The Scared Stiff (22 page)

No, not drop. An elevator. Not the regular elevator, the service elevator.

Of course. Somebody who worked here was connected to the cousins somehow and had recognized me, or learned about me, and passed the word on. How the cousins had got onto the ferry I had no idea — maybe they had a boat and came down the river — but their inside man (or woman) had led them straight to me and was now leading them — with me — back out again.

But how could they possibly get me across the river? Was there reason for hope after all?

The elevator stopped with a
whump.
More metallic rattling sounds, which I now realized was the elevator door opening, and then the stop-start progress began again.

We were outdoors. Even within the bag, I could sense the difference in the air. We were outside, and we'd stopped again, and I heard a metallic rattling sound once more, but slightly different. Another elevator?

No. I was turned upright — head at the top, fortunately — and then I was jammed into something tall and narrow, hard sides pressing close against me, and I had a moment of panic, thinking it was a coffin — they weren't going to take me across the river, they meant to bury me right here on the hotel grounds, bury me alive — and then my back hit hard things that moved, bumpy uncomfortable things that were a bit unsteady, rocking this way and that, no more than an inch or two in any direction. I was trying to figure out what the hell this was — where am I? what's going on here? — when I heard the metallic rattling sound again, and the light went away from in front of me as something descended.

Something sliding downward in front of me, cutting off the light. Various square-shaped boxy things behind me, jerking around slightly. A faint familiar smell in the air.

All at once, I knew where I was, and then I understood the whole thing: who had betrayed me to the cousins, and how they would get me across the river.

I was in the beer truck.

The body of the beer truck was divided into walled compartments on both sides, each the width of two cases, each with its own door that could slide up out of the way or slide down to be locked. I don't know how deep those compartments were, but I was wedged into the space available when the front stack of cases is removed. One inch in any direction and I met a wall or a beer case or the door.

And I wasn't alone. Faintly I could hear voices around me, and I realized at least some of the cousins would be traveling in this manner too, except not tied up in a laundry bag. That's the way they had gotten to the hotel and the way we all would leave.

I don't know how the cousins felt about that journey, but I hated it. The beer truck rocked a lot, even on the decent access road of Casa Montana Mojoca, and the ferry, when we got to it, didn't merely rock, it also rolled. I truly did not want to throw up with a bag over my head, but it was a close thing.

We reached the other shore, and the beer truck ground its way through the gears as it went up-slope from the ferry landing. Hands up to my face, sock spit out, I was now trying to undo the knots in that nasty tight cord with my teeth, but being jounced around so much by the beer truck meant I was mostly biting myself on the wrists. Still, I kept at it, having no other course of action I could think of, except to fill my pants, which I was trying very hard not to do. Let's let everything on the inside stay on the inside and everything on the outside stay on the outside, and let's see if I have any wits at all to keep about me, because somehow or other I have got to get
away
from these people.

Sure. Tied hand and foot, knotted into a laundry bag, locked in the compartment of a beer truck driving thirty miles an hour through the jungle. Over to you, Mr. Houdini; what I'm mostly doing is biting my wrists.

The beer truck slowed. It tilted way over, bouncing me into the door. Was it going to capsize? You can't capsize on dry land. What the hell was it doing?

Coming to a stop. On the side of the road, obviously, the right side — we drive on the right in Guerrera — and I was in a compartment on the right side, so when the truck stopped, since I had neither hands nor feet to help me support myself in here, I sagged helpless against the door.

Which, a minute later, opened.
That
was painful. The door was a series of connected slats, like an overhead garage door, so it could follow its track on a curve up under the truck roof, and every one of those slats shaved my entire body on the way by. But what could I do? I was off balance; I couldn't get away from it.

And then the door was open, so naturally I fell out. Fortunately, the rocky ground stopped me, starting with my head. I rolled over, stunned, and hands pulled me up to a sort of seated position: what would be a seated position for Humpty-Dumpty immediately after the fall. There was a tiny pause, and then I was hit
hard
on the side of the head, just above and behind my right ear.

Everything before this had hurt, but that blow
hurt.
However, I was quick enough, thank God, to realize at once that the purpose of that hit, with a piece of wood or something, was not to chastise me for misspelling
quesillo
but to knock me out. Therefore, if I moved around or yelled
ow
or anything like that, they would know I was still conscious and they would hit me again. So I did the only thing I could do, which was flop over onto the ground and play dead. Or play unconscious, anyway.

They accepted the idea. They believed I was unconscious, so they didn't hit me again. I had been bound and gagged and bagged, I hurt all over, I was developing a truly terrible headache, I was on the ground amid six brutal maniacs determined to kill me, but I didn't get hit again. We take our victories where we find them.

They picked me up, a lot of them, not gently, and carried me over uneven ground awhile, not gently, and then dropped me onto a hard metal surface, not at
all
gently. The hard metal surface then dipped a couple of times. Boots made ringing noises against it near my ear.

Their pickup truck. I was lying in the bed, and my kidnappers were boarding. In the distance, I heard the beer truck drive away. And then some sort of tarp or something was thrown over me, making it much darker inside my bag, and the truck moved forward, and all of a sudden, some kind of delayed reaction took place, and I
wasn't
conscious.

The sound of rain. No, not rain. I was still in the bag, in the bed of the pickup, covered with a tarp, but the truck was not moving. And that sound I heard was six men pissing.

I worked my wrists up to my mouth again. I've
got
to get out of this. I don't want to die, I'm already dead, I want to live. I can't give up; we never say die, do we? Do we?

The truck dipped and bounced as they all climbed back aboard. The truck jolted forward, and I felt the cord with lips and teeth.

The knot is too tight, I can't pull it loose with my teeth. If I try, they'll see my head moving, and they'll clobber me again to keep me quiet.

Can I bite it? Can I gnaw it, like a rat? If I can't I'm a dead man, so the answer better be yes.

There was one little area, between my wrists, below my thumbs, where the cord did not stick into my flesh but stood out plain. By loosely cupping my hands around my eyes and sticking my nose into the space between my thumbs, I could just get to that cord with my front teeth, the sharp ones. Sharper. I kept licking the rope, licking my teeth, licking my lips, and in between I chewed on the rope, which tasted something like Shredded Wheat without the milk and sugar.

I don't know how long we traveled, but a long time. An hour? More. I was wearing my Rolex, but under the circumstances I couldn't exactly consult it. If they were taking me home to Tapitepe, that would be a trip of 200 miles. In this pickup it could take four hours. It seemed to me horribly likely they'd prefer to get rid of me sooner, but on the other hand, they did have to go home to Tapitepe anyway, and they might know the countryside better around there, have more secure places to stash me where I'd definitely never ever be found.

So, after one long time, they stopped and only one or two got out, and I couldn't figure out what was going on until I smelled gasoline. Then, being as egocentric as anybody else, my first thought was, They're going to burn the body! Before it's dead!

But then I realized, No, they were just filling the pickup's gas tank. Which they did, and we rode on.

This was boring work, gnawing through hairy cord, but I didn't have anything else to occupy my time, so I kept at it. Every once in a while, somebody would poke me with a foot to see if I were conscious and ready to be slugged again, but I always lay doggo and spared myself further punishment.

Up until the stop for gas, I had no real feeling of accomplishment with the cord. I had it nice and wet, and it was less hairy, while my teeth were more hairy, and it seemed thinner and more wirelike, but I wasn't noticing any loss of strength. Sometime after the stop for gas, however, I felt it start to give. A faint loosening around the wrists. The ability to move my thumbs just a tiny bit farther apart. Encouraged, damn near elated, I gnawed on.

This kind of cord is not one rope but a lot of thin twines braided. I suppose I must have gnawed my way through half of those twines before I felt that first slackening, but after that it all went much faster.
Sprong! Sprong!
I could feel them on my lips as they popped apart, losing their tension. And all at once, my hands were free.

Oops. I must have moved, because here came that probing foot again. I lay still, but it wasn't enough. I'm going to get hit, I thought. The side of my head is against this metal truck bed, and coming down from above is this—

Stop. Bounce. Dip. Jerk. Darkness. Conversation. Men farting.

Memory and horror returned together, hand in hand. The truck had stopped somewhere, and they were getting out. Are we
here?
My hands were free, but my ankles weren't, and I was still inside the bag, and they were still six to my one, and they were armed at least with clubs and machetes while I was…

Feeling doomed, is what I was.

The male voices and fartings receded. A screen door somewhere to my right opened and slammed.

What was going on? Was I alone? Very hesitantly, because I didn't want to get whomped again, I moved my left hand until I could see the Rolex, and the little numbers gleamed in the dark: 10:09. This dear little machine would tell me the time in other places, too, if I wanted to know; Madrid, say, or Adelaide. It could not, however, tell me how to get to one of those other places now, right now.

Four and a half hours on the road. We must be in Tapitepe, at one of their houses. They'd come for the shovels and things they'd be needing soon, unless I figured something out this second.

How strong was this damn bag? I poked it, and I felt new frays, new scratches in it. That would mostly be from when the beer truck door was opened, doing as much damage to the bag as to its contents. I poked at a weakened spot down below my chin, scratched at it with nails I was glad I hadn't gotten around to trimming recently, and after a few little
scritch-scritches,
my finger went through.

A hole. I widened it, first slowly and then rapidly. I widened it until my head and shoulders could fit through, so there was nothing above me any more except the tarp. I wriggled and wriggled and got the bag off the rest of me, and then spent five frustrating minutes working the knots of the cord holding my ankles before I finally managed to loosen the damn thing and free myself.

And now what? Cautiously I moved under the tarp to the right, the direction from which I'd heard that screen door slam. I found the edge of the tarp, peeked out from underneath it, and saw a million stars in an indifferent sky. It can look cold even in the tropics. A mosquito buzzed me, and I blew on it, and it tumbled away somewhere.

Beside me was the side wall of the pickup. I snaked over to it, and lifted my head, and looked out at a many-windowed shack lit by some candles and some kerosene lamps. To left and right, some distance away, were similar shacks. I saw no electric light anywhere at all.

Tapitepe. It's a very poor town, Tapitepe, and I suspected this was one of its poorest neighborhoods. These people wouldn't mind at all trading some gringo's life for their share of millions and millions of dollars.

Movement in the house. They were all in there, talking together, perhaps arguing about where to bury me. I saw a couple of them drinking beer. I saw a couple of them eating what looked like burritos. On the other hand, I also saw one of them carry a shovel over and put it down next to the screen door.

They'd driven four and a half hours, and they were tired and hungry. They'd have dinner, and deal with the inconvenient but trussed-up Barry Lee later.

I lowered myself to the truck bed. On top of the tarp now, I squirmed myself forward. I had two options. If they'd left the keys in the truck, and in these rural places people mostly leave the keys in the truck unless they're staying in for the night, then I would try to escape by stealing the truck. If they had not left the keys in the truck, even though that would be uncommon and unfair, I would try to escape by climbing over the side of the truck away from the house and scampering into the darkness.

Most of the back window of the truck was gone. I looked through the space, but it was too dark in there. I couldn't see if the key was present or not.

All right. All right. We don't have time to stall around here, they won't keep eating forever. I made it to the left side and went sliding over like a snake, riding down, clinging to the door handle and whatever other parts I could find to keep me from falling straight to the ground yet again.

Out. Knees on the ground, left hand on the driver's door. When I opened this door, I knew, the interior light would go on, alerting the six in the house. So I wouldn't have much time, whichever option I got. I took a deep breath, held it, and opened the door.