Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (31 page)

 
          
The
Indians of the Central American forests are peasants, farmers who scratch a
living and a life from the rich jungle soil. Their ancestors have lived on that
soil and been buried in that soil for 2,000 years. They have endured famine and
flood, disease and wild animals, fire and enemy tribes; but whatever has
happened, the passive Indians have always stayed with the land.

 
          
Today,
the Indians want no more and no less than what they have always had; a piece of
land in the jungles, small interrelated communities, and to be left alone. But
today
Central
America
is a part
of the great world, and in the great world no
one
is left alone. The Indians cannot fight the death squads armed
with submachine guns and the soldiers armed with helicopters. They can expect
no mercy from the Ladinos who call them “animals with names.” Almost unbelievably,
driven beyond endurance, the Indians are leaving their land.

 
          
Refugees.
After thousands of years, they have become refugees. The Miskito Indians have
been in almost constant harried motion through
Honduras
and
Nicaragua
for the last three or four years, chivvied
and persecuted by “civilized” men, driven to distraction. More truly civilized
men and women in private religious groups have been helping Salvadoran and
Guatemalan peasants relocate in
Canada
, and what on Earth shall they think of
Canada
? And some, in tribal and family groups of
10 or 20 or 50, thousands of them by now, have made the terrible, long,
dangerous overland journey to the border of
Belize
, and across it ... to heaven.

 
          
It
is the jungle, as at home, but a wonderfully empty jungle, with miles and miles
of unclaimed territory in which to scratch out a piece of land and start to
live again. No armed masked men rove at night. The only military aircraft is
the occasional British Harrier jet, gone almost before it arrives, flashing
along the border to remind the Guatemalans of the futility of their dreams.

 
          
The
refugees arrive, fearful, ignorant, almost without hope. They begin their
settlements, hiding as best they can from the world, and in a week or six
months or a year they are found and the Belizean government sends its emissary
to them; a social worker, perhaps, or an unarmed policeman, or a medical
officer. They are told they have been accepted as immigrants; there are no
formalities and they shall not be returned to hell. So long as they live on
their piece of land, and use it, it is theirs. So long as they mind their own
business, they will be left alone. The government is not their enemy, and is
not at war with them. It asks only that they send their children to school: “We
want to make good Belizeans of them.”

 
          
The
Indians don’t entirely understand, nor entirely believe. They build their huts
out of the materials available in the jungle, they work their fields, and they
keep one eye over their shoulder. But nothing happens. And slowly, over the
course of years, they come to realize the truth:

 
          
The
war is over.

 
          
Innocent
hardly tasted his food at all, and barely glanced at the beautiful sea.
Lunching on lobster at the Chateau Caribbean, just up the bayfront from the
Fort George, he had smilingly but firmly refused offers to join friends at this
or that table, preferring his own gloomy company. Two Belikin beers had not
restored him, nor had the sounds of happiness and good fellowship all around him.
(At a nearby table, businessman Emory King, an American-bom Belizean citizen,
was explaining to his group, “How do you wind up with a small fortune in
Belize
? You start with a large fortune.”)

 
          
Valerie
Greene. He simply could not get her out of his mind. This morning, doing his
usual laps in the pool, it had occurred to him that Valerie had never seen his
house, had never swum in his pool, and the thought had so dispirited him he’d
stopped swimming at once, breaking his morning ritual for the first time in
memory, trailing away unhappily to the house to get dressed.

 
          
Which
was all, of course, ridiculous. None of his women had seen his house, nor swum
in his pool. Take a girlfriend to
that
wife,
those
four daughters? Not a
chance.

 
          
And
yet, however absurd the idea might be, it still had the power to deflate him.
Every thought of Valerie had the power to deflate him, in fact, rob him of
happiness and contentment. And the strange thing was, as time went by his
thoughts and memories were less and less about sex and more and more about
her.
Her smile, her naivete, her simple
worldliness, her passion for honesty and truth. In his mind, she was becoming a
saint.

 
          
He
avoided the word that would describe his condition. He could acknowledge—to
himself—that he was grieving for her, but not even to himself could he face the
reason why.

 
          
“Innocent
St. Michael?”

 
          
Innocent
looked up from his untouched lobster and unassuaged melancholy to see a white
man looming over his table, extending a hand with a card in it. A
very
white man, ashen as a barracuda’s
belly; just off the plane from the snowy north, no doubt. “Yes?” Innocent said,
wanting nothing more than for the man to cease to exist; or at the very least,
to go away.

 
          
But
he wouldn’t; waggling his fingers, he said, “My card.”

 
          
Come
along, Innocent, he told himself,
you re
still alive. Here’s a man with a
card.
Here’s a North American with money in his pockets, probably looking for a
little investment, some land to buy or a business to associate himself with, a
man wanting to wind up with a small fortune in
Belize
. Take an interest, Innocent.

 
          
He
took the man’s card, though not really with very much interest. The card told
him the man was named Hiram Farley and he was associated with a magazine in
New York City
called
Trend.
Had Innocent managed to drum up any interest, it would now evaporate:
“Reporter, eh?”

 
          
“Editor,”
Hiram Farley said, and uninvited pulled out the chair to Innocent’s right.
Seating himself, stacking his forearms on Innocent’s table, he said, “Mister
St. Michael, how familiar are you with your nation’s Antiquities Law of 1972?”

 
          
Innocent
raised an eyebrow. “The act says the Mayan ruins within
Belize
belong to the nation of
Belize
,” he said, “along with any and all
contents, all others to keep bloody hands off. Is that familiar enough for
you?”

           
“Good,” Hiram Farley said. “Fine.
And since that law was passed, back in 1972, that’s been the finish of the
trade in smuggled Mayan artifacts, is that right?” .

 
          
“That’s
called irony,” Innocent told him. “What you just did there.” Despite himself,
he was becoming involved with this fellow.

 
          
Hiram
Farley smiled. “Occupational hazard,” he explained. “Such a good cheap weapon,
irony. ” Then he switched to a keen look, saying, “Mister St. Michael, some
time ago I became aware of a scheme to smuggle pre-Columbian artifacts out of
Belize
and into the
United States
.”

 
          
“Which
you promptly reported to the officials of both nations,” Innocent suggested.

 
          
“Irony;
that’s good. Mister St. Michael, I had no proof, only a vague rumor. Hoping to
get solid documentary evidence, both to turn over to the authorities and to
present in an exclusive story in my magazine—”

 
          
“Ah,
yes, of course.”

 
          
“It
isn’t only charity that begins at home, Mister St. Michael.”

 
          
“I
don’t know much about charity, Mister Farley,” Innocent said. “Tell me what
you’ve done.”

 
          
“I
encouraged two friends of mine to come down here and pursue the suggestion of
becoming engaged in the smuggling operation. Antique dealers from
New York
.”

 
          
By
God: Witcher and Feldspan! Innocent became so delighted with this revelation
that absolutely nothing showed on his face. So
this
was the reason for the taping!

 
          
And
if Innocent hadn’t stepped in to remove those tapes, Kirby and his smuggling
operation would right now be plastered all over the pages of
Trend
magazine!

 
          
And
Valerie? Would she be alive or dead?

 
          
No;
Trend
would not have come out in time
to save her.

 
          
Kirby
. . . Kirby . . . Kirby would already have killed her, in any event.

 
          
Hiram
Farley continued, while Innocent’s thoughts went racing. Farley explained about
the tape recordings, their being stolen at the airport, and went on, “My
friends—they’re not the sort for intrigues like this, certainly not for
anything dangerous—they’ve made it clear they don’t have the heart to go on
with the investigation, particularly if those tapes are now in the hands of the
smugglers, as they almost certainly are.”

 
          
Innocent’s
mind was full of thoughts of Valerie and Kirby, but he managed to follow Hiram
Farley well enough to say, “So now you’ll do it yourself?”

 
          
“Mister
St. Michael, I still want that story for
Trend.
And I imagine you would like to help save your patrimony from the thieves and
smugglers. ”

 
          
“But
of course, Mister Farley,” Innocent said, thinking, Is this fellow a pansy-boy,
too, like his friends? Yes. More subtle about it, not noticeable at all if you
aren’t looking for it, but yes. On the other hand, shrewder than his friends,
tougher. Not an easy fellow to take advantage of.

 
          
Farley
was saying, “Mister St. Michael, I’ll level with you. After my friends threw in
the towel, I looked around, asked around, trying to find somebody else with a
connection in
Belize
. Do you remember a man named Rodemeyer? William Rodemeyer?”

 
          
The
name rang a distant bell, no more. Innocent frowned, saying, “I’m not sure ...”

 
          
“This
would be several years ago. You sold him a piece of land in Ladyville.”

 
          
Ladyville
was the little community next to the
International
Airport
. Its future was in fact quite promising for
commericial properties, should
Belize
ever become a considerably larger and more
bustling nation than it now was. Innocent had owned different parcels out there
over the years . . .

 
          
Rodemeyer!
It came back to him now, the man with the odd name. “The magazine man!”

 
          
“That’s
right,” Farley said. “He wanted to found a weekly business magazine for the
English-speaking
Caribbean
basin.”

 
          
“Yes,
I remember that man,” Innocent said. “He wanted land out by the airport, to
build offices and his own printing operation out there, distribute by air
through the
Caribbean
. Very ambitious project.”

 
          
“Too
ambitious, as it turned out,” Farley said.

 
          
“Bigger
circus than this come to
Belize
,” Innocent told himself.

 
          
Beg
pardon?”

 
          
“Nothing.
Seems to me that man went bust.”

 
          
“Yes,
he was undercapitalized.”

           
“That’s the big trouble in the
Caribbean,” Innocent agreed, nodding like a statesman.

 
          
“He’s
back in
New
York
now, Rodemeyer is,” Farley said. “Working for
Barron's.”

 
          
“Aristocrats
pay pretty good, I hear,” Innocent said.

 
          
“I
understand he sold the land back to you before he left, for rather less than
he’d paid for it.”

 
          
“Very
depressed real estate market, just at that moment,” Innocent murmured.

 
          
“Yes,”
agreed Farley. “The point is, Bill Rodemeyer told me he met several people in
Belize
, but you were the one I should see. He said
you were the shrewdest, toughest con man he ever met in his life, but you were
important in the government, and if there was something in it for you I could
probably get you to work with me on this smuggling story. ”

 
          
“I
have never had anything but the nicest remarks to make about Mister Rodemeyer,”
Innocent said, putting on a faintly insulted air.

 
          
Farley
laughed. “And why not? You made a pretty penny off him.” Becoming more serious,
he said, “I’ll let you personally break the story in
Belize
, and I’ll feature you prominently in the
write-up in
Trend.
We give each other
an exclusive. My information plus your local contacts, and we expose these
smugglers together.”

 
          
By
now, Innocent’s mind was functioning simultaneously on two completely different
levels. On the surface, operating out of long practice and engrained habit, he
listened to Hiram Farley, heard his ideas, decided how to play this latest fish
on his line. But underneath, his mind was full to overflowing with thoughts of
Valerie Greene. And where the two thoughtstreams converged was at Kirby Galway.

 
          
Kirby
the smuggler. And Kirby the murderer.

 
          
“So
you want to expose these smugglers in your magazine,” he said. “You want to
catch them in the act, you mean, with photographs and all.”

 
          
“That
would be best,” Farley agreed. “I can handle all that part of it myself. What I
need from you, if you think it’s a good idea, is help on the ground.”

 
          
“To
catch the smugglers,” Innocent said, brooding. To catch Kirby the smuggler;
yes, that would be a good thing, with this man Farley along to get the evidence
that would stick. But what about Kirby the murderer?