Something for Nothing (10 page)

“Anyway,” Val said, wiping his mouth. “Apparently Mexico is the main place for producing heroin these days. They call it ‘Mexican brown,' or ‘Mexican mud.' It used to be Turkey, but not anymore. They grew shitloads of opium there, and it would get processed and then sent to France. And then from France, they'd send it to New York. That's the French Connection. You know, like the movie. But then about a year or two ago, the Turkish government outlawed opium poppies. You can't grow them anymore. It was like the Arabs and their oil—fuck you, no more opium. And so no more heroin. And no more French Connection, of course. And now, because of that, Mexico supplies most of the heroin in the U.S. They just stepped right into the market, and now the shit is just flowing over the border.”

“Huh,” Martin said. “The French Connection.”

He was amazed that the Gene Hackman movie from a couple of years ago had actually revolved around the same heroin trade that he was entering into here in California. It hadn't occurred to him to think about it that way. He'd liked the movie all right, and he remembered getting caught up in the atmosphere and the drama of the film, especially the chase scenes. But it was ridiculous that Gene Hackman had won an Academy Award for his role as the cop in the movie. What was his name? . . . Of course, that was it. Popeye Doyle. He was supposed to be a real tough guy—broke the rules, beat the shit out of the crooks,
and the rest of it. But the problem was that you could tell that Gene Hackman wasn't athletic or strong at all. He was a skinny guy who would've gotten his ass kicked by any self-respecting street thug. And so you really could feel him pretending to be a tough guy. He overdid it, is what it came down to. Steve McQueen would have been better. Even Paul Newman, although he was too handsome, probably.

“But look,” Val said, breaking the momentary silence. “You don't need to worry about all that stuff. Like I said, my man Ramirez and his guys are all right. They're cool. He's connected somehow to this Perez big shot—he's his brother-in-law or cousin or something like that—and he breeds and trains horses for Perez and some of his pals. And so because I'm pals with Ramirez—we go way back—I'm getting a kind of insider deal. Plus, this isn't a big operation, really. It's just a little side job he's kind of tossing our way.”

Val explained how Martin would fly to the little airport in Santa Barbara and meet up with Derek Hano, a horse guy that Val worked with in the L.A. area. Then, when it was dark, the two of them would fly past San Diego, over the border and down to Ensenada, the touristy port town not far beyond Tijuana. Or just south of Ensenada, to Ramirez's ranch. He'd have a landing strip lit up for him, Val said. He quizzed Martin about flying at night, whether he could locate a specific location without much to go on, and so on. Martin assured him that it wasn't a problem, that he'd done a lot of this sort of thing. Which was true. Before starting Anderson Aircrafts, he'd done side work for the Forest Service, dropping guys in behind fire lines, landing in crazy spots in the middle of nowhere, way up in the Sierras, or in Oregon and Washington. It wasn't a big deal.

“Good,” Val said. His expression was relaxed, and he gave Martin one of his big Val Desmond smiles. Then he reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “That's good. I knew I could count on you.”

Martin thought that he detected a brief flash of something in Val's eyes—a latent wariness, maybe—but then it was gone, and Val was standing up and finishing off his beer.

“Listen,” he said. “Let me get that money, and then you can take off. I've gotta be somewhere in a while. So just hang on a second—I'll be right back.”

Martin watched as Val walked away, down a short path that led off the patio area, away from the stables and toward a big shed that backed up to a fenced area. Val opened a gate in the fence, and then disappeared into the shed. Martin realized that it was the dog's kennel. He'd seen Val walk him down there before, and had listened to Rex bark from behind the chain-link fence—had seen him throw himself against it with his big fat paws. He was scary even when he was locked up. Martin remembered that Val had converted the shed into a kennel after Rex had ripped up that guy's arm. But he didn't know why Val was there now. He wondered for a quick, worried moment if Val was planning to let the thing out of the cage—maybe menace him a little bit, let him know what would happen if he screwed things up or chickened out. He looked around for the dog, but didn't see him.

The ground around him was littered with fluffy little yellow flowers and long green seed pods. They must have dropped from the big acacia tree that shaded the patio area. It reminded him of that Dr. Seuss book. He imagined thousands of civilizations crying out to him from their individual little acacia flower worlds. “We are here! We are here! We are here!” He felt as if he could understand their basic complaint, which to his mind was a feeling of utter helplessness. He looked at his beer and wondered if he might be a little drunk. But he'd only had two beers. It was the stress. Too much time being anxious and trying to hide it.

And then he found himself thinking about Linda. What would she say to all this? She'd tell him to get the fuck out of there before Val came back with the money, that's what she'd say. But even if he did leave Val's without the money, she'd tell him that it was over, that she wanted out, right now. Because he'd gone from being a bungling liar to a dangerous fool.

“Don't you know what happens when drugs are involved?” she'd ask
him. “People get hurt. You'll get hurt. Or arrested. And then what happens to us—to me—to
my
life?”

He'd tell her that it was all for her, for her and the kids, but she wouldn't buy it, not for a second. “No,” she'd say. “It's all for
you
. And do you know how I know that, Martin? Because everything you do is for you. Even when you think you're doing it for me or for the kids or for someone else, it's always for you. For Martin. And you know what? It always has been.”

A minute or two later, Val emerged from the shed. He opened the gate and started back up the path toward Martin, carrying a green trash bag. Even from where he was sitting, thirty or forty yards away, Martin could tell that it was filled with bundles of money. Huh, he thought. So Val keeps his cash in the dog's kennel. Not a bad idea. Who would go in there to look for it? It would be like going into a grizzly bear's cave. Even if you knew the money was in there, would you really want to hunt around for it, knowing that the grizzly might come home at any moment?

Val plopped the bag onto the metal patio table. “Here you go,” he said. He didn't sit down again, and Martin knew it was time to get going. “All you have to do is land the plane and hand it over to the guys down at Ramirez's place. Hano knows all the people involved. There's nothing to it.”

“Okay, so this coming Friday, right?” Martin asked, standing up. “May seventeenth?”

“Yeah,” Val said, smiling again. “That's right. Mark it on your calendar.”

Martin nodded, acknowledging Val's sarcasm.

“All right,” he said. “I'll be there.”

He reached out and picked up the trash bag. He couldn't wait to get into his car, drive off and park somewhere, so that he could look through it all. He didn't know why, exactly—it certainly wasn't his money. And in some respects it didn't much matter how much money
was actually in the bag. Ten thousand dollars, a million—he was going to hand over all of it to the drug guys, and in return they were going to load up his plane with heroin, so that he could fly back to Hayward and get five thousand dollars for his efforts. But still, it was a lot of money.

Val gave Martin a pat on the back, and turned to walk into his house. “Be safe,” he said.

Martin started to say something in reply, but he realized that Val wasn't listening. The conversation was over, and it was time to go. Val stepped into his house through the sliding glass door, and when he opened it Martin he could hear Rex barking.
Woof, woof. Woof, woof, woof.
Then the door closed, and he couldn't hear the dog anymore. Or maybe just faintly—he wasn't sure.

He held the bag out for a second, as if weighing it (it seemed to be at least ten pounds, maybe more), and then he folded the loose part of the bag over the top of the bulky part. He tucked it under his arm, let himself out through the gate, and headed for his car. He put the bag into his trunk, and then got into his car and sat there for a minute, looking out at Val's yard and thinking. He had a lot to do before the trip.

He was about to start the car when he heard—or thought he heard—Rex's barking again. Then he started the car and backed up so that he could swing around and head down the hill, wondering as he did if maybe he was going to hear that faint barking sound all the way to Mexico.

M
artin was still thinking about the money and the hiding place he'd chosen for it on Monday morning. He'd put it into a leather satchel Linda had given him a few years ago, and shoved it to the back of the upper shelf of his closet. But knowing that it was sitting there just a few feet away from him while he lay in bed or got dressed was driving him crazy. He had to keep resisting the urge to take it out and look at it and count it—or just plain touch it.

Which is exactly what he'd done after leaving Val's house on Saturday. He'd driven straight home and dumped the money onto his desk in the spare room. (They called it Martin's office, but it was really just a junk room cluttered with toys the kids had outgrown.) Linda had taken Peter somewhere, and Sarah was at a friend's, and so he had the house to himself. Val had said to just leave the money in the bag—in fact, he'd made a big deal out of it, and Martin had wondered briefly if Val had some way of knowing if he removed it. But he knew this was ridiculous, and so he'd dumped it out onto his desk.

It was more money than Martin had ever seen (except on TV shows and in films—though he'd heard that it was illegal to use real money for movies, that it had to be fake). He'd been involved in a larger transaction when he was setting up the initial loan for Anderson Aircrafts, but he'd never actually seen that money, let alone touched it.

The money was divided up into lots of bundles that were bound with rubber bands. It was a little like Peter's baseball cards. Peter kept his best cards separate, the Hank Aarons and Reggie Jacksons and Sal Bandos, but most of them were sorted into teams, rubber-banded, and stacked neatly into shoe boxes and cigar boxes.

Now, Martin thought, he knew where all of America's missing
cash had gone. Yes, the sultans over in the Middle East had a lot of it, and the bankers in New York had their slice as well (and no doubt Radkovitch slept on a mattress full of money). But, he realized, a big chunk of his and everyone else's money was sitting in leather bags just like this one. All over the country they were being filled, handed over, and zipped off to places like Mexico to buy drugs. No wonder Nixon had to keep printing all those greenbacks.

He counted. There were one hundred and ten bundles, and each bundle held one thousand dollars. Who'd done all this arranging and counting? He considered the possibility that it had been Angela, but then he realized that this was absurd—the idea that she'd involve herself in any aspect of drug smuggling was laughable (and in fact Martin doubted she knew anything about what Val was up to). Maybe it was one of the Mexican jockeys, or one of the young guys who helped out in the stables. Or maybe it was just Val. It wasn't hard for Martin to picture Val sitting there alone in one of the stables late at night, the money spread out on a blanket he'd draped over a hay bale, and sorting it out by flashlight.

At one point, he held a packet in his hand and thumbed the edge. It made a kind of flicking sound, like someone with a deck of cards. The numbers in the upper left-hand corners of the bills whizzed by. It occurred to him that if he drew a stick figure on the corner of each bill, each one with legs or arms slightly higher or lower, it would seem as if the stick person were moving when you flicked through the packet of bills. He wondered what the drug dealers in Mexico would think if one of them noticed a stack of bills with an animated sequence built into it. Would they gather around the person who had discovered the unexpected little moving cartoon, pointing and laughing and perhaps shedding for a minute their identities as bad-ass drug guys? Would their faces crease into smiles—youthful again for a brief moment? Would they say “Hey, those Americans sure are goofy”?

Martin must have sat there at his desk, looking at the bills, touching them, musing in his own abstracted way, for at least half an hour. It was
as if they were trying to cast a spell on him, whispering their siren song and urging him to keep on touching them. He'd read books and seen movies where people were transfixed and suddenly changed by the sight of money, or by an unexpected windfall. Like the woman in
Psycho
. She was a workaday secretary, and then, suddenly, she got her hands on a big stack of bills, and she didn't look back. It was Janet Leigh; she was really good in it. Sexy, but also just believable. She told herself she was stealing the money so that she could get married, pay off her lover's debts, and give them a fresh start, but you weren't supposed to buy that, not really. She took the money because it was there, because it had whispered to her, and then she headed out into the night, driving like a maniac.

M
ARTIN'S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR
Monday morning had been to head to the office. He and Ludwig had talked about generating some ideas for a couple of ads in the
Oakland
Tribune.
Plus, Martin thought he might invest some of the money he was going to get from Val in a TV spot, and he wanted to bounce the idea off of Ludwig—in part because he wanted Ludwig to know that he was still trying and still had some juice. (The actual idea had been Sarah's: she'd been watching some clown in San Jose trying to peddle his used cars on one of the local channels, and she'd asked Martin why he never did that. He'd told her that those ads never worked, but in fact he'd been dumbfounded by the commonsensical brilliance of the suggestion.)