Mule (7 page)

"Can you swing by here on your way to Miami?"

"I have a guy doing that for me right now."

"Then how about you pay us a visit down here and we'll talk?"

"No way. You're the one who has to come up here."

My hand on the phone was cold and wet. I said to him, "It's hard for me to get away, with my kid."

"No worries, my man. Another time. Call me when you come through."

"Wait," I said. "When do you want to meet?"

"Tomorrow. Outside the theater at the Governor's Square Mall at three."

When I was done on the phone, I looked at Kate. Her face was as white as I knew mine was.

"You're going up there?"

"Tomorrow. I have to."

"You'd better be careful."

"I will."

We didn't know Eric, didn't know a thing about him. Could I check up on him with Roger? I knew it wouldn't make any sense to Roger if I did. I sat beside my wife, set my hands in my lap. Kate said, "You're going to have to get that money."

"That's what I'm going up there to do." I looked at her; from the way she sat there I knew she was thinking about the new baby.

After our talk at the beach, we'd driven to Wal-Mart and bought a pregnancy kit. When we did the test at home, the two pink lines appeared in the window right away, just like they had for Kate when she'd tested herself a couple of days before. Then we'd talked about it all through the night.

Were we happy about it? we'd asked each other. The room had been dark and quiet. The baby we already had was sleeping in her crib. It would be nice to have the children be close in age, we'd agreed; they were going to be Irish twins. Wouldn't that be a funny thing to try to explain?

Now I put my hand on Kate's belly. "Can you feel anything in there yet?"

Kate put her hand on top of mine. "Not yet. But my body feels the way it did when I was first pregnant with Romana."

"You're going to start getting sick again."

"Then you'll have to bring me some more weed."

"My beard isn't ever going to grow back, is it?"

"You look fine without it, Captain Patchy."

 

I told my mother I had an interview, turned down her offer of gas money at the door. I knew she was underwater on her house, as worried about things as anyone, even if she wouldn't admit it. "Thanks for letting us stay here," I said to her. She said, "Don't ever thank me for things like that."

The drive to Tallahassee was long and dull, five hours in the car. I was nervous the whole way. What if it was a sting? What would my story be? I was wearing the same flannel jacket and beat-up Levi's I had on my drive from California. They'd gotten me across the country safely and I thought of them as lucky now.

In the lot outside the movie theater at the Governor's Square Mall, I was talking to Kate on the phone when Eric coasted past in his car. I sat up in my seat with a start. In the middle of our conversation I whispered to her, "He's here."

"You know we love you."

"You know I love you, too."

His car was a black Mercedes, long and sleek. He looked as clean-cut in it as he had at Roger's. He cruised by again, circled, came back. When I winked my headlights at him, he grinned at me. I started the old Forester, followed him. There was a Marine Corps sticker on the bumper of his car. At the stoplight when I caught up to him, I could see that under the Marine Corps insignia the sticker read, "Iraq War Vet." Downtown Tallahassee was busy with traffic, congested around the capitol. Eric switched lanes at every opportunity as though trying to shake me. Why was he doing that?

We entered a residential neighborhood; the people here had real money. He pulled into a long and curving cobbled driveway. The large house at the end of it was Bavarian, all dark beams and eaves—foreboding. When he stepped out of his car, he was dressed in white, even his shoes. I took slow, deep breaths as he came striding across his long lawn to meet me. He held out his hand, pulled me in close, then yanked up my shirt. He ran his hand around my waist, cocked his chin at my car, and said, "How many miles you got on that piece of shit?"

As we walked up the flagstone pathway, Eric said, "James, I'm really glad you made it. I've been thinking a hell of a lot about you. The Cubans have been killing me, you have no idea the shit they make me eat. We can't do too much because we can't have them notice, but we can still do plenty. Ten pounds here, ten pounds there, everybody stays safe and happy. I mean, their stuff's indo, it's good haze, but it's nothing like your kush. And with the kind of margins you're giving me, there's no way we both won't get rich."

"What kind of margins do you get from the Cubans?"

"Six. Six point two. Five and a half when they're really glutted. Come inside," Eric said, unlocking the heavy front door. "My humble abode is yours. Want a smoke? Want a snort? Want a drink? Want a bitch? Let's see who's freeloading on my couch today."

"I should have told you six," I said as I followed him in.

"Then we wouldn't be talking."

The carpeted front rooms we passed through were dark and empty. It felt like nobody lived there. Then we entered a bright modern kitchen. Lying on the center island was an assault rifle, ventilated barrel, compact stock. Eric opened the tall steel fridge. He said, "I got Stella, I got Beck's."

I shook my head and said, "Got to drive home after this." I should have turned around as soon as I saw that gun.

Eric leaned his hip against the island like the weapon wasn't there. He was excited, started talking with his hands. He said, "God, how I've wanted to hook up with Cali. But how are you supposed to do it? Fly out to Humboldt? Hold up a sign? Do you have any idea how happy I was when you showed up?"

He beckoned me down a long white hallway. He said, "The landlady came snooping around here once. Nearly got herself capped—she didn't know that. You'd think three and half Gs a month would get you some privacy, but I guess not."

We went into a dark, wood-paneled den. There were two guys sitting on a leather couch, shooting up Liberty City on a projection TV. The room was furnished like an MTV set: a tank full of tropical fish built into a long brass bar, neon beer signs, posters of Phish and the Dead. On the coffee table were half a dozen bongs, so much ash that the table seemed covered in snow. There were loose buds on the shag carpet, loose buds on the table, the air smelled like they'd all just smoked. Eric said, "The fat one is my crazy brother, Eddie. He got the defective genes in our family. The Mexican one is Manuel. He was my gunner in Iraq. Now he's my adopted orphan."

They were greasy and bloated, Eddie pasty-skinned and bearded in a food-stained white T-shirt, Manuel's face pockmarked with acne scars. Neither of them looked at me.

Eric took me across the room to a framed picture on the wall. In it, a dozen heavily armed soldiers stood before a tank, making gang signs with their free hands. Beside the picture was a diploma:
Florida State University, Political Science, Eric L. Deveny.

Deveny, Deveny, Deveny.

The soldiers were outfitted for desert combat. The landscape behind them was a flat and endless yellow pan.

"Which one are you?"

"Third from the left."

He'd been heavier then, a chubby, childlike version of the sculpted person he was now. Eric pointed his finger like a gun at the faces in the picture, shot each one in turn as he said, "This guy is dead. Armor-piercing IED. This guy lost his leg below the knee. This is Manuel. We ended up running heroin over there with these three guys and a local sheik. This is the motherfucker who ratted and got us discharged. I've got his address in Utah. One of these days I'm going to go out there and kill him.

"Fucked-up shit," Eric said to end it. "But a lot of good times, too. I wouldn't have joined, but I needed the money. Not a day goes by that I don't think of that."

Eric beckoned me up a carpeted flight of stairs at the side of the den. As we climbed them, he looked back over his shoulder at me, grinned, and said, "Nobody gets to come up here, my man. This is where it all goes down."

It was a kind of loft, a small windowless space, an FSU banner of the Seminole taking up all of one wall, a computer workstation in the corner. There was a king-size bed with rumpled sheets on it, heavy dumbbells on the floor, two armchairs and a coffee table on a red Persian rug. On the coffee table was an orange Nike shoebox packed with row after row of banded money.

We sat in the chairs. Was there a recording device behind the Seminole flag? Video camera? The way we sat there felt like an interview. Or a haggling session.

Eric ran his hand over the money. He said, "Fifty Gs, my man. Bring me the weed, you go home with this."

I looked at the money, held together with simple rubber bands, each folded set in the rows a thick bundle of bills.

"Those twenty-dollar bills?"

"Tens and twenties," he said.

"You have to give me half up front."

Eric made a face. He said, "Are you fucking crazy? It doesn't work like that. You show up with the shit, you go away with the money. That's the only way it's ever going to be."

I knew right then I was going to use the baby's college money.

"How am I supposed to pay for it?"

"You have to figure that part out."

"Then you have to give me some earnest money."

"Why would I give you that?"

"How else will I know you'll pay me when I get here?"

"You're looking at the cash, aren't you? Why else did you come up here?"

"I came up to get half."

"Well, you're not getting that."

"Well, you have to give me something."

Eric touched his forefinger to his temple. He was quiet for a while. Then he said, "How long will the trip take you?"

"I figure I'll be back in two weeks."

"I can't let my money sit out there for two weeks. I've got shit coming up from Miami. I need this money here working for me."

We both sat back in the chairs.

"I thought you just wanted to see it," he said.

"I thought you were going to give it to me."

Defeat washed through me. Eric flipped the lid closed on the box. He said, "This isn't going to work out, is it?"

I'd come this far. The money was right there. I said, "We're smart guys. Let's just relax and think about it."

We went back downstairs, through the den, out a sliding glass door, onto a high wraparound wooden deck. The yard was huge, sloped down to a creek. No other houses could be seen through the trees. The place was beautiful, anyone's dream. When we lit cigarettes at the rail, I noticed my fingers were trembling.

Eric said, "You don't have any clue what I've put together up here. I've worked so fucking hard at it. A million guys would want what I have. But I'm the one who took it."

I said, "I want to make this happen. More than you know."

"Don't see how it can be done, my man."

"Maybe I could do some driving for you."

"I already have a guy doing that."

We were quiet, thinking as we smoked; at least I was. I would use the baby's college money to buy the ten pounds of weed from Darren. What if this guy didn't pay me when I got back?

We went upstairs. He opened the shoebox to let me look at the money again, then shut it. He shook his head and said, "Do you know the kind of hard-ons I've been having about this?"

God, how I wanted that money. I said to him, "Just give me something so I know you're in it."

"I'll give you two grand."

"Give me three."

"How do I know I haven't just bought you and your wife a trip to Vegas?"

"Because of Roger. You can always get to me through him."

Eric looked at the money, shrugged. Then he offered me his hand. "Sold. Sold, my man, for three thousand dollars." He opened the lid, took out three bundles, began to hand them to me. When I snatched at them, he pulled them back. He winked and said, "Really want it that bad?" Then he flipped them to me and I slipped them in the pocket of my jacket.

"I dropped that guy's class, by the way," Eric told me. "I'll figure out how to write my book on my own."

When he walked me out, we looked around at the evening. There were no cars going by, no listening van, nothing like that, no one else there. "I need to get stoned," Eric said at last.

"I need something, too."

"Call me from the road."

"I will."

In the car, I smelled like sweat, like stress, like I'd had a long day, which was true. It was past midnight when I got home to Sarasota. The girls were already sleeping.

I crawled into bed beside Kate, held her. "Made it home safe," I whispered.

"That's great, baby," she murmured. "Did you manage to get the money?"

 

Now the clock was ticking. I'd been naïve, had the idea that getting ten pounds of weed from California to Florida was a thing you just went out and did. I had no clue how the money worked, the paper trail, all the things I'd eventually have to use: the cell phones, laptops, Internet, post office, credit cards; the cash, of course, always the cash; the planes, rental cars, motels; I had to eat sometimes, too; the timing and coordination of the handoffs—everything you had to do to get something like this done. Again and again in the coming days I would stop and think, Impossible. Then I'd take a deep breath, turn my mind to the project, make myself find the solution.

My research into the police became a constant thing. I dried out my eyes scanning news reports on my laptop. Where had the recent busts taken place? How had the couriers been busted? Had they made mistakes with their driving? Speeding? Following too close? Or had they been profiled? On what stretch of highway had the bust gone down? Had the cops run a dog? How about traffic? Would there be more cars on the road during a particular period of time, making it easier to hide in—a holiday weekend, say, or a rodeo congesting a certain area? Or were rising gas prices emptying the roads, leaving me the only idiot out there?

All of that didn't come into play during that first big run, but a lot of it did. Even the first time, I risked an immediate federal interstate drug trafficking offense: huge fine, long sentence, permanently ruined record. Kate pitched in, always would: she kept my mother occupied, took care of the baby, worried for me. The work would always be intense for her, too.