Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (43 page)

 
          
“They
didn’t even kill me,’ I said.”

 
          
“That
isn’t south
Abilene
,” Valerie said.

 
          
Kirby
Galway turned the little plane in a long slow parabola, out and around, while
down below a man and woman chased goats from the long green field surrounded by
forest. At one end of the field was a squat brown house with several additions,
and behind it patches of cultivation. “No, it isn’t,”
Galway
said.

 
          
She
gave his bland profile an extremely suspicious look. “What is it, then?”

 
          
“Where
I live.”

 
          
“Why
are we going there?” After all she’d been through, must she now defend herself
from
this
man’s attentions?

 
          
Galway
made minor adjustments with the plane’s
controls; its nose was aimed now at that long field, with the tiny house and
the tiny people at the far end and the goats all cleared away. He said, “I want
to talk to you before you talk to Innocent.”

 
          
“Why?”

           
“I’ll tell you when we’re on the
ground.”

 
          
She
watched him, but he had nothing else to say. But wasn’t what he’d already said
significant, didn’t it mean once and for all that Kirby Galway was
not
in league with Innocent St. Michael?
If there was some secret he wanted to keep from Innocent—and what else could he
be planning?—it meant they weren’t partners in crime after all.

 
          
So
which one was the criminal?

 
          
And
what was the crime?

 
          
It
was all too confusing. She had seen the temple, exactly where it was supposed
to be, where she and the computers had both predicted it would be, and then two
weeks later, at the precise same spot, it was
gone.
She had seen Kirby Galway with Whitman Lemuel from that museum
and had
known
it meant they were
stealing rare Mayan treasures and smuggling them out of the country, but when
she’d at last held several of those treasures in her hands she’d found herself
doubting they were real. She had thought
Vernon
was working for
Galway
or Innocent or possibly both of them, and
now it
seemed
to turn out he’d been
working only for himself. And what had
Vernon
been trying to do? Get his hands on the
(fake) treasures of the (nonexistent) temple? She shook her head, and spoke her
frustration aloud: “What is everybody
up
to?”

 
          
He
laughed. “I’m actually going to tell you,” he said, and the plane bounced on
the uneven turf, bounced again, landed, settled, and slowed to a sedate roll as
they neared the house, where the man and woman stood waiting, smiling.

 
          
“I’m
beginning to remember,” Valerie said slowly, “that you’re a very bad man. You
are, aren’t you?”

 
          
“Extremely
bad,” he said, and the plane turned toward a copse of trees on the right.

 
          
“Except
when you’re rescuing people,” she acknowledged.

 
          
“My
one saving grace,” he said, and the plane stopped in tree shadow.
Galway
switched off the engine, and the silence
flowed in like a wave.

 
          
There
was no door on her side. She had to wait while he unstrapped and climbed out,
then follow him, crawling across his seat and accepting his hand to balance her
as she made it down to the ground.

 
          
The
air here was very warm and heavy after so long in the plane, and she found
herself stiff and sore when she tried to walk. The couple had come over to
greet them—the man short, the woman much shorter—and
Galway
led Valerie around the wing to make the
introductions: “Estelle Cruz, Manny Cruz, this is Valerie Greene.”

 
          
“How
do you do?”

 
          
“Hello,
hello, hello.”

 
          
When
Manny Cruz smiled, he had many more spaces for teeth than he had teeth, but
somehow that merely made his smile look happier. And for such a gnarled little
woman, Estelle Cruz’s smile was surprisingly shy and girlish.

 
          
Galway
removed both those smiles by then saying,
“Miss Greene is an extemely annoying woman who has absolutely loused up
everything I’ve been doing here.”

 
          
Estelle
glared at Valerie, who gaped at her accuser in shock. Manny said, “This is
Sheena! So she
is
alive.” He didn’t
sound happy about it.

 
          
“That’s
right,”
Galway
said. “The temple scam is dead,
everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket, and I’ll probably have to move out
of this country.”

 
          
The
Cruzes were both terribly shocked. Estelle looked as though she might leap on
Valerie and claw her to death, while Manny said, “Move from this
house
, Kirby?”

 
          
“It
isn’t her fault, Manny,”
Galway
said. “She didn’t do it on purpose; she’s just stupid and ignorant.”

 
          
“Now,
wait a minute,” Valerie said.

 
          
“She
thought she was doing right,”
Galway
went
smoothly on, “so I don’t blame her. And now she can help me in one little way,
and that’s why I brought her here, to tell her the whole story, and I’m sure
she’s going to want to help out.”

 
          
Valerie
looked at them all suspiciously, even Estelle, whose manner was just as
mistrustful as her own. “I won’t commit any crimes,” she said.

 
          
Galway
gave her an enigmatic look: “If I were
going to commit a crime, Miss Greene,” he said, “you’re about the
last
person I’d ask to be my
accomplice.”

 
          
If
that was an insult—and it did seem to have been intended as such—it had to be
one of the strangest insults in history. Feeling mulish and put-upon, Valerie
said, “That’s all right, then.”

 
          
Manny
said, “Whadaya want her to do, Kirby?”

 
          
“Let’s
talk over lunch,”
Galway
said. “I’m starved.” Looking at Valerie, he
said, “How about you?”

           
Dear God! Her stomach! In all the
excitement and activity and confusion, she hadn’t even noticed, but all of a
sudden her stomach gave her such a
hunger
pang
she actually gasped from it. Food? When was the last time she’d eaten?
Nothing at all today, nothing since last night, on the run, when she’d eaten
those tortillas.

 
          
The
very thought made her head swim.

 
          
“Right,”
Galway
said, correctly reading her expression.
“We’ll just wash up and then eat out here, Estelle, okay?”

 
          
Estelle
nodded, tentatively smiling again, waving at the outdoor table beside the
house.

 
          
Galway
said, “Kids all in school? Just the four of
us? What are we having?”

 
          
“Escabeche,”
said Estelle.

 
          
ESCABECHE (Ess'ka-bet-che)

 
          
One
hen.

 
          
Two
large onions.

 
          
Spices.

 
          
Kill,
pluck and separate the hen. Stew in water one hour, adding cloves, pepper, and
chopped-up chilis to taste.

 
          
While
hen is stewing, prepare tortillas in usual manner, and thinly slice onions.

 
          
Add
onions to stew for the last 15 minutes.

 
          
Serve
stew in large bowls. Place napkin in bottom of basket, place tortillas in
basket, close napkin across top, place in center of table.

 
          
Place
small bottle of Pineridge Hot Pepper Sauce on table.

 
          
Open
four bottles of Belikin beer, place on table.

 
          
Stand
back.

 
          
“Oh,
my, this is good,” Valerie said.

 
          
“There’s
more,” Estelle told her, beaming from wrinkled ear to wrinkled ear.

 
          
“More
beer?” Manny asked. “Kirby? Valerie?”

 
          
“Oh,
yes,” everybody said, and Valerie was surprised to find herself smiling at
Kirby, who grinned back and reached for another tortilla.

           
Kirby. Valerie. They were on a
first-name basis now, ever since he had shown her into his susprisingly neat
and Spartan apartment to clean up before lunch and she’d said, “Which door is
the bathroom, Mister Galway?” and he had looked at her and said, “I don’t like
to be called Mister Galway except by the police, and I refuse to call you Miss
Greene any more, so what shall we call each other? Shall I call you Fido, and
you call me Spot?” So that was that.

 
          
Sunlight
gleamed on the yellow hair on Kirby Galway’s arm as he raised his spoon and
ate. She kept glancing at him, thinking he had a good laugh and an easy
self-confident manner, and it was too bad really that he was such a villain.
If, in fact, he was a villain.

 
          
Was
he not a villain? At his most furious with her, when he was waving that sword
about, he hadn’t actually
used
it on
her. A villain— and Valerie had met some villains now—would certainly have
sliced her head off at that point, and thought no more about it.

 
          
Nor
was he even a vile seducer. The contrast between this lunch and the eating of
conch with Innocent that time was so extreme it almost made her laugh out loud.
Innocent had been so smooth and so accomplished, and had just
filled
her mind with thoughts of sex.
Kirby Galway laughed and told jokes and ate his escabeche and didn’t try to
manipulate her at all, made not the slightest effort to fill her mind with
thoughts of sex.

 
          
And
if her mind
was
filled with thoughts
of sex, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, making her blush—they’ll think it’s
the hot sauce, and it almost is—she knew enough psychology to know it was
merely a mormal reaction to being in safety after a period of (extreme danger
and extended physical stress.

 
          
And,
of course, the sun gleaming on the yellow hair on Kirby’s arm.

 
          
He
looked up and caught her eye and grinned, and she looked down at her bowl,
suddenly flustered. Then, afraid she’d given herself away, she looked over at
him again and he was frowning slightly at his own bowl, thinking about
something.

 
          
Time
to change the subject. “Listen, Kirby,” she said. “You wanted to tell me
something.”