Aaron Elkins - Little Tiny Teeth

“Phil,” Gideon said with a sigh, “I am a real person. Even John is a real person.”

“Damn right,” agreed John. “Wait a minute-”

“To appreciate a certain amount of material comfort,” Gideon continued, “does not mean you are not a real person.”

Phil shook his head sadly. “And you call yourself an anthropologist,” he said, dripping contempt, as he had on similar occasions in the past and was sure to do again in the future.

Phil was right about the afternoon heat. Even at four o’clock, supposedly after things had “cooled down,” the thermometer in the lobby of the Dorado Plaza read thirty-seven degrees centigrade. Approximately ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit. And the relative humidity was even higher, according to the humidity sensor: 100 percent. The air couldn’t hold any more moisture if it tried.

Gideon’s crisp, fresh shirt went limp even before he and John were all the way through the revolving door to the plaza, where Phil, also apparently in fresh clothes (although, who could tell for sure?) was waiting. From there he led them on a walking tour of the highlights of Iquitos: the moldering once-grand, porcelain-tiled houses of nineteenth-century rubber barons on the Malecon Tarapaca; the strange Iron House, made entirely of engraved iron plates (it looked like a house made of tinfoil), designed by Gustav Eiffel for the Paris exhibition of 1889 and shipped to Peru by one of the barons; and the floating “village” of Belen, a swarming, astonishing, malodorous marketplace hawking everything from native medicines to capybara haunches, smoked monkey arms, and fresh turtle eggs.

By five-thirty even John was drooping from the heat, and they were all ready for a cold beer and something to eat. Gideon suggested the Gran Maloca, a nice-looking restaurant they’d passed, with white-shirted waiters visible through the windows and Visa, Master-Card, and aire acondicionado stickers on the door. But he was outvoted, as he knew he would be, by Phil and John, who opted for the open-air Aris Burgers; John because of the word burgers and Phil because it was where the motokar drivers and other “real” people ate.

The food was good enough, however – there were Peruvian dishes as well as burgers – the beers were cold, and the real people were colorful. By the time they finished they were relaxed and contented, and very much ready to call it a day. Phil headed for the Alfert and John and Gideon walked back to the Dorado Plaza. On the square, they found a crowd of at least a hundred people watching a remarkably good Michael Jackson imitator go through his routines to the accompaniment of a boom box. Gideon and John watched too, for a good twenty minutes, while the young man with fedora and single sequined glove gyrated and tapped and moonwalked.

“How does he do it in this heat?” Gideon said, shaking his head.

“I guess you can get used to anything,” said John.

They each left a dollar in the can he was using for donations and went up to their rooms.

Thirty minutes later, exhausted, lying in his bed with the air-conditioning turned up to high, Gideon could still hear the boom box going.

There are no roads into or out of Iquitos. A few supplies come in by air, but the great majority of its goods come and go via the river. As with almost every settlement on the Amazon, however, it has nothing resembling a working port or pier or dock. This is because every year the river rises forty to sixty feet in flood season, and then, of course, sinks again six months later. To build a commercial pier able to handle that kind of elevation change is beyond the resources of these jungle communities.

Thus, this being what is laughably called the dry season on the Amazon, John and Gideon got their first look at the Adelita the next morning from the crest of a long, unpaved, muddy, slippery incline that dropped from the level of the town down to the current shoreline.

“There she is,” Phil said as proudly as if he owned her.

“Jesus,” said John, staring. “That’s the Adelita?”

Phil looked offended. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing, except it looks about a hundred years old.”

“It is a hundred years old. More.”

It had been built in the boom times of the 1890s, he explained, to carry supplies and company VIPs to and from the rubber plantations. In the 1920s and ’30s it had spent a decade as a prison ship to transport criminals to hellhole prisons in the jungle. Very few had made the return trip. When Captain Vargas had rescued it from the river five years ago it had been a half-sunk hulk, rusting away on the shore, like quite a few of the other derelicts that were still to be seen along the riverbank. He’d installed twin diesel engines in place of steam power, gotten the boat into reasonable shape mostly with his own two hands, and had been hauling cargo and mail up and down the river ever since. Now he was eager to convert to the burgeoning eco-tourism trade – to what he hoped would be a burgeoning eco-tourism trade. This would be his first try at it.

“So we’re his guinea pigs,” John said. “What the hell, as long as it floats.” He eyed Phil. “It does float, doesn’t it?”

“It floats, all right, but just don’t expect too much,” Phil said. “The accommodations are pretty, um, basic. Don’t expect a basket of goodies in the bathroom.”

“Uh-oh,” Gideon said. “Sounds like the real people are going to love it, but we fake people may have a few reservations.”

But in fact he did love it at first sight. A peeling, white-painted, metal-hulled, much-dinged old bucket of a two-decker about the length of a Greyhound bus, it was everyone’s idea of an old jungle steamer: tubby and experienced and just a little raffish.

Negotiating the slick incline down to it was tricky, but they managed it without falling. Waiting on deck to greet them, effusively and somewhat anxiously, was an overweight, bespectacled, heavily perspiring man in jeans, T-shirt, and a bright new captain’s cap complete with woven gold-oak-leaf filigree. “Felipe, you’re here! Welcome, welcome. I was worried! You are the last to come.” He turned for a second to signal someone in the wheelhouse and at once the engines revved up and someone ran to untie the mooring lines from their cleats and haul them in.

“Captain, these are my good friends Professor Gideon Oliver and Mr. John Lau,” Phil said. “John and Gideon, Capitan Alfredo Vargas.”

“Welcome to the Adelita.” Vargas pumped hands all around. “Welcome, welcome, welcome.”

“ Me llamo Juan,” said John.

“In thirty minutes we have a nice meeting for everyone, yes? In the ship’s salon. Until then, perhaps you would like to see your cabins? Chato will show you.”

Chato, slim, silent, and about five feet, two inches tall, took them to the upper deck, where there were ten cabins, set back to back, five to a side, with doors and single windows opening out onto the deck. He opened their doors – there were no locks – and left without having said a word or once having met their eyes. The boat began to slip away from the shore.

Basic was the right word. Gideon’s cabin, the rearmost one on the starboard side, consisted of a cot-sized bed with a thin kapok mattress under the single window, an open alcove with two shelves and hooks for hanging things – no closet, no drawers – and a bathroom with a sink about as big as a medium-sized mixing bowl, a toilet, and a claustrophobia-inducing shower. Both rooms were in a total of what couldn’t have been even a hundred square feet. Not places to spend a lot of time, but perfectly fine for sleeping. And the barred window over the bed – a leftover from the Adelita ’s days as a prison ship – opened, which was good, because the heralded air-conditioning, a clanking, groaning unit on the ceiling, while it was trying its best, wasn’t quite up to the task. He guessed the temperature in the room was about eighty-five degrees, maybe ten degrees cooler than outside. The humidity was considerably less oppressive, though. It was bearable. It would do.