“Where we going?”
“To my place.”
Underway, he lit two cigarettes, handed one to the woman and said, “Thanks for not darting off on the bike.”
“It’s not like I had a choice.”
“Sure you did,” he said. “You could have made a break for it.”
She flicked ashes out the window.
“You had the faster bike,” she said. “We both knew that.”
River smiled.
“You’re smarter than I thought.”
“Tell me something,” she said. “If I would have made a break for it, would you have killed me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
She nodded.
“Fair enough.”
River took a long drag, blew smoke and said, “The more I think about it, we’ll bury them tonight after dark. You never told me which one of them you were with.”
“The asshole.”
“The one with the chain?”
“Yeah, him.” A pause, then she said, “My name’s January, if you’re still interested.”
River looked over to see if she was messing with him.
“January? Like the month?”
Right.
That.
“January James,” she said. “You can call me Susan though if you want.”
“January’s fine,” River said. “Actually, I like it.”
19
Wilde took another look at the mysterious woman and got pulled into her eyes momentarily before he broke away and opened the envelope. Inside was a wrinkled, dirty piece of paper. He unfolded it and found some kind of handwritten picture.
“What is it?”
“It’s a map.”
“A map to what?”
“To tombs.”
“Tombs?”
Right.
Tombs.
“Where’d you get it?”
The woman spotted the coffee pot on the credenza and said, “Can I buy a cup?”
Wilde got her fixed up. She took a noisy sip and said, “What do you know about the pyramids in Mexico?”
“I thought the pyramids were in Egypt.”
“They are, but there are some in Mexico too,” she said. “There was a civilization that lived in central Mexico, about twemty-five miles from where Mexico City is located today. The best guess is that it began somewhere around 200 BC and ended in the 7th or 8th century, meaning it was around for almost a thousand years. Who they were remains one of the biggest archeological mysteries today.”
“How do you know all this? Are you an archeologist?”
“Not officially,” she said. “Officially I’m a lawyer here in Denver. I work at Colder amp; Jones.”
Wilde nodded.
He’d heard of them.
They were one of the bigger firms in Denver with offices on the upper half of the Daniels amp; Fisher Tower over on 16th Street.
That meant she had money.
She could afford his services.
“Unofficially,” she added, “I dabble with the ruins down in Mexico. I don’t have any official archeological training but I tag along with whoever will have me. I’ve spent two or three months a year down there for the last four years. The site itself is enormous and largely unexplored, even to this day. There are two large pyramids. One’s called the Pyramid of the Sun and the other’s called the Pyramid of the Moon. They’re located some distance apart. Running between them is a long street, for lack of a better name, that’s called the Avenue of the Dead. There are a number of structures on that street and, indeed, structures emanate out in all directions for some distance. It’s probably the biggest archeological site in the world and 90 percent of it is still virgin. Most structures have yet to be entered.”
“Interesting.”
“They call it Teotihuacan. Can I have some more coffee?”
Sure.
No problem.
Wilde liked her voice. Every sentence was a melody, every word a note. The movement of her lips was pure sex.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and conclude that this map has something to do with that archeological site,” Wilde said.
London smiled.
“Good limb climbing,” she said. “Like I said before, almost nothing is known about this civilization. The biggest mystery of all is what brought it to an end. We do know that almost every prominent wooden structure was burned to the ground. Some think the city was conquered and burned down by enemies. Others think that the lower class got repressed to the point of revolution and burned down their repressors. Still others think that it was nothing more than an accidental fire that spread from building to building. No one really knows.”
Wilde lit a cigarette.
“This is actually sort of interesting,” he said.
“When you really get into it it’s absolutely fascinating,” London said. “In a very slow kind of a way, but fascinating nonetheless. Last year, they began to work into the interior of one of the pyramids. Not much progress has been made yet, but what they found so far was the remains of humans, together with birds in cages and various other animals in cages. The thinking is that these were all sacrifices that took place during the construction.”
“Sacrifices for what?”
“The usual,” she said. “To the gods, whoever they were, to make the construction go smooth or whatever. Most civilizations evolving during that time frame did the same thing. The Romans and Egyptians are the best examples.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Skulls and dead birds,” he said. “What a way to go, be sacrificed to some god who doesn’t even exist.”
