Dancing with the Tiger Page 15

  Anna asked the name of the artist.

  “Mi primo. I have one other mask. Very special. Wait here.”

  The woman evaporated into the gloom. Anna sighed. She should never have come. Just when she’d decided to buy the Moor out of charity, then make a graceful exit, the crone returned and thrust a heavy mask into her hands, saying: “Very old and valuable. Stone.”

  It was the death mask.

  It couldn’t be, but it was. Montezuma’s death mask—or an excellent copy. She turned it over, incredulous. Snakes. Warts. Red back. Splintering resin.

  Anna searched the old woman’s face. Her yellow, bloodshot eyes. She might have hepatitis. She might be insane. The click of bugs grew louder. The dog panted. It was too much. The murder and now this. Anna couldn’t figure all the angles, conjugate verbs, decide what to do.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said again, buying time.

  This mask must be a reproduction. A knock-off. The Tepito gunman had taken a photo of Malone’s mask, made a copy, which had somehow wound up with this lunatic crone in an outhouse in San Juan del Monte. The crone must come from a family of frauds. No doubt Daniel Ramsey had stood in this very hovel and handed over great sums for worthless art.

  “Turquesa. Muy vieja. ¿Cuánto me da?”

  “I am sorry.” Anna said. “No puedo comprarla.”

  Her rejection set off a torment of wailing. The smell of basil and cigar lodged against the back of Anna’s throat. She fought back a gag.

  “Mi princesa. I make you good price. Fifteen hundred pesos.”

  Anna laid the mask on the floor. “Señora, this mask is not authentic.” Her voice gentle, but firm. “It’s a reproduction.”

  As soon as Anna had said the reasonable thing, it lost all power to convince. A glorious vision blossomed in its place. The looter had been wrong: The Tepito gunman didn’t work for Thomas Malone. He worked for himself. He’d brought the mask to the mountains, to this woman, who was selling it because she didn’t know its real value. Or she was scared of Reyes. Or she was desperate for money. All of which meant Anna had been seducing the wrong man, barking up the wrong chapel.

  Montezuma’s mask was here.

  Ambition surged inside her. A desire not unlike cocaine, the toxic dribble that teases the back of the throat. She knelt, picked up the mask. Its good eye bored into her. Take me before someone else does.

  Anna pulled out a thousand pesos. Her hands were clumsy. “Bueno, señora. This is all the money I have, but if it is sufficient, I will—”

  The woman snatched the money and stuffed it in her empty bra. “Que Dios te bendiga.” She lifted a large wooden cross off the wall. Anna assumed this, too, was for sale, but the old woman swung the cross at Anna’s face. She ducked but the edge of the wood caught her cheek. With a cry, Anna turned and ran out of the hut, across the yard, around a lumbering pig. I am going to die here. Óscar Reyes Carrillo is going to jump out of that hut with a gun.

  Yard. Door. Street. Dirt road. Potholes. Only then did she dare turn around. The hag had returned to the fence, tobacco fingers twinkling as she crossed herself, mustard eyes rolling as she recited the incantatory prayer whose sorrow always filled Anna with unease. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen.

  A short woman with a worried expression passed Anna on the road. In one hand, she carried white day lilies. In the other, a man’s wallet.

  Walking back to Emilio Luna’s house, Anna composed herself, slowed her breathing. Best not to tell Salvador about the mask. Fact: People lie most often to the people they are closest to. Another fact: Every fourth conversation contains a falsehood. Besides, this wasn’t a blatant lie, but a lie of omission. A slinky black dress of a lie. A push-up bra. A cigarette snuck in an alley. An affair in the guest room. Two people in a single bed.

  What happened to your cheek?

  I snagged it on a rosebush.

  Did you get one?

  One what?

  A rose?

  No.

  Next time, then. Salvador would smile. Next time you’ll get even.

  A terrifying wail emanated from the old woman’s house. Anna kept going, chanting her own sort of Rosary, a prayer that shot into the sky, a firecracker calling out to God, who answered only in smoke. I have the mask now. Now I have the mask.

  —

  When Salvador dropped her off back at the hotel, he invited her to visit his studio the next day. He was shy, almost awkward, until he kissed her. The kiss was gentle, but sure, and it spread through her body, warm, liquid, and she thought, The simple things are the most amazing. When he pulled back, he laid his hand over her cut cheek, as if he could heal her wound.

  twenty-seven THE COLLECTOR

  Daniel Ramsey read Anna’s text five times, parsing each word, all four of them—Just wrapping things up—convincing himself this was good news. You couldn’t wrap up unless you had accomplished what you’d set out to do. The word “just” was particularly reassuring. Just checking out of the hotel, perhaps. Buying souvenirs. But Anna had never come out and said, I have the mask. She was being evasive, making him wait to hear the long version in person.

  He walked to the window. Frozen ground. Empty trees. The hush of the cold. Anna would be home soon.

  And then what?

  The Ramsey Collection would have a magnificent centerpiece. Word would travel quickly. Newspapers. The Web. DEATH MASK OF MONTEZUMA UNEARTHED. The shameless Addison Rockwell would call, tripping over himself, apologizing for the previous misunderstanding, proposing lunch at the Carlyle. Iced teas and club sandwiches all around. Rockwell’s aristocratic countenance would express the museum’s desire to renew discussion of the Rose White Ramsey Gallery. This time Daniel would set the terms. The book reprinted with corrections. An opening with international publicity. Symposium. Lecture tour. Yes, he wanted it all. Hot damn. There was reason to celebrate.

  And Anna said, I mean it. No ice.

  She was right. Many a slip between the cup and the lip. Maybe the looter wanted more money, or Malone or Reyes had gotten there first. How would Malone know about the mask? He wouldn’t. How would Reyes know? He just would. Mexico City was a tough place and Anna was so damn pretty, like her mother. He should never have sent her—no, he hadn’t sent her, she’d taken off, but still—his only child meeting a drug addict to purchase art on the black market while he sat snug in his living room, cowardly daydreaming of press conferences and punch bowls. What kind of father was he? What kind of monster?

  And Anna said, I mean it. No ice.

  He hadn’t been entirely truthful with Anna. He had smuggled masks through customs. He had his regular tricks. You were allowed two bottles at duty-free liquor, but he’d buy four. When challenged, he’d argue. By the time they’d confiscated his Kahlúa, the line was backed up a mile and they would wave him through. Rose was a master of diversion, feigning fainting spells, the flu. The one time authorities searched his bags, he’d claimed he was opening a Mexican restaurant and needed wall decorations. He’d waved the phony blueprints he kept in his bag. He also carried fake provenance papers, as a last resort. Bottom line: Customs wanted drugs, not art. Still, it was so stressful his nose bled. He’d stop at the bar to calm his nerves.

  And then they did get ugly, though not in the way he’d ever imagined. It was June, rainy season, the landscape lush and green. He was in the hotel bar, La Campana, nursing a queasy stomach and reading the wilted pages of a magazine, when Manuel López burst through the door, his face flushed yet pale, insisting the señor was needed on the phone. There had been an accident. Just then, the wind chimes rang, a metallic cascade of sound.

  And the horror after that. The terrible logistics. The remains, yes, the body remained in a white-tiled funeral home festooned with crosses and Virgins, as if those things helped, and the abuela who placed her wrinkled
hand on his, how good it felt to be touched, taken care of in this small way, the flight home, no memory, the urn he had pushed into the closet, how he’d sent Anna away to school so she would stop wandering room-to-room, touching her mother’s clothes, smelling her soap, and the nights, the long nights after, finding dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up after dinner, listening for a cheery voice that never came.

  How did everyone carry on, knowing all they were going to lose?

  Just wrapping things up. And that strange second text, something about sex. What in the world? Maybe that was what people called spam.

  February sank into his bones.

  The birds attacked the empty feeder.

  The ruined book sat on the coffee table.

  The beauty one finds in fine art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of all human endeavor. John Paul Getty. His book was called The Joys of Collecting, but he was a lonely man. Estranged from his five children, he had refused to pay his grandson’s ransom until the Italian captors mailed him the boy’s ear. Getty would have wanted nothing to do with a death mask. He disliked funerary objects, because he was afraid to die.

  Ramsey went to the bedroom. In moments of grief, he sat with Rose’s urn and it comforted him. He slid open the door and reached, scurried his hand. The shelf was empty. Her journal was gone, too.

  Anna.

  He collapsed on the bed with an anguished sigh. He wasn’t ready to give her up. The urn was not Rose, of course, just a symbol of Rose, but without a tangible object, all he had were memories, voices harder and harder to hear.

  He wanted a drink. He gave himself permission. One drink to settle his nerves, one toast to the woman he loved. But he had nothing to drink. He’d have to go out. The Subaru sat in the driveway. All he had to do was scrape off the frost.

  PART TWO

  I go everywhere with my eyes closed and two

  eyeballs painted on my face. There is a woman

  across the court with no face at all.

  —Denis Johnson, “The Incognito Lounge”

  one THE LOOTER

  Heaven wasn’t at all like he’d pictured it. No grassy fields or cool mountain lakes. No sex, no beer, no fishing. No, heaven felt like being skinned alive and looked a lot like Mexico. Cinder-block room, donkey blanket for a curtain. His angel was a stocky Mexican with a kindly expression, butch haircut, five or six earrings running up her right ear, breasts the size of mangoes. She sat on a stool like a milkmaid. A dog barked in the distance. The air smelled like dirt.

  The looter closed his eyes, opened them, expecting this vision to disappear, but nothing budged. His whole body hurt. Neck, back, but mostly his skin, what was left of it. His legs and arms flowed with a pink river of pus dotted with half-cooked scabs. He remembered the cement. The tub.

  “Where am I?”

  The woman smiled, said nothing. He found his Spanish, asked again.

  This time she answered. “In my house.”

  “Is this heaven?”

  The woman laughed. “Hardly. The narcos buried you in the bathtub. I cooked them lunch and they went on their way. The cement had almost set, but you were still breathing. I called my brother. He brought acid, and we dug you out. I have been treating your wounds. You have been feverish with infection. I am doing my best.”

  The looter lay back, closed his eyes. It was a lot, not to be dead. More than enough for one day. His body trembled. He could still smell the cement, feel the cool ooze, see the daggers of sweat on the men’s shirts. Tears wet his eyelids, followed by a violent rush of yellow lava that raced up his throat. Bile poured down his chin onto his stomach. He could do nothing to stop it. The woman wiped his lips, the wet on his chest. She offered him a joint and he smoked it.

  two ANNA

  It was dark by the time Anna got back to the Puesta del Sol with the death mask. A white moth beat against her window. On the patio, a Norwegian family played cards with their towheaded children. Anna lowered the blinds, propped the mask on the bureau as if it needed fresh air. When she undressed to shower, it watched her. Montezuma’s death mask. The prospect was both thrilling and vile.

  She called her father, eager to share the good news. He didn’t pick up. This was typical. He left his phone in the car half the time. Let the battery run out. Just as well. Better to wait for Gonzáles to confirm the mask. Authentication before celebration. No more Grasshopper debacles.

  Anna lay in bed, placed the mask over her face and pretended she was dead. It felt peaceful. The weight on her forehead. Her limbs giving way. Anna was ten when her mother died and she’d been surprised how life had gone on. Holidays came. Lilacs bloomed. People ate lunch, got married, outgrew their shoes. At school, teachers whispered into her scalp, Let me know if you need anything. What was she supposed to need? In class, words drifted across the page without meaning. Numbers read like Chinese. In the restroom, Anna scrutinized her reflection. She looked the same.

  And Salvador? She would visit his studio tomorrow. What did he think of her—if he thought of her at all? It had felt so good when he’d held her in San Juan del Monte. Not an exorcism. A blessing.

  —

  That evening, she called Lorenzo Gonzáles. His housekeeper answered.

  “El señor no está aquí.”

  Anna asked when he’d be back.

  “Tomorrow, but he has no free appointments.”

  “Tomorrow at one is perfect.”

  “No, I am sorry. He is busy all day.”

  “Thank you, I will come tomorrow at one, then. Please tell him it concerns a mask.”

  Anna hung up before the woman could object. There were advantages to speaking bad Spanish.

  —

  Anna showed up early for work at the Malones’ as if nothing had changed, except, of course, everything had. Hidden in her top dresser drawer was the most valuable pre-Columbian relic to surface in the past century. Or not. Until she knew which, it made no sense to sever ties with the collector.

  Thomas did not acknowledge their motel tryst. No fond glance or touch, no prurient wink. He greeted her with a brusque “Welcome, Ms. Bookman. We have a lot to do.” If anything, he acted unusually impatient, reminding her of their deadline. The gallery opening was three weeks away. The printer needed four days. They had catalogued only a third of the show. Thomas was disappointed she had to leave by noon. Their progress was often interrupted by phone calls he took in private.

  Mid-morning, after one such disappearance, Thomas returned with several files jammed with papers and colored index cards. “Since we’re behind schedule, I thought these might help. This is the work my previous assistant assembled. You can enter it into your database.”

  “Holly didn’t use a computer?” Anna had dragged hers along.

  “She preferred to write by hand.”

  “Because she didn’t like computers or didn’t have one?”

  “Both.”

  The notes included the usual information: character, origin, artist, dances, and so on. Holly’s handwriting was round and open. In the margins were sketches of birds.

  “I feel like I’m plagiarizing,” Anna said. “Are we going to give her credit?”

  “I paid for the work. It’s my property.”

  “But you’ll cite her in the guide.”

  “She asked not to be mentioned. Really, the less said about her, the better. It upsets Constance. It’s difficult when you become attached to people who aren’t emotionally stable. As you’ve no doubt noticed, Oaxaca is a magnet for lost souls. Druggies. Divorcees. Mystics. Crazies.”

  “Which was Holly?”

  This stopped him. A wry smile quickly replaced confusion. “Either a kleptomaniac or a thinly disguised opportunist. But that’s how it is. Flighty people often fly away.”

  “Like a bird.” Anna pointed to the drawings.

  His mouth twitched.
“Anyway, I hope you weren’t expecting a byline. For all official purposes, the guide will be written by Lorenzo Gonzáles, a leading authority on Mexican masks and pre-Columbian art.”

  Anna narrowed her eyes. “So what are we—”

  “Gonzáles will sign it, but he can’t be bothered to write it. He’s a busy man, as you can imagine.”

  Anna could imagine, did imagine, the whole picture. Thomas’s upcoming show was not about pleasing Texas relatives. The easiest way to cleanse stolen art was to have it appear in a public showing with a catalogue endorsed by a respected dealer like Lorenzo Gonzáles. After this coming-out party, the stolen object had a legitimate paper trail, its sordid past forgotten amid the swirl of canapés and prosecco. Anna’s own reputation had benefited from just such a cleansing. On David’s arm, surrounded by the glitterati of the New York art world, she became respectable. Her dodgy romantic past, her checkered provenance, were all but forgotten, leaving only the pleasure of aesthetics.

  Thomas excused himself again. Anna returned to work with a sigh. She wished she could leave right away, and wondered what the afternoon would bring. Gonzáles’s assessment. Salvador’s studio. Things could go terribly right or wrong. She opened a manila envelope from the files. A photograph of a young woman tumbled out. Even in the faded Polaroid, she was stunning. She wore a sleeveless blouse, feather earrings, the dangerous smile of a hitchhiker. An unlit cigarette dangled from her mouth. A tiara of flowers and a blue scarf encircled her head. Her expression was coy, daring, a little gonzo, a little come-hither. Definitely a girl without underwear. She sat at the same table where Anna now sat, bright notecards scattered. The photograph had been glued to a sheet of paper, a profile created from the familiar mask headings.

  CHARACTER: Holly Price, personal assistant