Donald Westlake - High Adventure

Hiram Farley leaned forward with his meaty forearms crossed on the table and looked unsmilingly at Vernon. He said nothing. He seemed to be exploring Vernon’s eyes, looking for something, traces of something. A cold finger touched Vernon’s spine. He knows, he thought. But he can’t know, get hold of yourself. Vernon blinked.

Scottie said, “Mr. Farley would very much like to come along with us tomorrow, if he may. Busman’s holiday and all that, the old fire company horse hearing the bell. Please say yes.”

“Yes,” said Vernon.

Twenty little devil-gods stood on the rattan mat, knees turned out to the sides and deeply bent, arms flung wide to show their bat webs, eyes glittering with evil, mouths stretched back in a violent smirk out of which forked tongues curled, poised to strike. In the flickering candlelight, the massed group of 20 demons seemed to move, shimmer, almost to dance, their eyes staring back at Kirby, who blinked, cleared his throat, and said, “Fine, Tommy. Very effective.”

“They get to you, don’t they?” Tommy held the candle lower, the movement causing the creatures to alter their knee bends and roll their eyes, while their shadows magnified and swooped on the far wall of the hut.

“They’re real good, Tommy,” Kirby said. Behind him, outside, a low-key party was under way, partly in hospitality at the presence of Kirby and Innocent and partly a vigil, waiting for word of Valerie Greene. Rosita and a couple of the others were still out there in the darkness somewhere, occasionally calling, but everyone knew they wouldn’t find their Jungle Queen tonight. At first light they’d look again, hoping nothing bad had happened to her, reeling around stoned and lost in the darkness.

Innocent was in another hut right now, being shown some of the blankets and dress material the villagers had made and dyed themselves, so Tommy had taken the opportunity to bring Kirby here and show him he’d actually been at work making the promised Zotzes.

Zotzilaha Chimalman, replicated 20 times, danced in the candle-light on the rattan mat. Each figure was about 10 inches high, seven inches wide, formed from clay, hollowed out as an incense burner. Buried and dug up again, all of them had been knocked together a bit to simulate age and rough treatment, each one subtly different, showing the specific touches of the half dozen artisans who had worked on them.

Fakes. Mockeries. Tiny clay imitations of an ancient long-dead superstition, but still brimming with the potency of dread. Zotzilaha Chimalman hated mankind and had the power and the genius to do something about it. Kirby had never been a Maya, but nevertheless he felt uneasy in the presence of this naked malevolence. He could understand why it was so hard for Tommy to turn his hand to the creation of such a being, and even more so for the other villagers, whose straightforward relationship with life and the spirits and their ancestors had never been corrupted by exile to the outer world.

Over the candle flame, Tommy’s eyes gleamed at Kirby almost as gleefully as the demons’: “Had enough, Kimosabe?”

“They’re fine, Tommy,” Kirby said, calm and dignified. “Thanks. And, uh, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Tommy chuckled, and they went outside to a clear night full of stars, with a moon about seven months pregnant. The villagers liked to party, but were troubled by the disappearance of their Sheena, and therefore merely sat in groups, murmuring together. The little plastic radio had been turned off; no salsa music from Guatemala tonight. A horizontal scrim of marijuana smoke hung at nose level. Jars of home-brew clinked against stone. The mountains that had swallowed Valerie Greene were black against the western sky.

Innocent was no longer admiring materials but sitting on them. A bulky old mahogany armchair had been brought out of one of the huts and set near the largest fire, then draped with colorful cloths; black-and-white zigzags over red or rust or orange, bright red and deep blue diamonds in alternating patterns, representations of flora and fauna so stylized by centuries of repetition as to have lost all hint of their original realistic nature. Upon this soft throne sat Innocent, smiling upon the fire and the shyly smiling villagers, in his left hand a large Hellman’s Mayonnaise jar mostly full of what to drink.

Crossing toward him, Kirby thought at first it was merely the ambiguity of the firelight that made Innocent’s face look so much softer and less guileful than usual, but when he got closer he saw it was more than that. “Innocent?” he said.

Innocent turned his smiling face. He wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t participating in the gage that was being passed around. It seemed as though he was just, well, happy. “How are you, Kirby?” he said.

“I’m fine.” Kirby looked around for something to sit on, found nothing, and sat on the ground beside Innocent’s left knee, half turned away from the fire so he could continue the conversation. “How are you, Innocent?”

“I’m all right,” Innocent said, with a strange kind of dawdling emphasis. “I’ve had a very strange day, Kirby.”

Kirby ruefully touched his shoulder, where Innocent’s bullet had kissed him. “Haven’t we all,” he said. Around them, the Indians conducted their own conversations in their own language, nodding or smiling at Kirby and Innocent in hospitable incomprehension from time to time. Tommy and Luz were at some other fire, waiting for Rosita to give up and come home.

“This morning,” Innocent said, “I was in despair. Would you believe that, Kirby?”

“You seemed a little hot under the collar.”

“That, too. But it was mostly despair. When I got out of bed this morning, Kirby, I was prepared to throw my entire life away.”

“Not to mention mine.”

“ Mine, Kirby,” Innocent insisted, but still with that same new languid manner. “I didn’t take my laps in the pool this morning,” he said. “Can you imagine that?”

“I guess not.”

“I never skip my laps in the pool. I didn’t eat breakfast. I didn’t eat lunch.”

“Okay,” Kirby said. “That’s a couple of things I can’t imagine.”

“It was love that did it to me, Kirby. At my age, after all these years, I fell in love.”

“With Valerie Greene?”

“Strange thing,” Innocent said, “until just now I couldn’t even use the word. Love. I could say I missed her, I was angry about her loss, I liked the idea of her, but I couldn’t use the word love . I could plan to shoot you because of it, but I couldn’t say it. Plan to throw my entire life away without ever saying that word.”

“My God, Innocent,” Kirby said, “you’ve had an epiphany.”

“Is that what it is? Feels pretty good.” Innocent smiled and sipped a bit from the jar.

“But,” Kirby said, hesitating, not wanting to spoil Innocent’s good mood or changed personality or whatever the hell this was, “but, Innocent, are you sure ? I mean, how well did you know Valerie Greene?”

“How well do I have to know her? Kirby, if I knew her better, would it make me love her more?”

“It wouldn’t me,” Kirby said, remembering his own less than satisfactory last sight of Valerie Greene.

“I spent one afternoon with her,” Innocent said. “Just Platonic, you know.”

“You didn’t have to say that, Innocent,” Kirby said comfortably.

Innocent chuckled. “I suppose I didn’t. Anyway, I expected to see her again, and it didn’t happen. I was thirsty, and the water went away.”

“You’re a wonder, Innocent,” Kirby said. “I never knew you were a romantic.”

“I never was a romantic. Sitting here now, thinking about it, I think maybe that’s what was wrong. I was never a romantic, never once in my life. Do you know why I married my wife?”