There is also a small doctor’s office—the doctor is in on Tuesdays only—and five or six little houses with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs, with chickens and small children scratching in the front yards.
Despite, or perhaps in defiance of the impoverished conditions, bright red flowers grow up trellises in the front yard of each house. Behind the little houses stretch the milpas of the occupants, gardens and fields of corn separated from their neighbors by fences of stone. Despite the dust, I can smell orange trees.
Because it is so hot, Don Hernan sits at the shadier of two tables on the veranda of the cafe. Because it is the day of the lizard, I picture one here, skittering from time to time across the tiles of the veranda and up the trellis at one end.
Guadelupe, the wife of the proprietor and mother of three-year-old Arturo, brings her visitor panuchos—tiny tortillas piled high with chicken, avocado, refried beans, and hardboiled eggs—and cold beer with lime.
Don Hernan is a big man. One is struck immediately by his size, but also by his expressive eyebrows, two circumflex accents over dark eyes. He has a mustache and goatee, still dashing, but a mop of gray and yellowing hair that would become unruly if not for constant attention.
Despite his girth and age, he has always been a dapper man. Since his wife’s death, and now without benefit of her ministrations, he has become somewhat rumpled, but in a genteel sort of way, dressed always in the cream colors of the tropics, right down to his shoes and his cane.
Childless himself, he dotes on others’ children. I can imagine little Arturo venturing to the veranda, curious about this stranger, being charmed by him and sent on his way with a peso or two.
Several days, or possibly weeks, earlier, poring through the myriad artifact drawers in the archives of the museo, peering at each piece through the magnifying glass he keeps on a chain around his neck, he finds and deciphers the message that brings him to this little cafifi in this tiny village.
Knowing that he will need younger, stronger eyes, arms, and legs to help him, he tries to think of someone who will be impervious to the politics and avarice that will inevitably surround this discovery, and places the call that brings me to Mexico.
At some point, perhaps even as my flight crosses the Caribbean, he suspects that someone else has found it, too, and begins a hasty and ill-conceived journey.
Suspecting that he may be followed, he does not return to his room at the inn, but embarks on a circuitous route from his little office in the museo: by taxi through the back streets, then on foot for several blocks, puffing from exertion, by public bus to Valladolid, where he stays a day or two making his arrangements, and then on to this village by hired car.
At the general store he purchases a flashlight, compass, and a length of rope.
At some point during this process, mindful of his social obligations, he calls me at the Casa de las Buganvillas to cancel dinner, but tells me nothing of what he has found.
And so now he sits, folding and refolding the crumpled piece of paper that brought him here, waiting. For what? For help? For salvation? For his killer?
He does not call me again, or another friend or colleague. Perhaps he notices the battered blue pickup truck that passes his post rather too often on a road going nowhere. Perhaps he senses the gathering forces closing in on him, some good, some evil, and wants to protect us.
There is one person who might save him, who even now is desperately searching for clues to his location.
But how could Don Hernan know? How could he choose between those who can help him and those who wish him dead? The answer is far from obvious.
the corpse behind the water tank, I learned the day after I found it, belonged to a young man by the name of Luis Vallespino.
To this day, my recollection of what happened right after I touched his dead hand is very hazy. What I do know is that I will never be able to forget his face. It was still smooth, with long, long eyelashes and just a hint of down above the mouth, the first attempt at a mustache perhaps, a youth on the threshold of adulthood. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen.
The mark of the blow on the side of the head that had killed him, and the rather Raggedy Andy appearance of the body stuffed so incongruously behind the water tank, added to the sense of youth and vulnerability.
Whatever attributes Luis Vallespino had possessed in life, in death there was a sort of sweetness about him. His face had, I thought, a sadness in its expression, as if in recognition of life’s opportunities lost. But perhaps I am projecting my own sorrow to that still young face.
Time stood still for me for a few moments as I gazed at him. Then the horror of what I was looking at came over me. As in a nightmare, I remember trying to scream, but no sound would come out. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move.
Then I was up and clawing at a trapdoor. It was unlocked, and soon I was half falling down a wooden staircase that led to the floor below, then to a stairwell that exited at the back of the museo.
I have a vague recollection of flagging down a cab near the plaza in front of the building, and directing the driver to the Casa de las Buganvillas. I’m not sure how coherent I was, but Santiago understood enough to call the police. A doctor was also called. He gave me a shot, and I was out until morning.
When I got up I discovered there was a police officer stationed outside my room. This didn’t do much for the ambience, in my opinion. It didn’t do much for my mood either.
I guess that when I poked my head out the door, the police officer on duty had called in that I was awake, because by the time I’d showered and dressed, my favorite policeman, Ignacio Martinez, was waiting downstairs.
Now, this might prove to be a little tricky! No doubt his first question would be something along the lines of “What exactly were you doing on the roof of the museo, senora?”
In the shower, I’d rehearsed several answers. The trouble with lies, as we all know, is that once you get into them, it is difficult to extricate yourself. I had been guilty of a lie of omission in not telling Martinez what I knew about the robbery in the bar and anything about why I had come down to see Don Hernan, as unclear as that might be. I like to think that this would not be my normal way of dealing with situations—lying, that is—but Martinez was not the kind of man I was prepared to turn my friends over to—or myself, for that matter. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to my trying to search the office, so now I was having to lie my way out of that one, too. The question was which answer would I use?
The “I’d gone up the stairs hoping to find Don Hernan, accidentally got lost in stairwell, found myself on roof answer.
Or perhaps the one that was something a little closer to reality, the “I went to see Don Hernan, had key, climbed out on fire escape (why, God only knows!), window locked behind me, took ladder to roof to find way out” answer?
But Martinez, in his usual take-control manner, surprised me.
“I believe your life may be in danger, senora,” was his opening gambit.
I was momentarily nonplussed.
“You really must tell me where Dr. Castillo Rivas is.”
“Are you implying your first and second statements are related in some way?” I managed.
He looked at me as if I were mentally deficient or terminally naive.
“Let me lead you through this, senora,” he said in his most patronizing tone. This man raised condescension to an art form. “Dr. Castillo and Senor Gomez Arias have a disagreement over, according to Senor Gomez Arias himself, a statue. This same statue is stolen shortly thereafter by a group calling itself Children”—he emphasized the word children—“of the Talking Cross.