“Artifacts, mostly. You weren’t the first person to notice that Campina Vieja seems to be a little hive of activity where artifact smuggling is concerned,” she said, irony in her voice. I took this sentence to be very encouraging, though, in that it appeared to signal that she was prepared to believe at least some of my story. We stared at each other across the table. Finally she put the gun down on the floor beside her chair. It was a generous gesture.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me how you got a false passport and got down here,” she said.
“Nope.” We looked at each other, each waiting for the other one to say something. I decided to leap in.
“You say you pass information along from time to time. I don’t suppose you know anything that would help me get out of this little pickle I find myself in?”
“Sorry, no,” she replied. “Nothing concrete at all.”
“Do you think something awful has happened to Steve?” I asked hesitantly.
“I don’t want to think about it, but yes, I’m afraid that is a very real possibility.” She looked away, perhaps to hide the tears forming at the corners of her eyes but not yet spilling over. She’s in love with Steve, I thought, and that’s why she doesn’t like Tracey. My face, as usual, betrayed my thoughts.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, pulling a cigarette pack out of the pocket of her robe and lighting up. “And you’re wrong. I’m not in love with him. I’m extremely fond of him, though. He’s been having an affair with Tracey, but I expect you must know that. You can’t have missed all that creeping around in the night.
“Steve’s separated from his wife, and even if he wasn’t, it’s none of my business, but I really disapprove of professors having affairs with their students,” she continued. “I’m not naive, I know it goes on all the time. But I’ve insisted she work in the lab and not with Steve at the site, because the others have, or will, figure it out, and I don’t think it’s good for morale.”
I said nothing. I still didn’t think I was wrong about her being in love with Steve.
“Are you married?” she asked suddenly.
“No, divorced. You?”
“Single. Married to my work, as they say. Boyfriend?”
“For a while, but he dumped me about a year ago.”
“For another woman?”
“Worse than that,” I replied. “He left me for politics.”
“My gawd!” she exclaimed, and suddenly we both got the giggles. It was part hysteria, but also part relief for both of us, I think, to be able to talk to someone about our hidden selves. It was as if a dam had burst, and suddenly we were sharing confidences one would normally share only with the closest of friends.
She told me about her back injury, the pain, and how she’d found out about Steve and Tracey’s affair.
“I blame Tracey,” she said. “I think she’s a scheming little bitch who is trying to take over from me, and using Steve to do it.” She made a face. “You don’t have to say it. I know I’m the one who’s the bitch. I’m being completely unfair, I realize that. I don’t even know her, really. I just met her at the start of this season, and I confess I’ve made no effort whatsoever to get to know her. In fact, I’ve acted in such a way to keep her at a distance. Perhaps I am jealous. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I hate the way she sits with him at dinner and chatters away. Puts me off my food, although I know that leaving the table with a bottle of scotch halfway through the meal is not exactly a mature way of dealing with it.
“In a way, even though Steve and I have never had that kind of relationship, I feel like the tired old first wife who’s being thrown over for a younger woman. Steve and I have been a great team, but this is my last season in the field. My back won’t take another.” I nodded sympathetically. “So next year it’ll be Steve and Tracey instead of Hilda and Steve, and I feel just wretched about it. But let’s drop this dreadful topic and talk about why you’re here in the first place. Details, please.”
I told her about Clive moving in across the street, and how upset and irrational I’d been at the time. I told her about the auction, about Lizard and Alex, and how everything I’d done since the day of the fire had been an attempt to make amends. “But the harder I try to fix things, the worse they get.” I sighed. “Unless I can figure out what’s going on around here, Alex is in big trouble, I’ve lost the store, and I won’t be winning any popularity contests with the police back home.”
I told her about the train of events that had taken me from Toronto to New York and then on to Lima, omitting, for Lucas’s sake, the side trip to Mexico. I related how I’d first looked up Lizard’s wife, and followed her around Lima.
“That got me nowhere,” I conceded, “so I decided to come here, the point of origin of the florero, thinking there must be some connection to Montero and the Fabrica Paraiso,” I concluded. This was a test. I wanted to know what she’d say about Montero.
“I agree,” she said, “that Montero and Paraiso would be the main suspect in all this, but I’ve looked around there and I can’t see anything unusual there.”
“Me neither. I looked everywhere except the washroom.”
“I’ve done the washroom,” she replied. “Invented tummy trouble so I could stay in there long enough to pull a board out and check behind the pipes even. Nothing. I’ve also had occasion to check out the body shop.”
She sighed. “But maybe I’m grasping at straws here, in desperation. Maybe I want it to be Montero because he’s so revolting. I find myself looking for evil in everything he does.”
“The florero had the words hecho en Peru on the bottom. I suppose after all this it really could have been a replica,” I said.
Hilda looked at me as if I was quite naive. “It’s easy enough to put a light slip over the bottom of the vase and put a stamp on it,” she said. “It’s done all the time, in fact. When it gets to its destination, you just soak the slip off, and there it is, genuine Moche.”
Of course, I thought. “Stay here, I’ll be right back,” I exclaimed. I went back to the courtyard where I’d dropped my bag when Hilda had startled me. I returned and handed her the photograph I’d taken from the files of the Fabrica Paraiso.
“Nice,” she said. “A florero.”
“Not a florero. The florero,” I replied. “The one from the auction. See, the snakes around the rim? I’m sure it’s the same one. I thought when I found it at Paraiso that I’d merely confirmed that my florero had come from Paraiso, just as the card that came with it indicated. But as soon as you mentioned the use of the slip and stamp as a way of concealing artifacts, it hit me: This is the way they get the stuff out. Someone photographs a looted object, and sends it over to Paraiso. Antonio does a drawing, then, in the case of ceramics, designs and makes the mold, and several copies are churned out right along with all the regular reproductions. They all get stamped with the made in Peru symbol, including the original in the way you described it to me, with the slip on the bottom. They get packed up together, probably in shipping crates from the Fabrica des Artesanias Paraiso, which would clinch it. Anyone looking at them would assume that they are all reproductions. It would certainly look that way, with rows of identical objects coming from a crafts factory.”
“I like it,” she said.
“There is, however, one problem with my theory,” I said. Hilda looked at me. I took the plunge. “Carlos Montero is dead.”
“Dead!” she exclaimed. She seemed genuinely shocked. “When? How?”
I told her what I’d found. She looked aghast. “Who would do this?” She paused. “What does this mean? You must be right about the photograph, but with Montero dead, does this mean… ?”