James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

Arnott stood in the doorway in a dark suit. He smiled, the muscles in his face at ease. He stood tall like he owned the place. “I’ve been concerned about Dr. Ulman,” he said. “Still no word.”

“I…see,” Alred said, nodding, feeling her cheeks flush and her lipstick drying in the Eastern breeze.

Mrs. Ulman’s worn face appeared in the door frame. “May I help you?” she squeaked.

Porter stared at Arnott, the nicely dressed man with the handkerchief in his breast pocket.

Arnott only glanced at him.

“You won’t find anything here,” Arnott said, looking down with ebony eyes into Alred’s jade circles.

She stood her ground, though inside she trembled with confusion.

The professor turned to Mrs. Ulman and said, “Thank you for your time. Please call me if you learn anything.” He took her hand with both of his and shook it lovingly. With a nod of his head, he walked quickly down the steps, entered a dark sedan across the street, and drove away.

With his hands in his pockets, Porter watched him go. “Nice car. You know that guy?”

“Mrs. Ulman,” Alred said in a kind voice with a smile, extending her hand to the lady in the doorway, “My name is Erma Alred. I’m one of your husband’s students. Could we have a word with you?”

The skin around Mrs. Ulman’s brown eyes sagged. The black hair running straight to the bottom of her neck seemed terribly to need a wash. “Why not,” she said without enthusiasm, turning into the house.

They entered and sat at two facing love seats offset by an coffee table of oak and glass, Porter and Alred together with Mrs. Ulman opposite them. An old molasses smell hung in the room, which made Alred wonder what was rotting or perhaps growing in the kitchen.

Porter nodded with a thin smile, trying his best to shine happiness from his otherwise wandering eyes. “John Porter.” He extended his hand. “Pleased.”

“We wanted to ask you a few questions about your husband,” Alred said. Her mind flirted back to Arnott’s appearance.

Mrs. Ulman sighed long and weak.

“Is that a problem?” Porter said with concern in his voice.

Mrs. Ulman looked up, but never met eyes with the students. She whined slowly, “I just don’t know any more!” Exhaustion killed any possibility of crying, though she looked like she needed to release a few thousand tears.

Porter and Alred glanced at each other with confused faces.

“Mrs. Ulman,” Alred began again, “We promise not to stay long.”

Ulman sniffed. “That’s what the FBI said before drilling me for an hour.”

Porter leaned forward with interest but no one spoke for a moment. Alred’s face remained impassive as she ran the words through her head again. Mrs. Ulman’s eyes traced the shape of the coffee table.

“They came two days ago, asking questions, just like you,” Ulman said, her voice sounding lost. “Look, I don’t know where my husband is. I have no idea what he was working on. There is nothing I can show you or give you. The FBI has it all.”

“Mrs. Ulman,” Alred tried to start a third time.

Porter quickly put two fingers on Alred’s arm and said, “The FBI took things from you?”

“It was illegal for him to mail artifacts out of a foreign country, they said. How do I argue against the government? I don’t know why Chris mailed things to me. What could I do?” Mrs. Ulman said with her eyes closed.

Porter spoke quickly. “FBI? Not Customs agents? What exactly did your husband send you?”

“A package, that’s all,” she said shaking her head. “A couple. He sent something else to our mail box downtown, though I didn’t know it. The FBI made me fetch it for them,” she said, her voice straining. Her face shifted with discomfort, her eyes darting every direction except at her guests. “I just wish everyone would leave me alone, is all,” she sighed again.

Alred raised her eyebrows. “The FBI knew Ulman mailed something to your post office box?”

“How would they know that?” said Porter.

“Well I definitely didn’t tell them!” she said, throwing up her hands, looking at the walls and the ceiling. She shivered and said, “Now, I’m sorry, but as I told Mr. Arnott, I don’t have anything to give you-”

“Arnott wanted something your husband sent home?!” Alred sat forward, a gleam of anger in her eye.

Mrs. Ulman stopped moving. She looked at Porter. She turned her head to Alred.

“Just like the FBI,” the older woman continued. “Just like you, I assume. Wanted anything Chris sent me. Artifacts most of all, but also letters, notes, or journals he may have sent home. Papers. That’s what they asked for. Everything.”

“I don’t want those things, Mrs. Ulman,” Alred said. “And I’m not here for your husband’s notes. I just want to know what happened to him.”

Mrs. Ulman pulled away, falling against the well-cushioned back of the orange couch. She closed her eyes and shook her head without speaking.

Porter gazed at his companion, bewildered.

Alred ignored the movement, but focused on their unspeaking host.

When Mrs. Ulman stopped shaking her head, she stood, sighed, and said without feeling, “Can I get you a drink?”

The two students waved the offer away politely, while Mrs. Ulman went to a short bar, pulled out a nearly empty bottle of vodka, and poured herself a glass. She swallowed and dropped her head.

“Mrs. Ulman,” Porter said, “truth is, we need to find out what’s…going on. The only way I can figure of doing that is by studying your husband’s work.”

Alred knew Porter was playing along with her own words, probably supposing them to be a ruse. He had only one thing in mind, obviously. If Mrs. Ulman had more to contribute to Porter’s dissertation, he needed it. Alred had told him about Ulman’s purported disappearance, and even mentioned the message written on the front page of Albright’s essay. Porter simply shrugged it away and continued his single-minded work on his peculiar translation of the codex. How could he translate it anyway?!

Mrs. Ulman’s reply was barely audible. “Third time I’ve heard that.”

“Mrs. Ulman, your husband was my favorite professor,” Alred said. She slowed her speech and reset her tone to a calmer note. “I studied under him before he went to Guatemala, and he’s written me since then. I hoped to continue his work. And now we’ve been given an assignment to do just that.”

Porter said, “In my case, this assignment is the last chance I’ll get to succeed at this university. If I fail, Stratford kicks me out. If there’s anything you could do for us, something you know about his work…it would be priceless. I really could use your help, Mrs. Ulman.”

Alred stared at him as if examining his weakness behind a magnifying glass. He wasn’t being very diplomatic, she thought.

Mrs. Ulman nodded, bracing herself up against the counter. As she turned, her arm hit the vodka bottle, and the liquor splashed over her clothes and poured into the carpet before she could catch it. She sighed, but it was almost a groan.

Alred chewed on her lower lip and looked at Porter, who met her eyes.

“I think,” Mrs. Ulman said with a pause, “I need to be alone.”

Porter and Alred nodded, stood, and thanked her for her time.

She led them to the door while Porter scribbled on a pad. Tearing out the paper as the door opened, he said, “This is my-”

“Right,” Mrs. Ulman said. “Dial you if I learn anything. I’ll just have to call everyone who came before you first. Hope you don’t mind.” She smiled a bitter smile which disappeared quickly.

Porter didn’t reply.

Once outside, the door closed behind Porter and Alred.

Opening the door to the bark-colored Toyota, Porter shot Alred a glance. “How did the FBI know Ulman mailed something to his P.O. Box?”