Rivera put the lamp on the table, stepped over the broken pitcher, and took Ford by the shoulders. "You have been asleep for so long that I began to worry you would never awaken. It presented certain difficulties. How can one properly bury a man who is still breathing? How could I get the Dodgers of Los Angeles to take notice of the greatest pitcher in Central America?" The big man was shaking Ford gently, laughing.
"Where are we?"
"In a convent above thirty kilometers from Tambor."
"How long, Juan? How long have I been out?"
"Um, three days . . . no, this is the fourth. Your friend the great DiMaggio pulled you out of the water. You were unconscious and had a small cut on the head—such a small cut to knock out a man of your size! My men captured you and wanted to kill you. Who can blame them? A gringo that looks like you. But then one of them recognized you as the great Johnny Bench. I give them strict orders not to shoot players of quality." He shrugged his shoulders humorously. "You were lucky that it was my best team I sent on the assault. They are all students of the game and so remembered you."
"Your men? But you said you wouldn't help."
Rivera said softly, "Do I need a gringo to tell me how to run my army? I had been planning the attack on Zacul long before you came to my camp."
"You didn't tell me that."
"Should I share such a secret with a capitalist dog like yourself? I did not become a general by doing stupid things."
Ford sat back in the bed, touching his hand to his head. Rivera said, "You are still weak. You will need sleep. And food. I will bring you something, but I warn you that these nuns eat the food of birds."
"Where's Tomlinson? I need to talk to him. He had a young boy with him—"
"They have both returned to the United States. The doctor who tended you said the boy was sick and that he should go home. The boy wanted very badly to go home. So the great
DiMaggio went with him, but he said he would return if you did not get better."
"Then I need to call him—"
"I will have my men get word to him when they go to town. There's no phone here. Now you need food and rest."
Ford sat up once more, remembering something. "Pilar was here, Juan. She talked to me. I'd like to see her. Can you tell her that I'm awake?"
Rivera had picked up the lamp, and now he looked uncomfortable. "That would be difficult to do."
"Why? Did she already leave?"
Rivera looked at the flame in the lamp, not at Ford. "In a way she has left. Pilar Balserio is dead."
Ford stayed in the convent another night and another day, and then the doctor came—a small, bald man with a mustache—and said he would have to rest for at least one more night before starting the long trip home. Ford protested; Rivera insisted, and without Rivera's help there would be no leaving. So he stayed. The nuns nursed him. They brought him books and food, and he was never so anxious to leave a place in his life. The one thing he did enjoy was the chanting. He would sneak out and watch the nuns through the portal; watch them march solemnly around the domed chamber with its tiny penance cells where the nuns, by choice, could go to suffer alone on the cold rock floors or by tying themselves with the penance ropes that hung suspended from the ceiling.
Sometimes Rivera came to talk. Yes, Zacul was dead. They had found his body floating. The men had crossed themselves when they pulled his body from the water, so terrible was the expression of horror on his white face. The sharks had not bitten him, though. Even so, the mountain people were already saying that the sharks had taken him; that one more evil man had died from the bite of El Dictamen. Rivera said he was certain that someday the story would be told as truth throughout the mountains of Masagua.
Zacul's men had bolted, Rivera said, though some had already returned to join the Masaguan People's Army. Zacul's officers had been taken prisoner, though four had been found dead of some strange illness—wagging his eyebrows at this, for Tomlinson had already told him about the poison. With his own army now stronger, with Zacul's guerrillas scattered leaderless around the country, and with the government forces in Masagua City already fighting among themselves, Rivera's destiny seemed clear.
But he would not answer Ford's questions about Pilar Balserio. Once he came close.
"She's not dead, Juan. That was no dream I had. She was here."
"Always it's the same thing with you. Eat your nasty soup."
"I heard her. She talked to me."
"With a woman of her spirit, all things are possible. But the Pilar you knew is dead. It was a ghost. A holy vision from the gods."
"It wasn't a ghost, damn it!"
"Don't use such language when you speak of Ixku!" Flaring at him, really angry.
"Ixku? Who in the hell—"
"Yes Ixku! Would I agree to forgo my rightful presidency for anyone less?"
And that was all he would say.
Ford left on a Saturday, one week after the battle at Zacul's camp. Rivera brought him his clothes and made a request; a favor, though he insisted that Ford would be repaid. Ford agreed and said payment was not necessary. Rivera said it had already been done and left. That seemed rather cryptic until Ford put on his pants. The emeralds he had picked up that night on the dock were still in his pockets. Seven of them.
Three of Rivera's men took him to Utatlan where there, amazingly, was the Land Cruiser—not even a gas cap missing.
He flew LACSA out of San Jose on Sunday, had a long layover in Miami, then flew Air Florida to Fort Myers.
It was 11 P.M. when the cab dropped him at Dinkin's Bay Marina. The island air was moist, like a warm veil, and the moon was three days past full, tumid with light.
Ford could smell jasmine as he walked down the dock to his stilt house.
TWENTY-TWO
His sharks were gone. Ford could see that even before he got the door open to turn on the lights. The water within the shark pen was cobalt in the moonglow and still. Dead water and Ashless.
He popped the lock and stepped into the stale air of a house that hadn't been inhabited for nearly two weeks. There were several handwritten notes on the table but no mail. MacKinley had been keeping his mail at the marina. Ford put his bag on the floor, hit the outside lights, then walked down the steps to the fish tank. The fish stirred in the glare of the overhead bulb; the eyes of the shrimp glowed.
Two of his squid were gone and one of them floated, partially decomposed, in the ripple of the water jets.
Not a happy homecoming.
Ford stood on the lower porch looking at the bay. At the marina, the lights of the boats shimmered on the water, but it was quiet; a quiet Sunday night. Tomlinson's mast light was on, but the windows of his sailboat were dark, and that meant he wasn't aboard. Far out on the point, Jessica McClure's porch light was on; she was also away.
Ford went to the shark pen and confirmed that the bull sharks were gone. There was a great dent in the fencing, as if someone had purposely trampled it. Why would someone do that? Disgusted, he went inside and took a quart of cold beer from the little refrigerator. It was the first beer he'd had in nine days, and he drank from the bottle as he read the messages on the table.
Two were from Tomlinson.
The first note said that he'd noticed the dead squid and had Ford ever tested for electrolysis? Maybe that was the problem. He'd taken the liberty of testing the water with a meter and got a small reading—he hoped Ford wouldn't mind. So maybe if he added some lead plates to the ground cable, it might help.
Ford almost smiled. Electrolysis, sure, that could be the problem. He'd never built an aquarium this close to a modern marina before, and with all that electricity going into the water his ground line would be drawing it right into the tank. Adding lead to the cable would stop the migration of ions. The second note read: