Hot Ticket (12 page)

“I’m not out on a bird watch.”

“If you are after Louis, go back where you came from.”

The gnats had relocated my ears. “Listen,” I said, swatting futilely at nothing but humidity, “I don’t give a shit about Louis,
whoever that is. I want to know what happened to Polly.”

The beam finally left my eyes. “Come with me,” he said. We crossed the lawn to a thatched hut. As my host lit a kerosene lamp,
I saw a finely hewn brown face that could have graced a Mayan frieze. His feet matched the prints on the trail. Black hair,
bright black eyes. The body of Tarzan, maybe twenty-five years too young to interest me. “My name is Ek. I’m the only one
left here now.”

“Why are you sticking around?”

He looked surprised. “Because Louis will return.” Ek offered me a glass of water from a covered pitcher. “Don’t worry, we
have our own well.”

I sank into the only available chair in a hut about the size of my shoe closet in Berlin. Wooden bowls cluttered a rough table.
Mortars, pestles, and glass beakers crammed the shelf above a stone sink. An array of machetes hung on the back of the door.
If Ek slept here, it was in the hammock suspended from two beams. Why would Bailey abandon a state-of-the-art facility in
Virginia for this shack? “Could you tell me what happened to Polly?” I sighed. “From the beginning?”

Ek studied my filthy face. “You do not want to sleep?”

“I took drugs to stay awake.”

Rummaging beneath the sink, he found a bottle. “I’ll stay awake with you then.” He quaffed most of its contents with a shudder.
“You are a brave lady.”

Brave? I was just a two-bit narcissist who wished to die recognizable. Ek settled into the hammock. “I have known Louis my
whole life. Every summer he worked with my father, who was a country doctor. I helped them carry plants back from the mountains.
Louis studied them under a microscope while my father made medicines for the villagers. They did this every year until my
father died last spring.”

“Your village is here?”

“No. This is a secret camp. You are the first person to have found it.”

I wouldn’t be getting a door prize. A breeze wafted through the cabin, cooling nothing. Every second I waited, my body lost
another few drops of precious fluid. “Polly came to study plants,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

Ek brushed a beetle off his shoulder, drank some more. Finally he spoke. “At the beginning of July, Louis came to my village
in the middle of the night. He had come to Belize through Guatemala so no one would know he was here. ‘Come with me,’ he said.
‘I need you.’ We went into the mountains and built this hut. Day and night we gathered plants. Louis had brought some equipment
and a computer that ran on solar batteries. No one bothered us for a long time.”

I went to the window and inhaled unseen, voluptuous blooms. “Then what.”

“One morning we heard chopping. We went toward the noise and saw a woman.” Ek paused. “She was tall with yellow hair.”

I wondered how long they had stared at her in awe and delight. Barnard had probably kept chopping, then spritzed water over
her neck so that her blouse would cling to her breasts like cellophane over tomatoes. Maybe she’d sit on a log, lasciviously
peel a banana. Better yet, she’d break her machete. Swear a little.

“She broke her machete,” Ek continued. “After Louis gave her his, she brought us to her place. She lived in a cave near a
waterfall. Inside were her herbs and books. She even had pictures on the wall.”

I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that Barnard had AC and track lighting. “Bet she and Louis hit it right off.”

“They were a good team,” Ek agreed. “He was a different man around her.”

All men were. “Did she move here or did he move there?”

“A little of each. But it was not what you think. They spent most of the night working.”

The ultimate erotic high, on a par with me playing the Brahms concerto with Furtwängler. No melding of flesh could compete
with that. “Working on what?”

“Chemical analysis. We spent days searching for special plants. Once Polly brought back a branch with little black leaves.
Louis was very excited. But the rain washed away the trails and she couldn’t find it again. Louis was angry. He said she remembered
perfectly well where she had found it but was keeping it a secret.”

“What do you think?”

His calm eyes held mine. “I think Polly was a very clever lady.”

And Ek was a very clever assistant. “Researchers are competitive. Not trusting.”

Ek shrugged. “One day Louis told me he wanted to go to San Ignacio. He had a favorite café there named Koko’s. We went by
canoe. Polly wanted to meet Dr. Tatal so I took her to the clinic while Louis went to Koko’s.”

“Who’s Dr. Tatal?”

A nearby bullfrog belched eight times before my host regained his tongue. “Louis’s friend. She comes to her clinic in San
Ignacio once a week.”

“Why’d Polly want to meet her?”

Ek looked surprised. “Because she’s famous.”

Brrrripa. Brrrripa.
“Was the visit a success?”

“No. Dr. Tatal wasn’t in.” Several drops of sweat fell to Ek’s shorts, leaving dark spots near his fly. “Polly and I went
back to Koko’s. Louis was not there.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I have not seen him since that day.”

Brrrippa.
“What did Polly do?”

Ek looked at me with annoyance, as if I were insulting his intelligence. He was probably right. “She went looking for him.
I never saw her from that day, either.” His eyes followed a spider, or a fuzzy golf ball with six legs, across the table.
“Polly was not really a botanist, was she.”

My pulse clunked, forehead wept: misjudging the assistant was such an elementary, costly error. “She went to medical school.”

A tiny iguana zipped over the windowsill as Ek took another swig from his bottle. “One night after I had gone to bed, Polly
stood by me for a moment, like my mother used to. I pretended to be asleep. She went to the clearing and began walking in
circles with something against her ear. I heard her say ‘Max’ a few times.”

“Maybe she was calling her boyfriend.”

“We have no phone here.”

I sniffed. Something burning: my nerves. “Did you tell Louis?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I did not wish to trouble him. He was already agitated that his experiments were going so slowly. I kept a close watch on
Polly after that. She never called the man Max again.” Ek smiled to himself. “I never found a telephone.”

My knees creaked as I stood. “Could you take me to her cave? I’m a little pressed for time.”

Ek filled our canteens as I sprayed fresh repellent over my insect bites. He lit a torch and, without a word of instruction,
handed me a machete. We returned to the shrieking, shuddering forest and began whacking the green stuff. Heavy going, complicated
by the shadows streaking from Ek’s flare. Hemorrhaging water, I kept as close as possible to the light as we followed a trail
of notched trees. Once I heard a snap, a deep grunt, inches away: big, whatever it was. My nervous system ratcheted into hyperspace.

We crossed two mountains. Finally, stumbling down a ravine, I heard water. The forest fell away and Ek stood at the edge of
a torrent. His flare reflected white, rabid tiers of froth. He ignored my dismay, or maybe he just didn’t understand it. “The
bottom is slippery,” was all he said. “Can you swim?”

Thunder downstream: even in a barrel, chances of surviving that mother were zero. “No problem.”

We stripped to our underwear. “I can take the machete or the flare,” Ek said. “Not both.”

“Take the machete.” I balled our clothing into my backpack.

“You’re bringing that?”

“I can’t live without my insect repellent.”

He finally smiled. Maybe my lies were beginning to humor him. “Aim there.” He pointed upstream and slid into the liquid death.

Warm at the fringe but it quickly went cold and malevolent as the bottom dropped away. My backpack was heavy as a Siamese
twin. Swam like a banshee but I was drifting toward that distant thunder. Felt bottom for three accelerating seconds then
pow!
over the edge of the first falls into choking, pummeling darkness. I let the whirlpool spin me above and below the surface;
third time up, I kicked with all my strength. Broke free of the maelstrom but the current was dragging me downstream again.
Something pulled my thigh as I was swept over a second falls:
Wake up, Smith.
Quieter in this pool but that was because the bottom would drop out of it any second now. I thought of Maxine and, strangely,
of Fausto: I had wanted to play a concert with him. Steeled for a bone-crushing end then my head hit a log. Comets behind
my eyes as I embraced it. The torrent sucked lasciviously at my legs. As the snagged trunk shifted toward the thunder, my
optic nerve picked up a thin line of red at the horizon. I’d be going over the falls at dawn, the hour of love: how that would
amuse the mischievous gods. One free fall in the mist, maybe in a rainbow, and I’d be out of this wretched jungle forever.
I almost surrendered.

Then my brain flashed to a cheerful, tinkling fountain. I floated back to a moon-drenched night, again transfixed by—
God,
what was it—something lithe and wonderful … music. Ah. Yes. A woman’s low laugh. I had envied her. The log lurched another
foot downstream, losing height as well as position. As water rose to my neck, the laugh grew more radiant. I began clawing
toward shore, toward
one more time.
Some primordial beast made the final yank and I rolled onto rock.

Lay staring like a dead fish at the slash of red at the horizon. A while later, Ek found me rubbing ointment into the gash
in my thigh. “That pack was heavier than I thought,” I said, tossing over his clothes.

He took a long time tying his sneakers. “Is there something special in it?”

“I told you. Insect repellent.”

“Are you a soldier?”

Buttoned my filthy shirt. “No. I’m just athletic.”

“Like Polly?”

“Yes.” To prove the point, I stood up. My thigh nearly split in two. “Tell me something, Ek. Did anyone ever see the three
of you together?”

“Just the fat man. Fausto.”

I had to sit down again. “Fausto was here?”

“You know him?”

“Not well.” But well enough to know that he wouldn’t endure this green hell unless his life were at stake. “I thought you
said no one visited the camp.”

“We had lunch in Belize City. To celebrate Louis’s birthday.”

Louis came out of hiding, Fausto flew two thousand miles, to blow out a few candles? “How sweet,” was all I could say.

“Everyone drank a lot of beer. Fausto asked Polly to run away with him. He said they wouldn’t have to spend much time together
and she would be rich. I think he was not joking, though he pretended to be. Louis swore that Fausto would live to be one
hundred.”

What drivel. “When was this?”

“The middle of August.”

Think, Smith.
Something else had happened around then: a bundle of loose ends caught fire but my brain couldn’t penetrate the smoke. “Did
Louis see Fausto after that?”

“No.”

“Did Polly?”

“I don’t know.” Ek stood. “We should continue before the sun gets too high.”

I followed him up the third mountain. Conversation impossible: not enough oxygen to make myself heard over the warbles, caws,
and trills. Any creature lucky enough to have outlasted the night was trumpeting its survival. The noise was kaleidoscopic,
literally dizzying … how useless my years in cities had made me. With daylight came more heat. My clothes steamed. Ek followed
a thin path, frequently slipping on the steep grade. Near the peak, he stopped. “Here we are.”

In the rock I saw a hole the diameter of a kettledrum. Barnard had the balls to crawl through
that?
“To keep the snakes out,” Ek said, removing a screen from the aperture. He found a flashlight like mine, only in working
order, at the threshold of the cave. “Put the screen back after you.”

We wriggled into a damp tunnel. The floor ended at a ledge overlooking a cavern about twenty feet high and wide. Three thousand
years ago, Joe Mayan’s castle. Now it smelled like an apothecary. I saw why as Ek’s flashlight played over piles of leaves,
roots, dozens of jars … rectangular glass. “What’s that?”

“Louis’s spectrograph. It worked better here.”

Of course: the temperature and humidity of a cave were constant compared with that of the open jungle. Barnard had probably
hooked up the solar panels for the batteries in a clearing nearby. Ek and I slid down a rope to the cavern floor. I was shown
Barnard’s bed, her books and clothing; even here, she’d look soignée. Silk panties hung on a string, still trying to dry.
“She was here gathering plants a month before we met,” Ek said.

I saw no weapons, no communications gear: either Barnard had taken everything with her or Ek was the most accomplished liar
in Belize. Next to the spectrograph lay drawings of leaves, bark, twigs, berries, all with their chemical and pharmaceutical
properties. Nothing here smelled like grilled pineapple. I found cures for constipation, impotence, insomnia, parasites; douches
to induce birth and prevent conception; unguents, powders, infusions … this was saintly, painstaking work. If only Barnard
had been a saint! “They didn’t put any of this into a computer?” I asked.

“It was always breaking down.” Ek lifted the spectrograph. “Would you like to see Polly’s pictures?”

I stared at the snapshot of Senator Perle in that whopping yellow suit. She stood at a microphone, catechizing with the humorless
vehemence that American voters always mistook for leadership. Next picture she was kissing Jojo Bailey’s flushed cheek. That
poor sod looked either drunk or heavily under the weather, but speeches had never been Jojo’s rush; he preferred parades and
talk shows. I leafed through a few more photos of puffy dignitaries, then Jojo getting into a cab, arm around a woman’s rump.
The last picture was of Paula Marvel dancing with schoolgirls in dark pinafores. Her dress, white with a dozen orange bows
up the front, would have looked more professional on a clown.