Aaron Elkins - Skull Duggery

Immediately below them was an old man playing the violin-Kreisler, Schubert, Dvorak-with such honeyed sweetness that Gideon had gotten up from the table to go downstairs and place a fifty-peso note in his open violin case. It was more than everything else in there put together, and the old man had shown his appreciation by asking what Gideon would like to hear. Gideon had told him that what he was doing was wonderful, and just keep doing it. The old man had taken him at his word: he’d been playing Dvorak’s Humoresque at the time, and now, fifteen minutes later, he was still playing Humoresque, looking upward to bow to them at the conclusion of each repetition.

“I grant you, it’s a pretty tune,” Julie said with a strained smile as he started on his fifth run-through, “but maybe you should go down and give him another fifty pesos and ask him to play something else.”

“I most certainly will not,” Gideon declared. “I like it, and it seems to be making him happy. If anybody else doesn’t like it, they can pay him to change.”

They were done with their appetizer of manchego cheese with olive oil and toast rounds, and their entrees had just been set down: sea bass with a grapefruit coulis for Julie, and huge Gulf shrimp over garlic-drenched linguine for Gideon. It was after two o’clock-Gideon’s deposition had consumed more time than expected-and the rich aromas practically had them salivating on the tablecloth. For a few moments, they happily shoveled in the food, only occasionally pausing for a sip of mineral water.

Julie suddenly blinked, struck by a thought as obviously as if it had hit her in the forehead. She put down her knife and fork. “That man… the drifter, the mummy… he really is Manolo.”

“Oh, I think so. The probability that-”

“No, I just thought of something else. Didn’t you say his name was Manuel?”

“Manuel Garcia. At least that’s what he told Sandoval.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, Manolo isn’t really a given name in Spanish. Would you like to guess what it’s a nickname for?”

He put down his knife and fork. “Manuel?”

“Exactly. It’s got to be the same man, Gideon.”

He nodded. “It sure is one more piece that fits. What was Manolo’s last name, do you know?”

“If I did, I’ve forgotten. But they’ll know at the Hacienda. What do you think the odds are that it’s Garcia?”

“Pretty good, I’d say. Sandoval thought it was fake, but now that’s looking doubtful.”

They finished their meals and sat back, contented, over coffee. “Thank God!” Julie exclaimed.

Gideon looked at her. “What?”

“He’s finally stopped playing Humoresque. He’s on to Mozart nowEine Kleine Nachtmusik. You mean you didn’t notice?”

“I guess not. I was thinking-if we’ve now identified Manolo, then what’s that skull in the museum?”

Julie shrugged. “Probably just what it’s supposed to be-some thousand-year-old Zapotec Indian.”

“But why would Tony want to kill me over that?”

“ If that’s the reason he tried to kill you.”

Gideon sighed. “What do you say we head on over to the museum and have a look? Maybe we’ll understand more in an hour or two.”EL Museo de Curiosidades was on Calle las Casas, only five short blocks west of the Zocalo, but in those few blocks Oaxaca went from urban chic to urban grit. Las Casas was a long, narrow, one-way street-if it had been shorter it would have been an alley-crowded with people and crammed with hole-in-the-wall shops and sidewalk stalls selling everything from rubber tubing and used automobile batteries to knock-off wristwatches and green high-top sneakers with pictures of Che Guevara or Daffy Duck on them. It was also the route to the second-class bus terminal, so it was choked with diesel fumes, and bumper-to-bumper with buses so old and beat-up that you expected to see them spewing nuts and bolts like cartoon cars.

The sidewalks were narrow enough to begin with, and with the encroachment of the curbside stalls, it was impossible to walk without continually shouldering aside people coming the other way, or being shouldered aside by them. Not once, though, did they encounter any rudeness or irritation; the locals had learned to live with it as a matter of course. Every now and then they got separated in the crush, but with Julie being half a foot taller than the average pedestrian, they had no trouble spotting each other over the heads of the crowd.

At the intersections, the pedestrian Walk signs made them laugh. They were, as Julie remarked, more Run signs than Walk signs. They allowed ten seconds to get across the street, and the dwindling seconds were shown: 10… 9… 8… Underneath the numbers was the moving figure of a man. At ten, the start of the countdown, he was sauntering along, but by five he had broken into a run, and by two he was running like hell, arms and legs churning. The live pedestrians, they noted, did not follow suit. They started at a saunter and they finished at a saunter, whatever the count. This resulted in an unabated storm of horn-honking (the drivers were not as polite as the walkers), which had no effect on the street crossers, but added considerably to the general sense of clamor, closeness, and commotion.

They were glad to finally see the museum. It stood on a corner, an old one-story adobe house, much the worse for the two centuries or so that it had been in existence, to say nothing of the last six or seven decades of diesel fumes. Seeing it answered a question that had been bothering Gideon: If the skull was what was worrying Tony, why had he opted for murder rather than going to the museum in the morning, when it was closed, finding some way to break in, and stealing the skull? Sure, there would have been risks involved, but there had been even more risks doing it the way he did. And whatever the risks, who would choose murder over theft?

The answers were on the house itself. There were few windows in the thick walls, and every one of them had not only an iron grill over it but a steel security shutter, all of which were rolled down. And while the entrance door was probably as old as the building, it had been cross-braced with studded steel bars. A guided missile might have gotten the place open for you, but nothing less.

In front of the building was a small courtyard enclosed by high adobe walls and secured by a head-high gate of ornate metal grillwork, overpainted so many times that the twining leaves and stems and flowers were hardly more than solid globs of black paint. The heavy old padlock on the gate was in the process of being shaken to make sure it was closed, by a small, pale, waspish man in a dark suit and tie.

“We’re closed,” he said to them in dour, unaccented American English. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” He was a bit of a dandy, or at least he would have been in 1965, when his threadbare double-breasted jacket and inch-wide tie were still in fashion.

“You’re not open till four?” Julie asked.

“No,” he said, his voice rising as if it were something he had already explained to them a dozen times. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, one until three. Saturdays, one until five. Mondays twelve until three, and Fridays, twelve until two. Look at the sign,” he added irritably, gesturing at a small plaque so darkened by street grime and age that it was next to impossible to read.

“But it’s barely three o’clock now,” Gideon said. “Couldn’t you let us in just for a minute?”

“Impossible.”

“It really is important, and I don’t think it’ll take long. We’ll be glad to pay your admission fees, of course.”

Now the man was insulted. “It’s not a matter of fees. Standards must be maintained.”

“Well, sure, but-”

“I’m sorry. Now really, I must go, I must be on my way. Time is of the essence.” And off he went around the corner, shaking his head.