Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“Not beyond my dreams,” Vernon assured him. “This is what I hate about this,” he said. “I got to get the goods on St. Michael, I got to expose his corruption and get him thrown out and put in jail and me to replace him. But the closest thing I got to proof right now is that goddam record you’re gonna—”

“Cassette.”

“ Record , goddamit!” Vernon’s eyes were big round circles. “But if I get rid of St. Michael by using this temple, then I lose the temple!”

“Ouch,” agreed the skinny black man. “But if we could get there first—”

“That’s just it,” Vernon said, pacing the room, punching his own thighs and shoulders. “Where is the goddam thing?”

At night, tall ivory-colored curtains are closed over the dining room windows at the Fort George Hotel, eliminating the featureless, dark, infinite, eternal, perhaps unsettling view of the nighttime sea. The lights are dimmer, the tablecloths are thick and soft, and the chunky waitresses in dark green move silently on the carpeted floor. The room is no more than half full, conversations are muted. Tourists smile at one table, businessmen look serious at another, the occasional solitary traveler reads a magazine while spooning his soup.

Whitman Lemuel looked up from his magazine and his soup when Valerie Greene entered the dining room, and his first lightning-quick thought process, almost too fast for memory, involved a series of rapid vignettes: “We’re both alone. Why don’t we eat together?” “I don’t want to be mysterious, heh, heh, but I really can’t talk about what I’m doing down here in Belize.” “But why is a beautiful woman like you alone in such an out-of-the-way place?” “Oh, my dear, I am sorry, it must have been dreadful for you.” “Don’t cry, here’s my handkerchief.” “I do have some vodka in my room.” There then followed an amber-toned scene, which crumbled and liquefied when, as Valerie followed the hostess past Lemuel to a table in another comer, recognition came.

My God! Her! “Despoliation!” “Unscrupulous museum directors!” He didn’t remember her name, but he was unlikely to forget her face. Or her voice. Slopping soup onto the snowy tablecloth, Lemuel raised his magazine up in front of his face, showing all the world that he was a reader of Harpers .

Unaware that the stir she had caused was anything other than the normal erotic ripple that followed her everywhere and which no longer very much impinged on her conscious attention, Valerie took her seat, glanced toward the draped windows with a slight passing regret for the lack of a sea view — the limitless ocean at night, heaving away, held no terrors for Valerie — accepted the large menu, and answered the hostess’s question with, “Just water, thanks.”

Behind his magazine, Lemuel gulped his vodka sour.

Witcher and Feldspan, arriving then, obediently waited by the lectern for the hostess to finish with Valerie. They glanced around at the lack of imagination displayed in the conversion of this large rectangular room from a warehouse manque to a restaurant, and then Feldspan gasped and whispered, “Alan!”

“What now?”

“It’s him! Behind the magazine!”

“Oh, my Lord,” Witcher said. “You’re right. Don’t look at him!”

“I’m not looking at him. Don’t you look at him.”

Witcher was always the first to recover. “Well, why wouldn’t he eat here?” he said. “He’s staying here, the same as us.”

“But who’s he hiding from?” Feldspan asked. “Surely his type doesn’t actually read Harpers .”

“Well, maybe he does,” Witcher said, becoming a little testy at Feldspan’s nervousness. “He has to read something, doesn’t he? And I really doubt there’s a Drug Dealers Digest published anywhere.”

“Hush!” Feldspan said, because the hostess was approaching, a smile on her face, her arms full of menus.

The hostess led them to a table along the right side wall. She was a good hostess, who didn’t believe in crowding the customers together in one area of the room for the convenience of the help, but who believed in spreading the customers out as much as possible for their own convenience and privacy and enjoyment of their meals. Therefore, once she had placed Witcher and Feldspan, the situation was this:

Among a scattering of other patrons, Witcher and Feldspan were a short way into the room, against the right wall. Lemuel was midway down the room, one table in from the left wall. Valerie was most of the way down the right side, one table in from the side, one back from the non-view. In this triangle, Valerie and Lemuel were seated so as to face one another directly, while Witcher and Feldspan, opposite one another with the wall beside them, were situated out of Valerie’s line of sight but so that Feldspan offered Lemuel a three-quarter profile and Witcher gave him a view of his right ear and the back of his head.

Lemuel simply couldn’t stand it. Every time he peeked over the top of his magazine, there she was, across an uncrowded room, facing him. And he daren’t let her see him, dare not .

She would know, she would have to. He had identified himself to her at that party back in New York as a museum curator. They had spoken about Belize; the subject of antiquity theft had come up, had most certainly and emphatically come up. She would see him, and she would immediately know what he was doing in Belize.

Then what? Given her vehemence in New York, Lemuel knew exactly what would happen next; she would inform the police. Most likely, she would leap to her feet right here in this public restaurant, point a finger rigid with virtue, and denounce him to diners and help alike.

What could he do? His main course hadn’t even arrived yet; to get up and flee the restaurant now would merely call attention to himself. But to sit directly in that woman’s line of sight was simply not possible; he couldn’t hold Harper’s up in front of his face indefinitely.

He peeked over the magazine’s top, to see that she was holding the large menu up in front of herself much as he was holding Harper’s . If he were to do anything, improve the situation in any way, it would have to be now.

What if he were to face in the opposite direction? But to stand, walk around the table, move everything with him to the opposite side, all of that would also attract too much attention. Besides, there wasn’t even a chair over there. The only other chair at this table was to his left.

Well, a partial move would certainly help. Quickly but smoothly, while Valerie continued to study the menu, Lemuel slid from his chair and, without rising, made it into the chair to his left. He drew the soup, the silverware, the bread plate and the glasses over with him, and laid the magazine on the table to the right of his setting. In reading the magazine now, his head would quite naturally be averted from Valerie, showing her much less than a profile. With the dim lighting, and at this distance, she was most unlikely to recognize him. Feeling much better, he looked up, and found himself staring directly into the eyes of one of Kirby Galway’s drug dealers.

The waitress asked Valerie if she were ready to order, and she said yes.

“He’s staring at me,” Feldspan said. There were little white spots under his eyes, and he spoke in a harsh whisper, not moving his lips. “My God, Alan, he moved around at the table so he could stare at me.”

Lemuel, seeing the drug dealer glare at him while muttering to his partner without moving his lips, looked down in fright and gazed unseeing at Harper’s .