The Arraignment

by Steve Martini

  “Like I was sayin’, chef tells me sauce is not the thing,” says Herman. I look like, “Maybe they might be expecting Spanish.”

  He ignores me. “Sauce is out. Now the French, they got their sauces down. But it’s the Eyetalians can cook. And they don’t put sauce on nothin’. You can’t cook, you need sauce.” Herman is pushing the cart with one hand, talking with the other.

  As we approach, the man in the chair puts his newspaper down on the floor and gets up. He leans a little and looks at the cart, first one side and then the other, from a distance. Herman pushes the cart until my back is almost right into the guy. The guard is trying to see around me to the side with the compartment.

  “As I was sayin’, you really wanna learn how to cook . . . Why don’t you step outta the man’s way, so’s he can do ’is job?”

  I shuttle sideways to the other side of the cart.

  “I was sayin’, you lookin’ to buy perfume, you talk to the French.”

  The guard leans down.

  “You wanna cook . . .”

  He reaches for the stainless steel door to the warming compartment.

  “You gots to talk to the . . .” Herman wacks him with the heavy end of the ladle, backhand along the side of the head without even looking, “fuckin’ Eyetalians,” he says.

  The man hits the floor like a sack of cement.

  Herman grabs the aerosol can of cream off the top of the cart and runs to the other end of the hall. By the time he gets there, the cap is off the can. He reaches up and sprays whipped cream all over the lens of the security camera, covering it with white foam until some of it is dripping on the floor.

  I open the compartment and take out the bag.

  Herman jogs back, rolls the guard over, and frisks him on the floor. He comes up with two pistols, a semiautomatic in a shoulder harness, then a small revolver strapped to the man’s ankle. “Put ’em in the bag.” He tosses them to me.

  “Gotta move before that shit melts.” Herman’s talking about the cream. “After that they be seein’ us, only difference is gonna be two whities. Besides, they be sendin’ somebody from maintenance up here any minute.”

  “That’s if they weren’t looking at the screen when you nailed him.”

  “That case,” says Herman, “they be carryin’ somethin’ besides buckets.”

  I take the shotgun out of the bag, check the safety, holding my finger along the outside of the trigger guard.

  Herman strips the belt off the guard’s pants and hog-ties him, hands and feet pulled up behind him.

  Then he grabs the pistol pack from the bag, straps it around his waist. He quickly checks the machine gun, pulls the bolt and cycles a round into the chamber, and checks the safety one more time.

  He hands me the bag with the extra ammunition. “If you be thinkin’ positive thoughts, be thinkin’ we not gonna need that shit,” he says. “We do, it means we in a fuckin’ Mexican bullet fiesta.”

  He tries the handle on the door. “Shit. It’s locked.” We’re standing in a dead-end corridor, armed like terrorists, not knowing whether Ibarra has a task force coming up the elevator for us at this moment, and all we have for cover is a food cart half the size of Herman’s ass.

  I go to the guard’s pants pockets as he’s lying on the floor. Nothing but change and a pocketknife. I feel a lump in his suit coat pocket, reach in, and find a large ring with a single key on it.

  Herman takes it. It slides into the lock and turns. He looks at me and takes a deep breath. Then he inches the door open and peeks through. “We’re in business.”

  Quietly he opens the door, then lifts the cart so the wheels don’t make any noise, and uses it to hold the door open. Then the two of us grab the guard under the arms and drag him inside, closing the door behind us.

  We are in a kind of entryway. A partition wall directly in front of the door, with a large oval mirror hanging in the center and a low credenza with some books and a plant on it forming the centerpiece underneath it.

  The partition extends ten or twelve feet up. Overhead, the ceiling is glass, rising on the diagonal toward the apex of the pyramid. On both ends, the partition is open.

  Herman goes to the right. I do the left. When I peek around my end, I find myself looking across a large room toward a wall of slanting glass that becomes the ceiling as it rises overhead.

  In the center of the room is a large desk on the Mexican tile floor. There is a man seated behind it with his back to us, typing, hunt-and-peck style, on a computer keyboard.

  I look along the partition and see the edge of Herman’s forehead taking in the same picture I am.

  There is a door to another room on Herman’s side. Nothing on mine but more glass. For the moment, the other door is closed.

  We pull our heads in, backs against the partition, and look at one another. Herman gives me a strange expression, shakes his head, and shrugs. How do you figure, drug lord at the keyboard? It’s as if neither one of us wants to be the first to shatter his serenity. Man lost in his own thoughts.

  But time is running. We step around opposite ends of the partition at the same moment. Herman clears his throat.

  The man at the computer stops, lifts his head, and turns. When he sees the guns, his eyes widen. He reaches for the desk.

  Herman lowers his muzzle on him. “Not ’less you wanna be changing out all those nice windows behind ya.” The man leans back in his chair and raises his hands above his shoulders. Whether he understood Herman or the gun isn’t clear.

  “Se habla inglés?” says Herman The man doesn’t answer.

  “Shit,” says Herman. “How’s your Spanish?”

  “You got mine beat.”

  The man behind the desk is small, slight of build, no more than five-foot-six. His black hair is graying at the temples; I would say he’s in his mid-sixties. His dark eyes are wide at this moment, taking in Herman and the submachine gun.

  “Listen fuckhead, you better start saying somethin’ I can understand or I’m gonna shoot ya,” says Herman.

  “I speak English,” he says.

  “Good for you. I wasn’t lookin’ forward to callin’ an interpreter. Where’s that door go?” Herman sweeps the closed door with the muzzle of his cannon.

  “To living quarters.”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “No one.”

  “You wouldn’t be bullshittin’ me?”

  “Perhaps a maid. I don’t know.”

  “Anybody likely to come through there?”

  He shakes his head. “I left instructions not to be disturbed.”

  “Good, cuz if somebody comes walkin’ in that door unexpected, they gonna be gettin’ one hair-raisin’ shock. And it ain’t gonna be doin’ your wall no good either. You Pablo Ibarra?”

  He doesn’t answer, just looks back and forth at Herman and me, my shotgun pointed at the floor.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Why, you expecting someone?” says Herman.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I ain’t exactly sure who sent my friend over there. But you might say whoever the god is handles revenge had a hand dispatching me.”

  “Herman.”

  He looks at me. “What?”

  “Let the man talk.”

  “I’m tryin’. Fucker keeps askin’ questions,” says Herman. “Where I come from, one’s gots the guns gets to ask the questions. Motherfucker lookin’ down the barrel’s the one’s gotta answer.”

  The Mexican in the chair is looking back and forth as we argue, probably wondering if we’re high on something.

  “What do you want to know?” he says.

  “Your name for starters. Make sure we get it right on the headstone,” says Herman.

  The man hesitates.

  Herman clicks the safety off on his spray gun.

  “Herman. That’s enough.”

  “Maybe we take him outside, see if he wants to do some window washing,” says Herman.

  “I am Pablo Ibarra,
” he says. He closes his eyes as if waiting for the impact of the bullets.

  “Father of the two assholes in the trailer down in Tulúm?” says Herman.

  He opens them again. “They are my sons. Did they send you?”

  Herman gives me a look. “Must be a cordial fuckin’ family. Can’t wait to meet the mother of your children.”

  “My wife is dead,” he says.

  “Oh. Sorry. Natural causes or did one of the kids shoot her?”

  “Cancer,” he says.

  “Too bad, but that ain’t the death I’m here for right now. Why did you kill Julio?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you make like some fuckin’ Mexican owl to me. You know who I’m talkin’ about. Julio Paloma. Big guy. Used to have a forehead without a hole in it.”

  “I don’t know this man.”

  “You may notta met him, but you sure as shit had him shot.”

  “Why would I do this?”

  Herman looks at me. Rolls his eyes. “See? Keeps askin’ more fuckin’ questions.” He has his finger inside the trigger guard.

  “I have never heard of this man.” Ibarra looks at me. “Please. I don’t know who you think I am. But I have never had anyone killed. I am a businessman.”

  “You wanna ask him about this Rosen shit before I shoot him?”

  “Calm down, Herman.”

  “You calm down. Right now I’m worried about how many keys been given out to that door behind us.”

  “Mr. Ibarra, my name is Paul Madriani.”

  “Yes.” His eyes latch onto me like I’m a lifesaver.

  “I was supposed to have a meeting with you tonight, at six-thirty. Myself and a man named Adam Tolt.”

  “Cut to the fuckin’ chase,” says Herman.

  “We talked with one of your sons yesterday. Arturo.”

  “Yes?”

  “This morning Mr. Tolt was taken from his hotel room and a note was left, telling me that unless I appeared at a place called Cobá tomorrow morning with something called Mejicano Rosen, Tolt would be killed.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Why don’t you go to the police?”

  “Because I think you know what Mejicano Rosen is.”

  Ibarra looks at Herman, then at me.

  “Enougha this shit,” Herman goes over and grabs Ibarra by the back of the collar, nearly lifting him out of his chair.

  “What are you doin’?” I ask.

  “No,” says Ibarra. “I will tell you.”

  “Fuckin’A, you will. And you,” he says to me. “No wonder costs an arm and a leg to hire a lawyer. Ask a couple a questions, takes forever. Coulda shot the fucker, been outta here by now. But, nooo. You wanna talk. So you wanna talk? Consultation room’s this way,” he says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  With his forty-five making a dimple in Ibarra’s back, and the long guns in the linen bag, Herman marches Ibarra to the service elevator and pushes 8 to go down.

  We drop two levels. Herman takes a quick look out. We brush by a maid on our way out of a service area and out onto the eighth floor.

  Each level forms a kind of open terrace, hanging gardens of Babylon, looking over a vast atrium that forms the interior of the pyramid.

  Halfway down the hall, a young couple comes breezing out of their room.

  Ibarra sees the open door. His thought is nearly palpable, and for an instant I freeze, afraid he is going to run for the room and Herman will shoot him.

  Herman nudges him with the gun. “Don’t even think about it.” He has a towel over the pistol, draped across his arm as if he should be carrying a finger bowl in the other hand.

  As soon as we are past the couple and out of earshot, he talks to me from the corner of his mouth. “Be easier just throw the fucker off the balcony,” he says. “Score him on his swan dive in the lily pond down there.”

  “Herman, we don’t know that he killed Julio. And even if he did, it’s a matter for the police.”

  “I didn’t.” Ibarra waddles in front of him with the gun in his back.

  “You gonna be walking with your ass on your shoulders, you don’t shut up,” says Herman.

  A few doors down I find the number that matches the one penciled on the little envelope with the key card I got when I checked in downstairs.

  I slide it through the lock and hear it click.

  Inside with the door closed, Herman checks the bathroom and the closet, then pulls the curtains closed on the window and pushes Ibarra backward onto the bed. “Now I wanna hear you talk.”

  “You have met my sons?” he says.

  “Only one of them. Arturo. The other, Jaime is it? He wasn’t there.”

  “You are probably lucky. Jaime has a bad temper. They have been involved in activities for which I am ashamed.”

  “And I suppose they did this all by themselves?” says Herman.

  “I admit at times I have done things for which I am not proud. But I didn’t want my sons to grow up this way. I have tried every way to stop them. Even gone to the authorities. But you know what Cancún can be like.”

  “Here we go,” says Herman. “Fuckin’ mistakes been made. Next he be tellin’ us he got religion when he seen the light coming outta the little hole at the end of my gun.”

  “Believe me. I have tried to stop my sons, but they will not listen. All they want is my money, to finance their schemes. When I refused, they found other sources.”

  “Narcotics?” I ask.

  “For a time. But that stopped. I was able to influence certain people.”

  “Your children cuttin’ into your profits, were they?”

  “I do not deal in drugs. I do not allow them on the premises of my hotel.”

  “You wrote a letter to a lawyer in San Diego, a Mr. Nicholas Rush. What was that about?”

  Ibarra looks at me, puzzled. “How do . . .”

  “Never mind that. What did Mr. Rush have to do with your sons? And who or what is Mejicano Rosen?”

  “Then you know about it? It is pronounced Roseton. Not Rosen.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Roseton means Rosette in Spanish. The French under Napoleon, when they found it, they named it the stone of Rosette after the name of the village in Egypt where it was discovered. The English called it Rosetta.”

  “What’s this shit?” says Herman.

  “The Rosetta Stone,” I say. “It’s a fractured slab of rock found by Napoleon’s forces when they invaded Egypt. It was engraved with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs along with a Greek translation. It allowed archeologists for the first time to understand the language of pharoahs.”

  Herman has a dense look on his face. “Wait a minute. You lost me. You tellin’ me this ’bout some rock from Egypt?”

  “No,” says Ibarra. “The Mejicano Roseton in your language is the Mexican Rosetta. It is the last remaining key to the ancient hieroglyphs of the Maya.”

  “Do you have it?” I ask.

  “Unfortunately no.”

  “Where it is?”

  “I cannot be sure, but I know that it exists and that it is priceless. My sons have been trying to acquire it.”

  “Is that what Nick Rush was after?”

  He nods. “He had been doing business through another man.”

  “Gerald Metz?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Never mind. Go on.”

  “This man Metz had done business with my sons previously.”

  “What kinda business?” says Herman.

  “My boys were looting archeological sites. At first they were simply buying a few trinkets from the Indians who found things in the jungle, small figures carved in jade, sometimes trinkets in silver or gold. My sons would then sell these items to dealers in your country or in Europe. Wherever they could be paid the most. Occasionally they would find something more valuable.

  “Then Arturo and Jaime began locating sites that were still covered by jungle. They are easy to spot if you know what y
ou are looking for. In the Yucatán, the jungle floor is flat. Any rise, a small mound, what looks like a hill, is very often the remains of a Mayan structure overgrown by trees and vines. They learned how to find these. They hired laborers and destroyed sites, looking for treasure.”

  “Didn’t your government try to stop them?”

  “They tried. But it is impossible. There are too many locations, not enough guards. Your government demands that we control the flow of narcotics through our country. That is the priority. The sale of looted artifacts is a huge business. Thousands of items are taken every year from Mexico and Guatemala and sold on the black market. Some of these people are drug dealers. They make more selling artifacts than they do selling drugs, and there is less risk. You do not go to prison for life for stealing Mayan relics.”

  “Who would buy them?” I ask.

  “There are people who deal in such things. They sell the items to wealthy Americans, so their wives can have figurines made into earrings and tell their friends where they came from. The larger, more expensive items are another matter.”

  “That’s what we saw at the trailer,” I tell Herman.

  “What?” says Ibarra.

  “It looked like a large slab of stone, like a headstone, only taller. We couldn’t see it very well. They had it covered with a blanket.”

  “Tell me. Did you see white paint on it?”

  “On a corner, under the blanket. It looked like whitewash.”

  “A stela,” he says.

  “What estella?” says Herman.

  “A stela. It is a stone sign used by the Maya for historical and religious purposes. They would cover the stone in white limestone plaster. Then they would carve their hieroglyphs into this softer material. There are maybe thirty or forty of them that we know of, and most of them cannot be read. The jungle moisture has destroyed the writing. I had heard that my sons had found one.”

  “So they’d sell it, right?” says Herman.

  “Yes.”

  “How much they get?”

  “If the one they have is legible, tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand U.S. dollars. If what is on it is important, if it reveals unknown information about Mayan rulers, their civilization, it could be worth much more.”