Donald Westlake - High Adventure

“Well, maybe there was questions in their minds, because we still don’t have any law.” Tommy drained his bottle. “You got another?”

“Tell me about Innocent.”

“I’m too dry.”

Kirby got them a pair of beers, and Tommy said, “That was Monday afternoon. He come out with this other fella, skinny nervous tan fella.”

“He’s got an assistant like that in Belmopan,” Kirby said. “Young guy.”

“That’s the one. They come out in a nice new pickup, said on the doors it was from the Highways Department.”

“And what did they do?”

“Walked,” Tommy said, and swigged beer at the memory of what a hot and tiring sight that had been. “They walked all over the hill. Your pal—”

“Call him Innocent, not my pal.”

“He isn’t my pal,” Tommy pointed out, “and if I call him Innocent I’ll have to confess it in church.”

“What did he do, Tommy?”

“Marched around. Kicked the ground a lot. Stomped. Looked mad, confused, worried, upset, pissed off. The young guy with him looked scared.”

“Scared?”

“It was like a man out with his dog,” Tommy said, grinning a bit. “Your pal stomped up and down the hill, while the little guy scurried this way and that, looking behind bushes, over the edges of drop-offs, up and down and back and forth like he’s chasing a rabbit.”

“Then what did they do?”

“Left,” Tommy said simply.

“Come on, Tommy,” Kirby said, trying to look and sound dangerous. “Tell me what happened.”

“I am telling you. They walked up and down the hill. They stood on the top a while, your pal scratching his head and the other guy making little dashes back and forth, looking under pebbles. We watched them, but we stayed out of sight, and you can’t see South Abilene from up there, so there was never any conversation, And after a while they went back down the hill again, your pal pounding his feet down like he was mad at the ground, the other guy rushing back and forth, smelling the earth. Then they got. back into their Highways Department pickup and left. Your pal was driving.”

“That was Monday?”

“And today is Friday, according to the mission,” Tommy said, “and that’s the last visitor we had.”

“I don’t get it,” Kirby said.

“It’s beginning to look,” Tommy said, “as though the coast is maybe clear.”

It was beginning to look that way to Kirby, too. Had Valerie Greene simply been too wild-eyed and weird, and had her story therefore been ignored by the authorities? Anybody who knew that parcel of land at all well, of course, would disbelieve Valerie Greene from the outset.

Which raised the problem and question of Innocent. Why, at that time of all times, had Innocent and his office assistant decided to come visit his old land? What had he been looking for? He, of all people, had to know there was no Mayan temple there, that Lava Sxir Yt did not exist and had never existed. So what was he after? What garbled story had reached Innocent’s ears that had led him to believe there might be something of interest on Kirby’s land?

And who had told him the garbled story, whatever it was? Over the weekend, Kirby brooded on those questions, on the absence of official response to Valerie Greene’s undoubted report, on the bewildering visit of Innocent St. Michael, and finally he came up with a scenario which seemed to him to fit all the facts:

Valerie Greene, as Kirby well knew, was an hysteric, particularly on the subject of purloined antiquities. Let’s just say she went to town, she made a report to the police at the top of her lungs, yelling and hollering and demanding immediate action and send in the troops. What would the police do? They would not want to be around such a crazy person, but just on the off chance she was right they would not want to throw her out of the office either, so they would pass her on to some other authority, who would pass her on to somebody else, and so on and so on, until at last someone would recognize the land in question as having once belonged to Innocent St. Michael. A quick phone call to Innocent in Belmopan would produce his guarantee that no Mayan temple could possibly be found out there, and various maps and surveys would support his statement.

In the meantime, of course, Valerie Greene would also have been hollering about Whitman Lemuel, as being part of the scheme. Let’s say somebody went to question Lemuel before he boarded his plane. That was exactly the sort of situation Lemuel would know how to deal with; stand on his dignity, show his credentials, denounce Valerie Greene as a dangerous lunatic with delusional ideas. With a member of government (Innocent) assuring everyone the woman’s story was impossible, and a distinguished North American scholar (Lemuel) assuring the same everyone that she was crazy, and with Valerie Greene herself ranting and raving in office after office...

Yes. It could have worked that way. It was a very probable scenario. The absence of any official response at all, not even a quick casual investigation, supported the idea. And if someone had checked with Innocent, it would explain his driving out there to find out what if anything was going on. Trust Innocent to leave no stone unturned.

This scenario fit the facts as no other did, so by yesterday Kirby had become convinced of its truth. Valerie Greene had done her worst, and had not been believed. Innocent’s curiosity had been aroused, but had not been satisfied. Whatever tempest in a teapot might have occurred in Belmopan or Belize City, it was over now. Lava Sxir Yt could rise again!

There was no reason to even slow down. Tommy and his fellow workers had been busily creating carvings etched in stone, bone utensils, broken terracotta pots with one triangular piece missing. Kirby for his part had two sets of customers, Mr. Mortmain’s friend Bobbi and the team of Witcher and Feldspan, who had already seen the temple. It was time to start rolling again by selling Witcher and Feldspan some pre-Columbian artifacts.

Sorry; no jade, no gold. Must have been a temple in a poor neighborhood.

So yesterday Kirby had finally come out of his funk and become decisive again. Last night he’d gone up to Orange Walk and talked to some people, and had come back with a job flying a cargo to Florida this coming Saturday. And this morning Estelle had given Manny a shopping list, and off he and Kirby had gone, jouncing in the pickup the other way to Belize City, where Kirby dropped Manny off by Swing Bridge and went on Cable & Wireless, where he sent Witcher and Feldspan the good news: See you Sunday, with our first shipment.

Coming out of Cable & Wireless, Kirby ran into the devil himself; that is, Innocent. “Well, well,” Innocent said, spying him, “my old friend Kirby. You haven’t been around, man.” There was more than the usual edge in his voice.

They shook hands in the usual way, though, gripping as hard as they knew how while smiling in one another’s faces, but it seemed to Kirby somehow that Innocent’s heart wasn’t in it. The smile on Innocent’s face seemed false, the strength of his grip a fraction off. In that first instant, it seemed to Kirby that Innocent was somehow doing an Innocent imitation .

They released one another. “I’ve been resting,” Kirby told him.

“Heavy labors?”

“Man must work,” Kirby said. “How about you, Innocent? You up to anything these days?”

“Not much, Kirby.” There was something grumpy about Innocent, underneath the imitation smile. “Too many schemers around, man,” he said, smiling hard at Kirby. “Too many schemes. Too much competition.”

Kirby grinned. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe, Innocent, you ought to retire.”