Where the loyal Vernon immediately took over the dog’s body work, making the call, saying, “No, nothing’s wrong,” hanging up, saying to Innocent, “It’s still out.”
“Hell,” Innocent said.
Vernon looked alert, ready to be of assistance. “Something the matter?”
“That archaeologist woman,” Innocent said.
“Oh, yes. Is that the car?”
“She didn’t come back.”
A cloud passed over Vernon’s face; perhaps his tooth twinged him. He said, “Who was the driver?”
Innocent looked and felt uncomfortable; this was the real problem in the affair. “You know that fellow I use,” he said, gesturing vaguely.
Vernon looked shocked. “Him?”
“I needed someone...” Innocent paused, but then went on, since he kept very few secrets from Vernon. “I needed someone to report to me,” he said. “Someone I could trust to keep his mouth shut.”
“Someone you could trust with a woman?” Vernon asked.
“Oh, I don’t think he’d...” But Innocent’s voice trailed away. In his heart, he had to admit he wasn’t sure about that part of it.
“Is he back?” Vernon asked.
“He isn’t on the phone.”
“Where does he live?”
“Teakettle,” Innocent said, naming a tiny hamlet a few miles away toward the Guatemalan border. “But I have to get down to Belize.”
“I’ll go out there,” Vernon offered, “see if I can find him. You can phone me here later.”
“Thank you, Vernon,” Innocent said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
29
In Which Is Recounted Lemuel’s Arrival In Belize, His Traveling To The Temple With Galway, The Unexpected Appearance Of Valerie Green, Galway’s Astonishing Behavior Thereafter, And Lemuel’s Decision To Have Nothing More To Do With The Whole Dubious Affair
“Mistah Whitman?”
Lemuel rose from a sweaty unrestful humid sleep, up out of discomfort and nightmare into worse discomfort and much worse reality. Jail. Fetid odors fixed in the dank air like flies in amber. Something dripping far off, against some ancient stone. The night’s clamminess just giving way to the day’s heat. Jail; a foreign jail.
Gray light seeped through the filth on the barred window, illuminating the concrete walls and floor, the bare thin ticking without sheet or mattress in which Lemuel had tossed and turned in sleepless terror all night, only to fall into exhausted unconsciousness at the first hint of dawn. And now he was startled awake by a voice, rasping his name:
“You dere, wake up. You Mistah Whitman?”
Sitting up, dazed with fear and lack of sleep, Lemuel blinked at the silhouette beyond the barred door. “Lemuel,” he said. His tongue felt swollen, against his furry teeth. “My name is Lemuel.”
“You no Mistah Whitman?” The silhouette wore a uniform of some sort, must be a guard.
“Whitman is my first name.” Trying to wake up, trying to collect his scattered wits, Lemuel dug knuckles into his sandy eyes.
“Huh,” said the guard, and rattled papers. “Whitman be you Christian name?”
“Yes.”
“And Lemuel, now. Lemuel be you family name?”
“That’s right.”
The guard chuckled, rattling his papers. “There be many a strange name in this world,” he said philosophically. Keys rattled now, clanged in the lock, and the door squeaked open. “Well, Mistah, Mistah Lemuel, Mistah Whitman Lemuel, you got a visitor.”
A visitor? What could it mean? Who knew he was here? After hours last night of struggle and protest, hours of being lied to or intimidated or merely ignored, Lemuel had finally given up hope of ever getting a message through to the American embassy, or the hotel, or anyone anywhere in the world who might be able to help him escape this sudden tropic Kafka. So who could this be, coming to visit him here in this awful place? Lemuel asked the guard: “What visitor?”
“The man who want to see you.”
“Who? Who is he?”
“You don’t want no visitor this morning?” The door squeaked again, ominously, as though with the idea of closing. “You want me, I tell him you be too busy for visitor this morning.”
“No no!” Anything would be better than this verminous cell. Rising too hastily, Lemuel was engulfed in dizziness and had to lean a moment against the wall, under the eye of the impassive guard. Then he moved on, out to a concrete hall being mopped by a small and toothless inmate. The guard led Lemuel toward the front of the building, but veered them into a small side office where a large stout chocolate-colored man in a light gray suit and pale green open-neck shirt stood leafing through a wall calendar from Regent Insurance Company, taking a great deal of interest in the months ahead. Translucent louvers in both windows were slightly open, letting in light and air without permitting a view of what lay outside.
“Mistah St. Michael,” said the guard, with some odd combination of deference and jocularity, “this be Mistah Whit-man Lem-uel.” Shooing Lemuel into the office, the guard snicked the solid door shut with himself on the outside.
Mr. St. Michael dropped the year and turned to brood upon Lemuel, who keenly felt his own griminess, his wrinkled clothing and unwashed body and unshaven face. St. Michael, for such a big man in such a hot climate, was absolutely dapper. A thousand sentences rushed through Lemuel’s mind — greetings, queries, demands, supplications — but none seemed precisely suited to the situation, so he remained silent, not even trying to alter the look of desperation and bewilderment and fear he knew to be on his face.
It was St. Michael at last who spoke, in a mellifluous radio announcer’s voice, saying, “Well, Mister Lemuel, I’ll say this for you. You don’t look a crook.”
So it was, that was it, his worst fears realized, the Kirby Galway situation, that was it. The terrors that had kept him awake all night were justified; reputation ruined, a dank jail cell his portion forevermore. “Oh, no, sir,” Lemuel said, in that moment a broken man, “no, sir, I am not a crook.”
“We have heard Americans say that before,” St. Michael told him.
“It was Galway,” Lemuel said, all in a rush. “Kirby Galway, he lied to me, said all he wanted was my expert opinion, there wasn’t the slightest hint of impropriety until it was too late, I was already there, right there at the temple, the first time he made the suggestion, that’s the—”
“At the temple?” St. Michael’s eyes gleamed; his interest had been captured. A super-detective, that’s what he must be, a manhunter thrilling to the chase.
Well, Lemuel wanted no part of it. Let this manhunter chase Kirby Galway, and let Galway try to weasel out of it later, try to pin any of the blame on a respectable scholar like Whitman Lemuel, just let him try. “I don’t know what the girl told you,” he began, “but I was out there strictly—”
“The girl? Valerie Greene?”
“Is that her name? Whatever she said, I assure you—”
“Wait, wait, Mister Lemuel,” St. Michael said, suddenly accommodating, reassuring. “Sit down here. Begin at the beginning, please.”
There was a small mahogany desk in the room, and a pair of armless wooden chairs. Lemuel and St. Michael sat across the desk from one another, and Lemuel told him everything, every single thing from his first meeting in New York with Kirby Galway and the girl — Valerie Greene, yes, both there, but they gave no indication they were together at that time — through the subsequent meeting with Galway alone in New York, Lemuel’s agreement to come to Belize to inspect Galway’s temple, his arrival, their traveling out together, the unexpected appearance of the girl, Galway’s astonishing behavior thereafter, and Lemuel’s decision to have nothing more to do with the whole dubious affair. He gave St. Michael this entire history, and almost everything he said was the absolute truth. Only in one small detail did he lie; in his version of events, Kirby Galway had approached him exclusively as an expert, had asked for an opinion as to the value and authenticity of the material he had found on his land, and had not suggested smuggling or the illegal sale of Mayan antiquities until they were already standing on the temple itself, until, in fact, just before the girl arrived.