The manager, having heard all the racket, arrived about then. He saw the shattered door, Billy on the floor, said something in Spanish. When he came forward, saw what was on the bed, he screamed and darted out of there.
Leonard and I got hold of Billy, dragged him into the hall. He didn’t wake up. Or if he did he was smart enough to not let us know.
I reached back inside the room, cut off the light, waited for the policia.
19
The cops came and got us, thought we might have done it. It didn’t help that Billy had a gun on him, even if it didn’t have bullets. The police thought we were all buddies.
We were shoved into a Mexican jail with cockroaches big enough to work in an iron foundry, rats that reminded me of a roadside attraction. The guard, a tall, mustached man with a slight belly, looked like he’d nail our balls to a log and give us a knife to free ourselves.
Something about him, and the jail, didn’t give me great confidence in the Mexican judicial system. I tried to tell them about Juan Miguel, and how I thought he might have done it or had it done. They listened to me, but said nothing. I might as well have been talking to those monoliths on Easter Island.
He did manage to ask in English where the knife was.
I realized then they were looking for the murder weapon. Obviously, we hadn’t beat Beatrice to death with Billy’s revolver, nor had we used it to cut her up.
Not finding the weapon seemed in our favor. We certainly hadn’t flushed it down the commode or hid it in our ass.
I reconciled myself with that. No murder weapon. What didn’t reconcile me was that jail and those goddamn rats.
Christ, they were big.
Once, many years ago, I stopped at a little trailer parked beside the road that was painted up with exciting pictures of behemoth rats, and above the painting was a sign that read: SEE THE GIANT RATS OF SUMATRA. I couldn’t resist. I paid my money, went inside, found them to be shaved possums. I said as much to the lady who owned the exhibit. She said, “Yeah, you’re right.” No embarrassment at all.
I said, “Everyone in East Texas knows a danged possum when they see it, shaved or not.”
“I know,” she said. And that was the end of that. She didn’t offer to give my money back. She didn’t care I knew they were shaved possums. It’s like the world’s largest gopher I heard about. You pay and go in and it’s the world’s largest all right, only it’s a stone statue of a gopher and they’ve already got your money.
The rats in the jail were near as big as those possums, only they were very much card-carrying rats. They came through a hole in the wall big enough to put your fist through – up to your elbow. They came at night, scampered and sniffed and nibbled about. I assumed they’d bite. I kept both feet on my bunk, watched them in the dark.
Rats. The dark. It brought me back to thinking about Beatrice. I didn’t want to think about her, but I did. Thought about what human rats had done to her by lamplight. Slowly, methodically.
But why?
The money her father owed?
Wouldn’t they let her pay it back after the fishing trip?
Why would anyone want money that bad?
Who in the hell had her father been in dutch with anyway?
Who was Juan Miguel?
What would be the point in killing her?
Break a finger maybe. I could see that.
But she’s dead, how do they get their dough back? What’s the advantage of dead over a living person you could hound for dollars?
Did it become a matter of pride over commerce?
She had to have let them in. The door was sound. But why would she? Did she think she could reason with them? Perhaps she had part of the money. Maybe she thought she’d have it all, that Billy would cool and she would talk him into doing what she wanted. She was probably used to that. Talking men into doing what she wanted.
No answers. Just questions.
So here we were, in a Mexican jail. Me, Leonard, and an asshole. It was a horrible place. Small and tight, all three of us in a damp cell with all those rats and one horribly stained shitter between us.
You had to sit right out there in the open and take a crap. Somehow I found that the most humiliating part of it. Me working out turds that, because of the food, came out like bricks, and Billy watching.
I don’t know why he watched. Maybe he had nothing else to do. Maybe he liked to watch people shit. He certainly seemed to be watching me as I folded the thick toilet paper so I could do my duty.
After about midday of the second day, me shitting, Billy watching, I wiped my ass and rubbed the paper in Billy’s face. He tried to fight back, but he was just big and strong and had no skills. I kneed him inside his thigh and dropped him. I got hold of his hair while he was on his knees and gave him a couple of shots with a swinging elbow.
I regretted that. Got shit on my elbow. Had to wash it in the sink with a pumice soap that nearly took the skin off.
Billy lay down on the floor then, shit on his face, whining. I felt like a bully, but not so much that an hour later, when he was showing signs of recovery, I did it again.
Hit him with an elbow I mean.
Had to use the soap again. Got it off his face and on my elbow. That was starting to irritate me as well. It was like washing up with lathered gravel.
Why couldn’t he have washed his face?
That way, I hit him it would have been clean skin.
I know I wouldn’t go around with doo-doo on my face. No sir.
“Isn’t he fun to hit?” Leonard said. “I’m thinking about giving up sex just to save energy to hit him.”
“In here you’ve given up sex,” I said.
“So I can hit him lots.”
I made a vow that I’d check my watch every hour, and on the hour I was going to kick Billy’s ass. But I’d try and keep my elbow, hands, and feet off the shit on his face. That crack he had made about Beatrice’s death not being suicide was still rubbing me raw. For that matter, I didn’t know for a fact he didn’t do it. I doubted he had. Somehow it didn’t strike me as his style. He was abusive, but I doubted he was a murderer. He might kill by accident he got mad enough, bitch-slap her to death, but I doubted he’d plan anything like that. Torture. Amputation. Then bringing us over to see his handiwork. Nope. Billy wasn’t that calculating.
But he did deserve an hourly ass whipping.
However, the meanness went out of me. Billy eventually felt better, washed his face with the bad soap and stayed in the corner away from us.
Leonard, who heard me make the vow to whip his ass on the hour every hour, was a little disappointed in my caving in. He thought it was the liberal in me. But we decided, liberal or not, it was the best thing all around.
Later on, I felt a little ashamed of myself for doing what I did.
Caving in like that.
After a couple days had gone by – because in Mexico nobody gets in a hurry – they began to seriously suspect we might not have done it. The authorities allowed me to send word back to the States in the form of a phone call. I got hold of Charlie. Told him to come see what he could do, and to bring any kind of help he could bring. The Army might be a good idea.
While we sat and waited, Leonard said, “I don’t know how you do it, Hap. You’ve just got the knack.”
“What?”
“Trouble. You step in it the way kids step in mud puddles. You just can’t go around it, and when you try to
