Atticus

“We don’t have to go up there.”

“We do,” he said, and they lunged through grass that was as high as their knees to the foot of a steep hill that was topped by a casita made of upright bamboo poles and palm thatching. Electrical power lines looped out from the roof and over the upper parts of some trees. On the way up, Renata moved some grass aside with her right foot in order to show Atticus a square gray stone with a fierce eagle carved in it. Only then did he notice the crannies and juts and lintels and stair steps that appeared to be growing out of the emerald green of the hill.

“Are they ruins?”

“A Mayan lookout post. Have you been to Chichén Itzá?”

“Yep.”

“Four or five thousand foreigners clawing their way up the Temple of Kukulkán, echoing ‘Hello’ in the ball court, having pictures taken of their heads between the jaws of the plumed serpent. So much for archaeological preservation. Here the Mayans wised up and kept the place secret.”

Atticus paused on the way up and held his hands on his hips. He was panting and his open white shirt was grayly spotted with sweat. Renata turned. “Higher than it looks,” he told her.

She went up a few steps more and he followed her, getting the tang of seaweed and salt air as he attained the top. His heart was hammering high in his chest with the fresh, winter pain that he hadn’t yet gotten used to.

Renata asked, “Are you okay?”

“Hell, I’m sixty-seven years old. Haven’t been okay since I was fifty.”

“Your heart?”

“Carburetor trouble,” he said. “Whole thing gets to acting like a juvenile delinquent at times

, kicking hard at the door. Don’t ever have to say ‘Who’s there?’” He smiled for the sake of Renata’s frightened brown eyes and squinted farther on at the sea view. From that height he could see the white coastline in its twists and tangles around bahías and bajas along the way north to Cancún. East was the navy blue of the Gulf Stream and the sea changing to azure and finally a lime-juice green as it overran a higher shelf of the coast and blasted into coffee-colored rocks. They were on a gray cathedral of stone, and west was green jungle and low plains and swamp that hazily blued at twenty miles and made the jungle seem no more than cigarette smoke rising up into the horizon. “Pretty out here,” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

He turned to see Renata holding the handle of the door, and then translated the Spanish on a sign that the Mexican police had stapled onto the wood, promising jail to looters and trespassers. Crime scene, he thought. “Didn’t have a lock on the door?” he asked.

She stared at a hasp where a padlock ought to have been. “Oh, I forgot. Wednesday Scott told me there was a break-in here. Kids, probably. Stuart’s house has been hit three times.”

“We got an old house on the ranch,” he said. “Even hunters use it. Hard to keep people off your property if you aren’t always there to protect it.” She smiled at him for some reason; he presumed he was wearing what Scott used to call his Republican face.

Renata pulled the door and then interpreted Atticus’s hesitation. “Don’t worry. We’ve cleaned it up a little.”

They walked inside. East was a wall of upright bamboo that was hinged in order to create huge doors that could open the interior to the light and air of the seascape or could be wired shut to the roof supports for weather protection. Renata unscrewed the wires and pushed the hinged bamboo out, making the twelve-by-twenty house as open as an unscreened porch. Atticus held up the Radiola tape player he’d given Scott at Christmas. A homemade copy of Linda Ronstadt’s Canciones de mi Padre was at the end of its reel. “You’d think they’d’ve stolen this.”

“Who?”

“You said kids broke in here.”

She gave it some thought and finally said, “Useless to them, probably. Most campesinos don’t have electricity in their homes.”

“Oh. Uh huh.” Atticus put the tape player down. “You forget where you are.” His eyes found a green wingback chair like his at home that was angled toward the door.

Renata went over to it and grazed her hand along the leather back. “He was sitting here,” she said. “Slumped over to the right. His fingers nearly touched the floor. And the gun was only an inch away.”

“Were there pictures taken?”

“I have no idea.”

Atticus frowned. “You weren’t here with the police?”

“I hate blood,” she said. “Seeing it makes me ill.”

“So: What? You peeked in, thought ‘Oh my gosh, blood,’ and skipped off?”

She seemed stunned by his irritation. She seemed to retreat a little, and there was a shine of tears in her eyes as she said, “I figured this would be hard for you.” She paused, as if phrasing a further explanation, but simply told him, “I have to get out of here.” And then she was out of the house and heading down to the sea.