Kilometer 99 (25 page)

“Oh my God,” Ben says.

I look up.

Walking down the street is Crackito. His feet are bare and he is wearing his too-big rags of a shirt and shorts. His entire head—hair, eyes, mouth, everything—is covered in spray paint, mostly blues and reds, a bit of glittery gold in the mix as well.

This isn't the first time I've seen the spray-painted face gag. Local kids sometimes do that to drunks who pass out in the street. But this seems far crueler—to paint someone so young and helpless.

“Poor bastard.” Ben sighs. “
Niño
!” he calls to the boy, motions for him to join us.

Crackito shuffles over. Ben pulls out a stool for him to sit on, then asks the woman behind the counter for another plate. She frowns at us, not pleased to have Crackito in her establishment.

“Hungry?” Ben asks.

Crackito nods, staring down at the hands lying empty upon his lap.

“Who did this to you?” I ask.

“Nobody.” Crackito shakes his head.

Once the food comes, he eats the whole plateful in seconds.

I pay the tab and give the cook a large tip. Crackito takes off his shirt and goes into the ocean to wash the paint off, scrubbing at his face and torso with handfuls of black sand. It seems to work.

“If you want to stay behind tonight, Malia, that's fine. Pelo and I can handle it.”

“I said I'm in.” The truth is, I can't cope with the thought of leaving Ben to do this alone.

“We'd better get back,” he says.

During Peace Corps training, we had a terrifying session on security, meant to scare us into caution and prudence. The only rule I remember is this: If somebody threatens you, don't ever let yourself be moved to another location. Once the bad guys move you, things always get worse. If somebody in a ski mask puts a gun to your head and tells you to get into a car—which did happen to a volunteer in San Salvador not so long ago—scream, run, but don't get in the car. I recall that lesson now, in light of Pelo's new plan. I'm convinced our situation will keep getting worse if we take steps forward in league with him.

Though Crackito has now run along, an image from a few minutes earlier, of him in the surf, still lingers in my mind's eye—the way he scoured himself with sand and salt water, while that thick and ugly layer worked its way off. I wish I knew a similar way to scrub off some of my recent missteps.

“I'll meet you at the hotel,” I say to Ben. “I want to make a phone call.”

*   *   *

At the ANTEL office, I tell the clerk the only phone number that I still have committed to memory. In my head, I count back the time zones and figure out the hour in Honolulu.

“Hello?”

“Dad,” I say. “It's me, Malia.”

“Malia.” He's excited. “How are you? I've been waiting to hear from you. How's the aqueduct?”

I pause so long that it becomes awkward. Then: “I don't know, Dad. I'm not working on it anymore.”

“Oh,” he says. “Is that right?”

“With the earthquake and all … it's not really a priority. I left the village.”

“I see.” He sounds utterly confused. “What are you doing now?”

“I'm staying at the beach, with Ben. You remember Ben? I—well, we, we're thinking about doing some traveling.” I cringe as I say it, but at least the words get out of my mouth.

“Traveling?” my father says.

“Yeah, Dad. We may go to South America for a while.”

“South America.” He says it just above a whisper. “Do you … do you have the money for that?”

Another awkward pause from me. “Of course.”

I'd been dreading this conversation for so long. It was meant to be a confession of a truth that my father didn't want to hear. Somehow, it's become more a mix of falsehood and omission.

My father's breath sounds like static through the phone. “It all sounds very interesting, Malia.”

I feel the beginning of tears, and clench my teeth together. “It's what I want. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance like this again.” That much is true.

“When do you think you might come back here, to Hawai‘i?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I say. “It could be a while.”

“Well, well,” he says. “I guess you know what you're doing.” He doesn't sound confident in his own words. Perhaps he fears that I'm turning into my mother—prone to run off with strange haole men, no thoughts for family or future.

“I'm very proud of you, Malia.”

That's when the tears finally get the best of me.

“All the things that you've done in that country—it's incredible.”

I want to tell him about the night with Alex, about the robbery, about the fact that I walked away from that aqueduct when it might have needed me most, and about the plan for tonight—to make the money that I claimed to already have. I want some way to tell him about everything, a way that might actually make sense to him. Most of all, I wish I still had the kind of problems that my father could fix with a few words.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too, Dad. I need to go now, but we'll talk soon, okay?”

“Okay, Malia.”

I wipe at my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt, then pay the ANTEL clerk for the call.

On the street, I take some deep breaths and try to compose myself. It's time to go back to the hotel—to find Ben and Pelo—and to go get this over with already.

 

24

The night is still and warm. Once outside of town, we pass no other cars. For once, I'm happy to ride in the back, lying on the plywood shelf. It makes me feel hidden somehow, safer. Ben drives slowly and cautiously. Pelo doesn't light a joint.

From the back, I'm able to make out only the odd painted rock along the side of the road. By the rising and winding of the Jeep, I can tell that we've left town.

“Simple,” Pelo says in a gentle voice.

Ben grunts.

“We're like Peseta now,” I say from the shelf. “Runners. Legs.”

Neither of them responds.

After what feels like hours of driving, Ben slows and says, “This is it, right?”

“This is it,” Pelo replies.

Ben shifts into four-wheel drive. He turns left and we bump our way down a rutted dirt road toward the beach. My hips and shoulders slide and bounce on the plywood.

“Try to get the car into those bushes,” Pelo says. “Might as well be subtle.”

Ben shifts in and out of reverse. We jolt forward and back a few times. Leaves brush up against my back window like the rollers in a car wash. The thin limbs scratch and groan against the Jeep. Ben cuts the engine.

“All right.” Pelo exhales and cracks open his door. “Now we do the waiting thing.”

A second of silence passes. Pings sound from the motor.

“Could somebody let me out of here, please,” I say from the back.

Ben comes around and opens the hatch. The two of us sit on the tailgate. It's still a beautiful spot—or seems so at night. The cove is narrow and rugged, full of palms and small bushes. Two tall shoulders of land reach out on either side of us. The sea laps gently against shore. The full moon turns the landscape as bright and gray as a marble statue.

Pelo walks down to the water's edge. Ben makes a cigarette at my side, the rolling papers crinkling against his fingers. I can tell from his jerky movements and shallow breaths that he's nervous. For whatever reason, I've turned calm. It's like paddling into big surf: Once you're out there, anxiety doesn't do you any good. My problem was always deciding whether to go out in the first place.

“It's nice out here,” I say.

Ben sparks up the smoke. I can hear that he's packed the tobacco too tight by the way he sucks on the tip. “It's not bad,” he admits, a chattering quiver in his voice.

Pelo paces along the shore, staring out at the horizon.

I reach over and take the cigarette from Ben's hand. “Relax,” I say. “We're here now. Might as well be cool.”

“Right.” He breathes in through his nose, then out through his mouth, and straight away becomes more composed.

“I think I hear something.” Pelo sings the words like a children's song.

We go quiet. The tiny, distant buzz of an engine slowly becomes audible. It sounds like one of the lawn mowers my father used to bring home to repair. The three of us turn still and stiff. For a long span of minutes, we do nothing but listen to the buzz. It grows louder and closer, and for a moment I wonder if it might be a tiny airplane.

At last, a small craft turns the corner and becomes visible inside the cove. Ben and I rise from off the tailgate. I squint my eyes. It's impossibly small, a Zodiac, and so loaded down with cargo that it appears to be dragging below the ocean's surface rather than floating atop it.

“Take these.” Ben holds up the keys to the Jeep. “Wait behind the wheel. If anything happens, start it up and bail.”

I accept the keys from him but don't move. My feet feel planted to the ground. “Who are those guys?”

Two men pilot the Zodiac. Both wear handkerchiefs over their faces, like gunslingers from the Old West. Apart from that, they appear to be dressed in dirty collared shirts and baseball caps—not unlike the local campesinos.

“Colombians, I suppose,” Ben says. “Or guys that work for them.”

“Did they come up from Colombia in that thing?”

Ben stifles a laugh. “They must have a bigger boat out there somewhere.”

“What's with the handkerchiefs?”

He shrugs. “Frankly, I'd just as soon not see anybody's face tonight.”

Pelo waves his arms above his head to signal them, as if they can't see him standing there.

“Get behind the wheel,” Ben says again.

This time, I do as he says.

From the driver's seat, I hear the chatter down by the water's edge. The Zodiac's engine shuts off. Feet shuffle hard against the sand. Soon, I look into the rearview mirror and see Ben and Pelo carrying a rectangular package wrapped in a grain sack and tied up with twine. They drop the first one in through the Jeep's rear door, onto the plywood deck. For a second, I fear that it won't fit inside and we'll have to find a way to disassemble that wooden shelf. But they're able to hoist it a little higher and slide it in.

“Do we need to check and see if it's real or something?” I ask as they push the bale flush against my seat back.

Pelo laughs. “You've seen too many movies, Chinita. Try trusting people once in a while.”

Ben claps dust from his hands. “I'd rather we get this over with and get the fuck out of here, to be honest.”

The two men from the Zodiac carry the next one. They speak Spanish to each other in an accent I can't place. One of them meets my stare through the rearview mirror and I hear him mutter the word
muchacha.
I turn my eyes away.

All four men head back to the water's edge. My mind slips into paranoia. This is the moment, I think to myself, this would be the time for them to kill both Ben and Pelo, then come back for me. Were I a Colombian thug hoping to make off with both the money and the product, to take advantage of some amateurs, now would be the time to shoot. Sweat comes coursing through the palms of my hands. Be cool, I order myself; you've seen too many movies.

Instead, the four men make one more trip and fill the Jeep. Ben and Pelo accompany the Colombians back to their boat. Once I hear their motor start, I turn the key in the ignition. Ben groans as he climbs into the back and squeezes himself around the bales. The hatch slams shut and Pelo jumps in beside me. I put the Jeep in reverse and pull out from behind the bushes. My heart throws jabs along the inside of my rib cage. We bounce our way inland up the dirt road.

“Well, that was fucking easy!” Pelo takes his one-hitter from the glove compartment.

Once on the paved road, I drive fast toward La Lib. Ben and Pelo whoop and cheer for a few minutes, passing the one-hitter back and forth like a victory cigar. Soon enough, they realize that we're not finished with our work tonight and the enthusiasm gives way to a tense and pregnant silence.

As we cross the final bridge into town, I feel my palms go sweaty once again; the taste of dirty coins rises from the back of my throat.

I drive toward the crack house and come to a stop kitty-corner from it.

I keep my eyes on the house. “So, where's the service entrance to this place?”

“Not here,” Pelo says.

“Excuse me?” I turn to him.

“This run, it's not for these guys. It's not their shit.”

Ben speaks from the back. “What the fuck are you talking about, Pelo?”

“The deal I made, for this stuff, it's with some other guys. Don't worry; it's only a couple blocks away.”

“You made a deal with some other drug dealers?” My voice rises and my breath grows short.

“So what?” Pelo shrugs. “What's wrong with a little competition? That's good for any market.”

“This isn't some business-school exercise, Pelo.” I can't believe what is happening. “It's a monopoly. A hostile one.”

“Malia.” Ben reaches forward and touches my shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn't sit here discussing this.”

Across the intersection, the red door to the crack house opens a hair. A head sticks halfway out. I put the car in gear and drive around the corner.

“I don't know what you guys are freaking out about. It's not like it's any of their business.”

“All cocaine in this town is their business,” Ben says. “This is fucked.”

“Look. Let's just make this drop and get paid,” Pelo says. “If anybody gives us any trouble, we'll go to the police. We won't be the ones holding all the shit. It's not like we'll have anything to worry about.”

I let out a heavy sigh.

“Pelo,” Ben says. “Those guys from the crack house run the police.”