Island of Thieves (6 page)

“We're looking for the guy who owns that shop.” Uncle Harvey pointed across the street. “Do you know where he is?”

The old men stared at him blankly. One of them said,
“Inglés?”

“Sí,”
said Uncle Harvey.
“Inglés. Hablas Inglés?”

One of them laughed and the others shook their heads.

“Gracias,”
said Uncle Harvey.
“Adiós!”

“Adiós!”
they called back, raising their glasses and toasting us.

Uncle Harvey took my arm. “Let's go and find a hotel.”

We walked back to the car.

I said, “Why were you talking to them in English?”

“Why not?”

“Don't they speak Spanish?”

“I'm sure they do.”

“Then why don't you speak to them in Spanish?”

“Because I can't.”

I stared at him like an idiot. “You can't speak Spanish?”

“I can say a few words.
Buenos días. Adiós. Una cerveza, por favor. Dónde está el baño?
But that's about it.”

“I don't believe this,” I said. “We've come treasure-hunting in Peru and you can't even speak Spanish!”

“I don't know why you're so surprised,” said Uncle Harvey. “We've been here for a whole day. Have you heard me speak a single word of the local lingo?”

Thinking about it, I realized he had indeed been talking to everyone in English. Like an idiot, I'd assumed he was doing it for
my
benefit.

“This is crazy,” I said. “How are we ever going to find this treasure if you can't even speak their language?”

“We'll be fine,” replied Uncle Harvey. “Stop worrying. Now get in the car. I think I saw a sign for a hotel on the road into town.”

You know,
I felt like saying,
I'm meant to be the doofus here. You're the adult. You're twice my age. No: three times. You are three times my age, Uncle Harvey, and you've brought me to Peru to hunt for buried treasure and you've offended a major criminal and he's going to track us down and kill us, and now we're in a little town miles from anywhere and it'll be dark soon and we don't have anywhere to stay and YOU DON'T EVEN SPEAK SPANISH.

But I didn't say that. In fact, I didn't say anything at all. Not a word. Like he said, he hadn't asked me to come with him. I'd practically forced him to buy me a ticket and take me to Peru. If I wasn't happy, there was only one person to blame, and that was me.

When I woke up in the morning,
Uncle Harvey was still snoring. I went for a cold shower—the hot water didn't work—and came back and got dressed, clattering around the room, making as much noise as possible, but he didn't even stir. Eventually I just shook his shoulder and told him to wake up.

“Go away,” he said.

“We've got things to do,” I told him. “People to see. Treasure to find.”

“I need five more minutes.” He pulled the pillow over his head.

I lay down on my bed and read the guidebook. Our town wasn't even in it, so I turned to the back of the book and tried to learn some Spanish phrases.

Half an hour later, I finally managed to persuade Uncle Harvey to leave his bed. Grumbling and groaning, he got dressed and trudged downstairs to the restaurant. He ordered fried eggs and toast for both of us. “What do you want to drink?” he asked. “Coffee?”

“Ha-ha.”

“You should try it. Just once. You might like it.”

“I have tried it,” I said. “I didn't.”

“Did you have real coffee? Or that instant junk?”

“Both. I didn't like either.”

“I suppose you're still very young. Wait till you're a bit older and your tastes have developed. Then you'll start to appreciate the finer things in life.”

Sometimes my uncle could be very patronizing.

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and drove back to the shop. Uncle Harvey parked the car on the opposite side of the street and we sat there for fifteen minutes, watching people come and go, looking for any sign of Otto's men. We assessed everyone: the guy with a squawking chicken in each hand, the woman with a baby tucked into her woolen shawl, even the little old lady who could only walk with the aid of a wooden stick. Any of them
could
have been spying for Otto, but my uncle was sure they weren't. I hoped he was right.

We went into the shop, which was a junk shop in the real sense of the word. It was crammed full of old trash, as if someone had just scooped up whatever they happened to find—rusty farm implements, computer keyboards, chairs, clothes, books, postcards, old phones—and dumped all of it in here, not stopping to wonder if anyone might be interested in buying it. Sitting in the middle of all this junk was a creepy-looking man with a twirly mustache and eyebrows that met in the middle. He was reading a newspaper. When we came through the door, he gave us a long stare over the top of his paper, then said,
“Buenos días.”

“Buenos días,”
replied my uncle. “My name is Harvey Trelawney. I was here a week or so ago. Do you remember me?”

The man inspected Uncle Harvey for a moment, then smiled. He was missing both his front teeth and he spoke with a lisp. “You are
Inglés
? You buy the jewels? Yes?”

“That's right.”

“Welcome. My name is Rodolfo, and this is my shop. Please, come, sit. You want to buy one more necklace?”

“Actually, no, I'm not interested in another necklace. I wondered if you could tell me a little more about this.” Uncle Harvey opened his blue folder and took out the piece of paper. “When you sold me that necklace, it came wrapped in this piece of paper. I didn't actually look at it till I got back home. But once I did, I realized the words are English.”

“
Inglés?
Yes?” Rodolfo was intrigued. He held the paper carefully with both hands and carried it over to the light. “Very interesting. You want more?”

“Have you got more?” asked Uncle Harvey.

“No.”

“Can you get more?”

“Is possible.”

“Oh, come on, Rodolfo. Let's not play games. Where did you get it? Can you remember?”

“Of course.”

“So where was it?”

Rodolfo smiled. “For the necklace, you get a good price, no? How much? Two hundred dollars?”

“Seventy,” said my uncle.

“Seventy. That
is
a good price.”

“Oh, I see. It's like that, is it? Well, here you go.” My uncle opened his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

(Here's a piece of free advice from Uncle Harvey: Wherever in the world you might be going, it's always best to travel with American currency. In an emergency, everyone wants dollars. He had five hundred of them in his wallet. Plus a grubby stash of the local currency—soles.)

He offered the money to Rodolfo. “Will you tell us where you got it?”

“Of course. But ten dollars . . . This is not a good price.”

“How much do you want?”

“Let us say . . .” Rodolfo paused for a moment. “A thousand dollars.”

“A thousand! Are you crazy? I'm not asking for much, Rodolfo. Just a little tiny piece of information. Go on, take my ten dollars and tell me what I want to know.”

They went back and forth like this for a few minutes and eventually agreed on twenty dollars. Rodolfo pocketed the money, handed the page back, and told us what he knew. It wasn't much. He had bought the necklace from an old man, a farmer, who came into the shop.

“What's his name?” asked my uncle. “Where does he live?”

“I show you. Come, we will go there together, you and me.”

“We don't need a guide,” said Uncle Harvey.

“Yes, yes. You must have guide. This place is difficult. Is dangerous. You need one guide. I will help you.”

“Just draw us a map,” said Uncle Harvey.

“Is not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Is not possible. Come, we go now. I will guide you.”

“I'll pay you for a map.”

“How much?”

“How about another twenty dollars?”

“How about five hundred?”

They were going at it again, arguing over the price. Rodolfo also asked all kinds of questions, trying to discover why my uncle was so interested in the necklace and the paper, but Uncle Harvey told him nothing. Eventually Rodolfo seemed to realize that he wasn't going to get anywhere and agreed on a fee of forty more dollars. Uncle Harvey handed over the money and Rodolfo drew a map for us, showing the rough location of the old man's farm, four or five hours' drive away. Before handing over the map, he made one final attempt to join us, saying that the mountains were very dangerous and without his help we would probably spend days driving up the wrong roads, getting lost, wasting time, failing to find whatever it was that we wanted so desperately. Uncle Harvey smiled, folded up the map, and said, “Thanks for your concern, Rodolfo, but you don't have to worry about us. We'll be fine.”

We drove for hours
along tiny roads that led us out of the lush valley and up into the hills. The air grew colder, and with each bend of the road, the craggy mountaintops looked a little closer. A couple of hours from the town, we passed a patch of old brown snow, and then, soon afterward, another newer, cleaner, whiter patch. I complained about the cold, but Uncle Harvey refused to turn on the heater in the car. He said it used up too much fuel. He reluctantly agreed to stop by the side of the road so I could get a sweatshirt from my bag in the trunk.

Rodolfo's map was so vague that we weren't quite sure when—or if—we would reach our destination, but after about five hours of steady driving, we came to a rickety old house clinging to the side of the valley. It fit the description Rudolfo had given us. Geese and chickens were wandering freely through the yard, and an evil-looking mule was tethered to a post. Two scrawny dogs sprinted to meet us, snarling and growling so ferociously that I was seriously worried they were going to take a chunk out of my leg. They were followed by an old woman, bent double, leaning on a wooden stick. She shushed the dogs and blinked as if she was trying to remember where she might have seen us before.

Uncle Harvey talked to her in simple English, asking about the necklace. She shook her head, not understanding a word, and started jabbering away in her own language. He shrugged his shoulders and said,
“No entiendo, no entiendo.”
They went on like this for a minute or two, and then he yanked a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket and drew a picture of a necklace. He opened his wallet and pulled out a handful of bills. Seeing the money, the old woman grinned and put up her hand, telling us to wait there, and hobbled into her house. She came back a few minutes later carrying a long silver necklace with a neat little cross on the end. It was nice enough, but not what we were looking for.

“Muchos gracias,”
said Uncle Harvey, handing the necklace back to the little old lady.
“Adiós.”
He winked at me as if to say:
There you go—I can say a few words of the local lingo. All is not lost.

We drove up into the hills, higher and higher.

We passed a man standing by the side of the road with a donkey and a wicker basket filled with potatoes. We showed him the picture of the necklace. He shook his head and waved us onward.

The car plunged through deep puddles and bounced over potholes, shaking us in our seats.

The air was colder. The sky was darker. The mountains towered over us.

We stopped at every farm, quizzing the owners, asking if they had sold a silver necklace to Rodolfo, the antiques dealer with the twirly 'stache.

No one spoke any English, so our conversations took ages. We had to say everything in sign language and drawings and the few words of Spanish that Uncle Harvey managed to remember.

We were offered a lot of jewelry. One farmer tried to sell us a goat. Another offered us each a glass of warm milk.

Wherever we went, I heard the word
gringo.
Uncle Harvey told me what it meant.
Gringo
is the Spanish word for a foreigner, a tourist, a white person. In other words: us.

I began to wonder if we'd made a mistake. Maybe we should have stuck with Otto. He might be a murderous criminal, but at least he could speak Spanish. Or should we have accepted Rodolfo's offer? With him in the car, guiding us, would we have found the farm hours ago? Thinking about Rodolfo, I wondered if he'd sent us on a wild-goose chase. He must have guessed we were searching for something valuable. Wouldn't he be tempted to take it for himself? He could have pocketed our money, drawn a fake map, pointed us up the wrong mountain, and waited till we were out of sight, then headed off in the right direction himself, going back to the guy who had sold him the necklace. Meanwhile we'd spend a few days driving around some completely different part of the Andes, searching for a farm that didn't even exist.

The sun sank behind the mountains. Darkness flooded the sky. Our headlights illuminated a little slice of road ahead of us and nothing more. One false move and our wheel would slip over the precipice, taking the rest of the car with it. Uncle Harvey could only drive about five miles an hour. I was tempted to get out and walk. I probably would have gotten there quicker. And I wouldn't die if the car went over the edge of the cliff.

“We're lost,” I said.

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Uncle Harvey. “I know exactly where we are.”

“Where are we?”

He didn't answer that.

“What if we run out of gas?” I said.

“We won't.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as eggs is eggs,” said Uncle Harvey.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means we're going to be fine and you should stop worrying so much.”