The Scared Stiff (26 page)

"I can see that," I said. "Tell me, do you have any thoughts? Anything that might help you decide?"

"The term that floats in my mind," he said, "is ten percent."

Sixty thousand dollars. It could have been a lot worse. "That seems very decent," I told him.

"Thank you."

"I'll tell Lola to bring it with her," I offered.

"That would be best," he agreed. "You understand, between us, it could not be a check. It would have to be cash."

"Yes, of course."

"Not
siapas
," he said.

I couldn't help laughing. "I'd love to see that much money in
siapas,
" I said.

"I'd like to see it in dollars," he said.

We did not shake hands. It wasn't that kind of deal. We simply smiled at one another, and stood, and the driver stood, and we went back down to the car.

I would now be under the protection of Rafael Rafez, which meant, of course, I would now be under the eye of Rafael Rafez, but that was all right. We were now useful to each other, so we were on an equal footing. It is true he was shaking me down, but not very badly, and in fact I would be getting something of value for my sixty thousand dollars. After three weeks of constant bobbing and weaving, constant trouble, constant worry, my final week in Guerrera would be calm and serene. I would be back in our bed in our room in Mamá and Papá's house, waiting for Lola to join me. I could relax now, and so could Rafez, because he knew he would get his sixty thousand dollars. If he didn't, he could easily block my departure from the country. And he could do it without having to open any ambiguous graves.

Once again, in the car, I sat next to the driver, with Rafez enjoying the expansive solitude of the backseat. Mostly, between Marona and San Cristobal, we talked about Casa Montana Mojoca, a place he knew only from brief daytime visits on duty and about which he was naturally curious. I answered his questions and tried to give him a sense of the place, but I'm not sure I succeeded. The American lifestyle can be observed more readily than it can be described.

At San Cristobal, we dropped Rafez off at police headquarters. "Enjoy the rest of your stay," he said, as he got out of the car.

"Thank you, I will," I said.

Now there was the final hundred miles to Sabanon. I stayed in the front seat, mostly because I was too weary to move, it having been a hectic night and it now being past four-thirty in the morning. The driver was not a garrulous type anyway, so as the lights of San Cristobal faded behind us I went to sleep, not waking up until he made the right turn onto our street in Sabanon, which caused me to fall over against him. He had to elbow me out of the way while steering around the turn, and it was the elbow in the ribs that woke me.

Dawn. I blinked at the familiar street. Some workers were already up and out, trudging barefoot to their jobs. The driver stopped in front of our fuchsia house, and I got out, as Madonna greeted me with a
snurf.
I would have forgotten the vinyl bag on the floor at my feet with everything I owned in it if I hadn't tripped over it.

"Gracias,"
I told the driver, who nodded at me with that flat look of his. I shut the car door and trudged up the outside stairs and into a living room full of empty beer bottles.

I thought I might be hungry, but I didn't care. Home is Felicio, the prodigal son. Home and very very sleepy.

I went straight to bed.

The first question, of course, was how we were going to tell Lola to bring sixty thousand dollars in cash with her. Was her phone tapped? Was this one? I thought probably not, in both cases, but it's always dangerous to assume you have privacy. We wouldn't use e-mail for the same reason, even if we still had it. That is, Arturo was webbed up here in Guerrera, but at home on Long Island we'd lost our Internet access to insolvency months ago.

I had finally gotten out of bed sometime after noon on Sunday. The family, back from mass, was sitting around in the living room, starting the day's beer consumption and watching soccer on television. They hadn't known I was in the house, so when the spare room door opened and I staggered blearily out, a certain amount of beer was spilled.

Once that was cleaned up and the TV switched off, I could tell them all my most recent adventures. Arturo made angry noises about the behavior of Manfredo and them from Tapitepe, while Mamá and Papá clucked and expressed horror on my behalf for all the trouble I'd gone through. Arturo, through being a cabby, knew Rafael Rafez by reputation, and the reputation was not good. "He's a bigger crook than the crooks," he told me.

"He wants that money from me," I said, "and that's all he wants, and he's going to get it, so there won't be any trouble. I know he's a crook, Arturo, that's why he's taking a bribe, but he has reason to stay bought, including whoever's in my grave out there, so I believe he will stay bought. The question is, How do we tell Lola to bring the money?"

Arturo said, "You think somebody listenin' to her phone?"

"Or this one."

He shook his head. "Not this one," he said. "Nobody around here got stuff to do that kind of thing except they get it from the CIA, and the CIA don't care about us."

"All right," I said, "the other end. So what you do, when she calls, you say it's a bad connection, it's probably her phone, she should go out to the pay phone by the gas station and call you from there, because the pay phones are always better."

"Bullshit, man," he said.

"What you tell her, Arturo," I said, "is that you remember Barry saying it one time, about the phones in the States: that the pay phones are always better."

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Yeah, you said that, I remember now."

The first time the phone rang, at six-thirty, Arturo took it, and it was Dulce de Paula. When he hung up, he told me, "Keith Emory disappeared."

"Think of that," I said.

"She reported it to the police."

"Good."

The second call came a little after seven. Arturo took it again, and talked a long time, and then hung up and nodded at me and said, "Okay."

I said, "What took so long?"

"She didn't want to do it."

"What?" I couldn't believe it. "She didn't want to
do
it?"

"She says it's cold up there."

"Of course it's cold up there. It's winter."

And the first thing she said, when the phone rang again ten minutes later and Arturo answered and then handed it to me, was, "It's
freezing
out here."

"I wish I was there to warm you," I said.

"So do I," she told me. "What's going on? I told Artie, we can't get the check until next week."

"Lola," I said, "hold on. There's something else."

"What?"

It was awfully good to hear her voice, but this wasn't exactly the love scene I'd had in mind. It was all too businesslike, and I could hear her teeth chattering. I said, "In the first place, I miss you a whole lot."

"I miss you too," she said, but I know her; I could hear her humoring me.

So I got to it. "Okay, I know you're cold there. The thing is, we got a little complication here. I can't tell you about it now, I'll tell you when you get here—"

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you when you get here. But the thing is, you'll have to bring sixty thousand dollars in cash with you."

"
What
? That's a whole lot of money!"

"It's ten percent, if you think about it," I said. "And I need it in order to leave the country."

"Something's going on," she said.

I said, "Of
course
something's going on! It got very complicated down here, wait'll I tell you about it."

"I can hardly wait," she said.

I said, "And
I
can hardly wait to see you again. To hold you again. You know what I mean."

Softer, she said, "I do. And I feel the same way."

I could sense the family's eyes on me. "I can't tell you everything I want to," I said, "you know, in the living room here." And from the family's expression, I understood they saw no reason for all this northern restraint.

"Well, I can tell you," she said.

"Please do."

"I want you inside me," she said.

I believe I moaned. The family looked at me with quickened interest. I said, "Oh, yes. Burrow in. Hibernate."

"Well, don't go to
sleep"
she said.

"Very active hibernation," I assured her. "Rolling and stretching. Snuggling in."

"Mmmm," she said. Then she said a few more things I couldn't properly respond to, and I could tell she wasn't feeling as cold as earlier. Her teeth had stopped chattering.

And what power words have to evoke memory. All the senses had come alive. "Come home soon," I whispered. By that point, nothing much above a whisper was possible to me.

"I will," she promised. "Wet dreams, sweetheart."

"Count on it," I said.

She didn't call Tuesday. She didn't call Wednesday. She hadn't called by two o'clock Thursday afternoon when Rafael Rafez came by.

I was in the living room, looking out at nothing happening in the sunshine out there, when that white Land Rover stopped out front and Rafez stuck his head out the car window. He'd seen me up here, and he gestured I should come down.

He was out of the Rover, strolling in the shade of the house, when I came down the stairs. He was snappily dressed, as usual, this time in a flowing amber gaucho shirt and ecru linen pants. "How you going, amigo?" he asked me.

"Pretty good," I said. "
Bueno
, I guess."

"What do you hear from up north?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Nothing?" He didn't like that.

"I talked to Lola on Sunday," I explained. "Told her to bring the cash but didn't say why. She'll bring it."

He nodded. "When, that's the question."

"As soon as she gets the check," I promised. "Believe me, I want this as much as you do. But you know these bureaucracies."

"Sure," he said. "Well, I'll be around."

"Great," I said, and he drove off, with a wave and a smile.

When Arturo came home at four-thirty Friday afternoon, I said, "Arturo, call her. You gotta call her, that's all. What's the problem? What's the delay? Is Kaplan making trouble again? Is he coming back down here? Is there a screwup someplace?"

"Slow down,
hermano.
I'll call her, okay?"

"Okay."

It was a fairly long call, though probably not the six hours it felt like. At last he hung up and said, "Sit down,
hermano,
stop pacing; you're gonna wear out the floor; we're gonna fall through, land on Madonna."

"What'd she say?"

"Sit down," he said.

"She didn't say sit down," I said, but I sat down. "All right, I'm sitting down. What did she say?"

"No check," he said.

"What? They're not gonna pay? How can they—"

"No no no," he said. "No check
yet
."

"Okay," I said. "I know that much. No check yet. But how come? Did she talk to our insurance man?"

"I don't think so," he said. "She told me, if nothing comes in Monday, she'll make a lot of phone calls, find out what's the holdup."

"Monday? Another damn week!"

"What she gonna do,
hermano?
The check didn't show."

"The check is in the mail," I said bitterly.

He nodded. "That's what I figure," he said.

"No," I said. "That's an American idiom.
The check is in the mail.
It's ironic, see, it means the check
isn't
in the mail, it means they're gonna stiff you."

He said, "In America, you say, 'The check is in the mail,' when you mean the check is
not
in the mail?"

"Yes."

"Americans are crazy, you know," he said. "No offense,
hermano,
not you personally, but Americans are loco."

"Everybody's loco, Arturo," I said. "But so far I'm just
poco
loco. But if that check doesn't show up goddamn soon, I'm gonna be
multo
loco."

"
Mucho
," he corrected me.

"Whatever," I said.

No news on Monday, not a sound. "Arturo," I said, when he came back from cabbing that evening, "I can't stand this. I'm going nuts here. I feel like I'm nailed to the floor."

He shook his head, sympathetic. "It is takin' awhile," he agreed.

"We have to call her," I said.

"Why?" he asked me. "If she had news, she'd call
us.
She said, Today she's askin' a lotta questions, the insurance company, all them people. They got to get back to her, right? Maybe the check is
lost
in the mail. Maybe your post office isn't so much better than ours."

"It isn't," I said. "Tomorrow, Arturo. If we don't hear from her by five o'clock tomorrow, we call her. Okay?"

"Okay," he agreed.

Four-twenty Tuesday, and Arturo came thudding up the outside stairs, yawning and scratching his belly. He came in and saw me sitting there in that low armchair, and he said, "No call,
hermano?"

"Time to phone Lola," I said.

"Okay. Just lemme get a beer."

He did, and came back, and made the call. I watched his face, and saw him look confused. I said, "Arturo?"

Without a word, he extended the phone toward me. I took it, and listened, and heard a recorded announcement:
"We're
sorry, the number you have dialed — (five) (five) (five) (nine) (five) (nine) (five) — is no longer in service. There is no forwarding number.
We're
sorry, the number you have—"

I pushed it back at him as though it were a snake. I said, "Arturo, she turned the phone off!"

"Oh, man," he said.

"I've got — I don't have any other way to get in touch with her, to find out what the hell is going on."

"
Hermano
—"

"Let me think let me think let me think."

Had she left me? That was inconceivable, but had the inconceivable happened? We were a tribe of two, we were each other's net, it was us against the world, we were inseparable.