Whisper Death (10 page)

Hemingway had been wrong, McGuire decided after observing the elite residents of a community structured entirely upon wealth and status. The difference between the very rich and the rest of the world was more than money. It was attitude and confidence. It was class arrogance.

An overweight man in a lemon-coloured jacket worn over blue slacks in a complex paisley pattern minced past McGuire's view, holding a martini at eye-level ahead of him. It certainly isn't taste, McGuire mused.

A small burst of polite applause sounded from the doorway and McGuire watched, amused, as the mayor of Palm Springs, a former lounge singer and comedian, entered with a stunning blonde woman perhaps half his age. As he moved through the crowd, the mayor had something to say to each person he passed, his comments punctuated with a handshake, a back slap, a ruffling of hair or a joke.

There was a new wave of applause from the entrance. Eyes turned from the mayor to the front of the gallery; the mayor, clearly upstaged, brought his hands together once without enthusiasm before seizing a drink from a passing waiter.

The crowd parted to make way for Glynnis Vargas, tilting their heads to whisper to each other as she passed. Donald Mercer escorted her, her arm in his, beaming at each guest in turn.

She was the woman in the portrait again, but her raw sexuality was diluted by the formal lines of her dress and the elegance of her carriage. Her hair had been swept up on her head; diamond earrings swayed like heavy fruit as she walked, creating fire at her neck. She wore a green satiny dress which managed to be both tasteful and alluring as it moved with and against her body. Men's eyes lingered on her a moment or two longer than necessary as she passed; women assessed her figure, seeking flaws and finding few.

She approached the mayor, who quickly swallowed his drink and set his glass aside. They shook hands, smiled, and brushed each other's cheeks with their lips. Mercer grasped the mayor's hand in his, seizing the politician's elbow with his free hand, each man laughing in turn at the other's greeting.

Glynnis Vargas refused a drink from a waiter, spoke to a few guests who approached her, then turned to offer a brief, silent smile across the room to McGuire.

McGuire realized she had known he was standing there since her arrival.

The string quartet, which had ceased abruptly when the mayor entered, resumed playing. Mozart's music accompanied Glynnis Vargas as she walked casually in McGuire's direction, pausing briefly to acknowledge greetings from guests as she passed.

“I'm pleased you decided to come, Mr. McGuire,” she said, offering her hand. “I had my doubts.”

“So did I.”

“You seem to be enjoying the music. Are you?”

“Very much,” McGuire replied. The mayor had separated himself from Donald Mercer, who was looking around for Glynnis. “All I seem to hear on the radio in this town is Muzak or mariachi music.”

“Acquiring money and acquiring taste are two quite different pursuits, Mr. McGuire.” She raised her hand in response to a greeting from an elderly couple standing near a bronze replica of Don Quixote, the old Spaniard's sad eyes focused on a distant windmill. “It's Mozart,” she continued, her eyes still sweeping the room. “His Prussian quartets. He wrote them for the king of Prussia, who was a very good amateur cellist. It must have been wonderful when men of power took time to develop a cultural facet to their lives. Most people in this room would have trouble playing a kazoo.”

“You're not really one of them, are you?” McGuire said. He was watching Donald Mercer edge his way across the room toward them, a drink in his hand.

“No. I never will be entirely. Because I'm still a newcomer. And because I have different values.”

“They seem to respect you a great deal.”

“They respect my money and my taste,” she said, turning to look at him directly. “That's how they measure people in this town. Nothing else matters.”

“Didn't think you'd be here, McGuire.” Donald Mercer unbuttoned his raw-silk jacket, revealing a pink patterned cummerbund which managed to restrain the thrust of his stomach. He swept his arm in an arc, encompassing the room, the guests and the musicians. “Well, what do you think? I'll tell you, McGuire, you add up all the equity in this room right now and you'd have enough money to buy your own country, I swear to God.”

“Have you seen the paintings, Mr. McGuire?” Glynnis Vargas asked, slipping her arm through his. “They are, after all, the purpose of this evening's event. Let me show them to you. Excuse us, will you Donald?” She leaned quickly to graze Mercer's cheek with her lips, then touch it gently with her hand as though reassuring him. “We'll be just a moment.”

McGuire felt the eyes of the other guests on him as they left the room together, the celebrity-watchers at the entrance parting respectfully. In the public foyer, he hesitated. “Where are the paintings?” he asked.

“Forget them,” she replied. “They're hideous. I want to visit my babies instead.”

She led him through the foyer, returning the greetings of late-arriving guests. “Through here,” she said. “Beyond the natural science wing.”

A brass plaque near a large open doorway announced “The Getti Vargas Court.” She touched the raised letters fondly with one hand as they entered the dimly lit room, passing a uniformed security guard who stepped aside and nodded before resuming his rounds.

“Look at them,” she said, freeing herself from McGuire's arm and approaching a display of small figurines. “They're worth all those ugly bronze and granite lumps back there. Don't you think so?”

McGuire bent to study the polished ceramic figures arrayed along a low shelf. They represented six men and six women, each totally individual in facial characteristics, dress and pose. One was a man seated on a crude chair, his left leg ending in a stump, holding a wooden staff so its tip was just free of the ground. Beside him stood a woman with a baby in her arms; next to her, a warrior god glared back at the world with vigorous intelligence in his eyes, and strength in every line of his face and sinew of his limbs. McGuire was impressed with the primitive yet exquisite craftsmanship in each figurine—an elderly man leaning forward on a walking stick, a woman bearing ears of corn in her arms, a muscular warrior with a ceremonial dagger extended in a threatening gesture.

In other primitive art McGuire had seen, facial characteristics were bland and homogenous, more concerned with presenting a racial ideal than individual features. He thought of Egyptian pharaohs, Aztec gods and Indian warriors, each depicted as virtual clones of others of their race. But these figurines were created from life with an effortless grace that belied the immense skill and talent of the artist.

There was more to their appeal than the realism of their features. Each figure had been painted, fired and glazed in brilliant shades of ochre, green, coral and crimson, their skin tones in rich copper.

“I've never seen anything like them,” McGuire said. He leaned to examine the figures of a boy and girl holding hands and wearing identically patterned dress-like garments.

“There's never been anything like them here or anywhere,” Glynnis Vargas replied. She knelt beside McGuire, and the aroma of her perfume diverted his attention from the figurines. “Do you have any idea where they're from?” she asked. “Or how old they are?”

“They look Mexican,” he said. “Am I close?”

“Barely. They're Mochica. Northern Peru,” she added when McGuire frowned at her, not understanding. “They were made a thousand years before Columbus arrived. They're burial figurines, created to keep company with the dead on their journey to the next world. That's the only reason they survived the pillage of Pizarro and the other barbarians who followed him. Because they weren't gold. And they were buried in tombs, out of sight of thieves.”

She stood and walked to the end of the shelf, where the last figurine stood apart from the others in lighted splendour on a low pedestal. “I own almost half of the world's entire collection of Mochica ceramic art. My husband collected them. I donated these when I arrived here after his death. In return, the museum insisted I accept a position on its board of directors.” She brightened suddenly. “Look at this one. Come here, Mr. McGuire, and look at this beautiful, beautiful woman.”

McGuire straightened, the cracking of his knees cutting through the silence in the room. He walked to where Glynnis Vargas stood, gently stroking the last figurine.

It was a young woman, naked except for a patterned garment hanging low on her hips. One hand was raised in a gesture of greeting. The other hand was poised at her midriff, either concealing or caressing her navel. Her features were delicate and finely formed in the ceramic material. She wore a ring through her nose and several rings through the lobes of her ears.

“Look at her expression,” Glynnis Vargas whispered. “Look at her face.”

McGuire bent and looked. She seemed about to smile, but there was a sadness in her eyes.

“I call her the Mona Lisa of the Andes,” Glynnis said. “Don't you think she has the same sweet, sad look?”

McGuire nodded. “How did they get such detail in the faces?” he asked. “And why haven't the colours faded after all these years?”

“We don't know.” She stood and looked sadly back at the last figurine. “Their civilization was absorbed by lesser peoples. Farmers, traders, religious fanatics like the Tiahuanacans, who lacked artistic talent, and by the Chimus who were even less gifted. We know virtually nothing of the Mochicas except what we can learn through their art. Eventually all the people in that area of Peru became part of the Inca kingdom. The Incas worked almost exclusively in gold. Which, of course, was the source of their downfall.” She glanced at her watch. “We had better go back. The others will think we're being terribly inconsiderate.”

“Do you really care what others think?” McGuire asked. His eyes remained on the figurine of the young girl.

“No,” Glynnis Vargas replied. “But I made a decision to live here and I believe anyone who joins a community has an obligation to become a part of it. I learned that when I moved to Brazil with my husband. And I don't see any reason to change it now.”

As they returned through the large open gallery, she paused and smiled at McGuire. “You really saw something in those figures, didn't you?” she said.

“Yes,” McGuire replied. The abstract oils and acrylics looked crude and contrived in comparison with the ancient ceramic art they were leaving behind. “Not as much as you. My only cultural taste is in music. But you were right. They were worth seeing.”

“Good,” she said. “That's why I wanted them displayed here. So people like you could enjoy them for their own sake.”

Entering the sculpture gallery again, she touched his arm gently and left to join Donald Mercer and two couples who were laughing in an exaggerated fashion at one of Mercer's quips. McGuire chose a canapé from one passing waiter, a glass of wine from another, and strolled to the corner near the string quartet. He stood absorbing the music, but his eyes were on Glynnis Vargas as Mercer led her from one group of guests to another, managing to say something amusing to each. At one point, when Glynnis Vargas turned to McGuire, she rolled her eyes in boredom and smiled.

She was no fragile beauty, McGuire decided, choosing his third glass of wine. Definitely not a woman whose only contribution to the world was her appearance.

He wondered why she had taken such pride in showing him the figurines. Maybe, McGuire mused to himself, because you're unlike the others. You're broke, you don't live here, and you have nothing to be pretentious about.

Or maybe she just felt like slumming for a few minutes. Which, he decided, was a more realistic explanation. He set his empty wine glass on a side table and turned to the entrance just as two security guards shouldered their way through the watchers at the open doorway. They were led by a slim, moustached man in a tuxedo who McGuire had noticed when he and Glynnis Vargas passed through the foyer on their way to the figurines. The man's moustache appeared to have been trimmed with a scalpel; his hands, which had fluttered in emphasis with his exaggerated greeting to Glynnis Vargas, were impeccably manicured. McGuire assumed he was the museum curator or manager.

But the man had lost his regal bearing. Perspiring heavily, his mouth tight, he stood in the entrance shifting nervously from one foot to the other, clenching and unclenching his hands. Finally he spoke sharply to the security guards behind him before approaching Glynnis Vargas.

Donald Mercer had just guided two men toward an empty corner, walking between them, his hand against the back of each. They were laughing quietly, chuckling in anticipation of the punch line to one of Mercer's stories. So when the curator arrived at Glynnis Vargas's side and whispered a few frantic words to her, Mercer didn't see her face cloud over and her hand fly to her mouth in an expression of horror.

Glynnis Vargas suddenly bolted for the door, the man in the tuxedo trotting to match her pace and motioning for the uniformed security guards to follow.

McGuire exited the gallery a few steps behind; Mercer was well into his story, his back to the entrance, unaware of their departure.

Glynnis Vargas strode through the painting gallery, the tuxedoed man a servile step in back of her. Ahead of them, a third security guard barred the entrance to the Getti Vargas Court. He stepped quickly aside as Glynnis Vargas swept past as though he were invisible.

McGuire was now barely a pace behind, and he nodded authoritatively to the guard who hesitated just long enough for McGuire to enter the sculpture court. There the long line of Mochica figurines waited patiently in the darkness, as they had been created to do.

In the dim light of the narrow room, Glynnis Vargas stared open-mouthed at the last figurine in the row, the young woman on the low pedestal. She was now headless, her slender neck snapped cleanly at the shoulders. Glynnis Vargas reached to retrieve the figurine's head from the shelf, rolling it between her fingertips.