Chapter 1

     I checked into the Hotel Colón and wondered if it was going to be the second time a woman had stood me up there. The first time had been fifteen years ago and the woman had been Felicia Esquivel. My wife. I hadn't been back to Mérida or the Yucatan since. This time, Pepper had assured me, things would be different. And they were, mostly: the automated customs procedure, the new Mexican money, the periférico, or loop, around the city. The only thing that was the same was that I was waiting for another woman: Pepper.
     Coming to Mexico had been a tough decision. There were too many memories, both good and bad. The happiest days of my life had been spent there, as a young archaeologist intoxicated with the history, the culture, and the people. I'd made friends, learned the Spanish and Mayan languages, and immersed myself in the exploration of ancient Mayan sites. I'd also met Felicia Esquivel.
     We'd fallen in love and, after a three-month courtship, I'd convinced her to marry me, not realizing the demons that lurked in her tempestuous psyche. Then, one day, I'd waited for her at the Hotel Colón and she didn't come. It was only later I found out she'd been with another man, a German archaeologist.
     I'd told Pepper I wasn't sure I was ready to come back, and she'd asked if I ever would be. She'd pointed out that I talked about Mexico frequently and that sometimes at night I shot upright in bed from dreams in which I'd been walking the streets of Mérida and prowling tumbled pre-Columbian ruins. Was I really going to let what was no ancient history keep me away? I'd complained about her going back for summer work with Eric Blackburn at Lubaanah, on the east side of the peninsula. So why not come down and visit? Eric was easy to get along with, and he was eager to meet me. Besides, I needed a vacation—she could tell that by the way I'd been for the last six months or so before she'd left for Mexico in June.
     I'd debated it long and hard. The company couldn't survive without me, someone should be close enough to the phone to handle Bertha Bomberg's unreasonable demands when the Corps of Engineers came calling, and there was a major proposal that was still out.
     Marilyn, my office manager, told me she'd quit if I didn't go, and David Goldman, my main associate, told he was tired of seeing me moping.
     That didn't leave me much choice.
     And so, after stalling as long as I could, I'd made reservations for early August, but had found out there were no available seats on the flights to Cancún, so I'd have to fly into Mérida, the old colonial capital on the west side of the peninsula. Pepper had said she'd come up and meet me at the airport, but at the last minute her plans had changed: We'd meet at the Hotel Colón at four, just as the siesta hour ended. That would give her time to drive the two hundred miles from Bacalar, where the expedition was headquartered.
     I told myself, as I stood in the cool lobby, smelling a mixture of bus exhaust from the street and bougainvillea from the patio, that I was hypersensitive. I could have made reservations at another hotel, but I'd opted to confront the demons at the beginning and be done with them. Then, too, I was disoriented from the changes I'd already noted: fewer Indian women in huipiles, the brightly embroidered smocks that had been common years before; fewer men wearing sandals, which before had been the sure mark of Indian status for males; a total inability to understand what the dollars in my wallet would buy these days; a pervasive use of Spanish, as opposed to Maya, among the people I'd passed when I'd walked down to the main plaza to kill the rest of the faltering afternoon. I was going to have to get my bearings all over again.
     Where the hell was Pepper when I needed her?
     Then I thought of the long, narrow main highway between Bacalar and Carrillo Puerto, the rain forest home of the insurgent Maya of the nineteenth century, and the equally narrow road that arrowed northwest from Carrillo Puerto toward Mérida. There were lots of crazy drivers and even crazier truckers down here. What if...?
     I walked back down to the plaza, got an orange juice at an open-air café, and when I came back the desk clerk handed me a note.
     It was written in Spanish and he said he'd taken it down word for word from the Americana who'd called. I thanked him and moved into the light from the open doorway.

I'm sorry I can't make it. I was supposed to pick up Paul Hayes at a little village called Tres Cabras, just south of Carrilla Puerto, and bring him to Mérida with me so he could research in the museum. But he never showed up. I'll wait until just before dark and if he doesn't come I'll go back to the camp at Bacalar. If you can rent a car tomorrow morning, I'll meet you in Carillo Puerto at the Balam Nah at four o'clock. I'm sorry.

Pebel

     The clerk had done the best he could with a strange gringo name. He was a young man with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache, and he smiled as I stuck the note in my guayabera pocket.
     "You ever hear of a place near Carrillo Puerto called Tres Cabras?" I asked him in Spanish.
     He nodded. "Sure. But that's a bad area. Muchos narco-traficantes. Drug smuggling everywhere. I tried to tell the señorita, but..." He shrugged.
     "If this place is so small, how could she have called?"
     "Señor, almost every village in Yucatan has a telephone these days. You pay the owner a few pesos, and..."
     "Of course." Why should I be surprised? "Look, did she say anything else?"
     He grinned. "I didn't write it," he said.
     "Didn't write what?"
     "What she said at the end. Ella le quiere. She loves you."
     That night I ate at Los Almendros, which, to my chagrin, it took me an hour to find. I had poc chuc, a braised pork served with black beans and a stack of tortillas, and I washed it down with three Superiores. The place was full of tourists and it seemed to lack the charm I associated with it in my memory. But maybe my memory was playing tricks, and maybe the restaurant had never really been the way I remembered. I tore my thoughts away to the matter at hand.
     I knew of Paul Hayes, the man Pepper had gone to pick up at Tres Cabras. Retired now, he was a linguist who'd done some of the early, crucial work on breaking the Mayan glyphic code. Pepper had mentioned him from time to time, but I wondered what he was doing by himself in a tiny settlement and why he wouldn't show up when he should.
     I lay in the air conditioning and told myself everything was all right: Hayes was not just a linguist but and epigrapher, and such people were known for their eccentricity. He'd been working in Mesoamerica while I was still in high school, so there was no reason to be concerned. If he hadn't appeared, then Pepper would drive back to the camp. Hayes was old enough to take care of himself. And nothing would happen to Pepper on the highway in broad daylight.
     There was nothing to worry about. I was back in Yucatán, where it had all started for me so many years ago, and I was home. Everything would be fine.
     I knew it would.