Ford left Tomlinson at the restaurant and headed off through the crowd alone. He had to stop three people before he found one who spoke Spanish and could tell him where to find the phone. It wasn't a phone booth with neon lighting. The public phone was inside a house where a short fat Mayan woman sat in attendance. She dutifully noted Ford's call, accepted coins in payment, contacted the overseas operator and told her that the call was to Washington, D.C., person-to-person to Donald Piao Cheng, collect. The operator said it might take a while to get the call through and the Mayan woman assured Ford she would send a runner for him when the call was completed.
Ford ate rice, red beans, and boiled chicken at the little restaurant and drank Masaguan beer served in a liter bottle with a ceramic top. Tomlinson was saying he was anxious to get back to the plaza and take a look at those Mayan stelae, and Ford said he could take his time because they would spend the night in Utatlan. He didn't want to chance stumbling onto Zacul's army after dark and getting shot before they could find a messenger to forward their offer of an exchange. Tomlinson said that was good; he needed a break from all that traveling. Ford said it wasn't going to be much of a break because they were going to spend their free time going over how Tomlinson was going to react to the questions Zacul would surely ask him.
"Damn, man, we went over and over that stuff for the whole six hours it took us to get here."
"If we had six days, Tomlinson, it still wouldn't be enough time. If Zacul isn't absolutely convinced you're an expert on pre-Columbian artifacts he's going to kill us. It's as simple as that. No judge, no jury, no trial. He'll just take us out and shoot us."
Tomlinson, finishing his beer, said, "I don't know what you're so worried about, Doc. I bullshitted my way through Harvard on all kind of subjects I didn't know."
Ford said, "It's just that Harvard has a different grading system. With Zacul, it's strictly pass or fail."
The Mayan woman sent a boy to get him, and Ford followed the boy through the market to the little house and picked up the phone. Donald Cheng was waiting. "Doc? Jesus Christ, Doc, you sound like you're about a million miles away. What's that echo? You in a plane or something?"
"No, at the base of a mountain. In Masagua—which is strictly between you and me. Did you get to the auction? Tell me you went to the auction, Don. "
"I went to New York. I went to the auction. That painting you described to me never came up for sale—not that I'm surprised."
"You didn't leave early—-"
"Just to make a phone call. I had to go out and call an agent friend of mine with New York Customs. And I bet a hundred bucks you know exactly why."
Ford said, "Oh?" and then waited.
"You said the guy holding the auction, this Benjamin what's-his-name character, Benjamin Rouchard, might be a little shady. Well, he's at least a little shady. Along with paintings, this guy was selling stuff he shouldn't have been selling. Jade carvings of jaguars, parrots, these weird little stone statuettes with nasty-looking faces and great big schlongs. He had about a dozen pieces on the block and a couple hundred more in the back room. I guess he was moving it out slow; didn't want to flood the market. You know what some of that crap sold for?"
"A lot," said Ford.
"Yeah, it's very popular with interior decorators these days. Pre-Columbian art is illegal, expensive, and bizarre, which makes it chic. One of the statuettes went for just under ten grand. And there was no documentation on any of it. No bills of sale, no statements of provenance, no shipping manifest, nothing. Smuggled goods. We're going to get one of our experts to verify the stuff as authentic, but I think it's real. That's why the high rollers come to his auctions. They know Rouchard sells only the real stuff. All Aztec."
"Mayan," said Ford.
"Hah! Caught you, you bastard. I knew you knew. That's why you pumped me about all those laws. Why didn't you just come out and tell me?"
"You're about to find out, old buddy."
"If it has something to do with that woman artist, you wasted your time being tricky. She was just an innocent bystander as far as we're concerned. We nailed Rouchard and we're checking his records to see if we can pull in any of his partners. But we don't want the woman—unless you count the way some of the guys were drooling when they looked at her. Which I guess explains why you suddenly became an art lover."
"Rouchard is in jail?"
"Oh, hell no. He's out on bail, first offense and all."
"Which means he could be out of the country by now. "
"He could be. It's not like he was smuggling in coke or heroin or something. But it's the sort of arrest we like to make to keep our neighbors to the south happy. Lets them know we care about preserving their rich and colorful history and all that shit. As if I care personally, but it's illegal and this guy was doing it in a big way, so I'm glad you steered me in even if you did it in your own weird, convoluted way."
Ford looked at the Mayan woman sitting there looking out the window, listening to him but not seeming to understand. He pressed the phone closer and said, "I want to know what else you found there, Don. It's important. There's one particular thing I'm looking for—"
"So now we're getting down to it: the real reason you didn't want a well-organized bust walking into that auction. You want something. Now it's becoming clear—"
"I do want something. It's a manuscript. Very old, written on parchment with no end boards and not very long—maybe forty, fifty pages in script; archaic Spanish with rough illustrations, hand drawn. I don't know for sure that Rouchard had it, but if he did, he may not even have known it was valuable. He'd probably want some expert to appraise it before he tried to figure out how to peddle it. It may have been in that back room with the other stuff. Or his home. Did you find anything like that?"
There was a long silence before Cheng finally said, "Well, yeah. I think maybe we did. I'm pretty sure we did. One of the agents showed me something like that. There was so much stuff I didn't look at any of it too closely, but I remember seeing—" "I want it, Don. I need that book. I need it in a big way." "Doc, I can't do that. You know I can't. That stuff all has to be catalogued and tagged as evidence. When we're done with it, it'll be returned to the rightful country if provenance can be established. That's the way the antiquities act reads."
"You made the bust late last night, Don. You mean to tell me your people have already catalogued all that stuff—"
"You know damn well we haven't. We didn't even get the search warrants signed until late this morning. That's why you sent me to an art auction and not a bust, isn't it? You were buying yourself time just in case this book you wanted happened to be there—"
"That's exactly what I was doing. I didn't want to have to ask you to take an article already catalogued and tagged as state's evidence. That would be against the letter of the law, Donald, and I knew what your answer would have to be. But now that manuscript—if it's the piece I need—is just sitting in a room—"
"Yeah, a room that we've legally sealed."
"Right. But the article hasn't been catalogued so it's not yet considered evidence."
"Ah, shit, Doc, you're really reaching. You must really want that manuscript."
"I do. I'll tell you why later, but I need it just as soon as you can get it to me. You still owe me a big favor, Don. Do you remember why?"
"You know goddamn well I remember. I will always remember. "
"I'm calling in that favor now. But you have my word that I won't sell the manuscript for profit and that it'll be returned to the proper people in the proper country."