3.
Lulu greets me as soon as I come through the door. Which tells me she’s snuck into the main apartment from her bed out on the terracotta-covered terrace via the open window that accesses the dining room. My fault for leaving it open. The small but muscle-bound dog jumps and yelps until I pick her solid body up in my arms and hold her for a minute or two. Then, letting her back down, I make up a bowl of the dry dog food she eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and set it onto the kitchen floor. I grab a cold Moretti beer from the fridge and sit down at a breakfast counter that abuts a set of tall French doors leading out onto the grape vine-covered terrace.
Opening the package I slide out the materials it contains. Not much in the way of information. A couple of eight-by-ten color glossies of Manion. He’s the man I remember. Tall, salt and pepper-haired, professorial looking. His long face is clean shaven, his cheeks sunken in a bit, lips thin and uninteresting, as are his eyes which are brown and neither large nor deeply set.
If I didn’t already know that he is an archaeologist I would peg him for an accountant, or maybe a department store manager. In the photo he’s teaching a class, his right hand extended up at a blackboard upon which a diagram has been drawn. If I have to guess, the diagram represents a crypt of some kind. An ancient, ornate burial chamber. I’ve seen the real thing plenty of times before.
In the second photo, the professor is shown working an archaeology dig. I can’t be sure, but it looks like he’s in Israel. I’ve dug in the Jewish state on several occasions and I recognize the unique way the sun shines down on that porous, almost hospital white rock. In the photo, the tall, gawky Manion is wearing khaki clothing and a baseball hat with cloth flaps hanging down from it in order to protect the exposed skin on his neck. If I remember correctly, the world class archaeologist has a problem with sunburn. Being of Mediterranean decent, the hot sun doesn’t bother me. Even equatorial sun. It just makes me bronze. My good luck. Good luck for the ladies too.
Setting the photos back down, I grab the vital stat sheet Cip provided for me which is typed out on Florence Polizia letterhead.
Manion, Andre, PhD—Archaeology/Psychology, University of Chicago, 1982, University of Chicago, 1984
Height: 6’1”
Color: Caucasion.
DOB: Feb 23, 1964
Status: Separated/Divorced
I set the paper back down.
“So check this out, Lu,” I say. “Manion isn’t just an archaeologist. He’s also a shrink. Funny combination. Never knew that about him.”
Lu looks up at me from her food dish.
“Who’s Manion?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Manion is our meal ticket home. He’s apparently gone missing in the desert. Probably outside Cairo where he’s working on digging up the bones of Jesus and who knows what else. I worked with him once before, until he ran out on the dig and me.”
“Jesus …You mean the Jesus Died-On-The-Cross-For-Our-Sins Christ?”
“The one and only. What’s important is that if I find Manion, I just might get a chance at digging up a few treasures of my own. Or perhaps even assisting in acquiring the very relic Manion is looking for. What a payday that would bring in my canine friend.”
Lu coughs something up into her mouth, then swallows whatever it is.
“Isn’t that stealing?” she asks.
“No. Errr, yes. But not like stealing in the classical sense. If those unearthed relics are truly up for grabs then it’s first come, first serve. That’s the law of the desert and the law of tomb raiding. But I am a little confused about one thing: the Professor Manion I once knew would never think of selling out to a private collector. But from the looks of it, somebody’s financing his new dig and that somebody has enough money to not only lure him away from his teaching gig in Florence, but also to simply render himself legally missing.”
