High Adventure Page 14

  “Tied down by things,” the skinny black man commented, with the smug superiority of the ne’er-do-well.

  “All right, all right,” Vernon said, struggling to subdue his fury. The thing to do was accept the situation, he told himself, as he paced back and forth past the open doorway, where gnats and dust motes practiced football plays in a shaft of orange sunlight. Lord, give me the strength to change that which can be changed, he thought, the patience to live with that which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to tell the difference. Lord, he thought, I’m up to my ass in shit, Lord!

  Too many things going on, too much happening. Now he was somehow responsible for the kidnapping of an American woman, which would probably become an international incident, with the Sixth Fleet making a show of strength off St. Georges Caye and U.S. Marines walking around Belize City giving people chewing gum.

  (Earlier in this century, after the world market in mahogany faltered, chicle, being the latex sap of the sapodilla tree, used in the making of chewing gum, became for a while Belize’s primary export to the United States.)

  There was no furniture in this place, no objects but an unlit candle stuck in a beer bottle in one comer, nothing to kick but the pine-slab walls. Punching his own thighs, Vernon paced back and forth, thinking many different thoughts, until the skinny black man said, easily, “If you’re that worried about her, we can always …” He drew a line with his finger across his throat.

  That was it, that was the thought Vernon had been avoiding and denying, circling around and around. In his mind and in his heart, he had committed many, many murders over the years, both of individuals and of groups, but out on the griddle of reality he had never even hit anybody very hard. Was this what a decisive man would do at this juncture? Just shoot the woman right off the—

  He didn’t have a gun.

  All right, stab her just as quick as—

  He didn’t have a knife with him, either, except his imitation Swiss Army knife (imitation! how that galled!), which might eventually do the job, but not with one clean quick slice.

  All right, all right, strangle the goddam …

  He looked down at his hands. He imagined a face between them, gargling. The eyes get bigger and bigger, red veins standing out on the whites. The tongue protrudes from the begging mouth, growing thicker, flopping like a red fish. The feeble fingers grope in agony at his hands. Drool pours from the mouth, snot oozes from the nostrils, the eyes bulge as though they would explode like grapes, the flesh turns mottled, purple …

  Vernon thought he might be sick.

  “Well?” said the skinny black man.

  Vernon swallowed, looking out the open doorway at the heavy jungle and the fading day. “Uhhhh,” he said. “We’ll decide that later. First I have to question her.”

  “About what?”

  “About the temple!” Vernon spun around, furious again. “Was that really and truly Galway’s land?”

  “Looked that way on the map. She seemed to think it was. And the temple was there.”

  “You saw it. You saw the temple.”

  “I told you already, I saw a hill with some rocks on it. Come on, man, make a decision.”

  The loneliness of command. Vernon bit his cheeks, he punched his knuckles together. All at once, it occurred to him, like a light shining from heaven, that he wouldn’t actually himself have to do the, uh, crime personally. Leaving here tonight, he could simply say (out of the comer of his mouth), “Take care of her,” and his partner, untroubled by conscience, unaffected by imagination, unthinking of consequence, would do the dirty deed.

  “What do you want, Vernon?”

  Vernon looked at the closed door to the inner room. The partition having originally been an exterior wall, it was still covered with bark, and the pine-slab door itself was thick and solid. It opened inward, but there was a rusty old hasp lock fixed in place with a broken-off piece of branch. “I’d better go question her now,” he decided, and sighed.

  Taking the pillowcase from his pocket, he slowly and deliberately unfolded it, then slipped it over his head. It was a yellow pillowcase with a large sunny flower design; the eyeholes so he could see had been cut into the center of two daisies.

  “Take the candle,” the skinny black man advised. “It’s dark in there.”

  So Vernon lit the candle in the beer bottle, the skinny black man undid the hasp and opened the door—a scurrying sound came from within—and Vernon stepped through into the other room, peering through the damn eyeholes, stumbling a bit because he couldn’t see his feet. Behind him, the door was closed, the hasp lock rasped.

  Valerie Greene stood tall—very tall—against the rear wall, arms at her sides, chin up in a posture of defiance. “You won’t get away with this!” she cried.

  “I’ve already gotten away with it,” Vernon told her, sneering a bit. (He’d seen the same movies.)

  “When I get out of here—”

  “If you get out of here,” he said, and was gratified to see her blanch a bit, one hand lifting, fingers curled, the knuckles just touching her chin. “All you have to do,” he told her, “is cooperate.”

  Her eyes flashed. “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he said, scornful and superior, “I have no designs on your maidenly virtue. I know how important that is to you Americans.”

  “You do?” In the flickering candlelight her expression was difficult to read.

  “I am here,” he said, “to talk about the temple.”

  “Despoliation!” She took an aggressive step forward, almost as though to launch herself at him. “You, a Belizean, and you don’t care what happens to your own heritage!”

  “What makes you think I’m a Belizean?” he asked, trying on a Texas accent.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “I know who you are.”

  “You may think you know—”

  “There is one thing I wish you’d tell me,” she said.

  This interview was getting out of control—now she was questioning him—but there seemed no way to get back to the original path: “Yes?”

  “Is Vernon your first name or your last?”

  Behind the door, someone snickered. She heard us talking! Dammit, dammit, through all these cracks in the wall. Vernon said, in a stage-Irish accent, “It is none of me names. You can’t see me face, you can’t identify me voice, you can’t prove a thing.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she said, and folded her arms beneath her proud bosom.

  “Listen,” he said, stepping closer, “you talk about heritage, but what do you think Kirby Galway’s doing up there? He’s selling stuff!”

  “That makes you no better.”

  “All right,” Vernon said. “I’ll tell you the truth. I am Belizean.”

  “Of course you are, I know that.”

  “I want to rescue the temple from Kirby Galway,” Vernon went on, looking guiltless and pure-minded under the pillowcase, “so I can protect it for my people.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, “or you wouldn’t lock me up in here. You and Innocent St. Michael. Boy! Was I ever taken in by your boss!”

  Oh, ho, Vernon thought, she thinks St. Michael’s part of this scheme. That’s good; somehow or other, it’s good. He said, “Never mind all that. The point is, that was Galway’s land you went to, is that right?”

  “Of course it was,” she said. “The temple’s just where I said it was, all along, and you were wrong with your drainage and faults and all that.”

  Vernon resisted the bait: I am not Vernon, he reminded himself, and said, “Is it valuable? Rich things there?”

  She gave him the exasperated look of the professional faced with the amateur. “How am I supposed to know that? I haven’t investigated the site, that man drove me off with a sword!”

  “A sword?”

  She made swishing gestures, saying, “You know, that thing, you know.”

  “Machete,” said the skinny black man from the other room.<
br />
  “You keep out of this!” Vernon yelled. With his free hand, he punched his hipbone. Inside the pillowcase, his head was getting hotter and hotter, in more ways than one. Everything was out of control. There was no way to buy this woman off, or force her silence, except …

  Ohhhhh, ohhhhhh. How had he gotten into this? “That’s all for now,” he said, backing away to the door. He thought, I’ll go to the land, I don’t know how we all missed the temple, but it must be there, I’ll go there, I’ll hunt around right now, tonight, if I’m lucky I’ll find some jade, maybe some gold, a couple hundred thousand worth (U.S.), I’ll skip the country tomorrow. Start all over again somewhere else, where nobody knows me, change my name, do things right this time. At the same time, he knew he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go there tonight, and even if he did he wouldn’t find anything useful by stumbling around in the dark, and even if by some insane chance he did happen upon something valuable he still wouldn’t flee Belize.

  Where would he go? What would he do there? Who would he know there?

  “Leave me the candle,” Valerie Greene said.

  “What?” he asked, disturbed from his reverie.

  “It’s dark in here. I need the candle.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. He’d seen that movie, too. “You’ll set fire to the place and escape.”

  “I just wanted some light.”

  “You don’t need light,” he said ominously, holding the candle closer to himself, not quite igniting the pillowcase. He pushed on the door, and nothing happened. His partner had locked it. So much for his exit line; hating the sense that he was somehow becoming a figure of fun, Vernon resignedly knocked on the door.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Oh, open the goddam door!”

  The hasp rasped, the door swung open, and Vernon glared back through the pillowcase eyes at Valerie Greene: “I’ll see you later,” he said, and this time made his exit.

  “I have to go to the bathroom!”

  The skinny black man shut and locked the door. The sun would soon be setting; orange rays crossed almost horizontally from the doorway to soften the roughness of the dividing wall. Vernon put the candle down in its comer, still burning. “I have to get back,” he said.

  The skinny black man nodded at the locked door. “Do I take care of that?”

  “Well, of course, man, you brought her here, didn’t you?”

  The skinny black man leveled on Vernon a cold and impatient gaze, and waited.

  Vernon dithered. Unwillingly, he said, “We can’t have her walking around the streets now, can we?”

  “Say it out, Vernon. Say what you want.”

  There was to be no escape from responsibility. Vernon looked aside, out the doorway at trees, brush, vines, heavy greenery turning black in the orange light. He shook his head. “She has to die,” he muttered, and hurried away.

  26

  THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  Home.

  An accumulation of mail. No burglaries, thank God. The cats and plants had been taken care of after all by Richie from across the hall; what a relief. Sour milk in the refrigerator, but otherwise fine in there. Seltzer gone flat, so the homecoming Cutty Sarks had to be splashed with water from the kitchen sink. And among the messages on the answering machine was the hearty robust cheerful voice of Hiram: “Hanging by my thumbs down here, can’t wait to hear all. Give a buzz the instant you get in.”

  “Oh, dear,” Gerry said. “I’m not sure I can face him.”

  Back on home ground, Alan was less judgmental, more compassionate. “I know what you mean,” he said, “but we might as well get it over.”

  “Can’t I at least shower first? We just walked in, we haven’t even unpacked.”

  “You go shower,” Alan told him. “I’ll call Hiram and tell him to give us half an hour, and then I’ll unpack.” (Alan was feeling a bit guilty at the memory of his tension-caused snappishness down there in Belize.)

  “Oh, I do appreciate that,” Gerry said. “Thank you, Alan.” The Scotch had made him feel better already, and so had Alan’s supportive mood, and so had the very fact of being home, here among the things he loved.

  Before showering, and while Alan made the call to Hiram’s apartment three floors below, Gerry went back to the living room simply to drink in the atmosphere for a moment; the reassurance of one’s own nest. Coming in from Kennedy in the cab through the evening rush, smears of wet dirty snow beside the roadway, Gerry had yearned to be home, and now at last here he was, in his own living room.

  On a basic motif of French Empire gilded furniture, Gerry and Alan had overlaid an eclectic mix of other items, all a little outrageous, and yet all coming wonderfully together, like a perfect little ragout. The nineteenth century English rhinoceros horn chair, for instance, made a blunt masculine statement that eased somewhat the overly pompous and delicate Napoleonic pieces, while the heavy window treatments of fringed green velvet against the slightly darker green of the lacquered walls created an interiority, a hereness saved from claustrophobia by the leopard skin casually thrown on the Aubusson rug. The dark Coromandel screen in the comer served as a focus for the room’s objets; teakwood Balinese demons grinning at brass manyarmed Indian goddesses under the baleful gaze of English cathedral stone gargoyles and medieval icons, lit by Tiffany lamps.

  Home!

  Actually smiling, for the first time in who knows how long, Gerry went on through to the bedroom, hearing the murmur of Alan on the phone in the office, and if the eclectic living room had soothed him the bedroom, designed for comfort and solace, made him almost weep with pleasure. The pattern here was English pastel flowered chintzes, basically in soft pinks and blues on a setting of cream. The king-size bed stated the motif, with a chintz spread tossed with lacy pillows, each in its own patterned cover reflected elsewhere in the room. The walls were sheathed in the softest and most delicate of cloth, with a slightly stronger statement made by the thick chintz window draperies sweeping the floor, backed by lacy sheers. The only strong note in the ensemble was a brass-legged glass table, flanked by low broad armchairs, very overstuffed beneath their chintz covers, soft and squishy and wonderfully comforting to sit on.

  Gerry and Alan hadn’t gotten around to doing the bathroom yet, unfortunately—they wanted to get it exactly right before calling in the workmen—so it still reflected the taste (for lack of a better word) of the landlord. Still, the shower was as wonderful and restorative as anticipated.

  Thirty minutes later, wearing a black muumuu decorated with dragons, and carrying a fresh Scotch and water in a wide, heavy-based glass, Gerry answered the doorbell to let in Hiram Farley, a tall barrelchested balding happy man, an important local magazine editor, which means a man who found it impossible to take life seriously. “Gerry, my darling, you’re tanned!” Hiram said, grabbing Gerry by both cheeks and tilting his face down so he could be kissed on his tanned brow. “How beautiful you are,” Hiram said, “and how beautiful that drink looks.”

  “No soda, I’m afraid. Plain water all right?”

  “Fish fuck in it,” Hiram said, “but on the other hand birds fuck in midair.”

  “Hiram,” Gerry said, “was that a yes?”

  “The day I say no to a drink,” Hiram said, “any drink, that’s the day for you to arrange for the six black horses, and the six good men well-hung and true.”

  Hiram’s words generally went by Gerry like traffic; in the pauses, he crossed the conversational street: “I’ll make your drink.”

  “Thank you, sweetness.”

  They bifurcated, Gerry moving kitchenward, Hiram toward the living room, Gerry saying, “Alan will be right in, he’s just finished his shower.”

  When Gerry returned to the living room, in fact, carrying Hiram’s drink as well as his own, Alan was already there, dressed in his black-sashed white kimono and seated crosslegged on a white-and-gold chair. Hiram had, as usual, settled his bulk onto the chair framed in rhinoceros horn, which made him look like the white vi
llain in a Tarzan movie. Gerry’s spot was the Madame Recamier.

  “To your happy return,” Hiram said, raising the glass Gerry had handed him.

  “Here, here,” said Alan, and everybody took a ritual sip.

  Hiram smiled hopefully at his hosts. “And to a successful trip?”

  “Not entirely,” Alan said.

  “Not at all,” Gerry said. “In fact, a disaster.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Alan said. “We know a lot more about how it’s done. You’re too pessimistic, Gerry.”

  “The tapes are gone!”

  “Hold on,” Hiram said. “Do what the King of Hearts told Alice to do, and what I tell writers every blessed day, ink-stained wretches, prose from amateurs, talentless bastards.”

  Gerry blinked. “Pros from amateurs?”

  Hiram leaned forward, assuming a pedantic yet royal posture. “‘Begin at the beginning,”’ he quoted, gravely, “‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”

  Alan said, “Everything seemed fine until the very end.”

  “And then it wasn’t,” Gerry said.

  “No, no,” Hiram said. “Listen more carefully this time. ‘Begin at the beginning—’”

  “Oh, Hiram!” Gerry said, at wit’s end. “The tapes are gone, okay?”

  Alan said, “Wait a minute, Gerry. Hiram’s right.” Turning to Hiram he said, “From the beginning, then,” and went on to give a mostly coherent account of their time in Belize, fictionalizing only their reaction to the presence of the mobster at their hotel, and finishing, “Now, obviously somebody knew we’d made those tapes, and guessed we’d try to sneak them out in our Walkmans.”

  Hiram nodded, thinking about it. “Galway, do you think?”

  “I just don’t know,” Alan said. “There wasn’t the slightest hint of such a thing, he doesn’t seem the type to be able to dissemble that well, and yet, who knows, really?”

  “Oh, it was Galway, all right,” Gerry said. “He’s very devious, that one.”

  “Well,” Hiram said, “if Galway has those tapes, that’s that.”

  Alan said, “Must it be? We remember exactly what he told us, the whole method to smuggle everything out and all that, what he’s going to do to that poor temple—”