After beers were ordered, and Steve still hadn’t said much of anything, Tracey prodded him. “Talk to us, Steve! What’s the problem? Who or what were you chasing?”‘
He made a face, a sort of tired grimace. “In a word,” he sighed, “or I guess two words, el Hombre. The fellow the folks around here refer to as el Hombre .”
El Hombre? The Man. There was someone wandering around here who called himself the Man? I wanted to laugh out loud, but something in Steve’s manner stopped me.
“What a dopey name!” Tracey exclaimed. “Who is he really, and why would anyone want to call himself that?”‘ she queried, undeterred by the expression on Steve’s face.
He sighed. “El Hombre? Beats me. Maybe he doesn’t want people around here to know his real name although why he should care, when he’s so open about what he does, I couldn’t really say. Perhaps he just thinks it makes him sound rather grand. His name is Etienne Laforet. French. From Paris. He’s an art dealer, owns a swank Parisian gallery on the Left Bank. He’s also sleaze, big-time. I haven’t seen him around here in a couple of years, but he used to come at least once a year, and sometimes twice. His modus operandi is always the same. Blows into town in a big, expensive car, visits a few bars and restaurants making a big show of throwing money around. Once he’s made sure everyone sees he’s got wads of cash, he finds himself a place to stay, parks his very flashy and expensive car—this year it’s a gold Mercedes—right out front so everyone will know where he is, and then he just sits and waits.”
“Waits for what?” I asked. “And isn’t that a little dangerous, showing off your wealth like that around here? Isn’t he asking for trouble?”
Steve looked at me as if I was naivete personified. “He’s not asking for trouble. He is trouble. No one messes with him. He’s waiting for people to bring him stolen artifacts, of course. They have to know he’s here, that he’s ready to buy, and where to find him.”
“By stolen artifacts, you mean… ?” I asked.
“Pretty much anything pre-Columbian. He specializes in Moche.”
“Are you saying that he sits around waiting for people to bring their stolen goods to him, right out in the open? Like in a hotel lobby or something?”
“A house. He usually rents a house, and that’s what he’s done this time. The little white one with the round window on the second floor over on Calle seven near the hardware store. I followed him there this afternoon. It has a high wall surrounding it, with a large tree in the front yard, and no windows overlooking it from the other side of the street. So no one can see what’s going on in the patio or the door. But there’s a place to park out front, so everyone can see his car and know he’s there. Perfect setup.”
“Where are the police in all this? Can’t they do something about it?”
“Perhaps they could. But they don’t. Maybe it’s can’t, maybe it’s won’t. This guy has a reputation for being ruthless, and people around here are really afraid to take him on.”
“But they deal with him!”
“Yes,” he sighed. “They do.”
“But you can’t take Moche artifacts out of the country,” I offered.
Steve gave me another are-you-new-to-this-planet look. “Obviously there are ways,” he said. “He’s never been caught with anything on him when he flies home to Paris, I can assure you.”
We all thought about that for a while, Steve staring moodily into his beer. “I thought maybe he wasn’t going to show up here anymore,” he said finally. “He’s been farther south the last couple of years, and nothing much of any interest has turned up in these parts that I’ve heard about. I wonder what it means that he’s here again. I’ll have to make some enquiries, I guess.”
I wasn’t sure what making enquiries meant, but I didn’t have long to think about it. There was a bit of a stir in the entrance to El Mochica, and Steve turned to look at the door.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, throwing money on the table to cover the bill, his beer still unfinished. “This place just lost its charm.”
I was sitting with my back to the doorway, and turned my head slightly to see what had brought on this abrupt gesture on Steve’s part. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw silhouetted against the bright light from outside, the figure of a man. I looked back at Steve to ask if the shadow I’d seen was el Hombre, but I didn’t need to speak. Steve’s face said it all. By the time we’d reached the door, el Hombre had disappeared into the lounge off to the right of the entrance and was not to be seen.
Dinner that night was more subdued than usual, Steve’s black mood affecting us all. On Ines’s day off, which corresponded with our break from the dig as well, the team, minus Pablo, who spent his time off in town with his family, and Hilda, who spent the day in her room, drinking herself into a stupor, no doubt, and sometimes with the addition of a student or two, crowded into the little kitchen to prepare the evening meal together, and it was normally a rather rowdy affair.
Ralph, a bachelor, liked to cook, and did it reasonably well. His responsibility was the main course, polio, chicken, which he cooked in what he always referred to as the “devil’s handmaid,” the propane oven, because of its propensity to shut off at the critical moment. I was responsible for the appetizer, and tried to master Ines’s papas a la Huancaina, potatoes in a cheese, onion, and hot pepper sauce that I’d found so appealing the first night. Tracey’s specialty was flan, or creme caramel, so she made dessert. Steve supervised, a responsibility that included keeping the cooks’ glasses filled. While the results never measured up to Ines’s feasts, on the couple of occasions we’d done this, we invariably declared the meal a triumph, and in a way it was. Sometimes the power went off, usually the stove quit: There was always some obstacle to be overcome to carry it off. Tracey, as always, had one of us take a tray up to Hilda, to leave outside her door, but as often as not it was not touched by morning.
That night, for the first time since I’d arrived at the Hacienda Garua, when everyone had retired for the night, I took the little Moche man out of his tissue wrapping and studied him once again. Every time I looked at him, I saw more to admire. He was exquisite really. The workmanship was extraordinary, the more so every time I looked at him. His necklace of tiny beads, each one handmade, and each just a little bit different, was so beautifully done, it almost took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine the attention to detail, the amount of time that must have been spent by some artisan, in making just one ear spool for someone, someone important no doubt. I wrapped it very carefully again and put it in its hiding place, behind a loose board in the cupboard. Was Etienne Laforet, I wondered, the connection I was looking for?
Later I heard the whispers again, and this time I got up quietly and went out to the railing. Three people were talking by candlelight at the front door. Steve was one, the other was the man I’d caught sight of for only a moment in the headlight of Ines’s brother’s motorcycle, the man of the arches, and the third figure, I saw this time to my surprise, was Hilda. Straining, I could pick up only snippets of their conversation.
“We can’t let him get away with this,” I heard Hilda say. Then, “Get Montero. Get him to talk to his brother.”