Mule

by Tony D'Souza

  I looked at my daughter and she looked at me. When I smiled, so did she.

  Kate winked and said, "Tightie-whities? I'd be happy to run to the store and get you some."

  I told her, "I'd rather quit the whole fucking thing."

  We looked at the money, the money looked back at us. "Pantyhose," we said at the very same time.

  She grabbed a pair from the suitcase she was living out of and took the baby from me. I stripped off my jeans, rolled on the hose. They were too tight, too short, but they were clearly going to work. I pulled them off, grabbed scissors from the kitchen, cut them off at the knees. Then I rolled them on again. I separated out the cash into four thin stacks, slid the stacks into the pantyhose at the tops of my thighs. The hose held the money against me like my very own skin.

  That was it, everything was figured out. Tomorrow I would go to the airport and discover my fate. But right now it was time to be with my wife.

  We lay in bed in the dark, our baby between us. Then I kissed the baby, put her down in her crib. Finally Kate and I were alone.

  "Are you worried?" I asked her.

  "I just want you to be okay."

  "Everything's going to be okay. No matter what happens to me, everything's always going to be okay."

  "I don't want to have to raise these babies alone."

  "You're not going to have to."

  "What if something happens to you?"

  "I promise nothing will."

  "Call me every chance you get, okay?"

  "Be patient while I'm driving."

  "If anything feels wrong out there, I want you to walk away."

  "You know I will."

  We made love once, twice. I lay awake the rest of the night, holding her as close to me as I could.

  I showered, shaved off my beard patches, dressed in my lucky flannel jacket and jeans. Underneath my jeans were the pantyhose, the money tight against my skin. At the airport, Kate gave me JoJo Bear. I checked in at the counter and we went up the escalator to security.

  "I have to leave now," Kate told me once we got there. "There's no way I can watch this, you know?"

  We kissed, I kissed the baby, then I stared after them as they went down the escalator. Kate's back was to me, her long black hair. Would I ever see them again? I turned away, joined the security line. When it was my turn to show my driver's license, the agent, an older guy, looked at it and said, "Texas, huh? Don't mess with Texas."

  I took off my shoes, belt, jacket, put everything in a bin. My backpack full of boxer shorts I tossed on the conveyor belt, too. All that was left to do was walk through the metal detector. A TSA agent was waiting at the other end. He was big and bald, looked like a bouncer. He beckoned me forward. I knew my face looked calm, nothing at all like the inside of me. Suddenly the money began to itch against my skin as much as my heart was pounding. I stepped into the metal detector like I was making a leap of faith.

  "Come through, sir."

  It didn't make a sound. I picked up my things from the conveyor belt like nothing had happened. I texted Kate—"made it"—as I put on my shoes at the bench afterward. She texted back: "love u."

  The first flights went fine; I felt calm; I wasn't doing anything yet. In Phoenix, I went to a men's room in the terminal, took off the pantyhose, transferred the money to my backpack, and tossed the hose in the garbage.

  When I landed in Sacramento at three, I called Billy. "Del Paso Road," he told me. "The lot at the In-N-Out Burger."

  I took the courtesy bus to the rental car plaza, gave the Sikh at the counter my reservation and credit card. Soon enough he handed me a set of keys. It was cool and windy when I walked onto the lot, a Northern California winter day. I'd been traveling for eleven hours; I felt dizzy. My car was a Chevy Cobalt with California plates. Three cars down the line was a Mustang from Wyoming; two cars after that was an Aveo from Texas. Texas plates? What if I could get that car? I went back in and saw the Sikh.

  "I don't really dig Cobalts. You think I could have that little Aveo?"

  "I'll check the availability," he said. A minute later, he handed me the Aveo's keys.

  I adjusted the mirrors and the seat, figured out the signals and wipers, got comfortable in that little cockpit. I drove off the lot, turned south on I-5. The Del Paso Road exit was on me in minutes.

  The traffic was heavy here, the beginning of rush hour. After several stoplights and strip malls, I saw the In-N-Out Burger. A towheaded man in a Carhartt work jacket stood smoking beside a beautifully restored blue Ford pickup from the seventies with a camper shell on the back, looking at the evening sky. He was lanky, older, early forties maybe, seemed like a hick down from the mountains. He pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket when I called.

  "James?"

  "Looking right at you."

  "Texas plates?"

  "That's me."

  "How'd you get those plates?"

  "I saw them in the line and asked for them."

  "Great fucking job on those plates," he said.

  He hopped in his truck and I followed him out of the lot. We drove on Del Paso for a few more lights, ended up at the side of a Rite Aid away from the road, next to an empty field of weeds. There was no one around. Still, it felt way too exposed. We stepped out of our vehicles, shook hands. He was taller than me, crow's feet around his eyes, a scar across his chin like he'd been cut. His hands were rough and thick; they were a farmer's hands. Was he the one who grew it?

  "You have to peel that car," Billy told me, pointing to the bar code stickers in the corners of the back windows. "Dead giveaway it's a rental. Don't do it here. Do it tonight when you stop. Stash the stickers somewhere safe. Put them back on at the end."

  I had so many questions, didn't know where to start. Instead he said to me, "You want to try your stuff?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "Some people smoke the whole way," he said. "Pop the hatch."

  I hit the button on the clicker. Billy ducked into the cab of his truck, took out a huge black duffel bag, unzipped it for me to see: it was full of packaged weed. Then he zipped it shut, tossed it in the back of the Aveo, slammed the hatch down. It didn't take three seconds.

  "Money," Billy said.

  I handed him the backpack. He leaned into the cab of his truck with it, then came and returned it to me. "Don't want your underwear, dude. All is well, all is well. Everything is vacuum-sealed—I wouldn't open any of it. Don't get pulled over in that rental. You waived your right to refuse a search when you signed the agreement."

  I hadn't thought of that.

  Billy went around, hopped in his truck. "Drive fast and swerve a lot," he said and waved from the window. Wait! I wanted to shout. But he peeled out and was gone.

  What about the sit-down? What about all the information he was supposed to explain to me? I got in the Aveo, drove away from that place. Had anyone seen the exchange? I looked into the rearview, scanned the traffic. Was that a cop? Was that a cop? My knuckles were white, my heart was pounding. I started coughing. I didn't want to do this anymore.

  "Fucking breathe," I told myself. "Just drive the fucking car. You can't get pulled over. You can't get pulled over."

  I turned into the parking lot of a Wendy's, went inside, washed my face. The bathroom was small and empty. I looked at myself in the mirror. My skin was blanched, my hands shaking. Should I call Darren, fucking yell at him? But I knew there was nothing more he could tell me that would make this any easier. If I wanted the money, this is what I had to do. I said to myself, "You're just another guy on the road, all right? Cut it out already."

  Back in the car, I sat in the parking lot with the engine off, took some deep breaths. I was in a rental and couldn't refuse a search. Of course that was true. Why was I such an idiot? I'd have to have my story ready in case I got pulled over: I'd flown out for an interview, had time on my hands, wanted to drive home one way and see the country. I didn't have a family or anything like that, was stopping here and there to visit o
ld friends. Then I shook my head at the thought of it. What a stupid story.

  What if they called for a dog? What if they popped the hatch? JoJo Bear was in the passenger seat; I pressed his belly and he said, "I love you." I took another deep breath, turned on the engine, checked around for cops. There was nothing left to do but do it. I got on the road.

  Rita was waiting for me when I knocked on her door with the duffel bag thirty minutes later. She yelled at her boys to go upstairs as she let me in. We stared at the thirteen big packages of weed as I unloaded them one by one onto her kitchen table. It was a mountain of marijuana, more than a hundred thousand dollars in street value.

  "What's the name?" she asked as she sorted through the bags.

  "I didn't ask."

  "Some of it looks even better than the last stuff you had."

  She picked out her bag. The buds in it were thick as pinecones, pale green, the color of money. She gave me a rumpled envelope. "It's only four grand," she said. "We're short a G for now."

  "Rita, are you kidding? Why would you do this to me?"

  She put up her hands. "We did the best we could! You know we'll get you the rest as soon as we can."

  Had I ever felt so angry? I noticed her boys in their pajamas peeking around the corner from the staircase. I shook my head. What could I do? I had to get moving. Even if Rita stiffed us what she owed, I'd still made $1,500 on the pound she'd taken. I hurried out to the car, popped the hatch, tossed in the duffel, got back on the road.

  Five hours later I was in a Motel 6 in Bakersfield; my heart hadn't settled down at all. In a dark area of the parking lot I peeled the bar code stickers off the car with my fingernail, stuck them far under the dashboard for safekeeping. When I went to the room, I spread the packages out on the bed like loaves of bread. So much weed! Mason would be happy, Deveny would be happy. I parted the drapes to look at the lot. What if anyone knew?

  The next night I was in Tucumcari, New Mexico. A thousand miles in a day—I'd broken my rule and driven until midnight; I wanted the trip to be done. The night after that, at Mason's, I was shaken, burnt out. Of course I hadn't eaten. Of course I hadn't slept. Wherever I stopped, I hadn't been able to say anything more to Kate than "Everything's okay, everything's okay. Just fucking let me drive, all right?"

  When I dumped out the weed on their living room floor, Mason's and Emma's mouths dropped open. Mason owed me $5,000. Of course he didn't have it. Three thousand dollars would have to do for now, everything he did have. "You're not upset, are you, James?" Mason asked. Goddamn stoners! What could I do but sigh it away? He had a six-pack of cold Lone Stars waiting for me in the fridge; I poured bottle after bottle into my face. Out on the porch as we smoked cigarettes, Mason said, "I want to do it, too, man."

  I shook my head, told him, "Believe me, you don't."

  "That bad?"

  "Oh yeah."

  "So you aren't going to want to do it again?"

  "Hell fucking no, Mason!"

  The car was looking ragged. In Houston, in the morning, I pulled into a self-service car wash and scrubbed off all the accumulated dust and bugs. In the evening, I crossed into the Florida panhandle, stopped at De Funiak Springs. Tallahassee was only an hour away, but driving through Louisiana had been terrifying. I knew too much about the state's draconian laws, the insane sentences that could put me away for as long as thirty years. And then there had been those minutes in Sulphur, the most terrible of the trip.

  I had seen plenty of cops along the way: a couple CHPs in the Mojave, a half-dozen troopers in forested Arizona, three black-and-tans through New Mexico's Navajo territory, a dozen on patrol in Texas. They were mostly hidden in speed traps, seen only at the last heart-stopping instant, but a few zoomed up on me from out of nowhere, then hurried by to bust someone else. But nothing was like Sulphur. I knew going in that the town's interdiction point was one of the toughest in the country; it lived up to its reputation. There was a trooper hidden after the crest of every rise, troopers parked in the median in SUVs. Some of the SUVs had K-9 on them, and they all bristled with antennas. I knew they were profiling each car as it passed, calling in suspects to be pulled over down the road.

  And people really were pulled over, blacks, Hispanics, beat-up cars, new. Every single vehicle had out-of-state plates: New York, Georgia, Oregon, New Jersey. And they were popping trunks. I held the steering wheel, maintained my even breathing, talked to JoJo Bear the whole way.

  And then a cruiser came up on me. He rode me a mile or two, came so close that I could see him in the rearview. He was square-jawed, clean-shaven, in his crisp uniform and wide-brimmed hat. Behind him was the cage he wanted to put me in. I left the car on cruise control, let it drive itself. When the cop finally swung around and alongside me, we looked at each other a moment. Did he have a family? Children at home? Then he gunned it up the road like a jet.

  From the dirty motel in De Funiak Springs that night, I called Kate. "We're in the same state," I told her. She yelled at me, "This is a fucking nightmare!"

  Later, I called Eric Deveny. He said, "I'm ready and waiting for you, my man."

  I didn't sleep, hadn't in days. Still, I took my time in the morning, as though I didn't really want to leave that room. This was it, the whole thing at hand. I thought of that gun Eric had. What if he wouldn't give me my money?

  At one o'clock that afternoon, I pulled onto his street. There was his same big house, his same long, black car. Suddenly I felt like I was dreaming.

  "I'm outside," I said when I called him.

  "Side door's open," he told me.

  I left the weed in the car, went in through the unlocked side door to the kitchen. The gun wasn't there this time. Eric was wearing a white tracksuit, like he was heading to the gym. "Welcome back, my man," he said and winked at me.

  "Your brother here?"

  "I sent him away."

  "I'm freaking out."

  "Believe me, I know that."

  The coffee table in the den had been cleaned and cleared; the gun wasn't in that room either. The orange Nike box was open on the table with the money in it. "James, there's your money. Doesn't it look pretty? It's still short a couple Gs. I have to run out right now and finish it. If you want, you can drive around town and I'll call you when I'm done. Or you can just chill right here."

  What should I do? If it was a sting, I was busted already. If he was going to rob me, there was nothing I could do. I said to him, "You want to see it?"

  He said, "If you're ready to show it."

  I went out to the car, looked around the neighborhood. No one else was there. I pushed the button on the clicker, the hatch popped open. I carried the duffel bag in on my shoulder, unzipped it, dumped the pounds out onto Eric's couch.

  Eric picked one up, squeezed it, fingered a bud through the plastic. Then he tore it open. "Beautiful work," he said as he smelled it.

  He left me alone in there. If the cops were going to rush in, now was the time. But a minute passed, then another, and the cops did not rush in. The house was silent around me. I sat on the couch beside the weed, took the rubber bands off the stacks, counted the money. Forty-five thousand in tens and twenties. It took me twenty minutes.

  I was numb, cold, exhausted. I zipped up my jacket. What was taking him so long? Was I really alone in here?

  I began to walk around the house. The rooms in the front were as dark and empty as they had been before, his loft upstairs the same as it had been with the flag. Behind the flag when I pushed it aside was only the bare wall. The unfinished basement was empty and silent. When I went back upstairs to the den, the weed and the money were still there.

  A few minutes later, Eric came in through the kitchen and tossed two more bundles in the Nike box. Then he closed the lid and gave it to me. "You want to have lunch?" he asked.

  "I want to go home," I said.

  We went out on the deck, had a cigarette together to end it. I held the money in the box under my arm the whole time. Eric told me, "Ther
e was a day when I'd done all the work and my first big payoff was sitting right in front of me. I was exactly like you—I couldn't believe it. There's so much about this that isn't about the money. You know what I mean yet? You will. Enjoy the moment, James. Inhabit it. It only feels like this once."

  As I left, he grinned and said, "Call me when you've settled down, my man. I know you'll want to do it again."

  The money was in the shoebox on the passenger seat, JoJo Bear sitting on top of it. When I added the money I'd collected from Rita and Mason, the total came to $54,000; $29,000 of that was profit.

  I counted down the mile markers to Sarasota, drove perfectly. The last five hours wouldn't end. I had to suck down these big, big breaths every inch of the way. What if I got busted now, with the money in my hands? The Texas plates were a long, long way from home. I could still easily get pulled over.

  But I didn't get pulled over. I coasted up to my mother's house in the night, and Kate opened the front door as I did. She touched her finger to her lips when I walked in. "Everyone's sleeping," she whispered.

  We tiptoed through the house to our room. Kate locked the door behind us. I looked at my baby asleep in her crib. I set the shoebox down on the bed.

  I opened the lid.

  There was the money.

  I fell on my knees and pumped my fists. I let out a long and silent "Yeeeeeeeessssssss!" Kate and I leapt into each other's arms. Then we threw the money all around us in the room.

  3 The Dark Mule

  THREE AND A HALF months later, I had a new career. I was a full-time drug mule. I'd done the run six times, always dropping off weight in Tallahassee, Sacramento, and Austin. Kate and I had nearly $175,000 in dirty drug money sitting in two anonymous safe-deposit boxes the size of microwave ovens at the Florida Vault Depository. Gone were the days when we'd kept $25,000 in a shoebox hidden under a pile of clothes in the dryer in the little house across town from my mother's that we'd since rented, another $25,000 in a plastic grocery bag under the pots and pans in the dishwasher. Safe-deposit boxes at banks were out of the question because you had to give them personal information to get one. Then I found the Vault Depository online.