Vineyard Enigma (9 page)

Who owns history? That seemed to be the question.

I was in the Edgartown library reading about archaeological theft.

Did artifacts of past civilizations belong to the nations or people now occupying those sites, or to those individuals who found them, preserved them, and displayed them to a wider world?

And what about the damage done? Haphazard excavations often destroyed as much as they saved. Reading this, I remembered hearing my sister Margarite saying that out in the Santa Fe country where she lived, archaeologists were now being very careful about how they excavated Anasazi ruins, and were leaving many untouched, in the expectation that less destructive techniques would be developed in time.

But according to my book the ancient sites of many countries had not been dealt with so kindly. They were routinely being plundered by professional and amateur thieves, who then sold the artifacts to museums and private collectors. And since grave robbers outnumbered police throughout the world, and since there apparently was no limit to the number of collectors who were willing and able to pay top dollar for purloined art objects, it seemed equally unlikely that the theft and accompanying destruction of old sites would soon end.

Archaeologists and religious leaders were particularly outraged by such commerce, the former because the raiders destroyed sites that were often the best or only source of knowledge about ancient cultures, and the latter because the illegal commerce involved objects considered sacred: mummies, skeletons and other human remains, burial objects, and religious art.

Some American Indian tribes were demanding and receiving the return of skeletons and burial artifacts so they could be reburied with proper ritual, and according to my book the bones of at least one ninth-century Anglo-Saxon warrior had been given a Christian burial after scientists had finished their study of them. How anyone knew the warrior had been a Christian was not explained.

Political correctness, of course, often prevailed over reason. One ancient body found on the American West Coast, for instance, was not only very, very old but seemed to resemble some race other than that of American Indian. Nevertheless, over the objections of scientists intrigued by the remains’ origins, it was returned by a socially sensitive federal cabinet member to a local tribe that claimed it, with little evidence, as a sacred ancestor.

By the time I put my book aside, I knew for sure that international trade in stolen artifacts was big business and that the UN’s agreement to outlaw such enterprise was often ignored by the very nations that had signed the convention. There was just too much money involved, and those charged with maintaining law and order were spread too thin.

I left my book and walked outside, where North Water Street was busy with tourists, many of whom were walking in the street instead of on the sidewalk. Visitors strolling down Edgartown’s streets often seem genuinely surprised when cars try to inch by them. To them the village, including its automobiles, is a make-believe place, too lovely to be real.

A catboat was beating in from the outer harbor, and the driver of the On Time ferry, recognizing the limited maneuverability of a close-hauled sailboat, held his vessel back as the catboat slid across in front of him and tacked away from the town wharf. The catboat’s skipper waved thanks and the On Time continued its hundred-yard trip over to Chappaquiddick to deliver its three-car cargo.

I hadn’t gone for a sail on the
Shirley J.,
our eighteen-foot Herreshoff cat, for several days, and I had a strong urge to do so now. But I only watched enviously as the catboat tacked on into the inner harbor, then I got into the Land Cruiser and drove to Aquinnah.

Joe Begay lived in Aquinnah. He and I had first met as soldiers in a faraway, long-ago war, then had met again years later when he married Toni Vanderbeck, of the Aquinnah Vanderbecks, and had left Oraibi to come and live on the island. He was a big guy with a face like granite and thick black hair that was barely beginning to gray.

In the years between our meetings, Joe had worked for some vaguely described organization in obscure places around the world. Even now, although officially retired, he occasionally went off somewhere for a few days to do some work about which he said little, if he mentioned it at all.

I had made it a point not to ask what he did or where he did it, but since our reunion I had learned that he had esoteric information about shadowy activities on several continents. And what he didn’t know personally, he seemed to be able to find out. He was a handy guy to know.

His wife, Toni, sold good Native American crafts in her shop on top of the Aquinnah cliffs, the western-most point of the Vineyard, and since the summer season had already begun, I figured she’d be there and Joe would be at the house waiting for their two children to get home from school. It wouldn’t be long before summer vacation and they, like my own kids, would be home all day.

I remembered how, when I was a kid, I’d looked forward to the last day of school and the feeling of freedom and endless time I’d had when that last day had come. By fall, I was ready to go back, but that first free day was like standing at the door of heaven. Now, as a parent, the thought of having my children home all day also made me as happy as I would no doubt be when they went back to school.

The Begays lived in a small, neat house not far from the beach, just north of the cliffs. There was a sandy path leading from the house to the beach. On that beach, on January 18, 1884, the frozen bodies of men, women, and children had washed ashore from the wreck of the
City of Columbus,
which had struck Devil’s Bridge and sunk with a loss of 103 lives. It was the most disastrous shipwreck in Vineyard history, but today the waters smiled and twinkled under the June sun, and there were no frozen ghosts on the beach.

As I pulled into his yard, Joe Begay was sitting in a lawn chair making a Nantucket basket. His big, thick hands looked too large for such work, but his touch was delicate and unhurried.

“I thought they made those over on that other island,” I said. “You should be making Vineyard baskets.”

“Actually,” he said, “I believe these were first made on the Nantucket lightship, not on the island. In any case, I don’t think there are any official Vineyard baskets, although I might be wrong about that. This one is going to be a genuine Native American work of art that Toni will sell for a pretty penny.”

“A Native American work of art being a work of art made by a Native American, I take it.”

“You bet. And you can’t get any more Native American than me.”

That was probably true. Joe Begay had a Navajo name, but his mother was Hopi and Joe was married to a Wampanoag. What could be more Native American than that?

“If you go into the house,” Joe now said, “you should find some Ipswich Ale and a couple of glasses.”

I went in and when I came back out with the ale, Joe had set his basket makings aside. I handed him a glass and took another chair and we drank. Good. God might not be a full-time brewer, but it was surely one of his trades.

“Now,” said Begay, “what brings you up here to Indian country?”

“I need some help,” I said. “Maybe you can give it to me.”

“
Maybe
is the operational word,” said Joe, taking another sip of beer. “Try me.”

I told Joe almost everything that had happened since I’d gotten the telephone call from Stanley Crandel, omitting only whatever was going on between Zee and Mahsimba, since that whatever had nothing to do with Zimbabwe eagles, and, moreover, since I wasn’t sure just what the whatever was.

When I was through, Joe said, “I’ve run into a few guaqueros during my travels. Most of them are just peasants trying to make a buck, but some of them are mean sons of bitches with machine guns who will kill you if you mess with them.”

“I’d like to know how the system works,” I said, “especially at this end of the tunnel.”

“There’s a lot of money at this end, but you know that already.” Begay dug into his shirt pocket and got out the makings: papers and Prince Albert, just like my father used to use. He rolled a smooth cigarette and lit up. I inhaled enviously and thought, not for the first time, about taking up my bent corncob pipe again. “The system works pretty much the way you’d think it would: The locals sneak out and dig up graves or anything else that they think might contain something valuable. They sell what they find to more sophisticated types, who move it to the cities and probably sell it to somebody else, who boxes it up and calls it bananas or some other legit product, pays off anybody who needs paying off, and puts it on a ship or plane.

“They have dogs to sniff out drugs these days, but they don’t have any that can sniff out ceramics or jewelry so the stuff gets to Europe or the States or wherever. It gets picked up by somebody at this end and stored away until they contact a buyer, if they don’t already have one. The buyer buys and everybody in the tunnel’s made some money.” He blew a smoke ring that drifted east on the gentle breeze and slowly fell apart.

“There’s a good market for the stuff and not much danger to people on this end, especially if there’s no official report of the theft or description of what was stolen. A smart dealer will fake papers if need be, and the collector can always play innocent if anybody can actually identify some stolen object.”

“No wonder business is good.”

He nodded. “A lot of businesses are good when there’s a ton of money lying around just asking to be spent. We have piles of it on the island these days. What do you want to know in particular?”

“Anything you can tell me about the characters in this little Vineyard drama.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, Daniel Duarte and Matthew Duarte. Daniel owned the company that sold the eagles and Matthew might have handled the deal. Charles Mauch. He’s a big wheel as well as a collector and he has his share of that money you were just talking about. Gerald Jenkins is another collector, but apparently one with limited funds. I’d like to know if any of their names have appeared in any official reports about this international trade in stolen objects.”

“I hate to disillusion you or lose your respect, but I’m not really up to speed when it comes to this particular brand of illegal activity.”

“I thought you might know somebody who is. There are a couple more names.” I looked at another smoke ring floating downwind. “David Brownington and Abraham Mahsimba. Both from Zimbabwe.”

He arched a brow. “I thought Mahsimba was one of the good guys. You’re turning into a suspicious old man.”

“All I know about this whole business is what Mahsimba has told me. And all I know about Mahsimba is what Stanley Crandel told me.”

He ground the cigarette butt under his heel. “Bad habit, but I can’t seem to shake it. How are Zee and the kids?”

“Zee’s working and the kids are in school. I’m the only one loafing.”

“Nothing new about that.” We exchanged family news and a couple of fishing stories, then Begay said, “Well, I’ll see what I can dig up on those names, but don’t count any chickens yet.”

“I won’t.” We shook hands and I drove home, thinking.

When I’d first taken this job, it had seemed odd to me that the eagles might have ended up on the island, of all places, but now I saw that they could be here as logically as anyplace else, since the Vineyard was home to more than its share of rich people who were collectors of fine art. If you had the money and the desire to collect artifacts, legally or illegally, why not do it here, where you lived at least part of the year, and where your privacy was enhanced by the Vineyard’s long tradition of leaving its rich and famous citizens alone?

And if you were a dealer in stolen art, that same tradition would make the island an ideal location from which to do business. Your office and storage area could be in one of those large old houses at the end of a long, sandy driveway, a very private place that was almost never seen by anyone but family, friends, and hired help.

If there actually was a Vineyard trade in pilfered artifacts, it seemed it would be easy to get the merchandise to and from the island, because there were boats and planes, both private and public, coming and going every day, all year long.

But maybe not.

I wondered how I would do it if I were in the business. Could I tie up my own boat to some dock and load or unload freight without eventually attracting unwanted attention? Would anyone wonder about the crates and bundles I loaded or unloaded from my plane?

Would it be better to use legitimate freight services like UPS or FedEx? They could deliver almost anything almost anywhere, and were extremely dependable.

I remembered reading about some great diamond, the Cullinan, perhaps, being shipped from South Africa to England for cutting. To deceive would-be thieves, much publicity had been devoted to a special ship that would carry the stone north, but it had actually been sent in a small box by regular post since the royal mail was such a dependable carrier.

Maybe I would use the U.S. mail to transport my purloined artifacts.

Maybe I could just drive my own van back and forth from the mainland. Why not? If I mixed legitimate art sales with illegal ones, no one would think much about my coming and going.

Had Matthew Duarte owned a van? I hadn’t seen one, but maybe it was parked in his barn beside the climate-controlled room that held his art objects until they could be sold.

At the end of our driveway I checked the mailbox. Empty. Curious, because in this age of endless catalogs, we always get junk mail if nothing else. I went down our driveway and found the reason why: Zee’s little Jeep was parked in the yard. She’d come home early from the hospital. Curious again, because Zee, a dedicated healer, almost never came home early.

I parked and stepped out and immediately heard voices from the gardens beyond the porch. Zee’s and another I thought I knew. I went and saw that I was right. Mahsimba and Zee were standing amid the raised beds, wineglasses in their hands, talking and laughing.

Zee saw me and waved, and Mahsimba turned and looked at me with his deep, golden eyes.

“Get yourself a beer and join us,” Zee called. “I’m giving Mahsimba another guided tour of our vegetables and flowers.”

I nodded and went into the house, where I took my time pouring myself a Sam Adams before carrying my mug back outside.

“You’re home early,” I said to Zee.

“Mahsimba finished his gallery visits earlier than we expected, so I brought him home for a drink before the kids get out of school.”

“I didn’t know you were working together,” I said. “I thought you were at the hospital.”

“Your wife has been kind enough to be my driver this afternoon,” said Mahsimba. “She has been a great help, since I must consult maps to find my way about your island. Because of her assistance, I believe I’ve now visited every gallery that is open.”

“I took the afternoon off,” said Zee in a delicate voice. “Mattie and John were both busy, so I stood in.”

I looked at Mahsimba. “Have you learned anything useful?”

He made a small gesture with his free hand. “I’ve found that there is a good market for art, and that much of what is for sale is of quite high quality, including objects from abroad. There is also a considerable market for antiques, again including objects from abroad. Your small island is quite a sophisticated place, I find.”

“We also have some people who’ve never been as far as Nantucket, and others who can barely read.”

He nodded. “That is the case in all communities. But I don’t think that those citizens are central to my inquiries. The others—the wealthy, the well traveled, the educated—those are the people of interest to me. The eagles I seek will not be found in the home of a poor or ignorant man or woman. They will be found in some great house or museum.” He sipped his wine and Zee’s eyes followed his hand while it plucked a weed from a flower box. Then his eyes rose to mine. “And how have your investigations gone, J.W.? Have you learned anything of interest?”

“I’ve learned some things. Whether they have anything to do with the eagles remains to be seen.”

“Tell me.”

So I told him about everything except my visit to Joe Begay. I don’t tell anybody everything.