The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (31 page)

—Get up.

We got up.

Harris gagged. Gabe took out the sap and forced Harris' head to the side and waited for the vomiting to subside before putting it back in.

Po Sin watched for a second then turned back to us.

—That the brother?

I looked at Jaime's feet sticking out from under the bed where he'd crawled to hide.

—Yeah.

He bent and grabbed an ankle and dragged Jaime squirming into the light.

—Get up.

Jaime stood, one big bundle of flinching muscles.

—Uh, hey uh.

Po Sin pointed at Harris and Gabe.

—See that?

Jaime nodded.

—Sure.

Po Sin shook his head.

—No you don't.

Jaime nodded.

—No, no I don't. I do not.

Po Sin looked the room over.

—Anything in here belong to any of you three? A hat? Keys? Phone? Check your pockets, make sure you have everything you came in with.

Jaime pawed his pockets.

—I got everything, sir, I have all my stuff.

Po Sin looked at me and Soledad.

—You two?

We nodded.

He pointed at the door.

—OK, get out.

Harris jerked and tried to knee Gabe in the back and Po Sin took a pillow from the bed and tossed it to Gabe and Gabe muffled Harris' face and Po Sin stepped on the cowboy's ruined gun hand and there was a noise from behind the pillow.

Jaime bolted for the door. I pushed Soledad ahead of me, detouring to unzip one of the duffels and pull out a thin Harbor Inn bath towel. Jaime and Soledad went out. I closed the door to a crack and stood just inside.

—Po Sin.

He looked up.

—Yeah.

—What are you gonna?

—We're gonna find out where my van is. I don't think it will take long. But you probably don't want to watch.

—And that's?

—What?

—That's all, just find out where?

Po Sin crossed the room.

—Go home, Web. Nothing's gonna happen here.

He opened the door and pushed me out.

I stuck my foot in the door.

—Hey man, just, you know. Not too much. I mean. I called for help, but.

—That's right, you called for help. Help came. Now we're just gonna clean things up a little.

And he closed the door in my face, cutting off my view as one of Harris' hands flailed and knocked Gabe's sunglasses from his face to reveal that single inked tear, dark beneath a raging eye.

—I mean, is this how you think partners behave, asshole?

I flicked the blinker and shifted onto the exit ramp.

—We're not partners.

Jaime folded his arms a little tighter.

—Apparently fucking not. Partners let each other in on the plan. Partners have some trust between them. You think I could get anything done in the industry if I did business the way you do, just giving people half the information and not even telling them the details of what happens in the third act? I could not.

I came off the ramp and took a right.

—Seeing as you're a complete fuckup, Jaime, I thought it best not to tell you that what I really needed you to do was to get found sneaking around so they'd think they caught us messing with them and not be worrying about us trying to pull something else. Seeing as you have an obvious gift for doing the absolutely wrong thing, I figured that if I told you you needed to get caught doing something suspicious, you'd probably end up in the greatest hiding place known to man. If I'd told you to let yourself get caught, you'd probably still be hiding in some damn storm drain or something.

—Well no shit! What asshole lets himself get caught?

I pulled into the parking lot and stopped.

—How relieved I am to know I was correct.

He looked around.

—What's this?

—Your motel.

He didn't move.

—I thought we might go grab a drink or something. You know, wrap party. Kind of review the events and see how the numbers add up.

Soledad opened the door and got out.

—Come on, Jaime.

—Yeah, but.

He looked from me to her and back.

—Well, let's all go get something to eat first? Yeah?

She tugged his sleeve.

—Come on, little brother.

—Shiiit.

He got out.

—Hey, hey, asshole, so how ’bout my cash? My ten percent.

I rubbed my forehead.

—I don't have it.

—Well. What? That's not cool. I got a hotel bill to pay here. I got to pay for those sheets. Expenses eating my capital.

He pointed at Soledad.

—She got anymore in that shirt?

I looked at her.

—No. That's all there was.

—Man, you owe. None of this would have worked out without me. You owe. That cash is to pay my talent. This was my project!

I adjusted the Harbor Inn bath towel I'd wrapped around myself when I stripped off my pee-soaked jeans and drawers and dropped them in the bed of the Apache.

—I know what I owe, Jaime. I'll pay it. Now please, fuck off.

He flapped his arms.

—Yeah, fuck yourself, asshole. Just you better come up with my dough.

He started for the motel.

—C'mon, sis, get my stuff from my room and grab my ride. We can skip the bill. I put it on your dad's credit card anyway. And he won't mind. I can crash in Malibu tonight, yeah?

I looked at Soledad.

—You want to ride with him?

She looked at her brother's retreating back.

—No.

—Should I bother asking if you want to ride with me?

She wiped at a clot of eye snot.

—Yeah.

—So you want to ride with me, or what?

—Yeah.

—Get in.

She got in and slammed the door and Jaime turned and watched as I rolled toward the exit.

—Oh, oh yeah, go on, you two, go have fun. Fuckin' ditchers! Get rid of me and go do your thing!

He walked behind the truck and we drove slow across the lot.

—Just better get me that cash, asshole! You don't, know what happens!

I pulled out, Jaime at our heels.

—Cut you, asshole! Fucking cut you!

We drove.

She fiddled with the chrome knob on Chev's antique truck radio, watching the little red line scan the frequencies, stopping when she found a woman's voice singing something slow and very sad in Spanish.

She looked through the windshield at the sign announcing the 405 and 110 interchange.

—You gonna take me home?

I stayed lined up for the 405 North.

—Someplace you'd rather be?

She pulled her feet up on the seat and hugged her knees.

—You take me to your home?

I jerked the wheel over, skidding onto the shoulder fifty yards from the split in the freeways. The truck stalled out, headlights spotted on a spider-web of graffiti covering the tall cinder-block wall edging the freeway, traffic barreling past, Spanish song playing on the old speakers.

We looked at each other.

Eyes on mine, she put her head on her knees and started to sing along with the radio. I looked away and stretched my arm behind the seat and felt around and came out with a nine-millimeter bullet like the one that killed her father. I showed it to her.

—Know it?

She stopped singing.

—It's a bullet.

I set it carefully on the dash, business end pointing at the sky.

—Yeah. In somewhat more detail, it's a bullet from the nine-millimeter pistol you gave your brother.

She unfolded her legs.

—What?

—Don't
what
me. Don't. Just. Just tell me that's not a bullet from your gun. Tell me you were never involved with Harris and Talbot and that other hick. Tell me you didn't drag me into all this shit to make it end like this.

—End like?

I banged the dash and the bullet jumped and fell into the footwell.

—Like this! Like it's all cleaned up! Like those guys are out of the picture and you don't have to worry about them. Like! Jesus! Like. You know.

I spread my arms.

—This.

I dropped my arms.

She bent and picked up the bullet and rolled it between her fingers.

—Web.

She held up the bullet.

—This isn't from my gun.

She set it on the dash.

I stared at the bullet.

—Well. Good.

She dragged fingers through her hair.

—But if you got that bullet from Jaime, it's from one of my dad's guns. And I did drag you into things. And I was involved with Harris and those guys.

I slapped my forehead.

—Awww, man! I knew it.

—Listen.

—This is fucked.

—Listen, goddamn it!

I listened.

She stared out at the spray-painted wall and I listened.

—Web, my dad, he was, he was great. A great dad. But he was a dirty businessman. No, that's not true. He was a criminal. A smuggler. And I knew. For a long time. And not just almonds. Other things.

An eighteen-wheeler washed past, its wind rocking the Apache on its shocks.

She watched it disappear down the ramp.

—People. Human trafficking.

She went through her clothes.

—I'm out of cigarettes.

She opened the ashtray and found the longest butt she could. She fitted it to her lips and blew through it, then lit it, and the cab filled with smoke.

—Chinese. These people, poor as hell. Poor as. We don't have a frame of
reference. They just want a new life. Or something. Freedom. Or something. I don't know. They get locked inside a cargo container. Forty, fifty people. Two weeks on the ocean. A chem toilet. Packaged food. Bottled water. Sometimes, their container gets loaded out of sequence.

She cracked a window and some of the smoke drifted free.

—The people who set this up, they try to arrange it so these cans get loaded onto the ships last, at the top of the stacks. In the air. Sometimes something happens. A can gets mixed up, ends up loading in the hold instead of the deck, buried under dozens of other cans. The heat. No air.

She dropped a spent match out the window crack.

—One time that happened with a can my dad had helped to set up. They all died. Forty.

She looked at me.

—And I found out about that. When he started getting sick, I began taking care of some of the business for him, and I found out about that.

She looked away from me.

—But I didn't. You know, I never did anything. About that. Except I had to talk to him. I. Jesus. It was. He was my dad and he'd been involved in this awful thing and I never. I mean, how was that possible? How did he live? Right? I couldn't begin to fathom how he could get up and go to work and, and he was still smuggling. After that. Like. So. And I thought,
Maybe I'm wrong. I have to be wrong. He couldn't have done that. He couldn't have been responsible for those people and let them die and hid it and never had it show.
Because he didn't, you know? Let it show. In himself. I could look at the dates, after I put it together, see when it happened, remember that I was fifteen, remember how there was never a change in how he behaved at home, around me. So I had to be wrong. Because people can't be like that.

She took a drag.

—So I asked him.

She exhaled through the crack, into the air outside.

—I asked him, I asked him if it was true.

She watched the cigarette burn for a while, got tired of watching.

—And he told me it was. He told me he didn't do it anymore. That he'd stopped after that. But it had happened. Those people, they come over, they promise to work for someone, pay off the fifty thousand dollars it costs to get here. They become slaves. They go from these miserable lives,
to worse. And some die horribly. But he said, he promised, that he didn't do it
anymore.
Like that made it better.

A crease formed between her eyes.

—And I told him what I thought of that.

She stuck her thumbnail in the crease and pressed till the flesh around it turned white.

—That night he killed himself.

She pressed harder.

—Which could have been his plan all along. Or not. His note didn't specify.

She looked at the butt in her hand, frowned, rolled the window down a little more and tossed it out.

—He was wrong about that whole blowing through the filter thing. Doesn't make it any better at all.

She looked at me.

—So where to now?

I started the truck.

I could have told her about her dad's continued interest in human trafficking. I could have told her what else he might have been thinking about when he wrote that note. But I didn't much see the point. She was going to know soon enough that he'd broken that promise. And I didn't feel like being the guy to tell her.

So instead I headed up the 110 toward home.

—I was getting these calls, these guys I knew my dad had a deal going with. He'd gotten involved with these truckers or something. It was a quick thing, I guess. Cash. A lot of it. And Dad, he liked the fast action, so he took it on. And now they called and I told them he was dead and they started freaking out. Threatening to go to the cops and. I don't know. I should have realized they wouldn't do that, but I was. Confused. I didn't. The cops. They would have dug into everything once they found out Dad was involved in that. I mean, these days, post 9/11, any kind of smuggling and I figured they'd dig up his whole life. I didn't want people to know. What had happened before. I didn't want them to know I had known. And that I'd confronted him. And what happened after. I.