by M. S. Karl
“Hey, I’ve seen you before.” It was the drunk I had met at the first party. “You did something to your head.” I sought escape as a few faces looked curiously in my direction. “Hey, did you know we’re sittin’ on a couple million barrels a day?” His hand grabbed my arm. “No, I don’t mean jus’ Tabasco. Hell, everybody knows ’bout Tabasco. I mean in the U.S. of A. I mean in Pocatello, Idaho.”
I downed my drink and shook him lose, making for the bar. “A … martini,” I told the barman. In the corner of my eye I saw Alexandra Whitcomb with two people I didn’t know. Now, where was Peón? Where had he gone?
Then he called my name. “Mr. Dennison. How good to see you again.” He gave me his hand, and I felt my back tight against the bar. There was no escape. “So how does the story go?”
“Well, I’m going to abandon it,” I said. “I couldn’t find anything new.”
“No?” The saturnine face showed distress. “Well, I think I can help you. Someone left me a threatening note this morning.”
“What?” My body went cold and I felt sweat on the back of my neck.
“Yes. In my own car, in my driveway.” He laughed. “Someone thinks I’m connected with the business. There are some very sick people in the world.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I think your drink is ready.” He nodded at the bar, and I turned to get my drink. When I looked again he was gone.
“In Pocatello, Idaho,” the drunk was saying.
I saw Alfredo Peón again, this time at the corner of the crowd. As I watched, he drifted away from the others, still smiling at them, and turned toward the house. Suddenly the mask of pleasantness fell away and I saw his real face, the expression grave. He glanced at his watch as he walked quickly toward the big house. I gulped down half my drink to keep it from sloshing over the side as I walked, and I followed.
The screen door at the rear of the house slammed as he went in. By the time I reached the entrance, his footsteps were disappearing inside. I stood inside a lavishly furnished salon, but I was not aware of the decor. I was straining to listen, to catch the sound of his feet from those in the kitchen, down the hall. Damn … Then I heard a phone being dialed in the next room.
“Si, señor?” A maid stood watching me, her smile quizzical. There was no way I could listen in on the call.
“I was looking for the bathroom,” I lied.
She pointed to a hallway on my left. “Alli.”
“Gracias.” I went down the corridor, passed the door to the bathroom, and came into a room that was a studio and library. There were bookcases and frames hung on the walls, but I was not looking at the wall, just at the desk, and the telephone on it. I took a quick look around me and, satisfied that I was alone, went to the telephone and lifted the receiver. I was just in time to hear the last ring.
“¿Bueno?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Querida.”
And the voice belonged to Gloria de Peón. The sinister doctor had called his wife. He was telling her that he would be home soon and reminding her that it was time for another pill. I listened to their words of endearment and the goodbyes and let the receiver down. Nothing. Just a man in love with his wife. A crazy rhyme was going through my head. One, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old ball.…
I was looking around me and the music had stopped. In the frames, on the walls were hundreds of them; Swallowtails, Monarchs, Skippers, moths—even beetles. It was a vast cave in which thousands of tiny wings beat and fluttered, and I suddenly felt trapped. I looked for a way out and then my eyes hit it: The pièce de résistance, dominating it all, above the desk, two feet from my face, a board with a single occupant. Coffee-colored wings, with blue, metallic veins, on a background of white.
“The Morpho theseus,” Alexandra Whitcomb’s voice said from behind me, “the rarest of them all.”
She took a step forward, drink in hand. “Did you know mine was only the fifth collected? Until—” She spat out the words, and I watched her face set into a mask of hatred. “Until that man decided he wanted one. He offered to buy this one, of course. I told him to go to hell.”
I wondered if I was hearing it all or whether the drinks had gone to my head. I felt woozy, unable to think. But I didn’t have to think. It was being solved for me in front of my eyes.
“He was a bastard,” Alexandra said. “A man without—class. He was the worst of the nouveaux. He thought he was one of us. He was a tacky man.”
I almost laughed. It was all coming together now. “He wanted a—” she nodded, and went on as if I were not there, eyes on the rare insect—“Yes. Can you imagine? A man like that? He had bought up tons of pottery, precolumbian relics, just because he thought it gave him culture. When he heard that the Zapatas collected coins, he decided he had to have his collection, too.” She swayed slightly, and I realized the liquor had loosened her tongue. “He bought a Beltran grammar and all he could talk about was how much it cost him. He didn’t have the first idea of its significance, its history.” Her eyes narrowed as if to exclude everything in the room except the butterfly. “And then he wanted the Motpho.”
“What happened?” My voice was a half whisper.
She laughed, and it was the laugh of insanity. She went to put her glass on the desk top, missed, and it went onto the floor and broke. Still she stood there, eyes fixed on the Morpho, laughing to herself.
If I stayed I might be able to learn the whole story. But now I had enough. I had the essential answer. A jealous woman, a door with a defective lock, through which anyone could slip without being seen, a fat man pierced like one of the bright creatures on the display board …
You don’t care if some of the most prominent families in Tabasco are destroyed.
But there was nothing I could do. Except hope that I was not too late.
I went out of the vast house and drove like a demon, down the winding road, up onto the airport road, to the boulevard and toward the center of the city. With luck, a paper misplaced in Mexico City, a form not signed, a question asked that required another call … Maybe the interrogators had not arrived.
I parked in a tow-away zone and went up the steps to the police station. Fat men, sitting on benches, watched me pass. I bounded up the stairs to the second floor and found the opaque glass with Obregon’s name on it and knocked.
A muffled voice came from inside. “Adelante.”
Lieutenant Obregon was staring out of the window at the plaza, his head surrounded by a cloud of cigar smoke. He removed the stub of the cigar from his mouth and placed it in the ashtray without turning around. “I saw you from here,” he said. “I have been wondering what I would tell you.” A shudder went through me and my mouth went dry. “I finally decided it would be best to tell you the truth. At first I thought maybe a lie would be best. Then the truth. Then a lie. You happen to come at the moment I have decided again in favor of the truth. So I had better tell it before I change my mind again and decide to lie.”
His voice was rueful and I sat down in the chair so he would not notice my shaking. The prisoner … what had happened to the prisoner?
“The truth?” My voice was a croak.
“Yes. Well, ni remedios.” He turned to me and raised his palms. “The prisoner Bassett has escaped.”
“What?”
“Yes. You see, the interrogators arrived. They decided to take him to an isolated location to ‘talk’ to him. I suppose the locals were not considered trustworthy.” Was there a tone of malicious amusement in his voice? “They were careless. Somewhere beyond Emiliano Zapata the prisoner grabbed the steering wheel, forced the car into a ditch, and jumped out.” He shook his head with scorn. “Any of my novatos, my first-year patrolmen, could have done better.”
“Bassett got away?”
“Si. Of course, he’s wounded. One of them claims to have shot him. If you believe that. They’re lucky he didn’t take away their guns.”
Wounded. Alone …
“What now?” I demanded.
“¿Qutén sabe? There will be a search. The policia judicial. Maybe they will find him, maybe not. On the one hand, how far can a wounded man, in handcuffs, go? One the other hand …” He turned back to the window and gestured at the hills in the distance … “Once into the jungle, even God might not find him. And the policia judicial are not God.”
“And if they do catch him?”
The lieutenant gave a short laugh. “Have you heard of ley fuga? There are some people with quick triggers.”
Yes. Shot while escaping. It happened especially during the last century, but it was not unheard of today.
The lieutenant leaned back. “Well, I have done my part. I am glad it is out of my hands. I suppose you will be leaving now?”
Leaving … Yes. I knew what I had to do. There would be no help from the police now. It was too big. So I lied. I told him I was going.
“Muy bien. Perhaps it is best.” He got up, put an arm over my shoulders, and walked me to the door. We shook hands. “When you come back, on vacation, maybe we will have more time. A few drinks, you know.”
But I did not go back to the hotel. Instead, I drove away from the plaza and through deteriorating streets until I came to his house, her house. There was something I had to find out.
She was not surprised to see me, but her eyes gave no sign of what had happened last night. “I have not spent the money,” she said.
“The hell with the money,” I said. “Listen, he’s escaped.”
A sharp intake of breath came from her lips. One hand flew to her breast. I took her shoulders with my hands.
“I want you to listen very carefully now: He was somewhere near Emiliano Zapata. He jumped out of their car. He may be wounded. It’s the same area where he’s always gone on his trips to collect butterflies.” The word butterflies struck a false note. All so sinister, so serious, and now—butterflies. But neither of us smiled. “Did he ever mention a place, any place, that was especially pleasant for him, especially isolated, a—a retreat, a place he might go?”
For a moment she was speechless. Then her head nodded two, three times. “Salta del agua. He once told me about a waterfall. Not a large one. But a very beautiful one not many people knew. He was surprised when I said I knew where it was.”
“Will you take me there?”
“Yes.”
In twenty minutes she had gathered the child and a few simple belongings, and we were on our way. But first we had to stop at the hotel. It was dangerous country; many things we might meet. I would need some fresh clothes and my briefcase with the two thousand dollars in U.S. and Mexican currency in a hidden place. It also held my passport. And finally, I might need the gun, the big pistol I had taken from Laurie. I loaded it with the five rounds I had emptied from its cylinder, stuck it in the attaché case, and went down to the car. Minutes later we were on the highway.
An hour later we passed Palenque Junction with its twisting road that headed up to the Maya ruins. But the junction we wanted was twenty miles farther on, according to the woman. She knew the area. She had come from a village at the base of the hills.
Emiliano Zapata was a flatland cattle town, with men in boots and cowboy hats, as if it were really south Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona. I gassed up at the PEMEX station and found a farmacia. It was the one thing I had forgotten.
The clerk handed over the bandages and alcohol, and was taking my money when I heard a voice over my shoulder.
“Someone is hurt?” The voice was friendly, but its owner wore a Federal Highway Police uniform.
I tried to keep my voice level. “A precaution. We’re going into the hills.”
“Ah.” The head nodded and I saw the eyes under the sunglasses looking me over. “Tourists?”
If he saw the woman in the car … but I had no choice.
“Tourists,” I said.
His head turned lazily to look through the front window of the pharmacy at the car outside. The afternoon sun was bright on the windshield and he turned back.
“Going to the ruins?”
“Yes.”
“Not Palenque?”
“No.” I did not know if I had said the right thing or not. What other ruins were there?
He turned to look at the car again. “You may make it in that car.” He nodded at the clerk who had stood motionless. “Can they make it in that car?”
“Most of the way. The rest …”
“Better take a plane from Tenosique,” the policeman said, “much safer.”
“I’ll do that,” I said, and thanked him. I saw him watching us through the window of the drugstore as we drove away.
The road from Emiliano Zapata ran beside the Usumacinta, one of Mexico’s great rivers. It started in the highlands, up in the clouds, and came down like a muddy knife, cleaving Mexico from Guatemala and finally spilling into the Gulf. It looked lazy but there was a power and threat that radiated from the brown surface. If he were smart, he would follow the river …
An airplane glided in over our heads and cut its motor. I saw it arc into a turn and come around for another look at us. They were still searching for him. They had not found him yet …
The airplane satisfied itself, and its motor went back to full throttle. It straightened out over the river and headed for the hills. Four o’clock. It would soon be too dark for them to fly anymore today. Already the shadows were long and there would be tricky winds down from the hills.
So far we had made slow progress. First, there had been a half-hour wait at a little ferry over a tributary where a bored policeman had looked us over, swaggering on foot up the hill alongside the line of cars. But he had said nothing and we had crossed. Then there had been an interminable series of bridges, most of which were not finished so that we had to go down detours and sometimes over shaking planks. The streams which fed the Usumacinta were like a hundred little fingers, each cutting in from the hills.
I wondered what was going on in the woman’s mind. She had said nothing the whole time, just cradling the baby, occasionally giving it the breast, and sometimes poking a finger for it to play with. I found out when we came to a turnoff.
“That is the road.” She pointed at the gravel surface that led away from the blacktop. Already the night shadows were eating away the light, and the sun was hidden behind the hills, a few faint streams of orange still smearing the sky. “But it is too late to go farther. We must start in the morning. I know a place to stay.”
It was a sad little town, the first settlement this side of the hills, with tumble-down huts and an odd jeep or two. A benevolent government had recently brought in electricity, and now the lights on the poles began to wink on. We locked the car and she led me over the gravel and down a dirt street. At a house with a tin roof, a man came out into the twilight and she went to talk with him. I did not know what they said, but we were given a place to stay in the cookhouse, an overhang which adjoined the main hut. There were noisy children who came to stare at us, especially me, and ask questions which I answered with half truth, half lies. I rested in the hammock they slung for me while the breeze from the hills quickened. There was a smell of charcoal from the fireplace, and an old woman came out and began the fire without looking at me. The woman, his woman, had gone inside and I heard her talking, but I could not hear what she was saying. The old woman brought me a bowl of beans and some tortillas. Somewhere, down along the river, or in the hills … somewhere there was a wounded man I had to find …
The old woman brought me a blanket and I thanked her. Far up in the hills it thundered and I saw lightning. Somewhere he was seeing it, too.
Chapter Thirteen
I awoke with the first grayness and shook off the blanket. A cock crowed, and in the next yard I heard a rattle of tin cans as someone walked through the back yard on the way to the bathroom. The woman came out of the house.
“We must go. The soldiers will be here from Tenosique at the first light. They will be watching the road,” she said.
I did not
argue. When I saw her again she had the baby in her arms, wrapped tightly against the morning chill, and there was a man standing behind her. We made our way back to the car, and I watched the man open a door and slide into the back seat. He was dark and wiry with the careful eyes of a peasant, but he wore shoes. I started to ask why he was going, but did not.
The road was a pale promise that brightened as the sun came up. By that time we had crossed the low valley between the foothills and the highlands. Soon the jungle would be all around us. I saw trees leaning their branches across the road and remembered a trail and a girl with a big pistol, the same pistol I now carried. Where was Laurie? Where was the man called Harold Bassett?
The odds were he had never gotten this far. Once more, I was on a fool’s errand. But she seemed to read my thoughts, and when she spoke the words hit me like an electric jolt. “He was seen in the town yesterday. Before we got there. He was given a ride in a truck that goes to Limonar. One of the passengers got off and talked about it.” She nodded toward our wake. “They said he seemed to be sick.”
Shot. He had been shot …
“And this person did not tell the police?” I asked. For the first time the man behind me spoke.
“One does not want to become involved with the police.”
I understood and was grateful. It was full light now, but the latticework of vines and branches over the road made us invisible from the air. We would not always be, though. There would be times when we would be open to the sky and vulnerable.
Of course, it was not that the police or the military would do anything to us. But they might hold us for questioning just long enough to take us out of the race. There would be a sergeant or a lieutenant who would see that I was a gringo, and half a day would go by while inquiries were made.
The man and woman had considered everything, though. Before Limonar there was a little settlement, two or three houses, no more. I pulled off into the brush where I was instructed, and waited. Fifteen minutes later they reappeared leading two horses.
I would be sorry to see the woman go. Of course, the man—her uncle, cousin, or godparent—would know the land. But the woman was something that was a part of it all, too sweet and bitter to let go.