Mule (23 page)

What else? Nothing else. You going to vote this year? Oh yeah, crazy old McCain. Pro–law enforcement, keep the prices up. What about you? Obama. Fellow Chicago boy. Well, maybe one of them can fix it. Yeah, we'll see; it seems like a lot to fix. How's your kid doing, Billy? Corinne? Corinne's picking out colleges this year. How about yours? Romana? Romana's got a bunch of new teeth.

"I stuck an extra G in the stack for you, to make up for being late last time."

Billy grinned and shook his head. He told me, "It'll barely cover her application fees."

After we finished eating, we made the switch in the lot, two duffel bags from his truck to my rental, right out there in the busy afternoon.

"Drive fast and swerve a lot."

"You know I will."

"All is well, all is well. See you in a couple weeks."

 

When I arrived at Jerome's apartment downtown, his mother was there, she'd made dinner for us. The signs of his new money were everywhere: a big-screen TV, a new Mac setup, electric guitars, piles and piles of designer clothes. His mother was like any other mother; she didn't seem to notice about her son what was obvious to anyone else.

Jerome adjusted his glasses, raked his fingers through his hair, explained to her that we were old friends from Sacramento State. "Are you in banking, too?" she asked me as we sat down to her lasagna.

"I'm in import-export."

She said, "How wonderful for you."

When we went out to the cars to make the switch, Jerome showed me a current Social Security Administration statement that had his mother's name and address on it, which I demanded to see to be sure the one he'd texted me was legit. He said, "If anything happens to her, I'll kill you."

"Don't disappear with my weed."

With the duffel bags stowed in the trunk of his freshly washed Honda Civic, we stood in the night shaking hands to seal the deal.

"Be safe out there, all right?"

"Thanks for saying that, James."

"Drive fast and swerve a lot."

"Same to you."

As a last thing, I handed him JoJo Bear. I'd opened up JoJo at home, changed the battery, stitched him shut myself.

"What's this for?"

"This is JoJo Bear. He's done every trip with me. Give him a squeeze." When Jerome did that, JoJo Bear said, "I love you." I told Jerome, "Set him on the passenger seat. He'll help keep you calm when you need it, an extra set of eyes on the road."

"A tracking device?"

I shook my head. "My daughter's teddy bear. Give him to the girl you'll meet in Albuquerque. He wants to get home safe as much as you do."

I caught the ten
P.M.
down to LAX, the redeye across to IAD. By eleven
A.M.
I was on the tarmac in Sarasota, and at noon I was home on Siesta Key. Cristina and the nanny were walking Kate around the living room between them, Kate looking like an injured football player.

"Baby on the way?" I asked as I picked up Romana. Kate just glared at me.

 

I drove to the Vault, had Romana with me. When we got there, Duke buzzed us in. How had he been? I asked. A little under the weather, he said, otherwise he couldn't complain. Could he give a lollipop to my little girl?

In the counting room, Romana sucked the lollipop, made a mess on the floor with the money I tossed her. The weight was moving across the country at this instant; at the end, the money would still be mine—$18,000. Not quite what I was used to making. All the same, how cool was this? Taking no risk, still making tons of money. Is this how Darren Rudd felt? What about Eric Deveny? I wasn't even stressed that Jerome or Emma might not make it. I was just glad not to be out there on the road. I counted money for a while, reached a hundred and fifty grand, wasn't through half of it, got bored. The world was going to run out of money the way I was socking it away in here. Afterward, I ate falafel at the Middle Eastern place on the Trail; my daughter liked the hummus. In the evening, I took her to see the ducks at Red Bug Slough. What a sublime way to make money!

The girls were waiting with dinner on the patio when we came home. Tonight it was Taco Bell. Taco Bell? Kate looked up from the chalupa she was devouring, smiled, and said, "Pregnant."

After dinner, I stayed outside with Cristina. We drank Stellas and smoked cigarettes, pleasantly poisoning ourselves away from the pregnant lady inside. Cristina said, "I've never seen Kate so beautiful."

"She was like this at the end of the last pregnancy, too." Then I cocked my chin at her, said, "What about you, Cristina?"

She looked out at the darkened yard, grinned to herself. "Me? I don't know, James. I guess I've kind of wasted half my life on completely unavailable men."

The TracFone on the table between us vibrated. I snatched it. I'd been waiting for this call all night. It was Emma.

"I'm in Albuquerque. Your California guy gave me this teddy bear." In the background, I heard the familiar "I love you."

"Great news, Emma."

"I'm staying in the Old Town. I've got a suite, rented a Cadillac, decided to do the whole thing in style."

"Do whatever you need to do. Drive fast and swerve a lot."

When I hung up with Emma, I turned back to Cristina. I said, "Tell me again what you were doing in Vegas."

"Before my whole life crashed and burned? I was a cocktail waitress."

"Short skirt?"

"Oh yeah."

"Good money?"

"Only until you spent it." Cristina cocked her head. "Tell me again what it is you do?"

"Import-export."

"Spices from the Orient, right?" she said and arched her eyebrow, because she knew.

"Kate tell you?"

"Of course she did."

I said, "You grew up with Darren Rudd, right?"

"He used to stalk my little sister."

"What else do you know about him?"

"Obviously not as much as you do."

I nodded, sat back in my chair. The evening was quiet around us. Finally I asked her, "So, what do you think?"

"What do I think? I think you're making a lot of money, Mr. Lasseter. After everything that's happened? How badly we've all been fucked? What else is there to think right now?"

 

The following evening, as Kate choked down six ounces of castor oil straight from the bottle, Emma pulled into Dallas with the weight. While Kate spent the night on the toilet shitting out her guts, Emma and Bayleigh were eating room service on a California king-size bed at the Fairmont Hotel as Mason looked on from an armchair, fuming. "What were you ever doing in that shithole in San Angelo?" Emma asked me when she called.

I laughed, asked her, "How was the heat out there today?"

"The heat? It was fine. Except for one crappy stretch on the 285 in north Texas."

"What happened on the 285?"

"Hang on a minute," she said, then came back on the line. "I'm in the bathroom. I don't want Mason to hear this. Have you ever done the 285?"

"I've always gone through Austin," I said, shaking my head.

"The 285 is two lanes for long parts of it, passes through all these towns. So I'm going along the Oklahoma border and I start to see these cops. They're cruising along by themselves, going ten miles under the limit. I saw the first one and my heart stopped. I didn't know he was going that slow until I almost rear-ended him."

"Jesus."

"I didn't know what to do. Pass him? Pass a cop? But at the same time, I was doing the speed limit. It was just me out there. No other cars, nobody to follow and figure out how to play it. So I took a deep breath, signaled, passed. And guess what? Nothing happened. He kept on driving slow, then disappeared in my rearview. I had to do that two more times. Imagine? So I think it's something they do over there, checking out people's nerves. If you were up to something, you'd be too afraid to pass, right?"

"You've got big balls, Emma."

"Drive fast and swerve a lot. One more day and I'm done."

"Mason taking your pounds home for you?"

"He's leaving with Bayleigh in the morning."

"Wait until you finish the run. You won't believe how good it feels to drive a car that doesn't have any weight in it."

"I believe you right now, James."

In our bathroom, Kate was dry-heaving into the sink from the castor oil, pale and sweating in her nightgown.

"How's it going in here, baby?"

"The castor oil isn't working."

Dare I laugh? I didn't.

"Why isn't it working for me? Why isn't anything working for me when it works for everyone else?"

"Kate, I have to overnight tomorrow up in Tallahassee."

She looked at me over her shoulder. "Gone? How long?"

"Leave in the evening, come back the next afternoon."

"What if the baby comes?"

"There's nothing I can do."

"Let me explain this to you," Kate said. "If you aren't here in time, I will hate you."

 

I drove up to Tallahassee the next day, in my own car for a change, the old Forester I'd started it all in, pulled into the Super 8 at last light. Emma was waiting in the lot in her Cadillac. She'd peeled off the stickers, everything she'd done had been exactly right. She tossed the duffel bags in my room when we went inside, then handed me JoJo Bear. I gave her the four padded envelopes with the $43,000 I'd decided to send back on the route. Did she want to go out and have a couple drinks, I asked, talk about the road? Sure she did, she said. She'd made it, after all. Popped her cherry on her virgin drive, made the big money for the very first time.

I left JoJo Bear to guard the weed in the motel room, and Emma followed me as I drove us over to the smoky Leon Pub. There, we muscled our way into the bar, and I ordered us framboises on tap. It was time to celebrate, wasn't it? The adventure a success yet again. Even sweeter for me now that someone else was doing it for me.

I texted Kate: "in labor?" She texted back: "not yet come home."

"emma made it safe."

"congrats to her come home."

"miss u."

"miss u 2 come home."

"love u."

"love u 2 come home."

I turned off my phone. I said to Emma, "How did it feel out there?"

"It felt like I was on any other drive."

"Think you could do it again?"

"As long as you'll let me."

"You know what, Emma? None of these people in here have any idea what you just did."

"I like how that feels."

"And you weren't scared?"

"I surprised myself out there. I even liked it. But what I like most about it is the money."

We drank our framboises and shot some pool. Emma could hit bank shots with the best of them. I never noticed before how pretty she was. How had Mason ended up with a girl like her? At one point, Emma looked around the bar, leaned against the table. How many of these kids would smoke our weed? she asked. More than I would have ever guessed when I began this, I told her. Did any of them have any idea about the work we did to get it here for them? That was the thing, I said. As long as they never had to ask, we were doing it right.

Afterward, in the lot outside the bar, we hugged goodbye. Emma wanted to get on the road, hole up in a Mobile hotel a few hours from now, be home in Austin the following afternoon. Then she was going to rest. Because pretty soon she'd be doing it again, driving back across the country from Albuquerque with another heavy load.

"You're the only other person who knows what it's like," I said.

"A secret society," she said.

Then I thought of something. "Want me to mail JoJo Bear back out to Jerome?"

"Please do. I couldn't have done it without him."

"Drive fast and swerve a lot."

"You take care of yourself out there, too."

In my room, before sleep, I called to check on Kate. Was she feeling all right? I asked. She was fine, she said, she just missed me was all. I'd be home soon, I told her. Why couldn't I be home right now? she said.

In the morning, I drove across town to meet Eric Deveny. I pulled up to that dark and foreboding house of his, felt the same twinge of dread I had from the first. I went in through the unlocked side door to the kitchen with the duffel bags on my shoulders. Eric was waiting there for me, dressed in white, sipping espresso from a tiny cup.

"Anyone in here?"

"Just us mice, my man."

"Your brother?"

He grinned. "You're really afraid of him, aren't you?"

I said what I always said: "Got the money?"

He said what he always said: "Let's look in your mule sack."

We went to the den and I dumped out the pounds on his couch. He sorted through the bags, broke some of them open, so the stink filled the room. He said, "Names on this?"

"'Pineapple' on the yellow. 'OG' on the rest."

"How about 'Superstar Kush' for this really dark shit? I fucking love it when it comes back to me."

He was talking about how people would brag to him in bars about the killer dank they'd scored, hear them say the names he'd made up. Now he jogged up the stairs, came back with a shoebox.

"Want to count it?"

"Do I ever?"

"It's always nice doing business with you, my man. Every time I see you, I think, Look how far my boy has come. Because you were born in my very own house. Think I'll ever forget it? You look fresh today, like you didn't even drive it. Got someone out there muling for you?"

Could he already know? "What if I did?"

"Come on, my man, I'm not fucking dumb. I know the rules: get established, protect yourself and your source. I know you're putting Cali as far away from me as you can. Good for you, you're smart to do it. How much money have you made? A quarter million? Three hundred grand? More? Sell me your goddamn source already, James."

I shook my head.

"What if I just told you to give it to me?"

What could I say? I said, "I guess we'd have to figure that out then."

Deveny looked at me a long time, like he was considering it. Then he smiled and said, "Look at how far you've come."

"I learned it all from you."

Where was I going to feed him today, he wanted to know, and sit down and finalize this New York run? Because I was fucking doing that now, didn't I know that? Especially since I had someone else out there driving. Not to mention again that big mess he cleaned up for me. Like we could ever forget that. Like we wouldn't always have that between us. "Still doing okay with it?" he asked.