The Laughing Falcon (4 page)

She laced up her expensive new walkers, then studied her San José map. The University of Costa Rica: that is where Fiona Wardell could bone up on pre-Colombian history.

Outside, sunlight was filtering through a hazy smog; the city seemed creaky and slow, hungover on a Sunday, a tacky tropical America – Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders looked misplaced here. After a half-hour traipse east, she came to the San Pedro district, the university area, where she found a vegetarian restaurant. She bought a bran muffin and a bundle of carrot sticks, and munched these while strolling through the campus, a clutter of low buildings. Students were lounging outside the library; a few were studying within.

In the deserted history section, she found several shelves of pre-Colombian Americana, many of the texts in English. As she was carrying a few books to a long table, a dark-skinned Latino strolled in, withdrew some maps from a drawer, and sat down to study them. He looked up at her, caught her eye and smiled, then returned to his maps.

She glanced furtively at the man. Tan slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt, skin the colour of milk chocolate — she presumed he had Indian blood. With his thin waist and broad shoulders, he could have been a flamenco dancer. He was tall for a Tico, almost her height, jet-black hair curling over his shoulders, dark eyes, and a long savage moustache. His smile had been unforced and dazzling.

She could sense him still staring at her as she flipped through the books. He said something in Spanish, a polite mellifluous voice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t understand.”

He rose and walked to her side. Looking at her texts, he said, “Ah, you are interested in the history of my country.” His accent charmed her:
heestory, contry
. Not quite forty, she guessed; no sign of grey. Although laugh wrinkles webbed from his eyes, his lined face reflected a world-weariness.

“I’m a writer. From Canada. I was thinking of setting a book here. A novel.”

“It is what I teach. Our history. And what do you seek to know?”

“I’m searching for, um, a lost Mayan city. My heroine is, I mean; she’s an archaeologist. I need something with intrigue as backdrop to a … well, it’s a romance novel. That’s what I write.”

She strove to curb her babbling, and scrambled in her bag for a copy of
No Time for Sorrow
. He studied the cover for a moment: the heroine, eyes ablaze with desire, giving token resistance to a shirtless male.

“So. You are rich and famous.”

“Not yet, but I’m working at it.”

His expression hinted at disbelief. “A lost city … We had the Choretegas, who were linked to the Mayan people. But they had not so much advanced. They did not lose any cities, I am sorry.”

“Well … it will be fiction.”

“But it is best to base on truth, no?”

He extended his hand. “Pablo Esquivel.”

“Margaret Schneider. Maggie.”

“And for your romance you seek some unusual mystery.”

“Mm-hmm.” She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“Then you must write about the buried treasure in the valley of Rio Savegre — the Savage River. It is a story of desperate men and desperate times. But may I be permitted to tell you over lunch?”

He insisted on paying for the taxi, which let them off at a plaza where vendors hawked hammocks, pottery, and assorted gewgaws. The restaurant was on the terrace of one of San José’s grander, older hotels. This was the heart of San José, Professor Esquivel told her: the Plaza de la Cultura and, across from it, the National Theatre, a down-sized copy of the Paris Opera House.

That graceful building, the plaza extending to it, the hum of activity — buskers, a juggler, a guitar duo, children clutching cones, their faces slathered with ice cream — persuaded
Maggie she was finally discovering the San José that had been waiting for her.

As he spoke, Pablo Esquivel gestured a great deal, and she found herself mesmerized by his hands, so sinewy and slender. Flattered beyond measure, she wondered at the attention being showered on her. Did he find her attractive? Maybe it was the cachet of being a novelist; the well-read were often curious about writers. Professor Esquivel himself had authored a text, a history of Mesoamerica, he said.

Maggie nibbled at a fruit salad, listening intently to his colourful though gory tale of the sack of Panama in 1671 by a mob of buccaneers led by Henry Morgan. Before the fall of that wealthy colonial city — “ah, Panama, she was the most prized jewel of the Spanish crown” — three galleons escaped, laden with gold, silver, and jewels. Two ships found their way to Ecuador.

“The third was galleon
La Naval;
she disappeared. There is a local myth that she put into a faraway island called Cocos, that the crew buried the treasure and were later lost at sea.”

Pablo was a masterful storyteller; his words cast spells — Maggie could visualize the swashbuckling Morgan and the desperate men of
La Naval
. That vessel, newly unburied journals revealed, had sailed up the coast of Central America, the crew seeking refuge at a mission in Costa Rica — the only Spanish habitation for a thousand miles.

It was in Costa Rica, in “thees, my contry,” in a river valley high above the Pacific coast, that the treasure was most likely buried. “The Savegre, I believe, but there are other rivers near, the Parrita, the Naranjo. Sadly, the mission was destroyed not by arms but by the scourge of plague, and its site has never been found.”

Finding a lost Spanish mission by the Savage River, buried gold and silver and emeralds — this could be Fiona’s quest. Buffy the warbler would stay vanished.

Where had she heard of this river before? It came to her: a brochure.
Beautifully situated in an isolated valley near the Savegre River, the Eco-Rico Lodge affords all the comforts of home
. “What an odd coincidence, I am going to the Savegre.” She described her wrangle at the Eco-Rico office, how she had cajoled Elmer Jericho.

He found her story droll, and chuckled. “Then you, Maggie Schneider, who are so delightfully conniving, you could be the one to find the treasure.” He shrugged. “The whole business, it is maybe a myth. But I have given you some truth to work into your fiction, no?”

“No. I mean, yes.”

“But tell me about yourself.”

She struggled for anecdotes that might entertain him, but her humdrum life in Saskatchewan seemed pale and uninspiring. She talked about her girlhood on a farm, the thrill of her first publication, her love of birding and bicycling, any inane matter that came to mind. The Christmas party at the Voice of the Wheatlands, the people she worked with. He began smiling, and finally broke into laughter.

“What can possibly be so funny?”

“You are most engaging, unlike some of the empty-headed women I have been forced to know.”

They parried for the cheque, but Maggie insisted, dipping into her fanny pack for her colones.

“You are alone here in San José?”

“Yes.”

“I am alone, too. Maybe you will do me the pleasure of returning the favour this evening. There is a delightful restaurant I know in the hills above Escazú.”

“Actually, that sounds enjoyable. Yes, I’d like to.”

The restaurant at which they would meet, La Linda Vista, was in the hills west of the city. Pablo had been apologetic about
being unable to escort her there, but, alas, his car was in the garage. She told him she was happy to take a taxi.

All afternoon, Maggie was in a turmoil of anticipation. Strolling through the streets, she suddenly found San José much more appealing. The stores were crammed with Christmas knick-knacks: a Santa Claus or a Rudolph in almost every window, cheek by jowl with a crèche, three wise men beneath a star.

From a tourist shop she bought a postcard, and wrote a note to her mother, hinting of developments to come with “the world’s most gorgeous man — he could charm the nose off your face.” She posted it, then walked past the public market to the wide commercial artery of Paseo Colón, and tramped many blocks west, into Sabana Park, where children played boisterously and young couples strolled hand in hand.

I am alone, too
. Those four little words had been tinged with melancholy, making her wonder if he had recently emerged from some deep, wounding affair. Though she had seen no wedding ring, she could not quell the fear that he was another in the long list of the unfaithful, and that she would learn the wife and children were off on a beach holiday.

How could such an attractive man escape matrimony? Was he divorced? She could not bear the thought he was a married hypocrite and resolved to put him through some verbal tests. Decisions must be made now, in the cold light of day, before reason becomes corrupted in the night. She must not present herself as either loose or tightly laced. She would set limits on this first date. Later, perhaps, after her week in the jungle, a return engagement … But these were such implausible plots.

Yet she had felt a genuine interest emanating from Professor Esquivel; perhaps he was seeking beauty beneath the surface. It was her mind that drew him, her sense of humour. He was tired of empty-headed women — though she could not remember, in her nervousness, having said anything so clever as to entirely remove herself from that category.

She was no longer slouching, but walking tall, and, sensing eyes on her, she glanced around to see two young men gazing at her. Maybe she did look ravaging: the remarkable bustless Maggie. Thank goodness the supermodel had packed the hugging green low-cut sheath that she occasionally dared to wear braless; not tonight, though: that would be too bold.

She whirled, performed a dance step, almost stumbled over a wayward soccer ball with which some boys were playing, then gaily kicked it back.

Clambering from her small taxi, Maggie saw Pablo Esquivel in a crisp grey suit, no tie, seated at a table for two on an upper terrace of La Linda Vista. As he rose to greet her, he plucked a hibiscus from a vase, and with a bow presented it to her, then smiled and brushed back the strands of long hair that had fallen over his eyes.

She pantomimed surprise at his generosity. As he laughed, she noticed he undertook a quick tour of her body. She hoped the effect of the tight sheath was not too much marred by the fanny pack; she must not slouch.

He held her chair as she sat. “You are in time for the sunset. Later, you would not see the view.”

The restaurant afforded a grand panorama of the Central Valley: rolling fertile plains encircled by cloud-draped volcanoes, the lights of the city below blinking on at dusk.

Their conversation was tentative at first, literary, a shared successful search for authors they respected: Marquez, Allende, Neruda. These bookish intimacies were interrupted by a loud, raucous bird call from a shrubby glade: “Haw, haw.” It sounded of derisive laughter.

“That has to be the Laughing Falcon,” she said.
Exceptionally vocal raptor
, said her bird guide,
feeds almost entirely on snakes, including venomous ones.”

“Ah, you are a bird fancier. The
guaco
, we call this
halcón;
it is the masked bandit of the skies. Maybe we will hear the full
guaco.”

“What is that?”

“Allow me to try. The bird goes ‘wah-wah-wah,’ ever faster and louder. Then it breaks into ‘Guah-co! Guah-co!’ ”

His mimicry caused her to smile. The full
guaco –
that strident voice might even cause the hairs of intrepid Fiona Wardell to stand on end.
Alone in the jungle, the sun dying, she sought to close her ears to its jeering call …

“May I suggest a pina colada?”

“Let me at least pay for the drinks.”

“I would not dream of it.”

She ordered a pina colada, he a vodka. She did not want to burden Pablo with a costly bill, so when the waiter returned, she asked for the local cuisine: refried beans, baked plantains, a salad with papaya and palm hearts. Pablo chose a steak.

After the menus were removed she barraged him with questions about Costa Rican food, customs, politics, history, but was unsure how to direct their conversation toward the crucial subject. Should she be blunt or subtle? I’
m always getting propositioned by married men — isn’t that ridiculous?
She would not be able to digest her
plato típico
if he delivered the usual worn-out line: “We’ve been unhappy for years.”

The pina colada disappeared all too quickly, and soon there was another in front of her. In the meantime, she was learning that Costa Ricans loved salsa music, were obsessed with politics no less than
fútbol
, and that the custom at bullfights in this warm-hearted nation was not to injure the bull but tease it.

There was no subject, with the possible exception of himself, with which Pablo did not seem at ease. Maggie’s male protagonists tended to be academics like her imaginary Jacques, and Pablo, too, was a professor — but with a Latin beat. He was even courtlier than Jacques, whose portrait seemed to blur in the presence of this urbane reality.

Pablo waited until the dinner plates were taken before lighting a cigarette. (“Forgive my minor addiction.”) Maggie had become tipsy: three pina coladas, and now liqueurs, Café Ricas, heavy and sweet. As the blush faded from the western clouds and the Laughing Falcon stilled its voice, crickets made cheerful night music; the air was fragrant with citrus blossom. This was the Costa Rica she had imagined.

Pablo still seemed reticent to talk about himself; preferring to carry on proudly about his
contry
.

“When people think of Central America they think of revolution, of armed guerrillas and bandits, but we have escaped that. There are paramilitary groups; however, these are merely a nuisance. But unhappily, with tourism has come street crime. It is not so safe for a woman alone; you must be careful.”

Caressed by a warm breeze, dazzled by the sparkling panoply of stars, Maggie drifted off again.
“The city, too, is a jungle; stay close to me.” Fiona feared only what was in her heart
.

“I think you have disappeared on me.”

She returned to find Pablo looking at her quizzically. “I’m sorry?”