Fifty Grand

those jungle border towns.

“What’s your name, partner?” I asked him.

“F-f-f,” he tried, but he couldn’t get it out.

“Ok, Fredo, we need you to help us.”

He looked at me.

I was covered in blood and brains and bits of skull.

He shrank away.

I took him by the wrist. He disengaged my hand immediately.

“Are you ok?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“Speak to me. Are you ok?”

“Yes,” he managed. “You?”

“I’m fine. We gotta move fast. We’re going to need to get everyone back in the Land Rover. You gotta help us. Help the lady first, you and Francisco. Understand?”

He nodded. I left him, went to the old man and kneeled beside him. “Can you stand, abuelo?” I asked.

“Yes.”

He didn’t look too bad.

“We have to go,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. Somehow his cheek was bleeding. He was touching it, staring at the blood. Fixated.

“You’re ok. We’ll get you a Band-Aid in the car. Come on, Poppa,” I said and offered him my hand.

“You speak English good,” the old man said.

“I studied it in school,” I replied.

That fact helped him. Anyone who could speak English that well was practically a Yankee. And Yankees could do this kind of thing to other Yankees. He blinked slowly, rubbed the tears from his cheek. I got him to his feet.

“Pedro, you and Francisco get over here. Everyone else back in the Land Rover,” I said.

I rebuttoned my shirt and slid some of Ray’s face from my hair.

When the Guatemalan kid and the old-timers were in the Land Rover, I rifled the two corpses and took back our money and possessions. Both bodies were still warm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pedro said.

I gave him his billfold and that shut him up for a second.

“Is there anywhere we can hide this truck?” I asked him.

“What?”

“Is there anywhere we can hide their vehicle?” I repeated with more urgency.

He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I don’t remember any gullies or canyons around here. Nothing back on the reservation.”

“Gotta leave it then. We’ll put the bodies inside, buy us some more time,” I told him.

“You can’t move those bodies,” he said.

“Not without help.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Pedro, listen to me. They’re gonna bring birds and attention. Get the bodies in the truck and it might sit here unnoticed till nightfall. Might buy us a whole day. Maybe two.”

Pedro could see the sense in that. “What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“Let’s get ’em in the cab. Don’t touch them with your hands if you can help it, they can take prints off anything these days. Roll your sleeves down or make fists.”

I looked at Francisco. “You gotta help too, ok?”

He nodded.

“Good, let’s go.”

First we went to Ray. I took one leg, Pedro took another, Francisco an arm. We dragged his headless body to the truck. I opened the door and with some difficulty we heaved him into the cab.

“Good. Let’s get the other one.”

We dragged Bob to the truck and before we hoisted him up I pulled the knife from his forehead. It made a terrible sucking sound. I’d hit him so hard that I’d punched all the way to the back of his skull, and as we lifted him into the truck, his cranium cracked. Daylight streamed through the hole in his head, sky where his face had been. Sky and brains and blood. Pedro began to throw up but Francisco and I kept at it, heaving Bob into the cab and dumping him in the driver’s seat.

“Damn it,” Francisco said, wiping goo off his shirt.

Bob’s brown eyes were still looking at me. Half accusation, half amazement. I wasn’t going to take it. Fuck you. Is this what you wanted, Bob? Is this what you thought would happen when you got up today, when you had your coffee and met up with your good buddy Ray? Save your look, friend, save your accusations, you had a dozen chances to let this go.

I closed his eyes with my knuckles.

“Let’s give them something to think about. Gimme one of your bags of coke,” I said to Pedro.

“I’m not a dealer, it’s just to keep me awake,” Pedro said defensively.

Mother of God, what was his problem? Was he sniffing cop? Maybe I was being a bit too professional, a bit too cold. If only he knew how sick I felt inside, fighting back the waves, pushing them deep where no one could see.

“That’s ok, man, we just need to give the feds something to worry over,” I said. He gave me a dime bag of his stash and I opened it and poured a little on Bob’s pants.

“Make ’em think it was a double cross,” I said.

“Yeah,” Francisco said. “I can help with that.”

I wiped prints everywhere I thought they’d be and Francisco dipped the knife in the blood and drew a T on the windshield. We both knew what it meant. CSI would pin this on the Tijuana cartel. At the very least it would set them off on a tangent.

“Ok, now we can-” I began but was interrupted by Bob’s cell phone. The ring tone was one of those jazzy Vince Guaraldi numbers from Charlie Brown Navidad.

We stiffened.

“What do we do?” Francisco asked.

“Well, we don’t answer it,” I said.

We let it ring and ring and then we walked back to the Land Rover.

“Now what?” Pedro asked, his face ashen, his eyes exhausted.

“We continue on like nothing happened,” I said.

“How can we just go on?” Francisco muttered.

He was cold, trembling. I put my arm around him. Poor kid. He’d lost about seven years. Thirteen again. Now I wasn’t the next privileged chiquita in line for his attentions, now I was his way-too-young mother comforting him on the dirt floor of some Managuan shanty.

“It’s going to be ok,” I said.

He nodded and tried to believe it. And then he turned and looked at me. “What about you, are you ok?” he asked.

I hadn’t thought about it.

I wanted to fall down, I wanted to scald my body, turn it inside out. He had touched my hair, between my breasts, my legs.

“I don’t know… I think so.”

“Did, did they?”

“No.”

He nodded and stared at the yellow sand spiraling around his shoes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s ok. We’re alive and in one piece,” I said.

It was one of Hector’s lines. We’re alive and in one piece and we’re not in a DGI dungeon.