Effigy (28 page)

Lori shrugged. She’d have to take his word for it. Astronomy was a point of weakness when it came to the extent of her scientific knowledge. She knew a few of the obvious stars and constellations—Orion, the Big Dipper, and the North Polar Star—but that was about it. She wondered if most archaeologists didn’t suffer a similar impairment. After all, how much time does one look at the sky when they’re busy digging in the dirt?

“The Pleiades are also represented by the snakes’ rattles,” Dr. Friedman continued.

“So what’s so important about the Pleiades?” Lori asked.

“My father tied them to Quetzalcoatl,” Eva said.

That only confused the matter. “I thought Venus was related to Quetzalcoatl?”

“My father didn’t look at the stars the way the rest of the world does,” Eva explained. “He saw Venus as the
spirit
of Quetzalcoatl. But the Pleiades physically formed the snake’s rattle. The Milky Way was Quetzalcoatl’s body and his mouth was the dark gap in the Milky Way.”

Dr. Friedman was nodding as though picturing the whole thing in his mind. “What an ingenious view of the night sky,” he said.

“Hold on,” Lori said. “Catch me up here. There’s a gap in the Milky Way?”

“A cleft actually,” Dr. Friedman said. “Or a dark rift, if you will. Basically, when we look at the Milky Way, we’re looking out across the edge of our galaxy. From our viewpoint, what we see of the galaxy appears like a long band of stars. But this band varies in width as it stretches across the sky.”

“Let me get this straight,” Lori said. “In Shaman Gaspar’s view, the Milky Way is Quetzalcoatl. The bulge forms his head with a gaping mouth, and the Pleiades complete his tail, right?”

Eva nodded. “In a nutshell.”

“That must be why Quetzalcoatl’s mouth is always open in Mesoamerican art,” Derek suggested.

“But what about Xiuhcoatl’s mouth?” Eva asked. “My father told me to find the smoke in the serpent’s mouth.”

For the first time Dr. Friedman looked stumped. “I’m not certain. As you can see, there’s no smoke coming out of Xiuhcoatl’s mouth.”

Lori turned back to the twin snake heads at the bottom of the sunstone. In typical Mesoamerican fashion, the heads were embellished with mosaic artistry nearly blending them into the glyphs of the inner circles. But the longer she studied them, the more detail she began to pick out. The fiery shapes Eva called butterflies adorning each segment of the snakes’ bodies, their malicious half-moon-shaped eyes, the seven bulbs fringing their curlicue snouts.

As Dr. Friedman pointed out, there was no smoke coming out of their tri-fanged mouths. Protruding instead were what appeared to be…
human faces?

“Wait a second,” Dr. Peet said into the hand which had reflectively buried his chin. His other arm lay across his chest, captured against his ribs by the contemplative elbow. “Gaspar didn’t say to look behind the sunstone. He told us to look in
the place
behind the sunstone.”

Dr. Friedman still looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“The birthplace as explained by the message in the sunstone. It’s all in the symbolism. And what is the sunstone really about?”

“The fifth age,” John replied thoughtfully.

“Right. And where was the fifth age born?”

Dr. Friedman’s eyes snapped to life. “You’re talking about
Teotihuacan
.”

“Yes!”

“Of course!
Teotihuacan
is the place where the gods supposedly gathered to create the fifth age. And it honors the two deities that sacrificed themselves into the fire with the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.”

Dr. Peet’s eyes were glowing as Dr. Friedman paced excitedly. It was the first time Lori had seen such correlation between the two professors. Their reservations toward each other had been momentarily pushed aside. They were two minds compliantly working together, causing Lori to wonder if she was witnessing a shadowy glimpse of buried history between them.

“The Aztecs highly revered
Teotihuacan
, even though it had been abandoned long before they arrived in central
Mexico
,” Dr. Friedman was saying.

“Shaman Gaspar did call it the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl,” Derek added.

“Mr. Gaspar didn’t bring the effigy to
Mexico
to donate it to the museum,” Dr. Peet said. “He must have had it with him when he went to
Teotihuacan
.”

Lori’s heart sank. “That means his killer took the effigy.”

“Not necessarily. Gaspar said we’d find the smoke in the serpent’s mouth. I believe ‘smoke’ is a codeword he chose to prevent anyone listening in on his phone call. Maybe ‘smoke’ refers to the effigy. And animal mouths such as jaguars, coyotes and snakes were often associated with caves—”

“Like Xiuhcoatl’s mouth, with the faces peering out,” Lori observed.

“So maybe Mr. Gaspar hid the effigy in a cave in
Teotihuacan
.”

“Right,” Dr. Friedman added, still pacing before the sunstone. “Now, there is such a cave whose mouth aligned with the heliacal setting of the Pleiades. It became the cornerstone of
Teotihuacan
’s layout and the Pyramid of the Sun was built on top of that cave.”

Derek smiled with sudden revelation. “So first thing tomorrow morning we need to find this cave inside the Pyramid of the Sun.”

“That’s where we’ll find the effigy.”

Agave Azul

There were probably three reasons Shaman Gaspar had preferred the Agave Azul—its relatively quiet isolation along the moody, dead end street above the markets of San Felipe de Jesus, its close proximity to MEX 132, and the taqueria’s blue corn tortillas. There were also three reasons Derek Riesling had booked their hotel rooms there. First, it was only a fifteen-minute drive from
Mexico City
’s
International
Airport
. Secondly, it was cheap—thirty American dollars a night, to be exact. Finally, it was familiar. Shaman Gaspar had introduced him to the quiet little hotel that first year Derek agreed to attend the equinox meetings to write his articles in the
Acatzalan
newsletter.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize the benefits of his namesake. In a sense, the name Acatzalan was like Santa Claus—everybody knew it, but nobody knew him. Those who had seen Derek—and there were many—had yet to realize that he was
the
Acatzalan.

Needless to say, Acatzalan came with a celebrity status already intact. Most New Agers thought Acatzalan was Shaman Gaspar’s second in command, a silent and faceless partner in the group’s activities. Some suggested that he was Gaspar’s apprentice who would some day take over, perhaps once the Age of Quetzalcoatl was well established. There was even a rumor circulating that Acatzalan was Quetzalcoatl himself, like a coming messiah, or some crazy shit like that. Derek couldn’t help but wonder how the New Agers would react if they knew Acatzalan was nothing more than a college kid observing and reporting from the sidelines, who would have nothing to do with their religion were it not for the extra tuition the newsletter provided.

Now, with Shaman Gaspar dead, that avenue of income was certainly closed and Acatzalan would slip away from the New Agers just as mysteriously as he slipped in. Shaman Gaspar’s followers were bound to be distraught over the death of their leader, but for Derek, the loss was more of a relief. It was like losing a dependent grandparent. Sure, he was going to miss Gaspar and his many quirks, but in reality, he relished the freedom he’d now have. There’d be no more rambling meetings of what should and shouldn’t be included in the newsletter. There’d be no more late-night phone calls whenever Gaspar thought of a last-minute article to insert; no more scrambling to the office supply store to mass-produce copies that needed to be mailed yesterday, all the while trying to avoid the store clerks who found the newsletter’s title curiously intriguing.

In fact, with Shaman Gaspar gone, Derek was already looking forward to spending his free time writing about archaeological finds rather than the theological whimsies of a delusional, self-proclaimed shaman. And once he returned the effigy to the university, Derek had the perfect springboard from which to launch his writing career.

Thoughts of his comeback article regarding the return of the effigy, however, had dissolved into memories of his first trip to Mexico with Shaman Gaspar as he walked across the dark and dripping garden plaza between the small taqueria and the Agave Azul’s row of rooms. There were only nine rooms total, with the Agave Azul’s laundry occupying the far end of the row. Derek had managed to rent three —one for Eva, one for himself, and one he reserved shortly after calling professor Friedman from the Zócalo.

Getting two additional rooms for Lori and Peet had been out of the question considering Derek had to dish out a boatload of pesos to convince the manager to cancel a reservation and give John the extra room. Doubling Lori in Eva’s room had been no problem. It was pairing Quickie Peet with someone that proved difficult. Derek sensed Peet’s rigid animosity toward him and the thought of rooming with the professor felt awkward, like waking up in the middle of the night with a knife to your throat awkward. Problem was, John seemed just as hostile toward Peet as Peet was toward Derek, so rooming the two professors together was also out of the question. In the end, Derek gave up his room and bunked in with John to keep the peace.

He knocked on the seventh door and Eva immediately answered.

“Thought you might want to drown your sorrows,” he said, retrieving a six-pack of Coronas from the rain-speckled paper sack he’d been carrying under his arm.

“No thanks,” she said. “I think Jose Cuervo took care of that last night.” She glanced at the dripping eaves from which large terra cotta flower pots hung. “Did the rain stop?”

“More or less.”

Eva slipped out of the door. “Good. I need a smoke. Lori might help you with those drinks though.”

Derek stepped into the girls’ room where Lori was wrapped in a half-length hotel bathrobe, scrubbing the shower from her hair. She looked surprised to see him but in the swift moment that it took to wrap her head in the towel, her mood clearly soured.

“Thought you might like a nightcap,” Derek said, setting the Coronas down on the stained mesquite night stand.

“I don’t drink.”

Derek shrugged. “I know.”

His gaze followed the caressing exchange of her legs as her bare feet padded across the hand-woven rug centering the floor. Her slender neck was delicately feminine without her blonde hair draped over it, plunging ever so teasingly into the cushy fibers of the bathrobe. As though she’d never acknowledged his presence, she rummaged through her duffle—a bag, he presumed, that had seen more excavation tents than hotel rooms.

“Are you angry with me?” he asked as she retrieved her night cream and returned to the foggy bathroom mirror.

She removed the lid to her cream, but hesitated with the jar balanced precariously in her palm. “I just spent a ton of money on a last-minute flight to
Mexico City
,” she said. “Of course I’m upset with you.”

“I didn’t expect you to come. You weren’t supposed to be involved.”

Lori was leaning over the colorful mosaic-tiled sink, watching her reflection as she impatiently rubbed the cream on her face. “You got me involved when you stole the effigy.”

It crossed Derek’s mind to sit down on the edge of the bed but he thought better of it. He felt too defensive to relax.