There were two unsettling aspects to the visit to the market, however, neither of which had anything, I thought, to do with Carla. One was that the place was abuzz with talk about the weather, about torrential rains in the mountains that were threatening the irrigation and water control systems. The consensus in the market appeared to be that the government’s evacuation plans might need to be put into effect any day. People were stocking up with provisions. It was a little difficult for me to fathom this anxiety, however. The place was as dry as a bone.
Secondly, it was on this trip to the market that I got the first intimations that someone else was watching too. Nothing substantial really, just a sense of someone else being there. A couple of times I had a feeling I was being followed, but when I turned there was no one unusual in sight. At other times I’d have the impression of someone pulling back out of sight, or I’d catch a glimpse of a man disappearing down a lane. In the end, though, I decided I’d been imagining it. I had a deathly fear of the Spider, that he might be around, but quite frankly, if he was, and if I was his target, I didn’t think he’d just hang about watching me. So I concentrated on being the spy rather than the spied upon.
When it came right down to it, the trick to surveillance, Hilda and I found, was nothing like trying to keep from being seen. It was trying to keep from falling asleep. Hilda and I took turns napping in the backseat while the other watched the house. Sometimes we watched on foot, at other times we parked the truck down the street where we could watch both doors. We alternated watching posts not just to avoid drawing attention to ourselves by staying in one place for too long, but also to keep ourselves moving.
That evening, as they had before, Carla and the Man drove the three short blocks to El Mochica for dinner. This in itself was not surprising: El Mo boasted the only white tablecloth dining in town. Cesar appeared to eat there once again, and Carlos’s reserved table remained vacant. Lucho held up the bar with his friends.
While Laforet and the others dined or drank in style, Hilda and I ate barbecued chicken sandwiches from a polleria down the street. If there is a national dish in Peru, I decided, it was chicken, polio. There are as many pollerias in Peru as there are pizzerias at home.
“I’m going to grow feathers any minute,” Hilda groaned as I handed her another chicken sandwich. We were sitting in the truck outside El Mo. “And the sandwich after this, I’ll start to cluck. I sincerely regret I didn’t eat Ines’s lovely dinners while I had the chance, and if I don’t get to sleep in a real bed soon, my back will never recover.” I nodded sympathetically.
“For some reason,” she went on, waving her sandwich in the direction of the bar, “ T thought this smuggling operation would work like a well-oiled machine. I have no idea why I thought that: I know absolutely nothing about smuggling, but nevertheless, that is what I thought. I had this idea we’d hand Laforet the ear spool, and then everyone would spring into action, including us, and we’d follow them, and then call in the local police force, all four of them. I had no idea smuggling could be this boring,” she sighed.
“I don’t know how well this operation ran at one time,” I replied. “It probably once did run like a well-oiled machine. But it must have gone seriously off the rails just over two years ago, when the parcel containing three pre-Columbian objects was in transit to a Toronto gallery, when the gallery owner—the sole proprietor, I might add—died. And he died under exceptional circumstances, circumstances that guaranteed that the police were all over the place.
“There would be nothing the smugglers could do to recover the antiquities that wouldn’t bring suspicion on them. So they did the only thing they could. They waited. I recall Steve saying that Laforet hadn’t been seen around here for a couple of years, that he was farther south for a while. They waited, and then the objects finally came up for auction at Molesworth Cox.
“Theoretically, it should have been straightforward. You send someone to buy them back. It doesn’t really matter what you have to pay, as long as they are considered replicas, because they are worth a fortune. But then it went wrong again. Two people, not one, came to get them. Lizard, Ramon Cervantes, a customs agent from Lima, and someone I refer to as the Spider. It’s possible they were in this together: Spider didn’t have a paddle for bidding that I could see, so perhaps that was Lizard’s job. But I don’t think so. They didn’t look like pals to me. In any event, neither of them got what they wanted. I did, and then the peanut disappeared, and finally Lizard ended up dead in my storage room and the florero is gone. The only person that could have killed him is Spider. Who else in Toronto would be after a customs agent from Lima?
“Then I go to Ancient Ways in New York, and after I’ve been there, mentioned the Toronto dealer’s name, and asked for Moche artifacts, Edmund Edwards ends up dead too.
“On the surface, at least, things don’t appear to be going too well for our smuggling ring. But now Laforet is back in town. Why? Or more precisely, why is he still here when Carlos is dead, even if no one but us has noticed, and the whole town is in turmoil because of a huaquero’s death and because of the impending rain? Is it because the threat to the organization was Lizard, or perhaps the old man in New York, or even Carlos—although I still think Paraiso must figure in this somewhere—and all are now dead, or is it because something very big has been found, something worth taking a risk for? I think we need to keep watch, because something is going to happen.”
“You’re thinking of Puma’s treasure, the one you get to through cracks in the rock, aren’t you?” Hilda said.
“I am,” I replied.
It was at about this point that Tracey and Ralph showed up, parking the second truck just outside El Mo.
“Seems to me the* only person who isn’t here tonight is that pal of yours, the Inca reincarnated,” Hilda said.
“Manco Capac,” I said. “You’re right. It’s the same crew as last night, except for him. Why don’t I, while Tracey and Ralph are in there, take the second truck—I have a set of keys—and go out to the commune to see if he’s there? I’ve also been thinking about Carlos and that little ruined house out back of Paraiso. I think while everyone is here and comfortably settled for an hour or two, I could just take another look.”
“Okay,” Hilda replied. “I’ll hold the fort while you’re gone. Be careful.”
I was greeted at the commune by a rather wild-eyed teenager who went by the name of Solar Flare. Despite my aversion to these nicknames, I had to admit the name suited her. Her reddish-blond hair radiated straight out from her head in spikes, and she spoke in bursts, seemingly unrelated words strung together as if in challenge to the listener. I asked if Puma and Pachamama had been heard from.
“No!” she replied. “Gone. Manco Capac says they won’t be back!” Did he now?
I wondered what would make him so certain of that.
“Is Manco Capac here?”
She shook her head. “New moon.”
“And that means?”
“Retreat.”
“What’s he retreating from?” I asked.
“Not what, to,” she replied.
“Okay,” I said. “What is he retreating to?”
“Mountains,” she replied. “Meditating.”
“You’re saying he’s gone up in the mountains to meditate, are you?” This conversation was hard work.
“Yes,” she said. “Preparing for the end of the world. I’m preparing for it too. It’s soon. Everywhere but here,” she added.