Curses! (17 page)

Julie cocked her head. “Meaning?"

"Sorry, that's as specific as he got."

"Emma,” Julie mused. “Emma always gets in her two cents’ worth, doesn't she?"

Gideon knew what she was thinking. Just after lunch Abe had passed on some information: Preston had proudly told him that Emma was writing a book on the events of Tlaloc, to be told from the perspective of Huluc-Canab, who had revealed himself to be a tenth- century
ahlelob
from nearby Xlapak. (The fact that the loquacious Huluc-Canab predated the curse by five hundred years did not seem to affect his intimate knowledge of it.) According to Preston, Emma had already spoken on the telephone to a New Age publisher in Los Angeles and gotten a tentative six-figure offer for
Beyond Dreaming: The Tlaloc Dialogues of Huluc-Canab.

Thus, as Julie now pointed out, Emma would seem to have a considerable stake in the fulfillment of the curse; even more than Ard did.

"I don't know, Julie,” Gideon said. “I don't have any trouble imagining her slipping something into our water, but I still can't see her as the one who jumped me at Chichen. I just can't."

"I can,” Julie said. “The woman is wacko, if you haven't noticed. But let's be fair. As long as we're talking about eccentric characters, what about Worthy?"

"What about him?” Gideon asked.

"Well, what's he doing here anyway? Does he strike you as the type who thinks sweating over a spade in the jungle is fun?"

"He's working on that adventure series about Mayan kids, remember?"

"Oh, that's right."

"Not to mention,” said Abe, “that this dig is all-expenses-paid. Everything's on Horizon. People will go to the most miserable places in the world if it's free. Not that this is so miserable."

"That's certainly true,” Julie said with a smile. “All right, what about Harvey, then? Aside from its being free, what draws him here? He's some kind of computer specialist now, isn't he?"

"He has ulcers,” Gideon said. “A nice, stress-free vacation in the jungle was supposed to be good for them."

"Not only that,” Abe said, “but once anthropology gets into your blood it stays there. And don't forget,” he added with a nod in Gideon's direction, “Harvey learned his anthropology from a wonderful teacher. So who does that leave, as long as we're being fair and casting aspersions equally?"

"It leaves Preston,” Gideon said, “but Preston's presence doesn't need a lot of explanation."

Abe nodded. “Withersoever Emma goes, Preston goes too."

"It also leaves Leo,” Julie said slowly. “Now just what is a guy like Leo doing here? What was he doing here last time?"

"Leo,” said Gideon. “Hm."

"Hm,” Abe said “Leo."

They walked on silently for a minute or two, while inquisitive birds zipped and swooped around them. From a pendulum-tailed, cinnamon-colored bird in a branch above them came a shy, liquid
ch-ch-chwipp.
At their feet another iguana shuffled resignedly out of their way, muttering.

Abe was muttering too. “Whoever did it, I can't make it add up. All right, Emma, or Ard, or someone, wants it to look like the curse is coming true. Fine. But where does the threatening note come into it? Tell me what the point of that's supposed to be."

"What's the point of the whole thing supposed to be?” Gideon asked. “Why try to kill me if it was only my soul that was supposed to get pounded?"

"Pummeled,” Julie said. “And why use something like a pipe wrench if you're trying to make it look like a Mayan curse? It's so, so..."

"Anachronistic,” Abe supplied. “And what about the digging? What's that all about?"

There were plenty of questions. There weren't many answers. They were already on the hotel grounds when Julie thought of one more. “What's next?"

"Next?” Abe echoed, deep in his own reflections again.

"In the curse. Setting our entrails on fire was
third.
What's
fourth."

"Something about Xecotcavach,” Gideon said grimly. “I don't think it was very pleasant."

It wasn't. “Fourth,” said the copy they examined in Abe's bungalow, “the one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth."

They stood looking at it for a long time. Julie moved closer to Gideon, her shoulder warm against his chest.

"I think,” Abe said, “I'll give Marmolejo that call right now."

Just before dinner Gideon went down to the hotel gift shop to buy some stamps. Leo was there, browsing among the postcards.

"Leo,” Gideon said forthrightly, “let me ask you something. What are you doing here?"

The question seemed to startle him. He straightened up from the revolving postcard rack. “Doing here?"

"At the dig. Why do you come to these things? To tell the truth, I can't say you really strike me as someone who's that interested in Mayan archaeology."

"Mayan archaeology?” Leo's happy honk of a laugh bounced off the walls of the little shop. “Who gives a shit about Mayan archaeology? I come to these things, because it's a great way to meet buyers, people who can afford to buy what I sell. What else?"

Gideon blinked. “And do they?"

"You better believe it. Harvey's gonna fly down to the Salton Sea with me next month to have a look-see. Hell, I've been on cruises down the Amazon, I've been turtle-watching in the Galapagos, I've been on a dig in Turkey, and I've never yet failed to make a sale. And it's all tax-deductible. You can't beat it.
That's
why I come.

"Oh,” Gideon said. “Well, I just wondered."

He lay on his back watching the ceiling fan revolve slowly in the moonglow. Julie was on her side, facing away from him, her warm, naked bottom against his hip. She was breathing steadily and quietly, but he knew she wasn't sleeping.

"Julie?"

"Hm?"

"I've been thinking."

She turned onto her other side to face him, making rustly, comfortable nighttime sounds. Her fingers found his arm and slid down it to gently encircle his wrist. She waited for him to speak.

"Well, I was just thinking that if you want us to pack up and get out of here, we can. If someone's got it in for us—for me in particular—maybe it doesn't make sense to stay. There's no reason why another physical anthropologist can't take over. Marmolejo's going to increase security tomorrow, so I don't think there's any real danger, but who knows? I was the one who said that threat wouldn't amount to anything."

Her head came up, silhouetted against the louvered windows. “Get out of here?” she repeated, obviously surprised. “Because some miserable rodent is going around slipping vile notes under doors and sneaking around with a pipe wrench? To quote one of the eminent G. P. Oliver's more penetrating statements, “'You have to live your own life. You can't let the creeps and cruds of the world run it for you.’”

He laughed and stroked the soft, moist line of her jaw, first with his fingertips and then with the back of his hand. Her black, ringleted hair gleamed in the dim light, stirring in the faint breeze from the fan.

"Besides,” she said, “I've been married to you for over two years now, and I've gotten used to a certain amount of, uh, adventure in my life."

"Good,” he said. He'd known what her answer would be, but she deserved a say. His hand drifted to her throat, to the silky, tender side of her breast, beneath her arm. “Are you having trouble sleeping too?” he said.

"A little.” She snuggled down again and draped a leg over his. “Got any suggestions?"

"I don't suppose you packed any Ovaltine?"

"Uh-uh.” Her leg slid slowly up and down his thighs.

"Well, then,” he said, and pulled her all the way onto him, “I suggest we discuss the matter."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Marmolejo's increased security came too late. And it wasn't Gideon who needed it.

He and Julie were almost out the door, on their way to breakfast, when the telephone rang. Gideon picked it up.

"Dr. Oliver?” The voice was tentative, urgent. “Er, this is Dr. Plumm speaking. Perhaps you remember me?"

"Of course. Is something wrong?"

Plumm was the house physician, a gentle, unpresuming Englishman of sixty-five with baby-smooth skin and an immaculately groomed little white mustache. He had retired from practice in Portsmouth, lost his wife to cancer less than a year later, and come to Mexico hoping that a change of locale might help him cope with his grief. He had never gone back. Now he lived an expatriate's lonely life at the Mayaland, providing his services in exchange for a room—a superannuated old Brit, as he called himself.

He was something of a crime buff in his ample spare time. He subscribed to the
Journal of Forensic Sciences
and was familiar with a series of papers that Gideon had written on cause-of-death determination from skeletal remains. He had looked Gideon over the night of the attack and had been transparently delighted to find out the name of his patient. He had been eager to discuss some of the points in Gideon's articles, and they had spent a pleasant hour over coffee the next evening.

"Yes,” he said, “I'm afraid something is very much wrong, and your help would be invaluable. Would it inconvenience you to come downstairs? It's in your line of work, and I'm sure you'll find of interest."

What was wrong was Stan Ard. He lay sprawled on one of the more distant and isolated jungly paths that wound through the hotel grounds, some hundred yards from the main building, near the chain-link fence that separated the Mayaland property from Chichen Itza. He was half-in, half-out of one of the white plastic lawn chairs that were placed along the paths. The chair had been tipped over onto its right side, apparently with Ard in it. His body had twisted sideways, so that he'd landed on his back, his bare, fat, hairy legs akimbo. His left knee had wound up hooked awkwardly on the armrest. He was wearing a blue
guayabera,
tan Bermuda shorts, and tennis sneakers without socks. The left sneaker had come loose and hung from his big toe.

His head was a bloody mess.

"A jogger found him half an hour ago,” Plumm said. “It's the reporter, isn't it?"

"Yes. Stan Ard.” Not that it was easy to tell. Tight-lipped, Gideon forced himself to look down at the shattered head. There was nothing enigmatic about this, no veiled meanings, no obscure nuances. This was the end of the cigar, brutal and unequivocal.

Fourth, the one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth.

Standing guard was a jumpy young policeman in a tan uniform and a brown baseball-style cap. He was resolutely looking anywhere but at the body.

"No toque,"
he said curtly when Gideon approached it.

He needn't have worried. Gideon wasn't about to touch it, for Dr. Plumm was very wrong—this was definitely not in his line of work, and he didn't find it of interest at all; not in the way the physician had meant. Yes, Gideon did forensic consulting and, yes, he frequently enjoyed his work for the FBI. But he was an anthropologist, a bone man, and the older and the browner the bones were, the better. Body fluids, brain tissue, and torn flesh were things he was constitutionally averse to, and the farther he could stay away from them the better.

"If it's still wet,” he'd once told the FBI's John Lau, “call somebody else, will you?” Not that the FBI always obliged.

Stan Ard's head was still wet, and while Gideon didn't react the way he had the first time he'd been called in to look at a corpse with a massive cranial wound (he'd thrown up into a stainless-steel sink in San Francisco's Hall of Justice, scandalizing the medical examiner's staff), his stomach did turn queasily over.

"Well, I'm not a pathologist or a medical doctor, you know, Dr. Plumm. I'm an anthropologist. I don't really—"

"But you're the Skeleton Detective,” Plumm replied, as if that said it all. “I've never been called upon to do this before, you see—to be the physician on the scene of a murder—and of course it's terrifically exciting, but I—well, there are more police on their way from Merida, and they've asked for my report, but I'm afraid I may have missed something that would be terribly obvious to someone with experience. I was hoping you might point out any oversights."

He looked hopefully at Gideon with his mild, friendly eyes. His mustache was so meticulously trimmed it might have been two strips of white felt, neatly pasted on. “I should hate to look like a fool before the police."

Gideon relented. “I'd be glad to help if I can, Doctor."

Plumm relaxed visibly. “Well. I've made an examination, of course, although I thought I shouldn't touch anything before the police arrive. That's the proper drill, isn't it?"

"Right."

"Right, then. Of course, with a wound like that there was no question of resuscitation. The man's dead as mutton.” He winced. “Oh, I am sorry. He was a friend of yours, wasn't he?"

"An acquaintance. I barely knew him."

Gideon made himself look at Ard again. Nowadays it wasn't so much the gore, the simple physical nastiness, that made his insides twist. Despite himself, he'd seen enough to get past that. But not enough to do what a seasoned homicide investigator could do: look at murder victims and see nothing but clues, diagnostic indicators, evidential data. For bones, yes; for bodies, no. To Gideon, the overwhelming fact, the only fact for the first few moments, was always that of
murder
itself; of willful, blood-soaked violence; of one person's actually
doing
this to another; of the terrible penetrability of skin, the brittleness of bone. It was always pathetic, always sordid, always horrible.

But Plumm had more experience of human penetrability, if not of murder. For him Ard was just another case, but of more than usual interest. “Well,” he said, and rubbed his dry, clean hands together, let me tell you what I've come up with, and you tell me where I've gone wrong, how's that?"

"That's fine,” Gideon said, “but I'm sure you haven't gone wrong."

Overhead a helicopter was clattering its way toward the Chichen Itza landing pad. Plumm peered up at it. “The police."