Page 3 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)
CHAPTER III
In Santa Ana Tlachiahualpa, far from snow and marshes, Antonio Elizalde’s life, like all lives, moved inexorably toward its close. Had a clock been ticking off the seconds of his existence, he might have noticed the sudden acceleration of its cadence; without such a clock, he was conscious only of a sense of danger. He hadn’t let the gun drop, keeping it at waist height and directed at Seeley. Now he raised it higher, and the little man put up his hands in mock surrender.
“Don’t shoot,” said Seeley, his smile never wavering, broadening even, as though Elizalde’s threat was a welcome move in the game, an indication of his willingness to play. “Me good Indian.”
Seeley wiggled his fingers, then raised his elbows to let his hands drop down, like a marionette operated by secret strings, and shook his sleeves.
“I’m not armed, beyond what’s in here”—Seeley tapped a forefinger to his left temple—“so don’t go testing out your popgun on me, not until you hear all I have to say. You don’t want to shoot an unarmed man. That brings with it all kinds of legal complications.”
“An unarmed intruder ,” Elizalde corrected. “That brings fewer complications, especially down here.”
Seeley conceded the point with a dip of his chin and resumed his former posture, his hands once more clasped in his lap.
“I hear you’re ailing,” he said. “Lung cancer, right? That’s a bad card to turn, but you can’t say you weren’t warned. I mean, I’ve seen the pictures on your Mexican cigarette packs, all those diseased lungs and women with one titty. I even saw a pack of Luckies with a dead baby lying on a bed of butts. That would surely make me think again—though you’re a Marlboro man, right? Bob Norris, that was the name of the guy who played the cowboy in those TV commercials. You know, he never smoked a cigarette in his life? Didn’t let his kids smoke either. Most of the rest of them Marlboro cowboys, they picked up cancers, or emphysema, but not old Bob. He just cashed the checks and tried not to think about Philip Morris’s name at the bottom. You got health insurance?”
“Yes, I have insurance,” said Elizalde.
“You’re a wise man. You never know what’s going to come around the corner and hit you right in the kisser—or in your case, in the lower left lung. Typical carcinoid tumor is what they tell me, which means it’s slow, and slow is good. Once they catch it early enough, a man might live to fight another day. Expensive business, though, getting rid of it. You got your wedge resection—that’s what’s on your slate for the week to come, according to the surgical notes—and then chemo or radiation, maybe both. If you don’t have good insurance, it all adds up, unless you’re lucky enough to win the public care lottery, and who wants to play those odds, right?
“Except your insurance isn’t so good, Mr. Elizalde. Your insurance will barely get you in the hospital door. Fortunately, you also have a nest egg, thanks to all those treasures you’ve sourced for your customers down the years. They ask and you provide, given enough notice, so you’re not just relying on the local boys to strike it lucky on an illegal dig. In a way, you’re like one of those spiders there, building a web and sitting at its heart, but instead of hunting for delicacies you tap a thread and someone brings the spoils right to you: from a museum, a private collection, an official site. You know all the people that matter, and they know you.
“And because you’re very quiet and listen hard, you have an awareness of plunder that few others possess, information to be filed away for when the right client comes calling with the correct sum in mind. But you’re cautious into the bargain. You wouldn’t have survived so long, in life as in trade, if you weren’t. Only you stopped being careful because of the cancer. You gambled, because you had nothing to lose but a disease-riddled mess of days. In this matter, sir, you could say that I represent the house, and I’m here to give you the bad news: your gamble didn’t pay off, and now it’s a matter of how you choose to settle the debt.”
Elizalde didn’t bother with bluff or denial. The fact that Seeley was here made both redundant.
“I could kill you,” said Elizalde, “and worry about settling debts later. I have enough money to leave the country and seek treatment elsewhere.”
“You could, you could,” agreed Seeley. “Of course, apart from the unlikelihood of your being able to kill me—shooting a man is a lot harder than it looks in the movies—it also assumes that I came here alone. Which, being prudent, I didn’t.”
“I see no one else,” said Elizalde, “only you.”
“That’s because you’re not looking in the right places.”
Seeley stood, or perhaps “uncoiled” might have been more accurate, because there was a serpentine ease to the movement. Elizalde could see that, upright, the interloper was slightly taller than he’d previously thought, with handsome, intelligent features. He looked like someone a stranger might be inclined to trust, an asset for a salesman, even if you weren’t convinced you wanted what he was selling. Elizalde didn’t wish to die, making him a reluctant mark unless Seeley had something better to offer than a death, easy or otherwise. But the man’s patter was almost hypnotic. It demanded that one hear him out, one reasonable human being to another, and neither party could leave until he’d finished his pitch.
Seeley gestured to the statue of the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan.
“Do you think the gods talk to one another?” he asked. “Do they love, hate, fear, and mourn like we do? Me, I was raised Presbyterian, so one deity was enough, even if He had to be divided into three to spread Himself around better. The church doesn’t see me much now, not even at Christmas. I was a doubter from youth, and that hardened into atheism in adulthood. I figured we were all alone on this rock, with nothing above but sky and only damp earth below.
“But since I was required to venture into your fine country, I must admit that Hamlet had a point and my philosophy may have been inadequate. At first, I thought it might be exposure to excessive sunlight, because I do like my shade and AC. Soon, though, I came to an understanding—a new philosophy, if you will. I’ve decided that gods may be just another kind of creature. I don’t think they have a form, or none beyond the ones we give them, which we create from what’s familiar to us, whether frightening or consoling. Some gods endure and some don’t. A few don’t even want to make themselves known to us, so we don’t get a perception of them, not ever. Others, they drift in and out of belief and can slumber like spiders, waiting to be jerked into life by being remembered again. Your goddess here, she’s pretty much all spider, which is why she’s surrounded herself with them. She summoned them out of fear.”
Elizalde glanced down at the totem of the Great Goddess. Now that Seeley had drawn his attention to it, he could see that the spiders had formed a mass around her, like a wall of bodies set against an approaching enemy.
“Fear,” repeated Elizalde. “Of what? Of you?”
“Of the one I came here with. To be honest, Mr. Elizalde, I generally prefer to work alone, but the difficulty is that I’m not by nature a violent man. I don’t like inflicting pain, never have, although I’ll do it if I have to; if it’s them or me, so to speak. Like I told you at the start, I’m primarily a fixer, a negotiator, with a Rolodex for a brain and a talent for squirreling out connections that others have missed. I like to leave behind as little mess as possible—blood, bodies, widows, orphans—because mess attracts attention.”
Seeley sighed theatrically.
“But unfortunately,” he resumed, “it seems to me that this job is going to involve a great deal of suffering and no small amount of killing. It’s more than I can handle alone, reluctantly or otherwise. In fact, it’s already begun, and you’re next in line.”
Something struck Elizalde on the back of the head. His vision blurred, and the office nook grew muddied around him. He crashed against his desk before dropping to his knees, the dimensions of his beloved store altering, its walls drifting away, its ceiling descending, so that he experienced simultaneous surges of agoraphobia and claustrophobia. It all happened in just a few seconds, from the striking of the blow to the pain of his knees hitting the floor, though Elizalde felt that he might have been falling for a long time—for all his life—and the landing, when it came, would be final. He kept his head down while he waited for the feeling of dislocation to pass. When he peered up, Seeley stood closer, and someone else was moving behind Elizalde.
“I’d stay down there if I were you,” said Seeley, as the other finally came into view. “After all, that’s how a man ought to greet a lady.”