Dancing Aztecs Page 2

  Jerry had found himself married one time, seven years ago when he was. twenty-two, but the marriage had only lasted four months before he’d realized it was her hustle. “I’m not the Welfare Department,” he’d told her, and that was that. Now he had the life he wanted. The attic of his parents’ house in Bayside had been converted into an apartment for him, with an outside staircase for privacy. He had a good income from Inter-Air Forwarding, he had a nice place to live, he had a good wardrobe, and most nights he was out dancing with girls like Myrna. What more could anybody want?

  The record ended. “You have good moves, girl,” Jerry said.

  “Very very,” she said. “There’s a guy over there waving at you.”

  “Yeah?” Jerry looked at Mel, over by the entrance. “Time to go. See you later.”

  “Who is that guy?”

  “My brother-in-law.”

  “Yeah? He looks Jewish.”

  Jerry laughed. “What do I look?”

  “You look terrific,” she said. “I’ll put a couple glasses in the freezer. It’s nice when they get that frosting on them.”

  “Don’t you get any frosting on you” Jerry said, and patted her hip, and the next record started: “You Sexy Thing,” by Hot Chocolate.

  Jerry walked over to Mel, who looked past him, saying, “That’s a great-looking girl.”

  “She thought you looked good, too,” Jerry said.

  “Yeah?” Mel tugged at his shirt buttons, staring across the room.

  Jerry said, “Your wife is my sister.”

  “I can look,” Mel said. “Come on.”

  Mel’s station wagon was outside, with the box marked A in the back. Mel drove, and Jerry sat there humming Hustle tunes to himself while he looked out at Queens Boulevard, wide and dull, flanked by red-brick boxes. Mel said, “What’s her name?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl you were dancing with.”

  “Myrna. Stepakowski, something like that.”

  “Yeah? She didn’t look Polish.”

  “Well, she’s half Mexican,” Jerry said, making that up for the hell of it.

  “That explains it.” Mel said, and they took the 59th Street Bridge to Manhattan.

  When he was a teen-ager, Jerry had come in to Manhattan all the time on the subway. He and other guys would come in and do a movie, maybe buy records, spend half an hour in a Playland near Times Square. When they got a little older they’d come looking for girls, and drink a lot in the midtown bars, but by the time he was twenty-one, twenty-two, Jerry’d had enough of Manhattan. Who needed it? The beer would make you just as sick right at home in Queens. Now, this was the first time in almost three years that Jerry had crossed the river.

  They drove to the Port Authority bus terminal, and up to the top parking level, where they found their contact waiting for them. The contact, a tall, big-shouldered wrestler-type guy in a biege sports jacket and chocolate slacks and white loafers and chocolate wing-collar shirt and white-on-white tie, took one look at the box and said, “What shit is this?”

  Jerry frowned at him. “What shit is what?”

  “That shit,” said the contact. “It’s the wrong box.”

  Jerry switched his frown to the box, sitting there on the tailgate of the station wagon. “The hell it is.”

  “That box has an A on it,” the contact said.

  Jerry nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You were supposed to get a box with an E on it,” said the contact.

  “The hell I was.”

  “You were told an E,” the contact said. He moved his big shoulders around inside his jacket, to show he was getting annoyed.

  Jerry stuck his chin out a little, to show he didn’t give a damn. “I was told an A,” he said.

  “E.”

  “A.”

  The contact opened his mouth to say something—probably E—and then closed it and frowned instead, apparently thinking things over, and when he opened it again he said, “You wait right there.”

  “I got all the time in the world,” Jerry told him.

  The contact walked away across the concrete floor, sparsely populated with parked cars, and opened the rear door of a maroon Cadillac Eldorado. He bent down to speak to somebody inside there.

  Mel said, “What’s happening, Jerry?”

  “I think they screwed up somehow.”

  Mel said, “Are you sure they’re the ones screwed up?”

  Jerry looked at his brother-in-law, ready to lay into him, and then he saw that in fact Mel was scared green. The whites were showing all around his eyes, and his nose was bulging. “Take it easy,” Jerry advised. “I’m in the right, Mel.”

  “I wish that made me feel better,” Mel said, and looked over at the Cadillac. “What now?”

  Somebody was getting out of the front seat of the Cadillac on the passenger side. He was short and dapper, in an electric-blue jacket of Edwardian cut, black sateen trousers, black patent-leather shoes, a white shirt with lace down the front and an electric-blue string tie. He and the contact walked back over to where Jerry and Mel were waiting, and they could see that this second man was Hispanic; olive-complexioned and brown-eyed, with black sideburns extending in scimitar-design halfway down his jawline and a pencil mustache that could have been used to slice rye bread. He also had a cocky and self-satisfied expression, and he looked Jerry and Mel up and down as though he was a king and they were ill-made beds.

  The contact said to Jerry, “This is the fella give you the message on the phone, and he says he told you right.”

  “But of course,” said the Hispanic.

  Jerry pointed a finger at him. “You told me A,” he said.

  “But of course,” said the Hispanic.

  “I don’t have to take a lotta—” Jerry stopped and frowned at him. “What?”

  “But of course,” said the Hispanic. Then he stepped forward, while Jerry and the contact both stared at him, and he looked at the writing on the box on the tailgate. “But thot ees wrong,” he said, and waggled his finger over it.

  “Right,” said the contact. He’d been at sea there for a second, but now he was on solid ground again. “It’s the wrong box, like I said.”

  “Thot ees not an A,” said the Hispanic.

  Jerry looked at the contact and spread his hands, as though to say, You see?

  The contact now was looking at the Hispanic, and not only were his shoulders moving around inside his jacket but there were also muscles moving around under the skin of his forehead. Slowly, softly, dangerously, he said to the Hispanic, “That’s not an A?”

  “But of course not,” said the Hispanic. He seemed only politely interested, very slightly puzzled.

  The contact pointed at the A. “If that’s not an A,” he said, “what is it?”

  “Ah,” said the Hispanic.

  Everybody waited, but the Hispanic had nothing else to say.

  The contact said, “Well?”

  The Hispanic smiled helpfully, ready to be of further assistance. “Yes?”

  The contact’s finger was still pointing at the A, and now it trembled as the contact said, “What the hell is that goddam letter, you goddam pansy?”

  The Hispanic showed offense by becoming taller and narrower. “As I have told you,” he said, “it is the letter ah.”

  “The letter ah?” The contact seemed ready to eat concrete. He said “Then what the hell is the letter A?”

  “Quite simple,” said the Hispanic. Withdrawing from his inner jacket pocket the kind of silver pen fancied by untrustworthy attorneys, he quickly sketched on the wooden box the letter:

  E

  Everybody stared at it. Then, in a voice hushed with awe, Mel said, “He’s talking in the Spanish alphabet.”

  A tiny furrow of doubt formed horizontally above the Hispanic’s narrow eyebrows. “Beg pardon?” he said.

  Jerry said to him, “You should of been watching Sesame Street, you dummy.”

  The contact said, “The Spani
sh alphabet? This fruitcake gave you instructions in the Spanish alphabet?”

  “Beg pardon?” said the Hispanic.

  The contact turned and struck the Hispanic with his fist, and the Hispanic lay down on the cement floor. To Jerry the contact said, “Wait there.”

  “Sure,” said Jerry.

  The contact walked away again to the Cadillac. The Hispanic lay quietly on his back, bleeding into both scimitars of his sideburns. Mel said, “Probably you didn’t realize it, Jerry, but I was a little worried there for a second.”

  “A cool guy like you? I would never of guessed.”

  “In fact,” Mel said, “I think I’ll go sit in the car. Okay?”

  “Sure,” said Jerry.

  Mel got into the station wagon and the contact came back over from the Cadillac to say, “Okay, no harm done. Tomorrow you pick up the box with the E on it, and we meet here tomorrow night, same channel, same time.”

  “That’s two pickups and two deliveries,” Jerry said. “I expect two payments.”

  The contact looked unhappy, but then he gave a quick nod and said, “Yeah, it wasn’t your fault. Okay.” Then he extended a small business card, saying, “You got any problems, call this number.”

  There was nothing on the card but a phone number, handwritten in black ink. “Okay,” Jerry said. He pocketed the card and pointed at the wrong box. “What about this thing?”

  “Keep it,” the contact said.

  “Right.” Jerry pushed the box into the storage area and shut the tailgate. Then he said, “You want to move your pal, so I can back up?”

  “Back over him,” said the contact.

  SOME TIME EARLIER …

  The landlocked South American nation of Descalzo is perched high in the Andes Mountains between Bolivia and Peru. The economy is based on a combination of agriculture (mostly yams and lima beans) and American military aid, and the population is .7 percent white, 1.9 percent Negro, 3.6 percent Amerindian, 92.6 percent other, and 1.2 percent undecided. The government is a parliamentary democracy with a constitution freely adapted from that of the United States; there are two houses in the legislature, with elections every three years, and a president who appointed himself for life back in 1949 after the unfortunate fatal accident that removed his predecessor, who fell out of an airplane. The current president, Pablo y Muñoz Diaz Malagua, who had previously been commander-in-chief of the air force, is a benevolent father to his people, whose standard of living is already above that of Haiti.

  Although most North American tourists have not as yet discovered Descalzo, there is much in the nation that could well be appreciated. Apart from the scenic majesty of the mountainous countryside, unspoiled by modern, conveniences, there is also the small but vibrant capital city of Quetchyl (pronounced “Clutch”), with its many squares and plazas, each with its magnificent statue of President Malagua, sometimes astride a horse and sometimes not astride a horse. But probably the most stunning attraction in all of Quetchyl, even in all of Descalzo, is the National Museum, with its extensive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts. Pots, knives, bas-reliefs and statuary from the Aztecs, the Olmecs, and the Mayas are displayed as they should be, in unadorned rooms with natural lighting, undistorted by the glare of electric bulbs. Brilliant native artisans manufacture reproductions of many of these pieces for distribution and sale throughout the non-Communist world, providing yet another source of much-appreciated revenue for the nation.

  Today, in the Plaza de Libertad, the great square in front of the Presidential Palace, an unusual ceremony is about to be held. Awards in the form of medals will be given to three Heroes of the Republic, three men who recently risked their very lives to save the national treasures for the continued good of the nation. Since President Malagua is to present these medals himself, in person, the Plaza de Libertad is completely ringed by soldiers and airmen carrying machine pistols, while Avenida del Progresos and Boulevard John F. Kennedy are both blocked by Sherman tanks. Clean and attractive members of the populace, provided with small flags bearing the national colors of crimson and orange, have been allowed to enter the plaza and take part in this historic occasion. Film crews from Granada, NBC, and Rediffusion, having paid the necessary fees and emoluments, are on hand to record this tribute for a waiting world.

  And now President Malagua, standing in full dress uniform on the portable podium behind the bulletproof clear plastic shield, is about to speak. Wise mothers will keep their children silent.

  President Malagua begins:

  “Members of the Senate, and of the House of Deputies. Distinguished guests and observers from foreign lands. Members of the Diplomatic Corps. Monsignore Halcon. Lieutenant Colonel Guffey. My fellow Descalzans.

  “We are gathered here today to pay tribute to three gallant men, who in their moment of testing proved themselves to be of the very fiber and spirit of Descalzan manhood everywhere. In honoring these three Heroes of the Republic we honor as well ourselves, who are of their blood and their bone and their sinew. And we honor their parents and their teachers and their priests and their good grandparents, whose example and diligence throughout the years have resulted in this moment of triumph and glory forever.

  “What was done by these three, by Pedro Ninni and by José Caracha and by Edwardo Brazzo, honors them and honors us in the honoring. For in protecting and saving the world-famous Dancing Aztec Priest, the very pride of our nation, they themselves have become the very pride of our nation, as valuable to us as that which they restored and salvaged in our name. Nay, they are more valuable, they of their flesh and bone and sinew which makes of them ourselves and our own family, blood of one blood, they are more valuable than gold, more valuable than the cunning artifice which fashioned the Dancing Aztec Priest so many millennia before our brief moment here on the stage of human life.

  “And so we have gathered here today to express the gratitude of a teeming nation, the heartfelt thanks of mothers of generations unborn for whom the Dancing Aztec Priest has been saved, so that they too might gaze upon it and be enriched, as we have been enriched, you and I, my children, in our many sojourns together in the National Museum.

  “Shall it be recorded again what these three did for the grateful nation? How can the story be told too often, a story of such dignity and manliness and courage and patriotism? So the story shall be told again, and will resound down the pages of Descalzan history, that when the foreign brigands came by stealth across the border from one of our sister nations—and we lay no blame, we will take no reprisals; our wish for peace with our neighbors remains undiluted by this experience, no matter how severe a trial and test of our national will and our national patience—when the foreign brigands came in their motor vehicle with the four-wheel drive that permits them to travel where only donkeys and mountain goats may feel secure, in the vehicle of the type which our friends in North America have promised us but on which they have not as yet made delivery—though I do not at all hold personally responsible my good friend, Lieutenant Colonel Guffey, the military attaché from our esteemed Free World partner, the United States—when, in fact, for purposes of foul theft and brigandage they arrived at the humble abode of artisan and sculpture José Caracha, who at that very moment by the light of candles he had manufactured himself was preparing reproductions of the Dancing Aztec Priest for export and sale in foreign lands where the fame of the Dancing Aztec Priest of Descalzo has long since spread, little did they realize, these thieves and brigands, the quality and manner of man they would face in Descalzo.

  “For José Caracha was not alone that fateful night. No, my children, two others were with him, two other strong arms of the Republic. And one of these was Edwardo Brazzo, Deputy Minister of the Board of International Trade, whose genius and foresight it was which had made possible these sates of reproductions of the Dancing Aztec Priest to foreign lands. And the other of these was Pedro Ninni, a guard at the National Museum, who by the wisdom and foresight of Hector Ovella, Curator of the National Museum,
had been sent to the home of José Caracha to guard the world-famous Dancing Aztec Priest during the period when it was not in its accustomed niche of honor within the National Museum.

  “And so it was that these three brave men and true were present when the foreign thieves came by stealth and by night to make off with the nation’s patrimony. And at what risk to themselves did these three Heroes of the Republic contend with the foe? The proof is that Pedro Ninni shed his own blood in defense of the patrimony of the nation. The proof is that the foreign thieves did not get what they came for. The Dancing Aztec Priest reposes once again in the National Museum. The national honor is safe. The national honor has been vindicated. The national honor has been increased by the actions of Pedro Ninni and José Caracha and Edwardo Brazzo.

  “And so we shall honor them, with each of the three to receive a brass medal from my own hands as an expression of the gratitude of a thankful nation. And I call upon Pedro Ninni, first, to come forward and receive from my hands this symbol of our gratitude.”

  And Pedro Ninni, a short and stocky man on crutches, hobbled forward to receive his medal.

  AND SOME TIME BEFORE THAT …

  “Listen, Pedro,” Edwardo Brazzo said in irritation, “do you want to die a poor man?”

  “I don’t want to die at all,” Pedro Ninni said. “Did you hear what they did to Miguel’s cousin when they caught him with the donkey? They hanged him by his tongue.”

  “That’s just a rumor,” José Caracha said.

  “A rumor is good enough for me,” Pedro Ninni told him. “Some things I don’t want to know.”

  It was nearly midnight, and the three men were huddled together over the bare wood worktable in José Caracha’s dirt-floored sod-ceilinged adobe hut. Homemade candles on the table sputtered and stank, casting great leaping shadows on the walls. Jungle noises, anonymous kreeks and kworks, echoed through the glassless windows, and the men absent-mindedly slapped at mosquitoes and chiggers and gnats and fleas as they talked. All around them in the humid night the population of Quetchyl lay sleeping, with their mouths open.