Authors: Carolyn G. Hart
I should have never come to Mexico. It was only what I deserved, chasing all this way after a man I had met but once. But I was here and it would be humiliating to run home to New York, not even staying a week.
I began to walk briskly toward the house. I was here. I would see Mexico. I wouldn’t let a mutilated doll or a strange family or anything else make me run away.
Chapter 9
I lingered at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, fascinated by the flowing line of plumed serpents carved in relief, and fell behind the group. I didn’t care. I had an excellent guidebook in hand, and there is nothing more destructive to absorbing any sense of past grandeur than to be one of a milling throng of tourists. I didn’t hurry after the group. Instead I took my time in the citadel. When I stepped out onto the Avenue of the Dead, the wide avenue stretched deserted and dusty, a long two-mile walk to the Pyramid of the Moon. I occasionally paused, read a bit, then moved ahead. Until I actually began to walk up the avenue, I had not realized how far flung and separated were the ruins of the pyramids of Teotihuacán.
I was alone on the dusty, pebbled avenue. Far ahead and to the right, tiny antlike figures toiled up the steep steps toward the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. On either side of the long avenue rose wild, hilly country with thick green brush.
I wondered what the pyramids had looked like when Teotihuacán was a living city, the hub of a people’s world. No one knew who had built the immense complex. The buildings had long been abandoned when the Aztecs ruled the Valley of Mexico. Once there must have been festivals and processions moving at a stately pace up this long, wide avenue. Had the priests and nobles led the way and the people followed? Or had family groups and visiting villagers lined either side of the avenue to watch the passing procession? Had wide-eyed children been lifted high to glimpse the chief priest?
I could almost see the passing shadowy throng, high-colored people and magnificent feathered headdresses, and hear the soft shuffle as thousands walked along the wide way.
I was listening so hard to the past, hearing the muted thump of drums and the steady beat of marching feet, that a sudden popping sound scarcely registered. Dust spurted as something struck the ground in front of me. I saw the puff and realized incredulously that a bullet had whizzed past me. I ran, knowing as my sandals slapped against the gritty street that I couldn’t run fast enough.
Pop.
I wouldn’t hear the shot that hit me; wasn’t that how it worked? Like bombs?
Where was everybody? Where had that disorganized group of visitors gone? Where were the two teachers who watched everyone so carefully and the honeymooners who were oblivious to the pyramids, to the tourists, to everything but each other? Where were the college kids in their crumpled, stained Levis and brightly colored T-shirts?
The street was uneven. One sandal caught on a half-buried rock. I fell headlong and hard, but even as I slammed onto the ground I was rolling, trying to get up. Again I heard the ominous light pop. Dust plumed by my hand. I scrambled up and veered to my left, running when there was little breath left, hoping for safety as the muscles in my back tightened in anticipation of pain.
I saw the drop-off in front of me just an instant before I jumped. I didn’t hesitate. I hadn’t realized that the long Avenue of the Dead was interrupted by this large square depression. I wondered even as I dropped the five feet to the floor whether it had at one time been an underground water chamber or perhaps part of an elaborate drainage system. I had no idea but I was terribly grateful for the feeling of safety when I landed on the floor and pressed against the stonework. I crouched, trembling, sweat spreading down my face, my back, my legs.
I looked around and realized almost immediately, with heart-stopping shock, that I was trapped. Whoever hunted me, loaded gun in hand, could be moving behind the hilly, uneven ground that rose on either side of the Avenue of the Dead, moving until I was in clear view pressed against the side of the depression.
If I climbed out, I would be vulnerable the instant that I rose over the edge. If I didn’t climb out, if I stayed here pressed against the side, I was doomed. But I couldn’t remain here. I was particularly easy to spot in my white double-knit dress with pink patch pockets.
Not so white now, I thought irrelevantly while I scanned the edges of my trap. Not very white at all after my tumble onto the gritty avenue and scramble to get up again.
Quickly, make up your mind. But still I cowered beside the wall, clinging to the illusion of protection, knowing it was illusory.
Should I climb up here, try to run the width of the street and scramble up the hillside and dart behind a clump of green brush? Should I zigzag across this depression, hoping to reach the opposite side, climb up, race past the second depression, and be close enough to some tourists to cry for help?
The huge Pyramid of the Sun rose off to the right. The figures climbing the steps were tiny, far away. If anyone heard a shout, a cry for help, could they possibly know it for what it was?
My shoulder pressed hard against the rock. I strained to see any movement alongside the depression. My heart hammered when something flickered in the corner of my sight. My head jerked around. Panic ebbed. A lizard. Only a lizard. He was black-and-white striped. I watched, fascinated, as bright red loose flesh beneath his neck ballooned out, held for moment, collapsed, ballooned again. Was he warning me? Or was that his means of trying to frighten off enemies? He and I, in that event, had equally ineffective defenses.
I still hesitated, hoping. Would someone come? Please, would someone walk briskly up to peer interestedly into this sunken square? Then I would be safe. Seconds slithered away and with every one that passed my danger grew. Whoever shot at me would have me in sight again soon. It was hot and still against the rough stone wall. No whisper of a breeze stirred here. There was no welcome crunch of nearing footsteps, no amiable chitchat between sightseers.
Shame made me move. I had to try. I owed myself that much. It was better surely to be shot on the run than to cower against a wall. Up, then, and running, no more time for thinking. I rushed to a corner of the depression, reached up, clawed at the top of the wall, pulled myself up, scraping my elbows and knees against the rough rock side. I was up and out of the depression. I lunged to my feet and ran up uneven ground. Five, ten, twenty feet and I reached a line of green bushes that sprouted irregularly alongside the ruins. I dodged behind the first clump of bushes but I kept on running until I couldn’t run another step. I dropped behind a thickly leaved bush and tried, over the whistling rush of my breathing, to hear if anyone moved near, if anyone followed.
I couldn’t be farther than a stone’s throw from the Avenue of the Dead but I might have been a hundred miles distant. I was alone on dusty, rock-strewn ground in the midst of a thick clump of bushes in a small hollow. I couldn’t even see the huge hump of the Pyramid of the Sun, which I knew was to my right across the Avenue of the Dead. There was not a voice, not a footstep, nothing but the ragged dry sound of my breathing as I tried to draw air into starving lungs.
The gunman was on the other side of the street. Since no other shots had come, I had either moved out of his sight or he had lost me when I jumped into the depression.
Was he hunting for me now?
With hands that trembled, I opened my guidebook to the centerfold and studied the map of the pyramids. I should be just there. My finger stopped on pale green paper. I looked around me and all I saw was a small, rough bowl of ground ringed by dusty, dry, gray-green bushes. I didn’t dare go back to the Avenue of the Dead. But how could I find my way back to the road that circled Teotihuacán?
I lost my way almost at once stumbling up one hill and down another, watching for snakes and lizards, stopping often to listen. The luck of lost children must have been with me for I found the parking lot near the museum and that was where Manuel had parked.
I hesitated at the edge of the lot. Only a few cars and buses were parked on the far side of the log near the museum entrance. I saw the soft cream of the Mercedes. I hoped Manuel was waiting in the front seat.
I would be vulnerable when I crossed that almost empty parking log. How far to the Mercedes? One hundred and fifty yards? At least that.
I stood at the edge of the lot in the sparse cover of the brush, afraid again.
I hesitated and so I lived.
Rocks slithered underfoot off to my right. Brush crackled.
I drew back deeper into my little patch of shadow, felt the pinprick sharpness of the gray-green leaves, smelled the musky dryness of the bush. I listened and looked, looked hard, but still I almost missed him.
He, too, waited in shadow, watching the almost empty lot. His faded blue denim shirt was barely discernible in the brush, his gray trousers merged with the shadow. He looked toward the Mercedes.
I saw his face, sharply, clearly, and prayed that he would not sense my nearness.
His face was memorable, black eyebrows that slashed sharply upward, a thin, tough mouth, taut coppery skin, straight black hair and flaring sideburns, powerful shoulders. I recognized him. He had watched me at the airport. I stared at his dark and dangerous face and saw a pattern.
The letter pushed into my hand at the airport.
The dismembered doll.
Shots on the Avenue of the Dead.
Jerry Elliot’s angry insistence that I leave Mexico. At once.
I don’t know how long we stood, each of us taut and still. Then he shrugged off a backpack. I saw a gun in the hand. He put the gun in the pack, slipped the pack back on his shoulder, then moved, stepping as softly as a pad-footed animal. He was moving away from me, his back to me now, crossing the parking lot. He walked to a motorcycle near the far edge of the lot. He handed a coin to the boy who had watched it. He swung the cycle in a slow half circle and passed the Mercedes. If I had doubted before, I had no doubt now. He hung for a moment beside the beautiful cream-colored car, then, abruptly, dust and gravel spitting beneath his wheels, he gunned the cycle and was gone.
I was sure now. He had shot at me. I no longer wondered who had directed the ragged shoeshine boy to thrust a letter in my hand at the airport. Somehow, who knew how, it must have been he who tore a doll into pieces.
Everything was done with one objective, to drive me out of Mexico. To kill me if necessary. Why? At whose direction?
I shivered, though it was warm in the soft heat of the midday sun. I was afraid that I knew the answer. I had run to Mexico to see Jerry Elliot. I had built on one summer afternoon and, obviously, built upon sand.
Who had sworn at me? Who had bruised my arm? Ordered me out of Mexico?
Jerry Elliot.
I saw his thin, intense face in my mind, remembered the ugly twist of his mouth as he shouted at me, the hard pressure of his hand on my arm.
Hot tears slid down my face as the last tiny, hopeful twist of a dream crumbled to nothing. I swiped my hand against my face. I was abruptly consumed by fury. I was a living, breathing, seething mass of anger, disappointment, and outraged pride. So Jerry Elliot would send a gunman after me, make me run and stumble, fall, scrape my knees, ruin my dress, frighten me out of my wits. I began to run again, this time toward the Mercedes. I’d show him.
Manuel was stretched out comfortably on the front seat of the car, drinking a beer. He obviously thought the señorita a little unhinged. I didn’t blame him. My dress was a mess, my legs and elbows scratched, my face flushed with exertion and anger.
“Señorita, what is wrong?”
I hesitated. I almost told him. But he wouldn’t believe me. I knew with a bitter certainty that no one would believe a gunman had stalked me on the Avenue of the Dead, that bullets had popped into the dust beside me. If I tried to tell the guards about it, they would think I was making it up. No one had seen me run and no one apparently heard the shots or an alarm would have been sounded.
I spread my hands wide and shrugged. “I fell down. The ground is rough.” I made some attempt to brush the dust from my dress. I knew the brown stains would never come out.
Manuel opened the back door for me.
Before we started, I told him where I wanted to go.
“Sí, señorita. The Museum of Anthropology. Sí.”
I leaned forward, willing the car to hurry, though, in truth, Manuel certainly drove fast enough. Still I wished he went faster. All the way back to the district, I never wavered in my conviction that Jerry was responsible for every ugly thing that had happened to me since I arrived in Mexico. My first furious anger had hardened into implacable resolution.
At the museum, I opened the door for myself, forestalling Manuel. I told him he need not wait. I would find my own way back to the Ortega house.
I had no eyes for the beauty of the museum today, for the graceful sweep of the shining white steps. No eyes for the grace of the children, dark eyed and eager, as they played near the outside fountain.
I pushed through the door, determined to face him. He couldn’t shoot me down in his office. I would effectively block any further attempts by his agent once I confronted Jerry.
He was in his office and he obviously didn’t expect me. He looked up as I stepped inside. The immediate flicker of distaste on his face infuriated me.
I closed the door behind me with a sharp, hard slam. “You certainly didn’t expect me, did you?”
Before he could say anything, I rushed ahead.
“You obviously think any means are justified to achieve what you think is important. But there are limits and you are damn well going to find out what they are. You picked the wrong person to lean on, buster.”