Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 21:21:26 -0400
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Psychic Detective 40

Psychic Detective 40
By: Jake Preston

This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a
murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in
other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes
recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described
explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character
development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there
are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that
while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think
about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html

Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on
nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters
and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions
for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!

Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com


       *  *  *  *  *  *


Chapter 40
The Serpent and the Cenote, II


	"What do you mean, "la pintura de los acróbatas de Papantla"?"
Göran asked. It was just after an early breakfast in the hotel
restaurant and he was caught by surprise when the acrobats said that they
had to be at Chichen Itza's ceremonial ball-court by quarter to nine.

	Pablo: "It's a traditional village ceremony in Papantla. We've
revived it for the Spring Equinox pageant at Chichen Itza. Usually the
acrobats wear colored tights and shirts: red for Earth and the East; black
for Fire and the North; white for Wind and the West; blue for Water and the
South. But for Spring Equinox we wear body-paint instead of uniforms;
body-paint and a jockstrap and a sunga. To prepare for the pageant, we let
some of the spectators apply the paint to our bodies. Except for
Señorita María Santana. She'll be wearing tights. We don't want the
spectators putting their hands on her."

	"Which spectators?"

	"Why, our benefactors, of course," Pablo said. "The body-painting
takes place in a pavilion behind the ball-court. The cost of admission is
2500 pesos, or about 200 American dollars. That's how we raise money for
our tours. The State of Yucatán pays us for our performances during Holy
Week, but we have to cover our own expenses."

	"What about you, Pablo? Do you get painted, too?" Göran asked.

	"Sí, Señor," Pablo replied. "For the painting of
Ometéotl-Omecíhautl the price is 5000 pesos, and it's an elaborate
design."

	While Pablo and Göran were speaking, Antón approached with a
jar of white paint and Pablo stripped naked. With two fingers, Antón
traced an evenly drawn line from the nape of Pablo's neck to his
cleft. Then he traced a white line from Pablo's forehead downward,
bisecting his torso down to his pubes.

	"My left side is Ometéotl, the Father-God, because the heart is
on the left side of the body," Pablo explained. "Antón will color the
field with yellow, and after the yellow has dried, the spectators will
paint symbols of the four elements and the four directions, all in red,
black, white, or blue. The painters will be given instructions about the
symbols they should paint.

	Antón started applying yellow body-paint to the left side of
Pablo's face and moved down to his neck and shoulders and arms. María
Santana joined him and applied yellow to Pablo's legs and moved up toward
his left thigh and buttock. Salvador and Jack and Göran seemed a bit
squeamish about the attention that María was giving to Pablo's naked
body, but the acrobats were used to it and for her it was part of the job.

	"And your right side?" Göran asked.

	"The right side is Omecíhautl, the Mother-God," Pablo said. "She
gets painted with secondary colors that are mixed from the cardinal
ones. Black and red make purple, for example, and red and white makes
rose. The spectators get to mix their own secondary colors and paint my
body with them, so I turn out rather paisley on the Omecíhautl side, and
formally symbolic on the Ometéotl side."

	"He's popular with señoras and señoritas," Antón
laughed. "Some of the señores find him entertaining, too."

	Salvador asked about logistics and wondered how he and Jack and
Göran would be able to protect the acrobats in a crowd. What if one of
them were attacked by Albino, or maybe by some unknown accomplice?

	"As for logistics, we stand on five separate platforms, except that
this time there will be four platforms, as the Señorita will not get her
body painted," Pablo said. "At each platform, the spectators stand in a
line and we admit them two at a time for ten minutes each. The gong in the
ball-court is sounded every ten minutes, and then a new pair of painters
take their turns. If a spectator wants another turn, she (or he) can get
into another line. The painting-ceremony ends at 10:30, to give us time to
prepare our minds for the performance, which begins at 11:00."

	"These platforms, are they widely dispersed in the pavilion?"
Salvador wondered.

	"Sí, Señor, to prevent overcrowding," Pablo replied.

	"What about security? Have you ever been robbed?" Salvador asked.

	"We accept only credit cards, no cash or checks," Pablo said. "The
spectators are allowed to leave tips in our jockstraps, and we split that
money equally, including the Señorita, of course." He nodded toward
María Santana. "We have two policemen at the entrance and they check
everyone for weapons and alcohol. No guns, no knives, no alcohol," Pablo
said, quoting a sign at the pavilion entrance. "In the last five years,
we've never been robbed."

	If Salvador had his way, the painting-ceremony would have been
canceled. Jack proposed an alternative: "We could situate four platforms in
a row at the far end of the pavilion. That way we could keep watch over all
the acrobats at once."

	María Santana protested: "We are artistes! If the spectators
line up like a soccer game at half-time, what would that make the
Papantlas?"

	Salvador agreed to do it her way. They set four platforms in place
like red squares on a checkerboard, one representing North for Antón,
one East for Alfredo, one West for Arcaño, and one South for Pablo (it
would have been José Castellano). So there were four lines of spectators
like marks on a compass, each leading to the center of the pavilion where
Salvador, Göran, Jack, Jésus, and Xiu guarded the acrobats while
María stayed on Pablo's platform to supervise the elaborate painting of
Aztec symbols on a yellow field on the left side of his body.

	The painting-ceremony was festive but not raucous, as the 2500-peso
admission, or 5000 pesos for Pablo, excluded populares who might have
inclined toward vulgarity. Still it was not without erotic moments, as when
a young señorita stuffed ten 100-peso bills into Arcaño's jockstrap
one at a time and it wasn't just money that bulged, as anyone could see
because his sunga had dropped to his ankles. He was better than the other
acrobats at flirting with the ladies, whilst Alfredo and Antón fared
better with señores, Many señores and more than a few ladies left
business cards wrapped in bills with three-figure denominations, upon which
they had scribbled times and places to meet in Chichen Itza. "We're not
hustlers," Pablo said, but he added that he might consider contacting a man
or a woman who had left a card wrapped in a four-figure note, but Antón
said he would do it only for American dollars.

	Periodically, Jack checked the acrobats' jockstraps and collected
the money when their bulges got too burdensome. Göran kept track of the
business cards so the acrobats could decide what to do about their admirers
at a later date. One of the cards in Pablo's stack read:

		Howard Coleman, Ph.D.
		Anthropologist
		Universidad del Valle
		Cuernavaca

	"This is a new campus of Universidad del Valle," Jack said, mainly
to Salvador. "Göran and I learned a lot about anthropology programs, and
about academia in general, while investigating Albino. We suspected that if
he found a job anywhere, it would be at a new college where the
administrators wouldn't have much experience with background checks."

      Göran transferred the card to a plastic baggie so it could be
checked for fingerprints. He showed it to Jack and Salvador. They decided
to keep it from the acrobats until after their performance.

	"He's flaunting us," Salvador said. "He wants us to know he's here.



* * * * * *


	The ya'axche-pole and the safety-net were set up in the center of
the ceremonial ball- court which seemed about the same width of an American
football field, but a few yards longer.  On two sides of the ball-court,
the ancient stone bleachers were already crowded and the Chichen Itza
officials allowed spectators to sit on the ground or on blankets as long as
they didn't get close enough to interfere with the safety-nets. The
acrobats picked their way through the crowd, accompanied by their guardians
with Salvador in the lead. He and Jack and Göran wore their uniforms and
badges. The acrobats wore loose white trousers and shirts but their
matador-like capes were colored to match their faces: Alfredo's cape was
red; Antón's was black; Arcaño's was black; María's was
blue. Pablo's cape, as elaborate as Achilles's shield, was kaleidoscopic
with secondary colors on the right side, and on the left side a yellow
field, with Aztec symbols of the four elements and four directions
inscribed in cardinal colors.

	Xiu and Jésus sat in lawn chairs at the spectator's end of the
ball-court where Xiu announced the acrobats in a microphone as they doffed
their white trousers and shirts and got into position on four sides of the
safety-net, Alfredo to the east, Antón to the north, Arcaño to the
south, and María to the west. Then Pablo leaped bounded into the net and
ignored the cheering crowd and within seconds he had scaled the
ya'axche-pole and was pirouetting atop the platform which, Xiu explained to
the crowd, was "Omexocan, the Place of Duality and the organizing principle
of the cosmos in Aztec and Maya mythology."

	The pageant was the same as Good Friday's azteca creación in
Mérida - sometimes a graceful vision of flying colored figures dancing
and at other times aerial combats enhanced by sexual energy and anatomical
display. Body-paint and sungas took the event to a new height of eroticism
even as Xiu's commentary emphasized its mythological and philosophical
attributes.

	The acrobats improvised a new idea in their performance: each time
one of the gods was displaced from his perch on top of the ya'axche-pole,
signifying the end of an Age, he was divested by his sunga and another
acrobat tossed it into the crowd where it was caught by a lucky spectator
as a souvenir. The first acrobat to perform in his jockstrap was Alfredo
Tloxhuitl during his impersonation of Tlatlauhqui Tezcatilipoca, the god of
Earth, East, and Redness, signifying the end of the First Age. During the
Second Age, Antón González's black sunga went flying to the crowd,
ending the age of Yayauhqui Tezcatilipoca, the god of Fire, North, and
Blackness and then two acrobats could be seen butt-naked except for their
jockstraps. During the Third Age, during Arcaño Xlachihuitl's defiant
combat with the others, he removed his own white sunga and tossed it to the
crowd and that was the end of the reign of Quetzalcóatl, the god of
Wind, West, and Whiteness. María Santana was exempted from the
strip-tease, as she was wearing blue tights as the impersonator of
Quetzalcóatl's wife in the Fourth Age, of Water, South, and Blueness.

	Pablo was an exception, too, but when he recovered his 'throne'
atop the ya'axche-pole and pirouetted in triumph atop the ya'axche-pole,
signifying the Fifth Age, the age of Ometéotl- Omecíhautl, and Pablo
let his sunga drop to his ankles and kicked it into the crowd so the
spectators could see that his buttocks were painted with the same designs
of Duality as the rest of his body while Xiu exclaimed into the microphone,
"O parure parée!" quoting from a poem by Paul Eluard.

	By the end of the Fifth Age in the pageant, each spectator got the
azteca creación that he (or she) desired or deserved: for some an erotic
display, for others an athletic demonstration, for others a folkloric
exhibition, for others a mythological pantomime, and for others a
cosmological allegory, and then one-by-one the acrobats descended to the
safety-net. Together they walked through the crowd to the far end of the
ball-court and the four male acrobats gave dozens of spectators a close-up
view of their figures in jock-straps. They ignored the crowd, exulting in
their performance of the azteca creación which had been technically
flawless, while Xiu announced to the crows that the ritual had brought
forth Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent, who would make his Spring
Equinox appearance at the Grand Pyramid.

	When the serpentine image appeared on the side of the Pyramid
facing the greatest number of spectators, two dark red-crested vultures
appeared with him at the top of Quetzalcóatl's head. No one had seen
them swoop down from the sky. They came out of nowhere. This caused a
sensation and when images of it were shown on television, everyone in
México talked about Quetzalcóatl, the vultures, and the Papantla
acrobats.

	Pablo, Alfredo, Antóon, and Arcaño got into fresh color-coded
sungas. Accompanied by María Santana and their guardian-companions -
Salvador, Göran, and Jack in police uniforms, and Jésus and Xiu in
civvies - they walked through the crowds, spoke to admiring spectator,
posed with them for photographs, and signed autographs. It wasn't part of
the show, but it was good for public relations. Slowly they made their way
to the boundary between Chichen Itza and the forested gully. Most of the
spectators were watching the Spring Equinox vision of Quetzalcóatl, who
still had believers, even among Spanish mexicanos who discerned not
contradiction between this Aztec-Maya god and the faith of the Catholic
Church. Then another wonder occurred: the two turkey-vultures flew upward
and disappeared into a cloud which came out of nowhere on a cloudless day.

	The acrobats and their guardian-companions strolled at the edge of
the gully until they reached the sacred cenote. That's when a madman, a
tall lean man with scraggly features and snow-white hair, jumped from the
crowd and ran after Pablo wielding a knife, and separated him from his
companions. Göran ran after them and lunged between Pablo and
Albino. Pablo escaped unharmed, and now the struggle was between Göran
and his old enemy.

      Albino drew blood with a knife to Göran's left thigh. It was a
serious wound though not a fatal one. Göran gouged Albino's right eye
until its eyeball dislodged from its socket and dropped to his cheek,
suspended by two bluish stings, one on each side of the eyeball which
bobbed on the surface of his face like a boiled egg liberated from its
cracked shell, according to lex talionis, the law of return, an eye for a
thigh, injury for injury, wound for wound, and now the monster was
Polyphemus the one-eyed giant. He roared inarticulately, this
Albino-Polyphemus roared at the edge of the cenote, calling on fellow
Cyclops for aid against a mortal enemy. From out of nowhere, it seemed, a
vulture swooped down and delivered a fearsome peck to his remaining eye. It
blinded him. A second vulture swooped and severed the two blue tendons and
then the swinging eyeball dropped to the hardened ground, plopped twice
like a marble, and rolled over the edge and into the cenote. The first
vulture attacked Albino's remaining eye again.  Albino swung his arms
wildly and swiveled round and round, and then his dying roar could be heard
as he dropped headlong into the cenote.

      Xiu attended to Göran while Salvador and Jack stood at the edge of
the cenote and looked down but in the unshaped darkness they saw neither a
body nor the bottom. "There's nothing to see down there but an underground
river," Xiu said calmly. "The current will have swept the body away. Soon
enough it will be a skeleton and then the disarticulated bones will float
to the sea." He spoke without emotion, as if it were Moïra or Manitou
speaking through him and then Göran knew that Xiu was the Maya magician
who had built the Temple at Uxmal over a thousand years ago.

      Two vultures perched on the branch of a ya'axchte overhanging the
cenote. They ignored the cenote and Salvador and Jack who were looking down
into it. They fixed their gaze on Göran whose thigh was bleeding, and
almost-naked Xiu who was binding the wound with a trouser-leg that he had
ripped at the seam, he having stepped out of his trousers for this purpose.

      One of the vultures croaked an elegy: "How the colonizing nations
come and go: first the hatchet-bearing Mexica who exacted tribute from the
Maya; then the spear-bearing Aztecs who exacted heart-sacrifice; then the
Conquistadors with horses and muskets who enslaved them and shipped all the
Aztec gold to Spain where the Hapsburgs squandered it on wars against the
Protestants; then the Dominicans with Bibles and stakes for burning
magicians; then the governors sent from Spain who decimated villages with
smallpox; then the governors sent from Mexico City; under their benign rule
the Yucatecans became a minority in their own country."

      "The rulers are of no importance," the second vulture croaked. "The
Maya spirit lives in Yucateca and in twenty-three other nations."

      "Which one of those birds is Craig Clark and which one is Red Cloud?"
Jack wondered.  (He meant the Lakota shaman.) He directed his question to
Göran, who must have known. Göran started to speak but fainted from
blood-loss.

      An ambulance came to transport Göran to Cancún. "Can't we take
him to Mérida?" Jack asked. The ambulance said it had to be Hospital
General de Cancún, but they would find an American doctor if that's what
Göran wanted. Jack and Salvador offered to go follow behind in the car,
but Xiu said "No, I'll ride with Göran in the ambulance. He's my
responsibility. Besides, I have Yucatecan friends in Cancún. We'll be
fine."

	Salvador and Jack spent the rest of the day preparing news releases
in Spanish and English. From their computer database they were able to tell
the whole story of Albino and his two accomplices. In the Spanish version,
they emphasized Salvador's role in the capture of an American serial killer
who had been killed while resisting arrest in Chichen Itza. This version
was sent to newspapers in Mérida and México (the city). They prepared
two English versions.  One of them emphasized Jack's role in the
narrative. They sent this one to the Lakota Times. The second version
emphasized Göran's role. It was sent to the North Country Advocate and
to the Ashawa News Herald.