Mule

by Tony D'Souza

  When the smoke began to clear on the operation at midday, the teams had searched dozens of properties, including the two high schools. They'd found heavy weights of ecstasy, hashish, and psilocybin, all packaged and ready for distribution. They'd also scored twenty-eight pounds of kush: people's orders brought aboveground for shipment. They'd confiscated guns, money, phones, computers, properties, vehicles, animals, and children. They'd made thirty-three arrests, including that fifty-three-year-old Mount Shasta city councilman, who had arranged to sell a pound of kush to the undercover agent. They had him on wiretaps and a video. Even better for them, they'd found two guns at his place and a sawed-off shotgun with the safety removed behind the door of another dealer's home. Most of the weed belonged to Darren's organization. Some of it had been intended for the Capital Cities Connection.

  The story and its details would run on the front page of papers up and down California the following day, including the Los Angeles Times, where I'd eventually read it online. But that's not how I first found out about it. I found out about it because I received a phone call while it was going down. Neither the caller nor I had any idea yet of what was really happening up there.

  What was that morning like for me? It was one like any other. I did some pushups in the bedroom, ate breakfast standing up in the kitchen, oatmeal and blueberries, simple food for my nervous stomach. Cristina and Kate were out at the mall with the kids. It was a cool day for Sarasota, down in the fifties. The sky outside was a flat, gray slate.

  I took a shower, dressed, watched television—the Weather Channel for a change. Jerome would be leaving Sacramento two days later, Emma would be coming into Tallahassee on Monday, I'd be heading up to New York the day after that. Snow was a problem for us at this time of year; I wanted to know what I could expect out there. I was tired, nodded off a few times on the couch. I hadn't been sleeping well because of Evan's nighttime feedings. After fighting it off for half an hour, I let myself roll away into the darkened womb of sleep.

  On the glass coffee table were the disposable phones I was currently using: one for Deveny, one for Billy and Darren, three more for everyone else. The one I used for Billy began to vibrate on the glass, made a sound like coins shaken in a can, startled me awake. I checked the time before I answered it, to see how long I'd been down. Kate wanted me to meet them for lunch at noon, and fear shot through me that I'd overslept. I'd been trying to be extremely nice to her, to make up for the things I'd done that she didn't even know I had. But the phone said that it was only eleven A.M. Why would Billy be calling from Cali this early?

  "Yo, Billy," I said into the phone.

  "Billy's going down." It was Darren Rudd.

  I sat up slowly in the middle of that shrinking room. I thought I'd be prepared for a call like this, realized now I still wasn't ready. How could I be? How could anyone? "What do you mean, Billy's going down?"

  "He got stopped a few minutes ago on the I-5 near Duns­muir. He texted. He was dirty. There were a couple units behind him, coming out with a K-9 right away. He hasn't texted since."

  Running the K-9 right away? I said, "Were they tipped?"

  "Of course they were tipped."

  "Who would've done that?"

  "You think if we knew, they would've had the chance? For all I know, it was you. He was coming down with your shit anyway."

  "You think I would've done something like that?"

  "Why not, James? It's not like we really know you. The way you've been acting? The attitude you've had with me? How am I supposed to know what's been going on out there with you?"

  "Nothing's been going on out here. It wasn't anyone on my end."

  "It better not have been. You know I'll find out if it was."

  I shook the threat away with my head. "What's going to happen now?"

  "Besides losing one of my best fucking guys? Nothing's going to happen. We've shut it down. Isolated it. We'll pick him up, set him up with counsel. It will drag on for a year or two and then he'll be all right. But he's going to have to find other work. Don't worry about Billy. He's retired now and that's it. Get your people up on new lines. You have a McKinleyville address you were working with? Overnight me a number there. Put it in a couple of envelopes, sign across the seals a few times."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it. Stay calm. Stay professional. Get back to work. You'll get everything you need on time. This line is dead. I'll be waiting for that number." Then Darren hung up.

  Maybe if Darren had had any idea what was really happening in Siskiyou County at that moment, he would have done things differently. Head for the airport without calling me or anyone else, carrying as many hundred-dollar bills strapped to his body as he could, enough money to start a new life somewhere, a life he would have to live quietly forever. Open a sleepy beachfront bar on the coast of Nicaragua, a hole-in-the-wall flophouse for backpackers way out in Mozambique. By early afternoon California time, they'd already be up on him, beginning to freeze his remaining assets, starting what would become a RICO investigation, later evolving into a Continuing Criminal Enterprise or "Kingpin Statute" case with the possibility of capital punishment. People were already flipping on him. In the backs of squad cars, in the interrogation rooms of jails even before they'd been processed. Everybody had been caught dirty for a change. And nobody wanted to go to prison, especially when someone else could.

  All I knew was that I had to get that load to Deveny. That though I had to get out of the business now, I hadn't figured out exactly how to do it. Not in a way that wouldn't endanger my family. Not in a way that would let me feel certain I'd go on living among them. I had to send a new number to Darren so he could get the load to Jerome. I had to play the game the way I'd been playing it so that no one could make a move on me before I could make a move on them.

  As I sat at the coffee table and looked at those silent cell phones, I began to think about all these other things. That maybe the cops were coming for me now. That maybe Billy would give me up and that they were about to knock on the door. I mean, I knew Billy wouldn't give me up. But still there was the thought of it. That a fuse was being lit out there that would race across the country and reach me here. Why had I done what I'd been doing? Why had I done it over and over?

  I sent out texts to Jerome, Emma, Nick, all of them: "dump the phones." Texts began to come back right away: "whats wrong?" "everything cool?" "fing hassle."

  Then I did the other things I had to do. I gathered up my TracFones, smashed them under my heel in the kitchen, put the jumbled pieces in two plastic bags, drove across the bridge to the McDonald's on the Trail, threw one bag in a garbage can in the lot there, threw the other one away down the street at the Taco Bell. Nobody saw me do it.

  I drove to Wal-Mart, bought half a dozen new phones, charged them up in the lot with the cards, then drove to the post office. I wrote the phone numbers on slips of paper, stuffed them in the security envelopes I'd brought with me, wrote "Don't Open This, Pig" across the sealed flaps. I stuffed those envelopes inside Express Mail envelopes, sealed those, and sent them overnight to all those people under fake return addresses, half a dozen of which I'd long since learned by heart. Then I drove to the 8th Street house, handed a phone to Nick.

  "Anything wrong?"

  "No."

  "Want to hang out?"

  "Way too busy."

  I went and met my wife and kids at Patrick's on Main Street, where they were running a "Great Recession" lunch special. That's what they were calling it now. Now it had a name. Cristina and my mother were there, too. Could any of them see what was happening on my face? I knew they could not. I sat between my son in his car seat and my daughter in her highchair, ordered a cheeseburger, because you still had to eat, tried to have as fine a time with them as I could.

  My mother gave me a look and said, "Shouldn't you be working on the boats?"

  "Too cold."

  "Don't they heat the warehouse?"

  God, my mom. "They don't want to spend th
e money right now."

  "How is Stewart and his new wife?"

  Stewart was a friend at work whom I'd made up and mentioned to her once. She'd never forgotten it. "Stewart and his wife are fine."

  "Did they enjoy their honeymoon?"

  "They had a wonderful time."

  Did I want to take the kids to the Mote Aquarium with all of them? they asked. I told them I couldn't—errands. "He's like his father," my mother said, tossing her napkin on her plate.

  As we left, I slipped a new phone into Kate's pocket, told her the number I'd already texted to it was one of mine, asked her to give it to my mother and Cristina, too. Kate sensed something was wrong. She grabbed my elbow at the door, said quietly so no one else could hear, "Is everything going okay out there?"

  I told her, "Everything's going just fine." Then I stopped, shook my head. "Do you really want to know?"

  "Of course I do. I always have."

  "Billy got busted a couple hours ago."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Darren called."

  "Did they catch him with anything?"

  I nodded.

  "Is he going to turn us in?"

  What could I say? I said, "My guess is no. But I don't really know."

  "What are we supposed to do?"

  "There isn't anything we can do."

  "Should we get away with the kids?"

  "We can't come back if we do."

  Kate was quiet as we loaded the kids in the car, that beautiful Subaru we'd bought with our drug money. The backseat was packed with children, their toys, their mess. "This is not going to turn into a grimy kiddie wagon," Kate had told me the day she'd sped us away from the dealership in it. Of course it long since had.

  My mother drove by in her Sentra with Cristina. They waved at us; they'd be waiting at the aquarium to help Kate get the kids out of the car. There, my daughter would run around and look at the fish while the adults took turns pushing Evan in his stroller, talking about things the way normal people did, as though the lives we lived were normal ones.

  But our lives weren't normal ones. "I want to stay with you," Kate pleaded with me outside the car. "I don't want us to be separated."

  "You have to go on like usual."

  "How am I supposed to act like nothing's happening?"

  "You pretend. You've done it before. You're good at it. This is what we have to do. This is how we pay for it."

  "I feel sick."

  "I do, too."

  "I wish we hadn't done it."

  "I'm sorry if I made you."

  "I'm sorry if I made you feel like you had to."

  "I'm sorry about all of it, Kate."

  Just before she pulled away, I tapped on her window. Kate powered it down. "Be nice to my mother."

  "I always am."

  "We may never see her again."

  Kate looked at me a long time. Then she began to cry.

  "Put on your sunglasses."

  "You know I will."

  "Don't let the kids see you crying."

  "You know I won't."

  Did I sleep that night? How could I? I paced the living room, fed Evan when he cried, consoled Romana on my shoulder when she called from her crib for me. How gentle children seem when they're that small. But then they grow up to be all these people. People just like we were.

  In the kitchen, I started to salve my worry with vodka but poured the glass down the sink. There was no one I could call, no way to get more information. When I went out on the patio to smoke, the world around me was calm. It seemed like an average night, was an average night for most of the billions of people in the world. But it wasn't an average night for me; my nights hadn't been average for a long time. Would there be any way out of it now? What would that way be? Had we exchanged selfishness for the balance of whatever had been good in our lives? The love Kate and I had for each other? Our children as expressions of that love in the world? Had we really needed to risk losing everything to realize all we'd had from the start? What could we salvage out of it, if we were given the chance?

  For example, would we be willing to give up the money if we could get out of this for free? I asked myself as I looked at the night. The stars glittered above me, and the answer that came to me was: I still wanted the money. I was a coward. I was too afraid to live life without the money.

  When I finally went in and lay beside Kate, I whispered, "Are you sleeping?"

  "No."

  "But are you trying to sleep?"

  "I've got this nightmare running through my mind."

  I had to tell her about what had happened in New York. I said, "I've got all that same stuff running through my head, too. I hope there'll be a day when we don't have to think about it."

  Kate said, "Will there ever be a day like that? We're always going to have to think about it. Maybe it won't feel like it does right now. But the things we've done can't just be put away."

  "Putting the children at risk, right?"

  "That's it. And being as greedy as we've been. There were other things we could have done. But we didn't even try. When we look back, we're going to say, Why didn't we just deal with the hard times like everyone else had to? We're going to have to hear them talk about how they struggled through. Then we're going to feel ashamed."

  "Kate? What if I had something to tell you? What if I told you about all the bad things I've done out there?"

  Kate turned and looked at me in the dark. I could feel the caution that came into her. She said, "What are all the bad things you've done out there?"

  "I've done things I'm always going to have to live with. I've done things I'm always going to regret."

  Kate thought about that. She said, "I know you'd never hurt anyone. I know you're not like that."

  "I have something to tell you."

  She sat up in bed.

  I said, "I don't know what I'm going to tell you."

  "Did you hurt someone?"

  "Yeah, I hurt someone."

  "Who did you hurt?"

  I didn't say anything.

  "What did you do? You're frightening me."

  "Kate, there's only one person I could ever truly hurt."

  She didn't say anything. Then she said, "Me?"

  "Yeah."

  "You hurt me?"

  "Yeah. I hurt you."

  She was shaking her head. "But I asked you. You said you'd never do that. I asked you never to lie to me, and you said you wouldn't."

  I was quiet for the longest time.

  She said, "Did you lie to me?"

  Time and time and time and time. Breathing and not wanting to say it. So long a time that I knew she knew the answer was yes. Then I told her about all the runs to New York that she hadn't known about, that a person had been waiting at the end of those runs for me.

  "Who was that person?" Kate said in a quiet voice.

  "It was a woman."

  She was quiet, thinking. Then she said, "It was the night you didn't call."

  "It was that night."

  "What did you do?"

  "I cheated on you."

  "You cheated on me?"

  "Yeah."

  The passage of time. Time and time and time.

  "You cheated on me with that person?"

  "Yeah."

  The passage of time.

  "Why did you cheat on me with that person?"

  "I don't know why."

  Now it was Kate's turn to control the passage of time. To make me wait. To make me know that there had been a consequence. Finally she said, "You don't love me, do you?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "But you did that."

  "Yes."

  "Because you didn't love me at that time?"

  "I don't know why."

  "Why didn't you love me at that time?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yes, you do know. Tell me why."

  "Because."

  "Because why?"

  "Because you let me do the drives."

  S
ilence. Time. The birth of a chasm.

  "Because I let you do what you wanted to do?"

  "Because you let me take those risks."

  "Because I let you do what you wanted to do."

  "Because you didn't make me stop."

  A sundering. A mitosis. The division of a continent.

  "This isn't my fault."

  "I know that."

  "I've never felt as awful as I do right now."

  "I've been sorry every moment since."

  We lay there a long time. Time did not make it better.

  Finally Kate said, "Maybe we rushed into this. Maybe we didn't really know each other. And now we have these kids. How could we have done this to them? My heart is broken. Completely, completely broken. One of us has to leave. One of us has to leave right now."

  "I'm the one who will leave."

  "I don't know that I'll ever want you to come back."

  "I'll do whatever you say."

  I dressed in my driving clothes in the dark. I looked at my sleeping children, kissed them, touched them as though for the very last time. I took three bundles of money from the teapot on the stove, gathered my car keys, my wallet, my phones. Then I left the house.

  I drove across town and checked into the Ritz, because a motel would have depressed me more than I already was. I hadn't dared go to the 8th Street house because that would have been even worse: the pictures on the walls there of when we'd been happy. Kate and I in Austin. Kate and I in the cabin with our new baby. Those people we'd once been who would condemn me now. Still, that plush room at the Ritz might as well have been a cell. What was Kate going through? I texted her where I was staying. She did not text back.