High Adventure Page 9

  “Not there,” Kirby said. “Only in the long shots, doing the stunts.”

  “A stunt man!” Manny said, pleased at knowing such esoteric English.

  “That’s right,” Kirby said.

  “Very brave, stunt men.”

  “Kind of foolhardy,” Kirby said, and shrugged.

  “You grew up around the movies, huh?” Manny was bright-eyed from more than Danish Marys; Kirby didn’t often open up about his background.

  “I would have,” Kirby said, “only things went wrong.” He looked at his cards, not liking them very much, then glanced up to see Manny and Estelle both watching him, expectant. “Oh, well,” he said. “It was one of those things. My father was a stunt man, my mother was an actress.”

  “A big star?” Manny asked, and Estelle told him, “Hush.”

  “No, just an actress,” Kirby said.

  Estelle, hesitant, nodded shyly toward the TV. “Is she in this ‘Rio Grande’ movie?”

  “No. They always wanted to work together, but they never did. Then they had a chance to, on a circus movie, in Spain. What they called a runaway production. I was only two, so I don’t really remember it.”

  “You went with them, in Spain?”

  “Sure.” Kirby sighed, and dropped the cards on the table. Might as well go ahead and tell it. “They only had one scene together,” he said, “on a rollercoaster. It was supposed to be safe, but it wasn’t.”

  Hushed, Estelle said, “They were killed?”

  “Yeah. I got shipped home to my aunt in upstate New York.”

  Manny said, “So you didn’t know them, like.”

  “Not really,” Kirby said, but in his mind’s eye he could see the pictures of his father and mother all over his Aunt Cathy’s house. Old-maid Aunt Cathy, his mother’s sister, had had a lifelong crush on Kirby’s father and had transferred it to Kirby. From the time he could first remember, Aunt Cathy was saying things like, “Oh, you’ll be a devil with the girls,” and, “You’ve got your father’s wildness, I can see it in your eyes.” He’d been spoiled rotten, and he knew it.

  Manny maybe had some inkling of Kirby’s thoughts. He said, “You think you’re like him, your old man?”

  “Some ways, some ways.” Kirby shrugged. “I think I’ve got more interest in a real home somewhere; they never much cared where they lived. The other thing is—” Kirby picked up his cards again, studied them, seemed reconciled “—I stay away from rollercoasters.”

  14

  THE UNKNOWN LAND

  “We must drive the corrupt profiteers out of government,” Vernon said, as he changed the sheets on his bed, “or we’ll never get the profit.” Above, a slowly turning fan made absolutely no difference.

  “Hush,” said the skinny black man, holding up the cassette recorder. “Listen to this part.”

  “I don’t think you get the picture,” Kirby’s voice told Vernon, as he tossed the rumpled sheets into the hall and snapped the clean lower sheet into the air, holding it by his fingertips; gently, the sheet settled onto the bed, guided by Vernon’s hands. “What he’s going to do is,” Kirby said, “he’s going to knock the temple down. You come back a year from now, this’ll be just a jumble of rocks and dirt.”

  “What do you think of that?” the skinny black man asked.

  “Greedy bastards,” Vernon said. “Most of the tomb robbers just burrow a hole in, they don’t knock the son of a bitch down.”

  Vernon finished making the bed while Kirby and his customers talked about the destruction of the temple. Then he carried the dirty sheets to the back of the house, the skinny black man following, holding up the recorder. After tossing the sheets in the big laundry sink, Vernon went to the kitchen, got two bottles of beer, and he and the skinny black man went to the living room to sit and listen to the rest of the tape. At last Feldspan giggled his giggle, the skinny black man pushed OFF and REWIND, and Vernon said, “Jail.”

  “For somebody,” the skinny black man agreed.

  “St. Michael,” Vernon said, with savage hope.

  “I don’t see it yet,” the skinny black man told him.

  St. Michael’s a crook,” Vernon said.

  “The sun rises in the east,” the skinny black man said.

  “He’s in my way. He stands between me and, and, and …”

  “The pot of gold.”

  “Do you have to give him that?” Vernon asked, pointing at the cassette.

  “You know I do. I can play it for you, in here, nobody knows about it, but now I gotta go give it to St. Michael.”

  “Maybe the tape got loused up some way,” Vernon suggested.

  The skinny black man shook his head. “You don’t want me to lose my job,” he said. “Think about it.”

  “I need to hear it again,” Vernon said, making a fist, punching his own knee in his frustration. “If I could have a copy.”

  The skinny black man looked around at the underfurnished tiny living room. “You don’t have anything to make it with,” he said. “Or play it on.”

  Vernon stared furiously around his room, blinking; with every blink, he was seeing something else he didn’t own. “I want,” he said, through clenched teeth, “I want …”

  “Yeah, man,” the skinny black man said. “So do I.” He got to his feet. “I got to go, man, I’m taking too long as it is.”

  “Wait a minute,” Vernon said. “Tell me about these guys, the ones on the tape. Who are they?”

  “They’re what they say,” the skinny black man said, shrugging. “Antique dealers from New York City.”

  “They couldn’t be federal agents?”

  “No. Federal agents don’t travel with K-Y jelly.”

  “Then why are they taping Galway?”

  “I don’t know, man. Maybe they’re just afraid they’ll get cheated, they want some kind of record.”

  “To go to court with? That?” Pointing at the cassette.

  “I got no answer,” the skinny black man said. “Vernon, I got to go.”

  “Wait,” Vernon said, jumping to his feet. “It’s St. Michael and Galway, isn’t it? We’re agreed on that, right?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “They’re in on something together,” Vernon said, “only they don’t trust each other.”

  The skinny black man laughed. “Why should they?”

  “So St. Michael has you search those guys’ room, and you come up with the tape, and St. Michael gives you the machine, says make a copy.”

  “And now I got to go give it to him.”

  “I need to hear it again,” Vernon said. “Maybe there’s a clue.”

  “To who the guys are? Why they made the tape?”

  “Not so much that. Where they were when they made it.”

  The skinny black man was surprised. “Galway’s land, isn’t it?”

  “No, that’s the goddam point. I’ve been there, with St. Michael, back when he still owned it. There’s nothing there.”

  “Maybe it was all overgrown. You know the way those temples get.”

  “I’d have seen it,” Vernon insisted. “St. Michael would have seen it. Do you think that man—or me either—do you think we could have walked around on a mountain of gold and jade and precious stones and not know it? Do you think St. Michael’s going to sell that land without he already squeezed it with those big hands of his, just to see what comes out?”

  The skinny black man frowned at the cassette player in his hand. “Then I don’t get it,” he said.

  “That’s the point,” Vernon said, and then more quietly, as though in a conscious effort to calm himself, “that’s the whole point. Galway goes off like it’s to his own land, but it isn’t. Somewhere up in those mountains, don’t ask me how, maybe he saw something from the air, just lucked on it, who knows, but somewhere up in those goddam fucking mountains Kirby Galway has found a Mayan temple! A brand new undiscovered temple, nobody knows about it!”

  “Jesus,” breathed the skinny black man, and looke
d at the cassette player with new respect. “So that’s the news I’m taking to St. Michael,” he said.

  “God damn it, I don’t want that bloated son of a bitch to know!” Vernon stomped around his tiny living room, driven mad by frustration and poverty and greed and spite. Anybody he’d have bitten at that moment would have died.

  “An unknown temple,” the skinny black man said. Belizean dollar signs danced in his eyes. “Riches,” he said. “Beyond the dreams of whatchamacallit.”

  “Not beyond my dreams,” Vernon assured him. “This is what I hate about this,” he said. “I got to get the goods on St. Michael, I got to expose his corruption and get him thrown out and put in jail and me to replace him. But the closest thing I got to proof right now is that goddam record you’re gonna—”

  “Cassette.”

  “Record, goddamit!” Vernon’s eyes were big round circles. “But if I get rid of St. Michael by using this temple, then I lose the temple!”

  “Ouch,” agreed the skinny black man. “But if we could get there first—”

  “That’s just it,” Vernon said, pacing the room, punching his own thighs and shoulders. “Where is the goddam thing?”

  15

  WARRIORS AND MERCHANTS:

  A PRELUDE TO DISASTER

  At night, tall ivory-colored curtains are closed over the dining room windows at the Fort George Hotel, eliminating the featureless, dark, infinite, eternal, perhaps unsettling view of the nighttime sea. The lights are dimmer, the tablecloths are thick and soft, and the chunky waitresses in dark green move silently on the carpeted floor. The room is no more than half full, conversations are muted. Tourists smile at one table, businessmen look serious at another, the occasional solitary traveler reads a magazine while spooning his soup.

  Whitman Lemuel looked up from his magazine and his soup when Valerie Greene entered the dining room, and his first lightning-quick thought process, almost too fast for memory, involved a series of rapid vignettes: “We’re both alone. Why don’t we eat together?“ “I don’t want to be mysterious, heh, heh, but I really can’t talk about what I’m doing down here in Belize.” “But why is a beautiful woman like you alone in such an out-of-the-way place?“ “Oh, my dear, I am sorry, it must have been dreadful for you.” “Don’t cry, here’s my handkerchief.” “I do have some vodka in my room.” There then followed an ambertoned scene, which crumbled and liquefied when, as Valerie followed the hostess past Lemuel to a table in another comer, recognition came.

  My God! Her! “Despoliation!” “Unscrupulous museum directors!” He didn’t remember her name, but he was unlikely to forget her face. Or her voice. Slopping soup onto the snowy tablecloth, Lemuel raised his magazine up in front of his face, showing all the world that he was a reader of Harper’s.

  Unaware that the stir she had caused was anything other than the normal erotic ripple that followed her everywhere and which no longer very much impinged on her conscious attention, Valerie took her seat, glanced toward the draped windows with a slight passing regret for the lack of a sea view—the limitless ocean at night, heaving away, held no terrors for Valerie—accepted the large menu, and answered the hostess’s question with, “Just water, thanks.”

  Behind his magazine, Lemuel gulped his vodka sour.

  Witcher and Feldspan, arriving then, obediently waited by the lectern for the hostess to finish with Valerie. They glanced around at the lack of imagination displayed in the conversion of this large rectangular room from a warehouse manque to a restaurant, and then Feldspan gasped and whispered, “Alan!”

  “What now?”

  “It’s him! Behind the magazine!”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Witcher said. “You’re right. Don’t look at him!”

  “I’m not looking at him. Don’t you look at him.”

  Witcher was always the first to recover. “Well, why wouldn’t he eat here?” he said. “He’s staying here, the same as us.”

  “But who’s he hiding from?” Feldspan asked. “Surely his type doesn’t actually read Harper’s.”

  “Well, maybe he does,” Witcher said, becoming a little testy at Feldspan’s nervousness. “He has to read something, doesn’t he? And I really doubt there’s a Drug Dealer’s Digest published anywhere.”

  “Hush!” Feldspan said, because the hostess was approaching, a smile on her face, her arms full of menus.

  The hostess led them to a table along the right side wall. She was a good hostess, who didn’t believe in crowding the customers together in one area of the room for the convenience of the help, but who believed in spreading the customers out as much as possible for their own convenience and privacy and enjoyment of their meals. Therefore, once she had placed Witcher and Feldspan, the situation was this:

  Among a scattering of other patrons, Witcher and Feldspan were a short way into the room, against the right wall. Lemuel was midway down the room, one table in from the left wall. Valerie was most of the way down the right side, one table in from the side, one back from the non-view. In this triangle, Valerie and Lemuel were seated so as to face one another directly, while Witcher and Feldspan, opposite one another with the wall beside them, were situated out of Valerie’s line of sight but so that Feldspan offered Lemuel a three-quarter profile and Witcher gave him a view of his right ear and the back of his head.

  Lemuel simply couldn’t stand it. Every time he peeked over the top of his magazine, there she was, across an uncrowded room, facing him. And he daren’t let her see him, dare not.

  She would know, she would have to. He had identified himself to her at that party back in New York as a museum curator. They had spoken about Belize; the subject of antiquity theft had come up, had most certainly and emphatically come up. She would see him, and she would immediately know what he was doing in Belize.

  Then what? Given her vehemence in New York, Lemuel knew exactly what would happen next; she would inform the police. Most likely, she would leap to her feet right here in this public restaurant, point a finger rigid with virtue, and denounce him to diners and help alike.

  What could he do? His main course hadn’t even arrived yet; to get up and flee the restaurant now would merely call attention to himself. But to sit directly in that woman’s line of sight was simply not possible; he couldn’t hold Harper’s up in front of his face indefinitely.

  He peeked over the magazine’s top, to see that she was holding the large menu up in front of herself much as he was holding Harper’s. If he were to do anything, improve the situation in any way, it would have to be now.

  What if he were to face in the opposite direction? But to stand, walk around the table, move everything with him to the opposite side, all of that would also attract too much attention. Besides, there wasn’t even a chair over there. The only other chair at this table was to his left.

  Well, a partial move would certainly help. Quickly but smoothly, while Valerie continued to study the menu, Lemuel slid from his chair and, without rising, made it into the chair to his left. He drew the soup, the silverware, the bread plate and the glasses over with him, and laid the magazine on the table to the right of his setting. In reading the magazine now, his head would quite naturally be averted from Valerie, showing her much less than a profile. With the dim lighting, and at this distance, she was most unlikely to recognize him. Feeling much better, he looked up, and found himself staring directly into the eyes of one of Kirby Galway’s drug dealers.

  The waitress asked Valerie if she were ready to order, and she said yes.

  “He’s staring at me,” Feldspan said. There were little white spots under his eyes, and he spoke in a harsh whisper, not moving his lips. “My God, Alan, he moved around at the table so he could stare at me.”

  Lemuel, seeing the drug dealer glare at him while muttering to his partner without moving his lips, looked down in fright and gazed unseeing at Harper’s.

  Valerie ordered the shrimp cocktail and the chicken parmigiana.

  Witcher, as though suddenly interested
in the non-view, turned to gaze at the curtains at the far end of the room. His eyes swiveled to look at Lemuel, who was reading his magazine and not staring at anybody at all. Witcher’s mouth curled in the expression of contempt he was about to show Feldspan.

  Lemuel looked up, and they were both glaring at him, grimacing at him.

  Valerie thought she might have a glass of white wine as well. But no more; she’d had too much to drink, really, at lunch.

  The waitress, in asking Lemuel if he were done with the soup, interposed herself between him and the table containing Witcher and Feldspan. “Yes!” said Lemuel. “Could you hurry the duckling, please, I have to leave soon.”

  “The chef is working on it, sir. You can’t really hurry a duckling.”

  Witcher and Feldspan looked at one another. Witcher said, “It doesn’t mean a thing, Gerry.”

  “Al-an, he moved! He was sitting the other way, and he moved around that way so he could stare at me! He knows!”

  “For Heaven’s sake, Gerry, what does he know?”

  “He saw us looking at him,” Feldspan said, “when he was out by the pool with Galway.”

  “It’s a public place,” Witcher pointed out. “And he was still there when we went for a swim; he didn’t act like anything was wrong then.”

  “He left right after we got there.”

  “A few minutes later.”

  “Al-an,” Feldspan said, leaning forward, “why did he move?”

  The waitress having departed, Lemuel could see the one drug dealer leaning forward to speak tensely and grimly to the other one. Were they talking about him? They’d come down to the pool this afternoon, decadent creatures, reeking of crime and unholy knowledge. Drug dealers tended to be addicts themselves, didn’t they? Those two weren’t like oldtime mobsters at all, they were like the criminals in recent French films; civilized in a sneering way, secure in their power, spouting philosophy, utterly cold and emotionless. Lemuel had waited just a minute or two after their arrival, not to call attention to himself, and then had hurried back to his room.