Something for Nothing (24 page)

T
HE LOW CLOUDS HUGGED
the coastline all the way down to Ensenada. This made for a smooth flight, not to mention giving them a spectacular view when they pushed through the clouds above Santa Barbara—the sun had just set, and it was as if they'd been invited to a private viewing of nature's wonders up at six thousand feet.

But the clouds also made it hard to find Ramirez's ranch once they got as far as Ensenada. Martin had the coordinates, but they weren't
that
exact. He had to dip below the clouds and circle around, looking for the landing strip with the burning rags. And just as with the first trip, it was confusing, because once they were past Ensenada, it was utter darkness. It was like flying over the ocean at night.

“Do you know where you are?” Hano asked more than once. “Are we lost?”

“Yeah,” Martin said, finally. “We've come back down into another time period, one from before there was electricity. If they don't kill us, they'll treat us like gods.”

Hano snorted, but didn't give over to a real laugh. Martin could tell that Hano was nervous about the plane. At least I've got one edge over this guy, Martin thought.

A few minutes later Martin spotted the two parallel lines of lights, and a few minutes after that they were bumping down onto the dirt landing strip. Just like before, he taxied down and past the runway, and then he wheeled around in the sudden darkness and came back toward the lights. It was hard to see through the glare of the burning rags' smoke, but as they moved along Martin gradually made out a couple of dimly lit figures jogging along, guns in hand. It really was as if they'd descended into some sort of primitive civilization. Martin had thought he was going to feel better this time, but there was something about the men and the setting that scared the shit out of him all over again.

What am I doing? he thought.

He stopped the plane at the edge of the two rows of burning rags, and they went through the whole process of putting their hands up against the plane and being searched. There was a slight breeze, and Martin felt as if the smoke from the rags was blowing right into his face. It made his eyes burn and tear up, but he was afraid to move his hands to wipe his eyes. Instead, he leaned his face over and rubbed his eyes against his biceps, first the right arm, then the left. But as he did this it occurred to him that the Mexican guys would think he was crying. The men were talking to one another in Spanish, and he wondered for a second if that's what they were saying.

Eventually someone gave him a quick pat on the shoulder, indicating that he could turn around. And then Hano was talking to one of the guys in Spanish, and they were climbing into the backseat of a car. Or Martin was climbing into the car. Hano was about to get in, but then he started talking to someone in Spanish again. Martin sat there looking at Hano's legs and midsection as he stood there, leaning against the car door and talking. Martin tried to pick up a stray word here or there, but it was hopeless.

“Okay,” Hano said, leaning in to look at Martin. His face was a weird reddish color, from the glow of the landing strip flames. “We're all set. They're just gonna load up the plane. But Ramirez is here, so give me the money, and I'll give it to him.”

“What?” Martin said.

Hano shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “I guess he decided to come check things out. But we gotta pay him, right? So give me the bag, and I'll give it to him. I'm the one who speaks Spanish.”

“But what about me?” Martin said. “Shouldn't I be there? I mean, to hand it over?”

Hano looked at him for a second, glanced out at whoever was standing there next to the car, then looked back at Martin.

“Martin,” he said, more serious now. “This isn't the time to fuck around. Who gives a shit who gives him the money? I speak Spanish, and I've met the guy before. And they just told me to do it, for Christ's sake. Just give me the money, and I'll be right back.”

Martin sat there for another second, thinking and staring at Hano. Was there a decision to make here? Should he just get out of the car and march around to the other side, and say “No, we're both doing this”? Would it matter? Did he really need to look Ramirez in the face?

“Martin,” Hano said. Martin saw that he was talking through gritted teeth now, and looking right at him. It was similar to when he leaned over to look at him at the restaurant, but more serious . . . more intense. “Just give me the fucking bag. Please.”

Martin sighed and handed the bag over to Hano. It was the word
please
that made him give in.

“All right,” he said to Hano. “Sure. Here you go.”

Hano reached out and grabbed the bag, and nodded at Martin. “Good,” he said. “Thanks.”

“So you're gonna be right back, right?” Martin said. But Hano had straightened up and was closing the car door. When the door clicked shut the interior light turned off, and so Martin was left alone in the darkness of the car.

For a few seconds he sat there feeling miffed. He watched as Hano walked over and shook hands with someone—with Ramirez, apparently—and then handed over the bag of money. Martin squinted and tried to get a look at Ramirez, but it was all just shadows and flickering light. He was just a guy, maybe vaguely Mexican-looking. From where he was sitting he could barely recognize Hano. Behind them, Martin could see his plane. A couple of guys were busy loading it up with the packages of heroin . . . the bricks, Hano and Val had called them.

Martin figured that would be it—that now that Hano had turned over the money, he'd walk back to the car, and either get in, or signal for him to get out. But he didn't. Instead he just stood there talking to Ramirez. Jesus, Martin thought.

It was like the time his father had sent him to a shitty summer camp. Some all-boy Catholic thing down the coast, past Santa Cruz. He'd been about thirteen or fourteen, and had gotten into trouble for something, so off he went. It was a boring camp, just Ping-Pong and hanging around. But one evening he and two friends had met two girls who'd snuck away from their family's beach house for the evening. The girls had some wine they'd stolen from one of the girls' parents, and so they all sat around drinking. But eventually his friends had paired off with the girls, and Martin had been left behind. “Keep watch for us,” one of his friends had said. And he'd done it—sat there like an asshole, listening to the sounds of making out. And then,
worse, he heard about it all week, about how great it had been, how they'd scored with some local chicks, how much cooler they'd been than the girls back home. Martin acted like he was in on it—talked up the whole thing to some of the other kids at camp—but of course he hadn't been. Not really.

Martin decided to get out of the car. Fuck it, he thought. I'm not even the lookout here. I'm just the pathetic American sitting quietly in the car, while the big Hawaiian guy does all the talking and schmoozing. But as he reached for the door handle he saw that one of the Mexicans was standing a few feet away, with a rifle in his hand. He didn't know whether or not the guy was supposed to be keeping watch on him, maybe making sure he didn't get out of the car. It seemed kind of unlikely. But he knew he didn't want to find out the hard way—the rifle barrel in his face, lots of yelling. More humiliation.

And so he just sat there. Five and then ten minutes went by, but it felt like an hour. He would rather have been in a motel room in Ensenada, puking his guts out.

He watched Hano and Ramirez talk and laugh, silhouetted by the runway flames. What were they talking about? His willingness to sit there? It also occurred to him that they were talking about hauling him out of the car and shooting him—shooting him and burying him somewhere out there in the darkness. One less loose end.

He shook his head. He was tired, and wanted to get the fuck out of there.

Finally, the guy with the gun walked away, and Hano came walking over. Huh, Martin thought. The guy didn't leave until Hano came back to the car.

“Okay, Mr. Pilot,” Hano said when he opened the door. He was all smiles now. “Sorry it took so long. But the plane's all loaded up now. We can get going.”

Walking over to the plane, Martin looked around for Ramirez. He figured he'd at least get to shake his hand. Or give him a nod.
Something, anyway. But he was gone, and pretty soon Martin was starting up the plane.

Up in the air Hano was a chatterbox. He wanted to vacation in Mexico soon, maybe do some sport fishing. He joked again with Martin about not getting to go out to Ensenada and see “Miss Mexico.” He talked about some upcoming horse races, and the extra money he was going to have from this job, about how great the setup was. No one seemed to think to look up in the sky to catch drug smugglers.

“They're stopping all the cars and tearing them apart,” he said. “But we're up here, and it's like we're invisible. Especially at night.” He shook his head. “What a joke,” he said.

They shook hands and said good-bye in Santa Barbara. Martin could tell that as far as Hano was concerned, everything was A-okay.

But once he was alone and back in the air, Martin felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. For a while he felt the urge to cry—even hoped that he would, for the relief it might bring. But there weren't any tears, and so he just had to deal with the sudden and fairly intense feeling of desolation that was gripping him, six thousand feet in the air. What was he doing? Yes, he was working—making money—and that was motivation enough. But what was he
doing
? He'd felt like a fucking idiot back there at Ramirez's place. And while that in itself wasn't a big deal, the problem was that he
always
felt that way—and always had. Sure, there were bright spots: the first time Linda told him that she loved him (which wasn't until after their shotgun wedding and Sarah's birth); the time Sarah was three and said she'd missed him, even though he'd only been out of the room for a minute; the time he heard Peter brag to a boy down the street about how his dad had caught a shark with three legs (it was a three-foot shark); the first time a racehorse he owned won a race. But in general his life was made up of moments like the one back in Ramirez's car: looking on while other people did the things that mattered. Just wait here, Martin. Eventually you'll belong, but not right now.

Not for the first time, he thought about cutting the engine and pointing the plane downward . . . He could just let gravity do its work. Plunge through the darkness—he'd be dead in no time. But he didn't want to be found with a load of heroin in his plane. For one thing, he was pretty sure that would void his life insurance policy, and Linda and the kids wouldn't get a dime. They'd be completely screwed. But he also didn't want to give that cop Slater the satisfaction of finding him with a load of drugs. At least not like that. If he was going to catch Martin, he was going to have to work a little harder than that.

He thought about flying past Hayward and the Bay Area, maybe up to Reno. If he knew someone who'd buy the heroin from him, he could use it to start a new life and be a new person. Just disappear. They'd think he'd crashed somewhere—that he'd gotten off course over the low clouds and run out of gas over the ocean. “He probably realized too late where he was,” someone, a cop of some sort or maybe Ludwig, would say to Linda. Ludwig wouldn't really believe that he'd made a mistake like that. He might say it to Linda, but he wouldn't believe it. Though Linda probably wouldn't believe it, either. She knew he might just be capable of bailing out—saying fuck it, it's your problem now, not mine. But knowing Linda, she'd hunt him down and then kill him herself. And she'd do it in a sly way: she'd hand him a drink with poison in it, and then, when he was lying there on the ground, choking to death, tell him she'd done it.

“Did you really think you could walk out on me like that, Martin?” she'd ask. “After all the shit I put up with from you? I don't think so.”

This last thought made him laugh out loud. The sound of his own voice startled him, but somehow it helped him shift the gears of his mood just a little bit. Fuck it, he thought. I'm sleeping in my own bed tonight, and maybe when I wake up in the morning things will be a little better. I'll be five thousand dollars richer, anyway. He laughed again. Then he started singing a song to himself, just to keep the sound of himself there with him in the cockpit. He realized it was “Country
Roads,” the John Denver song he'd sung at the restaurant in Ensenada on his first trip to Mexico, and this made him laugh yet again.

The instrument panel told him he was somewhere over the Santa Cruz mountains. But a few minutes later when he looked out the window he realized that he could actually see the lights of San Jose down below in the distance. The coastal clouds were finally clearing out. He'd be touching down soon. Good. He was really beat, and he needed to get out of the plane and drive home. Something—that frightening feeling of sadness, or maybe emptiness (it was hard to say what it was, exactly)—had tried to follow him back from Mexico. It had slipped into the plane with the drugs, or maybe with Hano, and it had grabbed him from behind for a few minutes, had tussled with him. But he'd managed to slip free, and if he just kept moving, it probably wouldn't catch up with him. Or not for a while, at least. And that was all you could ask for, really. Just a little bit of time and distance between you and the thing that was chasing you.

M
artin was right in the middle of telling Ludwig about his crappy morning, about how he'd decided to surprise Sarah by taking her out to breakfast, letting her be late for school. Or summer school. Her grades had been so bad that she'd been forced to sign up for an extra month of classes, three mornings a week. It was some sort of deal the school had cut so that she and a few other kids could get credit for classes they'd failed and graduate from junior high. She was miserable about it—beaten down and humiliated. So Martin thought he'd do something nice for her, a special little breakfast with dad, maybe a chance to talk, figure things out.