by J. R. Rain
“You’ve caught me on an off day, and I’ve never been able to take advantage of you, Nick, so I’ve given up trying.”
“Very admirable of you to admit, Juan. But we both know that’s bullshit. What are you offering?”
“Two thousand.”
“American dollars?”
“Of course.”
I laughed appropriately. “Fifty thousand dollars, and not a penny less.”
He sat back, shocked. “You would extort from a friend, my friend?”
“You were never much of a friend.”
“Now you insult me. Well, I spit on your mother’s grave, goddammit.”
I laughed at his showmanship and scooped up the knife. “My mother is alive and well, I think. Maybe I’m not ready to sell just yet. It is, after all, quite beautiful. Maybe it’s also good luck.”
“Ten thousand, and that’s my final offer.”
“I don’t think so. You’ll get ten times that from the New York collectors. Call me with a decent offer. Good day.”
“Twenty thousand and consider it a gift.”
“Adios, amigo.”
I left his shop and stepped out onto the empty dirt street. Ishi was sitting in the Jeep with the windows down and his Panama hat pulled over his eyes. He was out like a light. As soon as I opened the door he snapped awake.
“Well?” he asked, pushing up his hat.
“We’ll hear from him soon enough.”
“What did he offer?”
“Twenty Gs.”
Ishi whistled. “I would have taken it.”
“We can get more. A lot more.”
“Which is why you do the negotiating.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So what good am I?” he asked.
“You’re here for entertainment purposes.”
“Good to know.”
“Drive on, Ishi. Let’s get out of here. I have a date.”
He shifted gears, and we left the small town in a cloud of dust.
Chapter Three
“Nick Caine?”
I nodded and smiled. Ever the approachable stranger.
Marie Da Vinci was a pretty woman with an angular face and muscular arms. Probably spent five to six days a week with a personal trainer. There were wet splotches under her breasts; a film of sweat coated her forehead and forearms. Sub-tropical humidity has that effect. She unconsciously pulled her sticky shirt away from her skin and grimaced, as if sweating through her clothes was distasteful.
She looked good, distasteful and all.
Having sworn off all women years ago, I was concerned by my immediate attraction to her. I thought: watch yourself, Nick Caine, Looter Extraordinaire.
I was sitting in an outdoor cafe along the dirt streets of Ruinas, Honduras, just outside the Hotel Rio Copan. Drinking beer from the bottle. Or, as the song says, just wasting away.
“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice,” she said.
“Luckily, you caught me before my power nap,” I said.
She smiled. “May I sit?”
“Suit yourself.” Ever the courteous gentleman, I kicked out one of the whicker chairs opposite me. It skidded to a stop next to her feet. She brushed the chair with a paper napkin, and then sat on said napkin. The chair promptly creaked whicker-like. The alert Honduran waiter swooped in and asked in broken English if she would like a drink. He assumed correctly that she was both thirsty and a tourist. The copious amounts of sunscreen on her narrow nose and the bright pink blouse were the dead giveaways. In this humidity, the thirst was a given, of course.
“A glass of water please,” she said.
The waiter blinked, then looked at me. I shrugged at the waiter. The waiter waited. Marie looked at the waiter, then me and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Ordering a glass of water is a bad idea,” I said.
She nodded, blushed. “Of course. A bottle of water, please.”
“Of course, senorita.”
An old Miskito woman stood under an umbrella at the nearby street corner, encouraging all within earshot to try her amazing lemonade. I had tried it earlier. It was amazing.
I said to Marie, “There’s a man out here named Da Vinci. Leonardo Da Vinci. And from what I understand he’s a shitty artist, which, I suppose, is kind of ironic.”
At the mention of Leonardo Da Vinci she looked away. Her lower lip might have trembled, too. I continued, “He is, however, a murderous looting kingpin who would just as soon cut your throat open than lend you a dime. Rumor has it that he’s making a big move into the drug business.” I paused, studying her reaction. “No offense, but you wouldn’t happen to be related?”
There was no hesitation. “He’s my uncle.”
“Ah.”
The old lady on the corner raised her voice even louder, shouting in English, Spanish, Miskito and a mixture of all three. Hell, I even detected some French. Finally, she stepped out from under her yellow umbrella and out into the heat of the sun. Like a lioness picking off the weak and sick from the herd, she picked out a young man from a milling crowd and guided him toward her lemonade stand. The young man looked confused and a little scared. I didn’t blame him. She thrust a waxy cup full of the good stuff and practically reached down into his trousers for his money. He thanked her but looked thoroughly shaken when he retreated to his pack.
Marie continued, “He killed my father. His own goddamned flesh and blood.”
She pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes carefully. Her eyes were round, like Japanese anime, and I noticed for the first time the faintish, darkish, puffy circles under them, like twin-blackened moons in their quarter phase. When done dabbing, she crumpled the tissue and held it in her fist, should there be later tears. Recycling in action, folks.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Your uncle, Miss Da Vinci, is a cold-hearted killer. And not a very nice man,” I said. “However, killing his own brother seems to be a new low for Leo.”
“You seem to know him.”
“Let’s just say we’ve had reason to cross paths. Your uncle doesn’t like competition, and his competition has a habit of disappearing.”
“But you’re still alive.”
“No small feat. If it was up to your uncle, I’d be dead by now.”
She studied me carefully, and seemed to reappraise, looking me over like a used car. Maybe if I were lucky she’d kick my tires.
“Your father owned a museum in California,” I said, prodding.
“You know of my father?”
I grinned. “I’m just full of surprises.”
“Well, the museum was burned to the ground,” she said. “Everything was lost. My father’s entire legacy, destroyed.”
“I assume Uncle Leo had a hand in that as well.”
“Yes.”
She seemed about to tell me more but her drink came. She opened the bottle with a deft twist and took a long pull and wiped the corners of her mouth with her thumb and forefinger. Her hand was shaking. She twisted the cap back on and set the bottle on the wooden table. Next, she removed a small notepad from her purse, flipped to a page and looked at me steadily. Her blue eyes were flecked with gold. My favorite color.
She looked down at the pad. “You, of course, are a looter.”
“I prefer the term creative archaeologist,” I said and reached over and tilted down her notepad with my forefinger. There was much scribbling on the page, with my name written on top, underlined twice. Hmmmm. “Where did you get this?,” I asked. “I’m not exactly listed in the yellow pages under Looting.”
She grinned. “I’m full of surprises as well, Mr. Caine. As it turns out, you are fairly well-known in the museum industry. A looter who’s not entirely untrustworthy.”
“Mom would be proud.”
She went back to the notepad. “You have a Ph.D in Classical Mayan socio-economics from UCLA.”
“Sounded good at the time. But just try getting a
job at Microsoft.”
“You worked briefly as an acquisitions specialist for the Bowers Museum of Cultural History in Santa Ana, California. Your last official job.”
“Yes.”
“But you quit.”
I shrugged. “As it turns out, I had quite a knack for acquiring artifacts, and an even stronger desire to keep them for myself.”
She closed the notebook, put it back in her purse. I knew there was still more information in there about me. Curiosity killed the looter.
“So,” I said, “did I pass the test?”
She looked at me with those big round eyes. The circles seemed to be getting darker. She needed sleep. Probably a couple days’ worth. “Yes, I suppose you did,” she said.
“Oh, swell. Now it’s your turn. What’s this all about?”
Chapter Four
She sat back and crossed her legs. Her ankles were tan. Tan ankles did something to me. Her foot bounced as she spoke. “You are, of course, familiar with the legends surrounding Ciudad Blanca.”
I sat back. “It’s a fairy tale.”
“It’s not a fairy tale, Mr. Caine.”
“Oh? You’ve been there? What’s it like?”
She smiled and reached out and touched the back of my hand. I once heard that a good salesperson would always touch their mark. I felt like a mark. As if I were being manipulated through a sales pitch. Except that I liked her pitch—and her touch.
Oh, brother.
The waiter came by and looked at me. I shook my head and he went away. Meanwhile, she watched me carefully, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction. The flecks in her eyes glittered like fool’s gold. Except, I was beginning to feel like the fool. She slipped something into my hand.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Look at it.”
I did. It was a Polaroid of a limestone disc and a rotund older man standing next to it, smiling as if he were with a lover. The disc was taller than his hip, larger than the ones I had come across. I squinted, and was able to pick out one or two familiar glyphs, which seemed to speak of rivers and valleys. The majority of the text, however, was unknown to me. The glyphs spiraled out from the center for three rows in what could only be a very complex story. Or a complex set of directions. The text encircled an image of a stylized jaguar, a popular image in Mayan lore. I was intrigued by the size of the jaguar, easily twice as big as a man. “It’s a photograph of a Mayan disc glyph.”
“Ancient directions to Ciudad Blanca,” she said. “It’s why my father was killed.”
I noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding band, and knew immediately that I shouldn’t care if she was wearing one or not. But I did, and the warning bells continued to sound in my head.
“My father found the disc on an excavation in the Copan valley thirty years ago. He returned it to the museum, where he has been deciphering it ever since. Had been deciphering it.” She looked away, pained.
“Has the entire text been deciphered?”
She nodded. “Finished on the night he was murdered.”
“Coincidence?”
“No,” she said. “My uncle, you see, had a sort of spy working in the museum. Apparently, this bastard had been reporting on my father’s progress. My uncle waited thirty years for the glyph to be deciphered.”
“How do you know this?”
“He told me.”
“When?”
“Right after the funeral. He and I had a sort of family reunion.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a clear CD ROM case. “He was looking for this.”
I reached for it, but she held it back.
“What’s on it?” I asked.
“The deciphered disc glyph in its entirety. A road map that goes through the jungles of Honduras. And, it goes on to Ciudad Blanca.” She paused. “Uncle Leo managed to steal everything but the final clue to Ciudad Blanca, a clue contained on this disk. The final clue my father deciphered on the night he was murdered.”
“And how did you manage to get the disk?”
“Father emailed me the results as a precaution. He correctly suspected he was being watched. I had the information burned to a disk.”
“So, Uncle Leo has everything but the final location of Ciudad Blanca.”
She nodded. “He can start, but he can’t finish.”
I smiled and sat back. “I hate when that happens.”
Temple of the Jaguar
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About the Authors:
J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.
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