Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (18 page)

 
          
Lemuel
found the whistle. “Now, this
is
something!” he said, holding it at arm’s length, staring at it.

           
Kirby was just as pleased as Lemuel
about the discovery. He never prodded his customers, never directed, always
permitted them to make their own way across the terrain, and as a result only
about half found the whistle. Which was a pity, because it was a beauty.

 
          
About
eight inches high, made of limestone carved with primitive stone tools, it was
the figure of a priest in a high headdress, with arms straight out at his sides
and a long skirt over slightly spread feet. A hole bored through from the top
of the headdress to the bottom of the skirt between the feet had originally
made the whistle, but when Lemuel now tried to blow through it nothing
happened. “No, it wouldn’t,” he said, wiping his mouth. “It’s too old.”

 
          
“To
do what?” Kirby asked, parading his ignorance.

 
          
“This
is a whistle,” Lemuel explained, his amiability lightly sheathing his
condescension. Lemuel was a changed man now that the dread drug dealers were
gone. During lunch, over a vodka and tonic, he had reconstructed his academic
armor, had got himself back under control, and during the flight out had even
discoursed on his few encounters with marijuana, reminiscences occasioned by
Kirby having pointed out cultivated fields of the stuff down below, orderly
rows of fuzzy light green among the jumbled thousand greens of the jungle.

 
          
Lemuel,
in fact, had become so thoroughly the academic and the expert that he’d even
shown some early indications of skepticism as Kirby had led him up the side of
his extravaganza. “Hmmmmm,” he’d said, when he’d come to the shaped building
block, and, “Odd this should be out here in plain sight like this.”

 
          
“It
was farther up when I found it,” Kirby told him. “I did some digging here and
there, test'boring for a septic system, and that thing rolled down.”

 
          
“Hmmmm,”
Lemuel repeated, and when Kirby pointed out the silhouette of temple steps
against the sky on the right side of the hill Lemuel had said, slowly,
“Possible, possible. Could be a natural formation, or it might mean something.”

 
          
But
all skepticism had vanished once Lemuel’s foot, in poking into the hillside in
search of purchase, had dislodged the whistle. Brushing dirt away, turning it
around and around, even trying to blow through it, Lemuel had to know that what
he was holding was the real thing.

 
          
Real,
but not particularly valuable. There were certainly hundreds, possibly
thousands of similar whistles legally for sale among antique dealers and curio
shops around the world, most of them priced at less than $200. The one Lemuel
was turning this way and that way in his hands had most recently sold for $160
U.S.

 
          
But
value here wasn’t the point. This small artifact was
real
, it was honest'to-God one thousand and two hundred years old,
the lips of priests had encircled that blowhole, the hands of reahlife ancient
Mayans had held that whistle just as Lemuel was holding it right now. The
whistle was legit, and Lemuel had to know it.

 
          
He
did. “A whistle,” he repeated. “Late Classical Period, I would say, prior to
900 AD.”

 
          
“You
know a lot more about it than I do,” Kirby assured him.

 
          
Lemuel
held the whistle up so the little priest faced Kirby, arms spread wide, like an
infant recognizing its father. “This would have been used in religious
ceremonies,” he explained, and then frowned past Kirby, saying, “What’s that?”

           
Kirby turned. They were just high
enough so they could look over the intervening jungle at the meadow—visibly
drier today, by the way—where the plane waited and where now a coiling column
of brown dust spread out and away from behind an approaching vehicle. “Hey,
wait a minute,” Kirby said.

 
          
Lemuel’s
nervousness had shot back into existence, and in full flower. Stepping back a
pace, his eyes getting rounder and rounder behind his round glasses, he looked
from Kirby to the oncoming car and back to Kirby, saying, “What is this? What’s
going on here?”

 
          
“I
don’t know,” Kirby said, “but I’ll damn well find out.” This remote place
didn’t get
visitors.
Below, the
vehicle had paused at his plane, but had not stopped, and now came rapidly on,
bounding and bumping over the rough dry land, moving at an angle that would
take it around to the easier slope, the one Kirby and the Indians used but
which he never showed the customers. “You wait here,” Kirby said. “This is
my
land, goddamit.”

 
          
Lemuel’s
one sartorial concession to a trek in the wilderness had been to wear Adidas
sneakers with his usual gray slacks and pale blue shirt and light cotton sports
jacket. Till now, his garb had merely made him look slightly foolish but, with
fright blotching his face and agitating his limbs, he looked exactly like the
victim in some sadistic tale of a city man strayed among brutes; possibly by
Paul Bowles. Staring fixedly at the machete held loosely in Kirby’s right hand,
“I
demand
to know what’s going on,”
he cried, spoiling the effect when his voice broke on the word
demand.

 
          
“So
do I,” Kirby told him. He knew nothing about that onrushing car except it was
none of his doing and was therefore trouble. “Wait here,” he repeated. “Play
with the goddam whistle while I get rid of— whoever they are.”

 
          
He
hated
having to take the easier path
in full view of the client, but there was no choice if he were to stop the
interlopers before they actually reached the base of the temple. Running
diagonally down the hill, around to the right side, he kept catching glimpses
of the car between vines and tree branches, and be God-damned if it wasn’t the
peach-colored Land Rover from the hotel this morning! That, or one exactly like
it.

 
          
This
morning’s Land Rover had had government licence plates.

 
          
“Hell
and damn,” Kirby muttered, running harder. Innocent has something to do with
this, he told himself, but he was moving too fast to think about the question.

 
          
A
knot of vines was in his way. He swung the machete with both hands, teeth
gritted, wishing it were Innocent’s neck. The vines fell away, grudging him a
foot or two at every swipe, until all at once the hole was open, the Land Rover
was dead ahead, and Kirby hurtled out and down onto the barren flat, waving the
machete over his head and yelling, “Stop! Stop!”

 
          
The
Land Rover veered. There were two people in it, the driver black and male, the
passenger white and female. They were the people he’d seen at the hotel this
morning. He saw them, the driver blank' faced and the woman yelling something,
as the Land Rover angled around him, not even slackening speed.

 
          
What
were they up to? Kirby turned,
panting, the machete sagging at his side, and saw the Land Rover’s brake lights
go on as it suddenly jolted to a stop. The woman was waving her arms, now
yelling at her companion. The back-up lights flashed as the Land Rover came
sluing and sliding backward, slamming to a stop beside Kirby, where the woman
glared at him through her large sunglasses from under her floppy'brimmed hat
and yelled,
“Who
are you?”

 
          
“Who
am I? Lady, what the hell are you—”

 
          
“There’s
a
temple
here!” she cried,
astonishingly, horribly. Kirby gaped as she clambered out of the Land Rover,
some sort of map or chart flapping in her left hand. Behind her, the driver sat
immobile, taking no part.

 
          
“Oh,
no, there isn’t,” Kirby said. “No, no. No way.”

 
          
“But
there is! There must be!” Waving the map at him, she insisted, “It’s all worked
out! All I have to do—” She started around him, headed for the slope.

 
          
“Wait!
Wait!” Kirby ran to get in front, to stop her. “You can’t just— You can’t— This
is trespassing!”

 
          
“I
have authority from the Belizean government!” She stood even taller than her
normal six feet when she said this, and her eyes flashed.

 
          
Innocent.
Has
to be Innocent. Damn, damn, damn
the man, what was he up to and
why
?
Kirby said, “This is private land, this is my land and you can’t—”

 
          
But
now she bent almost double, looking upward past Kirby’s right elbow, whipping
off her hat so she could see better. “There/” she cried.

=
        
Oh, God. Kirby reluctantly turned, also
crouching a bit, and right there, through the hole he’d just this minute
himself cut through the vines, was framed the top fraction of the temple.
Steps, stela, flattened platform at the top. It was like a picture from a
textbook. “No,” Kirby said.

 
          
“The
temple,” breathed this miserable pest of a woman, and Lemuel appeared in the
opening, carrying the whistle.

 
          
Shit.
Kirby came around again to stand close in front of the woman, trying to block
her vision, praying Lemuel would have the sense to stay away. “Cut this
out
now,” he insisted. “This is my land,
this is private property, you can’t just barge—”

 
          
“I
know
you,” she said, staring at him,
and all of a sudden he knew her, too. Oh, this is impossible, he thought, this
is unfair, this is beyond anything. This pain in the ass can’t queer my pitch
with Lemuel
twice.

 
          
Yes.
Lemuel did not have the sense to keep out of it, because here he came, carrying
the goddam whistle, looking frightened and suspicious and determined and
fatuous, saying, “Galway, I have to know what’s going on here, I have a
reputation to—”

 
          
“You!”
cried the woman. The pest. Valerie Greene; the name returned unbidden to
Kirby’s mind. Valerie Greene, twice in one lifetime.

 
          
Lemuel
also recognized her, if belatedly. His jaw dropped. “Oh, no,” he said.

 
          
She
saw the whistle in his hand. She pointed at it, rising up taller than ever,
seven feet tall maybe, eight feet, nine. “DESPOLIA' TION!” she cried.

 
          
Now
everybody acted at once. Valerie Greene thundered into her
historicaLpreservation speech, Kirby yelled uselessly for everybody to shut up
and go away, and Lemuel backtracked, flinging the whistle away backhanded, like
a small boy caught smoking. “I won’t— This isn’t—” Lemuel sputtered, “I can’t—
Kirby, you have to—” And he turned and ran pelLmell toward the plane.

 
          
“National
treasures—Priceless antiquities— Irreplaceable artL facts—” Valerie Greene was
in full cry now, orating to a stadium of
60
,
000
.

 
          
Kirby
held the machete up in front of this virago’s face. His eyes were on her
throat. “One,” he said.

 
          
“Two,”
said the crazy man.

 
          
Valerie
backed away. Was he counting to ten ... or to three?

 
          
The
crazy man’s face was very red. Veins stood out on his neck, reminding Valerie
irrelevantly of Michelangelo sculptures, and he raised the machete even more
menacingly, like Reggie Jackson seeing a fat one come across the plate. He
didn’t say three.

 
          
“I—”
Valerie said, back'pedaling. “You—”

 
          
She
hadn’t realized the Land Rover’s engine was off until she heard, behind her,
the driver switch it back on. nrnmmrnr,
cough
,
CHUG.

 
          
Would
he leave without her? Would the one in front chop off her head?
Men!
Valerie turned about and scampered
to the Land Rover, leaping in as the skinny black man shifted into low; so she
would never know if he’d been waiting for her or if she’d just made it. The
Land Rover jolted forward, the driver spun the wheel in a hard right which took
them in a loop around the crazy man, and from the safety of the moving vehicle
Valerie yelled at him, “I’ll report you! I’ll tell Mister St. M
ichaell”

 
          
Something,
probably the threat, possibly the name, drove the crazy man over the edge. With
a mighty oath, he flung his machete to the ground, where it bounced in a sudden
jump of pebbles and flutter of dust. Tearing his bush hat from his head, he
hurled that atop the machete, then jumped on the hat with both feet.

 
          
Twisting
around in the metal bucket seat as the Land Rover sped back the way they’d
come, Valerie saw the crazy man jumping up and down on his hat and machete,
then pausing to pant and cough in all the dust he’d raised, then shaking his
fist after Valerie, then shaking both fists at heaven. All at once, he stooped,
picked up a handful of pebbles, and threw them after the Land Rover, though
they were far out of range by now.

 
          
Valerie
looked up, and there it was, serene, silent against the blue sky, indomitable:
the temple, looking like nothing more than a hill from this distance. Covered
by a millenia of jungle growth, a thousand years of accumulated earth, growing
plants, rotting flora and fauna, nature’s heavy veneer disguising the works of
man. “Do you know what that is?”

 
          
The
driver looked in his rearview mirror: “A very angry man.”

 
          
“No,”
Valerie said. “The
temple
. I was
right!”

 
          
The
driver veered, jolting Valerie almost out onto the hard dry ground covered with
dead and dying grass. She faced front, and saw they were angling around the
airplane, where Whitman Lemuel—oh, she remembered
him
—stood holding his jacket up over his head like arrested numbers
runners in newspaper photographs. “I know you!” Valerie yelled, shaking her
finger at him on the way by.

 
          
And
to think, to think, she’d been embarrassed at dinner last night, afraid
he
would notice
her
!

 
          
The
driver leaned forward, squinting at the rearview mirror. “That hill?” he said.
“That’s really a temple?”

 
          
“Over
a thousand years old,” Valerie told him, awed by its existence, its reality,
her own astonishing brilliance in rescuing it from oblivion. “A Mayan temple.”

           
“Well, that’s pretty good,” the
driver said. “And nobody knew it was there.”

 
          
“The
world
is going to know, just as soon
as I get back to
Belmopan
,” said Valerie.

 
          
“Uh
huh,” said the driver.