Donald Westlake - High Adventure

Feeling the conversation was moving into murky areas beyond her comprehension, Valerie said, “Actually, I’m an archaeologist.”

He brightened right up. “Oh! De Mayans!”

“That’s right,” she said, smiling, pleased that he was pleased.

“Dat’s me, you know,” he said, his simple good humor returning. Leaning a bit toward her, smiling, he patted his chest. “Mayan.”

“Oh, really?” She said, “Anzan kayalki hec malanalam.”

He gawped at her, then straightened, returned his hand to the wheel, looked at the road, looked at her: “What’s dat?”

“Kekchi,” she told him.

He frowned: “You mean, like a song?”

It was her turn to be confused. “A song?”

“People say, ‘Dat song, dat’s catchy.’”

“No, no,” she said, laughing. “It’s the Mayan language , the principal Mayan tribal tongue in this area. Kekchi.”

“Ohhh,” he said, getting it. “Indian talk. No, I’m not, I’m not all Mayan.” Grinning at her, this time he patted his kinky hair, saying, “Creole. I gotta lotta Creole, too. Dat’s what I talk. English and Creole.”

“I see,” she said, not seeing at all.

He said, “You going out to de ruins, huh? Lamanai, maybe?”

“No,” she said. “Actually, what I’m doing is rather exciting.”

He looked interested, potentially excited, potentially impressed: “Oh, yes?”

“I think,” Valerie said, unconsciously spreading her palms atop the attaché case containing her documents and maps, “I think there is a significantly important Mayan site that has never been discovered!”

“Up in de jungle, you mean,” he said, and nodded sympathetically. “Oh, it’s very hard to get up in dere.”

“That’s just it,” she said. “Belize is still so primitive, so largely unmapped—”

“Oh, now, Miss,” he interrupted. “We ain’t primitive, now. We got movie houses, radio, we gonna get television most any day—”

“No, I’m sorry,” Valerie said, “I do beg your pardon, I didn’t mean primitive like that. I mean so much of the country is still virgin jungle.”

“Virgin,” he said, as though it too were a Kekchi word. Then he gave her a quick sharp look and nodded faintly to himself.

“What I did at UCLA,” Valerie explained, “I got the statisticians interested. There are so many Mayan sites discovered, new ones still being found; what if we did a statistical analysis of site locations, with dates of original settlement and final abandonment? Would that show us where new sites should be?”

“Oh, yeah,” the driver said, nodding like a metronome. “Dat’s pretty impressive stuff.”

“Well, we ran it through the computer,” Valerie said, smiling in remembered joy, “with a lot of other statistical data, too, of course, rainfall and elevation and all that, and the computer said we were right!”

“Smart computer,” the driver said.

“It showed an area that has been missed by just everybody! So I went to New York—”

“It’s in New York? De Mayans?” The driver had thought he was more or less keeping up, but this latest turn in the story had thrown him.

“No, no,” Valerie said. “The money’s in New York.”

“Lots of money in New York,” the driver said, grateful to be on solid ground again. “My brudder’s in Brooklyn. He works for Union Gas.”

“Well, I spent almost three months in New York,” Valerie said, “and I finally interested two foundations, and they are funding me to come to Belize and test my theory! So that’s why I’m here.”

“Well, dat’s pretty good,” the driver acknowledged. “You gonna need a driver while you’re here?”

“Oh, thank you, but no. Where I’m going, there won’t be any roads. I have a contact in the Belizean government, he’ll supply me with whatever I need.” I hope, she added silently.

They were coming into Belize City now, a small picturesque port town, somewhat dilapidated, with small scenic bridges over narrow canals used in lieu of a sewer system; prettier to look at than to smell. Most of the buildings were low, almost all wood-framed, with sweet touches of latticework and carpenter Gothic. Built along both sides of the mouth of Haulover Creek where it enters the Caribbean Sea, and extending both north and south along the shore, Belize City looks as perhaps New Orleans did when Andrew Jackson was defending it from the British in the War of 1812, or as any number of pirate towns around the Caribbean basin looked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The concrete or stucco buildings of downtown, with their clothing shops and supermarkets, seemed to be the anachronisms, rather than the fanciful cupolas Valerie saw, or the large airy porches, or the potholed plowed-field streets. Her cab jounced and creaked and complained along these streets, where most of the vehicles around them looked just as dusty and battered, except for a British Army jeep, dark gray, efficient-looking, containing a couple of red-faced soldiers wearing shorts.

Ahead of them after awhile was a beat-up maroon pickup truck with three men visible inside, all bouncing up and down together as the pickup struggled along what had become more of an obstacle course than a thoroughfare. But then, with the pickup still ahead, they passed through downtown and came to a better-maintained street that ran along the north side of Haulover Creek. The water was to their right, while larger, well-painted wooden residences were to their left; they were coming, evidently, to the better part of town.

“Fort George Hotel,” announced the driver, and Valerie looked out at a modem but rather shabby building, three stories high, motel style, but with an elaborate curving entranceway.

Unfortunately, the pickup pulled in ahead of them and stopped in front of the steps to the main door, causing a delay. All three men got out, the driver on one side and the passengers on the other. The driver walked around the front of the pickup to shake hands with his passengers, both of whom were very tall and thin. The driver, who seemed more robust, exchanged a word or two with them, and then the passengers went into the hotel while the driver trotted back around his pickup, waved an apology for the delay at Valerie’s cabdriver, and climbed up into his vehicle.

I know that man, Valerie thought suddenly. The face, the smile, the easygoing manner, the being rather too sure of himself. She knew she’d met him somewhere, but couldn’t think where. As the cab pulled forward and the green-jacketed bellboy came out to open Valerie’s door, she frowned at the departing pickup and the vagrant memory. Somewhere, somewhere. She got out of the cab, holding her attache case, and turned to watch the pickup drive away, back toward the center of town.

All she could remember was that she had seen that face before, and that she felt... she felt...

Trouble.

Kirby circled while they took in the laundry, far below. Watching, waiting to land, lightly touching Cynthia’s controls, he repeatedly yawned.

It had been a long day, now rushing toward sunset; the shadows of the Cruz family and their wind-flapping laundry stretched long and black over the stubbly pasture. Bright purple or orange sheets; red, black, or green shirts; modest white underpants; the ubiquitous blue jeans; and finally the line itself was unstrung. The smallest Cruz children had meanwhile chivvied the goats into their log pen, and at last Kirby’s earphones spoke in Manuel Cruz’s Spanish-accented voice: “Sorry, Kirby. All set now.”

“Thanks, Manny.”

The Cruz kids always loved a little acrobatics, so Kirby turned Cynthia up and over on her left wingtip, power-dived directly at the eastern end of the pasture — the laundry having told him the wind was out of the west — brought the nose up at the last possible instant, and walked Cynthia like a bride across the bumpy pasture to the grove of sapodilla.