Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (35 page)

 
          
Twenty
little devil-gods stood on the rattan mat, knees turned out to the sides and
deeply bent, arms flung wide to show their bat webs, eyes glittering with evil,
mouths stretched back in a violent smirk out of which forked tongues curled,
poised to strike. In the flickering candlelight, the massed group of 20 demons
seemed to move, shimmer, almost to dance, their eyes staring back at Kirby, who
blinked, cleared his throat, and said, “Fine, Tommy. Very effective.”

 
          
“They
get to you, don’t they?” Tommy held the candle lower, the movement causing the
creatures to alter their knee bends and roll their eyes, while their shadows
magnified and swooped on the far wall of the hut.

 
          
“They’re
real good, Tommy,” Kirby said. Behind him, outside, a low-key party was under
way, partly in hospitality at the presence of Kirby and Innocent and partly a
vigil, waiting for word of Valerie Greene. Rosita and a couple of the others
were still out there in the darkness somewhere, occasionally calling, but
everyone knew they wouldn’t find their Jungle Queen tonight. At first light
they’d look again, hoping nothing bad had happened to her, reeling around
stoned and lost in the darkness.

 
          
Innocent
was in another hut right now, being shown some of the blankets and dress
material the villagers had made and dyed themselves, so Tommy had taken the
opportunity to bring Kirby here and show him he’d actually been at work making
the promised Zotzes.

 
          
Zotzilaha
Chimalman, replicated 20 times, danced in the candle-light on the rattan mat.
Each figure was about 10 inches high, seven inches wide, formed from clay,
hollowed out as an incense burner. Buried and dug up again, all of them had
been knocked together a bit to simulate age and rough treatment, each one
subtly different, showing the specific touches of the half dozen artisans who
had worked on them.

 
          
Fakes.
Mockeries. Tiny clay imitations of an ancient long-dead superstition, but still
brimming with the potency of dread. Zotzilaha Chimalman hated mankind and had
the power and the genius to do something about it. Kirby had never been a Maya,
but nevertheless he felt uneasy in the presence of this naked malevolence. He
could understand why it was so hard for Tommy to turn his hand to the creation
of such a being, and even more so for the other villagers, whose
straightforward relationship with life and the spirits and their ancestors had
never been corrupted by exile to the outer world.

 
          
Over
the candle flame, Tommy’s eyes gleamed at Kirby almost as gleefully as the
demons’: “Had enough, Kimosabe?”

 
          
“They’re
fine, Tommy,” Kirby said, calm and dignified. “Thanks. And, uh, let’s get the
hell out of here.”

 
          
Tommy
chuckled, and they went outside to a clear night full of stars, with a moon
about seven months pregnant. The villagers liked to party, but were troubled by
the disappearance of their Sheena, and therefore merely sat in groups,
murmuring together. The little plastic radio had been turned off; no salsa
music from
Guatemala
tonight. A horizontal scrim of marijuana
smoke hung at nose level. Jars of home-brew clinked against stone. The
mountains that had swallowed Valerie Greene were black against the western sky.

 
          
Innocent
was no longer admiring materials but sitting on them. A bulky old mahogany
armchair had been brought out of one of the huts and set near the largest fire,
then draped with colorful cloths; black-and-white zigzags over red or rust or
orange, bright red and deep blue diamonds in alternating patterns, representations
of flora and fauna so stylized by centuries of repetition as to have lost all
hint of their original realistic nature. Upon this soft throne sat Innocent,
smiling upon the fire and the shyly smiling villagers, in his left hand a large
Heilman’s Mayonnaise jar mostly full of what to drink.

 
          
Crossing
toward him, Kirby thought at first it was merely the ambiguity of the firelight
that made Innocent’s face look so much softer and less guileful than usual, but
when he got closer he saw it was more than that. “Innocent?” he said.

 
          
Innocent
turned his smiling face. He wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t participating in the
gage that was being passed around. It seemed as though he was just, well,
happy. “How are you, Kirby?” he said.

 
          
“I’m
fine.” Kirby looked around for something to sit on, found nothing, and sat on
the ground beside Innocent’s left knee, half turned away from the fire so he
could continue the conversation. “How are you, Innocent?”

 
          
“I’m
all right,” Innocent said, with a strange kind of dawdling emphasis. “I’ve had
a very strange day, Kirby.”

 
          
Kirby
ruefully touched his shoulder, where Innocent’s bullet had kissed him. “Haven’t
we all,” he said. Around them, the Indians conducted their own conversations in
their own language, nodding or smiling at Kirby and Innocent in hospitable
incomprehension from time to time. Tommy and Luz were at some other fire,
waiting for Rosita to give up and come home.

 
          
“This
morning,” Innocent said, “I was in despair. Would you believe that, Kirby?”

 
          
“You
seemed a little hot under the collar.”

 
          
“That,
too. But it was mostly despair. When I got out of bed this morning, Kirby, I
was prepared to throw my entire life away.”

 
          
“Not
to mention mine.”

 
          
“Mine,
Kirby,” Innocent insisted, but still with that same new languid manner. “I
didn’t take my laps in the pool this morning,” he said. “Can you imagine that?”

 
          
“I
guess not.”

 
          
“I
never
skip my laps in the pool. I
didn’t eat breakfast. I didn’t eat lunch.”

 
          
“Okay,”
Kirby said. “That’s a couple of things I can’t imagine.”

           
“It was love that did it to me,
Kirby. At my age, after all these years,

 
          
I
fell in love.”

 
          
“With
Valerie Greene?”

 
          
“Strange
thing,” Innocent said, “until just now I couldn’t even use the word.
Love.
I could say I missed her, I was
angry about her loss, I liked the idea of her, but I couldn’t use the word
love
. I could plan to shoot you because
of it, but I couldn’t say it. Plan to throw my entire life away without ever
saying that word.”

 
          
“My
God, Innocent,” Kirby said, “you’ve had an epiphany.”

 
          
“Is
that what it is? Feels pretty good.” Innocent smiled and sipped a bit from the
jar.

 
          
“But,”
Kirby said, hesitating, not wanting to spoil Innocent’s good mood or changed
personality or whatever the hell this was, “but, Innocent, are you sure? I
mean, how well did you know Valerie Greene?”

 
          
“How
well do I have to know her? Kirby, if I knew her better, would it make me love
her more?”

 
          
“It
wouldn’t me,” Kirby said, remembering his own less than satisfactory last sight
of Valerie Greene.

 
          
“I
spent one afternoon with her,” Innocent said. “Just Platonic, you know. ”

 
          
“You
didn’t have to say that, Innocent,” Kirby said comfortably. Innocent chuckled.
“I suppose I didn’t. Anyway, I expected to see her again, and it didn’t happen.
I was thirsty, and the water went away. ”

 
          
“You’re
a wonder, Innocent,” Kirby said. “I never knew you were a romantic. ”

 
          
“I
never
was
a romantic. Sitting here
now, thinking about it, I think maybe that’s what was wrong. I was never a
romantic, never once in my life. Do you know why I married my wife?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Her
father had the money I needed to buy a certain piece of land. ” “Come on,
Innocent, there must have been more to it than that. There were other girls
with fathers with money.”

 
          
“There
were two other potential buyers for the land,” Innocent said. “I didn’t have
time to fool around.”

 
          
“So
why Valerie Greene?”

 
          
“Because,”
Innocent said, “there was nothing in it for anybody concerned. She’s an honest
girl, Kirby, she’s the most completely honest girl I ever met in my life. And
smart.
And
earnest.
And something more than just out for a good time. But the
main thing is, no matter what she does, where she is, what’s going on, she’s
always one hundred percent honest.”

 
          
“You
know a lot about somebody you spent one afternoon with,” Kirby pointed out.

 
          
“I
do, that’s right.” Innocent smiled, remembering something or other. “She wants
to give happiness and receive happiness,” he said. “She’s not out to buy or
sell anything. She doesn’t try to get an
edge.”
“You’ve got it bad,” Kirby told him.

 
          
“I’ve
got it
good,”
Innocent said. “And now
that I believe you and these people here, now that I’m in this nowhere little
nothing village and I know for sure Valerie’s out there, not far, not
dead
, now that I know she’s not dead,
it’s just fine, isn’t it?”

 
          
“If
you say so.”

 
          
“She’ll
be back,” Innocent said. “Some time tomorrow she’ll be found, these eyes will
look at her, this mouth will say, ‘Hello, Valerie.’” He beamed in anticipated
pleasure.

 
          
“Innocent,”
Kirby said, with wonder in his eyes and in his voice, “you’ve regained your
innocence.”

 
          
Innocent
pleasantly laughed. “I suppose I have. Never knew I had one to lose. Kirby,
maybe this would have happened anyway, maybe it’s that man’s change of life
thing, but it needed somebody
good
to
bring it out, and that was Valerie. This is a whole new person you’re looking
at, Kirby.”

 
          
“I
believe you,” Kirby said.

 
          
“He
was tucked away inside me all the time, I never knew it.” “The love of a good
woman, huh?”

 
          
“Go
ahead and laugh, Kirby, that’s okay.”

 
          
“I’m
not laughing, Innocent,” Kirby told him, in almost total sincerity. “I think
it’s great. So this is the Innocent I’ll be seeing around
Belize City
from now on, is it?”

 
          
Innocent’s
smile was sleepy, comfortable, self-confident. “I know better than that,
Kirby,” he said.

 
          
“You
mean it won’t last?”

 
          
Innocent
said, “Kirby, did you ever visit someplace that was really nice, a place that
made you happy, so you started to think maybe you’d like to just stay there
forever?”

 
          
“Sure.”

 
          
“But
then after a while you realize it isn’t
your
place, you don’t fit in except as a visitor, you don’t belong there and you
never will. So you go home, where you do belong, and where you’re happy most of
the time because it’s the right place where you ought to be.”

 
          
“Okay,
Innocent.”