She hooked her arm to mine. “One hundred and seventy-four miles per hour. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.”
Darla Hogan had thought I was fearless. Until now. Must be crushingly disillusioning to her.
She’d been stalked by her ex-boyfriend. The restraining order wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, so she let her fingers do the walking and hired me. My esteemed competition was listed as Security Consultants and Professional Investigators, wimpy crapola like that. I was the only dick listed under Private Eye. That’s how we met.
She wanted me to track the sicko and dig up dirt that would land him in the pokey. Trouble was, he was squeaky clean. He lived with his mother, taught Sunday school, and was secretary-treasurer of the local orchid society. He didn’t do diddly except follow Darla around like a demented puppy and call her at all hours. I knew the type. One fine day, he’d go berserk. Then he’d be a model prisoner on death row.
I flipped for Darla, and took her and her case deep inside my heart. I stalked the freakoid as he stalked her. One night, while he was parked across the street from her apartment, I decided enough already.
I snuck up on him and took the law into my own hands, as well as various bodily parts that I used as handles to immobilize him with. I never told Darla what I did to him afterward, and I ain’t spilling the beans to you, either, other than that our boy lives with a maiden aunt on the opposite coast and is eligible to try out for the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
“Says you. It’s perfectly normal to be afraid of flying, especially if you’re not leaving the ground.”
“Darla, didn’t you tell me that nobody knows what Christopher Columbus looks like?”
I dropped Chris’s name to keep my mind off the planet blurring by outside. It wasn’t hard to get Darla going on Columbus.
This AVE bullet car we were in was preferente class, which is like first class on a plane. We’ve got ample hip- and legroom, one row of seats on one side of the aisle, two on the other, and cute young stews serving snacks. They even wheeled a duty-free shopping cart through and are showing an in-flight movie. As if I needed all these reminders that we’re moving like a bat outta hell.
Edwin Dobbs and Mary Beth Lambuth shared a table on the two-seat side, sitting across from each other. The antagonists were in opposite corners, Riley Neil behind us by the luggage racks, Chandler Bryce up front.
What really set my teeth on edge were the trains passing the other direction inches from us. Our train shuddered and so did I. If there was a derailment, we’d be locking antlers at three hundred and fifty mph.
“That’s correct, Brick. Christopher Columbus never had his portrait painted and written descriptions run the gamut. Many perceive him as blue-eyed, red-haired, and tall.”
“I hope he used sunscreen. I guess that rules out those clay build-ups of the skull the forensics teams do. Hey, how about DNA?”
Darla ignored my helpful hint. “You can debate absolutely every aspect of his life and death.”
I said, “All I know is, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
“Christopher Columbus got around almost as much in death as in life,” she said. “He died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506 at the age of fifty-four. In 1507 he was moved to Seville. In 1537, he was moved again to Santo Domingo. People in the Dominican Republic insist his bones are still there, but in 1795, off he went to the Cathedral of Havana. Then in 1899, he sailed back to Spain, eventually to his final resting spot in 1902. Considering the timespan and the shifting of his remains, it’s problematic whether any or all of the bones are his.”
She had my pinhead spinning. “So I’m fuzzy on what you guys plan to accomplish at your symposium.”
“We’ll have a look at the litter serving as his tomb. That will be exciting in itself. We’ll share information and research and, who knows, it’s a long shot, but there may be a stone left unturned. Some of us speak Spanish and one person knows Latin. Hopefully there are accessible archives. You being a detective, Brick, doesn’t that stimulate your curiosity?”
“We’re talking a trail that went cold a hundred years ago. And who pays my hourly fee? Refresh me on the sordid details of Riley Neil’s allegedly alleged transfer of the alleged old bones.”
“Hitler was pressuring Franco to declare war against the Allies. He wanted access to Gibraltar. Franco argued that Spain was an economic basket case because of the Spanish Civil War that had recently ended. This was true. Franco gave the Germans an impossibly extravagant shopping list before he’d go to war. Hitler figured it was a means of dodging participation.
“Hitler asked Mussolini to intercede. Franco and Mussolini met in February 1941 at Bordighera on the Italian Riviera. Franco supposedly brought Columbus’s bones. Franco continued vacillating on entering the war and Spain remained neutral, as she did throughout. Mussolini, for his part, reported to Hitler that Spain was too impoverished to be a military asset and recommended dropping the idea altogether.”
“I like the bribery and payoff possibilities. They speak to me. But Riley Neil’s saying that the bones changed hands. Hogwash, huh?”
Darla nodded. “Neil claims that Franco ingratiated himself with Il Duce with the gift. Mussolini had imperial delusions that he was leading the Second Roman Empire. Anything that lent splendor to the trappings was fair game. Riley theorizes that Mussolini was going to display Columbus’s remains in the Genoa Cathedral after the Axis won the war.”
“No bones?”
“I don’t believe it could have happened.”
“Why?”
“Franco and the Archbishop of Sevilla had a mutual enmity. The cathedral was the only one in Spain that didn’t have Falangist graffiti and displays commemorating the soldiers who fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Nationalists, Franco’s side. The archbishop would have raised a fuss.”
“What if he didn’t know? What if they were slipped out a window in the dead of night or a switcheroo was done, money under the table?”
Darla didn’t have an answer. These college profs, I tell ya, they need a more cynical edge to get to the bottom of things.
“My priceless documents! They’re gone!”
We turned around to see Riley Neil rummaging through bags on the rack, flinging them every which way, tearing through one of his suitcases.
“Who stole them?” he yelled. “I demand their immediate return!”
The washrooms were across from the luggage racks. I was about to tell Neil to throw some cold water on his face and simmer down, that we needed to go step by step, but he was steaming by me, shaking a fist, raving, “You pusillanimous sneak. You ersatz academician!”
Chandler Bryce rose clumsily to his feet, bug-eyed, looking like a punching bag waiting to happen.
Bryce countered with, “How dare you, you pseudointellectual, self-aggrandizing hypocrite!”
This was how these people cussed when their noses were outta joint? I waded in, a step ahead of Dobbs, Lambuth, and a couple of Spaniards whose movie the boys were interrupting.
“Break it up,” I snarled, lunging between them.
“I was seated before you came aboard, Neil, and I have not moved,” Bryce said. “I didn’t touch your luggage or this chimerical document of yours.”
“We shall see, Bryce,” Neil said, wagging a finger. “This crime shall come to light.”
“Ding, ding,” I said firmly, hands extended to their chests. “Go to your neutral corners.”
Though I don’t think the boys caught my prizefighting metaphor, Bryce took his seat and Neil headed back to his. It was almost too easy to keep the pointy-heads separated, but I was relieved. I had to wonder too why the hell, if this documentation was so priceless, Neil had it in a bag, unlocked, to his rear.