Chapter 9
* * * *
He didn't have long to wait. The next day, on a humid morning under a sullen gray sky, the Curse of Tlaloc struck again. Lurking in the supposedly deserted work shed was a bloodsucking kinkajou.
Or near enough.
Julie, Gideon, and Abe had walked to the site after an early breakfast at the Mayaland, planning to put in an hour of organizing and sorting before the crew arrived. Gideon had unlocked and opened the door, then quickly put out his arm to block the others as the smell of something rank and wild seeped from the stuffy interior.
'What's wrong?” Julie asked. Then she smelled it too, and stood very still and stiff, peering past him into the dim interior.
Something grunted thickly in the darkness, like a pig rooting, and there was a scrabbling sound, as of clawed feet moving over the limestone mortar floor toward them. The hairs rose at the back of Gideon's neck. All three people stepped instinctively back from the threshold.
From the shadows a furry brown animal emerged tentatively, then stopped and backed away again. About the size of a raccoon, with a ring-striped tail balanced daintily above it, it had a face that looked something like a fox and something like an old basketball sneaker. It looked warily up at them.
'Good morning,” the neatly lettered placard hanging from its neck said. “I am a bloodsucking kinkajou.'
'Good morning to you,” said Abe. “I am a broken-down old professor.'
Julie laughed. “It's a coati, a coatimundi. And it doesn't suck blood, it eats fruits and berries.'
She knelt to coax it near with a fig from her box lunch, and after some indecision the animal approached with rubbery-nosed interest. But as soon as it saw its chance it darted between her and Abe and made for the fence with a rolling, flatfooted gait. In two seconds it was through the opening, and in one more it burst through the jungle's green wall and disappeared.
Opinion as to the perpetrator varied. Julie was sure it was Leo, Gideon thought it just might be a sarcastic comment from Worthy, and Abe wondered wryly if Dr. Gideon Oliver might not be behind it.
Julie stood up for him. “He hasn't been out of my sight since we quit work yesterday,” she declared staunchly.
'Oh, yeah, what about when you took a shower?” Abe wanted to know.
'We took it together,” Gideon told him. “Abe, on my honor as a serious and responsible scientist, I didn't do it.
'Ha,” said Abe, but he switched his vote to Leo.
When the others arrived at eight-thirty and were told about it, Leo was everyone else's favorite suspect too, and was roundly accused, but he swore with his hand on his heart that he'd had nothing to do with it.
'It was the work of the gods,” he said darkly. “An omen.” He cut his voice to a melodramatic whisper and wiggled his eyebrows at Preston. “There are some things we aren't meant to know.'
'Absolutely,” said Preston, for whom this seemed to be a guiding philosophy.
* * * *
'A coatimundi, I love it. Out of sight!” Chuckling heavily, Stan Ard slowly wrote something in a spiral- bound notebook. “Coatimundi, what is that, some kind of lizard?'
Regretting that he had brought it up at all, Gideon told him about the raccoonlike mammal. It was 5:00 p.m. and they were sitting in basket chairs on the shaded, tiled veranda of the hotel, where Gideon had promised Ard an hour-long interview. Earlier, during the lunch break, Abe had told the crew about the free-lance reporter's arrival. He had suggested that they cooperate with him but keep to the facts and try not to say anything sensational; the ever-alert Dr. Villanueva was no doubt on the lookout for lapses of good taste that might appear in print.
Privately, Abe had confided to Gideon that he was worried. A brief talk with Ard had made him wonder about the reporter's judgment, and the man had hedged on what publication would print his article. Abe had considered asking the crew to refuse to talk with him. But he had decided on second thought that Ard was the kind of journalist who wouldn't quit, and might make up his own story if he had to—which was the most worrisome possibility of all.
After five minutes of conversation, Gideon's impression of the reporter was equally unfavorable. Stan Ard was a coarse, blowsy man who gobbled unfiltered cigarettes like someone bent on killing himself as quickly as possible, and who coughed like someone who was succeeding. He had spent the first few minutes of the interview hacking, pounding his chest, and talking about himself, hinting broadly at a shadowy past full of vague and undisclosable associations with the CIA and
He had struck Gideon as not very bright, not very subtle, and not very principled. But he had done his homework. He had a copy of the curse and a binder full of earlier reports about the theft of the codex.
'Look, Stan,” Gideon said uneasily as Ard continued to fill up the page with his round, methodical script, “this thing with the coati was just an in-joke, not something that was intended to make the newspapers. If it's all the same to you...'
Ard stopped writing and held up a hand in acquiescence. “Hey, no problem. Fine, great, we'll forget all about it.” To show his sincerity he ripped out the page, crumpled it, and tossed it into an ashtray. “Okay, Gid, let's get down to brass tacks. Let me tell you what I'm doing here.” He leveled two thick fingers and the cigarette between them at Gideon. “I think you're going to like this.'
Why was it, Gideon wondered idly, that he had never much cared for anyone who called him “Gid'?
'What I'm doing here is I'm doing a three-part feature for
