Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (28 page)

 
          
“You’re
absolutely right,” Valerie said, and stayed out of sight when the plane first
came over. Then some time later she heard it leave, and came out of the hut,
and was walking around waiting for everybody to come back when all at once
there was the plane again, diving right down at the village!
Into
the nearest hut she had run, the
image of the plane burned into her mind, and at
once
she remembered where she’d seen that plane before. It was
Galway, Kirby Galway.

 
          
Which
Rosita confirmed, when she came back: “You know Kirby?” she asked.

 
          
“Kirby
Galway,” Valerie said, excited, “that’s right, that’s his name!”

 
          
Rosita’s
eyes got very wide. “You
know
him,
Sheena?”

 
          
Oh-oh.
The implications could be very bad. Kirby Galway’s relationship with these
Indians could be simple and benign—merely flying their tawdry commercial
gewgaws to town and no doubt cheating them mercilessly—but nevertheless Galway
and the Indians were aligned. Did Valerie at this point dare tell the truth?

 
          
No.

 
          
Thinking
fast, she said, “I certainly
do
know
him, Rosita, and let me tell you, he’s a very bad man!”

 
          
“Oh,
I thought he was,” Rosita said. “You bet I did. He rape you one time, did he?”

 
          
“No,
no,” Valerie said, then wished she’d said yes-yes; it would paint him blacker
in Rosita’s eyes. Instead, she said, “He used to work for Winthrop.”

 
          
Rosita
was impressed. “Wintrop Cartwright?” she asked. “The man your papa gone make
you marry?”

 
          
“Yes.
He worked for Winthrop and cheated Winthrop very badly. This was a few years
ago,” she added, not knowing how long the Indians and Galway might have known
one another.

 
          
“Well,
ain’t that something,” Rosita said, and gazed away sharpeyed at the empty sky.
“Next time he come around here,” she said, “I think I give him a spider in his
ear.”

 
          
“You
mean a flea in his ear,” Valerie said.

 
          
“Oh,
no, I don’t,” Rosita said.

 
          
It
was embarrassing at first, but also rather funny. Gerry winked at a boy in
Sheridan Square who then turned out to be a girl, who gave him such a
glare.
Giggling to himself, Gerry walked
on through the slushy snow toward home, waving at a friend in the window of the
bar called Boots & Saddle, continuing on his way, wishing he could share
the funny moment with Alan—“I winked at a very nice hunk in Sheridan Square who
turned out to be some awful dike in
full
drag”—but Alan would think the point of the story was his winking rather than
the sexual confusion, and there’d just be argument and upset and wild talk
about disease, and Gerry just didn’t think he could face it, so he decided not
to mention it at all.

 
          
What
he needed, he reflected, not for the first time, was a boyfriend on the side,
someone he could really
talk
to.

 
          
The
sun was shining today, but the wind-chill factor was somewhere down around your
ankles. Walking west on Christopher Street, looking at the anemic milky sky
over the Hudson River, Gerry found himself thinking again of Belize. That had
been rather fun, really, in parts, and God knows it was warm. It had been a
mistake to play investigative reporter for Hiram, just too nerve-wracking.

 
          
If
they’d simply gone down there on their owny-own—

 
          
To
actually deal with Kirby Galway? To actually
buy
smuggled preColumbian artifacts for resale?

 
          
Well,
maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea at that.

 
          
The
more Gerry thought it over, in fact, the more he believed he and Alan had been
hasty in talking to Hiram, and in deciding the point of
that
story—like the wink and the dike—was a magazine article
exposing the racket rather than the potential of the racket itself. He hadn’t
quite had the courage yet to broach the subject with Alan, so of course he had
no idea if Alan were still content with their having sacrificed themselves for
king and country.

 
          
Entering
the lobby of his home, Gerry sighed, thinking just how difficult it was to
understand Alan, to follow his moods, to
cater
to him. We all have our crosses to bear, he thought, and went over to the
mailboxes.

 
          
The
usual bills. A tacky postcard from a friend wintering in New Orleans. And a
blue and white envelope containing a cablegram. A cablegram? Gerry went to the
elevator, which for once was right here on the first floor, boarded, pushed his
button, and ripped the cablegram as the elevator started up.

 
          
“Ai-an!”
Gerry called, entering the apartment, waving the cablegram in front of himself,
all thought of the wink-dike story fled from his brain. “Alan, you will simply
not
believe
this!”

 
          
Alan
appeared, covered with flour. So they’d be eating in tonight; good. “All right,
Gerry,” he said, very testily (he was wonderful in the kitchen, but it was bad
for his nerves), “what now? I’m in the middle of things here, I hope this is
important, not some
silliness
.”

 
          
“Ai-an,”
Gerry said, aggrieved. “Would I disturb you for nothing at all?”

 
          
“You
would, and you have. Well? What is it?”

 
          
“Oh,
you take the heart out of everything,” Gerry said. Tossing the cablegram on the
nearest table, he said, “Read it for yourself,” and went on into the bedroom to
sulk.

 
          
Well,
of course Alan came in three minutes later, flour washed off, black apron
removed, cablegram in hand, to say, “Gerry, you’re absolutely right. I was
abominable.”

           
“It’s only because you’re cooking,”
Gerry said, having decided to be magnanimous. “I know what it does to you, but
it’s perfectly all right, it’s worth it, because I know what comes out of your
kitchen is just
fabulous
.”

 
          
“Gerry,”
Alan said, positively blushing with pleasure, “you are in truth the sweetest
person, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you. The good fairy brought you
to me.”

 
          
“I
am
your good fairy,” Gerry said,
beaming, happy they’d made up. Pointing to the cablegram, he said, “And what do
you think of that?” “This.” Alan held the cablegram up, frowned at it. “I just
don’t know,” he said.

 
          
“Aban,
it’s from Kirby Galway!”

 
          
“I
know that.”

 
          
“He
still wants to do business with us!”

 
          
“He
says so.”

 
          
“He
says so? He says this Sunday, in Florida!”

 
          
“I
know he does,” Alan said. But still he frowned and looked disapproving.

 
          
Gerry
couldn’t understand it at all. “Aban,” he said, “this is wonderful news!”

 
          
“If
true.”

 
          
“Alan,
for heaven’s sake, what’s the
problem
?”

 
          
“Our
missing tapes,” Alan said.

 
          
“Oh,
dear,” Gerry
⁷
said, suddenly seeing it all.

 
          
“This
could be a trap, Gerry. If Kirby Galway is the one who arranged to steal our
tapes ...”

 
          
“Oh,
dear, oh, dear,” Gerry said, and the doorbell rang.

 
          
Alan
frowned. “That’s the
upstairs
bell,”
he said.

 
          
“Then
it must be Hiram,” Gerry said, starting out of the bedroom. “We can ask
him
what he thinks.”

 
          
“At
this hour?” Alan was finding fault with everything, as usual. “I don’t know,
Gerry,” he called, as Gerry went on through the apartment toward the front
door. “That door downstairs has been funny lately, it—”

 
          
“Oh,
it’s bound to be Hiram,” Gerry called back.

 
          
“Yesterday
I saw him going out with
suitcases.”

 
          
“Oh,
who else could it be?” Gerry called, flung open the door, and found himself
staring at the mobster he’d seen with Kirby Galway back in
Belize
. “My
God!”
he cried.

 
          
“My
God!”
cried the mobster, recoiling.

 
          
Gerry
would have slammed the door in a trice if his own feelings of shock and terror
had not been so vividly mirrored on the mobster’s face. A mobster displaying
shock and terror?

 
          
“The
drug dealer!”

 
          
Oh,
dear, oh, dear: Gerry had cried that out, but the mobster had also cried it
out, at the same instant, pointing at Gerry, who now said, “But you’re the drug
dealer!”

 
          
Wide-eyed,
the mobster said, “Kirby Galway told me you—”

 
          
“Kirby
Galway told us
you
—”

 
          
“Gerry,
for heaven’s sake, who is it?” Alan called, from deeper in the appartment.

 
          
“It’s—
It’s— I don’t
know!”

 
          
“I
am Whitman Lemuel,” the ex-mobster was saying, extending his card. “I am
assistant curator of the Duluth Museum of Pre-Columbian Art.”

 
          
Gerry
took the card. He looked at it with a sense that the world was spinning, the
entire Earth flipping on its axis. “I don’t understand,” he said.

 
          
“I
think I’m beginning to,” said Whitman Lemuel. “I was given a real run-around
down there in Belize—”

 
          
“Oh,
so were
we!”

 
          
“I
was told your names, and asked questions about you, by a man named Innocent St.
Michael.”

 
          
“I’ve
never heard of him.”

 
          
“Consider
yourself lucky.”

 
          
“Oh,
my
God!”
Alan cried, putting in an
appearance, staring at Whitman Lemuel.

 
          
“Alan,
Alan, it’s all right,” Gerry said, clutching at Alan’s arm, stopping him from
fleeing back to the nearest phone.

 
          
“All
right? All right?” Alan pointed a trembling finger at Whitman Lemuel. “How can
that
be all right?”

 
          
“Kirby
Galway lied to us.”

 
          
“To
all of us,” Whitman Lemuel said. “After I got back to Duluth, I started to
think about things, and it seemed to me maybe I hadn’t entirely understood
everything that went on down there.”

           
Gerry was showing Whitman Lemuel’s
card to Alan, saying, “See? Look.” Turning back, he said, “Mister Lemuel, I
think we all should sit down and have a talk.”

 
          
“I
was thinking the same thing,” Lemuel said, and came into the apartment.

 
          
“Well,
for God’s sake,” Alan said, staring at Lemuel’s card.

 
          
“And
to
begin
with,” Gerry told their
guest, “there’s a cablegram we just got that you will find very interesting
reading.”