Mule

by Tony D'Souza

  "Don't you feel like we're moving too fast, James?" my wife asked from across the glass table.

  "Don't think about it, Kate."

  "But don't you ever get afraid?"

  "I'm not afraid right now."

  She was quiet a moment. Then she said, "What do you really think of this place?"

  "I think I'm happier than I've ever been."

  "You're not upset about the money?"

  "I know we're going to make more."

  Kate was quiet again. She set her hands on her belly like she was thinking about the baby growing inside her. She said, "Is it really always going to be like this? Couldn't we have had this some other way?"

  "You know the answer to that."

  The car, we told my mother, was bought with my income from the yacht-detailing crew. The house on Siesta Key we didn't even try to explain. We visited her at her place; when she'd ask us why no one was ever home on 8th Street the times she'd dropped by, Kate said, "We have busy lives now, Lynne. We're not the homebodies we were when we first got here."

  "Then I'm so happy for the two of you."

  No one from the business would ever know about the Siesta Key place; we didn't want any of them to figure out how much money we were making. We paid Nick to stay at the 8th Street house from time to time, to babysit our weight. Then we just enjoyed our lives. I liked swimming endless laps in my pool. I liked staring at Cops in my boxer shorts on my big-screen TV. I liked watching my daughter learn to stand up against the coffee table. I liked it when my wife crawled across our big bed with something really randy on her mind. Sometimes when I checked my beard patches, I imagined they were growing in. Whenever I pressed his belly where I kept him on my nightstand, JoJo Bear would always tell me, "I love you."

  ***

  The last thing Kate and I did with our new money before Mason and I dealt with Russell was plan a vacation in Europe. Sarah and Kyle went there often, and Kate had been nagging away at me. Why shouldn't we go, too? Besides working so hard at the business, she was getting straight A's in school. On top of that, she'd be having her birthday soon, number twenty-nine. Okay, okay, okay, I said at last. Of course I hadn't mentioned to her the shit with Russell I'd been dealing with. We applied for passports, circled the dates in June. Then I went to talk to Eric Deveny.

  I'd been telling myself from the beginning that I didn't work for Deveny, but the truth was more complex. He was the one who had the money; I was the one who wanted it. It's not like he was hard to please: he wanted color in his weight, he wanted stickiness and stink, and he wanted his deliveries on time. I'd tell him the names of the stuff Billy gave me in Sac: Lamb's Breath, Silver Needle, Blueberry, Diesel, OG, Orange Crush, so many different names, which ones were indo, which ones were outdo. But Deveny didn't care about any of that; he made up his own names. "On time" is what he needed more than anything else. Except for that one ice storm in New Mexico, I'd had no trouble giving him that, and he always sent me home safe with the money.

  "Europe, my man?" Eric said when I brought it up to him in May. "That sounds really great. But let me ask you this: How am I going to get my weight while you're gone?"

  "What if someone else drives it?"

  "No one comes to my door but you."

  "What if we went to Europe anyway?"

  "I wouldn't be here when you got back."

  We were having Greek food, calamari, souvlaki, saganaki, at a quiet place near Governor's Square Mall when I talked to him about it. I was budgeting a couple hundred bucks into every trip to pay for those lunches with him. Kate had been supplying me with clothes to wear in upscale restaurants: Sevens, Diesel, Volcom; we both had piles of designer labels now. Before I'd meet Deveny at the end of the runs, I'd strip off my lucky driving clothes in the last motel room outside Tallahassee, pull all the new stuff on. I'd also long since been wearing my hair short, to look innocent on the road. At a French place, in late February, the hostess had glanced at the two of us and said, "You guys aren't brothers, are you?" I hadn't missed the shadow that had crossed Eric's face. And he never seemed to want to give me credit for anything. When I'd explained how I moved the money through the airports in pantyhose, he'd shrugged and said, "That's not new." When I'd told him about walking the rental car lines and going back in to get Texas plates, he'd said, "That's just common sense."

  In the French restaurant he'd looked me up and down and said, "You've cleaned yourself up, my man."

  "Taking after the Superstar," I'd said.

  Now, at the Greek place, a few months later, when I asked him if I could have some time off to take my family to Europe, Eric shook his head. "Having you gone right now would cost me too much money."

  "What do you do with all your money, Eric?"

  "All the same things you do with it, James."

  "Ever think about getting out?"

  "I'll get out when I've made enough."

  "How are you going to know when that's going to be?"

  He looked at me a moment with this strange grin like he was trying to figure me out. Then he said, "Worried I'm not going to have enough work for you, my man?"

  The waiter brought our lamb dishes and refilled our glasses with retsina. When he was out of earshot again, Eric looked at me and said, "How do I know you'll come back?"

  "We need the money now."

  "Are you going to give me your connection if you get out?"

  "We'll talk about that then."

  Deveny nodded. "How does your wife feel about all of this?"

  "I think I have to take my wife to Europe."

  "You like being married, my man?"

  "I like it well enough."

  We picked up our cutlery and began to eat. Eric said, "There are a lot of fucking hassles involved in marriage, aren't there?"

  "Not when it's working right."

  "Would you ever want a girl up here?"

  I shook my head.

  He looked at me a long time then, sipped from his glass. He said, "Good answer, my man. I like all the things I'm learning about you. Stay out of trouble, stay focused on the work. You've got Cali, you've got me. Nobody has a setup like you. People would love to take it from you if they knew you had it. But nobody knows you have it, do they? I'm glad you're working it right, James. Other guys would have gotten distracted by a whole lot of ego-stroking bullshit."

  At the end of the meal, he wiped his mouth, tossed his napkin on his plate. "Thanks for the feed, my man. You are granted my permission to go to Europe. You're working as soon as you get back. Then you're going to New York for me."

  I watched through the window as he peeled away in his car. Would I ever be as cool as that handsome man? Dressed all in white? Driving that long black Mercedes?

  When I got back to Sarasota in the evening, I checked in at the 8th Street house. Nick was lying on the couch in his boxer shorts and staring at Cops on TV.

  "Everything going okay?" I asked, tossing him Kate's new pound.

  "Just fucking driving all the time now, Jimbo," he said and pitched me a roll of money.

  "How's the shit moving?"

  "The shit's moving great."

  "Anything else going on?"

  "I want a goddamn raise."

  "You'll have to take that up with Kate, my man."

  At home in Siesta Key, I put the shoebox full of money Deveny had given me in the dishwasher, then stuffed Kate's roll of money from Nick in the pocket of her jeans on the patio as she kissed me to welcome me back. She had dinner waiting on the table, pesto linguine with garlic shrimp. I held my daughter on my lap as we ate, and Romana stuck her fingers into everything.

  "So can I book those tickets already?" Kate asked.

  "Go ahead. Out on June sixteenth, back on the twenty-ninth. We'll have two full weeks over there. I have to work right up to the day we leave. I have to be on the road the day we get back."

  "What do you think about driving up to see the Alps after we're done visiting Rome, James?"

  "Driving, Kate? Are
you fucking kidding me?"

  The passports came, the tickets were booked, and we told my mother we were going to see Kate's parents in California. Then it was time for the last run before Italy, and to go to Biloxi with Mason and finally do something about Russell.

  I flew out to Sacramento with the money, grabbed a rental car, picked up the weed from Billy, the same old things. Two days later, I pulled into Mason's lot late in the night. I'd been putting off this thing with Russell for so long because I really had no idea what to do. What I hoped more than anything was that when we rolled into Biloxi, Russell wouldn't be there. At least then I would have satisfied my obligation to Mason. Because what if Russell was there? Were we really going to fuck him up? Just like that? How would that get us our money? I'd only agreed to go so I could put the goddamn thing to bed before our trip.

  I sat in the car. I started thinking all these other things. What if we had enough now? What if Kate and I didn't come back from Europe? Could we hide enough money in the baby's diaper to stay over there a good long time? To do the things I was doing, I'd had to build lies into myself. The main one, I knew, was that I'd never get caught. But there were a lot of others, too. That we'd had to start doing this because of the economy. That we had to continue doing this because of the economy. Yes, we were scared when we lost our jobs. But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Because weren't we buying all this other shit now? Because weren't we doing all these other things? So what if I was good at the muling? Hadn't I been scared every single time? More scared than I'd ever been about anything else in my life? Wasn't I scared right now, just sitting in this car? What I felt in that car outside Mason's that night was that I should just stay in it, turn around and drive home without seeing him or anyone else, go to Europe with my family and never, ever look back.

  Then I thought about the money. God, how I wanted the money. I stepped out of the car, carried the duffel bag up the stairs.

  "It's time, James," Mason said when I went inside. "It's tomorrow. I'll follow you there. We'll wait outside his place. We'll stake him out until he gets home, then we'll fuck him up. Then you'll go to Europe and have a good time with Kate and Romana, and nobody will ever fuck with us again."

  I dropped myself onto Mason's couch. Where was Emma? Asleep in the bedroom with Bayleigh. I'd told Billy again about our problem in Sacramento; Billy had said what he always said: "Don't think so much, James. Hit the motherfucker in the face with a lead pipe." I'd also long since known what Eric Deveny thought I should do about it. God, what was so wrong with everybody? Now I said to Mason in a voice as exhausted by it all as I felt, "So we're just going to go there, wait for him, and then fuck him up?"

  "Yeah."

  "Russell's a big dude, Mason."

  "We're going to surprise him."

  "Have you ever done something like this?"

  Mason rubbed his chin, didn't say anything.

  I shook my head. I said, "What if we go there and he calls the cops?"

  Mason thought about it. He said, "What's he going to say to the cops? That he pissed us off because he stole our weed?"

  "What if the redhead calls the cops?"

  Mason thought about it. "Then we'll fuck her up, too."

  In the morning, I woke up as irritated about it as ever. Mason said we had to do some shopping first, so I followed him over to Wal-Mart. He grabbed rope, duct tape, two black pillowcases, a Louisville Slugger. I shook my head at the stuff in the cart. I said, "What, you gonna kidnap them?"

  "I don't know," Mason said. "It's better to be prepared."

  He wanted to buy rat poison for the dogs. I said, "Get a life, Mason." He wanted a gallon of paint thinner to burn down Russell's house. I told him, "That's not even his house!" At the register, I couldn't meet the checkout girl's eyes. What an obscenely stupid collection of items.

  We put those things in the back of my car, a big silver Chrysler 300, right beside the duffel bag of weed. I'd been getting upgrades from the rental agencies, my ego had finally decided to let me take one. I'd also just made Silver status on Star Alliance because I'd flown so many one-ways to Sacramento with them. Mason winked his headlights at me from where he sat across the aisle in his Corolla. Then we pulled out of the Wal-Mart lot, got ourselves on the road.

  In the evening, we turned off the I-10 and entered the ugly city of Biloxi, Mississippi. We drove past Russell's sad and dumpy house in the fading light. No one seemed to be there. We parked the cars, went up on the porch, peered in the front picture window. The dogs inside began to bark at us.

  "He's still living here if the dogs are here," Mason said.

  "Why don't we just break in and steal something?" I said.

  Mason said, "Why don't we just wait until he gets here, fuck him up, and then steal every single thing he has?"

  When we went back to the cars, Mason popped his trunk. "Look at this," he whispered. When I looked in the trunk, I saw the samurai sword from his wall. The scabbard wasn't on it.

  "What'd you bring that for?"

  "I'm going to scare him with it."

  "Goddamn it, Mason. Leave it in the fucking trunk."

  As the evening settled down, we drove to the beach and walked on the sand. There were cigarette butts and broken bottles everywhere. Why were so many places on the Gulf of Mexico such shitholes? Mason had all these plans he wanted to talk about, how we should start buying vehicles, register them in different states, set up drivers for every leg of the trip, one guy coming in with the dope, another guy meeting him with the cash for the next run. Then we could sit back, let other people take the risks, make a shit ton of money.

  What I wanted to say was, If it was that easy, Mason, don't you think we'd have done it already? Instead I said, "We have plenty of time to talk about all of that." I thought again that I shouldn't come back from Europe.

  When we went back to Russell's, it was night. We parked our cars far up the street; the cracked and broken neighborhood around us was dark and silent. I took the Louisville Slugger out of my car, Mason took the samurai sword out of his. "Give me that," I said and grabbed it from him, tossed it in my trunk. I took the tire iron out of the wheel well, since Mason had to have something.

  "Come on," Mason said when I gave him the tire iron. "It'll scare the fuck out of him. What's scarier than a pissed-off Asian dude with a samurai sword?"

  "Mason, give it a rest. You're a redneck from Biloxi."

  "What are you talking about, James? I'm full-blooded Ko­rean, been over there twice."

  "One of those times you were a baby."

  "One of those times I wasn't, all right?"

  We went around back, crossed the darkened yard, hid in the brambles growing over a dried-out culvert. The lights went on in the rear windows of the shotgun house next door. A few minutes later, the lights went off. The darkened house on the other side of Russell's was vacant.

  When I lit a cigarette, Mason hissed, "He'll see the glow of that." A half hour later, he was smoking one, too. We spent so much time in those brambles, smoking cigarettes, waiting. What would we have looked like to anyone who might have seen us?

  It must have been past midnight. Still no Russell. "Can I go home now?" I said.

  "You can't leave me here."

  "Can't we both go home?"

  "I'm not ready to go home yet."

  After another twenty minutes of waiting, Mason gave in. He was frustrated, tossed down his cigarette and ground it out hard under his heel. When we went around to the front of the house, a pickup truck was coasting toward us in the middle of the street with its engine off. Its headlights were off, too. I knew right away it was Russell. I now understood that he really had been hiding from us. Everything felt real in a way it hadn't before. Mason and I raced around to the back, ducked in the brambles. We lay beside each other on our bellies in the dirt and watched as Russell and the redhead climbed into their own house through a rear window they'd slid open.

  "Why are they doing that?" I whispered.

  "Beca
use they're fucking assholes," Mason said.

  The lights went on in the other back window. Mason and I crept through the yard to the back of the house. First Mason climbed into the open window, then I did. It was their bedroom. It was a mess, clothes piled everywhere, the sheets twisted on the bed and the mattress showing. They were such dirty people. Poor people. Mason and I stood with our backs against the wall by the door. Mason ducked his head to look through the doorway. Then I did. I saw the backs of their heads over the back of the couch, the TV beyond with a NASCAR race on it, on mute. I smelled the scent of burning weed.

  The redhead said in a normal voice that didn't know we were there, "How about your mother?"

  "She don't fucking care," Russell said in a voice that also didn't know we were there.

  "I'm not living in that campground, Russell."

  Suddenly the dogs were barking in the doorway. Mason sidled toward them; when he was close enough, they sniffed his hand and remembered who he was. Then they were bumping against my legs, whining to be petted. When I looked in the living room again, Russell was brandishing a golf club.

  "What the fuck you doing here! What the fuck you doing here!"

  The redhead was standing, too, bug-eyed, frightened. Could someone really be that scared of me? Mason stepped carefully into the room. He had the tire iron raised in his hands, was hissing under his breath, "Calm down! Calm down!"

  "What the fuck you doing in my house?"

  "We want our fucking money!"

  "I'll fucking kill you!"

  "I'll fucking kill you!"

  The redhead yelled, "Give them some money! Give them some money!" Russell glanced at her with a twisted face that said, What the fuck? and Shut the fuck up! at the same time.

  Mason and Russell squared off like swordsmen with those weapons in their hands. But there was still a good distance between them in the room. Mason barked out of the side of his mouth at the girl, "Give me that motherfucking ring," and she twisted it off her finger, tossed it to him. Mason stuffed it in his pocket. He said, "I want more shit."