Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (2 page)

 
          
The
girl was a real pest. “I think it’s terrible,” she said.

 
          
Kirby
Galway nodded. “I think so, too,” he murmured, jiggling ice cubes in his glass.
Around them the party brisked along, intense meaningless conversation on all sides,
mammoth paintings of house parts—a keyhole, a windowsill—visible above and
between all those talking heads. In the middle distance, receding ever farther
from Kirby’s grasp, was his target of opportunity for this evening, one Whitman
Lemuel, assistant curator of the Duluth Museum of Pre* Columbian Art, here in
New York on a buying expedition, here at this Soho gallery party as a form of
relaxation and a story to tell the home folks in Duluth.

 
          
Kirby
had just this morning learned of Lemuel’s presence in New York, had burrowed
out Lemuel’s evening plans by late this afternoon, and had come down through
the snowy city to crash the party early, so as to be ready when his mark
arrived. Tall and handsome and self' assured, proud of his luxuriant ginger moustache,
dressed with casual impeccability, Kirby was yet to find the party he couldn’t
crash. And in Soho? He could have come here straight from the jungle, in his
hiking boots and oil-stained khakis and battered bush hat, and still they would
have swept him right on in, assuming he was either an artist or an artist’s
boyfriend.

 
          
He
was neither. He was a salesman, and his customer this evening was one Whitman
Lemuel.

 
          
Or
was to have been; things were looking decidedly worse. Was it the door Lemuel
now angled toward?

 
          
It
had begun well. Kirby had introduced himself in tried-and-true fashion, by
actually introducing the other fellow: “Aren’t you Whitman Lemuel?”

 
          
Non-famous
people are always delighted to be recognized by strangers. “Why, yes, I am,”
said the round-faced Lemuel, eyes benign behind round glasses, broad mouth
smiling over polka-dot bow tie.

 
          
“I
want you to know,” Kirby said, “I was really impressed by that upper Amazon
show you put together a while back.”

 
          
“Oh,
yes?” The smile grew broader, the eyes more benign, the bow tie brighter. “Did
you see it in Duluth?”

 
          
“Unfortunately
not. In Houston. It traveled very well.”

 
          
“Yes,
it did, really,” Lemuel agreed, nodding, but his expression very faintly
clouded. “Still, there were parts of it that couldn’t leave the museum, simply
not. I’m afraid you didn’t get the full effect.” “What I saw was definitely
impressive. I’m Kirby Galway, by the way. ”

 
          
As
they shook hands, Lemuel said, “Are you connected with the Houston museum?”

 
          
“No,
no, I’m merely an amateur, an enthusiast. I live in Belize now, you see, and—”

 
          
“Ah,
Belize!” Lemuel said, brightening even more.

 
          
“You
know it?” Kirby asked, with an innocent smile. “Most people’ve never heard of
the place.”

 
          
“Oh,
my dear fellow,” Lemuel said. “Belize. Formerly British Honduras, independent,
now, I believe—”

 
          
“Very.”

 
          
“But,
I tell you, Mister, umm ...”

 
          
“Galway.
Kirby Galway.”

 
          
“Mister
Galway,” Lemuel said, excitement making him bob slightly on the balls of his
feet, “I tell you,
Belize
is
fascinating.
To me, to someone in my position, fascinating.”

 
          
“Oh,
really?” Kirby said. His smile said,
fancy
that.

 
          
“It’s
the very
center,
” Lemuel said,
gesturing, slopping his drink on his wrist, not noticing, “the very
center
of the ancient Mayan world.”

 
          
“Oh,
it can’t be,” Kirby said, frowning. “I thought Mexico was—”

 
          
“Aztecs,
Aztecs,” Lemuel said, brushing those Johnny-come-latelys aside. “Olmecs,
Toltecs,” he grudgingly acknowledged, “but comparatively little Mayan.”

 
          
“Guatemala,
then,” Kirby suggested. “There’s that place, what is it, Tikal, where they—”

 
          
“Of
course, of course.” Lemuel’s impatience was on the wax. “Until very recently,
we thought those were the primary Mayan sites, that’s true enough, true enough.
But that’s because no one had
studied
Belize,
no one knew what was in those jungles.”

 
          
“Now
they do?”

 
          
“We’re
beginning to,” Lemuel said. “Now we know the Mayan civilization covered a great
crescent shape, extending from Mexico south and west into Guatemala. But do you
know where the very
center
of that
crescent is?”

 
          
“Belize?”
hazarded Kirby.

 
          
“Precisely!
Coming up out of Belize now, there are pre-Columbian artifacts, jade figures,
carvings, gold jewelry, that are just astonishing. Wonderful. Unbelievable.”

 
          
“Well,
now, I wonder,” Kirby said thoughtfully, baiting the hook. “On
my
land down in Belize there’s—”

 
          
“Mayan?”
said an assertive female voice. “Did I hear someone say Mayan?”

 
          
It
was the girl, introducing herself, inserting herself, spoiling Kirby’s aim just
as he was releasing the arrow. Damn pest. As annoyed as any fisherman at the
arrival of a loud and careless intruder, Kirby turned to see an unusually tall
young woman in her middle 20s, perhaps only two or three inches shorter than
Kirby’s six feet two. She was attractive, if sharp-featured, with a long oval
face and straight hair- colored hair and eyes that flashed with commitment. Her
paisley blouse and long abundant skirt and brown leather boots all seemed just
a few years out of date, but Kirby could see that the heavy figured-silver
chain around her neck was Mexican and the large loop earrings she wore were
Central American, probably Guatemalan, native handicraft. He sensed trouble.
Damn and hell, he thought.

 
          
Whitman
Lemuel, obviously finding the presence of a good-looking young woman taller
than himself an even more exciting prospect than the thought of long-dead
Mayans, was welcoming her happily into their enclave, saying, “Yes, are you
interested in that culture? We were just talking about Belize.”

 
          
“I
haven’t been there yet,” she said. “I want to go. I did my postgraduate work at
the Royal Museum at Vancouver, classifying materials from Guyana.”

 
          
“You’re
an anthropologist, then?” Lemuel asked, while Kirby silently fretted.

 
          
“Archaeologist,”
the pest answered.

 
          
“Slim
pickings from Guyana, I should think,” Lemuel commented. “But, ah, Belize now—”

 
          
“Despoliation!”
she said, eyes shooting sparks.

 
          
Kirby
had never heard anyone use that word in conversation before. He gazed at her
with new respect and redoubled loathing.

 
          
Lemuel
had blinked at the word, as well he might. Then he said, doubtfully, “I’m not
really sure I . . .”

 
          
“Do
you know what they’re
doing
down
there in Belize?” demanded the pest. “All those Mayan cities, ancient sites,
completely unprotected there in the jungle—”

 
          
“For
a thousand years or more,” Kirby said gently.

 
          
“But
now;,” the pest said, “the things buried in them are suddenly valuable. Thugs,
graverobbers, are going in there, tearing structures apart—”

 
          
This
was the worst. Kirby couldn’t believe such bad luck, to have
this
conversation at such a moment. “Oh,
it isn’t that bad,” he said, determinedly interrupting her, and attempted to
veer them all away in another direction by introducing what ought to be a
sure-fire new topic of conversation: “What worries
me
down there is the war in El Salvador. The way things are going—”

 
          
But
she wasn’t to be that easy to deflect. “Oh, that,” she said, dismissing it all
with a colt-like shake of her head. “The
war
.
That’ll be over in one or two generations, but the destruction of irreplaceable
Mayan sites is
forever.
The Belizean
government does what it can, but they lack staff and funds. And meanwhile,
unscrupulous dealers and museum directors in the United States—”

 
          
Oh,
God. Please make her stop, God.

 
          
But
it was too late. Lemuel, looking like a man who’s just had a bug fly into his
mouth, stood fiddling with his bow tie and shifting from foot to foot. “Well,
my drink, umm,” he said. “My glass seems to be empty. You’ll both excuse me?”

 
          
Now,
that was unfair. The girl wasn’t Kirby’s fault, and it was really very bad of
Lemuel to lump them together like that and march off. It meant Kirby had no
polite choice but to stay, at least for a minute or two, and if he did manage
to make contact with Lemuel again this evening it would be more difficult to
get to the point of his sales pitch in a natural way.

 
          
Meanwhile,
the girl seemed just as content to deliver her diatribe to an audience of one.
“My name is Valerie Greene,” she said. She extended a slim long-fingered hand
for Kirby to either bite or shake.

 
          
He
shook the damn thing. “Kirby Galway,” he said. “It’s been very—”

 
          
“Did
I hear you say you live in Belize now?”

 
          
“That’s
right.”

 
          
“And
are you an archaeologist, by any chance?”

 
          
“No,
I’m afraid not.” Then, because Valerie Greene’s bright-bird eyes kept looking
expectantly at him, he was forced to go on and explain himself: “I’m a rancher.
Or, that is, I will be. I’m accumulating land down there. At the moment, I’m a
charter pilot.”

 
          
“What
company do you work for?”

 
          
“I
have my own plane.”

 
          
“Then
you must be aware,” she said, “of the pillaging that is taking place on
archaeological sites in Belize.”

 
          
“I’ve
seen some things in the paper,” he acknowledged.

 
          
“I
think it’s terrible,” she said.

 
          
“I
think so, too,” he murmured, watching Whitman Lemuel recede not toward the bar
but toward the door.

 
          
Terrible.
But not fatal, he consoled himself, not necessarily fatal. In fact, Lemuel’s
obvious unease when artifact theft was mentioned simply confirmed Kirby’s belief
that the man was a definite prospect. If Kirby failed to hook him tonight,
there would always be another time, in New York or in Duluth or somewhere.
Today was January 10th, so

 
          
there
were still almost three weeks before he was due to return to Belize; plenty of
time to find two or three Whitman Lemuels. And in any event, he already had a
couple of fish on the line.

 
          
“The
people who do that sort of thing,” Valerie Greene was saying, continuing
doggedly and blindly to plow her own narrow field, “have no sense of shame.”