The Xibalba Murders Page 3

  The air of the bar was filled with expensive perfume and cigar smoke. This was clearly where the beautiful people of Merida came to see and be seen. The person many apparently wanted to be seen with sat, or more accurately held court, at a table in a dim corner.

  He was a man of about sixty, short, I would say, somewhat paunchy, not particularly attractive, but with some kind of personal magnetism, perhaps the sensual appeal of money, that commanded the attention of at least half the women in the room, and the envy of most of the men. Two of the people at his table looked to me like bodyguards, not the least because their eyes constantly scanned the room and their conversational skills appeared to be just about nil.

  “Senor Diego Maria Gomez Arias,” Jonathan said, noting the direction of my gaze.

  “The name is vaguely familiar.”

  “Very wealthy. Owns the hotel. Avid collector.”

  “Of what?”

  “Beautiful things.” Jonathan smiled.

  “Including women?” I asked, watching the glances several women in the room were casting in Senor Gomez Arias’s direction.

  “Including women,” he agreed.

  “Are the artifacts in the glass cases real?”

  “Oh yes, I expect so.”

  “Shouldn’t they be in a museum?”

  “Quite possibly.” He shrugged.

  “I think I do recall his name. He is a client of Hernan Castillo Rivas?”

  “Was, I believe. They had a falling-out of some sort from what I’ve heard. But how do you know Don Hernan?” Jonathan asked.

  I told him about McClintoch and Swain.

  “Well, we’ve met McClintoch. Who is Swain?”

  “My ex-husband.”

  “Ah.”

  “ ‘Ah’ about sums it up.”

  I then told them about selling the business and the call that had brought me there the day before.

  This seemed to attract the attention of both of them. Even Lucas, who had until this time barely uttered a word, leaned forward in expectation.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, Lara,” Jonathan said. “What’s the project?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him yet. He called to cancel dinner last night. He had to go out of town, hot on the trail of something or other.”

  I started to tell them about the rabbit, but something stopped me. In a way, I was beginning to wonder if Don Hernan had not gotten just a bit dotty, a little non compos mentis, since I had seen him last. He was pushing eighty, after all. I didn’t want him—or me, for that matter—to look silly in the eyes of Jonathan Hamelin.

  In any event, I stopped myself from saying more. Lucas was looking at me intently, as if he knew there must be more to this story, but the waiter arrived with our drinks—margaritas for Jonathan and me, a beer for Lucas—and the conversation veered off into the usual banalities you hear in bars.

  Jonathan, I had learned as we walked over to the hotel, was an archaeologist from Cambridge University in England, Lucas the local archaeologist assigned by the Mexican authorities to work with him.

  They, or at least Jonathan, since Lucas had settled back into his role of observer, told me about the work they were doing at a site a few miles from Chichen Itza the great postclassic Maya site near Merida. I’d been to Chichen Itzi many times before, but thought it was always worth a visit, and said as much.

  Jonathan was explaining to me in his upper-crust British accent about the interesting limestone caves and underground rivers in that part of the Yucatan and entertaining me with tales of the sacrifice of cross-eyed virgins in the sacred cenotes, when the most extraordinary thing happened.

  Two people dressed entirely in black, kerchiefs over their faces, bandito-style, walked into the bar. One of them carried a rifle, the other a crowbar. Before anyone could react, they moved quickly to one of the glass cases at the end of the bar, smashed the glass, and grabbed one of the artifacts. They left the room as quickly as they had come in.

  There was actually a moment of stunned silence, then an absolute din. Some patrons of the bar laughed, thinking, no doubt, that it was a preview of Carnaval celebrations. Gomez Arias was hustled from the room by his two bodyguards.

  I looked at my two companions. Jonathan seemed quite startled. Lucas was as impassive as ever. But there was a look in his eyes that if I had to identify, I would call admiration.

  All thoughts of Carnaval pranks were dispelled when the federal police arrived shortly thereafter.

  The policeman in charge of the investigation was not, in my opinion, someone in whom anyone would wish to confide. Tall and thin, with an impressive mustache, he had a certain lean and hungry look, to borrow a phrase, a kind of hardness about the eyes, whether from a streak of cruelty or merely bitter disappointment, I couldn’t tell.

  I’m not sure what there was in his manner that made me dislike him so quickly. Perhaps it was his peremptory way of dealing with all of us, the patrons of the bar, or an undercurrent of brutality in the way he dealt with staff, the hotel’s and his own. Or the arrogance with which he announced to us all that the guilty party—and here he looked at each of us in a way that implied that each of us in our own way was guilty—would be quickly apprehended.

  Jonathan and Lucas, who seemed to be well known to the police, were called upon to identify which object had been taken, then all patrons were interviewed briefly and asked to leave an address and phone number where they could be reached, and permitted to leave.

  Afterward Jonathan walked me to a taxi. He had been asked by the police to stay behind to assist with the investigation. The media had already arrived, and crowds of reporters and spectators milled outside the hotel.

  “I’ll repeat my question,” I said. “Should those pieces not be in a museum?”

  “Touche!” He smiled.

  “I’m serious. How does Gomez Arias get away with keeping pieces like that in a glass case in a bar?”

  “Maybe he wants to share his collection with the public.”

  “The public, by and large, does not get into his bar,” I said acidly. “More likely he wants everyone who comes here to know he can afford them. It will be interesting to see if he can afford to lose them.”

  With that, we shook hands and I took the taxi back to the Casa de las Buganvillas. By the time I got back to the hotel, the news was already out, and the place was abuzz.

  A rather sullen Alejandro was staffing the front desk with his father. He warmed slightly when he saw me. “Caught a glimpse of you on television,” he said.

  Suddenly I was exhausted. Even dinner seemed too much of an effort. I told Alejandro of my adventures, and he suggested that a bowl of his mother’s sopa de frijol, black bean soup, be sent up. I gratefully accepted.

  I showered, then answered the tap at the door. It was Isa bringing the sopa, fresh cheese, and crisp tortillas. After setting out the meal on a side table by the window, she pulled up a chair, saying, “Okay, tell me everything.”

  I laughed with relief. It was just like old times. I told her what had happened.

  “We’ve been watching it on television,” she said. “A group calling itself Children of the Talking Cross has claimed responsibility, saying it will be returning the statue to its rightful owners, the Maya.”

  “This Children of the Talking Cross—is this a, well… a mainstream terrorist group or something? I’ve never heard of them.”

  “No one has, as far as I know,” Isa replied. “I certainly haven’t.”

  “Did they identify the statue?” I asked, thinking of Jonathan and Lucas.

  “Yes, there were two archaeologists—were they your friends?—right on the scene. They said it was a carving of the feathered serpent god, Itzamna.”

  After Isa had cleared away the dishes and gone downstairs to join her family, I climbed gratefully into bed.

  Despite my fatigue, sleep did not come easily. I found myself on the horns of a dilemma. I was guilty of a rather major error of omission in my report to Isa. The big
question was should I tell Isa that despite the mask I had recognized Alejandro in the Ek Balam? Should I tell him? Should I tell the federal police? I remembered my impression of the policeman. On that score at least, I rather thought not.

  Along time ago I had a boyfriend who described everyone he knew as a car. The worst thing he could think to say about someone was that they were an economy van.

  I was, he told me, a ‘56 Thunderbird convertible. Not being much into cars, vintage or otherwise, I wasn’t sure what that meant. One day, a couple of years after we parted company, I saw one, silver, on a revolving platform at a classic car show. Maybe he had liked me more than I realized.

  Anyway, while I can barely remember what this guy looked like, he has left me with this particular way of categorizing people. Isa, for example, is the kind of car she drives. Elegant and snappy, a Mercedes 580SL convertible.

  Jonathan? A British racing green Rover, leather upholstery. Refined, expensive in an understated way, and maybe just a little pretentious.

  Lucas? I wasn’t sure about him just yet. But whatever the model, the color would have to be black.

  Waiting at the reception desk as I went downstairs the next morning to scrounge a cup of coffee was the person I had already come to think of as a Mack truck. The kind that roars up on your bumper so only the silver grille, like rows of sharks teeth, shows in your rearview mirror. Convinced that any moment you will be squashed like some insignificant bug on its front bumper, your relief is palpable when eventually it roars past, causing your car to jerk and lurch in its wake.

  It was the investigating officer, one Major Ignacio Martinez, I had learned the previous night. Clearly this was a man who shot first and asked questions later, who made up his mind about the guilty party very early in an investigation, then went to great lengths to prove it, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

  And the person he had decided was guilty of stealing the statue of Itzamna, I was soon to learn, was Dr. Hernan Castillo.

  I had awakened late. The day was gloomy, fitting for Akbal, a day of evil and darkness. I had not arrived at any resolution of my dilemma of the night before, but when I saw Martinez standing at the reception desk, I thought my problem had been solved, though in the worst possible way.

  But Martinez was not looking for Alejandro, he was looking for me. And it was Don Hernan he wanted to talk about.

  We went into a small sitting room off the lobby.

  “What brought you to Mexico, senora?” he began.

  “I’m on a break from my studies, a holiday.”

  “What made you choose Merida as your destination?”

  “I’m studying Maya history and languages,” I replied.

  There was a pause.

  “I think you are not being entirely, shall we say, comprehensive, in your answers to my questions. Now, why would that be?”

  “Perhaps you are not asking the right questions,” I snapped. “What exactly is it you want to know?”

  “I want to know the whereabouts of Dr. Hernan Castillo, and I believe you have the answer,” he said.

  Whereabouts? This man watches too many movies! I thought.

  “What in heaven’s name does Dr. Castillo have to do with this? Surely you cannot think he has anything to do with the robbery. He’s a well-respected scholar.”

  “I believe I am the one authorized to ask the questions, senora, not you. Do I think he walked into the bar and took the statue personally? No, I do not. But yes, I do think he is involved. He and Senor Gomez Arias had an argument over the stolen sculpture, in fact only a few weeks ago.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” I replied. “I do know that he would not have anything to do with something as shabby as this.”

  He ignored the last comment. “But you did come to Merida to meet him, did you not?” Obviously either Jonathan or Lucas had been more “comprehensive” in his testimony than I had been.

  “Yes, but he canceled our first meeting, dinner the evening before last. I have not heard from him since.”

  “And the reason for his bad manners?”

  “Bad manners?”

  “Canceling dinner with a lovely foreign visitor whom you have invited to visit would not normally be considered good manners, would it, even in Canada?”

  I ignored the gibe.

  “What were you meeting him for? Perhaps to carry some stolen merchandise out of the country for him? I understand you have a fair knowledge of the import/export business.”

  “I really do not know what he wanted to talk to me about. It really was just an excuse to get away from my studies and the Canadian winter,” I replied. My reply, though true, sounded questionable even to me. And no doubt I looked a little long in the tooth to be a student.

  Another lengthy pause. Perhaps this is a technique I thought: wait long enough and the person will bleat something.

  “May I see your passport, please?”

  A new approach. I handed it to him, then watched in dismay as he slipped it into his jacket pocket and rose from his chair.

  “You can’t take that!” I sputtered.

  “Ah yes, but I can. Do not, as they say in your American movies, leave town, senora.”

  Then he was gone, leaving me with the satisfaction, albeit minimal, of being right about the movies.

  My first reaction was to try to reach my father to see what he and his diplomatic connections could do for me here. It’s amazing how no matter how old we get, we still turn to our parents in a pinch. However, now that my father was retired, my parents, their wanderlust still unsated, were always traipsing off somewhere, usually somewhere obscure. Currently, if I remembered correctly, they were on the slow train for Ulan Bator.

  Instead, I went looking for Don Santiago. After expressing his outrage in decidedly undiplomatic language, he propelled himself over to a telephone and began phoning some old acquaintances in the diplomatic corps.

  As I left the sitting room I passed Alejandro at the front desk.

  “You and I need to talk, Alejandro,” I hissed on the way by.

  He looked nonplussed for a brief moment, but then merely smiled and nodded. This was one composed young man.

  “Meet me at the Cafe Escobar, in an hour,” I said, naming a small restaurant just a couple of blocks from the hotel.

  Reasonably calmed by my brief conversation with Santiago Ortiz, and his promise to try to fix the mess with the passport, I went into the kitchen to get some coffee. Isa and her mother were sitting at the big oak table having a companionable cup of coffee together. Don Santiago soon joined us. I told them about my day so far, then inquired about Don Hernan.

  “Still not back, and we haven’t heard from him either. We’re getting worried,” Francesca said.

  “This would hardly be the first time he has disappeared on us,” Santiago observed.

  “Yes, but he usually calls,” Francesca countered.

  “I went to his office yesterday. It was locked up tight. I’d hoped he’d be there, or if not, I was hoping to get in to take a look around to see if there might be clues as to where he might be.”

  The Ortizes exchanged a glance, and Francesca rose from her seat.

  Santiago said, “We have a key—Don Hernan was always misplacing his, so he left a spare with us. Francesca will get it for you. I’m sure Don Hernan would not mind.”

  As I was about to leave them a few minutes later, key in hand, a bell rang in the kitchen. The Casa de las Buganvillas still has the features of a gracious home of a bygone era, including a kind of upstairs/downstairs bell system where the aristocrat upstairs pulls a cord in the room and a bell rings down in the kitchen. This summons staff to receive commands, go back downstairs to act upon them, and then return upstairs with the task completed.

  Most hotel guests, of course, simply telephoned the front desk when they wished something.

  “I thought that system had been disconnected years ago,” I said.

  “It has”—Isa sighed—“except for th
e Empress.”

  Francesca rose from her chair to answer the bell in person.

  “The Empress?” I asked.

  “Senora Josefina Ramirez de Leon Tinoco,” Isa replied. “She treats my family as if they were her personal servants!”

  I don’t pretend to understand the Mexican naming system, but I get the general idea that the longer your name, the higher your station in life. This name should put Dona Josefina pretty close to royalty, maybe just this side of God. Clearly she had never felt the need to learn to use the telephone.