High Adventure Page 25

  The correspondents streamed by, talking at one another. The American photojournalist named Tom stopped to say, “Give us ten minutes and we’ll be ready.”

  “Mm,” Vernon said, nodding his head with the papaya in it.

  “Your vehicle’s out front?”

  “Mm.” More nodding.

  “See you there.”

  “Mm.”

  Scottie went by with the extra man, the editor from Trend named Hiram Farley. Scottie was saying, “Tell me now, Hiram, old son, we’ve known each other all these many hours, what do you think of me, eh? Eh?”

  Farley, with a judicious expression, said, “I would describe you as tiresomely witty.”

  “By God, that’s succinct! Don’t pay by the word over on Trend, I’ll bet!” Scottie said, and clapped Farley on the back with a sound like a gunshot. Vernon blinked, and swallowed his papaya.

  18

  THE HARMONICA PLAYER

  The letter read:

  Hiram,

  You’ve gone away, you bad boy, without telling us a thing, and now we have this very interesting cable from Kirby Galway, which we’ve enclosed. Well, of course we cabled him right back that the answer is yes, and we’re on our way to sunny Flo at this very mo, with cassettes. And this time, believe us, nothing will go wrong. We may even get some actual Mayan treasures for you to photograph, wouldn’t you like that? We’ll be home by Monday, so call us as soon as you return from wherever you’ve gadded, and we’ll certainly have good news for the old newshound.

  Love and kisses,

  Alan and Gerry

  “A very dry Tanqueray Gibson on the rocks, please,” Gerry said.

  “Gerry,” Alan said warningly.

  “Just one,” Gerry said.

  The stewardess said, “I think the only gin we have is Gordon’s.”

  “Oh, well,” Gerry said. “All right, I suppose.”

  “So that’s one martini,” the stewardess said.

  “Gibson.”

  “The onions didn’t come aboard this trip.”

  “Oh, well. All right, I suppose.” Sadly, Gerry turned away and gazed out at cloudtops; they looked dirty.

  “Sir?” the stew said, turning her acrylic attention on Alan, in the middle seat.

  “The same,” Alan said. “Whatever it was.”

  With a thin smile, the stew turned to the curator from Duluth, Whitman Lemuel, in the aisle seat: “Sir?”

  “A Bloody Mary.”

  The stew beamed her appreciation at a man who understood airline drinking, and turned away. Shortly she turned back, the tray tables were lowered to a position just above knees, drinks were exchanged for cash, and they were left in peace, each in his own narrow pocket in the egg carton flying them Floridaward.

  Lemuel raised his glass of red foulness: “Confusion to our enemies.”

  “Oh, my, yes,” said Gerry.

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Alan, and they did, and Alan made a face. “Swill,” he said.

  “Better than nothing,” Gerry told him, and took another tiny sip of his own drink.

  The truth was—and Gerry would go to his grave without revealing this to anyone—the truth was, Gerry had no real sensitivity to the tastes of alcohol. If something were really very sweet, like Kahlua, or very bitter, like Campari, he could tell the difference, but in the range of gin drinks and vodka drinks and all of that he was very little aware of distinctions of taste, so this prepackaged martini here with the defrosted pimento olive was about the same to him as the finest ever Tanqueray Gibson on the rocks which a superb Upper East Side bartender would have prepared without even slightly bruising the gin. But one was expected to know the right things to drink, and appreciate them, and so on, and one of the ways to show that sort of sophistication was to say, “A very dry Tanqueray Gibson on the rocks, please,” so that’s what Gerry said whenever the suject came up, and everything worked out fine.

  He wondered sometimes if Alan really knew or cared about the distinctions in booze. Impossible to ask, of course.

  As for Whitman Lemuel and his Bloody Mary, there must be something so liberating about being a provincial, not having to keep up a front of sophistication.

  What an odd alliance theirs was, after all. Brought together inadvertently by Kirby Galway, they’d had just scads of lies and deliberate confusions to clear out of the way before they could begin to understand one another, but then they’d realized at once what a golden opportunity lay before them. From what Lemuel had said about his encounter with the apparently quite frightening Innocent St. Michael, it wasn’t Galway after all who’d stolen the tapes, so they were probably safe in going ahead with the original arrangements. As for the legality, morality, all that, Lemuel had explained to them at passionate length that it was practically their duty to buy Kirby Galway’s loot and see it got proper homes in the United States among people of refinement and taste, people who could appreciate and preserve such irreplaceable treasures.

  Much better than playing Woodward and Bernstein for Hiram. And more profitable, too.

  Gerry had been rather surprised and thoroughly delighted when the conversation with Lemuel had shown that Alan also was more than ready to forget Trend and actually deal with Galway.

  But cautiously, cautiously. That Galway had been engaging to deal with both of them, behind one another’s backs, and undoubtedly planned later to use each other’s existence to create a bidding situation for the more valuable pieces, showed the sort of slippery customer he was, as if they needed any further proof. Besides which, there was surely still more to the goings-on in Belize than any of them knew. Who could guess what intricacies, what wheels within wheels, might exist even further below the surface?

  That was why they’d left that letter for Hiram; in case there was any trouble at all with the law—an idea that made Gerry’s heart flutter in his breast—the letter and the cable would prove that Gerry and Alan had had no intention of actually becoming accomplices of smugglers. On the other hand, if everything went well, Lemuel would take away the first shipment from Galway, Alan and Gerry would arrange to pick up the second shipment and then return to New York, and when they next saw Hiram they would tell him Galway had never shown up and they’d decided to abandon the whole project.

  How oddly things worked out. But that, Gerry thought with some self-satisfaction as he sipped his premixed Gordon’s martini, is another mark of sophistication: the ability to deal with truly complex patterns, whether in art or in life. A simpler person like Whitman Lemuel, for instance, no matter how dedicated he might be to the preservation of pre-Columbian artifacts, was still essentially—

  A man walked down the aisle. He was about 40, not very tall but barrel-bodied and bull-necked, his large head stubbled with a gray crewcut, his face mean and disgruntled-looking, with down-turned thick lips and cold piggy eyes. A brown string tie hung down on a yellow shirt tight across his chest. He was so muscular he seemed to have trouble walking, his thick shoulders working massively back and forth. His tan jacket was too small for him, hanging open, with strain creases around the armpits.

  What made Gerry notice this creature was that he was staring at Gerry. He looked mean and angry, as though something about Gerry just simply enraged him. Helpless to look away, Gerry sat open-mouthed and watched the man go by, their eyes locked as though with Krazy Glue. Gerry’s head turned like a ventriloquist’s dummy until at last the man removed his own glare to face forward, and as Gerry looked to his left, over Alan’s head, still compulsively staring, that open jacket swung out and back and something glinted inside it at chest level, and then the man was gone.

  Something glinted.

  A badge.

  A policeman.

  They know.

  “Ohh,” said Gerry faintly.

  Alan gave him a look: “What now?”

  “I’m going—” Gerry swallowed loudly “—to be sick.”

  Alan glared. Sotto voce, he hissed, “I can’t take you anywhere.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to be home.”

  The man went by again, in the opposite direction, giving Gerry one withering glance before continuing on, his jacket taut across his back.

  “You had to sit by the window,” Alan said. Turning away, jawline eloquent with rejection, he icily explained to Whitman Lemuel that they would all have to get up so Gerry could be sick.

  “Ho—” Gerry said. “Unk—Ho-ome.”

  Still, everything might have been all right if the lavatories hadn’t all been occupied.

  19

  THE ROLE OF THE ANTI-HERO IN POSTWAR AMERICAN FICTION

  Kirby spent a few minutes watching the Indians wrap Zotzes in Beacons and then went back outside to a sunny day and a stormy Innocent, who rose from his mahogany throne to say, “Well, Kirby?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Aren’t you ready yet to give it up?”

  Kirby frowned at him. “Give what up?”

  “I don’t see any Valerie, you know.” Innocent put his hands on his ample hips and gazed around at the timeless morning scene: Indians squatting over fires in front of their huts, nursing their hangovers. Rosita’s distant unremitting call of “Vaaaallll-erie,” sounded from time to time across the sunny clean air like the cry of some local bird.

  “They’ll find her,” Kirby said, somewhat impatiently. Last night’s Innocent had been a lot easier to get along with.

  “It’s almost noon,” Innocent said. “She won’t be back, and we both know it. Stop the playacting, Kirby.”

  “You believed me last night, Innocent, you said so yourself.”

  “I talked a lot of nonsense last night.”

  “You had an epiphany.”

  “I believe what I had,” Innocent said, “was the shortest nervous breakdown on record. The disappearance of a fine young woman looked like what caused it, but it was really brought on by overwork, male meno-whatever-it-is—”

  “Pause.”

  “That’s my problem, I never did. Just work work work, I thought I was tough enough to go on forever.” He looked angry when he said all this, and Kirby was gradually coming to the realization that Innocent was partly angry at himself.

  But not entirely; there was plenty left for Kirby. Glowering at him, Innocent said, “And smart fellas like you, Kirby, coming along all the time, looking for that edge, trying to put something over on me.”

  Betraying a bit of his grudge, Kirby said, “The way I put over that land deal on you, right?”

  “What have you been doing with that land, Kirby?” Innocent stared at him round-eyed, leaning forward, alive with curiosity and frustration. “That’s what caused this whole thing! That land up there—” he flung his hand toward the barren hill in question, just visible from the village “—isn’t worth shit, Kirby!”

  “That’s not the way you talked when you sold it to me.”

  “What are you doing with it? What is all this goddam temple about?”

  Kirby took a step back, head cocked, giving Innocent a wary look. “Temple, Innocent? Which temple is that?”

  “That’s what I want to know, dammit! You bring all these Americans down, give them some song and dance about a temple, there isn’t any temple!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Valerie comes down, comes to me, Kirby, says she has computers up in New York tell her there’s a temple on your land. Wants to go out to see it. That’s where it all starts, Kirby. I wanted to know what you were up to.”

  “So you sent Valerie Greene out to see.”

  “She was coming anyway, that isn’t the point.”

  “No,” Kirby said, seeing it. “The point is, you made that creep of yours her driver.”

  “I regret that, Kirby,” Innocent said. “I regret it bitterly. But I blame you as much as me.”

  “What? You turned that girl over to that hoodlum, and it’s my fault?”

  “I had to know what was going on,” Innocent said. “What you were up to. That was the only driver I could trust.”

  “Some trust.”

  “Kirby,” Innocent said, coming a step closer, calming himself by an obvious effort of will. “It’s time to tell the truth, Kirby,” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Time for you. I know you didn’t kill Valerie Greene, just as surely as I know poor Valerie is dead. I know my own driver killed her and then ran away, so you don’t have to put on this game any more.”

  “No game, Innocent,” Kirby said, trying to look sincere. “Honest.”

  “Don’t use words you don’t understand, Kirby. I’m not even mad at you any more. All you have to do is give up all the playacting, admit this is just one more of your cons, and we can go home.”

  “But it isn’t. Valerie Greene actually was here, but now she’s gone.”

  “If I know anything for certain in all of this, Kirby,” Innocent said, “it is that you’re lying.”

  Kirby paused, thought things over, and then said, “All right, Innocent, I have a deal for you.”

  Innocent’s agitated face suddenly cleared, as though a storm over a pond had gone, leaving the surface smooth and blank. Even his eyes showed nothing as he said, “A deal, Kirby? What sort of deal?”

  “Buy that land back,” Kirby said.

  “Why?”

  “Buy it back for exactly what I paid you, and I’ll tell you the full honest truth about Valerie Greene and the temple.”

  “Lava Sxir Yt.”

  “Oh, you know its name, do you?” Kirby said, and smiled his admiration.

  Very faintly Innocent frowned. “That’s not a deal,” he decided.

  “It is if we shake on it.”

  Innocent considered. He glanced over at the blighted hilltop. He studied Kirby. He said, “The truth, Kirby? How much of the truth?”

  “I’ll answer every question you ask, as long as you keep asking.”

  “Then I’ll have the land and your con, whatever it is, and the truth about Valerie.”

  “That’s right.”

  Again Innocent considered. “There were some expenses involved in the land transfer,” he said.

  “You eat them.”

  “Hmmm.” Innocent brooded, and then faintly smiled. “I’ll never know what the trick is until I say yes, will I?”

  “It’s up to you, Innocent.” Kirby maintained a poker face, tried not to even think about anything. The instant Innocent had mentioned the temple, Kirby had known the scam was doomed, it was about to become necessary to move on to something else. But here was a way to get out of it whole, get his money back and get rid of that scabrous hill, trade it all for a live girl and a dead racket. Not bad. Only don’t think about it yet, don’t let it cross your mind. It wouldn’t surprise Kirby if Innocent were telepathic.

  At last Innocent nodded. “All right,” he said. “You have a deal.” He put his hand out.

  “Fine.” Permitting himself only the tiniest of smiles, Kirby took Innocent’s hand and they both squeezed down hard to seal the pact.

  “You!” cried a familiar voice.

  They turned, hands separating, and watched Valerie Greene leap with unconscious grace across the stream and come running toward them. Flushed, out of breath, quite dirty, somewhat ripped and tom, hair a mare’s nest, she was rather astonishingly beautiful. Stopping in front of Kirby, chest heaving, hands on hips, she cried, “I know how bad you are, I know you’re a terrible person, but nevertheless you’re the only one I can turn to. Innocent people are going to be massacred, and you have to help!”

  “Sure, lady,” Kirby said.

  Valerie Greene turned to frown in bewilderment at Innocent. Still on his feet though sagging, open-mouthed, glassy-eyed, shallow of breath, he seemed to be doing a Raggedy Andy imitation. “What’s the matter with him?” she said.

  “He just bought the farm,” Kirby told her.

  20

  INSIDE THE JUNGLE THE LAND IS RICH

  Inside the jungle the land is rich, almost black, fed ov
er thousands of years of growth and decay, well-watered and fertilized. The lower slopes of the mountains are so lushly overgrown that a man with a machete is lucky to make five miles a day through its tangle, and each day the jungle grows in again behind him, so that a week or a month later he would still need his machete to follow his path back out.

  The Espejo and Alpuche families had once lived in Chimaltenango Province, west of Guatemala City, but that became in the 70s one of the hottest areas of the revolution and the counterrevolution and the death squads and the army raids, so when the owner of the land where they sometimes harvested crops offered them a new life far to the east in the peaceful Peten, they accepted. They were sorry to leave their people and their land, but life was too frightening now in Chimaltenango, so they got on the trucks along with nearly a hundred other Quiché Indians, entire family groups, and drove for days over the rough roads, northeast above Guatemala City, through Salama and north through Coban into Peten Province, where they would live from now on.

  None of them had ever had any formal schooling, but from time to time they had heard speeches on the radio about Belice, the province just to the east of the Peten. Belice was the Lost Province of Guatemala, stolen a long time ago by the British but some day to be recaptured by the brave young men of Guatemala. In the meantime, a state of not-quite-war existed between Belice and the rest of Guatemala, though the Indians imported from the west into the Peten were never actually aware of it.

  The war they were aware of was the war they thought they’d left. The landowners had tried to get away from the revolution by moving into the underutilized and almost unpopulated Peten, a plateau of good plains land just waiting for the plow, but when they had imported workers from the west they’d imported the revolution as well. After a while, some of the Indians disappeared into the bush. Tourist buses heading up to the Mayan ruins at Tikal were attacked. Some Army jeeps were blown up and some soldiers ambushed and killed. Soon the death squads were roaming the area by night, as in Chimaltenango, savaging the innocent stay-at-homes since they couldn’t find the actual revolutionaries.