The Antiquities Hunter Read online

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said in very slightly accented English. “I see I am discovered.”

  “Hell, yes,” said Rose, her fists clenching as she faced off with her shadow. “Who the hell are you and why are you following me?”

  “My name is Cruz Veras. I’m a journalist. And I’m following you, Ms. Delgado, because you’re part of a story I’m working on.”

  Did I believe him? No. Which was why I did not stable the Taurus until he showed credentials identifying him as Cruz Sacramento Veras, an investigative journalist with a magazine published by the Mexican national historical society (the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, for those of you who are sticklers for detail), and I had to admit it put a (tentative) mark in the “not-a-threat” column. Obviously, we’d have to verify his story.

  Rose was unwilling to be impressed, credentials or no. Her fists had yet to unclench and I suspected she wanted to punch Mr. Veras in the face. “How do you even know who I am, what I look like, where I live, what I do?” she demanded.

  He looked at her unabashedly. “Ms. Delgado, your work came to my attention last year when your department brought an auction house clerk up on rather substantial charges. You may not be a Mexican national heroine now, but I could write a story that would make you one.”

  “How did it ‘come to your attention?’ The identities of field agents are not public information. It is the only way we can function in the field with a semblance of safety. Now I will ask you again. How did you find me and why?”

  In the face of her obvious anger, he batted not one eye. “It is said that some of the antiquities involved in that case were pilfered from a site in Mexico. I have sources, Ms. Delgado. And they pointed to you as someone who might have the information I need.”

  “If you’re a journalist, why not just make an appointment for an interview?” I asked.

  “I intended to do exactly that,” he informed me, still smiling pleasantly. “But I wanted to do some research first. Sort of a ‘day in the life’ look at what a Park Service agent does when she’s not out busting pothunters and unscrupulous museum directors. I am, after all, an investigative journalist. I was merely investigating Ms. Delgado’s habits.”

  It was a struggle not to roll my eyes. “Day in the life? Habits? And for that, you scare a woman into hiring a bodyguard?”

  His brows ascended. “Bodyguard? Are you speaking of yourself . . . or the dog?”

  As if knowing he had been mentioned, Hoho chuffed and wagged his tail harder.

  Okay, now I wanted to help Rose punch this guy in the face whether he was telling the truth or not. “I’m a licensed private detective,” I said quietly. “The pretty blue gun is not just for show. I actually know how to use it.”

  He gave me a direct look. “I have no doubt of that.”

  “So,” said Rose, “you want to write a story about how I’ve been protecting Mexican antiquities from predation? You can’t believe I’d want that kind of press, can you? My profession sort of relies on secrecy for maximum effectiveness.”

  He had the good graces to look chagrined. “Of course not. I assumed . . . you’d assume an assumed . . . a different name.” He smiled again, self-deprecatingly, while I wondered if the sudden verbal klutziness was an attempt to make himself seem nonthreatening.

  Rose glanced at me. I could see it in her eyes: the raw fury was starting to ebb. In a moment, it would be replaced by relief that this wasn’t what she’d feared. I wanted to warn her to reserve judgment, but Hoho had no such reservations. All during our inquisition, he had been shamelessly nuzzling Veras’s hand and wagging his tail so hard his long body described a series of furry Bezier curves.

  Veras seemed to sense the relaxation of Rose’s angst. “So . . . can I get an interview, Ms. Park Agent?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Rose said. “Give me the best number to reach you at and I will let you know if I decide to meet with you. If I do grant you an interview, I promise only that I may listen to your questions. I can’t guarantee that I’ll answer them. That’s the most I am willing to offer.”

  Veras nodded. “That is the most I would expect.” He reached for his back pocket; I reached for my revolver. “Wallet,” he said. Turning his back to me, he pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and fished out a card, which he handed to me. “The second number is my cell. I will check out, Ms. Bodyguard. I promise.” He raised his hand as if taking an oath (on Hoho’s wet nose, no less). “I can also assure you that your friend does not need protection from me. Now, may I go?”

  Rose and I exchanged glances, then she stepped away from the car and said, “Feel free.”

  I grudgingly moved my bike and, together, we watched him drive away.

  Chapter 3

  Cross Sacred True

  Did I mention that I’m an extremely suspicious individual? This is not my nature; it’s an entirely learned suspicion—something I acquired through experience. It’s my nature to be trusting, to take people at face value. I began to learn not to do this in high school—or at least I learned to conceal my trusting. I guess you could say I learned to be inscrutable.

  I also developed a keen sense of what other people were about. I credit my mom with much of that. She taught me empathy, along with an annoying level of persistence, and the value of nonverbal communication. From my dad, I learned compassion and the art of observation (okay, and hesitatin’). I honed all of these traits while in police academy, and while studying for my BS in criminal justice. I like to think I perfected them on the street during my stint with the SFPD.

  And yet it took being engaged to the fiancé from hell to fully break me of the habit of trust. That one broken habit was enough to make me choose PI work over any partner on the force.

  My suspicion of Cruz Sacramento Veras drove me to spend the rest of my Tuesday tracking him down online. What did I find? I found that he actually was a reporter for the INAH publication—Arqueología. More than that, he had academic creds to go with the journalistic ones. There were letters after his name on the archaeological wiki that I unearthed—P, h, and D being three of them. I went to the Arqueología website and found the same info.

  Okay, so some guy named Cruz Sacramento Veras actually did write and research for this magazine. That didn’t mean it was the same guy. So I did some further digging and found some of his work, which included photographs. Of him. At a dig or two or three. Same face—though sporting a closely trimmed beard.

  Cruz Veras, I realized, had underrepresented himself. He wasn’t just an investigative journalist, he was an investigative journalist and practicing archaeologist whose name translates into English as “True Sacred Cross” (well, okay, detail sticklers: “Cross Sacred True”). I found myself wondering why a PhD’ed professional would stick with a name like that. I’m pretty familiar with the territory that goes with an unusual moniker. My own name—Gina Suzu Miyoko—translates as “Silver Bell Temple,” which is how I ended up with the oh-so-cute nickname “Tinkerbell,” which everyone seems inclined to shorten to “Tink” rather than the far more melodious “Bell.”

  I wondered, absurdly, if Veras had had any embarrassing nicknames thrust upon him in school by frenemies. I considered getting even for the bodyguard crack (”Were you speaking of yourself or the dog?”) by asking him that if Rose decided to grant him an interview.

  Rose had gone to work after our encounter with Veras. When I felt that I’d exhausted the interwebs’ information on the man, I called her office and gave her the rundown. She listened, asked for a list of the URLs I’d toured, then told me that she’d done a little investigating herself.

  “I checked him out through AFIS and IBIS, plus a couple of other law-enforcement databases I had access to. I got nothing.” (For the uninitiated, AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and IBIS is the Interagency Border Inspection System, which gives government employees like Rose access to intel from every spy shop from the FBI to Interpol.)

  “Yeah
,” I said, realizing I was almost disappointed that we hadn’t outed Mr. Veras as the head of a skeevy pothunter cartel of some sort. “The information I found online goes back about eight years. He does seem legit. But the stalking bit bugs the hell out of me.”

  “No kidding. I still want to go on the warpath when I think of what he put me through,” Rose told me. “Which is why I’d like you to call him and set up the interview.”

  “Really, Rosie? Warpath? Tsk. So archetypal.”

  “Oh, shut up and call the guy. Café Lucca. One P.M. tomorrow. That work for you?”

  Either it worked or I’d clear my calendar to make it work. I wanted this episode over with. “Sure you want me there?” I asked just to make sure.

  “Is your dad into Sherlock Holmes?”

  Café Lucca offered a reasonably quiet place for Cruz Veras to conduct his interview. We got a table in the back of the room and ordered appetizers and drinks while the journalist-professor set up his state-of-the-art digital recorder. He didn’t blow into the little microphone that he aimed at Rose, nor did he tap it to see if there was a signal, which is no less than I’d expect of a professional journalist.

  Lest you think my findings of the previous day led me to trust the gentleman, let me assure you, they did not. I could think of a number of nefarious reasons why someone with this guy’s background might want to pry privileged information out of a federal park agent. What if he was, say, running his own illicit traffic in antiquities? Who’d be in a better position to do that than a practicing archaeologist, trusted by his superiors and peers? So with all my senses, I watched Cruz Veras carefully for any “tells,” or signs of duplicity—facial expressions, body language, eye movements, nervous tics. What I caught wasn’t suspicious as much as it was annoying. He was relaxed, polished, and smiled at me every chance he got, as if he thought I ought to be impressed with his Hispanic good looks and his suave aplomb.

  The fact of his good looks was something that Rose hadn’t given a rest for a moment since our research had failed to reveal holes in Professor True’s story. She seemed to think the whole thing was sorted; he was who he said he was, and I really ought to consider flirting with a guy that she’d been terrified of for weeks just because he reminded her of Antonio Banderas. Her desperate desire to see me in a happy relationship sometimes bordered on the psychopathic.

  As it was, by the time Veras started the interview, I was no more kindly disposed toward the man than I’d been when he first stepped out of his car, and only the fact that Rose seemed to have recovered from her terrors kept me from growling at him.

  He started by logging a series of reference notes at the beginning of the tape—date, time, subject. He even had a working title for his article: “Agents of the Park Service: Guardians of History.” A little hokey, but okay, I guess. He opened with harmless general questions about the purview of the NPS, then moved to the specific expertise of a field agent.

  “Now, Ms. Delgado . . .”

  “You can call me Rose.” She smiled and settled further into her corner of the booth.

  He smiled back, unaware that this was Rose angling to put him at ease, just as he was angling to do the same to her. This, I decided, might be fun to watch: investigator and investigated trying to out-investigate each other. Rose knew the limits of what she could tell him. I sat back to watch, wishing there was popcorn to go with my peanut-butter smoothie.

  “Rose,” Veras said, “it sounds as if your park service has a similar mandate to our historical institute in Mexico. What sort of expertise must an American agent exercise in the field?”

  “Persistence,” said Rose. “Dogged, patient persistence. And an ability to blend in to the background, or stand out in the right way, depending.”

  “On?”

  “The role he or she is playing. Is the agent a buyer, a collector, an investigator? Does she want to be seen by the subject of the investigation or not?”

  “And what role have you played most recently?”

  Rose shook her head. “You know I can’t be specific.”

  “Generally, then.”

  “My job is to make sure that priceless antiquities don’t fall into the wrong hands. Sometimes that puts me in the field investigating, sometimes it puts me behind a desk processing information, sometimes it puts me in a courtroom. I suspect you understand that much without me having to tell you.”

  Veras turned his head slightly and met my eyes. “I take it you checked out my credentials.”

  “Of course we did,” I said. “Did you expect any less?”

  “No.” He turned his attention back to Rose. “And, the answer is ‘yes.’ I do know the general shape of a park agent’s job. I’m curious about the cases you’ve worked.”

  “I told you, I can’t—”

  “The Hochob case was all over the papers and airwaves in Mexico City. Sommers was investigated for receiving illicit goods from the Hochob dig. That’s on the public record.”

  I saw Rosie’s jaw flex, and realized that my own jaw had tightened as well. “Yes, it is,” she said.

  “What I was curious about, as a student of archaeology—”

  I snorted. “Professor of archaeology, don’t you mean?”

  He looked at me directly again. “I’m both . . . Ms. Miyoko, isn’t it?”

  So I wasn’t the only one who’d done some checking up. I nodded.

  “What’s on the public record,” he continued, “is that a Sommers clerk was indicted for receiving contraband. The auction house, to all appearances, was not culpable.”

  Rose’s nostrils flared. He’d just hit her where she lived. “Yes. To all appearances,” she repeated.

  I caught her eye and made bubbles in my smoothie. Subtext: Nuh-uh. Don’t go there.

  She tilted her head, stirred her iced tea, and said, “That’s the way these things go.”

  Veras lost the relaxed look and leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped, dark eyes narrowed. “And you hate that, don’t you?”

  Rose seemed taken aback by his sudden intensity. “I . . . It’s my job.”

  “Which you love . . . and hate when something like that happens.” It was an observation—an accurate one—not a question. He followed it with another: “Your Facebook page says you’re Native American—Hopi. This is personal for you, isn’t it?”

  They locked eyes for a moment, then Veras looked down at his clasped hands. “I understand that. I do. I’ll be honest, the Hochob case and its connection to Sommers captured my attention, in part because it seemed to me to be part of a pattern. Black market antiquities are discovered moving in or out of an auction house or museum, and no one above low-level management ends up on trial. Does it seem that way to you too?”

  Rose let out a bark of laughter. “Of course it does. Because it is a pattern. A pattern my colleagues and I can do very little about. And really, what’s to say about it, Dr. Veras—”

  “Cruz, please.”

  “Cruz, why would your readers care that it’s a pattern?”

  He leaned back in his seat and shrugged, a lopsided grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. “It’s a sexy case. High profile. Sheds lurid light on a respected institution or two. Plus, the Mexican people deserve to know if the antiquities that belong in their country for all to admire have been returned home. Readers will eat it up.”

  “Sexy?” I repeated. “Who’s going to be reading this article—varsity archaeological jocks?”

  “It’s the same audience that reads National Geographic and Scientific American in this country. What did you expect, a bunch of stuffy archaeologists?”

  Rose laughed. “Dr. Veras—Cruz. You know the archaeological world and you know what it means to work for a national agency—or at least to work closely with one. You also know the part I play is not in the public narrative. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any information other than that the antiquities will be returned to the country of origin.”

  “Which is my beat. I’m Mexic
an, remember? Can you tell me what caused the NPS to view Sommers as a target?”

  Rose regarded him deliberately for a moment, then said, “Only in general. Obviously, any auction house that moves antiquities is going to draw the attention of the Park Service. We generally keep an eye on any lots they acquire from private collectors or estate sales. That’s no secret. In theory, we expect—or at least hope—that they’ll be upfront with us about any items in those collections that are of doubtful provenance. Or that lack any record of provenance at all.”

  “In this case?” Veras prompted.

  “That’s not for public consumption.”

  The dark eyes kindled. “All right, so you can’t speak on the record. What about off the record?”

  “Off the record?” Rose repeated. “What good does information do you that’s ‘off the record?’ You can’t put it in your story.”

  In answer, Veras flicked off his machine. “This isn’t about my story. This is about something else. You see, this is personal to me too. These . . . scavengers are sucking away the heritage of an entire people.”

  Oh, jeez. He’d just played the native card.

  Rose glanced at me, then back at Veras. “Okay, off the record. We got a call from a student docent at a Bay Area museum who was curious about a late-night delivery from Sommers auction house. He got a look into one of the open cartons and recognized several figures as coming from Mexican and Honduran sites that had been vandalized some ten years earlier.”

  “A student docent?”

  “His special area of study was pre-Columbian art and architecture. The Mexican site was Hochob, of course. The Honduran site was Copán.” Rose smiled grimly. “To hear the kid tell it, he just about peed his pants when he peeked into a crate and realized he was looking at a piece of the Rosalila.”

  I’d swear half the color drained out of Veras’s face. “The Rosalila? Dios mio.”

  I raised my hand. “Uh, just pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about.”