Mule (31 page)

"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 have 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.

"Eric."

He stopped, turned around.

"I'm not going to New York."

"What did you say?"

"I'm not going to New York. I'm giving you these pounds for free. I'll never say a word about you to anyone. I'll give you the connection as soon as I know my family is safe. Then I want you to let me go."

His face did all these things. Hard things with his eyes. Grinding things with his mouth. It was like a mask was coming off. What was underneath it was in so much pain. Then he got control of that. He said, "You think you're done?"

"I am done."

"Get the fuck out of my house."

I ran out to the car, peeled away.

About six blocks from his house, I pulled into the lot of the Greek place we'd eaten at before: Pegasus. Everything on me was shaking. I looked in the rearview mirror; no one was behind me. I called Kate. Would she answer? She didn't. The message I left was "Please do it exactly like we planned."

Then I texted her: "Emergency!!!"

 

I'd have three full days on Darren Rudd. Three full days to get out of the country before he picked up a phone. But really, I'd only have an hour, maybe less, on Eric Deveny. Was he going to come after me? At least Kate and the kids would be gone. Wouldn't they? All I had left to do was grab the money, my passport, and my mother.

One of the TracFones rang as I sped down the 75 through Gainesville. It was Mason. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Who is that motherfucker?"

"That motherfucker is the motherfucking source."

"What's the source doing out there?"

"He's busted. He wants me to take care of him."

"Are you going to take care of him?"

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

"I think you're going to leave the country."

I didn't say anything.

"Are we ever going to see you guys again?"

"I don't know what's going to happen."

Mason was quiet on the line. Then he said, "I'm always going to regret what I did that night."

I saw the redhead running in the moonlight. I saw the moonlight on the cotton. I saw her tumbling down. There were so many things I wanted to say to him. What I said to him was "Take care of your girls."

Was Kate at the house when I got there? Nobody was—the car was gone. But had they really left? Were their clothes in the closets? In the drawers? When I ran into the bedrooms to check, there were their clothes.

Where the fuck was Kate?

I texted her: "answer." She didn't answer. I texted her: "fucking answer right now!!" She didn't.

I jumped in the car, peeled out, called Cristina.