Dancing with the Tiger (15 page)

Daniel Ramsey read Anna's text five times, parsing each word, all four of them—
Just wrapping things up
—convincing himself this was good news. You couldn't
wrap up
unless you had accomplished what you'd set out to do. The word “just” was particularly reassuring.
Just
checking out of the hotel, perhaps. Buying souvenirs. But Anna had never come out and said,
I have the mask.
She was being evasive, making him wait to hear the long version in person.

He walked to the window. Frozen ground. Empty trees. The hush of the cold. Anna would be home soon.

And then what?

The Ramsey Collection would have a magnificent centerpiece. Word would travel quickly. Newspapers. The Web. D
EATH
M
ASK OF
M
ONTEZUMA
U
NEARTHED
. The shameless Addison Rockwell would call,
tripping over himself, apologizing for the previous misunderstanding, proposing lunch at the Carlyle. Iced teas and club sandwiches all around. Rockwell's aristocratic countenance would express the museum's desire to renew discussion of the Rose White Ramsey Gallery. This time Daniel would set the terms. The book reprinted with corrections. An opening with international publicity. Symposium. Lecture tour. Yes, he wanted it all. Hot damn. There was reason to celebrate.

And Anna said,
I mean it. No ice.

She was right. Many a slip between the cup and the lip. Maybe the looter wanted more money, or Malone or Reyes had gotten there first. How would Malone know about the mask? He wouldn't. How would Reyes know? He just would. Mexico City was a tough place and Anna was so damn pretty, like her mother. He should never have sent her—no, he hadn't
sent
her, she'd taken off, but still—his only child meeting a drug addict to purchase art on the black market while he sat snug in his living room, cowardly daydreaming of press conferences and punch bowls. What kind of father was he? What kind of monster?

And Anna said,
I mean it. No ice.

He hadn't been entirely truthful with Anna. He
had
smuggled masks through customs. He had his regular tricks. You were allowed two bottles at duty-free liquor, but he'd buy four. When challenged, he'd argue. By the time they'd confiscated his Kahlúa, the line was backed up a mile and they would wave him through. Rose was a master of diversion, feigning fainting spells, the flu. The one time authorities searched his bags, he'd claimed he was opening a Mexican restaurant and needed wall decorations. He'd waved the phony blueprints he kept in his bag. He also carried fake provenance papers, as a last resort. Bottom line: Customs wanted drugs, not art. Still, it was so stressful his nose bled. He'd stop at the bar to calm his nerves.

And then they did get ugly, though not in the way he'd ever imagined. It was June, rainy season, the landscape lush and green. He was in the hotel bar, La Campana, nursing a queasy stomach and reading the wilted pages of a magazine, when Manuel López burst through the door, his face flushed yet pale, insisting the
señor
was needed on the phone. There had been an accident. Just then, the wind chimes rang, a metallic cascade of sound.

And the horror after that. The terrible logistics. The remains, yes, the body remained in a white-tiled funeral home festooned with crosses and Virgins, as if those things helped, and the
abuela
who placed her wrinkled hand on his, how good it felt to be touched, taken care of in this small way, the flight home, no memory, the urn he had pushed into the closet, how he'd sent Anna away to school so she would stop wandering room-to-room, touching her mother's clothes, smelling her soap, and the nights, the long nights after, finding dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up after dinner, listening for a cheery voice that never came.

How did everyone carry on, knowing all they were going to lose?

Just wrapping things up.
And that strange second text, something about sex.
What in the world?
Maybe that was what people called spam.

February sank into his bones.

The birds attacked the empty feeder.

The ruined book sat on the coffee table.

The beauty one finds in fine art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of all human endeavor.
John Paul Getty. His book was called
The Joys of Collecting
, but he was a lonely man. Estranged from his five children, he had refused to pay his grandson's ransom until the Italian captors mailed him the boy's ear. Getty would have wanted nothing to do with a death mask. He disliked funerary objects, because he was afraid to die.

Ramsey went to the bedroom. In moments of grief, he sat with Rose's urn and it comforted him. He slid open the door and reached, scurried his hand. The shelf was empty. Her journal was gone, too.

Anna.

He collapsed on the bed with an anguished sigh. He wasn't ready to give her up. The urn was not Rose, of course, just a symbol of Rose, but without a tangible object, all he had were memories, voices harder and harder to hear.

He wanted a drink. He gave himself permission. One drink to settle his nerves, one toast to the woman he loved. But he had nothing to drink. He'd have to go out. The Subaru sat in the driveway. All he had to do was scrape off the frost.

I go everywhere with my eyes closed and two
eyeballs painted on my face. There is a woman
across the court with no face at all.

—Denis Johnson, “The Incognito
Lounge”

Heaven wasn't at all like he'd pictured it. No grassy fields or cool mountain lakes. No sex, no beer, no fishing. No, heaven felt like being skinned alive and looked a lot like Mexico. Cinder-block room, donkey blanket for a curtain. His angel was a stocky Mexican with a kindly expression, butch haircut, five or six earrings running up her right ear, breasts the size of mangoes. She sat on a stool like a milkmaid. A dog barked in the distance. The air smelled like dirt.

The looter closed his eyes, opened them, expecting this vision to disappear, but nothing budged. His whole body hurt. Neck, back, but mostly his skin, what was left of it. His legs and arms flowed with a pink river of pus dotted with half-cooked scabs. He remembered the cement. The tub.

“Where am I?”

The woman smiled, said nothing. He found his Spanish, asked again.

This time she answered. “In my house.”

“Is this heaven?”

The woman laughed. “Hardly. The
narcos
buried you in the bathtub. I cooked them lunch and they went on their way. The cement had almost set, but you were still breathing. I called my brother. He brought acid, and we dug you out. I have been treating your wounds. You have been feverish with infection. I am doing my best.”

The looter lay back, closed his eyes. It was a lot, not to be dead. More than enough for one day. His body trembled. He could still smell the cement, feel the cool ooze, see the daggers of sweat on the men's shirts. Tears wet his eyelids, followed by a violent rush of yellow lava that raced up his throat. Bile poured down his chin onto his stomach. He could do nothing to stop it. The woman wiped his lips, the wet on his chest. She offered him a joint and he smoked it.

It was dark by the time Anna got back to the Puesta del Sol with the death mask. A white moth beat against her window. On the patio, a Norwegian family played cards with their towheaded children. Anna lowered the blinds, propped the mask on the bureau as if it needed fresh air. When she undressed to shower, it watched her. Montezuma's death mask. The prospect was both thrilling and vile.

She called her father, eager to share the good news. He didn't pick up. This was typical. He left his phone in the car half the time. Let the battery run out. Just as well. Better to wait for Gonzáles to confirm the mask. Authentication before celebration. No more Grasshopper debacles.

Anna lay in bed, placed the mask over her face and pretended she was dead. It felt peaceful. The weight on her forehead. Her limbs giving
way. Anna was ten when her mother died and she'd been surprised how life had gone on. Holidays came. Lilacs bloomed. People ate lunch, got married, outgrew their shoes. At school, teachers whispered into her scalp,
Let me know if you need anything.
What was she supposed to need? In class, words drifted across the page without meaning. Numbers read like Chinese. In the restroom, Anna scrutinized her reflection. She looked the same.

And Salvador? She would visit his studio tomorrow. What did he think of her—if he thought of her at all? It had felt so good when he'd held her in San Juan del Monte. Not an exorcism. A blessing.

—

That evening,
she called Lorenzo Gonzáles. His housekeeper answered.

“El señor no está aquí.”

Anna asked when he'd be back.

“Tomorrow, but he has no free appointments.”

“Tomorrow at one is perfect.”

“No, I am sorry. He is busy all day.”

“Thank you, I will come tomorrow at one, then. Please tell him it concerns a mask.”

Anna hung up before the woman could object. There were advantages to speaking bad Spanish.

—

Anna showed up
early for work at the Malones' as if nothing had changed, except, of course, everything had. Hidden in her top dresser drawer was the most valuable pre-Columbian relic to surface in the
past century. Or not. Until she knew which, it made no sense to sever ties with the collector.

Thomas did not acknowledge their motel tryst. No fond glance or touch, no prurient wink. He greeted her with a brusque “Welcome, Ms. Bookman. We have a lot to do.” If anything, he acted unusually impatient, reminding her of their deadline. The gallery opening was three weeks away. The printer needed four days. They had catalogued only a third of the show. Thomas was disappointed she had to leave by noon. Their progress was often interrupted by phone calls he took in private.

Mid-morning, after one such disappearance, Thomas returned with several files jammed with papers and colored index cards. “Since we're behind schedule, I thought these might help. This is the work my previous assistant assembled. You can enter it into your database.”

“Holly didn't use a computer?” Anna had dragged hers along.

“She preferred to write by hand.”

“Because she didn't like computers or didn't have one?”

“Both.”

The notes included the usual information: character, origin, artist, dances, and so on. Holly's handwriting was round and open. In the margins were sketches of birds.

“I feel like I'm plagiarizing,” Anna said. “Are we going to give her credit?”

“I paid for the work. It's my property.”

“But you'll cite her in the guide.”

“She asked not to be mentioned. Really, the less said about her, the better. It upsets Constance. It's difficult when you become attached to people who aren't emotionally stable. As you've no doubt noticed, Oaxaca is a magnet for lost souls. Druggies. Divorcees. Mystics. Crazies.”

“Which was Holly?”

This stopped him. A wry smile quickly replaced confusion. “Either a kleptomaniac or a thinly disguised opportunist. But that's how it is. Flighty people often fly away.”

“Like a bird.” Anna pointed to the drawings.

His mouth twitched. “Anyway, I hope you weren't expecting a byline. For all official purposes, the guide will be written by Lorenzo Gonzáles, a leading authority on Mexican masks and pre-Columbian art.”

Anna narrowed her eyes. “So what are we—”

“Gonzáles will sign it, but he can't be bothered to write it. He's a busy man, as you can imagine.”

Anna could imagine, did imagine, the whole picture. Thomas's upcoming show was not about pleasing Texas relatives. The easiest way to cleanse stolen art was to have it appear in a public showing with a catalogue endorsed by a respected dealer like Lorenzo Gonzáles. After this coming-out party, the stolen object had a legitimate paper trail, its sordid past forgotten amid the swirl of canapés and
prosecco.
Anna's own reputation had benefited from just such a cleansing. On David's arm, surrounded by the glitterati of the New York art world, she became respectable. Her dodgy romantic past, her checkered provenance, were all but forgotten, leaving only the pleasure of aesthetics.

Thomas excused himself again. Anna returned to work with a sigh. She wished she could leave right away, and wondered what the afternoon would bring. Gonzáles's assessment. Salvador's studio. Things could go terribly right or wrong. She opened a manila envelope from the files. A photograph of a young woman tumbled out. Even in the faded Polaroid, she was stunning. She wore a sleeveless blouse, feather earrings, the dangerous smile of a hitchhiker. An unlit cigarette dangled from her mouth. A tiara of flowers and a blue scarf encircled her head. Her expression was coy, daring, a little gonzo, a little come-hither. Definitely a girl without
underwear. She sat at the same table where Anna now sat, bright notecards scattered. The photograph had been glued to a sheet of paper, a profile created from the familiar mask headings.

CHARACTER:
Holly Price, personal assistant

ORIGIN:
Berkeley, California

MATERIALS:
Flesh and bones

DIMENSIONS:
Perfect

DATE DANCED:
Last night

INFORMATION ABOUT THE DANCE:
I think you remember

A Post-it had been stuck on top. “For your collection.” Apparently, Anna wasn't the only personal assistant who had gotten personal with Thomas Malone.

Anna scanned the yard. Something was wrong with this place. A gloom or sadness shrouded the house, the distant cottage, the wall over which Thomas had dropped the dead squirrel, the pool no one bothered to clean, the chairs where her father had once sat, drinking, the kitchen where Soledad was frying bananas in corn oil, the grass Hugo cut down to two inches, the dog shit he scooped, and the chapel, locked. Had Holly been let in? Had they met there? Anna shivered. She didn't want to sleep with Thomas Malone, but for some crazy reason—and this made her question her sanity—she didn't want to be the only personal assistant who hadn't.

—

A construction van was parked
outside Lorenzo Gonzáles's home. The dealer answered the door, apologized for the disarray. He showed
Anna to his office, saying he was glad things had gone smoothly in Mexico City.

“Actually, not.” Anna was still angry. “I was held up at gunpoint. Where were you?”

He looked genuinely surprised, as he lowered his large frame into his chair. “How terrible. I had a family emergency in Puebla. I am sorry I couldn't be there, but you got the mask. What happened?”

“It all worked out in the end.”

Gonzáles pulled out a magnifying glass. “Let me see.”

She passed him the mask. The dealer scoured its surface. “This is either a legitimate antiquity or an excellent reproduction.”

Anna rolled her eyes. This much she knew.

“Every object has a story. I will need more time to tell this mask's full story, but as our looter friend was trespassing in an archaeological site, this is rightly the property of the Mexican government. A foreigner caught carrying looted relics will be deported in forty-eight hours. By law, I should call the police.”

He plucked the receiver and paused.

Anna recognized this bluff for what it was. She would bet her last peso Lorenzo Gonzáles had never given the Mexican government so much as an ashtray.

She kept it simple. “I don't think that would serve either of us.”

Gonzáles leaned back. “Leave the mask with me. I can deliver the report in a week.”

“I need information today.”

“I prefer not to speculate.”

“I can't leave the mask.”

“With my new alarm system, no one gets in or out.”

“Can you at least give me a date?”

Gonzáles frowned. “I can work with photographs, if I must. But you'll have to come back tomorrow before I could sign authenticity papers. I trust you could wait twenty-four hours?”

This service was another racket, like paid expert witnesses at a trial. While most art historians labored to document an object's history—its original use, the context of its burial or storage, its provenance since it was recovered (life, death, rebirth)—less scrupulous experts found creative writing a lucrative profession. It was amazing how many recently surfaced antiquities had previously belonged to unnamed Swiss collections. Anna did not know where Lorenzo Gonzáles fit on this ethical spectrum, but she had her suspicions.

Gonzáles held up a pencil. “You realize, even if I write, ‘The death mask of Montezuma the Second has finally been discovered,' scholars will rebut my claim. Jealous collectors will deny it. But my review is the first step. The process starts here. With me.” Gonzáles pointed his pencil to his desk. “While I work, I can give you a history lesson. Or are you too busy for that?”

Anna slid back in her chair.

“This sort of mosaic mask dates back to the postclassical period. Most masks were worn in religious services by priests, but the aristocracy was buried with masks to ensure safe passage to the underworld. The Maya had a saying:
A king dies, but a god is born.
Everybody wanted to live forever. You want to live forever?”

Anna nodded. She needed the papers.

Gonzáles produced a digital camera, lecturing on as he worked.

“Priests and royalty were buried with masks, gold, even dogs. Hairless dogs, Xoloitzcuintli, were slaughtered to guide the dead over the river. Today, masks are still used for celebrations. Carnival. Semana Santa. Día de los Muertos. Your typical
campesino
has no idea why he
wears a mask. A
fiesta
is an excuse to get drunk. They wear masks because their fathers wore masks and
their
fathers wore masks, back, back.” He leaned in. “Look at my face. What do you see?”

Nose hair. Veins. Exhaustion. She saw all this but said, “An educated man who knows a lot about archaeology and is proud of his country.”

Gonzáles pulled back, smug. “Exactly. You see only what I want to show you. The human race has outgrown its face. The face no longer serves a purpose.”

“And the body?”

“The body is not so good at keeping secrets.”

The house was suddenly quiet. No housekeeper, no workmen. Just the tick of the hall clock. Anna wished he'd left the shades open. She thought of the dead tiger. An ordinary man, but to himself a whole world. Gonzáles held out the mask. His breath smelled of garlic. She could map his pores. She reached over and took back the mask. It was all she could do not to snatch it. Her shoulders shook, a warm chill.

“You are wearing a mask right now,” he said. “Why is that?”

Anna set her jaw. She had no answer, but was sure Gonzáles did.

“Because, my dear, like the Aztecs, you are afraid.”