The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  “I know. But face it: Geraldo’s got the best deal in fifty miles. Besides, how could anybody trade the view, the lake, the Gonzales family? See, there are good memories, too.”

  She reached down, felt me, and gave a murmur of approval. “You won’t be thinking of her, then?”

  “No,” I lied. “Only of you.”

  FIVE

  Half an hour later, ignoring siesta time, we dressed and wandered up the beach, hand in hand. The observer was gone, but as we reached the landing with the love seat I stopped to enjoy the view and something caught my eye:

  A pair of cigarette butts littered the ground in front of the cement bench. But not a local brand: Gauloises.

  We entered the big thatched dining area that adjoined the Gonzales house and took a seat at a metal table under a slowly rotating overhead fan. At the bar, twenty feet away, a couple of local men hunched over their beer bottles. The waiter, a fat, dark man in his forties, appeared with a menu.

  “Botanas,” I ordered. “Y dos Superiores.”

  Two minutes later our waiter reappeared with a tray full of Yucatecan delicacies—salbutes, made of fried tortillas topped with onion and pork or turkey; escaveche, or chopped sea snails in a saladlike mix; tacos al carbón, or corn tortillas rolled around charbroiled pork; and fried chips with salsa, all to be washed down with bottles of Superior, Mexico’s best beer.

  “I should have gone to the dig,” Pepper commented, sipping her beer through the foam.

  “But aren’t you glad you didn’t?” I asked.

  She nudged me under the table. “What do you think?”

  “I think after a few botanas I’ll be ready for another round.”

  “Save some energy to meet the others,” she said, smiling. “After all I’ve told them about you, they’ll be expecting Superman.”

  “Even Iron Man Eric?”

  “Now, come on, don’t start that. How could you possibly be jealous after …?”

  “Easy. He’s had you for two field seasons and I have to make do with a field visit.”

  “Yeah, but he just gets to look.”

  “You sure?”

  “You’re going to piss me off.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. You put up with my crap.”

  She nudged me again. “Anyway, you’ll like him. He’s got a great sense of humor. But he’s totally dedicated to his work and loves this country. He told me it even cost him his wife. She had some high-powered job and didn’t want to be separated from him for these long periods. So he doesn’t see his daughter very much. But he’s become godfather to a little boy in the village where our workers live.”

  “Sounds like a fanatic to me.”

  “Give him a chance.”

  “So what’s the story with him and Paul Hayes?”

  She shrugged and took another sip of beer. “Hayes was sort of his mentor, helped him get grants and wrote a recommendation to help Eric get his job with the university in Houston when Eric left Tulane. Now Hayes is retired and he’s just kind of tagging along to do his own thing. He’s not really part of the project, except on paper, to give him legitimacy with the Mexicans.”

  “So what’s he really doing?” I asked, chewing at a salbut and savoring the greasy taste. “Last night he said something about trying to compare different versions of the Chilam Balam books.”

  “That seems to be it,” she said. “You know, the books were written in European characters by Mayan scribes as soon as the Spanish taught them the alphabet, but most of the books contain fragments from the old hieroglyphic codices and parts of the ancient calendars.”

  I nodded. The books were named after a famous Mayan prophet, or Chilan, who supposedly had foretold the coming of the Spanish a few years before their actual arrival. Now many Mayan villages, especially in the old heartland of the insurgents, had their own tattered books, jealously guarded.

  “He thinks that if he can compare enough of them,” Pepper went on, “he can find some insight into the way the calendar changed over time. And that could help solve some of the controversies about the relationship of the Mayan calendar and the Christian one. Many of the Chilam Balam books contain Mayan calendar counts.”

  “Well, I’ve read some of his work,” I said. “Brilliant—if you can understand it.”

  She laughed. “I know. But he’s really a teddy bear. He lost his wife a few years ago and I think he’s desperate for something to do.”

  “And the others?” I asked. “Are they desperate, too?”

  Pepper yawned. “Just April. But I think she’s been desperate all her life. Her father’s a senior partner in some big Houston law firm. The Blakes are part of the country club set. Makes you want to gag. I think that’s why April’s so screwed up. She can’t figure out why she should do anything at all and her father keeps pushing her. So she’s in grad school for right now and he pressured Eric to take her on, figured maybe Mayan archaeology would give her something to be interested in. I think she’d have been thrown out a long time ago except that the Blakes give about a jillion dollars to the university every year.”

  “Sounds unhappy.”

  “Yeah. And José hasn’t had things any easier, though I’m not sure it’s his fault, exactly.”

  “José Durán?”

  “Yeah. Not a bad guy, but moody as hell. I guess it’s part of the Latin mystique. I think he and April are getting it on, but she’s probably pretty demanding.”

  I smiled. “I’ve heard of Durán,” I said. “Never met him, but the last year I was down here he was a student, working out of INAH in Mérida. Everybody said he was one of Mexico’s up-and-coming archaeologists.”

  “Well, he may be, but he seems to have slowed down along the way. My guess is too many women and too little digging.”

  “Well, that’s his business,” I said, “just so long as …”

  “Save your breath. He isn’t my type. But if you keep up this way, he might have to do.”

  My turn to administer a kick under the table.

  “Well, at least everybody isn’t at each other’s throats yet,” I commented, remembering expeditions where that had happened.

  “No, Minnie keeps us sane.”

  “Minnie?”

  “Minnie O’Toole. I wrote you about her. She’s a librarian from Des Moines, retired a few months ago and decided to have an adventure. She’s sort of the mother-confessor. One of these volunteers from Earth First, paid her own way—and worth every centavo.” She sighed. “Eric and I were secretly hoping she’d get together with Paul. I don’t think he’d mind, either, except he doesn’t stay in camp long enough. Still, when they’re together, they make a fun pair. You’d almost think they were old marrieds—or old lovers.”

  I was about to reply that maybe they were when I heard movement behind me and turned to see our landlord.

  “Doctor, Doctora,” Geraldo Gonzales greeted. “I saw you both here and knew I had to stop and tell you how glad I am that everything is all right. And to see you again, especially, don Alan, looking so well, hardly a day older, while my poor hair has gone all gray and I have aches and pains everywhere.”

  “You look not a day over forty,” I lied.

  “You’re kind. May I join you?” The waiter appeared from nowhere and our host asked for a beer. “And no bill for any of this,” he ordered. “These are my guests.”

  He waved away my thanks. “No, it is so good to see you here, so happy, after such a long time. …”

  We whiled away the afternoon, talking of old times, and after a little while Pepper rose and excused herself.

  “I’m keeping the doctora,” Geraldo apologized, rising, but she put a hand on his shoulder. “Stay. I just need to take a nap before the others come in.”

  Geraldo watched her make her way past the empty tables. “A very beautiful young woman,” he observed.

  “Very.”

  He looked away. “I wondered why you never came back to visit us.”

  “I wanted to,” I sa
id. “But there were things.”

  “I understand. I haven’t seen her for many years now. She doesn’t come here anymore, either. I heard she works out of Mexico City.”

  I nodded and raised my glass. It was good to know we wouldn’t be running into each other.

  The old man reached over and patted my arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “It’s okay. And believe me, I’ve thought about you and doña Martina over the years, and of this place.”

  He shook his head sadly. “But it isn’t the same. Everything is changed. When they built Cancún we thought it would mean more tourists, and there are some. But most of them stay in the expensive tourist hotels.” He raised his hands in despair. “Caráy! Why would anybody who can pay a hundred dollars a night come down here? But mainly it’s the drugs.” He pushed his chair closer to mine. “When PRI left power in December and we got Fox as president, we hoped things would change. And maybe they will. But every bunch comes in and promises to clean up and they’re worse than the ones before. You know the governor of the state fled just three years ago, because he was implicated in the drug traffic. They recruit the young men out of the villages, even. And now we have soldiers everywhere, because the policía judicial are so crooked.”

  It was my turn to comfort him: “At least you have a wonderful family. How are the children?”

  Soon we were looking at pictures of his children.

  “Geraldo is an engineer in Mexico City. The pollution is horrible, but …” A shrug. “And Tomás is doing his year of social service as a doctor in a clinic in Chihuahua. Martinita is a nurse now, at the big Seguro Social in Mérida, and Maria is married to an architect in Campeche. None of them have chosen to stay here except Rita, and there is no choice.”

  “Oh?” Rita, I recalled dimly, was the youngest, a three-year-old with a baggy dress and a smile.

  “Doctor,” he said, lapsing into formal address, “Rita has been sick for the last two years. There were times when we thought we were going to lose her. I took her to all the best clinics.” He shook his head sadly. “They did all the tests. Caráy, you wouldn’t believe all the things they did to that poor girl, I could have cried. Only eighteen years old, Doctor, and to suffer so much.”

  “I’m sorry. What’s the problem?”

  He bent his head, as if merely thinking about it added weight. “Some kind of disease of the muscles. The one that the famous baseball player had.”

  “Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

  “Esto. They say there is no cure.” He shoved away his empty beer glass. “She’s in Mérida now, at another clinic, for more tests. Martina wanted to go with her, but poor Martina is exhausted. I told her our daughter Martinita could see to things.”

  I didn’t know what to say and my friend seemed to sense my discomfort. “No le hace, Doctor. It’s what God wants, verdad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Besides, if she dies, maybe it’s a blessing. Who would want to live in this world we have now? Sometimes I’m glad to be near the end of my run. You remember, Doctor, when it was only arquéologos and researchers who came here and some tourists. But now we get the dregs. The police leave us alone because they know we have American professors. It’s good for the economy. But now …” He nodded over his shoulder and I saw a man with a ponytail seated at the bar. As he turned his head, I realized that it was the same man I’d seen earlier watching us swim. “ … we have people like that one, who come here just to sell drugs.”

  “You know that man?”

  Geraldo snorted. “His name is Felipe Jordan. I think he’s a huach—a Mexican—or maybe even from your country. He speaks English. He’s been around here for the last three or four months, has no work. I’ve seen him talking to hippie tourists up in Bacalar. I know he’s selling drugs. It’s only a matter of time before they arrest him.”

  “Where does he stay?”

  “He rents a room in Bacalar at a place where they don’t ask questions.”

  “Maybe he won’t be arrested,” I suggested, making the money sign. “Maybe he isn’t working on his own.”

  “That could be, too.”

  “Don Geraldo, who is Chucho Cantu?”

  Suddenly my host’s face went ashen and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Por Dios, Doctor, I don’t know anything about him. He’s a businessman, a rancher, very rich.” The innkeeper shoved back his chair. “If you will excuse me, I see someone in the office.” He tried to laugh. “I can’t afford to turn away guests.”

  I watched him flee and idly shoed away a fly. So was the man with the ponytail working for Chucho Cantu? Was that why he’d been on top of the pyramid, giving some kind of signal to the smugglers? Perhaps. Then why had he been watching Pepper and me?

  But I was being paranoid: It wasn’t exactly pathological to watch a pretty woman swim. Still, the coincidences of his proximity seemed odd. I was shaken out of my thoughts by the sound of a vehicle on the loose pebbles of the parking lot and doors slamming. I looked toward the entranceway, where don Geraldo had his office, and saw shadows blocking the afternoon sun.

  Then Indiana Jones emerged.

  SIX

  Okay, so he didn’t have a whip.

  But the rest of the props were there: battered felt hat, khaki shirt open at the throat showing a tuft of manly chest hair, razor-pressed jeans stuck into expensive full-length leather boots, and a dark beard, besides.

  Eric Blackburn. Project director. Associate professor at a respectable university and shepherd of about a half million in NSF grant funds at a time when researchers would sell their wives and daughters for travel funds to a professional meeting.

  He moved through the office and into the restaurant like a cyclone, bearing bodies in his wake. The bartender greeted him and even the man with the ponytail managed a smile, though I almost sensed he was smiling at me instead of the newcomer.

  “You have to be Alan,” Blackburn boomed, sticking out a hand. As I took it I realized that, though I’d imagined him taller than I was, he was really an inch or so below my own height. “Tino, beers for everybody. Put them on my tab.”

  Behind Blackburn I saw the grinning Hayes, scratching his bald head, and behind him, a man and woman, hanging back.

  “And you’re Eric Blackburn,” I managed, feeling stupid afterward. Who did I think he was, Dr. Livingstone?

  “Where’s our girl Pepper? You two didn’t have a fight?”

  “She went down to take a nap.”

  Blackburn sat down heavily in one of the chairs. “Tino, how about moving these two tables together?”

  The bartender hastened to comply and I saw the man called Jordan had turned around on his stool so he could enjoy the show. He half raised the beer the barkeep had placed before him, but Blackburn ignored the salute.

  “Do you know Jose and April?” Blackburn asked, and as I rose from my seat I got a look at the pair who’d been hanging behind.

  Durán, a slight man with a thin mustache, stepped forward, giving a little head bow and a quick handshake. “Mucho gusto,” he said quickly and then stepped back. The girl, April, tried to smile, but it came out as a sneer. A washed out blonde with a halter top, she looked like she’d been on a diet for the last two years, and her legs reminded me of a pair of matchsticks.

  “I’m tired,” she announced. “I just want to go down and get some rest.”

  Durán followed her with his eyes and then took a seat on the other side of the table.

  “Where’s Min?” Blackburn demanded.

  “Did somebody call my name?”

  A gangly woman with gray hair appeared in the entrance-way, a straw hat in one hand and a canvas satchel in the other. “You didn’t want to leave the field notes in the van, did you?” she asked.

  “What would we do without our mother?” Blackburn asked. He got up and made a sweeping gesture: “This is Minnie O’Toole.”

  She gave me a thin hand with just enough pressure and a warm smile. “And you’re
Alan. All Pepper’s done is talk about you. Funny: You’re not what I would have expected.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well”—she laughed—”after what Pepper’s been telling us, I really expected Indiana Jones.”

  “I guess they don’t have enough to go around,” I said dryly.

  She put a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry, I’d have thought it was a little strange if you really had looked that way. There’s something phony about that type, don’t you think?”

  That was when I knew we were going to be friends.

  “Well,” Blackburn began, lifting his glass, “here’s to Alan’s return to the Mayab. Let’s hope what happened last night isn’t a bad omen. Paul here told us about it. Hell of a thing. Next they’ll be raiding our camp.”

  Paul Hayes picked up a taco. “With that Lieutenant Tapia I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Blackburn smiled. “So tell me, Alan, how’s it go with contract archaeology? Pepper says you run quite an operation.”

  “We’re a small company,” I said. “But we’ve been lucky enough to get a few contracts.”

  “I doubt it’s luck,” Blackburn said. “You know, I did some work in the Southeast years ago. Florida. I’ve always wondered how you guys can figure out the stratigraphy of those dirt sites like you do.” He gave a little chuckle. “It’s a little easier down here, where we have monumental structures. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, “come on out tomorrow and you can get back into tombs and temples.” He turned to Durán. “José’ll show you around, won’t you, José?”

  The Mexican nodded. “With pleasure,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “I think Paul and Pepper and I are going to have to go back to where the Rover’s stuck and haul it out,” Blackburn went on. “We’ll be a wrecker service for the day.”

  Minnie lowered her glass. “I worked for a week on a contract archaeology dig before I came here,” she said. “I thought it was fascinating. It’s what got me interested in coming here to Mexico.”