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Darla said it would be a travesty not to see the remnants of the great Maya civilization. She rattled off Uxmal, Edzna, Sayil, Labna, Kabah, Chichen Itza, and some longer names that tied my tongue in knots. She was determined to do every archaeological site she could.

I complained that it was gonna be like a whistlestop tour. She said what did it matter where we were? We’d still have the time and energy my “honeymoon without benefit of clergy” proposal entailed, though she referred to it as a proposition.

Don’t get me wrong. Darla likes the lovey-dovey stuff as much as me. If you were a peeping Tom you’d see us wrapped up like a basketful of boa constrictors.

And I had to hand it to her. She had us going first class on a budget. Our Palenque hotel was actually a resort with a series of cabins set next to thick jungle. Our cabin overlooked a creek and had charm coming out its ears, as did its open-air, thatch-roofed café, where we wound down and wet our whistles.

I waved a dead soldier at the barkeep and said, “I had a thought.”

“Me too, Brick. When I’m finished with my margarita.”

Darla Hogan teaches anthropology at a community college. She is a little slip of a woman with big hair and bigger glasses. She has the sweetest leer.

“No, another thought. What if Lord Pacal was whacked out? You know, assassinated.”

“What on earth gave you that idea?”

I pointed at the stack of books and notebooks on the table. Since we’d begun planning the trip, it was like they were grafted to her.

“You told me Pacal was born in 603 A.D., right? His mom, the queen, handed the keys to the kingdom over to him in 615. He was eighty when he croaked, after damn near seventy years in power. Hell, his reign alone was probably twice the normal lifespan.”

“Eighty was old then, it’s old today,” Darla reminded me. “You’re pushing forty, no spring chick—”

“Never mind. If Pacal lived to a ripe old age, wouldn’t there be a natural assumption he’d live forever? These dudes were god-kings, you know. Pacal’s older son, Chan Bahlum, a.k.a. Jaguar Serpent, was forty-eight when he took over from dad. Don’t you think he was getting antsy?”

Darla stroked my forearm hair, saying, “My Brick, always looking under rocks.”

Hey, looking under rocks was what I did for a living. Darla had been stalked by her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t think the restraining order was worth the paper it was written on, so she let her fingers do the walking. She picked me because my worthy competition advertised as Security Consultants and Professional Investigators, wimpy crapola like that. I was the only one who hung out my shingle as a private eye.

She wanted me to track the creep and to dig up dirt that would land him in the pokey. He was nearly my age and lived with his mother. Trouble was, he was squeaky clean. He didn’t do diddlysquat except follow Darla around like a lovesick puppy. I knew the type. One fine day he’d go berserk. Then he’d be a model prisoner on death row.

At first sight I fell for Darla like a ton of bricks. I took her case mighty personal. One night I caught the freakoid alone and took the law in my own hands, as well as him. I never told Darla what I did, and I’m not spilling the beans to you either, other than that he fives with a maiden aunt on the opposite coast and is eligible to try out for the Vienna Boys Choir.

“You can take the shoulder holster off the shamus,” she said, doing the math on a napkin. “Lord Pacal died one thousand three hundred and fourteen years ago. How do you expect to prove Chan Bahlum committed patricide?”

I shrugged and patted my pocket. I’d given up smoking for her. Not to mention letting her toss the bottle of cheap whisky from my filing cabinet and thin out my trenchcoat and snapbrim fedora collection. There were still times I felt naked without an unfiltered Camel dangling from my kisser, and this was one of them. “So the trail’s gone a little cold.”

“Good luck tracing eyewitnesses.”

I said, “There’re tons of historical precedents, you know. I switched to Masterpiece Theater once when a prizefight ended fast on account of a KO. In that episode Augustus had been the big cheese in Rome for forty years. Then his current missus slipped hemlock in his vino. Bingo. Her son was the new emperor.

“And look at England. I’ll bet whatshisname is running out of patience. If Liz ever falls off her horse, the first thing I’d do is check under her saddle for a burr.”

“You’re reaching, love of my life.”

“You were telling me about these Maya folks and human sacrifice. Anything’s possible.”

“Blood lubricated their universe,” she said.

“Hacking off heads and gouging the living, beating hearts out of chests with those stone knives isn’t what you’d call your basic polite behavior,” I said. “If I was Pacal, I’d’ve walked around with a rear view mirror glued to my forehead.”

“Homicide is not the same as ritual killing. The typical sacrifice victim was a captured enemy, the higher ranking the better.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a coverup. It’s worth looking into.”

“Answer two questions,” Darla said. “Who’s your client? How are you going to get paid?”

I was speechless. I hated it when she made sense.

Next morning the sky poured down on us in buckets. I’d never been anywhere tropical and couldn’t believe my eyeballs. It was just like Chicken Little said.

I suggested to Darla that we spend the day in bed watching TV. She reminded me that we didn’t have television. I said so what. She called me a satyr. I asked what that was. She said it was a vulgar mythical creature with goat horns that had only one thing on its mind.

I said that flattery would get her everywhere. She said uh-uh, we were on a tight schedule. We’d do the museum today. If it was still yucky later, we’d do Palenque tomorrow. Then we’d head on up to Uxmal.

Like a good scout I bought breakfast and drove us to the museum and visitor center, a modem building a mile from the Palenque ruin. On display were an assortment of artifacts and replicas of wall murals and stone carvings. Those ancient Mayans sure had busy hands.

I hadn’t been inside a museum since a field trip in the fifth grade, and all I remembered about it was that everything was old, so when Darla commented that they’d done a nice job here, I had to agree. While she was taking notes and pictures, I zeroed in on a stucco head of my prime suspect, Chan Bahlum. Client or no client, I needed to scratch my itch.

Chan Bahlum had a big schnozz and pierced earlobes. Attitude was written all over him, and he was definitely shifty looking.

We met up at a wall carving reproduction of Lord Pacal, who was with this babe they identified as his principal wife, Lady Ahpo Hel. In between them was their son, Kan Xul. They were dressed to the nines in feathered headgear and ornate loincloths. Ma and Pa were giving the boy some stuff, including what may have been a crown on the end of a stick.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Lord Pacal and Lady Ahpo are anointing Kan Xul with the symbols of power.”

“Whoa, wait a second. Where does Kan perch in the family tree?”

“He’s Chan Bahlum’s younger brother.”

“Aha!”

“Shhhhh. You big galoot, everybody’s looking at us.”

“Don’t you get it? Palace intrigue. Jealousy, envy, high-level hanky-panky. Chan Bahlum learned he was being passed over in favor of his kid brother. He decided to control his own destiny by clipping his old man.”

“Prove it, Brick,” Darla said, then immediately saw my stupidest grin. She covered her mouth, realizing her atrocious mistake.

She had just dared Brick Bates.

Opposites attract. That’s not exactly a news bulletin. Take Darla and me in regards to sheepskins alone. She’s got a B.S., an M.S., and is wrapping up her Ph.D. Although she’s always saying I’m a master in the b.s. department, my formal schooling involved a matchbook cover application to the Gumshoe Correspondence Institute of Private Detection.