The Moche Warrior (8 page)

Clive might be up to stealing the odd customer away, but he would not have murdered to get something. Not ever. The fact that he had been interested in the box was, I decided, immaterial. Something much more sinister than Clive was capable of was going on.

On a more mundane level, even with Alex and Clive out of the equation, cleared of any wrongdoing as I was convinced they would be, as long as there was a police investigation under way, my insurance company was not going to pay up, and if they didn’t pay soon, we would go bankrupt.

If that happened, my dear friend Alex would never forgive himself, no matter what I said to him. I took the gold and turquoise ear ornament out of my bag and, unwrapping it carefully, turned it over and over again in my hand. It was the only lead I had, that and a letter from a gallery in New York written to a dead man.

Well, I thought, I told Alex I’m not a quitter, and I’m not. I was not going to sit around waiting for the worst to happen. I picked up the telephone and called Rob’s house. I got the answering machine. I told it everything I knew to this point: the stuff about Smyth-son, my silly bid at the auction, my lingering feelings about Clive, my anxiety about Alex and the store, and how I was afraid my words were being used to condemn him, my curiosity about the vase, the peanut, everything. And as the beeps sounded when my time on the answering machine was running out, I said how sorry I was about the position I had put Rob in. I wondered if he’d hear that part before the machine cut me off. I hoped he would.

Then I picked up the telephone again and called American Airlines.

Spider

The burial ceremony is soon to begin. All is in readiness. The Great Warrior’s body is prepared, clothed in a shirt woven of the finest white cotton, his face painted red, color of blood, color of life.

In the huaca, the chamber is completed, walls lined with adobe bricks, the thick boards of the coffin floor already in place.

The others who will go with him on his journey, the women, dead long ago and bone brittle in their shrouds and cane coffins, are taken from the palace. Soon they will be placed in the tomb.

The fishermen and the sea lion warriors have come in from the sea with their spondylus shells and their offering vessels. They assemble at the foot of the huaca, in the great courtyard, surrounded by the murals of a thousand other ceremonies.

The procession of llamas, backpacks laden with conch shells, draws near. Iguana awaits them. The plumes of his bird headdress shimmer, his lizard face and almond eyes are watchful. The Decapitator also waits.

5

I was in Manhattan before ten the next morning. I’d left a brief note for Moira, walked out to Parliament Street, and hailed a cab for the airport. There I’d taken all the money the bank machine would let me have, not nearly enough as it turned out, and caught the first flight of the day to New York, boarding at the last minute and feeling like a fugitive, which I guess I was in some ways.

I suppose, looking back on what I did from that moment on, that a stranger could be forgiven for thinking that I, not Alex, was the one with the serious bump on the head. Be that as it may, irrationally or not, I did the only thing I could think of. I went to find the origin of the box of objects that I was convinced was at the root of all my problems. I had packed only a small carry-on bag, fully intending to be back in Toronto by early evening, before anyone, most particularly Sergeant Lewis, had noticed I was gone.

Ancient Ways Gallery was located on the West Side, close to the American Museum of Natural History. Cautiously I had the cab drive past it (there was no sign of life at the place at this hour) and then let me out at the museum. I’d called from the airport: A recording told me gallery hours were noon to six Tuesday to Friday, noon to five on Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Partly to kill time, and partly to do research—I was not, after all, in Manhattan to take in the sights—I went into the museum and headed for the Americas section.

The card had said that the stolen pot was a pre-Columbian replica. That covered a lot of territory. Even the words “made in Peru” on it didn’t narrow it down completely. The only Peruvian pre-Columbian civilization I knew anything about was the Inca, but I knew enough to understand that there had been lots of civilizations in that part of the world before the Inca empire had its heyday. I worked my way quickly through the Mexican and Central American sections, pausing just long enough to confirm that the pot, as I remembered it, didn’t fit there. The artifacts from South American cultures were located at the end of the section.

It took about an hour, but eventually I had a name I felt reasonably comfortable with. Just to make sure, I took a quick cab ride across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and took in the art of the Americas section there as well. By the time I’d seen what there was to see there, I was convinced I was on the right track.

I went to the museum bookstore, purchased a couple of books on the subject, and headed for the café for a coffee, a muffin, and a quick read. I had what I wanted.

Moche.

The Moche, I learned, were a people who ruled over the north coast of Peru during the first 500 years of the Common Era, long before the Inca had ever been heard from. The empire stretched from the Piura Valley in the north to the Huarmey Valley in the south, from a capital city which is now called Cerro Blanco. The Moche culture is known in archaeological circles for its engineering feats, primarily the building of fabulous adobe pyramids and lengthy canals which brought water from the mountains to the coastal desert where their empire was located; its political mastery of a large area as one of the first definable states in that part of the world; and artistically for masterpieces of craftsmanship in pottery and metals.

There was now absolutely no question in my mind about it. I had seen with my own eyes pottery that matched the stolen pot in style and execution, and ear flares of gold and turquoise that were, to my untrained eye, identical in style to the little ear flare I had in my handbag. And if I needed further corroboration, I had it. The books I had purchased showed photographs of a magnificent necklace of gold and silver beads, each bead in the shape of a perfect peanut.

As carefully as I could, I took the little ear flare out of my bag to take a better look at it. The little gold man with his gold scepter stared back at me mutely. I turned the piece over and over again in my hand. “So what do you have to say for yourself?”‘ I softly asked the little man.

In my business, you learn to spot fakes. You have to. The point is that you can take as many courses about antiques as you like, and I have taken several, but when it comes right down to it, you just have to develop a sixth sense about objects. I’ve learned to look at furniture, for example, to look at the metal hardware, the way the boards are planed, the kinds of nails and other fastenings that are used. But a really good craftsman can fool even a museum curator, and in the end you rely on your gut on some of the things you see. Sometimes, even after you’ve checked out everything you can think of, objects still just don’t feel right, and, taught by an expert, my friend Sam Feldman, I’ve learned to go with this feeling.

Before he opened his own gallery, Sam was a museum conservator. He told me that in his early days at the institution, a mere neophyte, he’d gotten the feeling a particular artifact, the centerpiece in an exhibit, was a fake. He tried to tell the curator of the exhibit and was roundly chastised. On his last day of employment at the museum, now a noted expert in his field, he went back to the curator and told him again. Once again Sam was told he was wrong, but he found on his next casual visit to the museum that the offending piece had been removed from the exhibit. “You see!” he told his students. “I was right. They will never admit it, but I was right. That’s why you go with your gut.”

This time the process was reversed. This object was supposed to be a fake. Maybe it wasn’t.

The piece looked in pretty good condition for something that was at least 1500 years old. Generally I would have said it looked way too good. The gold was nice and shiny, and overall the piece was in very good repair. But there were places where the gold, probably hammered on, was worn away, and the turquoise inlay was not of a uniform color. Carefully I edged a fingernail into one of the cracks between the inlays. There was dirt, but I wasn’t sure that proved anything. A good forger would know enough to rub a little dirt into the piece.

The question was, where had my little friend been for 1500 years? If he’d been well cared for in a museum, that might explain his relatively pristine condition. Or if he’d been hidden away somewhere, in a tomb for example. This might explain it. The Moche lived in the coastal desert, and arid conditions would limit corrosion.

For a while I just sat there looking at him. He was really sweet, if it’s possible to say such a thing about a little gold man on a pre-Columbian ear flare. His eyes bulged out of carefully cut eye sockets, and around his neck he had a necklace, ceremonial I would have thought, made up of tiny heads: owls most likely. Each of the beads had been made separately, then strung together, so they moved when you touched them. The scepter could easily be removed from his hand. His sturdy little legs showed muscle markings that were quite extraordinary. Under his nose was an ornament in the shape of a crescent, and it too moved when you touched it. I thought you could easily imagine the body under the garments, and that my little man could even be said to have a personality.

I reached my conclusion, and I couldn’t really explain why I hadn’t done so before this, except, of course, that I’d purchased it from a reputable auction house. The point was, no one could afford to make such a little masterpiece these days, replica or not. No one could afford to forge it, either. And even if someone had the patience and time and resources to do so, most of us couldn’t afford to buy it. The vase and the peanut might or might not be genuine. I didn’t have them anymore, so I couldn’t say. This little man, however, was genuine Moche, and Edmund Edwards had some explaining to do.

Before I left the museum, I went into the gift shop and bought a large pin in a Celtic pattern. I asked the saleswoman for a box—a big box—for it, saying it was a gift. She was very obliging in finding the right size box. On the steps outside, I put the brooch on my shirt and took the little gold man, carefully wrapped in tissue, and put him into the box with the card identifying it as a reproduction Celtic brooch. It wouldn’t fool anyone who knew anything whatsoever, but I was getting nervous walking around with this potentially very valuable antiquity in my purse.

By ten to twelve I was in position across the street and down a bit from Ancient Ways. It was a very warm August day in Manhattan, and it felt as if rain, perhaps a thunderstorm, would soon blow through. About five minutes to noon, an older man, grey of hair and unsteady of gait, shuffled down the street and opened the security gate with some difficulty. He had on way too many clothes for the heat of the day, as older people often do. It looked from that distance as if he had seriously arthritic hands and knees. He opened the door, but closed it immediately behind him, and the closed sign remained hanging in the door for several minutes.

Finally, at about twenty after twelve, he came and unlocked the front door, and turned the sign around to show the place was open for business. I crossed the street and entered.

Even by my standards of housekeeping, which let’s just say will never earn me a Nancy Neatness Award, the place was a mess. The carpet was old and worn, and quite frankly dirty. The desk at the back, where the old man sat, was covered in junk, papers strewn haphazardly about, coffee stains on his invoice book and everything else. He fit right in: His jacket looked as if it had gravy stains on the lapel, and his hair, what was left of it, was unkempt and unclean. Under his jacket, he wore a grey knit vest, a moth hole prominently featured. As I stood there, the phone rang, and the old man pushed stacks of paper around to find it. By the time he’d located it, on the floor under the desk, it had stopped ringing.

The merchandise was impressive enough, what you could see of it. Glass cases lined the walls, each of them packed with treasures. On top of each of the cases were various objects too large to be placed within: some very impressive African sculptures, including what looked to be a Benin bronze figure, and some really lovely wood carvings. There was no particular theme that I could see, except that everything was old, very old, and to my eye at least, authentic. In the middle of the room was a large table, also piled high with merchandise.

I idly picked up a small figure, a lovely little blue faience statue about six inches high, and had a closer look. It was, I knew, a
ushabti,
a representation of a deceased person, probably one of some importance, that would have been placed in an Egyptian tomb many hundreds if not thousands of years ago, to be a servant of sorts to the deceased. It is always fascinating to hold a few thousand years of history in the palm of your hand, but one always has to ask the question in these circumstances: Is it legal? I turned the figure over. On the back were tiny little numbers in black ink: museum catalogue number, I thought. Possibly deaccessioned, possibly not.

I turned toward the desk to see the proprietor’s eyes, almost hidden behind thick, thick glasses, focused on me. On the wall behind him were a couple of old prints and right over his head an extraordinary blade mounted on black fabric and framed in gold. It was not a knife as we know it, with a thin blade and handle. Rather it was one piece, almost bell-shaped, with a thick handle that led to a crescent-shaped blade. It was about six inches high, gold in color, with a string of tiny turquoise beads threaded through a hole in the handle. It was, I was almost certain, a
tumi,
a ceremonial blade used by the ancient peoples of Peru, perhaps for sacrificial purposes.