The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  I thought of Pepper’s descriptions of Eric and smiled as I recalled my own reactions. “Sometimes Pepper’s enthusiasm carries her away,” I said.

  “Then she announced that you were actually coming here and I’d have to meet you.” His face was red now from the alcohol. “Do you know I actually hoped that airplane would crash?”

  “You can’t be blamed for being human.”

  “I can be blamed for being stupid, for not realizing that there was more to it than Felicia had ever told me.”

  “I’ve got my share of responsibility,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said wryly. “You’re responsible for not being the son-of-a-bitch she said you were. That made it very hard for me.”

  The alcohol was making my head swim, but it didn’t matter. “José, maybe we’ve both been a little blind.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Maybe we were both wrong about Felicia. Maybe she’s more troubled than either of us realized at the time. Maybe she brings in memories of me as a way to keep men at arm’s length. Maybe no man can give her what she wants.”

  He nodded. “It’s been over between us for two years. But I still see her when I’m in Mexico City because she works at the main office of INAH. It makes it somewhat difficult.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “She has another man now. An architect named Perea. He’s old and he has a wife and grandchildren. He will tire of her as soon as a younger woman comes along.”

  Sadness settled over me like dirt being tossed into an open grave. I saw her as she’d been when we’d met and fallen in love and I imagined her as she was now, older, worn, with a hard set to her mouth.

  “I’m sorry for her, then,” I said.

  Durán shrugged. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “No.” I shifted in the bed.

  “Well,” he said with a rueful smile, “I seem to have a weakness for women with problems.”

  “April.”

  “Yes. But it won’t go anywhere.”

  “No?”

  “There’s quite a difference in our ages. Not to mention cultures. And, frankly, she’s a very difficult girl to get to know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She builds a wall. You think …” Another shrug. “And then you find you’re facing that wall. I made the mistake of telling her the pills weren’t good for her and she got furious and asked what did I know. Of course, I had to tell her I didn’t know anything at all, at least about her, but I was willing to listen. But she said I was only after what all men were after. And maybe I was.”

  “And yet most of the time the two of you seem to get along.”

  “Alas, my friend, I think she wants a father figure.”

  I laughed with him.

  “In any case,” he went on, “she’s leaving in a couple of days. She can go back to the Gran Disnilandia del norte, where they grow psychiatrists on trees.”

  “Will you do me a favor, José?”

  “Probably, so long as it isn’t giving advice about women.”

  “Not precisely. But I would appreciate it if you’d help me get out of this room and drive me over to the hospital where Pepper and Santos are.”

  He set his glass down. “I think,” he said with a smile, “that can be arranged.”

  And so, half an hour later, I found myself leaning on my cane, next to her bed in the little private clinic where she’d been taken. She awoke a few seconds later and smiled.

  “They told me you’d be here when you were well enough,” she said, “but I knew it wouldn’t take you that long.”

  I reached down and put my hand against her cheek. She turned her head and pressed her lips against it.

  “You know you missed your plane.” It was all I could think to say.

  “Yeah. The department will have to hold registration without me. Imagine all those students I won’t get to advise.”

  “I was scared,” I said finally. “I thought you were dead.”

  “That works both ways. I saw them shoot you, you know. And I didn’t care what they did to me after that. Then I got mad.”

  “Look, this may not be the right place to say this, but haven’t we been fooling around long enough?”

  “Fooling around?” Her brows arched. “Is that what we’ve been doing?”

  “Hell, you know what I mean.” I cleared my throat. “I guess what I’m saying is, I can’t imagine not being with you for, well …” I shrugged.

  “Go on.”

  “Are you going to drag it out of me?”

  “Damned straight. A girl has a right to hear this kind of thing.”

  “Well, the first time I mentioned it, a couple of years ago, you said you needed time.”

  “Two years ago is time,” she said. “But what about your work with Eric? What about the site?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t think so.” She kissed my hand again. “When you see Santos, tell him hi for me. They say he’s on the same floor.”

  “Yeah.” I melted away, feeling beaten, and found José in the hallway. Doctors and nurses eyed the curious spectacle as he helped me, limping, to a door at the end of the corridor. I knocked and went in.

  “I’ll wait here,” José said tactfully.

  Santos was still attached to an IV tube and his face looked drawn. I stood over him for a few minutes, watching the medicines drip from the bag into the tube and trickle down to his arm. When I couldn’t stand it anymore I said his name.

  His eyes flickered open.

  “Don Alan.”

  “I’m sorry this happened, Santos. If there’s any way I can ever repay—”

  “No le hace” he said weakly. “Those were bad men.” He managed a smile. “They said we did a good job on them.”

  “We did a good job, my friend.”

  “All I wish is they would take away these tubes. I lie here and think about beans and pork.”

  “I’ll get you some when they let you out.”

  “The doctors say I may not be able to eat it again. The balas did something to my guts. Can you imagine that? A man not being able to eat beans and pork?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t imagine it.”

  “But maybe they don’t know as much as they think, masima?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Are you going to work with don Eric, then?”

  “I told him I would.”

  He looked away. “I may not be able to.”

  “You will. What would we do without you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Santos, I need you to answer a question for me. It’s about your grandfather.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “Yes. Don Jildo. I told you I talked with him and he told me things, showed me his zaztun, cleaned my wound, fed me.”

  The man in the bed still didn’t reply.

  “One of the things he told me was about how the man Williams, the Ingles who came here years ago, when your grandfather was a boy, brought his own darkness with him, and how no matter what don Eleut, the h-men, did, there was no way to dispel that darkness. Finally don Eleut realized it was something foreign, something don Eleut and all his medicine couldn’t affect, and that’s when don Eleut realized the Ingles was going to die soon.”

  “Yes,” Santos said finally. “My grandfather told me.”

  “But he also said it was the kind of darkness that only hurt the Ingles and not other people.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he said there was another kind of darkness, like an evil wind, that came to some other men and when a man had that kind of illness, it not only destroyed him but it sucked in the people around him.”

  “He told me that, too.”

  I took a deep breath. “Santos, do you believe there really is such an evil wind?”

  The man in the bed nodded. “There is, don Alan. I have seen it. And there is no escape.”

  I stood up straight. “One more thing: Where’s your
grandfather now? Where’s don Jildo?”

  His lips moved and I heard the words, but it took a long time for them to register:

  “My grandfather died two years ago when the last people left the old village. That is where he is buried.”

  Later that day, thanks to José, April came to visit and we had a long talk. I asked and she told me about the darkness.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The next morning, against Eric’s advice, I abandoned the motel and had him drive me back to Bacalar. Pepper would stay in the hospital for another day or two and Santos somewhat longer, though I was assured he was making satisfactory progress.

  Supported by my new cane, I walked the beach, drank beer, retold my story to an admiring Geraldo, and bothered his workers. Eric, who insisted that I wait until my head was completely healed, whipped back and forth to the work site, tending to details that had been left hanging due to the recent excitement. Late the afternoon of the second day, satisfied that the dizziness wouldn’t recur, I took the Neon onto the highway and kept going until I reached the little village of Xul. When I got back to Bacalar it was dark, and an anxious Eric was waiting to give me hell.

  “Damn, are you going to do this every day?” he asked good-naturedly as I got out of the car and hobbled toward the path that led around the restaurant and onto the back patio, with the steps to the beach. “Look at you: You look like you’ve lost a gallon of blood, you’re so white.” He patted my shoulder. “I don’t know if I can stand having you around, with all this excitement. I’ve already got a new crop of gray hairs.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I promised.

  He let out a huge guffaw. “Hey, lighten up, fella. Let’s have a beer.”

  “Don’t feel like it, but thanks,” I said.

  “That’s a bad sign.” He called over a waiter and seconds later handed me a Superior. “Seriously, Alan, is your head still bothering you? Are you okay?”

  “I will be,” I said. “But it may take a while.”

  “I understand.” He lifted his own beer and we stood by the wall, looking down on the lake, as Pepper and I had a few nights before. A few nights that now seemed like an eternity.

  “Look,” Eric said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “If it makes any difference, I’ve been talking to the folks at the university. I explained about the new site. I downplayed the drug business a little, just said the army had cleaned out a bunch of thugs and the place was completely secure now. I promised the dean and the chancellor I’d fly back in a couple of weeks to make a special presentation, after I’ve got some good slides and a sketch map. Then I plan to fly to Washington to talk to National Geographic. This kind of thing is right up their alley.” He sipped from the bottle. “I’ll be counting on you to run things while I’m gone.”

  I raised my own beer, started to sip, and then lowered it again.

  “What are you going to tell them about Paul’s theory?” I asked.

  “Oh, shit.” Eric sighed. “I guess he told you his ideas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think it’d be best just to leave it alone. There isn’t any real proof. The whole business is bonkers.” He leaned over the wall, staring down into the darkness of the lake.

  “Think so?”

  He turned to stare at me. “C’mon, Alan: ancient Phoenician Christians sailing to the New World? Look, Paul was my friend. More than that, actually. He helped me over the years when I needed help. Wrote letters, made calls, pulled strings. I wouldn’t have gotten hired by Houston if it hadn’t been for him.” He took a long swig. “But face it, Alan: Paul wasn’t the man he used to be. When Marlene died it took something out of him. He had a stroke. He was in bad physical shape, but he wouldn’t admit it. I think he may have had some little strokes, you know, the kind that affect the part of the brain that has to do with logic. I think that’s where he got all this crazy stuff.”

  “He told me he’d been a diffusionist for years.”

  “Well, I guess we’ve all considered the possibility of diffusion from the Old World. But I suspect Paul was exaggerating when he told you that. Anyway, the point is, it’s moot now. Paul’s dead, there’s no evidence, so it doesn’t matter.”

  I thought about the temple of the masks. Seven of them, staring down at me from around the doorway at the top of the temple stairs. Seven masks, illuminated by a half-second flash of light …

  “Then you didn’t see anything when you went to the site,” I said. “Nothing that would back up Paul’s theory.”

  “No. Of course, I was just there a few hours. I had a bush pilot put down on the sacbé and that pissed off the soldiers guarding the place. I had to show my INAH permit and convince ’em it covered this site as well as where we were working, and I’d be out of there after I took some pictures. So all I could do was make a quick tour of the main groups of buildings. But it looked like a post-Classic site to me. Which argues pretty convincingly against any Phoenicians or Caananites, or whatever they were, since the post-Classic dates from about A.D. 1000.”

  “You didn’t see any masks?” I asked.

  “No. Were you expecting me to?”

  “Just a thought,” I said.

  “Crap, Alan, I don’t think we need Paul’s bullshit to justify this as a major site. In fact, crank fantasies like his can only hurt us. You know what would happen if I brought that up to National Geographic, or NSF, or the National Endowment for the Humanities? They award grants through peer review. We’d get laughed out of Yucatán.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “So I say we bury Paul and remember him for the good, decent man he was, hoist a few beers to him, and go on about our business. And once we start mapping at Kaax Muul, we’ll name a group of buildings after him, which is what he deserved.”

  “Kaax Muul,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, that’s the name I picked. A little PR can’t hurt anything.” He waved a hand. “I know, purists might say it should be Lubaanah and the place we’ve been working ought to be changed to something else, but what the hell does it matter? These are all recent names. Who the hell knows what the ancient Maya called these places?”

  He looked down at his empty bottle. “Another one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He called over the waiter and then turned back to lean on the wall.

  “I was thinking of bringing some people back with me from the States. Sort of a tour to drum up support. I was talking to old man Blake and he’s definitely interested in coming.” He smiled thinly. “Without his daughter, of course.”

  It was my turn to contemplate the dark waters.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said finally.

  Eric’s head jerked up. “What?”

  “I said I don’t think Blake should come here.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? The man’s giving us half a million dollars, and that’s just to start.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what the hell’s your problem?”

  “It’s April’s problem,” I said. “I talked to her.”

  “She won’t be here. Look, fella, talk straight. What’s eating you?”

  I stared into the lake, where the darkness swirled and congealed like the vortex of a tornado.

  “I had a talk with April yesterday.”

  “You mean she was lucid?”

  “Pretty much. She told me why she and her father don’t get along.”

  “Alan …” He shook his head, exasperated. “What the shit do I care why they don’t get along? I’m not her goddamned psychiatrist.”

  “She says her father molested her when she was younger. Not just once or twice but repeatedly. She even aborted his baby.”

  He stared at me, eyes wary.

  “That’s not something I need to hear about,” he said in a level voice. “It’s not something you ought to be digging into, either. Do you want to see this whole
damned project go down in flames?”

  “No.”

  “Then forget what she told you. The girl’s unstable. God only knows what she’s dreamed up. We don’t need to get dragged into her feud with her father.”

  “And if it’s true?”

  “Screw if it’s true. If she’s pissed at her old man, let her go to her lawyer, or the cops, or whoever handles those things. But not to us. This is, I repeat, none of our goddamned business, not yours and not mine. So drop it.”

  “I plan to. I mean, I agree with you, it is between her and her father, and maybe the law, but, like you say, it’s not for us to jump into.”

  The other man seemed to relax. “All right, then. Jesus, Alan, you were making me nervous. You have any idea what would happen if old man Blake knew we were even discussing this? That anybody paid any attention when his spaced-out daughter started babbling lies about him?”

  “Eric, you don’t understand. April wasn’t telling me this because she wanted me to do anything against her father. She hates him and she’ll probably split as soon as she gets home, anything so she doesn’t have to see him again. But none of this was anything she volunteered. I had to drag it out of her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I guess I’m talking about things we feel and can’t make sense of on a conscious level. Things that pop up at odd times and tell us to run away from something or somebody.”

  “You’re babbling, fella.”

  “Maybe. But I believe in intuition. Though I think it’s usually based on little clues that are too subtle for us to recognize consciously. I once knew a woman whose father was an alcoholic, for instance. After being raised in that kind of atmosphere, she could pick up on another alcoholic within ten minutes.”

  “Where are you going with this?” His tone was hard now, aggressive, and my hand tightened on the cane.

  “I think you know. Nobody knew why April always seemed to be sick when you stayed in camp here. There was even a rumor that the two of you were having an affair.” I waved away his objection. “I know, it wasn’t true. But then I asked myself, why else would she always want to be where you were? When the rest of the crew wasn’t there?”