Cruz laughed, then said, “Keep your eyes closed.” I felt the cool slip of eyeliner above my lashes. “So, how does your Buddhist father feel about all of this?”
“I think it amuses him. Heck, I think it delights him. He’s got a lock of my baby hair in his household shrine.”
He moved around behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Okay, open and look.”
I did. My cheeks were softly and rosily bronze; my eyelids were washed with gold; my lips were deep copper. I smiled at the reflection in the mirror. “Well, hello Marianna!”
Cruz shook his head. “You know, the timbre of your voice even changes when you do her.”
“I assure you, it’s not intentional.”
“Perhaps you’re a natural chameleon.”
“Dad says that. He said it would make me a good spy.”
“Well, let’s go put your dad’s thesis to the test, shall we?”
Per our host’s instructions, we went downstairs to the concierge who punched in the combination to Mr. Revez’s private elevator and sent us up to what I expected would be a palatial suite of rooms. I wasn’t disappointed. The penthouse of El Playa del Pavo Réal was a hacienda in the sky. The décor framed by the soft, golden adobe walls reflected Iberian, Moroccan, and Mayan designs in dark woods and rich, warm colors. I suspected a designer would say it was a man’s space, but I found I liked it very much, and apparently Felipe Revez felt that it liked me.
“You are a flame,” he murmured, as he bent over my hand. “Warm, vivid. You honor my home with your light.”
I tried to keep myself from shivering at the touch of his lips, but it was useless. I shot Cruz a helpless look over Revez’s head and crossed my eyes.
Cruz let out a chuff of laughter, just managing to make it sound as if he were clearing his throat. “Your penthouse is spectacular, Felipe. Surely, the best of all styles.”
“No more spectacular than the woman who graces it,” Revez said.
“Now, I’ll bet you say that to all your female guests,” I teased lightly.
“No. Not all.”
Cruz cleared his throat yet again, and Revez straightened and made a grand gesture toward a room that was flooded with the crimson light of the waning sun.
“Please, dinner is ready to be served. I thought the western patio would afford us the most beautiful views.”
And so it did. The vista included sea and shore, inland forest, and sunset. The sea was the color of red wine, the sand was copper, and the forest deepest rust. Looking at it, I forgot momentarily who I was and why I was there. Fortunately, Revez reminded me before I opened my mouth and put my foot in it.
“How was your day? Did you enjoy the galleries?”
I shrugged, rapidly collecting my thoughts. “Not as much as I’d hoped. You were right. They were tourist traps, every last one of them. It was disappointing.”
“And Ek Balam? Was that also disappointing?”
“Ek Balam,” I said, turning to my host and letting Marianna’s enthusiasm pour over him, “was glorious. The carvings were so . . . new looking. As if they’d been chiseled yesterday. And that tomb! Now, that would make a great wedding present for Geoffrey.”
Revez raised his brows, and Cruz said, “Really, Mari—you’re planning the man’s burial before the wedding?”
“Not the tomb itself, silly. That king-size platform, the dragon’s tongue. Can you imagine what an amazing bedstead that would make? Sleeping in the mouth of Hell—Geoff would love that.”
“And you?” asked Revez teasingly. “You would love sleeping in the mouth of Hell?”
I smiled coquettishly (I hoped). “It has a certain kick to it.”
“You are a surprising woman, Marianna,” said Revez, and I was stunned by the conviction that he meant it.
I glanced across the dinner table at Cruz as the butler or waiter—or whatever one was supposed to call him—set out our salad plates. Cruz raised his wine glass to me and smiled.
“To surprises,” he said softly.
Revez seconded the toast and we began our salad course.
“I suppose I’d have to have a replica made if I wanted such a piece, wouldn’t I?” I wondered wistfully a moment later.
“The dragon’s mouth?” said Revez. “I think so. It would be beyond even the most inventive . . . excavator to remove the mouth of the king’s tomb.”
“Well, someone seems to have removed his head,” said Cruz. “And part of a frieze as well.”
I added, “And don’t forget that cute little friend of his. The one perched on the dragon’s eyelid.”
Revez’s eyes narrowed slightly and fixed on Cruz’s face. “You’re an archaeologist, Cruz. How do you feel about such vandalism?”
“Vandalism?” Cruz watched the butler set the aromatic main course before him. “I should say ‘commerce.’ How do I feel about it?” He smiled and shook his head. “Do you know, Felipe, what a museum does with those treasures? What archaeological institutions do with them? A museum takes a bunch of photographs, drops the treasures into plastic trays, and locks them up in an underground vault with all the accessibility of a rabbit warren. An institution, on the other hand, barricades the entire site so that it is available to no one but the scholar and the scholar’s acolytes. What do I feel? I’m happy that at least someone is enjoying the head of the king, since he can no longer enjoy it himself.”
Revez studied Cruz a moment longer, then threw back his head and laughed, the sound seeming to roll up out of his core like the beat of a drum.
I sighed, dramatically and loudly. “Do men always have to talk shop?”
Cruz slanted me a “look.” “We were talking treasure, Marianna. You like treasure as well as the next person, I think.”
I stuck my bottom lip out in a moue. “I like treasure I can touch. And own. And give away if I feel like it.”
“Did you see anything at Ek Balam that struck your fancy?” Revez asked me. “Besides Hell’s bedstead.”
“The paintings were lovely,” I said.
“Friezes,” correct Cruz.
“Whatever. I liked the colors. Oh, and the funerary items. The masks, the vessels. All that lapis and turquoise and gold.”
“Would your fiancé like that sort of thing, do you think?”
“Let me put it this way: he doesn’t have anything like that now.”
“My employer is a most acquisitive man,” Cruz said. “Having what others do not means a great deal to him.”
“That,” said Revez, lifting his wine glass, “is something I understand completely.”
After dinner, Revez treated us to a tour of his fabulous penthouse. It was huge. My entire houseboat could have fit into the living room. And, as showmen are wont to do, he saved the best for last.
Behind two oversized paneled and carved doors that looked as if they, themselves, were valuable antiques, was a long, beautifully lit gallery, flanked on both sides by glass cases and wall-boxes. The walls were covered in some sort of woven fabric in a shade of gold I’d always associated with the padrone’s adobe, Flamenco dancers, and Zorro. Each objet d’art had its own pool of sunny light to bask in and a midnight blue velvet backdrop to bask on. It was more than impressive. This man was serious about his art.
Maybe even deadly serious, I remembered.
I oohed and aahed my way down the gallery, finding that appreciation of Revez’s collection required no acting ability. He lingered at my elbow, almost touching me, but not quite, while Cruz hovered watchfully behind him.
About halfway down the left-hand side of the room, I saw something that was more than a little familiar. It was a large vase—or rather, most of a large vase—and it looked quite as if it had been fashioned by the same artisan responsible for Ted Bridges’s potsherd.
“It’s glorious, Felipe,” I said, glancing up into our host’s smiling face. “Shame it’s not all in one piece. Any idea where the rest of it went?”
“It hardly matters, corazon,” Cruz answere
d, flanking me. The two men locked eyes over my head. “It is a large enough piece to be worth tens of thousands—perhaps more.”
Revez’s smile deepened, as if the other man’s feigned jealousy tickled him. “Three hundred thousand, to be exact. I acquired it just this past year. Here,” he continued, taking my elbow and steering me away from Cruz across the carpeted aisle. I’d always wondered what it felt like to be popular. “I think you may find this piece familiar.”
I did. I’d seen two just like it this morning at Ek Balam.
“Oh! This is from that temple we saw today, isn’t it?” I turned to shower Revez with admiration. “You clever man. How did you ever—?”
He raised a finger to my lips. “Now, that would be divulging secrets, Marianna.”
“Archaeological work is seasonal,” said Cruz from behind us. “Even in this part of the world. Often the ‘seasons’ have nothing to do with the weather. When grants run out, when projects are cut, when there are no excavations, diggers still need money to feed themselves and their families. What can they do? They dig. For whoever pays them.”
“Indeed,” Felipe agreed.
“So, do you have the king’s head too?” I asked.
“Regrettably, no. But I have something even better.” He tucked my hand through his arm and drew me to the very end of the long room where a single glass enclosure was centered in the wall. The lone object in the display was a mask.
Now, for most people—including me—the word mask probably conjures images of Halloween costumes, bank robbers in Nixon faces, and those silly Harlequins in white tights, neck ruffles, and dominoes. This wasn’t that kind of mask. Not even Bill Gates’s kids had gear like this come October 31. This was a life-size faceplate of gold inlaid with turquoise, malachite, and carnelian.
It was beautiful.
It was hideous.
The Mayans, I decided, were adept with that sort of artistic schizophrenia. It was something that separated them from the Egyptians, to whom a number of theorists had tried to connect them. While the Egyptians voted in favor of making even the Gods of Really Icky Things beautiful, graceful, and elegant, the Mayans simply portrayed the horrific with flamboyant honesty, but did it in the richest, most gorgeous materials they could lay their hands on.
I found my tongue after a long moment of reaction. “That’s stunning, Felipe. What is it? Or should I say, who is it?”
Felipe was a happy man. He had scored big points with the little lady. His dark eyes gleamed in boyish zeal, but did not toss a neener-neener glance at Cruz, which I thought was mighty big of him.
“That,” he told me, “is from a newly discovered hoard. My experts tell me it depicts the eighth-century Mayan king, Shield Jaguar II.”
“Then it’s from Bonampak,” said Cruz, “a site that has been photographed, catalogued, and even reduced to digital imagery. There hasn’t been a new hoard discovered there since the late nineties.”
“That is the common wisdom,” Revez said. “The common wisdom is not always correct.”
“Surely, that’s a death mask.”
There was an edge to Cruz’s voice that went beyond feigned jealousy. His face was curiously still and his eyes glinted dangerously. I wondered if I was going to have to step in and do something insane and Mariannesque to keep him from bitch-slapping our host.
“It’s a life mask. The hoard appears to be made up of collected objects from a number of royal caches. Possibly it represents an early attempt at grave robbing, or perhaps it was done to protect the memory of the kings—an attempt to foil tomb raiders. One of my . . . seasonal employees found it while doing some surveying work for a Yale University project. There is more where this came from, Cruz.”
Thank God and Saint Boris, he’d apparently read Cruz’s offended zeal as gold fever.
“More?” I asked, turning to fix my antiquities guy with a brilliant smile. “Did you hear that, darling?”
Darling had heard that, and apparently the warning in my voice and eyes came through loud and clear as well. He smiled. “Extraordinary.”
I turned back to Revez. “Is there another one of these?”
He laughed at me—a big-chested, booming laugh so full of patronizing fondness that I was surprised he didn’t ruffle my hair or give me noogies.
“Sweet Marianna,” he said. “Life masks aren’t like off-the-rack clothing. They are unique. As you are unique.” He kissed my hand.
Ow! A one-two punch: condescension and compliment all rolled into one. I vigorously quashed the urge to snatch back my hand and wipe it on my dress, and said, “So, this is the only one? What about his death mask?”
“That is in the National Museum in Mexico City,” said Cruz.
“But, this is exactly—I mean, exactly—what I was looking for.” I turned impulsively to our host, took one of his hands in mine, looked up into his eyes and asked, “How much?”
He shook his head. “How much?”
“For the mask. What do you want for it? I want it for Geoff.”
Revez grimaced ruefully. “My dear Marianna, I’m sorry, but I simply cannot sell this mask. It is, as you can see, the centerpiece of my entire collection.”
“How much did you pay for it?” I asked gauchely, and Cruz murmured, “Sagrada Maria . . .”
“I hesitate to speak of such things—”
“Nonsense. You spoke of such things when we were looking at that vase. Why not now?”
Revez stared at me as if I’d suddenly started speaking Swahili.
That’s right, el jefe, you’re looking at the business end of Marianna Esposito.
After a moment of hesitation, he smiled. It was a warm, sincere smile of unadulterated admiration. The mouse had roared. And she had roared in dollar signs, which was a language Revez understood quite well.
“You are correct. I paid nine hundred thousand for the mask. A stretch, but worth it. It was also a very difficult choice for me. In order to keep it, I had to let other equally amazing artifacts go to the open market.”
“The black market, you mean,” said Cruz, keeping his hand in.
Revez merely nodded.
“I’ll give you nine hundred and fifty thousand for it,” I said.
He shook his head.
I narrowed my eyes. “One million in American dollars.”
“Mari!” Cruz exclaimed.
But Revez refused to budge. “Shield Jaguar is not for sale, my dear. For any price, however . . .”
“Yes?”
“You should know that there are other, perhaps even more stunning artifacts available from . . . this site.”
Bingo. We’d apparently passed some sort of means test. To cover my suddenly racing heart, I began hesitatin’. I gave the mask another lingering look, then said, “Can you show them to me? I’d love to see them.”
“They are still in situ.”
“In what?” I asked even though I knew what he meant.
“He means they’re still at the site,” Cruz volunteered, then to Revez: “Are you suggesting that Ms. Esposito and I should go there and dig them up ourselves?”
Revez gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Come, let us discuss this in the living room where we can be more comfortable. I’ll have my man Edgardo bring refreshments. Wine or coffee?”
“Coffee,” I said, “would be glorious.”
“Despite what you see here,” Revez told us once we were seated in the opulent living room before a softly glowing gas-log fire, “I do not have a significant amount in liquid assets. I am a land baron, for lack of a better word. An entrepreneur. If you tally all my properties, yes, I suppose you would call me a wealthy man. And looking at my collection of antiquities, you might make a similar pronouncement. Were I such a man, I would be honored to give you, if not Shield Jaguar’s mask, at the very least something to equal it. But I am not such a man, and I do not have the resources to make such an offer. . . . Thank you, Edgardo.”
He paused to sip his wine, waiting to speak again until “
his man” had served our coffee along with a tray of very rich little confections that I felt entitled to, considering how much hiking I’d done earlier in the day.
“When I say that I paid nine hundred thousand dollars for Shield Jaguar, I speak in part of the cost of finding it, excavating it, and paying certain people not to notice its existence or wonder where it came from.”
“Then the site is unknown to academia,” guessed Cruz.
“It is unknown to anyone,” said Revez, “but me, my experts, and select . . . associates. And we intend that it should stay that way.”
“Associates . . . ?” Cruz pressed, and I held my breath.
Oh, please don’t get him all jinky.
But when Revez hesitated, Cruz continued, “I’m not asking who they are, Felipe, but simply whether they can pay for excavations.”
“Suffice it to say that I am not the only person with an interest in Bonampak or its sister site. But I am, perhaps, the most . . . well-placed person. My associates have reason to keep a low profile.”
Cruz smiled, slowly and wickedly, the way a man might more commonly smile at a half-naked woman or a pile of garlic fries. “And what do you suppose it might cost to . . . liberate this site?”
“A more substantial amount than even I can command.”
“Five million?” I asked as if I were contemplating writing him a check. “Ten?”
“A full-fledged and covert excavation of Bonampak B, as I call it, I estimate would cost in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars.”
I looked at him long and searchingly as if I were estimating his gross worth. “I don’t have that kind of money,” I said, and watched his face tighten. I waited a beat, then added, “But I’m marrying someone who does.”
Revez raised his wine glass to me and smiled. “Glorious,” he said.
Chapter 14
Her Own Woman
Tink.” The word popped out of Cruz’s mouth as we sat before the fire in our own suite.
I had changed into a multihued jogging suit; Cruz had donned a Giants’ baseball jersey over his dress slacks. We had the doors to the balcony open to let in the fresh sea air, but though it rose into the high nineties during the day in coastal Yucatán, it could get quite cool at night. A nice combination, actually.
The Antiquities Hunter Page 15