Sixteen.
THURSDAY was another bright, hot, beautiful morning. I had spent the time after driving Elena to town, sitting at the desk in the room and going through Rockland"s little red notebook. There were Miami and Miami Beach addresses, and addresses all over the country, presumably people who had stayed at the Sultana and who had subscribed to one of Rockland"s services-in one way or another. It would be logical for him to keep such a record.
The notes and reminders were too cryptic to be of any use. Things like "L.2 Sat aft"; "2 doz, suite 20B"; "$100 Reb in 7th." As they were chronological, I could get enough hints to figure out when notes were made. He didn"t make many. There was a notation of the cost of new tires in pesos and dollars, made before they got to Oaxaca. And just a few addresses after that, Bundy, the Vitrier estate, the hotel where Bix and Minda had stayed, and one that read, "I. V. Rivereta, Fiesta D, Mex City." All the rest of the pages were completely blank. On the inside back cover was his social security number.
At breakfast I checked out my twelve-second system with Meyer. "If I start edging up on him, he has time to adjust, a.s.suming he"s our nut, which I doubt. So I will drop it on him suddenly and from considerable alt.i.tude, and we will watch his throat and his mouth and his eyes like a pair of eagles, and no man living can make a fast enough recovery to hide every part of it, especially when I come on very amiable and kindly and understanding."
I told him the approach. He approved. He had watched me do it before. He had seen it work and seen it fail.
So we drove out to the turnoff to Yagul. We could see it a couple of miles north of the main road as we turned off, old stone patterns atop a rounded hill which bore faint traces of the old horizontal terracing. I drove across flats and then up the steep winding road to a wide paved parking area. There was an old sedan there with Mexican plates, and the small Honda. That was all.
As we got out, a large Mexican family came down the worn path from the ruins and started getting into the sedan, arguing about who would sit where. We went up the path. A gnarled little man came trudging out of a shady spot to collect the small government fee and give us our handsomely printed tickets. He went back to his place in the shade, his back against raw rock. From there he could look out across the valley, with all the ruins behind him.
The morning sky was a deep rich Kodachrome blue. A buzzard wheeled in the updraft from the hill slope, making sounds very like a pig. Tall clumps of cactus with big red blossoms grew out of the stony soil. It was indeed quiet. Two buses moved along the valley floor toward Oaxaca, stolid, silent beetles.
We came upon the traditional ball court, a long sunken rectangle with sloping sides of carefully fitted stone, with the high place where the priests sat and watched, and the lower places for the other spectators. Tricky bounces off those side walls. Iron rings set into the stone at either end, now long rusted away. Archeologists believe that the captain of the winning team was beheaded. It was some sort of honor to strive for. It meant a permanent place in the record books. It would keep a team from running away with the league. Perhaps the same theory as the cellar team getting first draft choice.
We looked at the front of the long temple, at the altars, at the peak of a distant knoll beyond the edge of the temple front wall, and saw, silhouetted against the sky, along with some twisted little trees, a dumpy figure semaphoring its arms at us, and a faint hail came upwind.
We found the stone steps that would lead us up to the temple level. A lot of it was restored. When they restore, they stick pebbles in the mortar between the new courses of stone. The academic mind saying, "See? This is all fake. We stuck it on the way we think it used to be."
Behind the temple farade there were small courtyards and unroofed stone walls forming a maze of small rooms and corridors. After we came to two dead ends, I found a toe hold and climbed up and picked out the right route toward Wally"s little hill. We came out the back of the temple complex and went up a narrow and winding footpath, puffing a little in the unaccustomed alt.i.tude.
Wally McLeen beamed upon us. "Isn"t it great? See, from up here you look over into the next valley too. Pretty strategic place. These holes here, these were tombs. The big shots got buried at the highest place. They bust into every one they can find because there"s gold jewelry in some of them. Now look back at the whole thing. Gold, sacrifices, underground pa.s.sages, astronomy, brain surgery, it blows my mind thinking about it."
He wore a market shirt of coa.r.s.e unbleached cotton, a pale blue beret acquired from G.o.d knows where, burgundy-colored walking shorts cinched around his comfortable tummy by a belt with a lot of silver k.n.o.bs affixed to the leather, and market sandals. His goatee was coming along nicely. He carried a bag woven of yellow fiber, shaped like a two-handled market bag. He had flip-up sungla.s.ses fastened to his thick eyegla.s.ses, and the cycle was turning his previous angry red to a red-brown, with some pink patches on forehead and nose where the early burns had peeled.
"When Minda comes back, I want to show her all these places, Trav, on account of I know she"ll flip. I remember when she was a little kid, one summer at the lake she found an arrowhead and I read to her all about the Indians, and you"d be surprised how much she remembered, a little kid like that. Just turned five years old. They can bolt another seat on that Honda and we can travel all over this part of Mexico."
Meyer had moved around into position, so that we were both facing him.
"But that won"t work out so good, Wally," I told him.
"Sure it will!"
"For a while. But then sooner or later the cops are going to find that village kid that saw you dump the camper into the ravine, and find out what you did to Rocko, and start adding things up and nail you for Mike and Della and the Mexican woman, too. So you better aim that bike for the nearest border crossing, Wally."
It is like that lousy frog routine I had to do in high school biology lab. You hook up the battery and touch the wires to the right place and that slimy dead leg makes jumping motions.
He stared at me and he stared at Meyer. And his mouth hitched up into a weak little smile and then opened into an O. Not a big O. About twice the size of the one you use to whistle. It went through the same pattern again.
"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"
"Too long, Wally." Meyer said sadly. "You took too long finding the right way to play it. Too much was happening in your head. You froze. You had too much to add up."
"I... I"ve got to wait for Minda! You can understand that. I"ve got to wait for her to come back here!"
It was hard to believe it, looking at him, even though it had come through as clear as a ten page confession.
"Wally," I said, "I can understand the thing with Rockland, sort of. You"re over the edge. You found out too much. Those three-Sessions, Nesta, Rockland-they turned your little girl on, and they banged her, and they degraded her, and something went wrong then in your head, Wally. This is a h.e.l.l of a long way from the weekly Kiwanis meeting and the shopping center stores. What you did to Rockland means you"ve been taken sick. It means you"ve got to go into town and tell people about it and get help, because there was Mike Barrington and there was Della Davis and there was Luz."
"I know. That went wrong. I mean I wouldn"t feel bad about it if I got Nesta too, because I thought it might have to be that way. I went in from the back, over the wall. The jeep was there when I went by, but when I came back to look for him I found it was gone. I should have waited for him to come back. But I got scared. I have to get him, you know. And I will. I made a vow. I"ve been working it all out. Mike and Luz were so close together, I got her before she could take a step, after he went down. But the n.i.g.g.e.r b.i.t.c.h could run like the wind. If she hadn"t stumbled and fallen, she would have been out the gate and gone." His voice was small and thoughtful, the words half lost in a small warm wind that gusted and died.
"What did they do to you... or Minda?" Meyer asked.
The shadow of the buzzard angled across the stony earth between us. Silent, awkward tableau. Wally McLeen bent over and picked up a small triangular shard of Zapotecan pottery. He looked at it with care and flipped it aside.
"I like the ones with designs," he said. "I like to think of them out here, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, scratching little designs in the clay to make the pots prettier. Funny thing about that. This morning, maybe an hour ago, over there down the slope of the hill, I found a piece that reminded me of an ashtray Minda made for me in the first or second grade. She made the same kind of wavy lines in the clay. I"ve got it here in the bag." He opened it and peered down in, reached in.
My alarm system went off too late. He yanked out some kind of a weapon, swinging it so swiftly I could not see what it was. From where he stood, his first choice was a backhand slap at Meyer. He should not have been able to reach him, but he did. There was the sickening solid thonk of a hard object striking the skull. Meyer went down in a bad way-a boneless sloppy tumble. There was no interval, no half-step, no attempt to break the fall. In a fluid continuation of the same motion, McLeen took a forehand shot at me and I sprang back, leaning back at the same time, and even so felt the wind of it across my upper lip, heard its whistling sound. He stood nicely balanced, slightly crouched as I moved back cautiously. Meyer had rolled over twice, down the slope, slowly, but it took him to a steeper slant and he rolled more rapidly for perhaps fifteen feet before the upper half of his body dropped into one of the small open tombs. He was wedged there then, the legs spraddled, toeing in, the substantial bottom turned toward the blue sky.
The weapon was at rest. I could see what it was. He held a hardwood stick about two feet long, gray with age, greased with much handling. A leather thong, heavy, tightly braided, was fastened to the end of the stick. The end of the thong was fastened to a crude metal ring that had somehow been affixed to a stone, round, polished, irregular, a little smaller than a peach.
He came at me with a little rush of quick light steps, bouncy and balanced. I feinted to run down the slope, then dodged and ran uphill, angling away from him. The feint had been a mistake. He missed my head by an inch. I realized I had seen smallish portly men like Wally McLeen moving very lightly and quickly and well on many dance floors in years past. Long-waisted men like Wally, and with the same short, hefty legs.
"I bought this in a stall in the public market," he said. "One of the kids told me it was a fake. But it"s just like the soldiers used to use. It"s tricky. You have to practice with it. The handle is limber. See? So all you need is good wrist action. I practiced on trees. You have to get the range right."
"Let me go help Meyer. Please, Wally."
"You can"t help him. He"s dead. Or dying." When again he came bouncing toward me, I spun and ran up the slope all out, thinking to get far enough away from him so that I could circle around and go down toward the temple. But as I started down the other side I took a quick look back and saw that he was only thirty feet behind me, moving too well. There was a crumbling, unrestored wall to my left and I angled toward it, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chunk of rock and turned and hurled it at him. He scrambled to the side and it gave me enough leeway to pick up another jagged piece and, in too much haste, overthrow him. He backed away quickly.
With more time, I was able to pick up one of better size and heft. I turned it to fit the hand, and took my best shot. He was fifty to sixty feet away. I put it"on a good line, right toward the middle of his face. He moved just his head. He moved it quickly to the side and just as far as was necessary.
A rock fight. Too many years since the last one. I might be able to get away from him, but that wasn"t enough. I had to get to Meyer, and I had to get to him soon. I didn"t like the choices. If I picked some good rocks and charged him, trying to get close enough to chunk him, he was going to have just as good, or better, a chance to bust my skull as he had with the three in the old compound on the Coyotepec Road. He was too good with that thing, and he could make it whistle.
A madman is curiously deadly. When the strictures and restraints of civilization and conscience are wiped away, the animal can move with ancient shrewdness. Man is a predator.
He stood downhill from me, slowly swinging the stone ball from side to side at the end of the stick planning what to do next. Stocky little storekeeper in blue beret and new goatee, and just as calmly intent on killing me as a Bengal tiger would have been.
I squatted by my wall and picked up a rock the size of my head and held it in both hands and arched it at him, like taking a shot from the foul line. He squinted up at it and stepped to his right. It hit, bounced and rolled down through coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and brush toward the temple level below. All the ruins were silent. For perhaps the first time in my life I desperately wanted to see a chattering flock of tourists, festooned with Instamatics, leaving a spoor of yellow boxes.
I knew that if I didn"t come up with something workable, fat Wally would, and I wouldn"t like it. Misdirection is the name of the game. I couldn"t point behind him and yell, "Hey! Tourist!" and hope to bounce a rock off his skull as he turned and stared.
But he had looked up at the big rock, hadn"t he? Indeed he had. So I palmed a couple of good small ones, holding them in place against my palm with ring fingers and little fingers, and picked up another big melon of a rock and gave it as much height and distance as I could, and as he looked up at it, I let fly with the first small stone. He glimpsed my movement and looked at me, moving swiftly to his left along the slope. He ducked away from the first small one, had to check the one in the air again to be sure he was out from under it, and moved forward, taking the second small rock high on the forehead and going a.s.s over teacup into a backward somersault as I came bounding down the slope. He peered up at me, on hands and knees, a bright rush of blood on his face. He had lost the ancient fake weapon and the blue beret and his gla.s.ses. But he reached and grabbed the weapon and took a blind full-arm swing and got me on the outside of the left thigh, just below the hip bone. It felt to me as if he had smashed the hip. I fell and rolled and got up, surprised to be able to get up. He wiped blood out of his eye and started toward me and I made ready for him, telling myself I would catch that d.a.m.ned rock, catch it in my teeth if I had to, and take it away from him and feed it to him. He hesitated and ran down the slope. I saw him fall and roll and get up and disappear into the maze of walls behind the temple faCade. I was trembling with reaction. I picked up the sweaty beret and the eyegla.s.ses with the tilt-shades attached, and saw that one lens was shattered.
I went hobbling on my broken, ground-gla.s.s hip to the opened tombs and heard myself saying, "Sorry Sorry, Meyer. Sorry."
I got him by the belt and pulled him out of the tomb. He seemed very heavy. I rolled him onto his back. He was very loose and sloppy. He had a lump over his ear the size of half an apple. His cheeks and forehead were scratched and torn from rolling down the slope. I put my ear against his chest, and the mighty old heart of Meyer said, rea.s.suringly, "Whup tump, whup tump, whup tump."
So I thumbed an eyelid up, and a blank sightless, and bright blue eye stared out, stared through and beyond me.
The other one opened, unaided, and slowly the focus came back from ten thousand miles in s.p.a.ce, down through all the layers with fancy names, and stared at me. Tongue came out and licked dusty lips. Rusty voice said, "So? So h.e.l.lo."
"Are you dying?"
"The point is debatable. What happened? I saw McLeen way up on the hill. We started up. Here I am. I fell?"
"You got hit on the head with a rock."
A slow hand came up and the fingers touched the lump. "This is part of my head? Way out there?"
"Do you want to sit up?"
"I would like to think about it. We economists have very thick skulls. It is a characteristic. Everybody knows that. But we are happy people with a great sense of rhythm."
"You are talking a lot."
"It keeps my mind off my head. So let"s try this sitting up part."
He sat up and spent a little time moaning. And then he stood up, and we started down the slope, very slowly.
"Why are you limping?" he asked.
"I, too, got hit with a rock."
"What do you have there in your hand?"
"A blue beret and a pair of broken gla.s.ses. Shut up, Meyer."
"Ask a stupid question and you get..."
"Shut up, Meyer."
"Sit up, Meyer. Stand up, Meyer. Walk, Meyer. Shut up, Meyer."
I had been listening for the snoring sound of the Honda heading down the hill, and I hadn"t heard it yet. It made me thoughtful. So I made Meyer sit on a short, wide, restored wall, and hold the beret and gla.s.ses. I went over to the side and climbed up onto a high wall. I could see a portion of the parking lot. I could see the Falcon and the cycle. I looked around. I could see the pattern of the maze, but not down into the rooms and corridors.
I dropped down from the wall, and managed not to scream out loud. Just silently, in the brain. I listened for a long time. I moved a few feet and listened again.
With an explosive grunt of effort he came scuttling out of a doorway, blinking and swinging, forgetting that part about the wrist action, and forgetting how tall I am. I stepped inside the arc, so well inside it that the lethal rock which I had expected might wrap around me and splinter a rib, smacked the wall behind me instead. I got one paw on the stick and the flat of my other hand against his chest, pushed and yanked and took away the toy. He ran backward, kept his balance, turned, and kept running. I went after him with no hope of catching him-not on a leg that felt as if I were wearing it backwards-but to see where he was headed, and if there was anyone interested in stopping him.
He came out onto the wide stone plaza that ran along the front of the temple faqade. By the time I got to the end of the unroofed corridor and made the turn, he was scooting along toward the nearest set of big steep stone stairs leading down to the lower courtyard level, to the same level as the ball court a hundred yards away.
As I came hitching and galumphing along, I saw him make his turn and slow to go down the stone steps. He tried to take the steps in stride, but he had not slowed quite enough, probably because perceptions of depth and distance were flawed without the thick lenses. So momentum carried him to the outside edge of the stairs. There was no railing. And he flailed his arms to recover balance but momentum took him over, leaning further and further, his feet trying to stay on the edge of the steep stone.
He dropped out of my sight. I heard a single cry which could have been "Oh!" and which could have been "No!" The sound ended with a whacking, dusty thud. I went down the steps and around and back to where he lay, half in white sunlight, half in black shadow. He lay on his right side in white dust, using a rock for a pillow, left arm curled around the pillow.
I went down onto one knee with some difficulty, and as I placed the pads of three fingers against the big artery in the side of his throat, I could see into his half-open mouth, see the neat gleam of a reasonably new filling. The dentist probably belonged to the same luncheon clubs and called him Wally, told him jokes and told him when to spit. The artery throbbed once, and in about three seconds throbbed again with half the vigor, and then did not ever move again. Escaping air rattled in his throat. All my life I had heard about the death rattle. Thought it was a myth. Now it was confirmed. A cla.s.sic sample. A collector"s item.
I stood up and walked beyond the steps. No tourists. A thousand years worth of silence. Baked rocks. Shards. Dust. A lot of Indio blood had soaked into the soil of Yagul, enough to chill the back of my neck. And I had to go up and get Meyer and did not relish the climb.
But Meyer was sitting up on the stone plaza, his feet on the top stair. His color was pasty.
"I told you to stay put."
"I came to tell you I feel very dizzy. And... in all truth, a little bit frightened."
I got up those stairs and got him down them, taking a lot of his weight. I then put the blue beret next to the stone pillow, and tucked one bow of the broken gla.s.ses under Wally"s cheek. I had shoved the wooden handle of the weapon down inside my belt, above the right hand pants pocket, and put the stone ball in the pocket, so that only the braided leather showed.
Walked by the ball court, out along the path. No new visitors. Tourists go to Monte Alban, to Mitla, not often to Yagul. I shouted the gnarled little tickettaker out of his shady nest, and pointed back in agitation, and then at the Honda, saying in my pidgin Mexican that the man had fallen, the man was hurt. He looked absolutely blank, and then there was sudden comprehension and concern. I said I would have the ambulancia come, the Cruz Roja, los doctores. He went trotting to find the dead daddy of the dear daughter, and I wedged Meyer into the Falcon and took off. Before we got to the main highway, he toppled over against the door on his side.
The large modern hospital was on the fringe of La Colonia, toward the city. I was glad I had taken Brucey and Davey there. I left rented rubber on every turn, using one hand to hold Meyer in place when I made turns to the right.
A birdlike little nurse came hurrying out of the emergency entrance. She ignored my linguistics. She looked at Meyer, sucked air audibly as she saw the lump on his head. She directed the attendants who lifted him onto the stretcher and rolled him in. I refused to understand their instructions to get my car out of the way, knowing it was perhaps the quickest way to contact somebody who could speak English.
A big brown man in a white smock appeared and said, "Would you please move your car out of the ambulance gate, sir. You can park it in back."
"My friend and I saw a man fall from in front of the temple at Yagul. While we were hurrying to tell the man who sells the tickets, my friend fell and struck his head. The man who fell was an American tourist, and I think the fall may have killed him, Doctor. What about my friend?"
"He is being examined right now. If you will move your car and then go to the office and help with the admission papers..."
"Is he in bad shape?"
"Please move your car." And so I did. Then a large, billowly, benevolent lady in the office helped me interpret their form and put Meyer"s name, rank, and serial number in the right s.p.a.ces. I caught Enelio Fuentes just as he was leaving the agency. I was using the phone on her desk. Enelio came through with that clout and speed that only a certified member of the local establishment can provide. A Doctor Elvara arrived twenty minutes later to be a consultant on the case. He was young, brisk, authoritative, and emotionless. After fifteen minutes he came back to the waiting room and made his report.
"There is no fracture. The patient regained consciousness and seemed rational, and then lapsed again into a comatose condition. It is obvious there is a severe concussion. The question of tissue damage cannot be resolved as yet. Pulse, respiration and pressure are good. It is safe to say there is no major area of hemorrhage in the brain, according to present symptoms. There could be a slow seepage from small blood vessels and torn capillaries. If so, the indication will be a deterioration in pressure, respiration, and pulse. We have no mechanized intensive care installation, and so the procedure here is to use student nurses on one hour shifts, constantly taking the pulse rate and the blood pressure and the rate of respiration and marking them on a special chart form which carries a column for c.u.mulative change. If percentage change exceeds specified limits, she will immediately alert surgery. I will be on call and be here by the time the patient is prepared. The chief resident in surgery will a.s.sist me. In almost every instance the seepage in subdural, evident; and readily accessible, with a favorable prognosis. When a deeper area is traumatized, the problem becomes more grave."
"Do you think you"ll have to operate?"
"I do not make guesses."
I knew he would make his guess if I could word the question correctly. "Doctor Elvara, if you had ten patients with exactly the same test results as my friend, the same lump on the head, how many do you think would require surgery?"
"Hmmm. Ten is too small a sample. Make it a hundred. At least twenty would require surgery, perhaps as many as forty."
"Out of a hundred operations, given the same conditions thus far, how many wouldn"t respond?"
"Perhaps five, perhaps four."
"How long does it usually take before you know whether you have to operate?"
"There will be a deterioration in the first twelve hours. But we would keep close watch for eighteen to be safe, then two more days of observation before the patient would be discharged."
"Thank you, Doctor."
"You are most welcome." He stopped outside the door and turned and looked in at me. "You... ask very nice questions," he said. It was probably his compliment for the whole calendar year.
So then, three chances out of ten they"ll have to open your skull, Meyer, and, if they do, it"s twenty to one in your favor. Your friendly neighborhood oddsmaker can thus put up fifty bucks against the dollar you don"t make it, and still have a twenty percent edge in his favor. But with your pants showing above the edge of the tomb, you didn"t look all that good.
But nothing in the world could keep it from being a very very long twelve hours.