White Bird (A Mayan 2012 Thriller)

by Tom Rich

  Alvaro felt currents of protest emanating from the glyphs now surrounding him. Perhaps they were angered over having been removed from their rightful places. Or were they in argument with the modern business equipment and communication devices occupying the other floors of Franz’s building?

  Franz’s torch flooded a second alcove.

  “A jadite portrarit of Yax K’uk Mo’,” said Alvaro. “Priceless. It would be from the temple in Copan, in Honduras. And his stela.” Alvaro ran a hand across the glyphs carved on the tall stone slab. “It tells of Yax K’uk Mo’s ascent to the throne.”

  Franz led Alvaro through several more alcoves. Alvaro called out pieces as he recognized them.

  They returned to the central chamber. The low ceiling spread the torchlight so that Alvaro saw the elevator fifteen meters away.

  And the open shaft next to it!

  “I now see, Mr. Franz. What you have created is meant to be a temple inside a pyramid. And the empty shaft next to the elevator? It extends deep into the earth and is open at the roof. That is your ol, no?” Alvaro would not allow himself to believe this fabricated ol had been the dark presence pulling at him in the elevator. “Your connection to the gods of the Underworld.”

  Franz bowed. The flame danced. “Anything else?”

  “Your ol is the precise center of your building. Your fifth cardinal point. And the four sides of your building now perfectly face the other cardinal points. Whereas, during the initial phases of construction…”

  “Yes?”

  “You found that not to be the case. Hence the destruction and rebuilding.” Alvaro felt emboldened at having detected what architects and contractors and members of the press throughout the world had not. “An impressive collection. And you have brought me here to validate the authenticity of these artifacts?” He smiled. “No. There is more, I believe. My first thought is that these pieces are of museum quality. Ah, but perhaps returning them to their countries of origin would be best. I do not mean to presume, Mr. Franz, nor do I mean to be disrespectful. But I believe many of these items have been illegally appropriated. Perhaps you are not well versed in the laws.”

  “I know the laws well enough.”

  Alvaro grew bolder still. “The Mayan people—we People of the Maize—feel our past is our future. It is important for us to regain all that is rightfully ours. My purpose at UCLA is not to create scholars to decode the secrets of an ancient civilization. My true purpose is to make Americans aware that the People of the Maize continue to exist. That we intend to empower ourselves with our extensive heritage. The world seems intent on looting our history with one hand as they tear down our forests for mahogany and coffee plantations with the other.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Xaman. But it’s not your coffee I’m interested in.” He raised the torch and swept his free arm. “The Maya created the greatest civilization in all the Americas.”

  “Of course you know my ancestors ultimately failed and abandoned their cities.”

  “They made mistakes. Mistakes we will all learn from when I show them in an entirely new light.” He took a step toward Alvaro.

  “Your world has offered my people only the corrupt light of a false sun.” Alvaro leaned away from the torch’s heat.

  “Still blaming the Son of God for your people’s troubles?” Franz spun on his heels. He carried the torch deep into the chamber.

  Alvaro had had enough of this man. Kurtwood Franz had the gall to believe his small bit of knowledge justified his grand scale of looting. But the scholar in Alvaro longed to see more. He followed Franz, keeping to the edge of the orange glow.

  Franz halted; stepped out of Alvaro’s line of vision.

  Alvaro froze. “I don’t…I…is this your…?” He took two small steps forward. “My God.” He crossed himself. “But such will not help me now,” he whispered. He stared a moment longer, convincing himself that what he saw was not possible. Then, “This is your own interpretation of the Ch’ak of Ukit Took? And the blank stela next to it? That is where the unknown history of Ukit Took is to appear to tell us if the world is to continue? This is more than impressive. Until now I thought only true People of the Maize knew the legend of Ukit Took and his self-decapitation.” He bowed. “The ch’ak is very much how I imagined it would look if it existed. The handle for self-operation, the upright posts, the blunt counterweight to force the blade through the neck.” He took two hesitant steps. “But even a facsimile is dangerous.” He stared, unmoving. “I think only a very skilled craftsman could have made this. To your specifications, Mr. Franz? Surely no Maya—”

  “I’m flattered you think I could literally pull this artifact from your ancient lore. But I did not commission this work. What you see is the actual Ch’ak of Ukit Took. Which goes a long way towards proving your people’s legends about him are true.”

  Alvaro glanced over his shoulder. He saw only the darkness of the ol sucking light from the chamber. His eyes returned to the ch’ak. “But if you know the legends… And if this were real.”

  “Oh, it’s real. It is real, sir. Care for a demonstration? It’s fully operational.”

  Alvaro touched his throat. Another one of Franz’s jokes? “A demonstration is not necessary. You cannot possibly know what has been set into motion by proving the ch’ak exists.”

  “Time is running out, is it not, Mr. Xaman?”

  “You cannot possibly…” Alvaro paused to regain composure. “I am not so much concerned about the smuggling of artifacts from Honduras and Guatemala. You have done much for the people of my country. I do not intend telling the authorities about this. But I implore you to return the ch’ak and the stela to where they belong. You may know more than I first realized, but you could not possibly know what you have set into motion. That is a thing only the—” Alvaro heard Don Delfino scolding him from wherever the disappeared went, his faint voice growing louder with each heartbeat. “That we People of the Maize know in our blood. It is something you could not possibly know, no matter how much time you spent among us. It is never spoken about. The knowledge exists in our blood!”

  Franz laughed. The light in the room wavered. “You talk about knowledge. In knowledge there is power.”

  “Knowledge was the tool used to bring down the people of this hemisphere.”

  “No need to get self-righteous, Alvaro. The Maya were on their way out well before the Spanish arrived.”

  Alvaro summoned his earlier boldness. “And your plan is to use Indianapolis—”

  “As a nexus. Not just between two worlds, but two times as well.”

  “And what I am standing in is meant to be a type of Disneyland? With hourly pageants of a legendary king removing his head with the ch’ak?”

  Franz grinned. “If disrespect of the ancients is your concern, let me remind you there are many who consider your scholastic approach to your myths to be a form of disrespect. I, on the other hand, am soliciting your opinion as an hombre de la maize. Tell me: the ol, the artifacts, the perfect alignment with the cardinal points? Do you not feel the k’ulel? Wouldn’t you agree I’ve brought that ancient life force to this time and place?”

  “Even if I believed such—”

  “I see. The scholar is disbelieving. But I’m looking at the man. And I see the man trembling before the power of the ol.”

  “I am tired, Mr. Franz. It has been a long day.”

  “Tell me. Do you hear voices emanating from the ol? Ancient voices raised by severed tongues?”

  “I hear nothing.” But something had stirred the tales of Don Delfino’s ultimate darkness. And something was animating the glyphs on the walls. “I hear nothing, Mr. Franz.”

  “Perhaps my ol lacks the benefit of proper ritual. Say, a little blood letting from the proper candidate?”

  “Thank you for this evening. I must leave now. It has been a long day. A four-hour flight. Two airports. The football contest.” Alvaro was confused about which way to turn. “And I must reverse the process tomorrow.”
/>   “Oh, but our evening is just beginning.”

  “If you could give me the number of a taxicab,” said Alvaro. He plunged across the dark chamber.

  “If you insist.” Franz followed closely with the torch. “I’ll have my driver take you. How often do you get a chance to ride in a real limousine?” He laughed. “But seriously, Al, I can count on your secrecy about what you’ve seen tonight?”

  “Even my knowing the ch’ak exists is dangerous. Not only to myself but to my family as well. There is a faction among my people—” Alvaro paused, felt the presence of Don Delfino. “There are laws more binding than those fabricated by modern nations, Mr. Franz. It is your secrecy that I must rely upon.” He continued across the room.

  “So I can count on you not discussing any of this with your colleagues at UCLA.”

  “No one at the university knows of my travels to Indianapolis.” Alvaro felt the heat from Franz’s torch on his neck. “I have kept to my part of the secrecy. Now I beg you to let no one know of my being here. It would not only place me in grave danger, but family members as well. If you could summon your driver.”

  “That faction of your people, Alvaro. Those People of the Maize devoted to the ancient ways uncorrupted by the Europeans? The Cult of the Quetzal Serpent, I call them. Perhaps you can contact them for me. I’m sure they have other… Well, I believe they use methods that bypass everyday avenues of communication. Perhaps someone taking a side trip through the Underworld could contact them for me?”

  Alvaro resisted looking at the dark opening next to the elevator. “We should leave your driver out of this. I can find my own way back to the hotel.” He stepped forward and stared at the keypad. The numbers held no meaning for him.

  “Door doesn’t open without the key and the code, Al.”

  It could have been the voice of Don Delfino emanating from the ol telling him as much; a clever irony of reversal suggesting Alvaro, as an hombre de la maize, would find these numbers a mystery to be solved with the language of science. Or the glyphs speaking; angry with him for seeking answers in the language of science; angry with Alvaro for even considering the application of irony in their presence.

  But Alvaro did not believe in the ol.

  He turned as Franz stuck the torch into a holder on the wall. Franz ducked from the light, then rose up holding a large ceremonial mask. He lifted the mask over his head, lowered it slowly. The mad eyes focused on Alvaro’s. Thick lips curled back, long rows of teeth grew smaller as they receded toward a distant, scarlet tongue.

  Don Delfino was now fully returned to Alvaro, his voice growing insistent as he loomed closer, coaxing Alvaro; coaxing him from his place of hiding...

  4: Cenote

  A tiny light moved in the woods on the hill.

  The trees, the techs, the uniformed cops were all frozen in the dark.

  But that light is moving through the trees like a cast-adrift soul.

  Indianapolis Chief of Homicide Melvin Weeks felt the plunging chill of abandonment that overwhelmed him the day the last familiar face turned away.

  Not that trees had played a part in Melvin’s abandonment. Witches and trolls rising in the forest to lure lost children were stories for white people. Melvin was left, at the age of five, standing next to a shambled, caving shack wedged into a corner of an inner-city parking lot.

  Perhaps this feeling of abandonment was flooding back via his racial memory. Melvin recalled the morning Detective Pelfry let his breakfast grow cold while explaining the notion of racial memory. Pelfry had compared the mysticism of the Yaqui Indians to stories from The Brothers Grimm, his point being that all cultures drew their myths from a common mind.

  Melvin hadn’t bought it on that day. Pelfry’s implication that religious belief was no different from the nest-building instinct of a bird mocked every value Melvin had established as a longtime member of the First African Baptist Church.

  But ever since getting the news of his impending death, little remained of Melvin’s belief system other than the fear of retribution for his diminishing faith.

  Or was his capacity for lasting belief murdered on that long ago day when his father said, “Wait here, Melvin, while I go and get the car. You wait here so the man know I come back with the money.” And that man who never got his money—who probably knew he wasn’t getting it after the first ten minutes—never said a word to me that entire afternoon as he ran in and out of that shack and waved cars into slots and took money and hung keys on pegs.

  The light in the woods wavered.

  A rising anger drew Captain Melvin Weeks back into the task at hand. “Who is that moving around in those trees, got dammit!” he yelled. “Tell that man to freeze!”

  Cries went up around the site for the man in the trees to freeze.

  The light went out.

  Weeks shook his head. He turned to his second in command, the man standing ten feet away next to the old well. “Baney. Who is that up there? Doesn’t anyone on this force know how to treat a crime scene?”

  “Probably Pelfry hugging a tree, Mel.” Lt. Baney sent the question up the hill by shouting it directly to the detective fifteen feet on the other side of Weeks, who shouted it to the next man, and so on up the hill and into the woods.

  A minute later came the faraway reply. “Mercer, Captain Weeks. Sorry, sir. Had to take a leak.”

  “Mercer,” repeated Baney. “Says he sprung a leak.”

  “So I heard.” Weeks flattened his hands and spread them apart as if what he needed to say were written on a scroll. “I want to make this perfectly clear. No one moves, not even to hug a tree, and no got dammed anyone better spring another leak until those floodlights get here. Got that? This site has been trampled enough by the blind leading the stupid.”

  Baney told the next man up, “No one moves until the floodlights arrive, by order of Captain Weeks.”

  The order went up the line. A minute later the scene again fell silent.

  Weeks felt grateful for the silence, grateful there was none of the usual gallows humor being thrown around by the plainclothesmen and uniformed cops scattered throughout the site. Joking about the results of a shotgun blast to the face, or about someone that’d been gutted and left for the insects, never bothered him. People working crime scenes needed to ease workday tensions just like anyone else.

  But cops never joked when the victim was a child.

  Weeks saw a figure moving through the darkness. He turned to Baney, made a face of concentrated disbelief.

  Baney gazed past Weeks. “Pelfry, sir.”

  “Ahh.” Weeks turned, the figure now close enough to identify, not because his face was visible, but because Jones Pelfry had a habit of alternately sweeping his hair back to front with one hand, then from side to side with the other, as if in perpetual war with himself over that day’s style. “Detective! Jones! Pelfry!” Weeks announced as if introducing a starting point guard. “So glad you could make it. You were called over an hour ago.” Weeks checked his watch. “Damn, man, closer to ninety minutes.”

  “Easy, Mel,” said Pelfry as he approached. “I was following a lead in the Quik Stop killings. Then the officer back at the road wouldn’t let me cut through those woods. I had to hike the long way around. Probably an extra mile.” He stopped and pointed out the detour, thus ending his styling job and leaving his hair in its usual tossed state.

  “We were concerned you might snag your bellbottoms on the underbrush,” said Baney. “I hope our bringing you out here didn’t interrupt a forensic table rapping session.”

  “You don’t recognize a footprint gauntlet when you see one?” said Weeks.

  Pelfry deflected the digs with a wince and a quarter turn of his head. He inhaled deeply, let it out slowly. “So, what do we have here?”

  Weeks threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Kid dead at the bottom of that old well. Got a tech down there snapping close ups and tying him off. Those two found him.” He nodded to two boys sitting at the feet of a uniformed
officer. “Out frog gigging. Said they stopped and shined their light down the well just because that’s what they always do.”

  Pelfry squinted at the boys. “Out this late on a school night?” He turned a three-sixty. “I didn’t see any creeks or ponds on the hike in.”

  “There’s an old cow pond back that way. Already sent a man out to confirm it. Saw plenty of croakers so big he was surprised we can’t hear them from here.”

  One boy held up a net full of frogs.

  Pelfry said, “Okay. And this is being treated a homicide, why?”

  “Two kids in nine days?” said Weeks. “Same circumstances? How many dead kids you need before we get off our asses and put a stop to it?”

  “The Furray kid? Since when was that tagged a homicide?”

  “Since ninety got damned minutes ago, that’s since when. What we got at the bottom of that well rules it a homicide.”

  “Shit, Melvin, you want the department blamed for a county-wide panic for what might be a coincidence? People locking up their kids. Schools empty. How stupid would we look? You know, some of us will still be around when the shit rolls down the hill.”

  Baney’s ears went up. He looked at Weeks.

  Weeks glared at Pelfry: the only cop on the force that knew about his cancer.

  “Fuck. Fuck,” said Pelfry quietly. “Shit, Mel. I’m sorry. I didn’t…” He turned to brace himself for an onslaught from his boss.

  But Weeks remained calm. “I get awfully tired of you apologizing all the time. Lucky for them, and for you, most people have enough sense to tune you out. And what they do hear is usually too outrageous to be believed. But we’re going to put all that aside for now. What we are going to do is focus on this crime scene and nothing else. With me on this?”

  “Yessir.”