EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  It wasn't as if they were arguing something important, like the Super Bowl. I kept that insight to myself and asked Darla, “I get ‘em mixed up. Cheap red wine was whose weapon of choice?"

  "Riley Neil threw his on Chandler Bryce. They say Neil has an ugly temper."

  "He definitely is a party pooper."

  "Worse than that. Riley Neil has had a less than distinguished academic career and is hoping to damage those of others, besides becoming rich."

  "Less than distinguished how? He got wrote up by the principal for leaving a dirty blackboard?"

  "Much worse, Brick. He's unpublished. He's never written a word that made it into scholarly print. A controversy this old is unlikely to be conclusive, but scholars have devoted years in research and have written pallets full of paper on the topic. This is a new wrinkle he could exploit."

  "And he's writing a book?"

  "My eyebrows lifted, too, when I heard."

  "Any of these other people hopping on the publish-or-perish bandwagon?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised. If you have such plans, you play it cool so no one else gets a jump on you."

  I was drinking Spanish beer out of the bottle. The bartender was chipping ice to go into a pitcher of sangría. The symposiumites were chatting in small groups like junior high school cliques. Ah, the genteel world of the halls of ivy.

  "Riley Neil is a jerk,” Darla added with a loathing that startled me. She didn't have a nasty bone in her luscious body.

  "You said they teach at rival colleges in the same town."

  "I did say. The schools constantly attempt to one-up each other in terms of academic prestige."

  "Who has the best football team?"

  Darla rolled her eyes at me and said, “Chandler Bryce teaches a creative writing section, too, and has had a few short stories published in obscure literary magazines."

  "Must make Riley Neil insecure, huh?"

  "My thoughts exactly."

  "I count my lucky stars I'm in the kinder and gentler world of snooping lowlife riffraff on the mean streets and at hot-sheet motels, instead of this shark pool you college profs swim around in,” I said.

  In case you didn't notice, that's where we were treading water now. All you had to do is read the nametags. According to his, the uncongenial Riley Neil was HI. I'M RILEY NEIL, PH.D. Everybody had their sheepskin tacked on to their names. Everybody but yours truly, whose higher education is courtesy of GCIPD, the Gumshoe Correspondence Institute of Private Detection. If there was any more tweed in the room, I'd be itching.

  Just for the hell of it, I grease-penciled PE by HI. I'M BRICK BATES. PE stands for Private Eye.

  Darla is HI. I'M DARLA HOGAN, MA. She wouldn't let me add LOVE OF MY LIFE. Darla teaches anthropology at a community college. She's a little slip of a woman with big hair and bigger glasses. She has got the sweetest leer.

  Some of these la-di-da Ph.D.s look down their noses at her because she only has her master's and doesn't teach at a four-year school. That pisses me off a lot more than it does her. Darla teaches a history section called New World Conquest 261. She's tickled pink to be invited to Spain for this affair.

  I'm one of the few significant anothers. Darla said she didn't know much about her colleagues’ personal lives other than that some were single or divorced. She said that some were “too career oriented to nurture a relationship.” Sounds to me like they're candidates for daytime TV talk shows.

  "I looked up ‘symposium’ in the dictionary,” I told Darla. “It comes from the Latin for drinking party."

  "My, my. Scholarly curiosity."

  "That's my middle name."

  Another lady in the group moseyed on over.

  "Yuck,” Dr. Mary Beth Lambuth said, making a face at Riley Neil, who was standing at the bar by his lonesome, swigging his wine refill. “Was he raised by wolves?"

  Dr. Lambuth was a tall, husky blonde. I could picture her carved in the prow of a Viking warship. Darla said she was an expert on the history of written communication and had knocked out an outline for a book that was with a New York literary agent, who'd had a nibble or two.

  "He isn't subtle,” Darla said diplomatically.

  "You'll find out how unsubtle if you get caught in a dark hallway with him."

  Darla didn't answer, but her grip on her wineglass got so white-knuckled, I thought it was gonna pop like a light bulb. Another member of our merry band swung by before we could expand on that theme.

  Dr. Edwin Dobbs said, “I caught the drift. The man surely could use some manners."

  Darla said that after years in Romance Languages, teaching Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, Dobbs now lectured on European history. She says he's a polymath, whatever that is. Dobbs looks like Burl Ives. Darla said he made his bones, pun intended, on the life of Columbus. Even had a book out on Chris, with this catchy title: Columbus: A Critical Study on His Origins, Path of Discovery, and Final Years. Darla said it was published by the University of Northeast Nevada A&M Press or some such and made no bestseller lists. Scuttlebutt had it that Dr. Dobbs just completed a whirlwind romance, marriage, and divorce to his second wife, a freckle-faced young teaching assistant, and was hurting big-time for bucks. He was the symposium's numero-uno Columbus authority and was slated to conduct panels and workshops.

  Mary Beth Lambuth said, “Riley Neil is an intellectual bully."

  No argument there. Dobbs gave a sourpuss nod of agreement and went to the bar. That seemed like a stellar idea. We did the same. By then Riley Neil had skedaddled. We had us a nice, dull cocktail party. Thanks to severe jet lag and nothing else to gossip about, the shindig broke up early as I was gazing at and then grazing on the tapas they'd laid out.

  "Tapa” is Spanish for appetizer, part of Spain's cultural heritage, and appetizing they were. Tapas bars are all over Spain, so says our guidebook. I was making a cultural tour of sausage chunks and slivers of ham and meatballs and olives and the omelet slices they call tortillas and prawns and other critters and toast wedges and—when Darla dragged me off. Before I burst, she said.

  * * * *

  Up in our room, looking out at buildings older than El Cid, I asked Darla, “How fast did you say this rolling rocket we're taking to Seville goes?"

  "Bricklin Bates, stop asking me that same question."

  "Bullet train. I don't even like the word."

  "Bullet?"

  "Train. You know how often they jump the tracks at a safe and sane speed, let alone at Mach Three?"

  "Bullet train is a generic term for a high-speed train,” Darla patiently explained. “This is the AVE, pronounced ah-veigh. Alta Velocidad Española or Spanish High Velocity. Two hundred and eighty kilometers per hour."

  "How fast is that in plain English?"

  She hooked her arm to mine. “One hundred and seventy-four miles per hour. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of."

  Darla Hogan had thought I was fearless. Until now. Must be crushingly disillusioning to her.

  She'd been stalked by her ex-boyfriend. The restraining order wasn't worth the paper it was written on, so she let her fingers do the walking and hired me. My esteemed competition was listed as Security Consultants and Professional Investigators, wimpy crapola like that. I was the only dick listed under Private Eye. That's how we met.

  She wanted me to track the sicko and dig up dirt that would land him in the pokey. Trouble was, he was squeaky clean. He lived with his mother, taught Sunday school, and was secretary-treasurer of the local orchid society. He didn't do diddly except follow Darla around like a demented puppy and call her at all hours. I knew the type. One fine day, he'd go berserk. Then he'd be a model prisoner on death row.

  I flipped for Darla, and took her and her case deep inside my heart. I stalked the freakoid as he stalked her. One night, while he was parked across the street from her apartment, I decided enough already.

  I snuck up on him and took the law into my own hands, as well as various bodily parts that I used as handles to imm
obilize him with. I never told Darla what I did to him afterward, and I ain't spilling the beans to you, either, other than that our boy lives with a maiden aunt on the opposite coast and is eligible to try out for the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

  "Says you. It's perfectly normal to be afraid of flying, especially if you're not leaving the ground."

  * * * *

  "Darla, didn't you tell me that nobody knows what Christopher Columbus looks like?"

  I dropped Chris's name to keep my mind off the planet blurring by outside. It wasn't hard to get Darla going on Columbus.

  This AVE bullet car we were in was preferente class, which is like first class on a plane. We've got ample hip- and legroom, one row of seats on one side of the aisle, two on the other, and cute young stews serving snacks. They even wheeled a duty-free shopping cart through and are showing an in-flight movie. As if I needed all these reminders that we're moving like a bat outta hell.

  Edwin Dobbs and Mary Beth Lambuth shared a table on the two-seat side, sitting across from each other. The antagonists were in opposite corners, Riley Neil behind us by the luggage racks, Chandler Bryce up front.

  What really set my teeth on edge were the trains passing the other direction inches from us. Our train shuddered and so did I. If there was a derailment, we'd be locking antlers at three hundred and fifty mph.

  "That's correct, Brick. Christopher Columbus never had his portrait painted and written descriptions run the gamut. Many perceive him as blue-eyed, red-haired, and tall."

  "I hope he used sunscreen. I guess that rules out those clay build-ups of the skull the forensics teams do. Hey, how about DNA?"

  Darla ignored my helpful hint. “You can debate absolutely every aspect of his life and death."

  I said, “All I know is, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

  "Christopher Columbus got around almost as much in death as in life,” she said. “He died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506 at the age of fifty-four. In 1507 he was moved to Seville. In 1537, he was moved again to Santo Domingo. People in the Dominican Republic insist his bones are still there, but in 1795, off he went to the Cathedral of Havana. Then in 1899, he sailed back to Spain, eventually to his final resting spot in 1902. Considering the timespan and the shifting of his remains, it's problematic whether any or all of the bones are his."

  She had my pinhead spinning. “So I'm fuzzy on what you guys plan to accomplish at your symposium."

  "We'll have a look at the litter serving as his tomb. That will be exciting in itself. We'll share information and research and, who knows, it's a long shot, but there may be a stone left unturned. Some of us speak Spanish and one person knows Latin. Hopefully there are accessible archives. You being a detective, Brick, doesn't that stimulate your curiosity?"

  "We're talking a trail that went cold a hundred years ago. And who pays my hourly fee? Refresh me on the sordid details of Riley Neil's allegedly alleged transfer of the alleged old bones."

  "Hitler was pressuring Franco to declare war against the Allies. He wanted access to Gibraltar. Franco argued that Spain was an economic basket case because of the Spanish Civil War that had recently ended. This was true. Franco gave the Germans an impossibly extravagant shopping list before he'd go to war. Hitler figured it was a means of dodging participation.

  "Hitler asked Mussolini to intercede. Franco and Mussolini met in February 1941 at Bordighera on the Italian Riviera. Franco supposedly brought Columbus's bones. Franco continued vacillating on entering the war and Spain remained neutral, as she did throughout. Mussolini, for his part, reported to Hitler that Spain was too impoverished to be a military asset and recommended dropping the idea altogether."

  "I like the bribery and payoff possibilities. They speak to me. But Riley Neil's saying that the bones changed hands. Hogwash, huh?"

  Darla nodded. “Neil claims that Franco ingratiated himself with Il Duce with the gift. Mussolini had imperial delusions that he was leading the Second Roman Empire. Anything that lent splendor to the trappings was fair game. Riley theorizes that Mussolini was going to display Columbus's remains in the Genoa Cathedral after the Axis won the war."

  "No bones?"

  "I don't believe it could have happened."

  "Why?"

  "Franco and the Archbishop of Sevilla had a mutual enmity. The cathedral was the only one in Spain that didn't have Falangist graffiti and displays commemorating the soldiers who fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Nationalists, Franco's side. The archbishop would have raised a fuss."

  "What if he didn't know? What if they were slipped out a window in the dead of night or a switcheroo was done, money under the table?"

  Darla didn't have an answer. These college profs, I tell ya, they need a more cynical edge to get to the bottom of things.

  "My priceless documents! They're gone!"

  We turned around to see Riley Neil rummaging through bags on the rack, flinging them every which way, tearing through one of his suitcases.

  "Who stole them?” he yelled. “I demand their immediate return!"

  The washrooms were across from the luggage racks. I was about to tell Neil to throw some cold water on his face and simmer down, that we needed to go step by step, but he was steaming by me, shaking a fist, raving, “You pusillanimous sneak. You ersatz academician!"

  Chandler Bryce rose clumsily to his feet, bug-eyed, looking like a punching bag waiting to happen.

  Bryce countered with, “How dare you, you pseudointellectual, self-aggrandizing hypocrite!"

  This was how these people cussed when their noses were outta joint? I waded in, a step ahead of Dobbs, Lambuth, and a couple of Spaniards whose movie the boys were interrupting.

  "Break it up,” I snarled, lunging between them.

  "I was seated before you came aboard, Neil, and I have not moved,” Bryce said. “I didn't touch your luggage or this chimerical document of yours."

  "We shall see, Bryce,” Neil said, wagging a finger. “This crime shall come to light."

  "Ding, ding,” I said firmly, hands extended to their chests. “Go to your neutral corners."

  Though I don't think the boys caught my prizefighting metaphor, Bryce took his seat and Neil headed back to his. It was almost too easy to keep the pointy-heads separated, but I was relieved. I had to wonder too why the hell, if this documentation was so priceless, Neil had it in a bag, unlocked, to his rear.

  I followed him, saying, “Neil, you better clue us in as to what this package looks like so we can conduct a search. I mean, is it bigger than a breadbox?"

  "Doctor Neil, to you."

  "Spare me the attitude, pal. You already got a serious problem."

  Darla had me by the arm before I could do something rash, like escort him to the outdoor observation deck this bullet train didn't have. Mary Beth Lambuth was right behind Darla, saying, “He's right, Riley. You need to be a bit less cryptic if you expect assistance recovering your property."

  Neil scowled and said, “Very well. It is a manilla envelope a quarter of an inch thick. It contains coded Teletype messages between Madrid and Rome, which I have had decoded at no small expense. The bulk of the material is correspondence between Franco's and Mussolini's foreign ministers, respectively Ramón Serrano Súñer and Count Galeazzo Ciano. Serrano Súñer was Franco's brother-in-law and Ciano was Mussolini's son-in-law, so confidentiality was presumed. In addition, there is a subsequent, albeit vague, thank-you note from Mussolini to Franco, expressing ‘gratitude for the righting of a historic anomaly.’”

  Well, it would be hard to mistake the contents of that manilla envelope for anything else. We went through the bags in the car one by one, with the owners present, even the Spaniards. We looked in the overhead racks and the washroom, too. Nada. Zilch.

  Everybody sat back down. Our train had pulled out of Madrid at eight A.M. sharp. We were due in at Seville at ten-twenty. I glanced at my watch: nine-forty. “You didn't notice Bryce go by us in the aisle earlier?” I asked Darla.

  "I didn
't."

  "We've gone through some tunnels."

  "Brick, the lights didn't go out and even if they had, we were through those tunnels in seconds."

  I twitched, reminded again of our terminal velocity. “I know, I know, I know. I was testing you."

  "Riley Neil was convincing,” Darla said.

  "The whys and wherefores of his documentation? Yeah, but if you rehearse any story long enough, it rings genuine even if it's pure, unadulterated guano."

  "Someone from the next car could have stolen the papers. Someone could have torn the paper into small pieces and flushed them."

  "You're buying his bill of goods, kiddo,” I said sadly.

  "Brick, you are such a cynic."

  "That's the sweetest thing you've said to me all day."

  * * * *

  Finally, at long, long last, half an hour later, the train began slowing. We were coming in for a landing at Seville's Santa Justa station. The conductors opened the doors and I exhaled a deep breath. Then, suddenly, our car was swarming with cops. They had a word with the conductor and let the Spaniards go. They detained us symposium types.

  This outfit was the policía nacional, the national police. They wore dark and formal uniforms with white shirts and ties. They were polite, but highly perturbed. I thought they were just being anti-American, a popular sport worldwide. Dobbs talked to them, Darla and her so-so Spanish listening in.

  "What's going on?” I asked her. My Spanish was limited to Otra cerveza, por favor.

  "The Seville cathedral received a telephone call this morning stating that Columbus's bones had been stolen last night. A ten-million-euro ransom was demanded,” Darla said. “The receptacle containing the bones, the litter, didn't appear to have been disturbed."

  "Have they opened it up?"

  "Apparently not yet. There is a dispute among officialdom about disturbing the bones, as it may well be a hoax. They surmise that if the crime occurred, it was an inside job, cleaning people during the night or guards paid to ignore the activity. Every employee on duty yesterday is being interviewed. So far they have no solid information and have made no arrests."