Cool in Tucson (25 page)

Hector’s brain ran out of obscenities and hit Pause.  Hunkered in his private dead zone, he watched the patrolman close his phone and get out of the squad car.  In his neat blue uniform, in no hurry because he had a badge and a gun and all the power of the city of Tucson backing him up, he walked around his vehicle.  Just beyond his own rear bumper he stopped, tall and strong, weight-lifter’s shoulders bulging out of his bulletproof vest, and beckoned to the tow truck that was pulling around the corner.

The Indian cab driver was watching the tall cop too, Hector noticed as his brain  came back to life.  He could see that old Ali halfway wanted to jump out and run over there, yelling for help. 
He’d do it right now if he wasn’t afraid to leave me with the cab.
  Better get him the hell away from the cop and the tow-truck while he was still dithering, Hector decided.  He chuckled a little, trying to sound like the SUV had nothing to do with him, and said, “Well, hell, looks like we gotta detour around this mess, don’t it?”

“I do not understand,” Ali said, “I thought you said your car was back here.”

“Well, I did have one here,” Hector said, still in that aw-shucks voice, “but I guess my friend just took it on home with him.  That’s okay, I’ll go get my other one.”

The driver went along with the story, probably because he didn’t like being back there in a tight space, in the dark, with a man who was obviously lying to him.  He had to back up and pull forward a couple of times to make the tight turn.  Then he wheeled around the Dumpsters and drove to the front parking lot.  In the backseat, Hector was  close to tears, thinking how close he had been to driving away from here in Ace’s SUV.  Part of his mind was already vaulting on ahead, telling him to forget his rage and go get his old Subaru Brat from the trailer park up on Ruthrauf.  A future kingpin in the drug trade couldn’t operate out of a taxi.  And he couldn’t be seen with tears running down his face either, but oh, 
fucking Goddamn it, if he’d just been a few minutes earlier—!
 

Ali didn’t ask where he needed to go next.  He pulled into a parking spot near the front of the store and turned off the motor, and Hector knew from the way he squared his shoulders that he was sick of worrying about this fare and had decided to blow him off.  So he wasn’t surprised when the little guy twisted around in his seat, not really looking at Hector but past him out the window while he said, “Very well, sir, we have used up the fifty dollars, now I must go home.”

“Bullshit.”  Hector knew that cop was going to be busy at the back of the store for a few more minutes, so up here in front he and Ali were alone in the cab together and Hector was the one carrying a Ruger with eight rounds left.  “I still got at least thirty dollars’ worth of time coming,” he told the driver, “and what you’re gonna do with it is take me to the Desert Oasis mobile home park up on Ruthrauf.”

But old Ali seemed to have grown bigger
cojones
up here in this lighted space with people milling all around them.  He shook his head and said, “No, sir, we are all done.”  And right then, fucking Christ, Hector remembered that his gun was inside the Trader Joe’s bag that he had zipped inside the duffel. 

But you had to keep on keeping on, wasn’t that what his parole officer always said?  So he leaned across the back of the driver’s seat flashing the shit-eating grin and in the voice of a wheedling boy he said, “Aw, c’mon, man, we couldn’t of used up all that money just coming up here from Ohio Street, did we?”  He didn’t mind the contempt gathering on the cabby’s face because by then he had his boot knife in his left hand behind the seat.  Keeping his face forward in the light so the cabby could see his foolish smile, he passed the knife to his right hand. 

When he was ready he grabbed Ali’s hair at the back, just below the white cap, keeping his own smiling face up there in the light so anybody passing would see only a Hispanic passenger joking with his Indian-from-India driver, probably say is this a great country or what?  He slid the knife along the top of the seat under his hand, stuck the sharp point in the driver’s throat and said, “You wanna die right now?” 

Ali sucked in air and rolled his terrified eyes back toward his passenger silently,   shaking his head emphatically, though Hector could see it hurt his scalp.

Hector said, “Then put this fucker in gear and drive west on Golf Links to Aviation Highway, take that to Euclid and turn north and from there on I’ll tell you where to go.”

“I cannot see if you hold my head…”

“You rather I cut your throat?” 

Ali shook his head again, pleading, “No, no, please, I have three children!”

“Better drive if you want to see ‘em again.”

It was over fifteen miles from the grocery store to the mobile home park, and  Hector was shaking with exhaustion by the time they reached it.  Ali was right about one thing, he couldn’t see very well with Hector holding his head like that.  So they had several near-collisions, and Ali cried the whole way and prayed in some funny language.  Just north of Davis-Monthan, with the big jets roaring over their heads, after narrowly missing an eighteen-wheeler Ali pissed his pants.  Hector gritted his teeth and tried not to breathe till they reached the crumbling gate of the Desert Oasis.   

“Stop right here,” Hector said, and slid off the seat fast, dragging his duffel behind him.  The park was poorly lighted at night.  He kicked the cab door shut, trotted through the gate and ducked behind a Dumpster in case old Ali had a gun stashed somewhere in that front seat.  Apparently he didn’t; he hit the gas and took off east on Wetmore laying rubber on the street. 

Walking along the lumpy asphalt driveway toward Ace’s lot, Hector felt used up and disgusted.  He knew he should have kept the taxi with him till he was sure his Brat was still in the carport and fit to drive.  But in that small, urine-smelling space with the weeping, praying driver, he had found himself longing to kill the man just to shut him up.  He could have done it too, nothing to stop him, except right then some voice in his head said
that’s enough killings in Tucson for now, just get your butt out of town
.

And for a minute it felt like good sense maybe turned his luck, because there was his old Subaru Brat right where he’d left it, facing the dying bougainvillea vine at the end of the carport.  All four wheels still on it and no flat tires.  Key turned in the lock just like always, motor started right up and there was even half a tank of gas left, all
right
!

The park was quiet for once, lights off in most of the units around him.  Sitting in the dim light coming from the street, listening to the quiet hum of his old, well-cared-for motor, he rubbed his tired arms and began to cheer up a little.  Everybody hits tough times, he told himself, you just have to get through it.  He thought about the frantically weeping, praying cab driver, and chuckled. 
First time I ever actually scared the piss
out of anybody
. 

Before he pulled out on the street he dug the car registration paper out of his right pocket, turned on the dome light and read the address on Lurlene Street.  Just off Kolb Road.  Wasn’t this weird?  Sometimes he went months without even
thinking
about Kolb Road, now for two days he’d practically lived on the damn crazy street.  A few minutes later he turned south on it again and saw it was still full of traffic roaring both ways, an endless river of noise and light.   

After Kolb, Lurlene Street seemed unbelievably quiet.  Dark, too.  Hector saw one light, way at the back in the brick duplex on the next corner, but the house was silent, nothing moving.  Different strokes, man.  His part of town would just be starting to jump about now. 

He strained to see house numbers, followed them as they grew larger.  Evil Mama must be one more block east.  One car was parked on the street up there about the middle of the block with the parking lights on, but…oh motherfucking shit it was another blue-and-white.  What was
with
those fuckers tonight, were they just
attached
to him or something?  That credit card ad line began to run mockingly through his mind,
they’re
everywhere you want to be
. 

The patrolman was out of his vehicle, standing by the front door of a house under an overhang with a little light shining down on him.  Hector could see the house number now, same as the paper in his hand.  The uniformed officer was beating on the door with his fist relentlessly, bam bam bam, the noise like cannon fire in the quiet street.  While Hector watched, dogs started barking and lights came on in surrounding houses.  The cop was looking around, scanning the way cops did, and when his eyes got to Hector’s slow-moving car they stayed on it.  His fist never stopped pounding on the door but Hector could see his little computer brain taking in the make, model, and color as Hector approached.  Hector sped up and rolled by.  In the rearview mirror he saw the cop’s head swivel, still watching him, memorizing the license number now.  Hector turned left at the next corner, kept on going down Birch Avenue to Stella Road and turned left again.   

He watched his mirrors.  No squad car appeared.  Two more blocks and I’ll know he’s not going to follow, he promised himself.  He kept checking the mirrors and when no lights appeared by the end of the second block he said, “
Yeah
!” 

But as soon as he was sure he was safe he felt the last of his energy draining away, like water from an open tap.  In the last two days he had killed two men and threatened to kill a third, kidnapped a small girl by mistake, and had two vehicles and a fistful of cash snatched right out from under his eyes.  And now in the least likely place he had been blindsided by still another cop.  It was too much.  He had to sleep or die. 

Kolb Road
was beginning to feel like the punishment for every sin he’d ever even thought about, but he maneuvered his way onto it one more time. He drove south to I-10 and underneath it to the frontage road, and rented a room at one of the ten interchangeable motels in a three-block area with signs reading, “$36.95 and up.”  The clerk said that would be $48.35 with tax, and Hector, too tired to argue, paid it and went upstairs to a room that smelled like cigarettes and sweat.  The couple next door encouraged each other loudly in the pursuit of pleasure, banging their headboard against the wall, but Hector was past getting turned on or even irritated. 

The image that came into his mind after he closed his eyes was of that tall, big-shouldered police officer, standing behind Ace’s SUV and beckoning to a tow truck. 
Tomorrow I’m going to
Mexico
, he promised himself as he drifted away,
where at least I know I can turn around without bumping into fucking Tucson police.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

This T-shirt’s pretty shabby,” Sarah said, “but I guess it’ll cover your bones, won’t it?”

“Sure.  Thanks.”  Denny held it up.  “Hey, the Diamondbacks.  I didn’t know you were a baseball fan.”

“Oh, that’s an old shirt of Andy’s, I found it in a box of stuff from the other house.”  

It had not been old the day she pulled it out of a box she thought held only sheets.  Suddenly smelling Andy where she least expected him, she’d given a great cry of despair and spent the next half-hour curled around the shirt on the bedroom rug, howling like a hurt dog.  Hardly the brave start she’d intended for her newly single life, the episode shamed her so much she added it to the grudges she held against Andy, disregarding the fact that he knew nothing about it.  He had been an ardent lover once, lavish with flowers and kisses, and even after he began malingering he always won his way back with sweet praises for “my wife with the traffic-stopping legs” and “my girl with the barn-burner smile.”  She had thrown him out, but his absence cut like a knife.       

Having stained his shirt with makeup and tears, she wore it like an angry battle flag while she pruned bushes, cleaned gutters and painted the back fence.  When it was stiff with sweat she washed it with bleach and afterwards wore it for all her hardest chores, relentlessly punishing the shirt for its owner’s offenses.  Turning it over to Denny would be the first kindness she’d ever shown it.  Seeing its blurred colors hanging limp in Denny’s slender hands, she decided it was high time she let her grievances against Andy go too.  She and that shirt had both suffered enough.