Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“About what?”

“About the temple!” Vernon spun around, furious again. “Was that really and truly Galway’s land?”

“Looked that way on the map. She seemed to think it was. And the temple was there.”

“You saw it. You saw the temple.”

“I told you already, I saw a hill with some rocks on it. Come on, man, make a decision.”

The loneliness of command. Vernon bit his cheeks, he punched his knuckles together. All at once, it occurred to him, like a light shining from heaven, that he wouldn’t actually himself have to do the, uh, crime personally. Leaving here tonight, he could simply say (out of the comer of his mouth), “Take care of her,” and his partner, untroubled by conscience, unaffected by imagination, unthinking of consequence, would do the dirty deed.

“What do you want, Vernon?”

Vernon looked at the closed door to the inner room. The partition having originally been an exterior wall, it was still covered with bark, and the pine-slab door itself was thick and solid. It opened inward, but there was a rusty old hasp lock fixed in place with a broken-off piece of branch. “I’d better go question her now,” he decided, and sighed.

Taking the pillowcase from his pocket, he slowly and deliberately unfolded it, then slipped it over his head. It was a yellow pillowcase with a large sunny flower design; the eyeholes so he could see had been cut into the center of two daisies.

“Take the candle,” the skinny black man advised. “It’s dark in there.”

So Vernon lit the candle in the beer bottle, the skinny black man undid the hasp and opened the door — a scurrying sound came from within — and Vernon stepped through into the other room, peering through the damn eyeholes, stumbling a bit because he couldn’t see his feet. Behind him, the door was closed, the hasp lock rasped.

Valerie Greene stood tall — very tall — against the rear wall, arms at her sides, chin up in a posture of defiance. “You won’t get away with this!” she cried.

“I’ve already gotten away with it,” Vernon told her, sneering a bit. (He’d seen the same movies.)

“When I get out of here—”

“ If you get out of here,” he said, and was gratified to see her blanch a bit, one hand lifting, fingers curled, the knuckles just touching her chin. “All you have to do,” he told her, “is cooperate.”

Her eyes flashed. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, scornful and superior, “I have no designs on your maidenly virtue. I know how important that is to you Americans.”

“You do?” In the flickering candlelight her expression was difficult to read.

“I am here,” he said, “to talk about the temple.”

“Despoliation!” She took an aggressive step forward, almost as though to launch herself at him. “You, a Belizean, and you don’t care what happens to your own heritage !”

“What makes you think I’m a Belizean?” he asked, trying on a Texas accent.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “I know who you are.”

“You may think you know—”

“There is one thing I wish you’d tell me,” she said.

This interview was getting out of control — now she was questioning him — but there seemed no way to get back to the original path: “Yes?” “Is Vernon your first name or your last?”

Behind the door, someone snickered. She heard us talking! Dammit, dammit, through all these cracks in the wall. Vernon said, in a stage-Irish accent, “It is none of me names. You can’t see me face, you can’t identify me voice, you can’t prove a thing.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said, and folded her arms beneath her proud bosom.

“Listen,” he said, stepping closer, “you talk about heritage, but what do you think Kirby Galway’s doing up there? He’s selling stuff!”

“That makes you no better.”

“All right,” Vernon said. “I’ll tell you the truth. I am Belizean.” “Of course you are, I know that.”

“I want to rescue the temple from Kirby Galway,” Vernon went on, looking guiltless and pure-minded under the pillowcase, “so I can protect it for my people.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, “or you wouldn’t lock me up in here. You and Innocent St. Michael. Boy! Was I ever taken in by your boss!”

Oh, ho, Vernon thought, she thinks St. Michael’s part of this scheme. That’s good; somehow or other, it’s good. He said, “Never mind all that. The point is, that was Galway’s land you went to, is that right?”

“Of course it was,” she said. “The temple’s just where I said it was, all along, and you were wrong with your drainage and faults and all that.”

Vernon resisted the bait: I am not Vernon, he reminded himself, and said, “Is it valuable? Rich things there?”

She gave him the exasperated look of the professional faced with the amateur. “How am I supposed to know that ? I haven’t investigated the site, that man drove me off with a sword!”

“A sword?”

She made swishing gestures, saying, “You know, that thing, you know.”

“Machete,” said the skinny black man from the other room.

“You keep out of this!” Vernon yelled. With his free hand, he punched his hipbone. Inside the pillowcase, his head was getting hotter and hotter, in more ways than one. Everything was out of control. There was no way to buy this woman off, or force her silence, except...

Ohhhhh, ohhhhhh. How had he gotten into this? “That’s all for now,” he said, backing away to the door. He thought, I’ll go to the land, I don’t know how we all missed the temple, but it must be there, I’ll go there, I’ll hunt around right now, tonight, if I’m lucky I’ll find some jade, maybe some gold, a couple hundred thousand worth (U.S.), I’ll skip the country tomorrow . Start all over again somewhere else, where nobody knows me, change my name, do things right this time. At the same time, he knew he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go there tonight, and even if he did he wouldn’t find anything useful by stumbling around in the dark, and even if by some insane chance he did happen upon something valuable he still wouldn’t flee Belize.

Where would he go? What would he do there? Who would he know there?

“Leave me the candle,” Valerie Greene said.

“What?” he asked, disturbed from his reverie.

“It’s dark in here. I need the candle.”

“Oh, no,” he said. He’d seen that movie, too. “You’ll set fire to the place and escape.”

“I just wanted some light.”

“You don’t need light,” he said ominously, holding the candle closer to himself, not quite igniting the pillowcase. He pushed on the door, and nothing happened. His partner had locked it. So much for his exit line; hating the sense that he was somehow becoming a figure of fun, Vernon resignedly knocked on the door.

“Who goes there?”

“Oh, open the goddam door!”

The hasp rasped, the door swung open, and Vernon glared back through the pillowcase eyes at Valerie Greene: “I’ll see you later,” he said, and this time made his exit.

“I have to go to the bathroom!”

The skinny black man shut and locked the door. The sun would soon be setting; orange rays crossed almost horizontally from the doorway to soften the roughness of the dividing wall. Vernon put the candle down in its comer, still burning. “I have to get back,” he said.

The skinny black man nodded at the locked door. “Do I take care of that?”

“Well, of course, man, you brought her here, didn’t you?”