“But you had to kill St. Romaine. He knew too much. Ditto for Artemio; he was getting remorseful. And that’s why you’ll have to kill me, too, won’t you, Gladney?”
Fred Gladney emitted a choked little sound, as if someone had punched him. “Just give me the damned jade,” he hissed.
“Why? The jade has no value. It’s the message on it. And you can’t read glyphs.”
“But Astrid can. She’ll read it for me.”
“Then she’ll have an accident, I guess.”
I could envision his shrug. “Well, you don’t think I can spend the rest of my life with an unbalanced girl like that, do you? I tried to take the blame for her, but the police weren’t interested. They were far more interested in what I had to say about her mental record. Dull bunch.”
“So dull you’ll blame my death on her, right?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s correct. Now where is it?”
“Humor me,” I said. “I don’t get a chance to be murdered every day. Though it seems like I’m on a roll.” I tried to sit up but my sling limited movement.
“How did you find out about the jade originally?” I asked.
“Leeds. He told me, the idiot. He was drunk. He’d had an argument with Thorpe. Something about the argument set him to thinking and he said all of a sudden he had this revelation. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I let him talk. He told me he’d found this valuable artifact with some glyphs on it and all of a sudden he knew what the glyphs meant. He said they were directions to a fantastic treasure.”
“Which was something you couldn’t pass up.”
“I’d been hanging around Astrid for a year and I’d never gotten anything for it. It was all Claude’s idea. He and I were fraternity brothers. Claude started banging Thorpe’s wife. At first it was thrills. He’d had Thorpe for a class. He said Thorpe was a turkey. He used to lie there in bed with her after that and laugh to himself about Thorpe studying his artifacts, lecturing while the class slept, and not knowing what was going on with his own wife. Then he got the idea it would be even better to turn some money off it. He didn’t need money; the bastard was rich. But it was the idea, see? The fun of it all. He’d try to use Cora as a pipeline to the artifacts. She went along with it.”
“Charming lady,” I said. “And what about you, Gladney? It wasn’t the same thing with you, though, was it?”
“No. I needed the money. Do you know what it’s like trying to make money as an oil broker in Louisiana right now, with the whole industry in a depression? When I started, in ’84, there was hope, but after ’86 and the way the ragheads dropped prices … Anyway, we agreed to try together. He said Astrid was a flake, that Cora had told him the girl had a mental record. I thought maybe I could talk her into helping me from the inside. But she was pretty hopeless. She wasn’t even good in bed.”
“She must not have known how lucky she was,” I said. “Poor girl. Tell me, which one of you put Artemio up to stealing from Thorpe?”
“He was a greedy little bastard. It didn’t take much. I just took him out drinking one night and explained how Thorpe didn’t give a damn about him or anybody else. I told him Thorpe would have him back in a Mayan cornfield quicker than he could say frijoles. He didn’t know a lot of English, but he sure as hell understood that.”
“I’m sure.”
“The trouble was he didn’t bring us anything worth stealing. Trash. It was all trash. Claude took it to Ordaz. He’d had some dealings with the greasy bastard before. Ordaz was the one who told him he could make some big money. But when Ordaz saw what he had to offer, he laughed. Paid him a few hundred to keep him on the string.”
“Which is where it would’ve ended if Leeds hadn’t told you about the jade.”
“Exactly. Now we’ve screwed around long enough. Where is it? I’ve killed already. It won’t matter to kill you.”
“You’ll kill me anyway,” I said. “Which is why I can’t let you do it.”
“What?”
“Turn on the light,” I said. “You’ll see the gun isn’t very big, but it’s pointed straight at your belly.”
There was an eternity of silence and then his breath leaked out like air from a punctured hose.
“No,” he said.
The light flared on then and I saw him for the first time, three feet away, the ice pick halfway out of his pocket. It was as if the little .25 in my hand mesmerized him, so that he hardly noticed the men shoving through the doorway.
“Put it down,” Mancuso said, bringing a magnum to bear on the man in the center of the room. “If his .25 doesn’t get you, you can be damned sure this one will.”
For an interminable instant Gladney stood rooted, his eyes wavering from one of us to the other. The next few seconds were a surprise that neither of us would ever forget: With a choked cry, Gladney ran, not toward the man in the doorway, but for the window. There was a crash of breaking glass and Mancuso swore as Gladney’s body plunged through.
Mancuso lowered his gun and went over to the window. I shut my eyes.
“Jesus,” the policeman muttered, looking down.
I managed a weary nod. At last, I thought, it was over.
It was two days later and we were sitting on my balcony, O’Rourke and Sandy and I, looking out over the patio. Old Mr. Mamet, the caretaker, had fixed the fountain, and now and then a vagrant breeze brought a fine spray to tease our faces.
I still had the sling, and my right arm was almost as useless as my left. I caught my two friends swapping amused glances as I tried to sip my beer through a long straw.
“Man gonna die of thirst,” Sandy smirked. “But I guess that’s better than what he almost died of.”
O’Rourke smiled. He was contented these days, he said, because things had turned out well. The charges against both Thorpe and me had been dropped, the villain unmasked, and, most important, he had found a lunchroom in Arabi, of all places, that served as perfect a muffaletta as would ever exist. I was happy that he saw things in such clear perspective.
“Still,” Sandy went on, “I don’t understand the whole thing. I mean, you say everything started with this St. Romaine and Gladney?”
I took a last sip and leaned back. “I guess you could say that. Or you could say it started with Thorpe and his personality, and with his infatuation with Cora. Or even when he met Artemio Pech. But St. Romaine and Gladney were the triggers.”
“Gladney was about to go under,” O’Rourke said. “I did some checking on the company he owns. An office and an answering machine, with an in-box full of bills.”
“It fits in,” I said.
“Lots of people that way, though, babe,” Sandy said. “Is that all you had against the man?”
“There was his insistence that the woman he loved was insane. He seemed to want very badly to spread the word to everybody he met. Strange behavior for somebody in love, but not so strange if you were looking for somebody to take the heat. His little confession ploy with the police was the clincher. He wanted to plant just the wrong information with them, to convince them he was trying to save Astrid, and at the same time put the idea in their heads that maybe she was the killer.”
“Sandy squinted. “And you deduced everything from that?”
“Of course,” I said. “And then there was the matter of Cora Thorpe. She told me.”
My two friends broke into laughter.
“Then why didn’t you go to the cops when you knew who it was?” Sandy asked.
“You mean an escapee who got it straight from the mouth of an accomplice, and a flaky one at that?” I looked over at O’Rourke and he nodded.
“He’s right,” the lawyer said. “He’s lucky I got the sheriff of St. Tammany Parish to drop the escape and battery charges.”
“Anyway,” I told her, “I was a little more interested in getting you loose. I thought there was a chance he might come back and try to finish Cora, which is why I sent Thorpe over there.”
“And Cobbett didn’t hav
e anything to do with the plan?” Sandy asked.
“Not really. He was the appraiser Ordaz used. He saw the jade but didn’t attach any significance to it until Ordaz got excited about losing it and asked him about the glyphs. Then he realized it must be worth something, and he started to wonder how he could get his hands on it. When Ordaz had him come aboard the launch to verify the piece, he never expected his meek little flunky would be carrying a gun, much less that he’d use it on him.”
“I wonder how Cobbett expected to get rid of Ordaz’s bodyguards?” O’Rourke said.
“Who knows,” I said. “Probably he didn’t have any idea what would happen. He never really thought the chance would arise, but when it did, he took it.”
“But how did Ordaz find out the jade was valuable?” O’Rourke asked. “He would never have let go of it if he’d known.”
“I suspect that was somebody’s big mouth,” I said. “Probably Gladney told his pal, St. Romaine. St. Romaine wasn’t in it for money. He wanted to be a big shot, to swagger. He probably told Ordaz, after he’d killed Leeds. St. Romaine wanted Ordaz to pay him to get it back. But, like I said, it wasn’t the money so much; it was the thrill of the game.”
“Sounds like Cora-baby,” Sandy mused. “I can’t believe that little pinhead was trying to blackmail Gladney.”
“Thrills again,” I said. “She and her lover, St. Romaine, were a lot alike. Anything for an adrenaline rush. She thought being married to Thorpe would be all Indiana Jones, but she found out he was the wrong man for excitement. She was all ready when St. Romaine made his move. I’ll never prove it, but I’d bet it was her idea to siphon off the artifacts.”
O’Rourke shook his head. “Sweet lady.”
“Of course, nobody trusted anybody else,” I said. “Which was how she ended up drugged at a murder scene. The way she tells it, St. Romaine called her from the cabin that night I followed her, told her to come in a hurry. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but it sounded important, so she went. In reality, it looks like Gladney had convinced St. Romaine that they needed to get rid of her, because she knew too much. That way they could make it look like she’d killed Leeds. St. Romaine thought he was luring her to her death, not his own. What he didn’t know was that Gladney, nice guy that he was, was holding out on one part of the scheme.”
“You mean St. Romaine’s death,” volunteered Sandy.
“You got it. Gladney’s plan was to let it look like a murder-suicide, and blame it on Cora. I stepped into the middle of it and he had to change his plan. Cora got her stomach pumped before the drug did her in and began to put two and two together. She knew it had to be Gladney at that point.”
“And that’s when she started to blackmail him,” Sandy said. “But what was she trying to get?”
I sighed. “She’s the kind who has to be continually stimulated. Throwing out little hints to Gladney, calling him at odd times, trying to make him jump at her every whim—this was her way of keeping the game alive.”
“Good way of getting herself dead,” Sandy said darkly.
“Yes,” I agreed. “In that respect, she was lucky.”
“And she knew from the first her lover Claude had killed Leeds, then, right?” O’Rourke asked.
“She figured it out pretty easily. You remember that Astrid wasn’t feeling well and Gladney took her home early? It was the perfect opportunity. Gladney put her to bed and then called, probably from a phone booth. He told St. Romaine to follow Leeds, and then went back to the party, giving himself an alibi. Gladney thought they could steal the jade from Leeds or get it through some form of trickery, I expect. I think he was genuinely upset when St. Romaine, who had taken Thorpe’s car and was waiting outside Hahn’s place, not only followed Leeds but ran him down. He was at heart a businessman, not a killer.”
“Some difference,” Sandy said contemptuously. “So Gladney knew Leeds was a little …” She raised one limp wrist.
“Right. Leeds had confided to Astrid, who’d told Gladney, of course, without thinking about it. It wasn’t so much that Leeds hid it as that he just didn’t talk about it or flaunt it. Anyway, Gladney knew he’d be at Hahn’s place and that’s where he sent his friend to wait.”
I took another long sip of the beer. With the straw it tasted flat, or was it just the sordid tale I was having to recount?
“When you asked me to bring the jade and my pistol along with your boat book, I thought you’d flipped.” Sandy declared. “And then, asking me to call up Astrid and tell her you had the stone and you wanted her to come up to the hospital the next day to help you translate the thing … You were pretty sure she was gonna tell Freddy-boy, weren’t you?”
“It was a chance,” I admitted. “But I figured she would, yes. She’s not half as crazy as he tried to make out, but she has had problems, and he managed to isolate her even more, through the guise of being protective. He was about the only person she felt she could turn to. Of course, she didn’t have any idea he was the killer.”
“What’ll happen with Cora now?” Sandy asked.
“Extortion and obstruction of justice are both crimes,” O’Rourke said. “I understand the DA is filing charges. Matter of fact,” he said smugly, “Thorpe has talked to me about defending her.”
“Oh, gag.” Sandy made a face. “Of course you said no.”
The lawyer shrugged. “Of course I said I’d think about it. I have to make a living too, you know.”
“Well, how’s Thorpe going to manage your fee? Tulane’s giving him the boot, aren’t they?”
“Why? He hasn’t done anything but bore students. And the exhibit has been breaking records.”
“And he’s going to stay with Cora?” Sandy asked, incredulous.
“That’s something else,” O’Rourke explained. “He’s having a good time being noble and forgiving, but it’ll be hard to forget what happened. And besides, he has something else to occupy him right now.”
“Which brings us to the real question,” O’Rourke said, lifting his Manhattan. “What in the hell do the glyphs on that damned jade mean?”
I stopped sipping. “Ah, I was wondering when one of you was going to ask that.”
“So?” Sandy demanded, leaning forward in her chair. “Are you going to tell us?”
I smiled. “Why not? Thorpe’s got the jade now and he’s on his way to Yucatán.”
“Well?” Sandy persisted.
“The jade,” I said, “is a play on the name of the ruler Ek Balam. And the glyphs tell where he’s buried.”
EPILOGUE
It was nearly dawn and a thin mist hung over the tops of the trees. We stood shivering atop the little mound of rubble, waiting for the sun. From around us came the heavy, earth-laden smell of the rain forest, salted with the strong odor of smoke from the previous day’s field burnings. On the eastern horizon the first tendrils of sun were snaking up into the sky and I knew it would be another mercilessly hot May day. I gazed out at the strange world around me. Here and there, against the dark carpet of trees, white forms that had once been pyramids and temples hovered in the mist.
“Not long now,” Gregory Thorpe said, consulting his watch. He was dressed for the field: jeans, a khaki shirt, and an ancient straw Panama; while Katherine wore khaki shorts and a white blouse and a safari hat she’d confessed to having ordered from a Bean catalog. The newspeople fiddled with their cameras and recorders and I was wondering why I’d agreed to come. I knew it was Katherine who’d wangled the invitation and Thorpe could hardly have refused. But just standing with them brought everything back and knowing that I’d helped make this possible was small recompense.
One thing was for certain, though, I thought, as I waited for the sun to appear over the eastern treetops: Thorpe was in his element, oblivious to any shortcomings in his behavior of the previous summer.
A pert woman in her twenties with short black hair, designer jeans, and oversized dark glasses whispered something to the cameraman, who lifted the camera onto
his shoulder. A bright light went on, striking the archaeologist in the face, and Thorpe flinched.
“Would you say a few words for our viewers, Dr. Thorpe?” the newswoman began. “About the hieroglyphics and the buried treasure? And maybe touch on the curse of the Balam?”
Thorpe gazed down his nose at her and took a deep, meaningful breath. “In the first place, we are not here to find buried treasure. We are here to open the tomb of the ruler Ek Balam, who lived in approximately A.D.1400. As for the so-called curse, that is utter nonsense, and repeating such a story does a disservice to archaeology.”
“But several people died in making this discovery,” the woman persisted.
“People die every day,” Thorpe huffed. I looked over at Katherine. She smiled and gave a tiny shrug. I turned back to Thorpe. He’d recovered well from his disappointment with Cora, I thought, partly because of the challenge represented by a new, significant discovery and partly because of a loyal secretary who refused to take no for an answer.
“We’ll leave out the curse, then,” the woman said with obvious disappointment. “But there is a treasure, isn’t there? I mean, you’ve been excavating here for almost a year, just to uncover this single tomb.”
Thorpe put on his best pained expression. “We have been excavating here for nine months because archaeology is a painstaking business, contrary to the drivel that is foisted upon the public by the popular press. We have elected to proceed level by level, to the extent possible, recording everything of significance above the tomb itself. As for the treasure, it is probable that the burial is accompanied by offerings, and in many cases these would be of value on the illegal antiquities market, but our main concern is to recover information. In this case the existence of the burial is only secondary, confirming a theory that I have held for some time concerning the practical importance of astronomical phenomena to the Maya.”
The defeated newswoman gave a nod for the cameraman to roll.
“Maybe you could tell us about that, then,” she said.
The Maya Stone Murders Page 21