Page 23 of The Children of Eve

“We ought not to have consented to it,” said Hul, which was just like him. He had many good points, but some lesser ones too, among them the habit of being wise after the fact. But then he qualified what he’d said: “Splitting the children up like that.”

“It’s too late for regrets,” said Harriet. “What’s done is done, and half the money’s already spent. You weren’t so contrite when the roof was being fixed.”

She was still clinging to his hand, even while they bickered.Such a pair we are.

Against her better judgment, Harriet decided to yield some ground, or else she might never get him back to bed. If this was madness, she could only hope it was the passing kind.

“If it is her, she’ll get tired soon enough. All children do. And she has company.”

“The boy’s different,” said Hul. “I think he might be retarded.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it now.” Harriet squeezed her husband’s hand. “Come on, we can’t stay out here all night. We’ll catch our deaths.”

She tugged, and he followed. They were on the threshold of their bedroom when Hul paused for the final time.

“I think they’re names,” he said. “She’s calling out names.”

“What names?”

“The names of gods.”

CHAPTERXVIII

Roland Bilas spent a long, uncomfortable night in a holding cell at LAX before being arraigned the following morning in federal court on felony smuggling charges. No objection was made to bail, which was set at an eye-watering $60,000, though Bilas was required to surrender his passport. Dates were also set for a felony dispositional conference and, depending on the outcome, a preliminary hearing the following month, while a search warrant was granted for Bilas’s home and storage unit. Bilas kept his mouth shut throughout, as his lawyer had instructed, but it was a close-run thing because Bilas had once again felt a childlike urge to admit to everything just so people wouldn’t be angry with him anymore.

His attorney was a woman named Erica Kressler. She had looked after his affairs for years without any acknowledgment of his involvement in the illegal movement of antiquities, even as she suspected him of engaging in some form of criminality. Following the arraignment, and the signing of the paperwork with the bail bondsman, Kressler drove Bilas to her office, requested a pot of coffee, sat back in her chair, and said: “Tell me straight: What are they going to find?”

“Less than they expect,” Bilas replied, “and nothing as valuable as what was in the suitcase.”

“Do you have any storage facilities you didn’t mention during questioning?”

“None.”

“You’re sure? Because if you’re lying and the feds find out, any hope we have of cutting a deal at the dispositional conference will be gone. You could be looking at serious time, along with fines that will leave you destitute until the grave.”

“I told them everything,” said Roland, and hoped his face gave nothing more away.

The coffee arrived. Kressler poured a cup for each of them.

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked. “We have croissants and doughnuts.”

Bilas declined both. All he really wanted was to shower and change his clothes, but before he did, he needed to get to a laptop and start insulating himself financially. The seizure of the mantas was going to seriously undermine his retirement planning, as would the premium Kressler was charging for her services in this instance. The bail bondsman’s ten percent he could swallow. That was the least of his worries, since the alternative was a jail cell.

“How bad will it be?” Bilas asked.

“If you’ve been straight with them, and the federal warrant doesn’t uncover the treasures of Montezuma, you’re looking at probation and a fine.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You haven’t heard about the small print,” said Kressler. “A happy outcome will require cooperation on your part, a guilty plea, a prosecutor who doesn’t want to put you on the rack, and a judge who’s had a good lunch and doesn’t suffer from indigestion. Look, Roland, you were caught with antiquities worth a mid-six-figure sum concealed in your suitcase, and from what you’ve just told me, a search of your home and storage unit will reveal additional items that shouldn’t be in your possession. If you picked them up from another party in the United States,I guarantee the feds will want all the details as a condition of the plea bargain. If you declare that you acquired the antiquities during your travels, then you can’t claim the mantas were a one-off, which is likely to make a judge less sympathetic.”

She watched Bilas add four sugars to his coffee. Her previous dealings with him had been mundane for the most part: assisting with his late mother’s estate, drafting a will, ironing out contracts. But she’d had her suspicions about Bilas for a few years, thanks to escrow arrangements on his behalf with the kind of Latino lawyers who raised red flags among even the halfway sentient.

“I got a call,” she said, “not long after you contacted me, from a man who didn’t leave a name. He told me to make sure you knew your friends had your back and advised that what you could do in return was—and I quote—‘keep your fucking mouth shut.’ Now what would that have been about, Roland? Did you have partners in the acquisition of the mantas? Because I have to tell you, this man didn’t sound like someone big into textiles, not unless they could be used as shrouds.”

Bilas swallowed half the coffee. It was bitter and lukewarm. For a country that seemed to run on coffee, it was hard to get a cup worth the money. Bilas blamed Starbucks for transforming the taste buds of a generation. It was another reason why he preferred Latin America, though now he was dearly wishing that, on this last occasion, he’d stayed at home.

“The mantas and ceramics are mine alone,” he said. “I set up the deal and used the bulk of my ready cash to buy them. Their seizure has left me drowning.”

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