Uneasy Relations

by Aaron Elkins

  Between them, they had finished the sandwich. Gideon ordered coffee and Julie got a refill on her iced tea. She pulled slowly at the straw with a contemplative scowl.

  “What?” Gideon said.

  “Well, I was just thinking . . . what about your reputation? You were the senior author of the paper that started the whole thing, after all—I mean, the thing about Gibraltar Boy being a hybrid, and all.”

  He put down his cup. This was something that hadn’t occurred to him. “I think I’ll come out of it all right,” he said, not as confidently as he might have liked. “Remember, we went out of our way not to call him a hybrid. Other people did that. We just described him as accurately as we could. What does bother me a little is that we didn’t spot the fact that the two sets of remains came from two different sites over a hundred miles apart—different soils, different weathering patterns. We did say—I hope we said—something about them differing more than one would anticipate for bodies that had been buried together—in their color, in their preservation, and so on—but when you’re dealing with bones twenty-five millennia old, you expect that kind of variation, so I don’t think anybody’s going to fault us for not making something of it.”

  “Uh-huh, I see,” Julie said. “Extenuating factors, is that it?”

  He laughed. “Hmm, you think maybe you’re looking at one more dupe, after all?”

  “Oh, I doubt it, but I wouldn’t worry about it anyway. If they frog march you out of anthropology, you’ve got your other career all ready and waiting for you.”

  “I do? What career would that be?”

  “Writing ‘stunning exposés’ for Lester Rizzo and Javelin Press, of course. Which reminds me—” She drained her tea. “The Javelin reception starts at five. We’d better get started if you want to go.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you have to. Lester is your editor, and you’re one of their star authors; he’s going to want to show you off. You have to make an appearance. Besides, Rowley would be crushed if you weren’t there.”

  “You’re right, as always,” Gideon said, getting up reluctantly. “Let’s go, then. Oh, by the way, we’re not supposed to mention any of this to any of the others—orders from Fausto.”

  Julie responded with a snappy salute. “Yes, sir. Will do . . . sir!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE Paleoanthropological Society cocktail reception-cum-book launch party had gotten off to an early start. The Eliott Hotel’s rooftop terrace, bathed in mellow, late-afternoon sunshine, was hopping by the time they got there, with knots of attendees chattering away on the wide patio surrounding the outdoor swimming pool. Most had a drink in one hand and a plastic plate piled with food in the other. Those that didn’t were either in line at one of the two portable bars, or gathered around food tables near each end of the pool. At one, a blonde woman in a tall white chef’s toque carved slices off a giant hunk of roast beef. At the other, an ice swan, dripping wings outstretched, hung over dozens of plates of quintessential ye olde English appetizers: sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, potted cheese toast triangles, miniature Cornish pasties. Waistcoated, bowtied waiters threaded their way smoothly through the crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. And in an out-of-the-way corner of the terrace a tuxedoed quartet, sans amplification, was unobtrusively, almost apologetically, tinkling out Boccherini’s Minuet in C.

  “You do have to hand it to Lester,” Julie said as they came through the doors from the elevator. “He throws a heck of a party.”

  “Seems a bit understated for Lester,” said Gideon. “I mean, Boccherini? I was expecting a fully staged Phantom of the Opera. Or if he wanted classical music, a symphony orchestra and full chorus doing Beethoven’s Ninth at the least.”

  “Well, you know Lester. Understated is his middle name.”

  “Right. Get you something to drink?”

  “A white wine would be nice.”

  On the way to the nearest of the bars, Gideon almost bumped into a Prada-Gucci-Ferragamo-clad Fausto smoothly gliding among the fashion-clueless academics like a sleek shark in a school of flounders. He was one of the few without a glass in his hand.

  “Wow,” Gideon said. “I didn’t know you were a dignitary. I’m impressed.”

  “Commish gave it a pass,” Fausto said with a shrug. “Officially, I’m here representing him. Personally, I wanted to come, kind of look around, check on the people.” With a hand on Gideon’s arm, he steered him to the fringe of the crowd, near a giant poster of Rowley’s bright blue book cover with its long-winded title: Uneasy Relations: Humans and Neanderthals at the Dawn of History: Implications for Today’s World. Under it was a table laden with copies to be given to the attendees as gifts.

  “Listen, Gideon, remember when we were talking about licenses for explosives? Well, I did a little poking around and came up with something pretty interesting.”

  As Fausto had told him earlier, there were only two construction companies in Gibraltar that had explosives licenses. He had spoken with the owners of both and one of them, the owner of G. Barrows & Sons Demolition and Excavation, had admitted reluctantly that they were missing—they were pretty sure they were missing—they thought they might be missing—twenty-two sticks of gelignite from their stores. In any case, their records couldn’t account for them. They hadn’t reported the disappearance as the law required, because at first they were sure they’d just misplaced them. Then, as time passed and they didn’t find them, they’d been worried about having waited so long to report the loss—there would be fines involved—so that they had just let it go and hoped it would never come back to bite them. And after all, it had been two years, hadn’t it, and nobody had blown anything up yet, at least not in Gibraltar.

  “Two years?” Gideon said. “So this would have been in . . . ?”

  “The fall of 2005, from an excavation job they were doing out at Catalan Bay, on the other side of the Rock.”

  “And Sheila was killed in September of 2005,” Gideon said, nodding. “So it fits. Now the question is—”

  “Here,” said Julie, thrusting a Scotch and soda into his hand. “Since you weren’t going to get me one, I did it myself. And I got one for you. Hi, Fausto.”

  “Sorry about that, Julie,” Gideon said, taking the drink. “Fausto and I were just—”

  “Gideon! Hey, my man, glad to see you here!”

  And there was Lester Rizzo in the flesh, all six feet four of him, energetically pumping Gideon’s right hand and looking his normal ebullient, slightly insane, and painfully overstuffed self. It wasn’t simply that he was overweight (which he was), but that he seemed positively overinflated, as if, if you stuck him with a pin, there’d be this whoosh, and off he’d go, careening crazily through the air, banging into walls and furniture.

  “Lester, a wonderful reception,” Gideon said, wrenching his crushed hand back. “You know Julie, and this is Detective Chief Inspector Sotomayor.”

  “Detective Chief Inspector. Whoa! I love those great old names. Like Inspector Morse. He was a detective chief inspector too, am I right?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Fausto said, wincing as he got the hand-mangling treatment.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was. Hey, I think you all know our guest of honor here . . .” He glanced around. “Where’d he go? Hey, guest of honor!”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere, I’m right here.” From behind Lester, where he’d been completely hidden by his bulk, an abashed but beaming Rowley Boyd emerged, basking in the glow of his newfound celebrity. “Er . . . thank you all for coming.”

  “It’s our pleasure, Rowley,” Julie said. “Congratulations.”

  The others joined in with congratulations of their own, which the new author accepted with blushing self-deprecation, teeth clamped happily on his unlit pipe.

  “Lester, are you doing some promotion for the book?” Gideon asked. “As you so kindly did for mine? Although I really don’t see how you can beat, ‘It’s going to stand the scienti
fic world on its ear.’ ”

  Lester threw back his head and trumpeted with laughter. “Hey, complain to me after we see the numbers.” He looked fondly down at Rowley. “I’ll come up with something, don’t worry. I know, maybe we’ll submit it for the Nobel Prize in Archaeology, how’s that sound? You never know what could happen. I got some influential friends in Stockholm. Or is it Oslo? What the hell, I got friends there too.”

  “But there is no Nobel Prize for archaeology,” Rowley said.

  Lester looked at him as if he’d just discovered that the latest addition to his prestigious stable of Frontiers of Science authors was a simpleton. “Well, the peace prize, the literature prize. Whatever.”

  “Lester . . .” Rowley hesitated, embarrassed. “I appreciate the gesture—and your confidence in me—but . . . well, I really don’t think it’s the kind of book . . . I mean, it’s just a popular treatment, it’s not as if it contributes anything new. I’d feel, well, a bit awkward about...”

  “I think Lester was joking,” Gideon said gently. “He does that.”

  Now Rowley was really embarrassed. “Oh . . . well, of course, ha-ha.” He chewed furiously on the pipe, shifting it from one corner of his mouth to the other with his teeth alone. “Yes, that’s funny, really. I didn’t get it at first. . . .”

  “Well, great talking to you guys,” Lester said, his burly arm coming down around Rowley’s slight and shrinking shoulders. But now there are plenty of other people eager to meet our famous author.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about ‘eager’ . . .” Rowley was murmuring as he was hauled away.

  “Did he really think Lester was going to try to get a Nobel Prize for him?” Julie asked. “You told me he was literal-minded, but that’s amazing.”

  Gideon smiled. “That’s Rowley for you. He’s—hey . . .” His observation, whatever it was, petered out. He stood without speaking, staring intently into the middle distance.

  “What?” Fausto asked, puzzled. And then again: “What?”

  “Don’t bother,” Julie told him. “When he gets like that, he’s inaccessible; you just have to wait him out. He’s hatching something. ”

  So he was. He had just that second, out of the blue, experienced that minute, barely perceptible click he was coming to know; the sense that a few small parts of a difficult, intricate puzzle had separated themselves from the jumble of pieces and snapped neatly into place, with the rest now poised to follow.

  Or maybe not. Getting a couple of pieces fitted together didn’t necessarily mean you were on the way to solving the puzzle. More data was needed.

  “Have you seen Buck?” he asked, surfacing.

  Julie pointed. Buck was coming from one of the bars, carefully balancing the brimful glasses of wine he held in each hand. Gideon put down his own glass and intercepted him.

  “Buck, can I ask you a quick question?”

  Buck came to a careful halt, sipping a little from each glass to keep it from slopping over. “Sure, what?”

  “Well, remember when you went on that tour of St. Michael’s Cave before my talk? With Rowley and the others? Did you happen to mention what we talked about in the van on the way up there?”

  Buck frowned mightily. “What we talked about on the way up?”

  “You know, the problems that go along with erect posture—what my talk was going to be about.”

  “Oh . . . well, yeah, I guess maybe I did mention it.” He looked like a kid whose secret history of cookie stealing had finally caught up with him, even going so far as to scuff his feet. “I’m sorry, Gideon, I know I promised not to, but it was just so damn interesting. It blew my mind. And I thought . . . I mean, I figured it was just some of us, just, you know, Rowley and Audrey and Corbin, so—”

  Another click; another piece in place.

  “—Anyway, I’m sorry if I spoiled anything for you.”

  “No, don’t worry about it. You didn’t spoil anything. Far from it.”

  Far from it, indeed. If what he was thinking was right, Buck had saved his life.

  The cloud lifted from Buck’s meaty, friendly face. “That’s good to hear. You had me scared there for a minute.”

  “What was that about?” Julie asked as Buck headed off. “What are you hatching?”

  “Maybe nothing at all,” Gideon said slowly, “but on the other hand, I just might be on to something. I need one more piece.” He scanned the terrace and found what he was looking for. “Let’s go, Fausto. If this amounts to anything, I think you’ll want to be in on it.”

  “I want to be in on it too,” Julie declared.

  “Then come on along.”

  Fausto’s mouth formed to say, “In on what?” but Gideon wasn’t waiting for them. He was striding after Buck. Fausto and Julie looked at each other, shrugged, and hurried after him. “What the hell,” Fausto sighed to himself.

  Buck’s destination—and Gideon’s—was a gaggle of people clustered near one end of the pool, next to the roast beef buffet. There Audrey, Corbin, Adrian, and Pru, drinks in hand, were bunched around Lester and a frazzled if happy-looking Rowley, who was accepting their compliments and congratulations.

  Gideon waited until there was an opening in the conversation, at which point his silent, waiting presence was sensed. They turned expectantly.

  “Rowley,” Gideon said as casually as he could manage, “didn’t I hear you saying something the other night about doing an archaeological site survey on the west side?”

  “It’s quite possible,” Rowley said. “I do them with some frequency. It goes with my job. Why do you ask?”

  “This would have been, oh, a year or two ago—2005, I think. It was during that Europa Point retrospective that they had here.”

  Rowley removed his pipe and tapped his lower lip with it. “Mmm . . . you know, I think you’re correct. I believe I was evaluating a potential sewer construction site near Casemates Square. Nothing came of it, though. They went right ahead and installed the sewer.”

  “No,” said Gideon, “it couldn’t have been Casemates Square. You said it was on the west side of the Rock.”

  “Did I? Hmm, well, I do a lot of them, you know.” He was beginning to get edgy. “What’s the difference? Why do you ask?”

  “It was Catalan Bay, wasn’t it?” Pru said. “I’m sure that’s what you told us.”

  Fausto and Gideon exchanged a quick, extremely meaningful look. Gideon could almost hear the click in Fausto’s head. Catalan Bay.

  “Catalan Bay?” Rowley coughed softly. “Yes, by George, I believe you’re right. Now that I think of it, it was—”

  “Mr. Boyd,” Fausto said, “I think you and I should have a little talk.”

  “A talk,” Rowley repeated dully. A muscle below his eye twitched erratically. He brushed at it is if he could sweep it from his skin. “Of course, if you like, but this is hardly the time. What is this about, Chief Inspector?”

  The others had become quiet as well, and intent, sensing something in the air.

  “I think it’d be better if we talked privately,” Fausto said.

  “You mean it can’t wait? We’re right in the middle of a party.”

  “Probably best to take care of it now.”

  Scared as he was, Rowley stood his ground. “No, sir, I demand to know what it’s about.”

  “Yeah, I demand to know,” put in Lester, who could have had no possible idea of what was going on, but wasn’t one to pass up an opportunity for a little theater.

  Patience had never been Fausto’s long suit. His lips tightened. “Okay, then, I got a couple of questions about some sticks of gelignite missing from a construction project at Catalan Bay.”

  “And what is that supposed to have to do with me? Exactly what are you implying?” Despite the brave words, his voice was choked. He could hardly be heard. He had grown perceptibly paler, perceptibly more still. He knows it’s over, Gideon thought. He’s dying by inches.

  Fausto, finished with cajoling, moved toward Rowley t
o reach for his arm, bringing Rowley suddenly to life. Twisting just out of Fausto’s grasp, he grabbed a shocked Audrey by the bun at the nape of her neck, quickly getting his arm around her spindly throat and jerking her up against him.

  “Hey!” Buck cried, starting forward, but Fausto stopped him with an arm across his chest.

  “Rowley, damn you, don’t be ridiculous,” Audrey snapped. “You know you’re not going to hurt me.” She tried to pull away his arm but couldn’t. Rowley wasn’t a big man, no more than five-eight, and not powerfully built, but Audrey, for all her lean sinewiness, was little more than five feet tall and weighed perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet. It was hard for her to get any meaningful leverage.

  “This isn’t going to do you any good,” Fausto said. “You gotta know that, Rowley.”

  “If you come any nearer,” Rowley said in a choked voice, “I’ll kill her, I will.” He spat the pipe out onto the terrace.

  It seemed too incredible, too histrionic, to be real. Some of the onlookers began to laugh, under the impression they’d been roped into one of those interactive murder mystery plays. But that impression was quickly dashed when Rowley snatched up a barbecue fork from the roast beef table and quickly pressed it against the side of Audrey’s neck, creating two little dents that immediately filled with blobs of blood. There was a collective gasp, a whispered chorus of “Oh, my God!” Audrey instantly stopped struggling and stood stone-still, her eyes open very wide, as if she were straining to listen for some faint and distant sound.