Tyrannosaur Canyon (19 page)

"In here," came the deep rumble of the voice. "And don't touch anything."

Beezon led the way into a sitting room. In the middle, a grossly fat man was imbedded in an oversized armchair of flowered chintz, antimacassars resting on the armrests. The light came from behind, leaving the man's face in shadow.

"Hello, Harry," said Beezon, his voice a little nervous. "Long time, eh? This is a friend of mine, Mr. Thomas Broadbent."

A large hand emerged from the darkness of the chair, made a vague flicking motion toward a pair of wing chairs. They both sat down.

Tom studied the man a little closer. He looked remarkably like Sidney Green-street, dressed in a white suit with a dark shirt and yellow tie, his thinning hair

combed carefully back, a neat and tidy man despite his corpulence. His broad forehead was as smooth and white as a baby's and heavy gold rings winked on his

fingers.

"Well, well," Dearborn said, "if it isn't Robert Beezon, the ammonite man.

How's business?"

"Couldn't be better. Fossils are going mainstream as office decor."

Another dismissive gesture, a raised hand and a barely perceptible movement of two fingers. "What do you want with me?"

Beezon cleared his throat. "Mr. Broadbent here-"

He stopped Beezon and turned to Tom. "Broadbent? You aren't by chance related to Maxwell Broadbent, the collector?"

Tom was taken aback. "He was my father."

"Maxwell Broadbent." He grunted. "Interesting man. Ran into him a few times. Is he still alive?"

"He passed away last year."

Another grunt. A hand came out holding a huge handkerchief, dabbed away at the fleshy, slabbed face. "I'm sorry to hear that. The world could use a few more like him, larger than life. Everyone's become so ... normal. May I ask how he died? He couldn't have been more than sixty."

Tom hesitated. "He ... he died in Honduras."

The eyebrows rose. "Is there some mystery here?"

Tom was taken aback by the man's directness. "He died doing what he loved doing," he said with a certain crispness. "He might have asked for better, but he accepted it with dignity. No mystery there."

"I am truly shocked to hear it." A pause. "So, what can I do for you,

Thomas?"

"Mr. Broadbent here is interested in purchasing a dinosaur-" Beezon began.

"A dinosaur? What in the world makes you think I sell dinosaurs?"

"Well..." Beezon fell silent, a look of consternation on his face.

Dearborn extended a large hand to him. "Robert, I want to thank you most sincerely for introducing Mr. Broadbent to me. Excuse me if I don't rise. It seems Mr. Broadbent and I have some business to discuss, which we should prefer to do in private."

Beezon stood and hesitatingly turned to Broadbent, wanting to say something. Tom guessed what it was.

"About that agreement we made? You can count on it."

"Thank you," said Beezon.

Tom felt a pang of guilt. There wouldn't, of course, be any commission.

Beezon said his good-byes and a moment later they heard the thump of the door, the whine of the car engine starting.

Dearborn turned to Tom, his face creasing into the semblance of a smile. "Now-did I hear the word dinosaur? What I said is true. I don't sell dinosaurs."

"What exactly is it that you do, Harry?"

"I'm a dinosaur broker." Dearborn leaned back into his chair with a smile, waiting.

Tom gathered his wits. "I'm an investment banker with clients in the Far East, and one of them-"

The fat hand rose up yet again, halting Tom's prepared speech. "That may work with Beezon but it won't wash with me. Tell me what it's really about."

Tom thought for a moment. The shrewd, cynical glitter in Dearborn's eye convinced him that he would be better off telling the truth.

"Perhaps you read about the murder in
New Mexico
, in the high mesas north of Abiquiii?"

"I did."

"I was the man who found the body. I happened to come across him as he was dying."

"Go on," said Dearborn, in a neutral tone.

"The man pressed a journal into my hand and made me promise to give it to his daughter, named Robbie. I'm trying to keep that promise. The problem is, the police haven't identified him or as far as I know even found his body."

"Did the man tell you anything else before he died?"

"He was lucid for only a moment," Tom said evasively.

"And this journal? What does it say?"

"It's just numbers. Lists of numbers."

"What kind of numbers?"

"Data to a GPR survey."

"Yes, yes, of course, that's how he did it. May I ask what your interest is in this, Mr. Broadbent?"

"Mr. Dearborn, I made a promise to a dying man. I keep my promises. That's my interest-no more, no less."

Harry Dearborn seemed amused by the answer. "I do believe, Mr. Broadbent, that if I were Diogenes, I would have to put out my lantern. You are that rarest of things, an honest man. Or you are a consummate liar."

"My wife thinks I'm merely stubborn."

He gave a flabby sigh. "I did indeed follow that murder up in Abiquiii. I wondered if it wasn't a certain dinosaur hunter of my acquaintance. I was aware that

the fellow had been prospecting up there and there was a rumor he was on to something big. It seems my worst fears have been realized."

"You know his name?"

The fat man shifted, the chair creaking under the massive redistribution of weight. "Marston Weathers."

"Who's he?"

"Nothing less than the top dinosaur hunter in the country." The fat man gathered his hands together and squeezed. "His friends called him Stem, because he was tall and kind of stringy. Tell me one thing, Mr. Broadbent: did old Stem find what he was looking for?"

Tom hesitated. Somehow, he felt he could trust this man. "Yes."

Another long, sad sigh. "Poor Stem. He died like he lived: ironically."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"A great deal. And in return, Mr. Broadbent, you will tell me about what he found. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

14

WYMAN FORD COULD see the tapering point of Navajo Rim a few hundred yards ahead, where the mesa ended in a small, thumb-shaped butte. The sun hung low in the sky, a disc of red-hot gold. Ford felt exhilarated. He now understood why the Indians of old went off into the wilderness and fasted in search of a vision quest. He had been on half rations for two days, eating only a slice of bread drizzled with a little olive oil for breakfast, and then for dinner half a cupful of cooked lentils and rice. Hunger did strange and wonderful things to the mind; it gave him a feeling of euphoria and boundless energy. He found it curious that a mere physiological effect could produce such a profoundly spiritual feeling.

He skirted the sandstone butte, looking for a way up. The view was incredible, but from the top he would be able to see even more. He edged along a sandstone ledge no more than three feet wide, plunging a thousand feet down into the blue depths of a canyon. He had never been this deep into the high mesa country before, and he felt like an explorer, a John "Wesley Powell. This was, without a doubt, some of the remotest country that existed in the lower forty-eight.

He came around the edge and stopped in surprise and delighted astonishment. There, wedged into the side of the bluff, was a tiny but almost perfect Anasazi cliff dwelling-four small rooms constructed from stacked pieces of sandstone and mortared with mud. He edged around the precipice with great care-how in the world had they raised children here?-and knelt down, peering in the doorway. The tiny room inside was empty, save for a scattering of burned corn cobs and a few potsherds. A single shaft of sunlight penetrating through a broken part of the wall, splashing a brilliant splotch of light on the ground. There were recent footprints in the dust of the floor made by someone wearing hiking boots

with chevron-shaped lugs, and Ford wondered if these belonged to the prospector. It seemed likely; if you were going to search this corner of the high mesas, you couldn't find a better lookout.

He stood up and continued along the ledge past the ruin, where he encountered an ancient hand-and-foot trail pecked into the sloping sandstone, going to the top of the butte.

The summit afforded a dazzling vista across the Echo Badlands, almost, it seemed, to the very curve of the earth itself. To his left, the enormous profile of Mesa de los Viejos loomed up, level after level like a great stone staircase, rising to the foothills of the
Canjilon
Mountains
. It was one of the most awesome views it had ever been his privilege to see, as if the Great Creator had blown up and burned the landscape, leaving it an utter wreck.

Ford sorted through his maps and removed one. He traced the quadrants of the map with his eye and then mentally drew those same lines on the badlands in front of him. Having sectioned and numbered the landscape to his satisfaction, he took out his binoculars and began searching the first quadrant, the one farthest to the east. When that was done he moved on to the next one and the next, methodically working his way across the landscape, looking for the peculiar rock formation outlined in the computer plot.

His first sweep yielded too many candidates. Similar formations were often found in groups, having been carved from the same layers of stone by the same action of wind and water. Ford had a growing conviction that he was on the right track, that the T. Rex was somewhere in the Echo Badlands. He just needed to get closer.

He spent the next fifteen minutes examining each quadrant a second time, but while many rock formations looked similar to the one he was after, none were a perfect match. There was always the possibility, of course, that he was looking at the right formation from the wrong angle, or that the formation might be hidden in one of the deep canyons at the far end of the badlands. As his eyes roved about, one canyon in particular captured his attention.
Tyrannosaur
Canyon
. It was the longest canyon in the high mesas, deep and tortuous, cutting more than twenty miles across the Echo Badlands, with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of side canyons and tributaries. He identified the great basalt monolith that marked its opening, and he followed its sinuous length with his binoculars. Deep in the badlands, the canyon petered out in a distant valley jammed with queer, domelike rocks. Some of the domes looked uncannily like the image in the computer plot-broader on top, with narrower necks. They were jumbled together like a crowd of bald men knocking their heads together.

Ford measured the distance from the sun to the horizon with his fingers at arm's length, and decided it was about
four o'clock
. Being June, the sun wouldn't set until well past eight. If he hustled, he could reach the cluster of sandstone domes before dark. It didn't look like there would be any water down there, but he had recently filled his two canteens at a fast-evaporating pothole left from the recent heavy rain, giving him four liters in reserve. He would camp somewhere down in that impressive canyon, commence his exploration at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Sunday. The day of the Lord.

He pushed that thought out of his mind.

Ford took one last look through his binoculars at the deep, mysterious canyon. Something twisted in his gut. He knew the T. Rex. was down there-in
Tyrannosaur
Canyon
.

The irony of it made Ford smile.

15

HARRY DEARBORN DREW in a long breath of air, his face hidden in shadow. "My goodness, it's four-thirty already. Would you care for tea?"

"If it isn't too much trouble," Tom said, wondering how the enormously fat man would get out of his chair, let alone make tea.

"Not at all." Dearborn moved his foot slightly and pressed a small bump in the floor; a moment later the dim presence of a servant materialized out of the back of the house.

"Tea."

The man withdrew.

"Now where were we? Ah, yes, Stem Weathers's daughter. Roberta's her name."

"Robbie."

"Robbie, that's what her father called her. Unfortunately, she and her father were somewhat estranged. Last I heard she was trying to make it as an artist in Texas-Marfa, I believe. Down there by the Big Bend. A small town-she should be easy to find."

"How did you know Weathers? Did he collect dinosaurs for you?"

A fat finger tapped on the arm of his chair. "Nobody collects for me, Thomas, although I might pass on suggestions from some of my clients. I have nothing to do with the collecting-beyond requiring documentary proof that the fossil came from private land." Here, Dearborn paused long enough for an ironic smile to stretch across the lower part of his face. Then he continued.

"Most of the fossil hunters out there are looking for small stuff. I call them the ferns and fishes crowd, like our Mr. Beezon. Crap by the truckload. Once in a. while they stumble over something important and that's when they come to me.

I have clients who are looking for somerhing quite particular: businessmen, foreign museums, collectors. I match buyers and sellers and take a twenty percent commission. I never see or touch the specimens. I am not a field man."

Tom stifled a smile.

The servant appeared with an enormous silver tray carrying a pot of tea covered in a quilted cozy, plates heaped with scones, cream puffs, small eclairs, and miniature brioches, jars of marmalade, butter, clotted cream, and honey. He placed the tray on a table to the side of Dearborn and vanished as silently as he had come.

"Excellent!" Dearborn pulled the cozy off the pot, filled two china cups, added milk and sugar.

"Your tea." He handed the cup and saucer to Tom.

Tom took his cup, sipped.

"I insist on my tea being prepared English style, not as the barbaric Americans make it." He chuckled and drained his cup in a single smooth motion, placed it down empty, and then reached out with a plump hand and plucked a brioche from the tray, opened it steaming, slathered it in clotted cream, and popped it in his mouth. He next took a hot crumpet, placed a soft dollop of butter on top, and waited for it to melt before eating it.