The Take (7 page)

“New
Orleans?” she cried. “Eddie, that’s not very far away. Don’t you think Salazar —”

Eddie
gestured reassuringly with a free hand. “Hey, don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll be
okay there. It’ll just be for a few days, and then we can really take off.”

Her
voice turned downward. “Eddie, it’s not a good idea. We’ve got our chance now.
We’ve got to get away from here.”

“We are
getting away from here. New Orleans is not close. It must be three, four
hundred miles from here. And it’s just for a couple of days. Besides, nobody
knows we’re going there. So don’t worry about it.” He pounded the air
conditioning unit with his hand, trying for increased output, then he guided
the car up onto the eastbound freeway.

“Well I
am worried about it. It’s my ass, too.” With clenched fists, she added, “And if
Val or Salazar catches up to us, I’m gonna be just as dead as you!”

Eddie
gripped the steering wheel more tightly. He spoke very slowly, squeezing his
sentences out. “We are going to go to my sister’s. I am not going anywhere
without seeing her. You don’t understand. She raised me. From the time I was
little. I’m not gonna disappear without seeing her. Now, we stopped at your
mama’s so you could say goodbye. So we are going to New Orleans and that’s
that.”

Felina
leaned back hard into the seat, folding her arms in disgust.

Eddie
went on: “Look, baby. Salazar doesn’t know where we are. You said it yourself.
He doesn’t even know who we are. We could be in New Orleans, we could be in
Dallas, we could be in fucking China for all he knows.” He softened his voice
and reached over to touch her thigh. “Now c’mon,
darlin’. I’ve gotta see Linda and then we can go anywhere you want to.
Okay?”

She
looked at him without anger. “Oh Eddie, it’s just that I’m so afraid. I’m so
afraid they’ll find us. They’ll all be looking for us and …”

“Yes,
they will,” he said. “There’ll be some heat for a while, especially from
Salazar. But after a while, things’ll cool off. I’m telling you, we’ll be all
right.” Even though he was patting her thigh, he wasn’t at all sure.

The
rain picked up. A few more miles down the road Felina began to cry. “My mother
is so wonderful. I love her so. And we might never come back here. Oh Eddie,
promise me I can see her again!”

He had
no real reply. So he just said, “We’ll send for her one day real soon. I
promise.”

She
sobbed for a few minutes as they moved down the freeway, slicing through
driving rain. After she had gone through a couple of Kleenex, she sniffled. “You
know, when I was growing up, it was just the two of us. I never knew my father.”

“Is
that where y’all lived, back there? In that trailer?”

“Y-yeah.
That was it. Oh, but it — it wasn’t as bad as it looks.”

Eddie
realized he’d scraped a sore spot. “Hey, it didn’t look bad,” he said, trying
to rescue himself. “I was just wonderin’. Just …”

“Don’t
worry about it, Eddie. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you know, Mama
really loved me. I mean she really, really loved me. I guess she was about the
best thing
ever in my life.
It about killed her, though, when I left years ago to go out on my own. You
know, she didn’t want me to go.”

“How
old were you when you left?”

”Fifteen.”

”Shit,
that’s pretty young.” It really is, he thought. “No
wonder she didn’t want you to leave.”

He
tried hard to imagine what life must have been like for her. He got nowhere.

≈≈≈

Even though his own life hadn’t exactly been a real big party, there
was no way Eddie could have known the trials of Felina’s impoverished
upbringing. He could never have known about the nights she spent in front of
their little television, stoking her curiosity and filling herself with hunger
for the wider world. The world she knew must have existed outside her own
ramshackle surroundings.

And
what a world it was! A world apparently filled with beguiling women, who had
everything they wanted, courtesy of anxious men gathering at their feet.
Dazzling clothes, shiny cars
¾
nothing was beyond their reach. They had
merely to desire it and it would be theirs.

With
puberty, she realized that her own appearance had acquired considerable value,
even in her confined setting. With practice, she emulated the small-screen
vixens, their walk, their gestures, the way they used their eyes. Before long,
boys — and soon after, men — clustered around her with tribute in
hopes of ravaging her firm, nubile body. She learned how to play this big trump
card, until she eventually parlayed it into a
ticket out of the trailer park.

But how
could Eddie have known anything about what she went through at fifteen?

And how
could he have felt the awakening that surged through her when she first saw
tourist brochures of Mexico? Had he seen them, she knew it would have been
through his own gringo eyes. For Felina, however, each colorful photo, each
alluring description, resonated deep within her Latin belly.

Such a
beautiful place. Here was the place of her people. Her people, her country. It
was her place, a notion she could never apply to Texas.

She was
pretty sure Eddie wouldn’t have bothered to learn about the vibrant Mexican
culture;
shit, they’s just Mess’cans
,
he would say
.
She’d overheard him say
that more than once. He had no way of knowing the complexities of Mexican
society, the importance of family, of music, of the very border itself. He
would never have fallen asleep on countless nights the way Felina did, with the
endless chatter of Spanish-language radio by her cramped bedside.

Sometimes,
there would be men who knew of Mexico through their travels, or were from there
— real
Mexicanos
— and
they would enchant her with stories of
México
lindo
. How could his insides quiver the way hers did when she heard these
tales?

“Mama
named me, too,” she went on. “Felina, like the girl in that Marty Robbins song,
El Paso
.”

And in
a soft, sultry voice, she began to sing, surprisingly on key:

“Blacker than night were the eyes of
Felina

Wicked and evil while casting a spell

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden

I was in love, but in vain I could tell.

“A lot
of Mexican girls born in the sixties and seventies, and even the eighties, were
named after her. Did you know that?”

He
shrugged.

T
hey kept going
east, and the sun soon came back out. They were less than forty miles from
Beaumont when, without warning, a loud shot came from outside.

They found us!
Eddie thought, ducking reflexively as the
car swerved.

He
glimpsed Felina sidelong. She was looking around in panic, but unhurt. But what
the hell’s wrong? What — the car.
The
car!
Now veering wildly across the interstate, they nearly dusted a pickup
in the left lane. With a lot of effort, Eddie brought the vehicle under
control. He guided it to the side of the road, slowing the thwoppa-thwoppa of
the blown tire.

He got
out to examine the unraveled remnants of his right front tire. Opening the
trunk, he reached behind the leather suitcase for the jack. He retrieved the
stand, but there was no handle.

“Shit,”
he cried. Felina rolled down the window. “I left the goddam jack handle over at
Val’s last night. It’s what he used to pop open Salazar’s suitcase.”

Felina
laughed a throaty tune. “Now we got a million bucks and no jack.”

The
sign up ahead told of an exit two miles down the road. Eddie was still looking
for a way out when a 1980s-vintage lemon-yellow cargo van pulled up behind
them, rolling to a stop. Two young men in sunglasses got out, their
bright-colored sport shirts
clashing
with the van. As they approached, Eddie could see they were Latinos.

“You
habbing some trouble?” asked the driver as he walked around to the front of
Eddie’s car.

Eddie
looked around. His piece strained his waistband under his shirt, clammy against
his sweating skin. He eyed the open trunk and replied, “Y-yeah. A flat tire and
no jack.”

“Man,
that tire ees really gone,” observed the driver. “Bu’ you can jooze our jack if
you want.” The passenger was standing directly between the van and the yawning
trunk.

“That’s
very nice of you.” It was all he could think of.

The two
strangers conferred in Spanish and then produced a jack from the rear of the
van. “Here, I get the spare for you,” said the driver, reaching into the trunk
and shoving the suitcase aside.

“No!
No,” cried Eddie. “No, I’ll get it.” He rushed to the rear of the car and
jostled the driver aside, grabbing the spare. “I mean — I don’t want you
to get dirty. You’ve been very nice … stopping to help. I don’t want — I
mean, your clothes, they’re …” Then he shut up.

He made
the tire change, then after thanking the two men, Eddie and Felina pulled back
onto the freeway. They both exhaled loudly, as though they had held their
breaths during the entire episode.

At the
next exit, Eddie left the freeway. After pulling into a service station to
clean the carbon black off his hands and arms, he continued eastward down Route
90, the old Federal highway to Beaumont. Soon, along this stretch of forgotten
road, he found a small used car lot, where he traded up for an eight-year old
vanilla Ford sedan, paying for it out of his pocket. He deposited the suitcase
into the big trunk, as they took off, staying on the old two-lane.

Shortly,
after one o’clock, they crossed the Sabine River. The sign said “Welcome to
Louisiana”. Eddie noted to himself that this was his first trip ever outside
the Lone Star State.

And I wouldn’t be makin’ this trip now if
the goddam Dodgers hadn’t got lucky
.

As
Texas and the Toyota faded into memory behind them, they felt a little safer.
Just outside Lake Charles, they stopped to eat.

It was
a diner-gas station combination, one of those flyblown roadside places that
used to do big business a long time ago. But since the dawn of the Interstate Highway
era, there hadn’t been much outside of a slim local trade, mostly lunch, mostly
oil and construction workers. Eddie reasoned that was why the flimsy screen
door hadn’t been fixed in a while.

He and
Felina took a booth near the back. He remembered he hadn’t eaten since
yesterday afternoon. The big hamburgers he saw on the grill sizzled almost as
loudly as George Strait’s plaintive pleas pouring out of the jukebox.

The
waitress took their orders, then brought their drinks. Eddie stirred the sugar
into his iced tea, while his mind raced.

At this
very moment, Val Borden, Raymond Cannetta, and Chico Salazar’s pals were surely
hot to find him, to say nothing of the cops. He had gotten himself into a tight
trick bag and now he had to get himself out. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had no
choice. If he needed any incentive, though, there was plenty to go around.

The
stakes were as high as
they
ever get: his own skin, a million bucks in cash, and a woman.

E
ddie was
digging into his cheeseburger, while Felina was fanning mosquitoes away from
hers, when he approached their booth.

“Excuse
me, but didn’t you folks pull up a few minutes ago in that car out there? The
one with the Texas plates?” He stood about Eddie’s height, with a dark mustache
and a hint of anxiety.

Eddie’s
nerves were already stretched wire-tight. Any reference to the car, any
attention they attracted, twanged him into a state of high tension. All he
wanted was to get through the day without being singled out.

“Yeah,
that’s our car,” came his wary answer. He stopped eating.

The
stranger turned humble. “Well, since you’re from Texas and maybe traveling
east, I wonder if you might could help out a fellow Texan. I’m headed for New
Orleans and my car’s gone out on me. They’re gonna fix it here in the garage
next door, but they’ve gotta send away for a part. It won’t be ready for a few
days, and, well, I’ve just gotta get to New Orleans right away. And they tell
me there won’t be another bus through here till tomorrow. If I could impose on
you folks for a ride maybe as far as you’re going, why I’d just —”

“Sorry,
but we can’t —” Eddie said.

“Why,
we’d love to help you out.” Felina turned to Eddie and said sweetly, “Honey,
the man’s got car trouble and he needs our help. We can’t turn our back on him
when we’ve got all that room in our car.” Then, as she looked back at the
stranger, her mouth slipped into a promising smile. “We can take you all the
way to New Orleans ‘cause that’s where we’re going.” Eddie glared at her, his
jaw tightening.