Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  A brass plaque near a large open doorway announced “The Getti Vargas Court.” She touched the raised letters fondly with one hand as they entered the dimly lit room, passing a uniformed security guard who stepped aside and nodded before resuming his rounds.

  “Look at them,” she said, freeing herself from McGuire’s arm and approaching a display of small figurines. “They’re worth all those ugly bronze and granite lumps back there. Don’t you think so?”

  McGuire bent to study the polished ceramic figures arrayed along a low shelf. They represented six men and six women, each totally individual in facial characteristics, dress and pose. One was a man seated on a crude chair, his left leg ending in a stump, holding a wooden staff so its tip was just free of the ground. Beside him stood a woman with a baby in her arms; next to her, a warrior god glared back at the world with vigorous intelligence in his eyes, and strength in every line of his face and sinew of his limbs. McGuire was impressed with the primitive yet exquisite craftsmanship in each figurine—an elderly man leaning forward on a walking stick, a woman bearing ears of corn in her arms, a muscular warrior with a ceremonial dagger extended in a threatening gesture.

  In other primitive art McGuire had seen, facial characteristics were bland and homogenous, more concerned with presenting a racial ideal than individual features. He thought of Egyptian pharaohs, Aztec gods and Indian warriors, each depicted as virtual clones of others of their race. But these figurines were created from life with an effortless grace that belied the immense skill and talent of the artist.

  There was more to their appeal than the realism of their features. Each figure had been painted, fired and glazed in brilliant shades of ochre, green, coral and crimson, their skin tones in rich copper.

  “I’ve never seen anything like them,” McGuire said. He leaned to examine the figures of a boy and girl holding hands and wearing identically patterned dress-like garments.

  “There’s never been anything like them here or anywhere,” Glynnis Vargas replied. She knelt beside McGuire, and the aroma of her perfume diverted his attention from the figurines. “Do you have any idea where they’re from?” she asked. “Or how old they are?”

  “They look Mexican,” he said. “Am I close?”

  “Barely. They’re Mochica. Northern Peru,” she added when McGuire frowned at her, not understanding. “They were made a thousand years before Columbus arrived. They’re burial figurines, created to keep company with the dead on their journey to the next world. That’s the only reason they survived the pillage of Pizarro and the other barbarians who followed him. Because they weren’t gold. And they were buried in tombs, out of sight of thieves.”

  She stood and walked to the end of the shelf, where the last figurine stood apart from the others in lighted splendour on a low pedestal. “I own almost half of the world’s entire collection of Mochica ceramic art. My husband collected them. I donated these when I arrived here after his death. In return, the museum insisted I accept a position on its board of directors.” She brightened suddenly. “Look at this one. Come here, Mr. McGuire, and look at this beautiful, beautiful woman.”

  McGuire straightened, the cracking of his knees cutting through the silence in the room. He walked to where Glynnis Vargas stood, gently stroking the last figurine.

  It was a young woman, naked except for a patterned garment hanging low on her hips. One hand was raised in a gesture of greeting. The other hand was poised at her midriff, either concealing or caressing her navel. Her features were delicate and finely formed in the ceramic material. She wore a ring through her nose and several rings through the lobes of her ears.

  “Look at her expression,” Glynnis Vargas whispered. “Look at her face.”

  McGuire bent and looked. She seemed about to smile, but there was a sadness in her eyes.

  “I call her the Mona Lisa of the Andes,” Glynnis said. “Don’t you think she has the same sweet, sad look?”

  McGuire nodded. “How did they get such detail in the faces?” he asked. “And why haven’t the colours faded after all these years?”

  “We don’t know.” She stood and looked sadly back at the last figurine. “Their civilization was absorbed by lesser peoples. Farmers, traders, religious fanatics like the Tiahuanacans, who lacked artistic talent, and by the Chimus who were even less gifted. We know virtually nothing of the Mochicas except what we can learn through their art. Eventually all the people in that area of Peru became part of the Inca kingdom. The Incas worked almost exclusively in gold. Which, of course, was the source of their downfall.” She glanced at her watch. “We had better go back. The others will think we’re being terribly inconsiderate.”

  “Do you really care what others think?” McGuire asked. His eyes remained on the figurine of the young girl.

  “No,” Glynnis Vargas replied. “But I made a decision to live here and I believe anyone who joins a community has an obligation to become a part of it. I learned that when I moved to Brazil with my husband. And I don’t see any reason to change it now.”

  As they returned through the large open gallery, she paused and smiled at McGuire. “You really saw something in those figures, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yes,” McGuire replied. The abstract oils and acrylics looked crude and contrived in comparison with the ancient ceramic art they were leaving behind. “Not as much as you. My only cultural taste is in music. But you were right. They were worth seeing.”

  “Good,” she said. “That’s why I wanted them displayed here. So people like you could enjoy them for their own sake.”

  Entering the sculpture gallery again, she touched his arm gently and left to join Donald Mercer and two couples who were laughing in an exaggerated fashion at one of Mercer’s quips. McGuire chose a canapé from one passing waiter, a glass of wine from another, and strolled to the corner near the string quartet. He stood absorbing the music, but his eyes were on Glynnis Vargas as Mercer led her from one group of guests to another, managing to say something amusing to each. At one point, when Glynnis Vargas turned to McGuire, she rolled her eyes in boredom and smiled.

  She was no fragile beauty, McGuire decided, choosing his third glass of wine. Definitely not a woman whose only contribution to the world was her appearance.

  He wondered why she had taken such pride in showing him the figurines. Maybe, McGuire mused to himself, because you’re unlike the others. You’re broke, you don’t live here, and you have nothing to be pretentious about.

  Or maybe she just felt like slumming for a few minutes. Which, he decided, was a more realistic explanation. He set his empty wine glass on a side table and turned to the entrance just as two security guards shouldered their way through the watchers at the open doorway. They were led by a slim, moustached man in a tuxedo who McGuire had noticed when he and Glynnis Vargas passed through the foyer on their way to the figurines. The man’s moustache appeared to have been trimmed with a scalpel; his hands, which had fluttered in emphasis with his exaggerated greeting to Glynnis Vargas, were impeccably manicured. McGuire assumed he was the museum curator or manager.

  But the man had lost his regal bearing. Perspiring heavily, his mouth tight, he stood in the entrance shifting nervously from one foot to the other, clenching and unclenching his hands. Finally he spoke sharply to the security guards behind him before approaching Glynnis Vargas.

  Donald Mercer had just guided two men toward an empty corner, walking between them, his hand against the back of each. They were laughing quietly, chuckling in anticipation of the punch line to one of Mercer’s stories. So when the curator arrived at Glynnis Vargas’s side and whispered a few frantic words to her, Mercer didn’t see her face cloud over and her hand fly to her mouth in an expression of horror.

  Glynnis Vargas suddenly bolted for the door, the man in the tuxedo trotting to match her pace and motioning for the uniformed security guards to follow.

  McGuire exited
the gallery a few steps behind; Mercer was well into his story, his back to the entrance, unaware of their departure.

  Glynnis Vargas strode through the painting gallery, the tuxedoed man a servile step in back of her. Ahead of them, a third security guard barred the entrance to the Getti Vargas Court. He stepped quickly aside as Glynnis Vargas swept past as though he were invisible.

  McGuire was now barely a pace behind, and he nodded authoritatively to the guard who hesitated just long enough for McGuire to enter the sculpture court. There the long line of Mochica figurines waited patiently in the darkness, as they had been created to do.

  In the dim light of the narrow room, Glynnis Vargas stared open-mouthed at the last figurine in the row, the young woman on the low pedestal. She was now headless, her slender neck snapped cleanly at the shoulders. Glynnis Vargas reached to retrieve the figurine’s head from the shelf, rolling it between her fingertips.

  “Mrs. Vargas . . .” McGuire began.

  “Who are you?” the man in the tuxedo demanded. His demeanour had snapped from sympathetic to authoritative.

  Glynnis Vargas turned to McGuire. “It’s all right,” she cautioned the man, who was bristling with anger. Her hand touched his shoulder. “This is Mr. McGuire. He’s a police officer. Mr. McGuire, this is Henry Gruenstein, the museum’s curator and manager.”

  Gruenstein extended a pink, sweaty hand in reluctant greeting. McGuire shook it, his eyes on Glynnis Vargas. She opened her hand, displaying the severed head in her palm.

  “Look what someone has done to the Mona Lisa of the Andes,” she said. “Look what a barbarian did to one of my babies.”

  “Who?”

  Gruenstein answered for her. “We don’t know. It happened after Mrs. Vargas inspected them just a few minutes ago. . . .”

  “Mr. McGuire was with me,” Glynnis Vargas interjected. “We examined them together.” Her sadness had turned to quiet seething.

  “Our security guard, Wayne,” gesturing at the man, now sullen and defensive, who had barred entry to the sculpture court, “discovered this vandalism on his rounds.”

  McGuire turned to the guard waiting in the doorway. “How often do you make your rounds?”

  “Every twenty minutes,” the guard replied. “I go from here, though the McCormick Gallery, up along the north hall, check the Western American Art Wing and return by the south hall . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Glynnis Vargas interrupted. “It’s too late for this Sam Spade nonsense. The damage has been done.” She set the figurine’s head gently back on the shelf, looked at it with sadness for a moment, then turned to the men. “Henry, I want the court closed immediately. From now on the figurines will be mounted behind tempered glass to protect them from further damage. Have the new display designed, priced and submitted to me for approval. Until then no one, no one, is to enter this court without two security guards accompanying them and their names recorded. And don’t bother reporting this to the police. There’s always a risk of inspiring other hoodlums.”

  Gruenstein closed his eyes and nodded.

  McGuire arched his eyebrows in surprise.

  “Mr. McGuire, you have a car I presume?” Glynnis Vargas asked.

  “It’s parked across the lot,” McGuire began.

  “Then please be kind enough to take me home.”

  “It may have been an accident.”

  They left the parking lot in silence, McGuire driving through the desert dusk along Palm Canyon Drive. The sun had set behind the San Jacinto Mountains an hour earlier. An hour’s less sunlight each day was another price paid by Los Angeles citizens who fled to Palm Springs to escape the smog, chaos and climate of the city.

  On Palm Canyon Drive, McGuire noticed young men in valet uniforms standing impatiently in front of restaurants in the downtown area, awaiting the arrival of late diners in their limousines. Their presence amused McGuire—he wondered if the restaurants were rated as much for the quality of their valet service as for the texture of their béarnaise sauces and the selection of their vintage Bordeaux wines. He grew aware of something else. Something about the valets that puzzled him, nagged at his mind.

  “It was no accident,” Glynnis Vargas said icily. “It was wanton destruction. Someone seized her with one hand and snapped off her head with the other.”

  “Any idea who? Or why?”

  She lowered her head, a hand across her eyes. “No,” she replied softly.

  “It looked as though it could be easily repaired,” McGuire offered.

  She smiled across at him. “What’s your background, Mr. McGuire?” she asked. “Where are you from?”

  McGuire told her. “Worcester, Massachusetts. A factory town. My father worked in a foundry. My mother was a housewife. I was a street kid.” He turned west off Palm Canyon onto Vista Chino. “A totally different world from yours.”

  “Of course it is,” she purred. “But not better or worse. Only different.”

  “You weren’t born wealthy either, were you?”

  “No. Just with a desire to be rich. I knew that if I was rich, I could acquire things that matter. Like culture. And freedom. Maybe even wisdom. And I almost have. Unfortunately, I have discovered the wretchedness of being rich is that you spend most of your time around other rich people.”

  “You seem to fit in well,” McGuire offered.

  “Do I?” She leaned against her door, as though searching for a fresh perspective on McGuire. “Now, you see, I don’t know whether I have been flattered or insulted.”

  “I didn’t mean to do either.”

  “No, you didn’t. A man like you wouldn’t. Which makes you so different from everyone else who was there tonight. Do you read philosophy, Mr. McGuire?”

  McGuire snorted. “I’m a cop, Mrs. Vargas. Philosophy’s not worth much to a cop.” Not true, a voice in his head began. Ollie Schantz was talking about philosophy just the other day.

  “Ignorance is degrading when found in the company of riches. That’s what Schopenhauer said about wealthy people. And he was right.”

  They were at the end of Vista Chino, where Via Linda began its ascent up the hill to the three isolated villas.

  “Then why did you come here?” McGuire asked. There was no reply, and McGuire wheeled the car in front of her security gate. In the near darkness cast by the hills around them he turned to her. “You’re as rich as these people, but you’re not like them. What brought you here from Brazil?”

  Her answer startled him. “Poverty,” she said. Her eyes were on the massive shadow of the hill rising behind her house.

  “Poverty?” McGuire laughed drily. “Here? In Palm Springs?”

  “In Brazil. In Rio, Sao Paulo, everywhere. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I had a choice of either staying and trying to ignore my conscience or claiming my American citizenship and coming here. The poverty is still down there. It’s just out of sight.” She twisted the door handle.

  “Mrs. Vargas,” McGuire said. “Somebody doesn’t want you here. Bunker Crawford didn’t show up at your house by accident. And what happened tonight was no coincidence. Crawford’s dead and my partner is barely alive. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “No,” she said, stepping out of the car. “I can’t.”

  McGuire sprang from his seat. “I noticed a man around the back of your house when I left this afternoon. He scrambled up the hill when he saw me watching him. I don’t think he belonged there.”

  “What are you saying, Mr. McGuire?” She extended a finger and pushed a button on the side of her security wall.

  “I’m saying I don’t think you should go into your house alone. . . .”

  A man’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Sim?”

  She spoke a few non-English words in reply and McGuire was reminded again that the second language of California was Spanish. The gate slid ope
n, its metal wheels squeaking in the silence, and Glynnis Vargas looked back at McGuire as she strode between them. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. McGuire,” she said. “Thank you for escorting me home. Please call me tomorrow.”

  She entered her lush gardens, and the gate closed behind her.

  A dark figure awaited her in the open doorway. They embraced briefly and the door closed. The sound of a security latch sliding in place echoed beyond the palms and shrubbery to McGuire, who stood in the darkness longer than he should have before entering the car and driving away.

  Art Lumsden answered McGuire’s knock, a cigar clenched between his teeth. He removed it slowly, blew a cloud of blue smoke over McGuire’s shoulder and grinned. “Yeah, I’m still here, McGuire,” his voice rumbled. “What’s up? Or you just here to borrow a cup of gin?”

  “What do you know about Glynnis Vargas?” McGuire asked. He moved away from the door to draw Lumsden outside, and to avoid inhaling his cigar smoke.

  Lumsden’s smile widened. “Ah, the elegant Miz Vargas. Yes, yes.” He stepped down the walk to join McGuire and rested his considerable weight against the trunk of a sturdy palm. “You ever see so much money and sex on two legs before?”

  “You talk to her?”

  “Yeah. This morning. She even let me come in the front door. Didn’t send me around to the wetback entrance.”

  “Where was she when Crawford was shot?”

  Lumsden lowered his massive chin and raised his eyes in an expression of disbelief. “Now let me see here. Are you suggesting that Miz Glynnis Vargas, the pride of Palm Springs society, could have stood over there in her Gucci pumps with a two-handed grip on her Smith-and-Wesson and pumped four bullets into poor old Bunkie?”

  McGuire rubbed his eyes. His day’s supply of adrenaline had dissipated hours ago. “No. I’m just curious to know where she was.”

  “At the Desert Museum,” Lumsden replied. “Sipping tea and sherry with half the heavies in town. Arrived about six. Left about eight. Couldn’t be more than a hundred, two hundred witnesses with her. How’s that?”