Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (21 page)

 
          
 
 
       
I
can still call those two guys in
New York
, Kirby thought, as he lifted the too-full
Cynthia over the mountains in a great looping half circle. Just so that damn
woman’s story doesn’t hit the wire services, I can still call them in three or
four weeks and start making deliveries, whether I have a temple set up down
here or not.

 
          
Around
and behind him the marijuana bales made small squeaking and scraping sounds as
Cynthia labored through the moonlit night. The first few trips with this sort
of cargo, Kirby had thought the grass was infested with bugs, but then he came
to realize it was just the bales shifting and adjusting as air currents toyed
with the plane.

 
          
The
only way to make a living at all carrying this sort of bulky cargo in this
small plane was to overload it and hope you were as good a pilot as you thought
you were. More than once, waddling along some bumpy pasture or a potholed
secondary road toward a line of trees dead ahead in the darkness, Kirby had
thought he’d overdone it this time— and wouldn’t that be a penny-ante way to
die—but so far luck and skill and vagrant breezes had conspired to help him
rise above all those trees and his own foolhardiness as well.

 
          
But
now that he had the temple scam, he was doubling the risk. Having loaded the
plane, having said farewell to the contact here at the Belizean end, he
struggled Cynthia into the sky, set off northward and, once securely out of
sight and sound of the men to whom he’d just waved goodbye, turned around in a
long ungainly loop, hugging the treetops, Cynthia straining all the way, all so
he could fly back south to his own land for an extra landing and takeoff.

 
          
Again
tonight. He flew on south, mostly by feel, as clouds rolled in to block the
moon. Coming in over the former temple, the world below him unrelieved black,
he switched on his landing lights at the last possible instant, to see Luz and
a couple of the others scurry out of his path. His land was even dryer than
this afternoon, the first cracks appearing among the brown stubble.

 
          
Chunkl
went Cynthia, hitting hard, the
whole plane groaning in complaint. Kirby turned, flashed his landing lights
briefly once more to find the Indians, then pushed Cynthia over to where they
stood gathered around a couple of large cardboard cartons.

 
          
The
loading didn’t take long; they’d done all this before. Out of the cardboard
cartons came smaller or larger parcels wrapped in recent Belizean papers,
mostly the
Beacon
and the Voice. The
smallest parcel was no bigger than a coffee mug, the largest about the size of
a table lamp without the shade. “Careful with this one,” Tommy said, handing
over a medium-sized piece, “it’s broken.”

 
          
“Right,”
said Kirby, stuffing it gently into one of the marijuana bales.

 
          
It
was now a little past
midnight
, and he had nearly 800 miles to travel,
most of it over water. Depending on winds and weather, the trip would take
between five and seven hours; in any event, it would be before dawn when he
landed. Stowing the last parcel, he yawned and said, “You get the temple put
away?”

 
          
“Oh,
yeah,” Tommy said. “The hill’s a little scuffed up, that’s all. You can see
there’s been digging.”

 
          
Luz
said, “I’m lookin forward to those assholes. They’ll shit when they get here
and don’t see any temple.”

 
          
“Just
so that ends it,” Kirby said, and yawned again. “I’ll see you guys next week
some time,” he said. “When I get back from this trip, I’m just gonna
hibernate.”

 
          
Innocently,
Tommy said, “What’s hibernate?”

 
          
Kirby
said, “What bears do in winter.”

 
          
Tommy
said, “What’s winter?”

 
          
“Oh,
fuck you,” Kirby said, and flew away with the music of their laughter in his
ears.

 
          
Nine
A.M.
Saturday morning, and the first thing
Innocent saw when he walked into his suite of offices in
Belmopan
was his faithful assistant,
Vernon
, elbow deep in paperwork. “Well, good morning,”
Innocent said. “Working on a Saturday?”

 
          
Vernon
looked up from his graphs and lists: “I had
to see the dentist yesterday, so I came in to get caught up.” He looked as
though he still had the toothache.

 
          
“I
have some phone calls to make,” Innocent said, “then an appointment down in
Belize
.” He grinned, thinking about his
appointment. How happy he was going to make Whitman Lemuel, by rescuing him.
For a price.

 
          
Vernon
reached for his phone. “Who do you want to
call?”

           
Good old reliable
Vernon
. “Transportation,” Innocent told him. “I
signed out a Land Rover yesterday, I want to know if it’s back.”

 
          
While
Vernon
made the call, Innocent reflected again on
yesterday’s unsatisfactory conclusion. Having arranged for the harrying of Whitman
Lemuel, he had sat in the bar of the
Fort
George
, one G and T after another in his hand as
he’d watched daylight fade over the ocean. In air conditioning, behind glass,
he had seen the slowly changing colors of sky and sea as a huge television
production, slow but vast, put on particularly for him. Occasionally, a dusty
cartop was visible, passing by on the dirt road beyond the hotel property’s
stone wall. But none of those cars contained Valerie Greene.

 
          
Full
night turned the windows into mirrors, and the view of himself sprawled on the
low dark chair, drink in hand, waiting hour after hour for some woman who never
appeared, finally irritated Innocent to the point where, a little after 7:30,
he went back out to the phone booths, called a friend in the police, asked one or
two guarded questions, and was assured no government vehicle of any kind had
been involved today in an accident. (A rare day.) He then called Belize City
Hospital, where no female
U.S.
citizen had been admitted in the last 12
hours. Likewise the Punta Gorda and
Belmopan
hospitals. He didn’t phone the hospitals up
in Corozal and Orange Walk because that was the other end of the country;
Valerie had been traveling south.

 
          
At
that point, he could have taken a room at the hotel for himself, and there were
any number of women he could have phoned to come join him, but he just didn’t
feel like it. His appetite had been set for Valerie Greene, and he wanted no
substitute. Besides which, he was somewhat surprised to realize, he
liked
that girl, and wanted to be sure
she was all right. So he ate alone in the hotel dining room, facing the
curtains that close out the night view, and when she still hadn’t returned he
left a simple message for her with the night clerk: “I’ll phone in the morning.
Innocent.” Whereupon he drove home, took a quick moonlight swim in the pool to
get the kinks out of his body, and slept like a baby.

 
          
This
morning, as promised, he phoned from the house, but Valerie Greene had never
returned to the hotel. Her possessions were still in her room, as though she
expected to come back, but the girl herself had been neither seen nor heard
from.

 
          
His
first appointment today was to have been with Whitman Lemuel, but the
disappearance of Valerie Greene changed all that. The amount and kind of
telephoning he had to do would not be possible at home, where he was surrounded
by hostile spies with his blood in their veins. So he must first come here to
the office in
Belmopan
.

 
          
Where
the loyal
Vernon
immediately took over the dog’s body work,
making the call, saying, “No, nothing’s wrong,” hanging up, saying to Innocent,
“It’s still out.”

 
          
“Hell,”
Innocent said.

 
          
Vernon
looked alert, ready to be of assistance.
“Something the matter?”

 
          
“That
archaeologist woman,” Innocent said.

 
          
“Oh,
yes. Is that the car?”

 
          
“She
didn’t come back.”

 
          
A
cloud passed over
Vernon
’s face; perhaps his tooth twinged him. He said, “Who was the driver?”

 
          
Innocent
looked and felt uncomfortable; this was the real problem in the affair. “You
know that fellow I use,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

           
Vernon
looked shocked. “Him?”

 
          
“I
needed someone ...” Innocent paused, but then went on, since he kept very few
secrets from
Vernon
. “I needed someone to report to me,” he said. “Someone I could trust to
keep his mouth shut. ”

 
          
“Someone
you could trust with a woman?”
Vernon
asked.

 
          
“Oh,
I don’t think he’d ...” But Innocent’s voice trailed away. In his heart, he had
to admit he wasn’t sure about that part of it.

 
          
“Is
he
back?”
Vernon
asked.

 
          
“He
isn’t on the phone.”

 
          
“Where
does he live?”

 
          
“Teakettle,”
Innocent said, naming a tiny hamlet a few miles away toward the Guatemalan
border. “But I have to get down to
Belize
.”

           
“I’ll go out there,”
Vernon
offered, “see if I can find him. You can
phone me here later.”

 
          
“Thank
you,
Vernon
,” Innocent said. “I don’t know what I’d do
without you.”

 
          
In Which Is Recounted Lemuel’s Arrival In
Belize, His Traveling To The Temple With Galway, The Unexpected Appearance Of
Valerie Green, Galway’s Astonishing Behavior Thereafter, And Lemuel’s Decision
To Have Nothing More To Do With The Whole Dubious Affair

 
          
“Mistah
Whitman?”

 
          
Lemuel
rose from a sweaty unrestful humid sleep, up out of discomfort and nightmare
into worse discomfort and much worse reality. Jail. Fetid odors fixed in the
dank air like flies in amber. Something dripping far off, against some ancient
stone. The night’s clamminess just giving way to the day’s heat. Jail; a
foreign
jail.

 
          
Gray
light seeped through the filth on the barred window, illuminating the concrete
walls and floor, the bare thin ticking without sheet or mattress in which
Lemuel had tossed and turned in sleepless terror all night, only to fall into
exhausted unconsciousness at the first hint of dawn. And now he was startled
awake by a voice, rasping his name:

 
          
“You
dere, wake up. You Mistah Whitman?”

           
Sitting up, dazed with fear and lack
of sleep, Lemuel blinked at the silhouette beyond the barred door. “Lemuel,” he
said. His tongue felt swollen, against his furry teeth. “My name is Lemuel.”

 
          
“You
no Mistah Whitman?” The silhouette wore a uniform of some sort, must be a
guard.

 
          
“Whitman
is my first name.” Trying to wake up, trying to collect his scattered wits,
Lemuel dug knuckles into his sandy eyes.

 
          
“Huh,”
said the guard, and rattled papers. “Whitman be you
Christian
name?”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“And
Lemuel, now. Lemuel be you
family
name?”

 
          
“That’s
right.”

 
          
The
guard chuckled, rattling his papers. “There be many a strange name in this
world,” he said philosophically. Keys rattled now, clanged in the lock, and the
door squeaked open. “Well, Mistah, Mistah Lemuel, Mistah
Whitman Lemuel
, you got a visitor.”

 
          
A
visitor? What could it mean? Who knew he was here? After hours last night of
struggle and protest, hours of being lied to or intimidated or merely ignored,
Lemuel had finally given up hope of ever getting a message through to the
American embassy, or the hotel, or anyone anywhere in the world who might be
able to help him escape this sudden tropic Kafka. So who could this be, coming
to visit him here in this awful place? Lemuel asked the guard: “What visitor?”
“The man who want to see you.”

 
          
“Who?
Who is he?”

 
          
“You
don’t want no visitor this morning?” The door squeaked again, ominously, as
though with the idea of closing. “You want me, I tell him you be too busy for
visitor this morning.”

 
          
“No
no!” Anything would be better than this verminous cell. Rising too hastily,
Lemuel was engulfed in dizziness and had to lean a moment against the wall,
under the eye of the impassive guard. Then he moved on, out to a concrete hall
being mopped by a small and toothless inmate. The guard led Lemuel toward the
front of the building, but veered them into a small side office where a large
stout chocolate'colored man in a light gray suit and pale green open-neck shirt
stood leafing through a wall calendar from Regent Insurance Company, taking a
great deal of interest in the months ahead.

           
Translucent louvers in both windows
were slightly open, letting in light and air without permitting a view of what
lay outside.

 
          
“Mistah
St. Michael,” said the guard, with some odd combination of deference and
jocularity, “this be Mistah Whit-man Lem-uel.” Shooing Lemuel into the office,
the guard snicked the solid door shut with himself on the outside.

 
          
Mr.
St. Michael dropped the year and turned to brood upon Lemuel, who keenly felt
his own griminess, his wrinkled clothing and unwashed body and unshaven face.
St. Michael, for such a big man in such a hot climate, was absolutely dapper. A
thousand sentences rushed through Lemuel’s mind—greetings, queries, demands,
suppli- cations—but none seemed precisely suited to the situation, so he
remained silent, not even trying to alter the look of desperation and
bewilderment and fear he knew to be on his face.

 
          
It
was St. Michael at last who spoke, in a mellifluous radio announcer’s voice,
saying, “Well, Mister Lemuel, I’ll say this for you. You don’t
look
a crook.”

 
          
So
it was, that was it, his worst fears realized, the Kirby Galway situation, that
was it. The terrors that had kept him awake all night were justified;
reputation ruined, a dank jail cell his portion forevermore. “Oh, no, sir,”
Lemuel said, in that moment a broken man, “no, sir, I am
not
a crook.”

 
          
“We
have heard Americans say that before,” St. Michael told him.

 
          
“It
was
Galway
,” Lemuel said, all in a rush. “Kirby
Galway, he lied to me, said all he wanted was my expert opinion, there wasn’t
the slightest
hint
of impropriety
until it was too late, I was already there, right there at the temple, the
first
time he made the suggestion,
that’s the—”

 
          
“At
the temple?” St. Michael’s eyes gleamed; his interest had been captured. A
super-detective, that’s what he must be, a manhunter thrilling to the chase.

 
          
Well,
Lemuel wanted no part of it. Let this manhunter chase Kirby Galway, and let
Galway
try
to weasel out of it later, try to pin any of the blame on a respectable scholar
like Whitman Lemuel, just let him try. “I don’t know what the girl told you,”
he began, “but I was out there
strictly
—”

 
          
“The
girl? Valerie Greene?”

 
          
“Is
that her name? Whatever she said, I assure you—”

           
“Wait, wait, Mister Lemuel,” St.
Michael said, suddenly accorm modating, reassuring. “Sit down here. Begin at
the beginning, please.”

 
          
There
was a small mahogany desk in the room, and a pair of armless wooden chairs.
Lemuel and St. Michael sat across the desk from one another, and Lemuel told
him everything, every single thing from his first meeting in New York with
Kirby Galway
and
the girl—Valerie
Greene, yes, both there, but they gave no indication they were together
at that time
—through the subsequent
meeting with Galway alone in New York, Lemuel’s agreement to come to Belize to
inspect Galway’s temple, his arrival, their traveling out together, the
unexpected appearance of the girl, Galway’s astonishing behavior thereafter,
and Lemuel’s decision to have nothing more to do with the whole dubious affair.
He gave St. Michael this entire history, and almost everything he said was the
absolute truth. Only in one small detail did he lie; in
his
version of events, Kirby Galway had approached him exclusively
as an expert, had asked for an opinion as to the value and authenticity of the
material he had found on his land, and had not suggested smuggling or the
illegal sale of Mayan antiquities until they were already standing on the temple
itself, until, in fact, just before the girl arrived.

 
          
“So
it’s there, in other words,” St. Michael said, when Lemuel was done. “The
temple is there.”

 
          
“Well,
yes, of course.”

 
          
St.
Michael brooded some more. Did he believe Lemuel? If he didn’t, it was still
possible that Lemuel was too unimportant to bother with further. Particularly
if Lemuel volunteered to be, to do—what was the legal term for selling out your
partners? Oh, yes—to give evidence for the prosecution, that was it. “I’ll be
happy, if necessary,” Lemuel said, smiling a bit as man to man, “to give
evidence for the prosecution, though of course, with my reputation at stake,
I’d prefer to have as little to do with this sorry mess as—”

 
          
“Tell
me about,” St. Michael interrupted, as though he hadn’t heard Lemuel talking at
all, “tell me about, mmmm—” He withdrew a flat white envelope from his inner
jacket pocket and consulted something written on its back: “Witcher and
Feldspan.”

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
“Alan
Witcher and— Here, see for yourself.”

           
St. Michael tossed the envelope
across the table. It landed face up, and Lemuel had time to see that it was
addressed to
one Innocent St.
Michael at some Belizean government
department, and that the printed return address was a bank in the
Cayman Islands
. But then St. Michaels reached out, turned
it over, and tapped the pen notations on the back, saying, “That side.”

 
          
“Yes,
of course.”

 
          
Lemuel
drew the envelope closer, to read what was written there:
Alan Witchery Gerrold Feldspan,
8
Christopher
Street
,
New York
,
NY
10014
. “Who are these people?”

 
          
“That’s
what I am asking you, Mister Lemuel. Who are they, and
why
did they tape-record their conversation with Kirby Galway?”

 
          
“But
I have no idea, I’ve never heard—”

 
          
St.
Michael’s big palm boomed down onto the desktop with a crack of doom, so
forceful that everything in the room jumped, including Lemuel, who very nearly
went over backwards out of his chair. His large round face all thunderclouds,
St. Michael roared, “Do not toy with me, Mister Lemuel, or it will go very
badly with you, I assure you. You can spend a
month
in that little cell, if you think you’d like it, if you—”

 
          
“No,
please!” Lemuel leaned forward, gasping for breath, ribcage pressed against the
rough edge of the desk. “I’m telling you the truth! I swear I am! I’ll tell you
anything you want, anything you need to know!”

 
          
“Tell
me about Witcher and Feldspan, then, and stop wasting my time!”

 
          
“But
I don’t
know
them! Honest to God, oh,
God help me, oh, what am I going to do, I should never have, it’s all Galway’s
fault, he kept saying this and saying that, and that
girl
, I don’t know what she told you, she’s as bad as he is,
they’re in it together, I know they—”

 
          
“Oh,
be quiet,” St. Michael said, all his fury gone as abruptly as it had arrived,
like a summer storm. Shaking his head, he said, “You’re telling the truth now,
all right. You don’t know any more than you just said.”

 
          
“That’s
right!”

 
          
“So
Kirby brings down those pansy boys. And then he brings down you. And he knows
Valerie Greene, but he don’t like her so much. And when you see her, you get
the wind up, you figure you gonna be arrested for what you planned, stealing
our antiquities, you try to run—

 
          
“I
never, never had any—”

 
          
St.
Michael pointed a thick finger at Lemuel. “You come down here, at
your
expense, because Kirby’s got no
money to throw away on strangers,
your
expense, just to play expert, that’s all it is. You tell that story, Mister
Lemuel,” St. Michael said, and smiled a thin and dangerous smile. “You tell
that story in a
Belize
court, Mister Lemuel.”