Relic of Time (34 page)

When he stepped out of the shower, he heard the room phone ringing. He grabbed a towel and began to rub his head. Catherine? Dear God. It had to be. Lulu would call his cell phone. He could of course just ignore it, but that would only put off the evil day. He was going to have to make a clean break with Catherine. There was no point in going to confession otherwise. A firm purpose of amendment, that was what he needed. And besides, Catherine now knew he had a wife. Such a sporty antinomian wench she was. He smiled. Mistress Quickly, if you will. His smile faded. But even a wench can misunderstand and what woman can be as antinomian as a man? Just a lapse in his own case, of course. He felt weighed down by the moral law, in the breach, if not in the observance.

He went to the phone, avoiding the sight of himself in the mirrors, naked as a jaybird, overweight, but still irresistible to women apparently. He closed his eyes, threw back his shoulders, and picked up the phone.

“Yes?” he said in a grave voice.

“Neal?”

“Lulu!”

“You must have turned off your cell phone. What time is it there?”

“Aren't you going to say you love me?”

“I've forgotten what you look like.”

“Love starved.”

With Lulu's voice in his ear, it was impossible to believe that he had succumbed to the blandishments of Catherine, and twice! He liked to think of it as passive, she the aggressor, he the seduced. It seemed to diminish his guilt.

“Good. I'm coming out. Neal, everything is falling apart. It's frightening.”

There he stood, still dripping from the shower, hair only half dry, as heavy with guilt as Hamlet's uncle, hearing his wife saying she would join him. He averted his eyes from the bed to whose adulterous sheets with such dexterity he had posted . . . He knew he was rattled when he turned Shakespearian.

“Or I could come there, Lulu. I've done what I came to do.”

“Done? Are you mad?” She inhaled, then paused. “Oh, your book.”

He drew himself up. The towel was now around his shoulders, the rest of him naked to his enemies. “My book. It is why I am here, my love.”

“Neal, everyone is converging on California. Everyone who isn't trying to get to Mexico City. This
is
your book, for God's sake.”

“Of course it is.”

Just like that, his professional persona was back. Shakespeare, thou art not living at this hour. Ah, Byron. Lulu spoke with excitement.

“And to think you're right there in the eye of the storm.”

“Lulu, this is the story of the millennium.”

“I wonder if we'll survive.”

For a millennium? “How soon can you get here?”

“Getting a flight is hell.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Keep your cell phone on.”

“It needs recharging.”

“Who doesn't?”

And so, renewed in body if not yet in spirit, Neal headed up the road to Don Ibanez's. There was more traffic than usual. Several Oakland taxis. A television truck. My God, the brethren were arriving. As he approached Jason Phelps's drive he saw the chaos on the road ahead. Don Ibanez must have closed and locked his gates to the media. Neal managed to pull into Phelps's drive. This was risky, with Catherine on the premises, but faint heart never lost fair lady. He hopped out, went up to the door under the overhang, then thought better of it. He went back down the drive and pulled the gates closed, shutting out the competition. The media had no respect for private property.

He rounded the house, remembering the study whose french doors opened onto a patio and gave the professor an unrivaled view of his domain, and of much more besides. He was in luck. Phelps was at his desk. No sign of Catherine. The doors were open. Neal stepped inside. Phelps looked up.

“You!” He rose as if pulled up by wires.

“I hoped you'd remember me.”

“She's gone! I threw her out.”

Catherine? The poor girl. “Gone?”

“You will no doubt find her at your place of assignation.”

Neal looked puzzled.

“The El Toro Motel!” the old man roared. It was like seeing Don Ibanez drop his patrician manner and have a fit. Phelps was clearly in a rage.

“I don't understand.”

Phelps looked at him exophthalmically, his face empurpled. Suddenly he sank into his chair and buried his face in his great, gnarled hands.

“Don't mock me, sir,” Phelps croaked.

Neal pulled up a chair. Phelps looked at him through his fingers.

“Don't grow old,” he advised.

Neal found all this an annoying distraction. Of course Catherine had hinted at the old man's amorous advances, which, in her telling, she had resisted. Apparently she hadn't. What is more pathetic than a lovesick septuagenarian? The thought of Catherine with this old and feeble, however venerable, man, was almost as effective as absolution.

“You surely don't think that Catherine and I . . . Professor Phelps, I am a married man.”

The hands dropped. Something like hope came into the great pouched eyes.

Neal affected a laugh. “Catherine jeopardize her position here? For me?” The laugh became genuine. Take her, she's yours.

“I asked her to go. In the middle of the night. I threw her out. I assumed she had come from you.”

“When was this?”

“After midnight.”

“My dear fellow, I had been in bed for hours then.” True enough. No need to elaborate. Phelps was taking heart. But what truth seeker is not vulnerable to an artful lie?

“But where did she go?”

“Have you checked at the motel you mentioned?”

Phelps snatched up the phone. He didn't know the number. Neal tossed an El Toro matchbook onto the desk. It was a risk, but Phelps was clearly deep in self-deception now. He called the motel. Neal turned and looked out the open doors. Far off was a little area with benches, overhanging palms, and to the left, just visible, a bit of Don Ibanez's basilica. He could hear Phelps on the phone. He heard him slam it down.

“She isn't there!”

“You say you asked her to leave?”

“I threw her out into the night!” Was he going to cry?

“Then I suppose she left. She may be on her way back to Minneapolis.”

The old man fell back in his chair. He seemed grateful for Neal's guess. Neal leaned toward him.

“What do you know of the events at Don Ibanez's?”

“Events.” Phelps was reluctant to emerge from his cocoon of self-pity.

“The great hoax. It began here. Haven't you been keeping up on the news?”

What was the collapse of the country compared to the loss of a concubine? Catherine had used the word. Strange woman, and alluring. Neal could easily have taken on again the feelings that Jason Phelps was trying to master. The loins are never completely monogamous.

“They picked up the package I'd been keeping for Don Ibanez.”

“Tell me about it.” Calmness was all. “What package?”

Phelps described it, as if to dismiss it from memory; it was an irrelevancy to him in this time of trial. “A foam package, taped.”

“How large?”

“What in God's name difference does that make?”

But Neal was putting two and two together and hoping they were still on a base ten system. Had the missing portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe found refuge under the roof of a notorious atheist and debunker of such things? But why would Phelps have been told what the contents of that package were?

“There was an exchange?”

Phelps clearly wanted Neal out of there. He had picked up the phone again and punched numbers he read from a notebook. Neal rose. As he went out the door, he heard Phelps say, “Myrna, this is Jason.”

Neal went at a good pace to the back of the property and as he did his view of the basilica came and went as the terrain altered and trees were thick or thin. When he reached the little cluster of benches under the palm trees he saw what seemed to be a path leading into Don Ibanez's property. It might have been his reason for turning into Phelps's driveway rather than joining the traffic jam on the road ahead. Thank God he had shut the gates to Phelps's driveway. But they were unlocked. Neal hurried along the seeming path, in the direction of the basilica.

Don Ibanez led Nate Hannan into the little basilica, stood facing the altar, and bowed his head. Hannan followed suit, but the founder of Empedocles did not intend to pray for long.

“That is where the original hung?”

A mournful sigh. “That, of course, is a copy.”

Don Ibanez told them the story later, over wine in his study, his tone the desolate one of a man who regretted ever taking part in such a deception.

“The monks at the shrine were warned that such a theft was planned,” he explained.

One response would have been to turn the basilica and surrounding area into an armed camp, and even then there was no assurance that the outrage could have been prevented. And so Don Ibanez had been approached.

“By the monks?”

“Miguel Arroyo was their intermediary.”

“Was he the one who warned them of the planned theft?” Ray asked.

Don Ibanez looked at him with his tragic pouched eyes. “I don't know.”

“Go on, go on,” Nate urged.

The plan was worthy of the most sensational thriller. Remove the original and replace it with a copy. Spirit the sacred image out of the country and hide it where no one would dream of looking. “Where would you hide a book?” Arroyo had asked. “In a library.”

And what better place for the original picture than in a little basilica exactly like the shrine in Mexico City, though of course on a smaller scale? An artful copy of the image had hung behind its altar from the time of its construction. Now the original would be there.

“I did not sleep during the days it took to get it here,” the old man said. “But once it was safely here . . .” A beatific expression erased the lines of his face. To have the object of his principal devotion mere footsteps from his house, to be able to visit it at will, untroubled by crowds of pilgrims. “Frater Leone spent hours on his knees in the basilica. And so did I. Those were wonderful weeks.”

Ray said, “Except for riots, gunfire, general chaos.”

The beatific expression was replaced by that of a lost soul. “Exactly. No one was more shocked than I at the reaction when a theft did take place. I myself flew to Mexico City to beg the monks to say they knew where the original was. Blood was being shed.”

“That was when you were supposedly kidnapped,” Laura said.

“Yes. Miguel Arroyo tried to dissuade me. But I was determined to go.”

The monks, when Don Ibanez spoke with them, were convinced that any such announcement on their part would be dismissed as the excuse of faithless custodians whose precious object had been stolen.

“I could see their point. But I could not agree. They were impervious to argument. The picture was safe. They were convinced that Our Lady would not permit the violence to continue. I returned.”

But the violence had continued. Finally the return of the miraculous image was agreed to. The bishop, when consulted, was convinced that people would be so overjoyed by its return that all violence would cease. There would be a triumphant procession to the shrine. . . .

And so the plan for the return was worked out.

“With Arroyo?”

“No, no. With your man Traeger.”

Hannan made a face, but said nothing. Ray asked Don Ibanez to describe exactly what had happened here at the little basilica as the plan was put under way. They all leaned toward him as he went through it, the hiring of the U-Haul, the ready-ing of the Empedocles plane.