The Maya Stone Murders

by Malcolm Shuman

  “Oh?”

  “I was being sarcastic. I mean he and some of his friends were looting Ek Balam when Gregory first started going there. It’s fairly common in the Mayan villages. The people are poor and the sites are sources of income. The government can’t guard but a few. Gregory said the best way to protect the site was to put the looters to work as crew members; let them earn money honestly.”

  “Isn’t that risky?”

  “Apparently not. The Maya are very loyal. And Gregory loves everything Mayan. I think he’d do more for his workers than he would for some members of his own family. As a result, they’d die for him. Artemio was one of the better crew members. He worked like a Trojan and showed a real interest in the archaeology itself. You have to understand: The contemporary Maya have almost no real sense of what happened in their history. Most of that was wiped out by the Spanish. All they have are myths that they’ve combined with recent events, so you get a hodgepodge. Artemio was more intelligent than most; he knows how to read Spanish, and Gregory started to lend him books. At the end of the third field season, Gregory fixed it for him to come up as his laboratory assistant. But I think now that was a mistake.”

  We crossed Poydras, heading for Canal, but somehow my mind was back with the faces of villagers I had thought I’d known, but never really known.

  “It’s a mistake to take somebody out of his natural milieu,” Katherine said. “You show him a whole new world, one he can’t ever really be a part of. You let him touch it, taste it, dream it, and when you’ve finished he isn’t satisfied with his world anymore, but he’ll never be able to really be a part of the new one. Last year it was all new to Artemio. He was big-eyed and full of wonder at it all. This year he realizes he’s not a professor at an American university, like he told everybody in his village he was going to be. Instead, he’s just a flunky, at the beck and call of graduate students and secretaries. He doesn’t speak enough of the language to feel comfortable, and there’s nobody here who speaks his language.”

  “No Spanish speakers?” I asked in surprise.

  “I mean Mayan. That’s his first language. Spanish is just the lingua franca. Contrary to the popular view, most archaeologists are terrible linguists; it’s all most of them can do to speak Spanish.”

  We turned onto Canal. “Gregory was supposed to counsel him but Gregory isn’t very good at handling that kind of situation. I guess it will end up with us having to send him back. He didn’t have but a few more months left on the grant, anyway. After that, his work permit expires.”

  I found a parking place just off Conti and we walked toward Royal, passing a knot of boisterous tourists. The headquarters for Vieux Carré District is on the corner of Conti and Royal, a well-lit building with a grille fence that fits in with the surroundings.

  Katherine identified herself and the booking sergeant had her fill out some papers and handed her a plastic bag with the prisoner’s effects. Five minutes later a buzzer sounded and a thick metal door opened. A young, jaunty policeman came out with the manacled Mayan in tow.

  “Tulane’s gonna pay for it, huh?” the desk sergeant asked. He shrugged, as if the University were more foolish than he thought.

  “What did he do?” Katherine asked the policeman with Artemio.

  “What didn’t he do?” the policeman answered. “How about putting a barstool through a plate-glass window and trying to gouge the eyes out of the bartender?”

  Artemio looked up at her with a pleading expression. “I don’t … hit him first,” he stammered and I flinched from the odor of alcohol.

  The policeman removed his handcuffs. “I hope you got a place to keep him, lady. It’ll take at least a day for him to sober up.”

  “I’ll see to it,” she said crisply, once more the efficient secretary. “Meanwhile, I take it there’s no cash bond?”

  “No, he’s in your custody,” the desk sergeant said. “You got my sympathy. The summons you signed has the court date on it.”

  She thanked them and marched the Indian out. As the door closed behind us she took a deep breath, and then turned on Artemio. “Artemio, you stink, do you hear me? Tu apestas. Bañate. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He nodded with shame. “Doña Catalina, mil disculpas. Es que …”

  “No me dices nada,” she said angrily. “Just go home and stay there.”

  “Your Spanish is good,” I commented, watching her shoo the drunken man into the backseat.

  “Purely sophomore level,” she said. “Though I have been to Yucatán a few times, and, of course, Gregory has to entertain Latin American scholars frequently.”

  I wheeled out into the traffic and Katherine hunted up another cigarette. “I told myself I was going to give up these damned things, but it looks like it isn’t going to happen.”

  I moved my head slightly, glimpsing the backseat from the corner of my eye. The Mayan was staring glumly out of the window. The smell of whiskey was overpowering, so I cranked down the window.

  “Thanks,” Katherine said.

  “Where does he live?”

  “He has a little apartment on Burthe. He was staying with a faculty family, but he got impossible this year.”

  As if in answer, a lugubrious wail rose from the backseat and I twisted around. Artemio was crying, pounding his head against the car window.

  “Kalaan in amigo tumen in keban,” he moaned in Mayan. “El profesor es mi amigo. My friend … in carcel … because … me.”

  “What’s that about?” I asked Katherine.

  She shrugged. “Oh, he’s blaming himself for everything. He’s always sorry afterward.”

  “Que me lleve Dios por el pecado mío,” he sobbed.

  “Oh, Christ,” Katherine muttered. “Now he wants to die.” She turned around in her seat. “Well, if God doesn’t get you, I will. Me oyes?”

  But he didn’t hear, because the next sound that emanated from the back of the car was a loud snore.

  I found the apartment on one of the narrow one-way streets so characteristic of the Carrollton section. I opened the back door of my Firebird and we wrestled the drunken man across the lawn and down the driveway to the little building behind the house. Katherine fished in the plastic bag for his key and then opened it. We carried him in and hoisted him onto the couch that served as a roll-out bed. It was a spare arrangement, a single room with a stove and refrigerator in an alcove, and a bathroom to one side. There were virtually no furnishings, other than a framed photo of Artemio with Gregory Thorpe at an archaeological site.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Katherine said, “but believe me, compared to a thatched hut, this is a palace.”

  I nodded and helped her pull off Artemio’s shoes. She threw a spread over him and looked down, shaking her head.

  “Well, he won’t be going anywhere for a while, so it’s safe to leave him.”

  She closed the door behind us and locked it. I had a funny little feeling in the pit of my stomach but I fought it down. The man was out for the count. Like the lady said, there was nothing more to be done.

  9

  I walked Katherine to her door. She unlocked it, hesitated a moment, and then turned around to face me.

  “You’re a very nice man, Micah Dunn. If I asked you to come in I don’t know what would happen. I just know I might be sorry afterward.” She offered me her hand and I took it.

  “You’re pretty special yourself,” I said. “Not many people would refuse to speak evil of somebody that had taken the person they love.”

  “Just a character flaw,” she said wryly. “But I want one thing understood: If it comes down to it, I’ll swear Gregory was with me all night.”

  I drove away, thinking about her words. I liked Katherine Degas, but likable people commit murder all the time.

  I decided to pass by Thorpe’s house. It was ten o’clock, early yet. If Cora was playing, she might not be there. Or she might be there with somebody else. It wouldn’t be smart, but then she didn’t i
mpress me as a very brainy lady.

  I parked across the street and waited. There was a light on in the front room and the blue Mazda was in the drive. There were a couple of cars parked in front and I didn’t know if they were visitors to the Thorpe house or belonged to other families on the block. I decided to write down the plate numbers and got out. I had finished the last one when I heard someone clear his throat and looked up.

  Mr. Beasley was rocking in the swing on his front porch, watching me. “That one belongs to the Lorios, next door,” he called dryly. “And the others are from houses on the other side.”

  I put away my notebook and went up the sidewalk to his house.

  “That’s a big help, Mr. Beasley.”

  “She’s been inside all day,” Beasley said. He was still dressed in his coat and tie and his face bore a faintly supercilious expression. “She hasn’t been out to see him. You’d think she’d at least visit him.”

  “You’d think,” I said. “But maybe she’s too upset.”

  Beasley emitted a little guffaw. “Upset? I hardly think so. All that would upset that young woman would be the inability to take her annual trip to Paris.”

  As we stood there, the side door opened and I saw a figure emerge and get into the Mazda. An instant later the motor ground into life and the lights flashed on. The car shot backward out of the drive and into the street, halted, and then started toward St. Charles.

  “Doubtless gone to visit her husband,” Mr. Beasley said.

  I left him rocking and started off down the sidewalk for my car.

  She had a two-block head start and I saw her turn left onto St. Charles. I had to wait for three cars to pass before I could make the turn and by that time she was lost in the traffic. I swore under my breath and sped through a yellow light at Broadway. I tried to close the gap, but the car ahead of me was maddeningly slow. Ahead, I saw her turn right onto Carrollton and breathed relief. I didn’t know where she was going, but it certainly wasn’t to visit her husband. I ran the red light at Carrollton and Claiborne and elicited an angry cacophony of honks. The road was wider now, though, and I managed to gain a few cars. But she was moving quickly and if I got stuck at a traffic signal, I’d lose her. I had an idea she was heading for the expressway, and if I wasn’t close enough to keep her in sight I could forget it.

  Sure enough, she shot across Washington and swerved right, onto the entrance ramp, and I followed, curving upward. Her taillights were growing smaller and I jammed down my own accelerator as I came onto the expressway, heading north.

  She opened it out to seventy-five and I had to increase my own speed to keep up with her, hoping there were no police cars in the area.

  We were headed north now, toward Lake Pontchartrain. Traffic was light, but there was enough so that I could hope she hadn’t spotted me. Something about the way she was driving made me doubt she was aware of anything except her destination. Just ahead now, the expressway swung left, in the direction of Metairie, the airport, and the swamps. She took the curve and seconds later we were into Jefferson Parish. I hung behind her for two and a half miles and then saw her glide over into the right lane. She was heading for Causeway Boulevard.

  I exited after her, and by the time we came to the toll booth, I was two cars behind.

  Now I knew: Her destination was the north shore of the lake, where the rich have their cabins, twenty-four miles from the smog of the city.

  I saw the two red dots of her taillights grow small as she pulled away from the booth. I paid and started onto the low bridge after her, forcing myself to hold down my speed. The car between us shielded me from her rear-view, but if she held to her speed I would lose her. I debated swinging out and trying to close the distance between us, but it wasn’t an attractive thought: If a tire blew, there would be no room to maneuver and the car would ricochet down the lanes like an electron in an atom smasher. I would just have to let her go.

  But luck intervened and I saw a red light strobe the darkness ahead as a causeway police car left a turnaround, headed after her. A minute later I passed in the outer lane, and the cop was smiling in the glare of his headlights. Maybe she’d talked him out of a ticket.

  I came off the bridge and onto the north shore, where the fresh smell of ozone greeted me from the pines.

  Mandeville was quiet and I pulled off at the first street and waited. I flicked a switch under the dash, dousing one of my headlights. Now, instead of two lights behind her, she would see the single lamp of a decrepit heap. If she turned, then in the second we were out of sight of each other I would switch the other headlamp back on. Two cars for the price of one.

  Five minutes later she whipped past, seemingly unfazed by her recent brush with the law. She made a right at the second light, heading east onto Florida, and I watched her open out the distance between us.

  She went on for five miles, then turned suddenly and I slowed as the crossroads shot up in front of me. I was far from town now, with the pine woods on both sides like a dark tunnel. I wheeled left and saw her red lights blink and then go out. I gunned the engine and watched the needle go to ninety. The road was narrow and there was always the chance of a deer leaping out onto the right-of-way, but I hadn’t any choice. As I neared the place I’d last seen her I braked and hoped I wouldn’t come up on her stopped on the road in the darkness.

  But she was gone, as completely as if she’d vanished into the air. I slowed to a stop and then made a U-turn. I drove back slowly the way I’d come and that was when I saw it: a gravel road to the left, with a thin haze of dust hanging in my headlights.

  I flicked off my lights and crawled along, painfully aware of the explosions of gravel under my tires.

  A half mile later I came to the gate. I opened my glove compartment, took out my flashlight, and played the beam on it. It was a pair of brick pillars with a cattle guard and a sign that said NO TRESPASSING. A barbed-wire fence led from the pillars into the forest on either side. I thought for a moment, then made a decision. Turning around so that I faced back the way I had come, I left the car at the side of the road and got out.

  I started along the gravel, stopping every few seconds to listen for noises, but there were none. I’d gone about five hundred yards when I saw the house. Its windows winked through the trees like a pair of friendly eyes but I knew better. I could see her Mazda now, as well as a white Jaguar. I’d check out the Jag and then see if I could find a crack in one of the windows.

  I stowed my flashlight in my guayabera pocket and fished out a small notepad and pen. Then, holding the pad against my chest with the heel of my hand, I pushed the button on the ballpoint and copied the license number. I needn’t have done it, because it was a prestige plate, with SAINT on it, which showed somebody had a sense of humor.

  The house was a log-cabin affair with a sloping roof. A rock tune drifted out from inside and I heard muffled voices. I edged around to the end, where I was covered by darkness, and tried to get a look through the windows, but the curtains were drawn and the room was dark. I crept to the rear and slipped along the back side of the house, to where a white square of light fell on the grass. There was a concrete deck with some lawn chairs, and I threaded my way among them, flattening myself against the timbers and bending my head to look through the window beside the door.

  She was standing in the middle of the room, a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other. She was talking in a loud voice and now and then I caught words like “responsible,” “police,” and “prison.” Against her pleading I caught a deeper voice, from someone out of sight of the window, and I could tell he was trying to quiet her, but he seemed not to be having much luck. As I watched she took two steps forward, but her gait was unsteady and she dropped the glass onto the floor and I heard a muffled oath. A man came into view then, steadying her and gesturing as if to say that it didn’t matter. His back was to me, but I could see that he was tall, well over six feet, and young, with longish, curly blond hair. He was wearing a silk shirt and he
had the kind of narrow waist and bulging biceps that went with weight lifters. He was holding her with both hands now, gently shaking her, and he was trying to tell her that everything was all right, but now and then I caught sight of her face, terrified, and I could tell his words weren’t having much effect. He turned around then and I thought he had seen me, but I realized he was just fixing her another drink. I watched as he poured in vodka and tonic and then, to my surprise, took out a little vial and dropped in a pill. He stirred and then, satisfied, turned back to her and handed her the glass.

  I had only seen him for an instant, but I would remember the face: long, with a pointed chin, and the quick, calculating eyes of a con man. He was bending over her now, the soul of compassion, and I wondered if I should break down the door before she took a sip. Before I made up my mind, however, the decision was taken out of my hands. I heard a twig crackle behind me and started to turn but it was too late. Something hit my head and a Roman candle of colors shot through my vision. I tried to turn but my legs buckled and I fell forward into a tunnel.

  When I awoke I was staring into the sun. I moved my head and mortar fire began to explode the ground around me. I held still and the firing subsided. I closed my eyes and tried to remember something, anything. I had been shot and I was lying in a paddy, just as I’d always feared would happen. I was hit and the others had left me for dead. I would lie here forever and be carried in the casualty lists as only a name.

  But what name?

  I reached for my dog tags but I wasn’t wearing them. Then I rolled onto my side and the mortar explosions began anew, only farther away. I tried to shove myself upright with my left arm, but it wouldn’t work for some reason.

  But my body was otherwise functioning, and that meant I could crawl for the tree line, out of the field of fire.

  Except that there wasn’t any tree line. And there wasn’t any sun. I was in a room and the bright light came from a lamp beside a sofa and a blond woman was stretched out on the sofa, apparently asleep.