The Xibalba Murders

IK

Merida may well merit its reputation as the White City, the cleanest and most beautiful in Mexico, but for me it is a city whose beginnings, like many Spanish colonial cities, are steeped in blood. Even now it remains one where the tensions between the colonial and the Indian, while giving the place a certain energy, are never entirely laid to rest.

Take, for instance, the square where Isa and I met for almuerzo, late breakfast, the day after my arrival. We were sitting at a cafe“ on what Meridanos call the Plaza Grande, tucking into huevos rancheros and getting caught up on each other’s life.

We’d arrived just as a party of revelers left to sleep off the previous night’s festivities. Merida is one of the cities of Mexico that take Carnaval seriously, and while technically it is only celebrated the week leading up to Lent, some Meridanos get an early start on the festivities.

The plaza where we sat, officially the Plaza de la Independencia, is the heart of Merida, just as this same great space was once the heart of a great Maya city called T’ho. At one side is the cathedral, built in 1561 of stone taken from the razed buildings of T’ho. At the south side is Casa Montejo, now a bank, once the palace of Francisco de Montejo, the founder of Merida—and the destroyer of T’ho. In case anyone misses the point, the facade of the palace depicts the Spanish conquerors standing on defeated Maya warriors.

The significance of the setting was apparently not lost on Isa, either.

“If I had to describe the character of this city, in some ways I would describe it as schizophrenic,” she mused.

“To a certain extent Merida, and indeed the whole Yucatan peninsula, is cut off from the rest of Mexico geographically. This has allowed it to develop a distinctive character. Merida, for example, is a colonial city; just look at the buildings around this plaza.

“But the Maya roots are never very far below the surface and, quite frankly, are what give this place its very special feeling. It is quite a compelling mix. In a sense, Mexico’s culture is the only one in the Americas where the old world and the new truly meet and mix.

“Sometimes there is an easy balance between the two, sometimes not.

“Sort of like my family.” She smiled.

I told her of my sense the day before that all was not entirely well with the Ortiz family, and about the argument I thought I might have heard below my window.

“I am reasonably sure it was a Mayan language I heard, probably Yucatecan. But perhaps I just dreamed it.”

She looked troubled for a moment. “I can’t tell you about the argument—I didn’t hear anything, and perhaps as you say, it really was a dream.

“As far as my family is concerned—perhaps my comparison between Merida and us is very apt. Alejandro has discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, his Maya heritage.

“It is a cause for some friction in the family. He accuses Mother of selling out to the Spanish. Presumably that means by marrying my father.” Again she smiled.

“Oh, I know we all go through stages as we are growing up when we are not exactly enamored of our parents, of course, but Alejandro seems to have gotten involved with a group of young people at the university we’re not crazy about. He makes a lot of speeches, when he deigns to speak to us at all, that is, about fighting injustice, and there is a tone to it that worries parents a great deal.

“I’m sure his talk of rebellion is just youthful posturing, a phase all university students go through. But there is no question the Indigenas suffered greatly because of the conquest, and that disaffection is often very close to the surface. You may recall the riots in Chiapas not that long ago.”

Indeed I did. I had been there, in fact, on a buying trip. The riots had occurred over the New Year, and had lasted several days.

“If I remember correctly,” I said. “The riots were the work of a group called the Zapatista National Liberation Army, planned to coincide with the day the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, came into effect.”

“That’s right. It is said that the Zapatistas trained for ten years in the jungle before coming out that New Year’s,” Isa said. “There were rumors, of course. We all heard them. You couldn’t plan something like this for ten years in complete secrecy. But when it happened, it seemed to take the government completely by surprise. There had been nothing seen like this in Mexico since the Revolution.

“It was all over pretty quickly, but since then there have been flare-ups. Sometimes the Zapatistas and the government are talking, sometimes they aren’t. But the possibility of violence always seems to be there.

“Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that our family problems mirror in some way the tensions that exist in our society. Alejandro talks a lot about injustice and hints at revolution.

“Mother is distraught of course,” she continued. “Alejandro is her baby, the son born late in life. I was well into my teens when he was born, and I confess that while I thought he was an adorable baby, there was too much of a gap in our ages for me to find him very interesting. I guess I just find him irritating now, despite the fact I agree with him about many things.

“For example, Alejandro despises me because, like many of the children of the well-to-do in Merida, I went to university in the United States. He has chosen to go to university here in Merida, and I admire him for it, actually, although he is so tiresome on the subject that I have never told him.”

“I’m sure he’ll grow out of it,” I said. “After all, when I was at university, I was the most conservative person on the campus, and that was only because my mother seemed embarrassingly flaky to me at the time. Now I realize she was just ahead of her time—she never let any of the rules about what women could, and could not, do influence her in any way.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Isa replied, and with that we parted company, she to visit her small factory where her designs were manufactured, I to prowl the museum—the Museo Emilio Garcia, named for its founder, a wealthy Merida philanthropist. The museo was housed in a former monastery a few short blocks from the Plaza Grande.

I had hoped, I think, to run into Dr. Castillo Rivas, who had an office there. Santiago Ortiz had told me that Don Hernan had not returned to his room the previous night, but as that was not an unusual occurrence, no one gave it much thought. Don Hernan was often hot on the trail of some treasure or other, and when he was, he tended to get a little distracted, more so as the years went by. I had always regarded this as a sign of his genius, the absentminded-professor type. His wife, if I remember correctly, had found it less endearing.

I sneaked past the “Prohibido Entrar” sign on the staff door on the top floor of the museo and checked at his little office. It was dark and locked up tight.

I decided to try to solve the puzzle he had given me—the one about writing rabbits. I thought it a little coy of him, but Don Hernan and I had spent many a wonderful day together searching for goods for my shop, and I was determined to get into the spirit of the thing.

Because it had been Dr. Castillo who had first introduced me to the Tzolkin, the Maya count of days, I thought of that first. It was he who had explained to me that there are twenty name days, and thirteen numbers associated with them. Each day is linked to a number, 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal, and so on. Because there are more names than numbers, the fourteenth name is given the number one again. With thirteen numbers and twenty names, it is 260 days before the original day and number, 1 Imix in my example, comes round again.

Several visits earlier, sitting over a cup of very strong Mexican coffee in the darkened dining room at the Casa de las Buganvillas late one evening, Don Hernan had begun to explain all of this to me.

“To understand the Maya, you must understand their concept of time,” he had told me.

“Like us, the Maya devised ways of recording the passage of time. Like us they gave names to days, but unlike us they attributed characteristics to those days.

“While most of us have forgotten these vestigial origins of our days—your Thursday was the Norse Thor’s Day, Wednesday, Woden’s Day, for example— many of the Maya have not.

“For the Maya, everything is influenced by the characteristics of the day, the number of the day, the character of the Haab or what we would call the month sign, and the character of the quadrant sign, four gods each characterized by a color, red for the east, black for the west, white for the north, and yellow for the south. Each of these gods, called Kawils, rules a quadrant of eight hundred and nineteen days.”

“I suppose this is not dissimilar to our applying human characteristics to astrological signs and judging events by the cycles of the planets. Even American presidents have been known to do this,” I said. “And the number-day-name correlation is not unlike our Friday the thirteenth.”

“Yes, but as you will learn, theirs is a much more complex system, moving back and forward over enormous periods of time. While we measure time in years, decades, centuries, and so on, the Maya measure time in katuns, or twenty-year cycles, and baktuns, twenty times twenty, or four-hundred-year cycles.

“And while our largest unit of time is a millennium really, the Maya have much longer ones. They have, for example, a calabtun, a one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-year unit. And they measure time from the beginning of what they consider to be the current cosmos, the fourth one to exist.

“There are dates and numbers carved on Maya temples that would predate the big bang many times over, and they predict dates millennia into the future. I think what I am trying to say is that for the Maya, the past is still with us, still alive.”

Remembering that conversation as I walked through the museo, I tried to find a link with the riddle. The current day was Ik, the day of wind, breath, and life. Nothing to do with a rabbit. I mentally ran through the twenty day names. The day Lamat, six days hence, had some association with a rabbit and the moon or the planet Venus, but if there were a connection, I didn’t know what it might be.

Perhaps, I thought, it is a play on words, perhaps a translation to Spanish. But nothing came to mind.

Thinking that the answer might lie somewhere in the museum, I spent a good part of the afternoon wandering through the exhibits looking in vain for a Maya rabbit.

I was bent over an exhibit of artifacts taken from a sacred cenote when I heard the voice behind me.

“I say, didn’t my eyes meet yours across a crowded room?” the very British voice asked.

I turned. It was the fellow from the dining room the evening before, looking every bit as good, I might add. Behind him lurked his dark friend.

“Ms. McClintoch, I believe,” he said, extending his hand.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” I replied.

“Sorry. Jonathan Hamelin and my associate, Lucas May. I managed to convince Norberto that I thought I knew you from school or something, and was able to pry your name out of him.

“Since we obviously frequent the same places, might we presume to invite you for a drink? A coffee, a tequila? If you don’t mind a bit of a walk, I know a wonderful bar on the Paseo de Montejo.”

He had such an air of assurance that I soon found myself being escorted from the building and propelled along several blocks toward the paseo, a tree-lined avenue, very European in character, that Meridanos somewhat optimistically refer to as their Champs-Elysees. There was a time, at the turn of the century when fortunes were being made by the Spanish in the henequen trade, when Merida was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The paseo was its centerpiece, the place where the wealthy lived in houses, palaces really, of blue, pink, buff, and peach, with wrought-iron gates and elaborately carved moldings modeled more on the style of Paris than the Americas, more Belle Epoque than colonial.

The houses are still there, but by and large the families have moved on, the upkeep too much, perhaps, for diluted family fortunes. The houses stand, some lovingly restored and home to banks and other corporations that can afford them, others sinking, either gracefully or drearily, into decay.

We entered one of these old homes, painstakingly restored to its former glory, now the lobby and entrance-way of the Hotel Montserrat. Behind and adjoining it is a stucco-and-glass tower where guest rooms are located, designed to complement the original building. We headed for the bar, a large room at the front of the original house. Jonathan Hamelin was obviously well known there, and a table with a very nice view of the paseo materialized quickly.

Jonathan looked very comfortable in this setting. Even in more casual clothes, he was very nattily attired. His associate, however, was dressed very much the same as the night before, except that now he wore a black jacket. Once again, he looked rather out of place.

The bar was called Ek Balam, the Black Jaguar. Maya motifs featured prominently in the decor. At one end were two discreetly lit glass cases in which were displayed what appeared to be, at this distance at least, authentic pre-Columbian pieces.

But here any local references ended. Rather too large to be a conventionally cozy bar, the decor tended to cool peaches and aquas rather than the brilliant colors of the tropics. No mariachi or flamenco nouveau assaulted the delicate ears of the patrons. Instead, a string quartet at one end of the large room displayed what I think is called salon music: Ravel, Haydn, Copland, Strauss.

The air of the bar was filled with expensive perfume and cigar smoke. This was clearly where the beautiful people of Merida came to see and be seen. The person many apparently wanted to be seen with sat, or more accurately held court, at a table in a dim corner.

He was a man of about sixty, short, I would say, somewhat paunchy, not particularly attractive, but with some kind of personal magnetism, perhaps the sensual appeal of money, that commanded the attention of at least half the women in the room, and the envy of most of the men. Two of the people at his table looked to me like bodyguards, not the least because their eyes constantly scanned the room and their conversational skills appeared to be just about nil.

“Senor Diego Maria Gomez Arias,” Jonathan said, noting the direction of my gaze.

“The name is vaguely familiar.”

“Very wealthy. Owns the hotel. Avid collector.”

“Of what?”

“Beautiful things.” Jonathan smiled.

“Including women?” I asked, watching the glances several women in the room were casting in Senor Gomez Arias’s direction.

“Including women,” he agreed.

“Are the artifacts in the glass cases real?”

“Oh yes, I expect so.”

“Shouldn’t they be in a museum?”

“Quite possibly.” He shrugged.

“I think I do recall his name. He is a client of Hernan Castillo Rivas?”

“Was, I believe. They had a falling-out of some sort from what I’ve heard. But how do you know Don Hernan?” Jonathan asked.

I told him about McClintoch and Swain.

“Well, we’ve met McClintoch. Who is Swain?”

“My ex-husband.”

“Ah.”

“ ‘Ah’ about sums it up.”

I then told them about selling the business and the call that had brought me there the day before.

This seemed to attract the attention of both of them. Even Lucas, who had until this time barely uttered a word, leaned forward in expectation.

“Don’t keep us in suspense, Lara,” Jonathan said. “What’s the project?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him yet. He called to cancel dinner last night. He had to go out of town, hot on the trail of something or other.”

I started to tell them about the rabbit, but something stopped me. In a way, I was beginning to wonder if Don Hernan had not gotten just a bit dotty, a little non compos mentis, since I had seen him last. He was pushing eighty, after all. I didn’t want him—or me, for that matter—to look silly in the eyes of Jonathan Hamelin.

In any event, I stopped myself from saying more. Lucas was looking at me intently, as if he knew there must be more to this story, but the waiter arrived with our drinks—margaritas for Jonathan and me, a beer for Lucas—and the conversation veered off into the usual banalities you hear in bars.

Jonathan, I had learned as we walked over to the hotel, was an archaeologist from Cambridge University in England, Lucas the local archaeologist assigned by the Mexican authorities to work with him.

They, or at least Jonathan, since Lucas had settled back into his role of observer, told me about the work they were doing at a site a few miles from Chichen Itza the great postclassic Maya site near Merida. I’d been to Chichen Itzi many times before, but thought it was always worth a visit, and said as much.

Jonathan was explaining to me in his upper-crust British accent about the interesting limestone caves and underground rivers in that part of the Yucatan and entertaining me with tales of the sacrifice of cross-eyed virgins in the sacred cenotes, when the most extraordinary thing happened.

Two people dressed entirely in black, kerchiefs over their faces, bandito-style, walked into the bar. One of them carried a rifle, the other a crowbar. Before anyone could react, they moved quickly to one of the glass cases at the end of the bar, smashed the glass, and grabbed one of the artifacts. They left the room as quickly as they had come in.

There was actually a moment of stunned silence, then an absolute din. Some patrons of the bar laughed, thinking, no doubt, that it was a preview of Carnaval celebrations. Gomez Arias was hustled from the room by his two bodyguards.

I looked at my two companions. Jonathan seemed quite startled. Lucas was as impassive as ever. But there was a look in his eyes that if I had to identify, I would call admiration.

All thoughts of Carnaval pranks were dispelled when the federal police arrived shortly thereafter.

The policeman in charge of the investigation was not, in my opinion, someone in whom anyone would wish to confide. Tall and thin, with an impressive mustache, he had a certain lean and hungry look, to borrow a phrase, a kind of hardness about the eyes, whether from a streak of cruelty or merely bitter disappointment, I couldn’t tell.

I’m not sure what there was in his manner that made me dislike him so quickly. Perhaps it was his peremptory way of dealing with all of us, the patrons of the bar, or an undercurrent of brutality in the way he dealt with staff, the hotel’s and his own. Or the arrogance with which he announced to us all that the guilty party—and here he looked at each of us in a way that implied that each of us in our own way was guilty—would be quickly apprehended.

Jonathan and Lucas, who seemed to be well known to the police, were called upon to identify which object had been taken, then all patrons were interviewed briefly and asked to leave an address and phone number where they could be reached, and permitted to leave.

Afterward Jonathan walked me to a taxi. He had been asked by the police to stay behind to assist with the investigation. The media had already arrived, and crowds of reporters and spectators milled outside the hotel.

“I’ll repeat my question,” I said. “Should those pieces not be in a museum?”

“Touche!” He smiled.

“I’m serious. How does Gomez Arias get away with keeping pieces like that in a glass case in a bar?”

“Maybe he wants to share his collection with the public.”

“The public, by and large, does not get into his bar,” I said acidly. “More likely he wants everyone who comes here to know he can afford them. It will be interesting to see if he can afford to lose them.”

With that, we shook hands and I took the taxi back to the Casa de las Buganvillas. By the time I got back to the hotel, the news was already out, and the place was abuzz.

A rather sullen Alejandro was staffing the front desk with his father. He warmed slightly when he saw me. “Caught a glimpse of you on television,” he said.

Suddenly I was exhausted. Even dinner seemed too much of an effort. I told Alejandro of my adventures, and he suggested that a bowl of his mother’s sopa de frijol, black bean soup, be sent up. I gratefully accepted.

I showered, then answered the tap at the door. It was Isa bringing the sopa, fresh cheese, and crisp tortillas. After setting out the meal on a side table by the window, she pulled up a chair, saying, “Okay, tell me everything.”

I laughed with relief. It was just like old times. I told her what had happened.

“We’ve been watching it on television,” she said. “A group calling itself Children of the Talking Cross has claimed responsibility, saying it will be returning the statue to its rightful owners, the Maya.”

“This Children of the Talking Cross—is this a, well… a mainstream terrorist group or something? I’ve never heard of them.”

“No one has, as far as I know,” Isa replied. “I certainly haven’t.”

“Did they identify the statue?” I asked, thinking of Jonathan and Lucas.

“Yes, there were two archaeologists—were they your friends?—right on the scene. They said it was a carving of the feathered serpent god, Itzamna.”

After Isa had cleared away the dishes and gone downstairs to join her family, I climbed gratefully into bed.

Despite my fatigue, sleep did not come easily. I found myself on the horns of a dilemma. I was guilty of a rather major error of omission in my report to Isa. The big question was should I tell Isa that despite the mask I had recognized Alejandro in the Ek Balam? Should I tell him? Should I tell the federal police? I remembered my impression of the policeman. On that score at least, I rather thought not.

Along time ago I had a boyfriend who described everyone he knew as a car. The worst thing he could think to say about someone was that they were an economy van.

I was, he told me, a ‘56 Thunderbird convertible. Not being much into cars, vintage or otherwise, I wasn’t sure what that meant. One day, a couple of years after we parted company, I saw one, silver, on a revolving platform at a classic car show. Maybe he had liked me more than I realized.

Anyway, while I can barely remember what this guy looked like, he has left me with this particular way of categorizing people. Isa, for example, is the kind of car she drives. Elegant and snappy, a Mercedes 580SL convertible.

Jonathan? A British racing green Rover, leather upholstery. Refined, expensive in an understated way, and maybe just a little pretentious.

Lucas? I wasn’t sure about him just yet. But whatever the model, the color would have to be black.

Waiting at the reception desk as I went downstairs the next morning to scrounge a cup of coffee was the person I had already come to think of as a Mack truck. The kind that roars up on your bumper so only the silver grille, like rows of sharks teeth, shows in your rearview mirror. Convinced that any moment you will be squashed like some insignificant bug on its front bumper, your relief is palpable when eventually it roars past, causing your car to jerk and lurch in its wake.

It was the investigating officer, one Major Ignacio Martinez, I had learned the previous night. Clearly this was a man who shot first and asked questions later, who made up his mind about the guilty party very early in an investigation, then went to great lengths to prove it, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

And the person he had decided was guilty of stealing the statue of Itzamna, I was soon to learn, was Dr. Hernan Castillo.

I had awakened late. The day was gloomy, fitting for Akbal, a day of evil and darkness. I had not arrived at any resolution of my dilemma of the night before, but when I saw Martinez standing at the reception desk, I thought my problem had been solved, though in the worst possible way.

But Martinez was not looking for Alejandro, he was looking for me. And it was Don Hernan he wanted to talk about.

We went into a small sitting room off the lobby.

“What brought you to Mexico, senora?” he began.

“I’m on a break from my studies, a holiday.”

“What made you choose Merida as your destination?”

“I’m studying Maya history and languages,” I replied.

There was a pause.

“I think you are not being entirely, shall we say, comprehensive, in your answers to my questions. Now, why would that be?”

“Perhaps you are not asking the right questions,” I snapped. “What exactly is it you want to know?”

“I want to know the whereabouts of Dr. Hernan Castillo, and I believe you have the answer,” he said.

Whereabouts? This man watches too many movies! I thought.

“What in heaven’s name does Dr. Castillo have to do with this? Surely you cannot think he has anything to do with the robbery. He’s a well-respected scholar.”

“I believe I am the one authorized to ask the questions, senora, not you. Do I think he walked into the bar and took the statue personally? No, I do not. But yes, I do think he is involved. He and Senor Gomez Arias had an argument over the stolen sculpture, in fact only a few weeks ago.”

“I don’t know where he is,” I replied. “I do know that he would not have anything to do with something as shabby as this.”

He ignored the last comment. “But you did come to Merida to meet him, did you not?” Obviously either Jonathan or Lucas had been more “comprehensive” in his testimony than I had been.

“Yes, but he canceled our first meeting, dinner the evening before last. I have not heard from him since.”

“And the reason for his bad manners?”

“Bad manners?”

“Canceling dinner with a lovely foreign visitor whom you have invited to visit would not normally be considered good manners, would it, even in Canada?”

I ignored the gibe.

“What were you meeting him for? Perhaps to carry some stolen merchandise out of the country for him? I understand you have a fair knowledge of the import/export business.”

“I really do not know what he wanted to talk to me about. It really was just an excuse to get away from my studies and the Canadian winter,” I replied. My reply, though true, sounded questionable even to me. And no doubt I looked a little long in the tooth to be a student.

Another lengthy pause. Perhaps this is a technique I thought: wait long enough and the person will bleat something.

“May I see your passport, please?”

A new approach. I handed it to him, then watched in dismay as he slipped it into his jacket pocket and rose from his chair.

“You can’t take that!” I sputtered.

“Ah yes, but I can. Do not, as they say in your American movies, leave town, senora.”

Then he was gone, leaving me with the satisfaction, albeit minimal, of being right about the movies.

My first reaction was to try to reach my father to see what he and his diplomatic connections could do for me here. It’s amazing how no matter how old we get, we still turn to our parents in a pinch. However, now that my father was retired, my parents, their wanderlust still unsated, were always traipsing off somewhere, usually somewhere obscure. Currently, if I remembered correctly, they were on the slow train for Ulan Bator.

Instead, I went looking for Don Santiago. After expressing his outrage in decidedly undiplomatic language, he propelled himself over to a telephone and began phoning some old acquaintances in the diplomatic corps.

As I left the sitting room I passed Alejandro at the front desk.

“You and I need to talk, Alejandro,” I hissed on the way by.

He looked nonplussed for a brief moment, but then merely smiled and nodded. This was one composed young man.

“Meet me at the Cafe Escobar, in an hour,” I said, naming a small restaurant just a couple of blocks from the hotel.

Reasonably calmed by my brief conversation with Santiago Ortiz, and his promise to try to fix the mess with the passport, I went into the kitchen to get some coffee. Isa and her mother were sitting at the big oak table having a companionable cup of coffee together. Don Santiago soon joined us. I told them about my day so far, then inquired about Don Hernan.

“Still not back, and we haven’t heard from him either. We’re getting worried,” Francesca said.

“This would hardly be the first time he has disappeared on us,” Santiago observed.

“Yes, but he usually calls,” Francesca countered.

“I went to his office yesterday. It was locked up tight. I’d hoped he’d be there, or if not, I was hoping to get in to take a look around to see if there might be clues as to where he might be.”

The Ortizes exchanged a glance, and Francesca rose from her seat.

Santiago said, “We have a key—Don Hernan was always misplacing his, so he left a spare with us. Francesca will get it for you. I’m sure Don Hernan would not mind.”

As I was about to leave them a few minutes later, key in hand, a bell rang in the kitchen. The Casa de las Buganvillas still has the features of a gracious home of a bygone era, including a kind of upstairs/downstairs bell system where the aristocrat upstairs pulls a cord in the room and a bell rings down in the kitchen. This summons staff to receive commands, go back downstairs to act upon them, and then return upstairs with the task completed.

Most hotel guests, of course, simply telephoned the front desk when they wished something.

“I thought that system had been disconnected years ago,” I said.

“It has”—Isa sighed—“except for the Empress.”

Francesca rose from her chair to answer the bell in person.

“The Empress?” I asked.

“Senora Josefina Ramirez de Leon Tinoco,” Isa replied. “She treats my family as if they were her personal servants!”

I don’t pretend to understand the Mexican naming system, but I get the general idea that the longer your name, the higher your station in life. This name should put Dona Josefina pretty close to royalty, maybe just this side of God. Clearly she had never felt the need to learn to use the telephone.

“Does she wear a mantilla?” I asked.

“Always.” Isa smiled.

And with that I left them.

Shortly thereafter I made my way to the Cafe Escobar. I had no idea whether Alejandro would show up or not.

The cafe was far from fancy, lots of Formica and what my neighbor Alex likes to call “little junks”—dangling Day of the Dead skulls and the like. But the food was good and plentiful and one wall had a Diego Rivera-like mural that appealed very much to students and aging dissidents. I thought it would be a place where Alejandro would feel comfortable.

As I waited for him I tried to calm myself. I had had nothing to eat yet and it was already well past noon, which didn’t help any. I’d consumed several cups of very strong black coffee, and with this and the events of the day, I was almost dizzy with caffeine, adrenaline, and anxiety.

I ordered chicken chilaquiles, a casserole of tortillas, shredded chicken, tomatillos, chilis, cream, and cheese. To wash it down, a Dos XX beer. If he didn’t show up, at least I’d have had lunch. I sat in a small banquette against the wall, watching the door, mentally plotting my approach to the subject.

Show up he did. Bold as brass.

He slid into me booth opposite me and quickly ordered a beer for himself. He was obviously well known here: he didn’t have to tell them which brand.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” He smiled.

This was a very self-possessed young man. I had to remind myself that he was only about half my age.

“Yes I do, Alejandro. About a robbery. In a bar. A robbery at which, as it turns out, I was present.”

His expression did not change.

“Not only present,” I continued, “but in which I am implicated.”

“Implicated?” He looked surprised.

“Yes. In more ways than one. The police believe I have information that would lead them to the perpetrator.”

Now I thought I was beginning to get through to him, judging by the way he kept nervously twirling the coaster on the table.

“I could, in fact, should I choose to, lead them to one of the perpetrators. Ironically, however, it is not the person they are looking for.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” he said, but he looked a little uneasy now.

“Would it interest you to know that the police suspect Dr. Castillo of masterminding the whole event? And that he is now the object of search of that rather ruthless Major Martinez?”

A slight flicker of emotion, apprehension perhaps, crossed his face.

“I cannot imagine why they would do that,” was all he said. But I had struck a nerve.

“Tell me, just who are these Children of the Talking Cross?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” he said.

“Oh, I think you do, Alejandro. Why would these people, whoever they are, steal a statue of Itzamna and not the others?”

“Perhaps some political reasons you wouldn’t understand,” he said slowly.

“Or perhaps they are just a bunch of young hoodlums defying their parents, and making a nuisance of themselves, drawing innocent people in as they go!”

He gave me a look that I could not interpret, tossed a few coins on the table to pay for his beer, and hurried from the restaurant.

Well, that was brilliant! I told myself. He knows all you know, and you know nothing more than you did before. Furthermore he’ll never tell you what he knows because now he is convinced you’re a nasty old cow!

I paid for my meal and grabbed a taxi for the museo. I made the driver stop about a block away, and walked the rest of the way.

I paid my admission, made a pretense for a few minutes of looking at the exhibits, then, as I had the day before, ducked through the door on the top floor marked prohibido entrar and very quietly let myself into Don Hernan’s office, carefully locking the door behind me. I did not want to be surprised by anyone, least of all Major Martinez.

Despite the fact that he was well past retirement age, the museum board of governors had let Don Hernan keep his little office in recognition of his contribution to Maya studies in general, and his generosity to the museum in particular. Many of the exhibits on the floors below would not have been possible without his donations.

It wasn’t much of an office really, just a dark little cubbyhole at the end of a long hallway on the top floor. The little room still reeked of the cigars he indulged in, and I very quietly unlocked the window and opened it a few inches to allow in some air.

There was not much light in the room, in part because of the gloominess of the day, but I was afraid to turn on the reading lamp. It would have been quite obvious, I thought, if anyone came into that dark hallway.

I could feel my face flush in mortification at the mere thought of being caught searching the office. Whatever would I say? I wondered. That Dr. Castillo had sent me to get something for him? And what would that something be? Indeed, when it came right down to it, what on earth was I doing here and what exactly had I hoped to accomplish? To find a road map pointing to his precise location? I felt a rush of annoyance at myself. Don Hernan had said he was going out of town and would call on his return. He did this all the time; at least he used to. He was probably just fine, and I was being silly.

But there I was, burdened by this niggling anxiety about the old man. I’d already committed a felony, minor though it might be, letting myself into this office without permission, so perhaps I’d just carry on, I reasoned.

I looked around. The room was much as I remembered it: stacks of books and papers everywhere, the odd pottery shard scattered on the desk. It was going to be difficult to find anything in this clutter, but I was able to locate his desk diary, a logical starting point, very quickly.

There was a comfortable ledge by the window, which led, as is typical in many old buildings, to a fire-escape landing. After momentarily pondering the idiocy of having a fire escape off a locked room, I began to look at the entries in the diary made in Don Hernan’s spidery scrawl.

I was just settling in nicely when I heard footsteps in the hall.

I stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe. The footsteps stopped right outside the door. I heard the rattle of keys as first one, then a second was tried in the door. I had no doubt that one would fit, and I looked frantically around the room for a place to hide.

At that moment there was a loud rumble as the rather antiquated freight elevator just down the hall groaned into use. Whoever was outside the door stopped fiddling with the lock and stood still. This person, or persons, apparently wished to be caught in this office as little as I did.

As the freight elevator clanged and rumbled I carefully slid the window open and crawled onto the fire escape, sliding the window down behind me. As I did so I heard the lock click and sensed rather than saw the door begin to open cautiously. I pressed my back to the wall to one side of the window.

It was a few minutes before I was able to regain a shred of composure and, standing as still as possible, to take stock of my surroundings. This was no easy task because I am not good with heights, and standing on an open fire escape, even on a building as low as four stories, makes me very uncomfortable at the best of times, which clearly these weren’t.

Looking to the right and down, I could see that this was the kind of fire escape where, presumably to discourage burglars, the stairs do not go right down to the ground, but lead instead to another window two floors below.

I did not relish the thought of climbing into someone’s office. It was an academic point anyway, because to get to the stairs I would have to cross in front of the window. Since the window was open slightly, I knew that the unwanted visitor was still there, systematically searching the office. It did cross my mind that it could be Dr. Castillo, but I decided that he would not have had to try so many keys to get in, neither would he be searching his own office quite this methodically.

Looking straight down, I could see that I was on the back side of the museum, in an alleyway of sorts, which opened onto a larger street. Across the alley was another building, windowless on this side. My imagination, overactive at the best of times, began to see accomplices in the shadows of the alleyway.

The longer I stood there, the worse it got. The spurt of adrenaline that had got me out the window so quickly was now contributing to what I can only describe as a full-fledged panic attack. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure it could be heard in the office, and I couldn’t seem to get enough air no matter how often or how deeply I breathed. I tried concentrating on remaining motionless and breathing normally, but I felt overwhelmed by the need to get away from my precarious and exposed position on the fire escape, no matter what the risk.

A small rational part of my brain was still functional and assessing my situation, I guess, because I became aware that I was leaning against something uncomfortable, which I eventually realized was an iron ladder. By craning my neck, I could see it led to what appeared to be a flat roof. As slowly and quietly as I could, I turned, put one foot on the first rung, then moved in slow motion to the second.

I was very close to the top of the ladder when I hit a loose step, which clanged, metal against metal, in what seemed to me to be the loudest noise in the world.

I heard someone start to raise the window, and with my last ounce of strength I hauled myself up and over the top to lie facedown on the gravel surface of the flat roof. I remained there, absolutely still, imagining someone coming out on the fire escape and up the ladder. But no one did, and after what seemed an eternity, I heard the window close, and a loud click as it was locked shut.

After several more minutes of motionless existence, I rolled onto my back and sat up. Over my shoulders I could see a large metal tank next to a brick wall, which I took to be the top of the elevator shaft.

I began to edge my way back toward the tank, thinking it might afford me some protection. I felt even more exposed on the roof than I had on the fire escape, and I wanted to huddle in a corner until the danger had passed. I thought if I could get to that tank, I could rest in its shadow, and figure out where to go next.

My hands were bleeding from pushing myself along on the stones, but eventually I felt my back touch the tank. I tried to wedge myself in tight against it. But as I reached out, my hand touched another, cold as death.