Free The Moche Warrior by Lyn Hamilton Page A

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