Mule (24 page)

I shrugged.

"Ever going to tell your wife?"

I made a face, shook my head.

"Yeah," he said, "that's the way. Dump it. Or else keep it locked inside. There will come a day when you can let it all out. And then everything will feel fine, trust me. But let me ask you this: Why do you keep telling me no about New York?"

"What's up in New York you want so bad?"

"What do you think is up in New York, James? Money. Why don't you feel like you made a commitment to me when you brought that mess here to clean up?"

"You have that hanging over you as much as I do."

He thought about it, smiled, and said, "Maybe I do. But maybe I don't care about things like that at all. I'll come up with something else to keep you honest. Because I've been having this idea I have to keep you honest. All the money you're making me? Don't you know how important to me you are? Don't you know how proud of you I am? Born in my very own house. So where are we going to eat? Shula's for steak? How about that French place for duck?"

Could I just cruise home this one time? I asked. My wife was due.

He said, "A boy, right? Number two? They say that when you have a child, you learn the meaning of love for the first time. Is that true? Then I can't imagine how much you love those kids. Me? I'd never bring a life into this world. Not with the things I've seen. Not with the kind of people I know are in it. I'll get a present for your son when he's born. But what are you supposed to get for a kid who already has everything? Money? Parents who love it? I didn't have that. And I'm never going back to what I did have."

Deveny went behind his brass-topped bar, returned with a short green bong. He sat on his couch with those pounds of weed piled around him like pillows. He packed the bowl of the bong with bud from one of the pounds he'd popped open, sparked a lighter, started hitting it. "Did I tell you I was down in South Beach this weekend, my man?" he said, letting out a long plume of smoke. "Good times, James. You should be jealous. But you're not jealous, are you? You've got it all already. Kids. A wife who loves you. Because your wife loves you, doesn't she? Or does she just love the money? Europe? What else? She's spending it, isn't she?"

He hit the bong so it bubbled, his eyes closed like he was concentrating. It was so quiet in the house, it felt like there was some kind of sadness about it all. He tilted up his chin, let out the smoke. He tapped the bowl of the bong with the lighter to loosen up the weed. "Anyway, everybody down there is freaking out about the economy. I hate those fucking people—did you know that about me? Silver spoons, trust funds. That's who you get the pleasure of hanging out with when you're where I'm at. I love seeing those people scared. Know what I mean? To see them feel what we feel? To see them realize they live in the same world we do? My question is, if you're scared, shouldn't you do something about it? I did. You did, too."

He hit the bong, exhaled the smoke into the room. "We got ourselves out of it, didn't we, my man? And I know I'm going to keep myself out of it. And even if I could do something else, and even if I could be something else, I wouldn't. Not anymore. Not until I have enough. Not until I know nothing can ever fucking touch me. Is that how you feel? Tell me the truth, James. Because I need you. Are you still in this with me?"

He'd never said so much to me. What I said to him was "Yeah, I'm still in it."

"Superstar," he said and grinned. "I knew you had it in you from the start. Remember how bad you wanted that money? Hard to control, isn't it? No more excuses, my man. As soon as that kid is born, you're going to New York. Dump your phones, by the way. Heat's been off since that dead CI, but that's no reason for us to get lazy. Get the fuck out of here. You owe me a steak."

Deveny was talking about Rachel Hoffman, the girl who was killed back in the spring. The Tallahassee PD had busted her for a few ounces, scared her into working a sting with them, sent her in alone on a drug and gun buy with $13,000 in cash. Somehow they'd lost their surveillance; the hoods drove away with her in their car, executed her. She was twenty-three, not any kind of real drug dealer. The papers had been hammering away at the police ever since. At the time Eric had said, "A civilian like her? That's the best they could do?"

When I pulled away from Eric's, I called Kate. Was she still pregnant? I asked. Yes, she was still pregnant. Any contractions? No, she sighed, nothing at all. Then I threw away my phones in a garbage can in a McDonald's parking lot, like Eric had told me to. During the long, quiet drive down to Sarasota, I thought about the things Deveny had said. Did my wife love me? Of course my wife fucking loved me. Why was he trying to get in my head?

Nick was pacing in a fury when I got to the 8th Street house, yelled at me when I walked in: "Why haven't you answered your phone? The deal is right now. We have to grab Micah and get up there."

"I can't go up there. Kate could have the baby."

Nick put up his hands to end the discussion. He said, "You're coming or you're not. The money's already in the motel room."

Money, money, money.

We didn't take two cars, we took one: no matter how much I did or didn't like Micah, I didn't want him to know the plates on my car, have something on me. Now we were too rushed to get a rental. We tossed the two pounds in the trunk of Nick's Escort, hurried up to Bradenton. As we watched Micah jog down the steps of his complex in a satin Yankees jacket with his cap cocked to the side, Nick turned to me from the driver's seat and said, "Check it out." When he lifted his shirt, I saw the handle of a gun tucked in his waistband. Nick whispered, "Told you I had it all covered."

"Is it real?"

"Hell yeah."

Panic tore through me. Right away, I said, "No no no no no!"

"What?"

"'Ten–twenty–life.' Ever fucking heard of it?" Micah was almost to the car. I said, "Ten years mandatory on top of anything else."

He said, "What do I do with it now?"

"Throw it out the window."

"Dude, it's my stepdad's."

Micah was in the backseat. "You Capones ready?"

I said, "Keep your head down."

"Because I'm black?"

"Come on, Micah. Like you don't know?"

Nick took us up on the 75, then across on the 4. There was a lot of high-speed weekend traffic, and we were past Disney and in Orlando in just over two hours. Micah bitched the whole way about having to keep his head down. When we got to Pine Hills, he said that if we really wanted to keep a low profile, he should be the one behind the wheel. "How many lightbulbs you see driving around up here? Pull over and get in back."

Nick turned into a Burger King parking lot. "Toss it in the garbage can," I hissed to Nick when we switched seats. But Nick looked at me like he was helpless. He said, "I gotta get it back before he sees."

Then Nick and I were hunched on the floorboards in back while Micah drove us along West Colonial. Every time I looked up, I saw liquor stores and PD cars. Nick pulled out his lit-up cell phone, showed it to me. The message on it read, "where the f is james??? why wont he anser his fon???" Of course it was from Kate. An instant later, another message came in from her: "everything ok??" Then we were idling somewhere. Micah powered down the window. "Got that key?" he whispered to someone. Someone with a deep voice out there in the night whispered, "Where your boys at?"

"They coming."

"They better be straight."

"Money in there?"

"Money's in there."

Micah powered up the window, pulled us away. He passed me back a keycard. When we were in traffic again, Micah said, "Who's going in?"

I said, "I'm going in."

"Room 151."

He wheeled us in somewhere, parked, turned off the car. When I looked up, we were at the Top Hat Motel; across the lot was the room. The lot was poorly lit, the few cars around us dark and empty. Why was I so fucking nervous? Micah slouched in the driver's seat, pulled down his hat. "It's your move," he said.

I opened the door, stepped out of the car, and walked across the lot to the room. No one was around. I slid the card in the slot, the lock clicked, I turned the handle, the door creaked open. I turned on the lights. The room looked like all those rooms did: shitty. There was no one in it but me. Where was the money? Nothing on the table, nothing on the bed. Should I leave? The bathroom. Why would they put it in the bathroom? God, would I have to check the fucking bathroom now?

Halfway through the room, on my way to check the bathroom, I saw that the adjoining door beside me had begun to open as I passed it. It was opening so slowly it looked like the nightmare was coming out of the closet. What should I do? I ran to it, even put my hands on it. It smacked the wall as they burst through. Four or five of them. All in hoods, two with guns. Their eyes were red. Were they high? Why would they be high? I put up my hands, let it all go.

"Face the wall, motherfucker!"

I faced the wall. "I'm cool. I'm cool," I heard myself saying.

"Shut the fuck up! You ain't cool," the one with the gun to my head shouted in my ear.

Another one was shouting in my other ear, "Want to get wasted? Want to get wasted? My boy will do that. My boy will do that."

The gun was pressed hard to the back of my head. They put a cell phone in my hand. "Tell your boy to bring the shit in here!"

The phone was ringing. Someone picked up. "Yo," Micah said.

"Get me Nick."

"Hang on."

Then it was Nick. Nick said, "What the fuck's going on?"

"Bring it in here."

"What the fuck?"

"Don't think. Just bring it in here as fast as you can."

"Open the door," I said to the room.

"Shut the fuck up!" Then they got quiet. Come on, Nick. Come on, Nick. Come on, Nick. I heard the door creaking, then the scuffle. Light splashed across the room when the lamp went over. Then I got hit in the back of the head, and I fell to the floor and stayed there.

"What you gonna do with this?" one of them shouted.

"No, no!" Nick said.

Then there were shots.

They banged out of the room, car doors slammed, cars peeled away.

Nick was lying face-down when I got to him. "Nick! Nick!" I turned him over. He wasn't shot.

I pulled at his shirt. "Get up! We have to get out of here!"

We ran outside. The Escort was sitting there. When I jumped in it, the keys were in the ignition. I drove us out onto the road, kept driving, realized my headlights were off, turned them on. Then we were up on a highway, then off of it. Then we sat in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

"Fuck! Fuck!"

"Jesus! Jesus!"

"Fuck! Fuck!"

"Jesus! Jesus!"

Then: "You all right, man?"

"Yeah, I guess so. What about you?"

I rubbed the back of my head where the gun had been. I said softly, "He left the keys."

Nick opened the door, started to get out. I said, "Where you going?"

"I'm done!"

"Get back in. Where you gonna go?"

Halfway home, near Tampa, Nick said, "I can't believe it!" A few seconds later he said, "He knew the whole time. He knows I'm going to have to see him again."

I told him, "Text Kate. Tell her I'm on my way. Text Micah. Text him, 'Fuck you.' Then tell him you want that gun back."

Nick did that. The text that came back from Micah said, "y u bring it? cost u a g."

Nick said, "What are we gonna do?"

I shook my head. I shouted at him, "You think we can do something?"

Nick looked out the window beside him in silence the rest of the way home.

When we got to the 8th Street house, he said, "I fucking quit!"

I said, "You can't quit. You owe me money."

I drove home. No one was at the house when I walked in. A handwritten note on the counter read, "If you can work it into your busy schedule, we are at the birthing center having your son."

I arrived at the birthing center, beside a Japanese pond. Kate's and my mother's cars were there. I ran through the doors. My mother was sitting in the lobby reading a magazine; I ran past her. When I entered the candlelit birthing room, Cristina and my wife were in the tub in the corner. I stripped down to my boxers. Cristina stepped out of the tub and I stepped in. Kate took my hands. She said between contractions, "I was worried. I was worried." Three hours later, our son Evan was born underwater, and I lifted him to the darkness to take his first breath.

 

My mother was always over. Kate's parents flew in from California wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts, began drinking Coors right away. They were so glad we'd sent them the tickets, so happy to be with us and the babies. Cristina, too, what a nice surprise to see her. She'd always been like a daughter to them. Florida was so warm and sunny, our house was so nice, they were thinking of staying forever. What did we think about it if they did?

I ran away with Romana to the park every day. Then Emma wanted me to go to Austin and help her with her college-kid deal, which I'd forgotten I'd said I would do. Fly out in the morning, fly home late at night—did Kate mind if I went? As long as it'd only be a day, she said; if she could get away from everything right now, she would, too.

I shaved off my beard patches, put on my work clothes, flew out early, and landed in Austin in the middle of the afternoon. Emma picked me up; Bayleigh was in her car seat in back. "Say hi to your Uncle James," Emma said to Bayleigh. Bayleigh said, "Hi, Unca James."

As she drove us into town, Emma asked, "How is everybody?"

"Everybody's fine."

"The baby?"

"Yeah, the baby, too."

"A lot more work for you guys now."

What could I say? I said, "What's two when you got one, right?"

We went to Trudy's on the north side, ate fish tacos. I drank a margarita to pass the time. Should I tell Emma about the gun to my head in Orlando? The margarita made me want to, but I knew I never should.

Emma explained the deal while Bayleigh colored on her placemat. She said, "I've got the pound in the trunk in a backpack. We pick up my cousin Sam. You go with him, tell him what to do. If everything works out, I'll run my stuff for this guy through him, let Sam make some money. They were all relocated here after the hurricane, just like we were. They haven't had shit since."