by Dan Pollock
Félix ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “I’m not optimistic about that. Dr. Laya is well connected with most of the university departments. I was thinking of contacting one of the archaeological societies. They cater to amateurs and novices, some of whom like to volunteer on excavations.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Owen said.
“I’d say jump on it.” Ray Arrillaga glanced back after his own inspection of the abandoned trench. “Looks like you’re going to need some help to get in gear down here.”
“Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it.”
Just then the tent opened and Marta Mendes stepped out. She was barefoot, wearing an unfocused smile, skimpy cutoffs and an oversized white soccer shirt with a big 69 in red numerals. Despite her tomboyish figure, she looked, Félix thought, exactly like a girl who had been banging her brains out. He introduced her to both men.
“Marta is one Bolívar University volunteer who decided to remain. So at least I’ve got a start.”
“I’m sure Félix is grateful for your loyalty, señorita,” Owen said. “Pretty hard work out here, though, isn’t it?”
“I like hard work,” Marta said. “I bet I could operate one of those big bulldozers you got up there, as good as anyone.”
“I bet you could,” Owen said. “If we have any openings, we’ll keep you in mind.”
Ray Arrillaga had already swung his attention back to Félix. “Owen and I have invited some media people down here, escorted by our local PR director, to take a look at your activities. They’ll want to take some shots, ask some general questions.”
“Uh, when might that be, Señor Arrillaga?”
“We were hoping sometime tomorrow. It would be nice if there was a little more going on—whatever it is you do on a dig. Shoveling, sifting, looking at artifacts through microscopes, that sort of thing.”
“I understand.”
“Maybe we could help Félix round up some temporary volunteers,” Owen suggested to his boss. “Maybe borrow a labor crew from the railroad grading.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t work,” Félix said. “It’s not a matter of shoveling earth. We’re talking about careful scraping and sifting, along with constant note-taking, sketching and photographing. And you have to know what you’re looking for—or you’ll miss it. Even with constant supervision, day laborers would be more destructive than helpful.”
Owen grinned sheepishly. “Another one of my bad ideas. Well, you and Señorita Mendes do what you can. By the way, I guess you heard that bone flute you delivered to the university turned out to be pretty old. You must be excited.”
“I haven’t had a chance to unpack the radio. How old?”
“Eight thousand years, wasn’t it, Ray?”
“Nine, I think.”
Félix whistled. “That makes it early Holocene. About what Dr. Laya and I estimated.”
“And there should be more artifacts where that came from, correct?” Arrillaga asked.
“I hope so,” Félix said.
“Well, frankly, from a somewhat selfish point of view, Félix, that’s what we’d really like to see. If you could come up with some more major finds here, it would take a lot of political heat off us. And also, obviously, tend to confirm your serious allegations that Dr. Laya falsified the location of artifacts.” Arrillaga went again to the lip of the trench and peered down. “Where exactly was it found, the flute?”
“Down at that end,” Felix answered, trying to recall what documentation he’d invented for the artifact pouch. The figure of three meters flashed in his mind. But he desperately hoped he hadn’t written that, since the pit was barely two meters deep. “We found it right down there at the bottom.”
“Where the water has collected?”
“Yes. That’s just from this morning’s rain.”
“Don’t you usually cover excavations when it rains?”
“Normally, yes. But, in the confusion of moving and unpacking, it apparently got neglected.”
Marta stood close beside Félix, keeping silent. But her hand stole behind him and pinched his left buttock cheek—hard. She was obviously enjoying this.
After all the other volunteers had denounced Félix, Marta had slipped into his tent to announce she was taking his side. Félix hadn’t known how to react. Everybody in camp knew the flute had been uncovered exactly where Arquimedeo said. Then Marta had peeled off her shorts and crawled into Félix’s sleeping bag—and made clear exactly what she expected in return for her loyalty.
“Well,” Owen Meade said, “we’ll clear out and leave you two to your labors.”
Arrillaga nodded to them both, his eyes, behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, laser sharp. Félix found himself perspiring even more than warranted by the morning savanna sun.
“Um, before you go,” Félix said, “there’s one thing I wanted to ask about.”
The two Proteus men stopped. “What is it?” Owen Meade asked.
“About my funding. With the university support being cut off in protest, I understood that Proteus would be filling in.”
Owen slapped the clipboard against his thigh. “I believe that was already arranged with you on the ship.”
“Short term, yes. I was wondering about a longer-range basis.”
Arrillaga spoke up: “When we come back tomorrow to inspect your work, why don’t you submit a budget and we’ll take a look at it.”
A moment later Félix stood watching angrily as the Land Cruiser vanished behind a billowing dust plume: “Lameculos!”
Beside him Marta cackled. “Why are you calling them ass-kissers? You’re the one puckering up.”
He whirled on her. “Cállate la boca!—shut up! Look, if we’re going to get any money out of those bastards, we have to make this whole area look like an actual dig site. So listen up. I need you to help me lay out a baseline alongside the pit, then drive stakes and extend stringlines at two-meter intervals.”
Marta snorted. “What’s the point of laying out a grid? There’s nothing down there to excavate.”
“Don’t fuck with me!”
“Tsk, tsk, don’t be such a nasty boy.”
He seized her arm, but she pulled away. “I’m kidding, Félix. I’ll help you. After you finish what you started.” Catlike, she brushed up against him.
“Jesus, how many times do you want it?”
They’d been at it, with a few stuporous time-outs, since the previous sundown. Somewhere along the way Félix had stopped counting his climaxes. Whatever the number, it had been sufficient to exhaust him, yet leave him in a state of painfully protracted engorgement—a condition Marta obviously found irresistible.
“Please, Félix, just one more time. You got me all strung out, baby. Give me a good ride, and I’ll work my butt off for you, I promise.”
“Mierda!” Félix growled and turned back toward the compact tent. “But this isn’t going to be any marathon.”
“Whatever you say, felicidad, sweetie.”
None of this was working out the way he intended. The trouble was, he’d never had an actual plan—just a series of violent reactions when Jacqueline Lee, after two days of non-stop flirtation, had ignored him, then dumped him altogether—for a wrinkly old buzzard who happened to have a zillion bucks.
But it wasn’t just jealous rage that had sent Félix into his tailspin. Watching his dream girl ride out of his life was like having all the doors of opportunity slam shut at once, plunging him back into the recurrent failure of his life. And the most tempting revenge—waiting for her to come back from her ride, then luring her off somewhere and taking her by force—would have been suicidal. One word from Jake to her father, or to Sam, and Félix figured he’d be hunted down and shot like a dog.
So instead, he had come up with his wild scheme to betray Arqui, hoping for a sizable payoff from Jake’s father. And it had all worked, or seemed to—stealing the bone flute, switching the location tag, delivering it to that fantastic yacht along with the story about Ar
qui’s radical political connections. All the little Asian bastard had to do was open his fat wallet and count out some real money. With even a few thousand dollars, Félix could open a little bodybuilding gym somewhere. And he could have aerobics classes to bring in the ladies—not sweaty jock types like Marta with her flat pecs and knobby shoulders, but jiggling, giggling chicas right off the beach in their string bikinis.
But Félix had walked away from his shipboard meeting with less than five thousand bolívars in pocket and airy promises of further, much more substantial funding. Except for Félix to qualify for any future rewards, Señor Lee and his Proteus pals had required him to return here and carry on this sham South Hill excavation. Of course, they had all acted as if it would be a real excavation, as if everything on Cerro Calvario was exactly as Félix had told them.
And now they wanted to put him on display, like a trained monkey, in front of invited media. How long did they think they could jerk him around, and just how dumb did they think he was? Did they think he would really fall for that crap about submitting a budget, which they would “take a look at”? Assholes! They’d better open their wallets tomorrow, or he was blasting out of here in his truck and never coming back.
Just outside the tent Félix nearly tripped over a spade propped against a wheel barrel. In a flare of anger, he booted the hickory handle—forgetting he was wearing rawhide sandals. Pain seared upward from his big toe, and he screamed, grabbing his right foot and nearly toppling sideways into the tent.
Marta, a step behind, wrapped her arms around him and held him up. She was strong enough to ease him down and help him into the tent. As he cursed and writhed on the sleeping bag, she kept hold of him, murmuring comforts. Then, as the pain relented slightly, Félix realized Marta was digging inside his waistband and working on him again.
“Hey, not now, Marta. Give me time to recover.”
“That’s what you say. But Marta just found another little Félix down here who’s ready for big action. Matter of fact, this little Félix ain’t so little.”
It was difficult, under the circumstances, to argue. And for the moment, Félix was too tired to protest further and too crippled to escape. So he lay there in the sweltering nylon cave while she peeled them both naked, then grappled him like a well-oiled wrestler.
The first night Señorita Mendes had invaded his sleeping bag with her fiercely whispered promises and ultimatums, Félix had managed to replace her in his mind with erotic images of Jake, imagining what it would be like to have her naked against him, instead of this sinewy and inexhaustible little athlete. Now, however, he was unable to summon his imagination, or anything else. Oh well, he thought, let her do the fucking work, if she wanted it so bad.
Abruptly, he felt himself tilted and rolled onto his back. Then, after a disapproving cluck, Marta set about methodically restoring his nodding erection till it suited her needs. A moment later she had settled herself comfortably and begun her rhythmic ride.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sam Warrender crossed the New Mexico-Texas border fifty miles northeast of Tucumcari on US 54, angling back up toward the Oklahoma Panhandle and the Lazy S. For cross-country driving, he usually opted for the Seville or the Sovereign. But because of his daughter’s insistence on keeping his identity in the closet, on this Albuquerque trip, as on previous ones, he had taken one of the ranch pickups.
And, again as on previous visits, there had been an initial awkwardness between Teresa and himself, almost like two actors still feeling out their characters early in a run. Which was, of course, understandable, considering the seldomness of his visits. Teresa had been only six when María had left the ranch for good. In the eighteen years since, Sam had been reduced to a cometary orbit in and out of his daughter’s life—unfortunately more out than in. As a result, their relationship had been pieced together cross-sectionally out of birthdays and graduations, phone calls and letters, weekend and holiday outings—and presents that, by maternal fiat, could never be as frequent or expensive as Sam had wanted to give. Yet, despite all the absences and handicaps, Sam had been determined not to lose his daughter, as he had his son Tony, on the far side of an unbridgeable gulf. And unlike Caroline—thank God!—María had never attempted to freeze Sam out of their child’s life.
By the end of their brief visit, Sam thought, most of the wariness was gone from Teresa’s glance. But he still sensed a certain unstated limit on the degree of his involvement in her life, and a subtle withholding on her part even at the moment of embrace, or when she called him “Dad” and his heart leaped. Perhaps, though, he was expecting too much.
She lived in an adobe-and-stucco complex two blocks from the University of New Mexico campus, in a one-bedroom, patio apartment that reflected her magpie delight in festive and artistic clutter. Basketry and ceramics and sculpture thronged tabletops and shelves. Gallery posters and weavings and acrylic abstracts turned all available wallspace into a wraparound collage. Even an ugly-textured plaster ceiling had been put into play, festooned with a bright armada of oriental paper kites shaped like butterflies and birds.
Only Teresa herself escaped adornment. She came to the door wearing paint-spattered sweatshirt over baggy jeans and tennis shoes, her dark hair ponytailed, her pretty face sans makeup. Sam couldn’t help recognizing her mother in the welcoming smile that bunched her olive cheeks, and in the quick brown eyes behind the oversized round frames—from which were tortoiseshell, just like the phantom feline who dashed past his shins as the door opened. Of himself, fortunately, Sam detected traces mostly in his daughter’s height, which was midway between his own and María’s.
“Come on in, Dad,” she said, stepping back from a hug. “I was just decorating some sun-dried pottery for a class I’m teaching tomorrow.” She displayed fingers liberally splotched with poster paints. “But I’ve got a stew going. Kind of a kindergarten version of mom’s posole.”
She produced two cold Coronas, and they settled at right angles on a Navajo-blanketed sectional. “Did you see Mom yet?”
“I stopped off for lunch on the way in. She told me I looked like the Man of La Mancha. I think she meant gaunt and haggard, but, God knows, I’ve been tilting at windmills lately.”
“I want to hear the whole sordid story.”
“Maybe later, if I drink enough of these. But I’m afraid after your mother got through stuffing me, there may not be any room for your posole.”
“No way! You’ll eat every pinto bean. We Cárdenas women know how to feed our menfolk. Doesn’t she look great?”
Sam nodded. “She told me she’s got a new steady. A cop.”
“Hector. He’s got kids and grandkids already. But he’s fun. Did you meet him?”
“María thought he might drop in. I waited around a while. Maybe I’ll meet him at the wedding. What do you think?”
“Quién sabe? So, where are you staying?”
“A TraveLodge on old 66. I figure it goes with the Dodge Dakota and the hard-scrabble rancher disguise.”
“It’s not fair to you, Dad, I know it isn’t. But I’m making progress on my identity crisis, I really am. Just give me a little more time, okay?”
“Excuse the squawk. Whatever you want, Teresa, you know I’ll go along with. So, can I assume I’ll be seeing Wally later on?”
Wally Torres, an assistant basketball coach at UNM, was Teresa’s current guy. In recent years Teresa had hinted that once she was married—and Wally seemed to be a likely candidate—she wouldn’t feel the compulsion to hide Sam’s real identity anymore. But until that happened, she didn’t want her circle of friends or any prospective boyfriend being influenced, one way or the other, by knowing her father was this big-rich oilman.
“The team’s got a late practice. He’ll try and stop by for dessert.”
Over dinner on her tile-topped kitchen table, she’d asked about Venezuela.
Sam had tried to get by with a sardonic, once-over-lightly. But Teresa wasn’t having any. As a devotee of Native Am
erican arts and crafts, her sympathies were aroused at the mention of primitive artifacts, and her anger inflamed at the thought of their being willfully destroyed. She’d kept asking questions, until finally Sam began to recount the story in more detail.
When he got to the part about the ancient bone flute, he’d tried to sketch its delicate shape for her on a nearby scrap of newspaper—a recipe she’d torn from the Albuquerque Journal. He told her how he’d imagined it lying in buried silence through the millennia. When he’d glanced up from his crude drawing, he was startled to see his own hesitant feelings reflected and magnified in his daughter’s dark eyes.
“That’s so neat, Dad! I’m really proud of you!” She got up from her place and came around to kiss his cheek—easily the high point of his visit. Sam couldn’t remember eliciting that kind of spontaneous reaction, and that special look, from Teresa before, not after any birthday gift, and certainly not for any of his blockbuster business conquests, most of which she’d never expressed much interest in. Apparently it took being canned from his job on a matter of quixotic principle to make his little girl proud of him. Maybe it was worth it after all.
“You have to realize, Teresa, your old dad didn’t save anything. He lost right down the line.” He went on to describe a little of the corporate slugout. She was appropriately sympathetic, but clearly less engaged. Yet she picked up immediately on his passing mention of D.W.’s being opposed by his own daughter.
“She sounds a lot like me. So you and she must have been allies, which must have driven D.W. crazy. Tell me about her.”
Sam did the verbal equivalent of his quick sketch of the flute, being careful not to betray any of his personal feelings for Jacqueline, or hers for him. Yet somehow Teresa’s suspicions were alerted. “Dad, you never described her. Is she short, tall, fat, skinny, or what? God, I hope she doesn’t look like D.W. in drag.”
Sam chuckled, then began haltingly to describe Jacqueline, realizing it was a tricky assignment. And so it proved. After a few fumbling sentences, Teresa was on to him.