Mule

by Tony D'Souza

  Should I have told her what I had done? I did not know. Had it made me feel any better about myself? It had not.

  How could I have done this?

  Should I wait to call her? Hadn't I hurt her enough already?

  I snatched up the phone, called. It went directly to her voice mail. What could I say but, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll do anything. I love you." And it went to her voice mail the dozens of times I called after that.

  I chain-smoked on the balcony. When dawn broke over the city at last, I called room service for oatmeal, put a cigarette out in it when it finally came. Would the TracFones ever start ringing? At eleven A.M., the first one did: Eric Deveny.

  "Got your new line, my man. Prudent, prudent. Still seeing you on Tuesday?"

  "On time as always."

  "Then you're going up to see your girlfriend?"

  "Yeah."

  "You ever hit that shit again?"

  "You know I haven't."

  "Yeah, that's what I think I heard about it. Anyway, once is better than never, right?"

  "That's right."

  In the afternoon, the second one rang: Darren Rudd.

  "Did you read the news?"

  "What news?"

  "Front page of the L.A. Times. Half of Siskiyou County taken down."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "When they took down Billy, they were taking down three dozen other people, too. They have my name on their list."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Got a computer? Google 'City Councilman Arrested in Mount Shasta.'"

  "What would it say if I did?"

  "It would say that I'm in a lot of trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "RICO. Do you know what that is? Or else CCE. You don't know what that is either, do you?"

  "I know RICO. I don't know CCE. Letters aren't good, Darren."

  "These ones are the worst of all. They mean I'm going to have to lie low. Real fucking low. It means I'm going to have to get my hands on a new identity."

  "You going to leave the country?"

  "They've locked me in."

  "Am I going to get my load on time?"

  "You have to. Now I need the money like you wouldn't fucking believe."

  I set him up with Jerome's number, called Jerome, told him someone besides Billy would be making the switch with him this time.

  "What happened to Billy?"

  "Billy's on vacation."

  "On vacation to where?"

  "Timbuktu. How the fuck am I supposed to know? You think I give a shit about where anyone goes on vacation?"

  "Man, chill out. However it has to get done, I'll do it."

  "Drive fast and swerve a lot."

  As I sat in that room that interminable weekend, the only thing I knew for certain was that the load coming from Cali would be the last. The last no matter how it turned out. Even if Darren Rudd could somehow get me more, I was done. I wasn't going to do it anymore. I killed those desolate days by smoking, staring at the TV, missing my family, thinking about my life. Every time I thought about Kate, my heart broke all over again. This is what my acts had led to, a destruction of everything important to me. I felt as empty and alone in that room as though I were locked up already. A quiet came into me, an acceptance. Was this how people felt when they were finally tossed into prison?

  I read about the Siskiyou County bust in the hotel's business center, about the city councilman and the charges he faced, the reactions of the people around him who hadn't known. Who hadn't had any idea. They were shocked, amazed, all the things you'd expect. The message boards after the articles were filled with comments from stoners about the injustice of the marijuana laws when alcohol and tobacco killed so many people. The simple fucking stoners didn't know.

  Monday came and I was on the road. When I pulled off the interstate in Tallahassee that evening, Emma was waiting by her rental, a white Mustang, in the lot of the Motel 6. She passed me a keycard, told me the load was in the room.

  "Where's JoJo Bear?" I asked her. The evening was cool and quiet, no one else around.

  Emma didn't say anything. Suddenly I knew something was wrong.

  "JoJo's in the room, James. JoJo's in the room with the guy in there."

  "There's a guy in there?"

  "He came with Jerome. He put a gun on me. He took away my phones. He put his gun on Mason in Dallas. He pointed his gun at Bayleigh. He told Mason he'd kill me if he called you. There was nothing we could do. What does he want? Who is he?"

  I looked at the door of the room. I knew right away. I told her, "He's somebody who's in a lot of trouble."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "You know what kind of trouble."

  Emma thought about it. She said, "What's he doing here?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "I couldn't stop him. There was nothing I could do. Once he pointed the gun at Bayleigh, I didn't even think about trying. It was the worst two days of my life."

  "I'm sorry."

  Emma said, "Are you going in that room?"

  "I have to go in that room."

  "I don't think you should."

  I looked at the door of the room. The room I would have to go into now. I knew that if I didn't, things would only get worse. The person in there knew too much about me.

  "It's all over," I said. "You know that, right?"

  "It ended for me when he got in my car."

  We looked across the lot at the door. The door someone was waiting behind for me. Emma said, "Remember when I saved your ass in San Angelo? I never told Mason about that. I'd never seen anyone as shattered as you. If I hadn't come out and got you, you'd be in prison."

  "I know."

  "Can't there be a way out of this?"

  "I don't know."

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  I looked at her. She wouldn't be standing here if it wasn't for me. I said, "You're supposed to get in your car and leave."

  "Leave you behind?"

  "Yeah. And go home. This is something I have to deal with for fucking around in all of this."

  "You'd better have a plan, James," Emma said. She looked around the darkening lot. She hugged me. "Be careful." Then she hopped in her car and was gone.

  Was it time to text Kate "Emergency"? Would I ever see her again if I did? When I opened the door of the room to get my answer, I said to the man in it, "Hi, Darren."

  "Hi, James."

  Darren Rudd was sitting on the edge of the bed in his calfskin jacket, looking at a basketball game on the TV. He seemed calm, maybe bored, his yellow hair shaved close to his head like a pelt. The black duffel bags were beside him. Seated on top of one of the bags was JoJo Bear.

  "I caught a lift with your people," Darren told me as I closed the door on us. "Figured it was finally time to come and see Florida, visit your operation. You'd better keep your eye on that Sacramento guy. All he wanted to talk about was how to cut you out. The girl is much better. I'd hire her myself."

  "Where's Billy?"

  Darren looked at the game with his angular face. He said, "Billy made bail on Friday. Then he disappeared like he had to."

  "Where'd he go?"

  "He has a cabin in the woods. Way back of beyond. He kept it stocked with provisions in case of something like this. Billy can stay up there till infinity if he wants to. We may not ever hear from him again."

  I knew right then, Billy was dead. I said, "Why'd he have to disappear? Because he could take you down?"

  "He's one of them. But you're one of them, too."

  "And the rest?"

  "None of them have anything on me like Billy did. Nothing even close. As long as Billy stays away, maybe I'll go back and face it. Even if they manage to make a couple things stick, without him, they can't CCE."

  "The Kingpin Statute."

  "You read up on it?"

  "Death penalty for the top guys if they pin bodies on the organization."

  Darren looked at me. "But they don't ha
ve any bodies to pin on it, do they?"

  I sat down in a chair, stared at the game with him. Who was playing? Lakers and Bulls. Billy was dead. Darren had killed him. Or had him killed. A profound coldness settled into me. I glanced at Darren. I could see he was thinner than when I'd known him up in Siskiyou, tired-looking. Was it fatigue from the long crossing? Or was it because of everything else? I was surprised at how familiar he looked, as though no time had passed at all. But there was something more to it: as he sat there in those lean lines of his, he looked like an animal, a leopard, one of the great predator cats.

  "What happens now, Darren?"

  "All that money I let you make? It's time you paid me back. You're going to help me keep my head down. Put me somewhere safe, put me in touch with your guy. Then we'll all be back in business before anyone's even noticed."

  "You don't have anywhere else to go, do you?"

  "I have a million other places to go."

  "How do you know I won't just leave you in this room?"

  "You know you're in too deep for that."

  "You're in a lot of fucking trouble, Darren."

  "You're going to help me get out of it."

  "Why did you have to bring your trouble to me?"

  "You're the only one whose name they don't have on their list."

  I had my answer. It was time to text Kate "Emergency." Would she do it? Get on a plane with the kids and go? Everything just like we'd planned? Or had everything changed for her now? Darren showed me he was wearing his gun, let his jacket fall back over it. "Give me your phones."

  "Come on, Darren."

  "Give me your phones."

  I pulled out my phones, tossed them to him, sat back in my chair, looked at the game. Then I thought of something. Could he use a beer? I asked him, because I sure knew I could. Yeah, that was what the doctor ordered, he said, just give him my car keys and he'd run out and get some.

  "Let me do it," I said. "You've got to be tired from the trip."

  "I'm not that fucking tired."

  "What if I take off while you're gone?"

  He didn't bother to look at me. "I make a phone call. I'll tell them your name, everything about you. I'll make shit up. I'm your responsibility now as long as I'm out here."

  While I waited for him to come back, I kept looking over at the landline phone on the nightstand. It felt like the thing was mocking me: I had no idea what Kate's cell phone number was. Fifteen minutes later, Darren and I were sitting across the room from each other, drinking bottles of Pabst. He was talking about the bust, about how so many other people had done so many things wrong. But had he done anything wrong? I asked him at last. Maybe he'd worked with too many people in the end, he told me. But how else was he supposed to make any money?

  "It was that goddamn city councilman," Darren explained. "When they figured him out, they went huge on it—they love getting politicians. You can't play both sides of the game. If you want to be straight, be straight. But don't deal out the back door of your house and still want to be on the fucking city council."

  "You don't think lots of people do that?"

  "They're smarter about it. They keep their operations at a remove. They don't set up a deal with a high school kid. And they don't keep the shit in their own goddamn house and have all their different businesses under the same fucking name."

  Darren began to relax, get friendly. Had Kate and I figured out how we were going to clean up our money? he asked me. I told him we hadn't thought about it yet. We should open a hair salon, he said. Get a small-business loan, make the government chip in the seed money. Then we could say the place was hopping even when it wasn't. The only trick would be to find someone to babysit it who could both stand the boredom and also chop hair. Sooner or later some joker always walked in who really did want a fucking haircut.

  "Now, what you and I are going to do," Darren told me, "is you're going to put me in touch with this big fish of yours. Then he and I are going to work something out. I have to keep my head down, stay behind the action. You are going to be my main guy now. You're going to have to set up a safe house for me, or else I'm going to bunk with your fucking kids."

  When the morning seeped in around the edges of the curtains, I was under my jacket on the floor, where I'd passed out sometime during the night. I rubbed my eyes, sat up, looked around. Was it still happening? Yeah, it still was happening. Darren Rudd was there in his leather jacket, lying awake on the bed. He was watching an episode of Cops.

  "You watch this shit?" I said.

  He said, "I like the takedowns."

  I had to hustle across town and make the drop, I told him, had to run some stuff up to New York for a couple days after that. Because I was working all over the place now. Because that was what my big fish had decided to make me do. When that was done, I would come back and take care of him, figure out where to hide him. But for right now he would have to stay in this room.

  "That's not how it's going to work," Darren said, glaring at me. "How it's going to work is, you're going to take me with you and introduce me to all your people."

  I shook my head. "These people are heavy, Darren. If I show up at the drop with you in the car, they're not going to open the door. And at that point, we wouldn't want them to. Because at that point, we'd both be dead."

  Darren rubbed his head. "I didn't think you'd be working with people like that."

  "Why not? I've been working with you, haven't I?"

  "You're not leaving this room without me."

  "You're not coming with me."

  Darren drew his gun, pointed it at me. I knew if he pulled the trigger, he wouldn't miss. Then he'd drive away in my car. "You want to shoot me, Darren? Go ahead. That won't get you out of this room. I'm not going to abandon you. I'll be back in a couple of days. You're going to have to sit here until I'm finished with my run."

  He held the gun on me, a black little snub-nosed sidearm. He said, "I'll pin so much shit on you. I'll say you were there for everything."

  "You're not going to have to."

  "I'll tell them to look at your credit card, give them the dates. Fucking bush league. You never stopped using it, did you?"

  I told him, "You have to be patient while I'm gone. You can't freak out or anything. It's going to take me a day and a half to get up there. Then a day and a half to get back. I'll check in on the phone, let you know where I'm at. I'll be back before you know it and then I'll figure out how to put you in touch with my guy."

  Darren looked at me a long time. His whole world was fucked and he knew it. Would he really take me down if he went down? I had no doubt about that. He clenched his teeth so his jaw muscles flexed. He said, "If you don't come back, I make that call."

  "I understand."

  "You won't see your kids again."

  "I know how it works."

  He holstered his gun, began tossing me my phones.

  How much money did he have on him? I asked. Fifty-six thousand dollars, he told me, most of it was the cash I'd sent out for the run. Any other money anywhere he could get his hands on? Everything else was frozen. Did he want to hole up somewhere better than this? Yeah, someplace with a pool would be nice. Then he added, "You know, you're a documented accomplice as soon as you book me in, right?"

  I loaded the duffel bags into the back of the old Forester, then waved to Darren to come to the car. If I thought he'd run across the lot with his head down, he didn't. He walked with confidence, looked around at the day with his chin stuck out like he was daring them to take him down. On the way to the Marriott, I stopped for gas. Did he want something to eat from inside? Only if it was vegetarian. Would a couple bananas do the trick? Bananas would be fine, even if they weren't organic.

  "How was everything over at your farm?" I asked when we were on the road again. He looked at the city, the passing cars, told me, "Everything in Thailand is always fine. Nicest people in the world." A few moments later, he added, "You're lucky with Kate, you know that, right?"


  I booked him in at the Marriott under my own name, settled him into the room. He should go down in the mornings for the buffet, I told him, swim if they could scare him up a suit. Otherwise he should stay put, order room service. Then I asked him for JoJo Bear.

  "This thing?" Darren said and squeezed the bear's belly.

  JoJo Bear said, as if pleading for help, "I love you."

  Darren said, "I'll hang on to it. It's gotten me this far, hasn't it?"

  In the elevator, on the way down to the car, I took out the phone with Kate's number on it. What should I do? Text her "Emergency" right now? Or should I drive home first, beg her on my knees to let us leave the country together? I thought about it all the way to Eric Deveny's.

  When I pulled up to his house, I texted Eric that I was there, took a deep breath, and carried the duffel bags in through the unlocked side door. The kitchen was clean and quiet. The den was like that, too. If the assault rifle was in there anywhere, I couldn't see it. I stood around a minute; the place remained silent. Then Eric came down the steps in his white boxer shorts. His hair was messy. He was yawning, his face bloated from sleep. I'd never been there this early. I'd never caught him like this.

  "Got my weight?"

  "Right here."

  "Heading up to NYC?"

  "Right now."

  He unzipped the duffel bags, sorted through the kush as though it was any other weed and any other day I'd made a drop there. But these were the last pounds that would ever come to him from California, and this was the last day I would ever bring weight to him. I also wasn't going to New York. Eric didn't know that. If he had, I would have already lost my value. Where would I dump his shit on my way home? My heart was pounding as hard as the first day I'd been there as he picked out the bags he thought would be going up on the run, put them in the open suitcases on the floor that were already full of pounds of haze, smaller packages wound with brown tape that I knew were cocaine.

  "Going back to bed, my man. Crazy fucking night, you know? I'll be waiting for my lunch when you get back. You'll get your money then."

  He was halfway up the stairs.