“You mean with Nora?”
“Okay. With Nora. How did she take it?”
“First she got faint and then she threw up, and then she decided she loves you and wants you back.”
“Boy I come back like a hero, don’t I? I come back in great shape.”
“But you came back.”
“She’s a sucker for punishment, eh?”
“Why did you do her that way Sam?”
He braced his arms on his knees and stared at the floor. “I don’t know. I just don’t know, Trav. I swear.” He looked up at me. “How has she been? How does she look? How’s she been making out?”
“She looks a little thinner in the face. And she’s a little bit quieter than she used to be. She’s made a good thing of the shop. It’s in a new place now. More expensive stuff. She’s still got the best legs in town.”
“Coming back is doing her no favor.”
“Leave that up to her, Sam. Unless you plan to do it the same way all over again.”
“No. Believe me. Never. Trav, have there been any guys?.
“When you two get back together, you can decide whether you want to trade reminiscences.”
“You know, I wondered about you and her. I wondered a lot.”
“Forget it. It was a mild idea at one time, but it didn’t work out. Where have you been all this time, Sam?”
“Most of the time in a little Mexican town below Guaymas. Puerto Altamura. Fishing village. I became a residente. Helped a guy build up a sports fishing layout, catering to a rich trade.”
“You don’t look so rich.”
“I left real quick Trav. Jesus, you’ve never seen fishing like we had there. Any day, you quit because your wrist is so sprained you can’t hold a rod.”
“How nice for you, Sam.”
He peered at me. “Sure. Sure, you son of a bitch. When you don’t think much of yourself, you can’t think much of anything else.”
“You said you’re in trouble.”
“You’re still doing the same kind of hustling, McGee?”
“I am still the last resort, Sam, for victims of perfectly legal theft, or theft so clever the law can’t do a thing. Try everything else and then come to me. If I can get it back, I keep half. Half is a lot better than nothing at all. But I am temporarily retired. Sorry.”
“I’ve done some thinking since I talked to you. When I decided to come and see you, was I thinking about getting help, or an excuse to see Nora? I don’t know. Everybody kids themselves. How can you tell. I knew I’d find out she’s married, two kids by now. I could see the guy, even. One of those development guys, very flashy, speeches to the service clubs, low golf handicap, flies his own plane. A nice guy with thirty forty sports jackets.”
“She’s twenty-nine. She’s not married. She should be.”
“To me? To me, Trav? Take a good look.”
His eyes moved away. He made a knotted fist and stared at it.
I said, “Maybe you’ve gotten all the rest of it out of your system now. Maybe you’re ready.”
He sighed. “I could be. God knows I could be. I did some thinking. If there’s a chance of her. If there’s a good chance, then the thing that seemed so important to get your help on… maybe it isn’t all that important. Oh boy, they gave it to me good, friend. The stuff was mine, and they took it. You see, without Nora, it was a lot more important to get it back, or get half of it back, half to you. If you could do anything about it. Maybe not, even if you wanted to. This is not minor league.”
“I don’t have very much idea of what you’re talking about.”
“I suppose it’s pride,” Sam Taggart said. “Getting pushed around like a stupid kid. But it is better, I guess, to just get out of it with what I have.” He stood up. “Stay right there. I want to show you something.” He went out to the rusty car with the California plates. In a few moments he came back in. He sat on the bed and untied coarse twine, unrolled a piece of soiled chamois, reached and handed me a squat little figurine about five and a half inches tall. The weight of it was so unexpected I nearly dropped it.
It was a crude little figure, dumpy, a male representation like a child would make out of clay. It was startlingly, emphatically male. It was of solid metal, dull yellow and orange, blackness caught into the creases of it, shinier where it had been handled.
“Gold?” I asked.
“Solid. Not very pure. But that doesn’t make the value of it. It’s Pre-Columbian. I don’t know whether this one is Aztec. It could be. It’s worth a hell of a lot more than the gold, but nobody can say exactly what it is worth. It’s worth what you can get a museum or a collector to pay for it. I imagine this one was some kind of a potency symbol. I had twenty-eight of them, some bigger, some smaller. Not all the same source or same period. Two were East Indian from way way back. Three were, I think, Inca. When they took the others, they missed this one because that night by luck or coincidence, this one wasn’t with the others.”
“They were yours?” I couldn’t read his eyes.
“Let’s just say there was nobody else they could have belonged to, the way things had worked out. Somebody might develop an argument on that, but when I had them, they were mine. A rough, a very rough estimate of the value of the whole collection would be three to four hundred thousand. Take the gold alone, it was two thousand, two hundred and forty-one point six ounces, discount that for impurities, it’s still a nice bundle.” He slowly rewrapped the figurine, knotted the twine. “Finding the right buyer for the whole works would be touchy”
“A question of legal ownership?”
“Who owns things like these anyway?”
“I’m not looking for a project, Sam.”
“So you keep saying. And this one is too rough for one man. Some people have been hurt on this thing already. I thought it all over and I decided, what the hell.” He bounced the wrapped lump of gold on the palm of his tough hand. “It scalds them they missed this one, not so much from the value of it, but because I could use it as a lever and give them a lot of agitation. If I wanted to give up any chance at any of it, and give this little fellow up too, I could raise political hell with them. So, earlier today, I made the decision to pull out with what I could salvage. I used most of the pennies I had left to stop along the road and make a couple of phone calls. They’d like to have this little fellow, and close the books. So I said fifteen, and they said ten, and it looks as if it will be twelve thousand five. They’re sending a guy to close.” He grinned widely enough to expose all the gap where the teeth were gone. “At least I come back with a trousseau. Twelve-five plus Nora is better than three hundred without her. Lesson number one.”
“It takes you a while. But you learn.”
“Can I tap you for some walk-around money?”
I looked into my wallet. “Forty do it?”
“Forty is fine, Trav. Just fine.”
“When are you going to see Nora?”
He looked uneasy. “After I get this thing closed out. God, I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know how to act toward her. I ought to drop onto my knees and smack my head on the floor. Tomorrow is the day. Three years of thinking about her, and remembering every little thing about her, and tomorrow is the day. I’ve got stage fright, Trav. How should I set it up?”
“What you do, you hire fifty female trumpet players and dress them in white robes and then you-”
“Right. It’s my problem. Trav, how’s Nicki?”
“I wouldn’t know. She isn’t around any more.”
“Oh.”
“When she left, we shook hands. What she really wanted was a barbecue pit in the back yard, tricycles in the car port, guest towels, daddy home from the office at five-fifteen. She tried to be somebody else, but she couldn’t make it. She lusted to join the PTA.”