“Thank you, Tim,” Scofield said around the bit of his pipe. He clicked the lighter closed, turned to his left, and tipped his head benignly at the woman with the Laura Petrie hairdo. “Maggie?”
She stopped jiggling her foot, uncrossed her jeans-clad legs, and turned to face Gideon’s table, the table of strangers. “My name’s Maggie Gray-”
“Oh, I forgot,” Tim blurted. “I should have said – I’m also a student of Maggie’s – of Professor Gray’s.”
“-and, as Tim indicates, I also teach in the ethnobotany program at the University of Iowa.” She paused. “At the moment, anyway. My primary interests are in the area of ethnopharmacology with a concentration on anaesthetics, hypnotics, and opiates.” She had an unusual, not unattractive manner of speaking, biting and humorously ironic, as if everything she said was half taunting – self-taunting as much as anything else. The set of her face, with its wide, sardonic mouth, and with one eyebrow slightly raised – much practiced, Gideon suspected – added to the general impression of barbed, above-it-all skepticism.
“Mel?” said Scofield.
Beside Maggie, the fourth person at the table, the big guy with the bull neck, now smiled affably. “Hi all, I’m Mel Pulaski and I’m not a botanist, I’m a writer, so in a way I’m kind of just along for the ride-”
“Wait a minute,” Phil said. “I know you. Didn’t you used to play for the Dallas Cowboys?”
“Minnesota,” Mel said, pleased. “You got a good memory.”
“Running back, right?”
“Linebacker. But that was a few years and a few pounds back. I’m a freelance writer now. I’m writing up an article on the cruise for EcoAdventure Travel. I also worked with Dr. Scofield on his latest book-”
“Indeed you did, and we’ll come to that in just a few minutes, Mel,” Scofield said, talking over him. “But there at that table are four gentlemen whom I haven’t met.” He leaned forward, smiling at Osterhout and radiating cordiality. “I think I can guess, however, who that particular gentleman, our butterfly expert, is.”
“Well, I’m Duayne Osterhout. Yes, I’m an entomologist, an ethno entomologist, I suppose I should say in this august company, and I’m with the Department of Agriculture.” He was still on his first pisco sour, but obviously he wasn’t much used to drinking, because it had gone to his head. He was speaking a little too carefully, almost visibly preforming the words before trying them out. “In other words, I’m a bug man.”
“Dr. Osterhout is being unduly modest,” Scofield said. “He is not just any bug man, he is one of the world’s leading bug men, and an internationally recognized authority on the order Blattaria.”
Visibly pleased, Osterhout simpered and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh now, really, I don’t know that I’d say…”
“What’s Blattaria?” John whispered to Gideon.
“Cockroaches.”
John inconspicuously shifted his chair a few inches further away from Osterhout.
“Surely this isn’t your first trip to the Amazon, Dr. Osterhout?” Scofield asked. “I imagine your studies must have taken you here many times.”
“Not really. I can assure you that if it’s cockroaches one is interested in, one has no trouble studying them in the Washington, DC, area, so as a matter of fact, yes, it is my first visit. You see, my work at Agriculture has been so time-consuming, and then my wife was never in favor of my going, but since she left…” He clamped his mouth shut. Apparently it had struck him that the potent drink had made him a little too forthcoming. “Well, anyway, here I am.”
“And we’re delighted to have you as part of our merry band,” Scofield said smoothly. “I’m sure we’ll have a lot to learn from you. I should add, by the way, that I had the great pleasure of having Dr. Osterhout’s charming daughter Beth as a member of last year’s expedition in the Huallaga Valley. That lovely young woman is someone you can really be proud of, Dr. Osterhout; she’ll be a real credit to the field. If I can ever be of help to her, I hope she’ll feel free to call on me.”
These generous if overdone remarks of Scofield’s obviously called for an appreciative response from Osterhout, but they were met instead with a searing, squint-eyed look of what Gideon took to be pure malignity. Somebody else who has some kind of a grudge against Scofield? he thought. Osterhout’s ferocious glower lasted but a second, however, before lapsing back into mildly intoxicated passivity. “Thank you, sir,” he said tightly, through a barely opened mouth.
If Scofield was disturbed, he didn’t show it. He moved his glance to Phil. “Sir?”
Phil offered a casual salute to all. “Hiya. I’m Phil Boyajian. I guess I’m just along for the ride too. I’m with On the Cheap, and I’m reviewing the Adelita for possible inclusion in our Amazon guidebook.”
“Happy to have you with us, Phil,” Scofield said. “I hope you’ll feel free to join our little excursions whenever you like.” He pointed the bit of his pipe at Gideon. “Sir.”
“My name is Gideon Oliver. I’m a prof too, at the University of Washington, but I’m afraid the last time I studied botany was in high school. I’m here to help Phil out, basically, but I’m looking forward to learning a little about what all of you do too, if you’ll let me.”
Scofield was looking keenly at him, his clear blue eyes narrowed. He placed the bit of the pipe against his temple. “Am I wrong, or do we have yet another celebrity among us? Would you be a physical anthropologist, Dr. Oliver?”
“Well, yes-”
“Hey, right, the Bone Detective!” Mel Pulaski exclaimed, jabbing a thick finger at him.
“ Skeleton Detective,” John corrected helpfully.
“Yeah, right, Skeleton Detective. I knew you looked familiar. You were on the Discovery Channel or the Learning Channel or something, just a few weeks ago. All about – what was it – identifying people from their skulls, I think, or figuring out how old they were, or something like that. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it probably was,” Gideon said, repressing a sigh. He didn’t mind being identified as a forensic anthropologist, but he’d been looking forward to going a whole week without being the Skeleton Detective.
“Son of a gun,” said Mel, visibly impressed.
“Well, we’re certainly happy to have you aboard, professor,” Scofield said. “I think we’d all love to learn a little about what you do, so shall we assume we have a quid pro quo to that effect? That leaves you, sir,” he said to John.
“John Lau here. I’m also with Phil.”
“You’re a writer? You work for On the Cheap?”
“No, I’m just helping out too, so I guess you could say I’m along for the ride also. Actually I’m a special agent for the FBI.”
“FBI?” Scofield cried, twinkling away. “Good heavens, are we under investigation?”
“Nope,” said John. “Well, not yet, anyway.”
Scofield chuckled, the others smiled civilly, and Scofield got to his feet again. “Well, now that we’re all friends, I hope you’ll let me present you with a little welcoming gift and do a little bragging at the same time. As most of you know, I have a few publications to my credit-”
“A lot more than a few, sir!” Tim enthused a little too ardently, then blushed bright pink.
“Well, thank you, Tim, but be that as it may, until now I’ve never written anything for the general public. So when Javelin Press asked me to put together something of an autobiographical nature, something that wasn’t full of technical jargon, I didn’t know where to turn for help. Fortunately, they were able to recommend a first-rate writer to assist me.” He smiled at Mel Pulaski, who grinned back. “I want to thank you for all your help, Mel. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Hell, you did all the work, Arden,” Mel said. “I just tweaked a word or two here and there. I was ashamed to take any money for it.”
“Not true at all. Don’t you listen to him. I would have been helpless without his guidance.”
John made a rumbling noise low in his throat. He was getting tired of the bowing and scraping, the kowtowing, and the self-inflating modesty. As was Gideon.