The Maya Stone Murders

by Malcolm Shuman

  What if Hahn was the murderer? What if I was walking into a trap?

  Suddenly, as if in answer, the doorway above me jerked open, blasting the stairwell with light. A stick figure blotted the glare, swaying slightly, its hand pointing at me with a magically elongated finger.

  “Stop right there!” it cried, the voice hovering on hysteria. “I’ve got a gun and I’ll shoot, I swear to God.”

  I froze, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden light.

  “It’s all right,” I said quietly. “I’m not armed.”

  “I don’t know that. You may be lying. You used Gordon’s name. You lied about that.”

  “Then why did you let me in?”

  “You can’t hide forever. You’d find a way. I know about you people. Gordon told me before you killed him. Well, now the shoe’s on the other foot. And I’m going to kill you.”

  The hand with the gun wavered and I tried to keep my voice steady. “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I’ve been hired by Gregory Thorpe to find out who did.”

  It caught him by surprise and his body jerked, the hand with the gun waving from one side of the passageway to the other.

  “You’re police?” he demanded, his voice rising an extra octave.

  “Private detective,” I said. “I thought you might have some information nobody else had.”

  There was a moment of quiet while he digested it and I got a look at his features. He had a round face, with a brown mustache that seemed stuck on as an afterthought. His hairline had receded well back on his skull, but he had carefully combed his hair to cover his baldness, at least on one side. He was wearing a wine-colored smoking jacket, but his appearance was of only secondary importance to me right now. I was far more interested in the pistol in his hand. It was a nickel-plated revolver, an old High Standard .22 with a nine-shot capacity, in case you missed the first six times.

  “You ought to put that down before somebody gets hurt,” I advised.

  He looked down at the gun as if he had just discovered he was holding it, and his hand lowered slightly, then snapped back up to center squarely on my chest.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “If you’re who you say you are, show me some identification.”

  I hesitated and then gave a little shrug.

  “Sure,” I said, reaching toward my top pocket and taking a step upward at the same time.

  His eyes followed my hand as I unbuttoned the top of my pocket and the gun lowered just a fraction. I brought my right hand down suddenly in a quick chopping motion, missing his hand but knocking the gun barrel away. His mouth gaped in surprise and he stumbled backward, into the room. I saw the gun coming up again and this time I kicked out, connecting with his wrist. He grunted, more in outrage than in pain, and the gun crashed onto the floor. I scooped it up a half second ahead of him and let him look down the barrel for a change.

  “Good for plinking,” I commented, “but my guess is you haven’t used this for a long time. Maybe never. It’s a bad habit, keeping a gun you don’t practice with.”

  He stood glaring at me, left hand holding his wrist. “It’s for protection,” he said. “A friend gave it to me. The Quarter is too dangerous these days.”

  “Your friend’s right there,” I said, and shoved the door closed. I turned the lock with the same hand holding the gun, an awkward maneuver, and saw sudden realization flood his face.

  “You,” he said. “You’re the one …”

  “The one-armed man?”

  He flinched. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course not. You meant to say the man who was wanted for killing Cora Thorpe’s lover. And who escaped from the St. Tammany Parish jail.”

  His lips moved but he couldn’t think of anything to add. I could see him better now, in the light. He was in his mid-thirties, older than Leeds, and just slightly puffy around the jowls. He exuded the aroma of cologne and his hair glistened from brilliantine.

  “Do we have to stand here?” I asked. “It seems unnecessary.”

  He nodded assent and sat down quickly on the couch behind him. I took in the rest of the room. It was tastefully furnished, with potted plants along one shelf and a mobile of stained glass hanging from the ceiling. At one end of the room was a giant mirror that made the small living room seem spacious. The furniture was a combination of antique and modern and I could tell that it had been waxed and dusted in the past twenty-four hours.

  “Who are you afraid of, Mr. Hahn?”

  He bit his lip and I could see that he was trying to make up his mind whether to say anything more.

  “Look, you’re scared shitless of somebody. You think whoever killed Gordon is coming here to kill you. Now if you’ll trust me, maybe we can work this out together. Whoever killed Gordon managed to frame me, because with me out of the way they’re safe. With you out of the way they’re probably safer. But if both of us know the same thing, killing either one of us won’t do them any good. Tell me who it is. Give me something to go on.”

  The man across from me frowned and then stared down at his slippers. His shoulders heaved and then he started to tremble all over. He started to say something but his voice cracked and suddenly he was crying.

  “He told me they were after him,” he said through his tears. “He told me that night. He was here. He said he was going to see somebody, somebody that could help him. He said it was only a few blocks away. I offered to go with him but he wouldn’t let me. He said it was too dangerous; he wouldn’t let me take the risk.”

  Hahn buried his face in his hands and wept.

  “He was going to see me,” I said. “But whoever it was got him first.”

  Hahn wagged his head from side to side, disconsolate. “If I’d have gone with him, just walked alongside …”

  “There’d be two of you dead now,” I told him. “You don’t have anything to reproach yourself for. There was nothing you could do.”

  He looked up through tear-filled eyes. “Do you really believe that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment. “Thank you. That means a great deal.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a handkerchief and I watched him wipe his face. “I’m sorry. I … I loved him, you know.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry.”

  Hahn nodded again. “Yes. How did you find out my name? Gordie and I agreed … We wouldn’t advertise our relationship.”

  “There was a bottle of Amaretto at his house with your initial. You were the only person with a K in his name who signed the funeral register. When I looked up your address it was in the Quarter. It seemed worth checking out.” No need, I thought, to tell him about my conversation with Scott.

  “I understand,” he said, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “We decided to keep everything quiet. No more of the leather-jacket bars that he used to go to when I first met him a year ago. I convinced him they were too dangerous. He agreed. I suppose they weren’t any worse than the streets, though.”

  “Who was after him, Mr. Hahn? Who was he so afraid of?”

  “A man,” Hahn said bleakly. “He wouldn’t tell me his name. He just said it was a very powerful man.”

  “How did he meet this man?”

  “It was an accident. It was all an accident. That’s what was so absurd. Everything was an accident. Just the way he found the artifacts. An accident.” He stared over at me, demanding my agreement, and I nodded.

  “Go on.”

  “You see, we used to go shopping sometimes. I was helping him furnish his apartment. Some of the things he had in there before we met.” He wagged his head again in disapproval. “Atrocious. I make my living as an interior decorator. The furnishings must mediate between the essence of the architecture and the personality of the inhabitant. We were in a flea market near Fat City. I think Gordie was just teasing me. Pretending he was going to buy some perfectly horrible trash. He started talking with the proprietor, a Mr. Tanoos. Lebanese, you know.” He shifted
slightly in his chair. “They started talking and Gordie mentioned that he was an archaeologist. This Tanoos began to warm up to him, though, of course, I knew he was only interested in making a sale. I wanted Gordie to come along and just when I thought he was ready, this man told him that he had some things that would interest a discriminating person. Naturally, Gordie was curious, so he followed Tanoos into the back and Tanoos went to a big chest he had in one corner of this horribly untidy little office. He opened it and we looked down inside.

  “There were several sacks and he lifted them out, one by one, and placed them on the desk there. Then he began to empty them in front of us. Some contained spear points, made of obsidian and flint. Some were fragments of pottery, and there were some little clay dolls. And there was a small object of polished stone that Gordie told me later was an unusual jade.

  “Well, I thought it was fairly interesting, because Gordie had taught me a little about Mayan artifacts. But I was hardly prepared for his reaction. He stared down at them as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he was seeing, and then he began to examine them one by one. He turned a deathly pale and for a minute I thought he was getting ready to faint. His eyes were bright, like somebody with a fever, and then he asked Tanoos how much he wanted for them.

  “Naturally, Tanoos knew he had a victim and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that he doubled the price. As it was, Gordie wrote out a check for four hundred dollars. I was appalled. I helped him gather up the artifacts and we left. It was only when we got home to my place that he explained what they were.”

  He looked down at the floor and tried to find his next words. I waited, trying to imagine the scene: Gordon Leeds, the bags of artifacts on the coffee table, checking each item again and again. Because I already had guessed part of the answer.

  “They were all from Ek Balam, weren’t they?” I asked.

  Hahn looked up, surprised. “Yes. They were. He said he remembered excavating some of them himself. But most of them he’d never seen. It was just the style, and the fact that they were associated with other items he knew he had dug up, that allowed him to conclude that they were all from the same place. The only thing that wasn’t from Ek Balam was the little jade object, but he said it was in the Mayan style. He said they traded a lot of things like that back and forth.”

  “So what did he do?” I asked.

  Hahn waved a hand and the big red stone of his ring gleamed in the lamplight. “He anguished. That’s what he did. He knew someone had robbed the site, had actually been smuggling out things while they were working there. Naturally, his suspicion fell on this Indian fellow, the chief of the native crew. But he knew he had to be in cahoots with somebody else, somebody with good contacts, somebody who could set up the deal. He also knew that what he’d bought had to be just a small sample of the less valuable artifacts. Nobody would go to that much trouble for just a few things.”

  I got up and walked to the other side of the room. The air conditioner must have cut on because suddenly it seemed very cold inside.

  “The next day he went back to talk to this Tanoos,” Hahn went on, “but Tanoos had left and nobody knew where he was. People didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Somebody had gotten to Tanoos and scared him away. I’ll remember Gordie’s face for the rest of my life, the way he came in that day, bitter, his eyes angry. He told me he knew who’d done it. He knew who’d stolen the artifacts.”

  “And who did he say it was?” I asked.

  Karl Hahn looked me in the eye and when he spoke again his voice was cold. “He said it was his professor, Dr. Gregory Thorpe.”

  14

  “Thorpe?” I echoed.

  He nodded. “Yes. He’d never liked the man, you see. Thorpe was a perfect tyrant. He was Harvard. Superior. Gordie was not of his class, I’m sure. And the man would brook no dispute. A very insecure person, if you ask me.”

  I nodded, thinking at least that part was probably true.

  “But none of that makes Thorpe a thief,” I pointed out. “After all, he was risking exposure. His own reputation was at stake.”

  “Perhaps. But Gordie figured out that it was all a mistake; that probably the artifacts were never supposed to be peddled in New Orleans. It was impossible to find out if more was missing, of course, because, with the exception of a few things in the lab, most of the artifacts are still stored in Mexico. If Gordie stirred up the Mexican authorities, it could endanger the entire future of Tulane projects there.”

  “But why would Thorpe be doing this?” I persisted.

  Hahn shrugged. “Gordie said it was probably his wife. Everybody knows how demanding she is, how all she lives for is a good time. She demands a great deal of upkeep. Gordie figured that Thorpe had just succumbed to his infatuation for her and used the artifacts to raise money he needed to keep her in furs.”

  “Interesting theory,” I admitted. “So what did Gordon do next?”

  Hahn raised his hands again. “Well, that was just the dilemma, wasn’t it? He had no proof. What could he possibly do? He certainly couldn’t confront Thorpe without risking the ruin of his own career. But he had to do something.”

  “And planting the artifacts in the displays was his way of getting back?”

  “It was a psychological ploy, don’t you see? He wanted Thorpe to realize in the most direct way possible that someone knew his secret.”

  “But he wanted to leave him in the dark as to who,” I said. “I have to admit it’s unique.”

  “Exactly. Let Thorpe worry about it. The man was on edge already. Just a little more might send him over. At the proper time Gordie planned to leave him a note, anonymous, of course, asking for his resignation before even more embarrassing evidence came out.”

  I stopped my pacing. “A dangerous game,” I said.

  Hahn jerked his head in agreement. “I told him that. I begged him not to do it. But he said Thorpe was taking a chance with everybody’s future, that he was stealing from the site. You’d have to understand: Gordie had an almost mystical dedication to his work. He identified with the Maya, with the site itself. He saw this as a criminal act that had to be redressed. He was very intense.”

  “Tell me about what happened just before he died,” I said.

  “He came in from the Cobbetts’ party, excited. He showed me the jade hacha. I remember what he said: ‘This is what they want.’ Naturally, I asked him what it was about, but he refused to tell me. He said it was safer for me not to know. But I remember he said it was all bigger than he thought, that it wasn’t just a matter of smuggling. I asked where he was going and he said to somebody who could help.”

  “Right,” I said bitterly.

  “Then I read about your being arrested for this murder over there …” He waved vaguely toward the lake. “I thought that must mean you were the killer, not Thorpe. So I took out the gun.”

  “Understandable,” I said. “Tell me, did anybody Gordon worked with know about his scheme? Astrid Bancroft, for example?”

  Hahn shook his head, “Not to my knowledge.”

  “And not Katherine Degas, Thorpe’s assistant?”

  “The Degas woman is a secretary. Gordon did not confide in secretaries.”

  I went to the window and moved the curtain. The street below was dark, and there was no reason to think the apartment was being watched.

  I dropped the curtain and walked back over to the center of the room. I took the pistol out of my belt and laid it on the coffee table.

  “I’d put this away, Hahn,” I told him. “It’s liable to get you killed.”

  He stared at the floor, hands clasped before him. “I don’t care. With Gordie gone, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I nodded and went out the door, closing it softly as if to avoid waking the dead. I heard it lock and for an instant I regretted leaving the gun behind me. I was alone again, and even here, protected from the street by the locked grate, I had a sense of vulnerability. Gordon Leeds had left here only four nights ago, sure he could mak
e it only three blocks. And something had emerged from the night with the finality of perdition.

  I shuddered and started down the black stairwell, each footstep echoing like thunder.

  Thorpe could have killed Leeds. He had motive and he certainly had opportunity. Leeds had been out to ruin him. It would have been a matter of twenty minutes to leave his house and come here, find a phone booth, make the call that would have sent Leeds out into the deadly night.

  But somehow the jade didn’t fit in.

  Why had Leeds decided he had to get it to me? And why did Ordaz want it so badly? And how had it come into the hands of a flea-market owner named Tanoos, who had since disappeared?

  I came to the big iron gate and halted. The street was silent. From somewhere over the rooftops came the mournful sound of a ship’s horn. I put my hand on the gate and halted.

  Why did I feel that there was someone out there, watching?

  I drew back into the shadows and waited. Five minutes went by. Ten.

  A man passed, weaving slightly and mumbling to himself as he went. I let the sound of his steps die away and then moved out of the shadows.

  I was jumpy, that’s all it was. Every sound was a police car, every movement a possible assailant. I took some deep breaths, telling myself I had been in tighter spots.

  In Nam I had once had to crawl back for five hundred yards from a forward observation post that had been overrun. I had survived, hadn’t I?

  You’re a fool, an insistent voice in my mind shot back. There you were just another body, a figure in the dark. Once away, no problem. But here you’re on every wanted list in the country.

  I had to admit the voice made sense. But I couldn’t stand here forever. I pushed the gate open and stepped out onto the street.

  The sense of danger was acute now. The little voice told me to flatten back into the shadows, jab the button, get Hahn to reopen the gate. But logic took over, told me not to panic.

  I started down the sidewalk, toward Esplanade. Ahead was a street lamp, throwing a pool of light onto the ground. When I passed through it I would be a target. I crossed to the other side, sticking close to the buildings.