back we should be the fuck out of here and if we hurt his partner he’ll hunt us down and blah blah blah.
I stop walking and watch as Candito backs himself around the tiny bar to a doorway covered by a Virgin of Guadalupe curtain. He reaches behind himself and pulls the curtain aside, jabs the gun at me three times, emphasizing that I should not fucking follow him, then ducks through the doorway. I can hear his feet sprinting away on the gravel outside.
– Rolf.
He pops up from behind the barrel.
– Dude, that was tense.
I kneel next to Leo and roll him onto his back. His face is beaten and bloody. At least one of his teeth has been knocked out. I put my finger alongside his throat; his pulse is steady and strong. Rolf walks over and looks at his best friend.
– Motherfucker.
He looks at Morales where he’s still sprawled on the floor, mewing, his eyes rolling in his head.
– Mother. Fucker.
He raises the revolver, shoots Morales in the face, and spits on his corpse.
– Rolf!
I’m staring at what used to be Morales’s face.
– Rolf! What the fuck are you doing?
– You see what this dick did to Leo, dude?
– You don’t just. You don’t just. What the fuck?
– Dude! He fucked up my best friend.
I look at the lines tattooed on my forearm, and find I have nothing else to say.
– So what now?
– You take Leo in the buggy. There’s only the one road in and out of town, so just cruise out to the highway, park, and I’ll drive out in their truck after I take care of the other guy.
– Rolf.
– Hey! You hired the pros to get you out and shit got fucked up. That’s cool, you paid, but now shit’s got to be taken care of. These cops? They know who Leo is, where he lives. Get it? So untwist your panties and help me get him to the buggy, ’cause I got a pig to ambush.
And what do you say to that except
LEO STAYS unconscious as we put him into the passenger seat of the buggy. I get behind the wheel and fire it up. Rolf slaps me on the shoulder. He’s holding the revolver and has Morales’s 9 mm dangling out of his hip pocket.
– Just turn north when you hit the highway and pull into the trees. I’ll be there in a few.
He walks back into the bar. The town is dead silent, motionless except for one painfully skinny stray dog that limps across the park. I pull onto the road out of town. Behind me I might or might not hear gunshots. It’s hard to tell over the roar of the buggy’s engine.
Back on the 261, I pull into the trees where Rolf told me to. I get out, grab my pack, and hoist it onto my shoulders. It should be about twenty kilometers from here to Campeche. If I stay near the highway I can walk and be there in several hours. Or maybe I’ll take a chance and stick my thumb out. If Morales and Candito were working alone no one will be looking for me. If not, they’ll find me soon enough. I lick my fingers and rub a little blood from Leo’s forehead, but there’s nothing I can do for him. I check his pulse again, still strong, and put my face close to his.
– I’m sorry, my friend.
And it’s time to get moving again before anyone else gets hurt.
I HITCH a ride with a family from Cancun that are on their way to Campeche to stay with relatives for Christmas. I sit in the back seat of their Jeep, between their two small sons. The boys are quiet for the first couple miles, but get over their shyness and are soon pointing at their own body parts and at things in the car, asking me to tell them what they are called in English.
– Ashtray. Headrest. Ankle. Gearshift. Eyebrow. Toenail. Booger.
They giggle after every word and try to repeat them back to me. Their parents sit quietly in the front seats, holding hands, seemingly happy just to have a break from entertaining the kids. They drop me off in the middle of the city and I take a cab to the airport.
Campeche is a state capital and a tourist destination; the airport has everything I need. I go to the departures board and find a flight. I call Aeromexico from a pay phone and get transferred to an English-speaking agent. She says I can’t make a reservation without a credit card number, but assures me there is room on the flight and tells me how much it will cost. At the American Express counter I get about ten thousand pesos worth of traveler’s checks.
I have to make a decision here about which identity to sign the checks with because that’s who I’ll be flying as. I’m about to give the guy at the counter the Carlyle passport when I remember that all it has is a three-year-old entry stamp and no visas. Not a problem with AmEx, but it will be a problem if anyone in a uniform needs to see it.
I give him the passport I’ve been using for the last two years. Of course there is a problem there as well. When Morales’s and Candito’s bodies turn up, the Federales will look into their recent cases and start asking questions. Soon, they will find that I have disappeared. After that they’ll be looking for this identity. Of course if Rolf didn’t get Candito, all of this is moot. Because Candito will be coming after me, the real me. And all this is just too confusing anyway; too many variables and too few options for a guy who needs to get the fuck out of Mexico. I sign the checks and walk over to the Aeromexico counter.
Buying a one-way ticket with cash is just as big a no-no in Mexico as it is in the States, the kind of tip-off that screams
The airline man finds me an aisle seat on the flight and announces the total.
– Siete mil y cinco cien.
I sign a bunch of checks and slide them over along with my passport. He checks the signatures and prints up my ticket to Cabo.
THE FLIGHT gets in around one in the morning. I walk out of the airport, get mobbed by cabbies, all trying to carry my pack for me, and climb into the closest hack. The driver asks me what bar I want to go to. I have him take me to a hotel instead, the Hyatt. I pay for my room for one night with more traveler’s checks. It will make it easier for the
In the brutally air-conditioned room I take a shower, flop on the bed naked, and smoke cigarettes. Soon the last of the adrenaline seeps from my body and I fall asleep. I wallow in utter blackness until four hours later when my wake-up call sends me jumping at the ceiling to dangle by my fingernails like a frightened cat.
Cat.
Shit.
I miss my cat.
CIVILIZATION ON the Baja, such as it is, clings either to the long ribbon of Highway 1 or to the coast, demonstrating two principles of survival: that life can be sustained either by water or by cars. It takes about two seconds of travel time beyond the edge of Cabo to feel that you are passing through one of the more forlorn wastes of the third world, which is apt, because you are. At the ABC terminal I pay pesos for the first bus going north. It will only get me as far as La Paz, but that’s fine with me. I just want to get moving.
We roll up Highway 19 and I stare out the window at a landscape that puts me in mind of nuclear blasts. My brain turns on itself and I start thinking about all the things that can go wrong. It’s a long list and it keeps me pretty busy for the three hours it takes to get to La Paz.
