Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (3 page)

 
          
“Oh,
I agree,” Kirby said, watching the white-painted fire door close behind Whitman
Lemuel’s back. “I couldn’t agree more. Well, goodbye,” he said, smiled with
sheathed hatred, and walked away.

 
          
Pest.

 
          
On
a bright sunny afternoon in early February, the temperature 82 degrees on the
Fahrenheit scale, a man named Innocent St. Michael drove out from Belize City
to Belize International Airport to watch the plane from Miami land. His
lunch—with a fellow civil servant and a sugar farmer from up Orange Walk way
and a chap interested in starting a television station—sat easily under his
ribs, eased down with Belikin beer and a good cigar. The air conditioning in
his dark green Ford LTD breathed its icy breath on his happy round face. His
white shirt was open at the throat, his tan cotton suit was not very wrinkled
yet at all, and in the cool of the car he could still smell the sweet tangs of
both his aftershave and his pomade. How nice life is, how nice.

 
          
Innocent
had been graced by God with 57 years of this nice life so far, and no immediate
end in sight. A man who loved food and drink, adored women, wallowed in ease
and luxury, he was barreLbodied but in wonderful physical condition, with a
heart that could have powered a steamship. The efforts of assorted Mayan
Indians, Spanish conquistadores, African ex-slaves, and shipwrecked Irish
sailors had been combined in his creation, and most of them might have been
pleased at the result of their labors. His hair was African, his mocha skin
Mayan, his courage Irish, and the deviousness of his brain was all Spanish. He
was also—and this is far from insignificant—both Deputy Director of Land
Allocation in the Belizean government and an active real estate agent. Very nice.

 
          
The
road out from Belize City to the International Airport is somewhat better
maintained than most of the thoroughfares in that nation, and Innocent sprawled
comfortably on the seat, two thick fingers resting negligently on the steering
wheel. He honked as he drove past the whorehouse, and the girls at the
clothesline waved, recognizing the car. A moment later he turned left onto the
airport road.

 
          
Air
Base Camp was to his right, the British military installation, where two
Harrier jet fighters crouched like giant black insects beneath their camouflage
nets, dreaming of prey. Perhaps they were among those which had gone south not
long ago to play in the Falklands war. They were here as part of a 1,600-man
British peacekeeping force, the last true colonial link, made necessary by
neighboring Guatemala’s claim that Belize was in fact its own long-lost colony,
which it had threatened to reabsorb by force of arms.

 
          
However,
since the world recently had seen the result of Argentina’s belligerence in its
own similar territorial dispute with Great Britain, Guatemalan rhetoric had
begun to ease of late, and a settlement might yet be found. This prospect
Innocent approved; although war iself is good for business, threats of war sour
the entrepreneurial climate. Innocent St. Michael had lots of land he wished to
unload on eager North Americans, and it was only the possibility of war with
Guatemala that had so far delayed the land rush.

 
          
Belize
International Airport is a single runway in front of a small, two-story,
cream-colored, concrete-block building without glass in its first-floor
windows. Taxis and their drivers make a dusty clutter around the building, sun
glinting painfully from battered chrome and cracked windshields. Innocent
steered around them and parked in the grassy area marked with a rough-hewn
sign: VISITORS. He slid the LTD near the only other vehicle there, a crumbling
maroon pickup he thought he knew. So Kirby Galway was back, was he? Innocent
smiled in anticipation of their meeting.

 
          
Kirby
himself was around on the shady side of the building, hunkered down like a
careless native boy but dressed for business: short-sleeved white shirt, red
and black striped necktie, khaki slacks, tan hiking boots. “Welcome home!”
Innocent said, approaching, hand outstretched, beaming in honest pleasure.
Seeing Kirby reminded Innocent of his own wit, intelligence, guile; the thought
of how he had snookered Kirby Galway could always make him happy. “I was afraid
you were gone forever,” he said, squeezing Kirby’s hand hard, pumping it up and
down.

 
          
Kirby
squeezed back; the young fellow was surprisingly strong. With his own smile, he
said, “You know me, Innocent. The bad penny always turns up.”

 
          
If
there was one thing that even slightly marred Innocent’s pleasure in having
clipped Kirby, it was that for some reason Kirby never seemed to mind. Where
was the resentment, the grievance, the sense of humiliation? Just to remind
him, Innocent said, “Well, you know me, Kirby. Good or bad, if there’s a penny
around I want some of it.”

 
          
“Oh,
you’ve had enough from me,” Kirby said, with an easy laugh. One more shared
squeeze and they released one another’s hands. “Selling any more land?” Kirby
asked.

 
          
“Oh,
here and there, here and there. You back in the market?”

 
          
“Not
yet.”

 
          
“You
be sure to let me know.”

 
          
“Yes,”
Kirby said, with a slight edge in his voice, and looked up.

 
          
The
plane from Miami? Innocent couldn’t yet hear it, nor could he see anything when
he gazed skyward, but Kirby apparently could. “Right on time,” he said.

 
          
“Meeting
someone?”

 
          
“Just
a couple of fellows from the States,” Kirby said. Moving off, he said, “Nice to
chat with you, Innocent.”

 
          
“And
you, Kirby.” The fact is, Innocent thought in happy surprise, we do like each
other, Kirby and I.

 
          
There
was the plane. Innocent could see it now, and a moment later hear it, making a
great easy purring loop in the sky, like some cheerful iceskater just fooling
around. Then all at once it turned businesslike, pointing its no-nonsense nose
at the runway, seeming to accelerate as it neared the ground, the big
blue^and^white plane surely far too large for this tiny airport, these little
scratches in the dirt surrounded by the lushness of the forest a month after
the end of the rainy season.

 
          
The
plane growled as it touched down and raced past the building toward the far end
of the runway. Then it roared quite loudly, decelerating, as though warning
lesser creatures that the king of the skies was come.

 
          
Innocent
was not here to meet anyone in particular; he just liked to know who had both
the money and the need to travel by air. Absentmindedly grooming with his gold
toothpick, he stood in the shade of the building and watched the plane trundle
back, a tamed tabby now, an outsized toy. It stopped, and 15 or so passengers
got off, to be herded toward the building by Immigration officials in odds and
ends of uniform.

 
          
Innocent
classified the arrivals as they went by: several North American tourists,
heading most likely to Ambergris Caye and the offshore barrier reef, where
those who like that sort of thing said the scuba diving was unparalleled.
Innocent himself wouldn’t know; the largest body of water in which he ever
intended to immerse himself was his swimming pool, in which he could be sure he
was the only shark.

 
          
Three
serious young men in suits and ties and white shirts were local boys,
continuing their studies in the States. The University of Miami is now as
important as any British school in turning out lawyers for the Carribean basin.
A couple of slightly older fellows in neat but casual clothing would be
expatriates, gone north for the advantages of American wage scales, home on a
visit to show off their solvency, and incidentally to get some relief from the
horrible winters of Brooklyn, where so many expatriate Belizeans made their
home.

 
          
A
pair of white Americans in sports jackets, carrying attache cases, but not
apparently traveling together, would be either businessmen or functionaries at
the embassy; in the former case, they might eventually be of interest to
Innocent. And the pair of pansy-boys were undoubtedly the “fellows” Kirby was
here to meet.

 
          
Definite
pansy^boys. They were both in their 40s, quite tall and almost painfully thin,
and both unsuccessfully trying to hide an intense nervousness. The one in
designer jeans and an alligator’d shirt apparently had grown that absolute
forest of a pepper-and-salt moustache to make up for the fact that he was
completely bald on top, with thick curly hair standing out only around the
sides, resting on his ears like a stole. The other had a slightly less imposing
moustache, russet in color, but the top of his head luxuriated in long wavy
orangey hair, atop which perched sunglasses. He was got up in a safari shirt
and khaki British Army shorts and cowboy boots decorated with stitched bucking
broncos. He carried a small olive-drab canvas shoulderbag that tried to look
like some sort of military accoutrement, but which was in fact a purse.

 
          
Those
were the ones, all right. But what did Kirby want with them? And what was
making them so excessively nervous? Money is going to change hands, Innocent
told himself. He wanted to know all about it.

 
          
Remaining
outside the building, he glanced through its glassless windows, seeing the
sheeplike processing of the arrivals. Out on the runway, luggage extracted,
doors shut, the plane snarled and turned aside, at once hurrying back up some
invisible ramp into the sky, busily on the way to its next stop, Tegucigalpa,
capital of Honduras.

 
          
Innocent
watched Kirby, inside the building, watch the pansy-boys clear through
Immigration, then watched him shake their hands, one after the other. No
squeezing hard with those two. They collected their luggage—Louis Vuitton for
the bald one, a large black vinyl thing with many zippers for the other—and
Kirby escorted them out to the sunlight and over to his pickup.

 
          
He
would be taking them to his plane, yes? Perhaps a hotel first, but then his
plane. Even though Belize is a very small country, and even though Belize City
is no longer its capital, it is a city possessing two airports. Commercial
international flights moved through this one here, but the charter planes and
the small locally-owned craft were all back in town, at the Municipal Airport
built on landfill beside the bay. Kirby would take them there, and fly the
plane . . . Where?

 
          
These
were not marijuana buyers. And if they were, they would meet Kirby in Florida,
not here.

 
          
Pocketing
his toothpick, Innocent went inside to chat with the Immigration man who’d
checked the pansy-boys’ passports. They were named Alan Witcher and Gerrold
Feldspan, they lived at the same address on Christopher Street in New York
City, and each listed his occupation as “antique dealer.”

           
Innocent went back outside, frowning
slightly, feeling a bubble of gas in his stomach. The pickup was gone. He
wished he could fly. Not with a plane or a helicopter, but just by himself,
like Superman. Except that he wouldn’t like that foolish posture with the arms
over one’s head, as though diving. Arms folded, perhaps, or hands casually in
jacket pockets, he would like to be able to lift into the sky like an airship,
like a dirigible, and float along behind Kirby, unknown, unseen.

 
          
What
was Kirby’s business with those two? Where was he taking them? To his land?
“There’s nothing there,” Innocent grumbled aloud.

 
          
He
should know.

 
          
“Sweeeeeeeettt,”
said the tinamou.

           
“Kackle-icker-caw,” said the toucan.

 
          
“Bibble
bibble ibble bibble bibble,” said the black howler monkey.

           
“Sssssss, sss,” said the coral
snake.

 
          
“This
way, gentlemen,” said Kirby. “Watch out for snakes.” He thumped his machete on
a fallen tree trunk, which said
throk.
“The noise keeps them in their holes,” he explained.

 
          
Witcher
and Feldspan, having long since abandoned their earlier pretense at
heterosexuality, had been nervously holding one another’s hands since before
Kirby’s little six-seater Cessna had landed. Now, at talk of snakes, they
pressed shoulders together and gazed round-eyed at the deceptively peaceful
green. Well, it gave them something other than the law to be nervous about.

 
          
“I
bought this land as an investment,” Kirby explained, which was true enough.
“Good potential for grazing, as you can see.”

 
          
Witcher
and Feldspan obediently looked about themselves, but were clearly still
thinking more about snakes than about grazing land.

           
(A fer-de-lance slithered by, unnoticed.)
Nevertheless, at the moment, at this particular moment, the land was very
plausible indeed. It began on the east with the fairly level grassy field where
Kirby had landed, the slowing plane shushing through knee-deep grasses and
clover, the whole area just crying out for a herd of beef cattle. Westward
toward the Maya Mountains was the jungly upper parcel into which he was now
leading them; at the moment it was rather too overgrown with trees and vines
and shrubbery, but a person with vision could imagine it cleared, could
visualize the trees themselves being used to build a bam just over
there
, could just see the white
sprawling manor at the top of the ridge, like something out of a Civil War
novel, commanding a view of all this rich grazing land below.

 
          
It
had been just this time of year when Innocent St. Michael had shown Kirby this
land, and when Kirby had scraped together every penny he could find or borrow
to buy it. Just this time of year, two years ago, and Kirby was still
struggling to get out from under the mess he’d made of things. But he’d do it,
he’d make it. He had the system now.

 
          
A
self-assured and easygoing fellow of 31, who made his living mostly by flying
marijuana bales from northern Belize to southern Florida, Kirby had always
thought of himself as pretty sharp. In Belize he had seen the growing influx of
American immigrants, attracted by the good climate, the stable government, the
cheap and plentiful land. In Texas, where he had worked for a while flying
bales of feed to cattle on a ranch which was itself rather larger than the
entire state of Delaware, he had seen how the combination of good grazing land
and herds of beef cattle could provide its owners incredible wealth.

 
          
Texas
land, of course, had all been gobbled up well over a century ago. But here was
Belize, and here was Kirby in on the ground floor, and the vision of himself as
a cattle baron was a pleasing one. (Satin shirts; he’d leam to ride a horse.)
Not bad for a boy from Troy, New York, who had been taught to be a pilot by the
United States Air Force, but who was of too independent a mind either to stay
with the military or work for one of the commercial airlines. His Cessna, which
he had named Cynthia, had been bought used from a dealer in Teterboro, in New
Jersey, and flown south in easy stages, Kirby finding different temporary jobs
along the way. He had met some sharpies, and had dealt with tough guys on both
sides of the law, and had never been stung. He was a sharp bright boy, and
proud of it.

 
          
And
then he met Innocent St. Michael.

 
          
“A
lot of Americans are coming down here,” he told Witcher and Feldspan, leading
them deeper into the jungle, “because there’s just so much available land. Here
we are in a country the size and shape of New Jersey, and there’s a hundred
fifty thousand people here. Do you know how many people there are in New
Jersey?”

 
          
“No
one I know,” said Witcher. He was recovering from the thought of snakes.

 
          
“I
had an aunt in New Jersey once,” said Feldspan, “but she went to Florida and
died.”

 
          
“There
are seven million people in New Jersey,” Kirby said. “And only a hundred fifty
thousand here.” He
throkked
another
tree bole, to punish them for being flip, then chopped his way through some
dangling vines. There was a welbwom path he and the Indians used, but the
customers found it more dramatic if Kirby hacked a fresh path for them through
the jungle to the site. And the customer is always right.

 
          
“This
is awfully wild country, isn’t it?” Witcher said, clutching Feldspan’s elbow
with his free hand.

 
          
“Just
unpopulated,” Kirby said. “Human beings haven’t lived here since— Well, you’re
about to see it, aren’t you?”

 
          
“Are
we?” They looked around again at the increasingly dense flora, seeing nothing
but shiny green leaves and ropy vines and tree trunks still garbed in their
green rainy^season mold. Kirby had led them the long way around through the
thickest part of his personal jungle, and now he pointed the machete ahead and
slightly to the left, saying, “Just through there. Wait; let me clear some of
this stuff out of the way. ”

 
          
Chop;
slash; whack. Vines and branches fell away, creating a window in the bumpy wall
of green, through which the partly cleared hilltop could be seen, rising
steeply upward another 60 feet or more from where they stood. Stippled with a
stubble of grasses and brush and a few twisted dwarf trees, the slope ended at
a bare conical top. “There,” Kirby said, stepped back, smiled, and let the boys
have a look.

 
          
They
looked. They stared. All thought of snakes was forgotten, all thought of the
laws they were here to break was swept clean out of their heads. Hushed,
Feldspan said, “Is that it?”

 
          
Kirby
pointed again with the machete. “You see there on the right, about halfway up?”

 
          
They
saw; they had to. “Steps,” breathed Feldspan.

 
          
“The
temple,” breathed Witcher.

 
          
“Let’s
have a closer look,” said Kirby.

 
          
“Oh,
do
let’s!”

 
          
Kirby
laid about himself with the machete, enthusiastically clearing a path up
through the thicket to the clearer part, where he paused,
tinked
an artfully casual foot-square stone with the machete tip,
and waited for the city boys, a bit out of breath, to catch up. “Like I told
you in New York,” he said, “I’m no archaeologist, I don’t know much about this
kind of thing, but what I
guess
is,
the temple probably starts right around here.”

 
          
Feldspan
was the first to notice the stone. “Look!” he cried, excitement quivering in
his voice. “A paving block! This has been
shaped
!”

 
          
Kirby
nodded in thoughtful agreement. “It was seeing a few of those blocks around
that first got to me. Then I went down to Belmopan and talked to the government
people there, and everybody said there’s just no Mayan cities or temples or anything
at all like that in this area. They said it’s all been studied and checked out,
and there’s just nothing here.”

 
          
“They’re
wrong,” breathed Witcher. The paving stone must have weighed 40 pounds, but he
had picked it up anyway, stood tilted forward a bit, gazing at the stone,
turning it slowly and awkwardly in his hands.

 
          
Feldspan
said, “What’s the name of this place?”

 
          
“Probably
nobody for a thousand years has known the name of this temple,” Kirby told him.
“The Indians around here call this hill Lava Sxir Yt.” (He pronounced it “Lava
Shkeer Eat,” and then spelled it.)

 
          
“Lava
Sxir Yt,” Feldspan echoed, reverently, as though the words were an incantation
to call up an ancient savage Mayan priest.

 
          
Kirby
said, “Let’s go on up.”

 
          
Witcher
carefully replaced the stone, and they continued up the slope, soon coming to
partly cleared steps, obviously part of the temple’s outer wall. Witcher and
Feldspan chattered happily over that discovery, until Kirby shepherded them on
upward. Near the top, where they could already look back over the jungle canopy
to the tiny blue-and-white plane parked toylike in the field below, they came
upon what at first appeared to be a low tombstone, perhaps two feet wide and
six inches thick, jutting less than a foot from the ground, tilted slightly
forward. The top and sides had been squared off by rough chisebwork, and some
sort of scratches were etched deeply into the forward side.

 
          
This
really
got to Witcher and Feldspan,
who fell to their knees in front of the stone, Feldspan spitting on it and
spreading the wet with his fingertips, the better to see the etcheddn
scratches, while Witcher clawed away at the loose dry soil at the thing’s base,
revealing more of it. “Jaguar,” breathed Feldspan, tracing the lines. There it
was; the topmost portion of a typical stylized Mayan drawing of a jaguar’s
head. The lines continued down into the area Witcher had cleared, and
presumably some distance below.

 
          
“Scorpion,”
said Kirby mildly.

 
          
They
both jumped backward, scrabbling in panic on the weed- grown steps, struggling
to their feet. “Where?” cried Witcher.

 
          
“No,
no,” Kirby said. “I just meant to look out for them.
I
wouldn’t dig barehanded around here, believe me.”

 
          
“Oh,
I see,” said Feldspan, beginning to recover his poise. “You’re absolutely
right.”

 
          
“This
stela,” Witcher said, pointing at the stone, “could be
very
valuable. Depending on the condition of the rest of it.”

 
          
“There’s
a bunch of them here,” Kirby said casually, watching Witcher and Feldspan
exchange a quick hungry look. “Let’s go on.”

 
          
This
time they continued all the way to the top, where they found a mostly flat
weedy area about 12 feet square. In one comer the old paving stones were
completely uncovered. Walking back and forth, alternately staring down at the
paving stones and out at the view of jungle and clearings and, in the western
distance, the bluish hulking shapes of the Maya Mountains, Witcher and Feldspan
were clearly caught up in the myth and the magic of it all; here were they, two
New Yorkers, sophisticates, antique dealers, used to the ways of the most modem
of civilizations, and they had traveled in the course of one day more than a
thousand years into the past. The blood of human sacrifice must have soaked
these paving stones. The few visible steps in the overgrown sides of the temple
would have been lined with savage worshipers in their bright cloaks and
feathers. Here—
here
—the priest would
have waited, the rough stone knife held high over his head.

 
          
“The
temples,” Witcher said, and was overcome by emotion, and started again: “The
temples were painted red. In the old times, when the Mayans were here. Imagine;
from miles and miles away in the jungle you could see the great red temple
rearing up into the sky.”

 
          
“Fantastic,”
breathed Feldspan.

 
          
“Must
have been something,” Kirby agreed. His job was to be slightly the rube, to
their greater sophistication, just as he was meant to be a bit less honorable
than they and a bit more dangerous. He enjoyed all parts of the game, including
this one.