Mule (9 page)

"I'll get on it right after work. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

I crunched the numbers on my phone, calculated the gross and net. Could I really make that much? I called Darren as I walked over to the WaMu. "Everything still on track?" Darren asked.

"Everything's great. But I don't need ten now, I need thirteen."

"Same guy?"

"Other people, other places."

"Billy will have everything waiting for you."

"Thirty-two five?"

"That sounds right."

"Holy shit, Darren."

Darren said, "It's just the beginning."

In the WaMu lobby I wrote a check to myself for $19,500, deposited it in the ATM. That was it, every last penny of the baby's money. I put the receipt in my pocket. Inside, a young guy was at the welcome counter in his blue uniform. I approached him.

"What can I do for you?" he asked me as he typed on his cell phone.

"I just put a check into my account. How long before I can get the cash?"

"Assuming sufficient funds?" he said without looking up. "Three business days at the latest. But it could clear overnight. You can get a hundred bucks of it right now if you want."

I took one of the business cards from the tray, slipped it in my pocket. I drove to the house, went to our room, took the baby from Kate, and put her on my shoulder.

"Everything okay?" she asked nervously.

"Everything's fine. Mason has to get some money here, but that's it."

"Are we still set to make the same amount of money?"

"We're going to make much more."

"How much more?" Kate whispered.

"If Mason comes through with what he's supposed to, we're going to make over thirty-two thousand."

Kate let out a long, slow breath. Then she said hurriedly, "What do you want me to do?"

"Can you take care of the baby?"

She took the baby from me. I pulled out the business card, called the WaMu. I held up my finger to tell Kate not to say anything. A woman answered and recited the branch location. I said, "I'm calling to arrange a large cash withdrawal."

"I can help you with that," she said in a serious tone. "Approximately how much will you be withdrawing?"

"Nineteen thousand five hundred dollars."

"May I ask why you need to withdraw such a large amount?"

"I'm going to buy a car and the seller wants cash."

"Oh, that's not a good idea," she told me. "You should write a check."

"He doesn't want a check, he wants cash."

"It's unsafe to deal with cash in that amount, sir."

"Nonetheless, I want the cash."

"You'll have no recourse if something happens. There's no valid reason why someone needs cash like that."

"He wants cash, and I'm not worried. This is what I want to do."

"Let me get my manager."

My heart was racing. Was she going to file a Suspicious Activity Report on me? A man came on and said, "You want to make a large cash withdrawal?"

"Nineteen thousand five hundred dollars."

"You want hundreds?"

"Yeah, hundreds."

"You have to come in and fill out a withdrawal slip. The money will be here on Friday."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Then I said to him, "The woman I spoke to sounded worried."

He snorted. He said, "Susan's just like that."

Kate's eyes were wide when I hung up. She said, "You're using the baby's money?"

"If we want to make this happen, I have to, Kate."

"What if something happens to you out there?"

"Then we're going to have a lot more to worry about than that."

I went to the bathroom, shaved off my patches, combed my hair, pulled on a blue Lacoste polo from our Austin days. Would cleaning myself up be enough to keep the people at the bank from being suspicious of me?

The woman I'd talked to on the phone was standing inside the WaMu entrance when I drove up a half hour later. She was taller than I'd imagined, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. "It's your money, you can do what you want with it," she said, shaking her head as she walked me inside. "But I'd really advise against it, sir."

I filled in the boxes on the withdrawal slip, 1 9 5 0 0. Then I gave it to her and she ran it through her terminal. "All set," she said. "Come in on Friday afternoon and we'll take you in the office. I urge you to have some safe way of transporting the money. The bank bears no responsibility once it leaves the premises."

"We only live five blocks away."

"Cash can't be replaced, Mr. Lasseter."

 

Back at the house, my mother was setting up for mahjong, the baby was asleep in her crib, and Kate was sitting on the bed, her glasses on, circling courses in the community college catalogue. She lifted her eyebrows at me when I came in. "Everything go okay over there?" she asked.

"Everything went just fine."

"They're offering late-starting courses I can still enroll in."

"Do what you need to, Kate."

"It's going to cost us real money, James."

"We'll have it when I get back."

I lay on the floor with the laptop and found a flight to Redding for $670 one way. Flights to Sacramento were half that price. I called Darren.

"I can get to Redding, but Sacramento's easier. Can your guy come down and meet me?"

"Sac's no problem. Billy takes stuff there all the time."

I booked a US Airways flight through Charlotte and Phoenix, leaving Saturday at 6:55
A.M.
and arriving in Sacramento at three in the afternoon—$365 on the credit card. I knew I shouldn't use it, but what other choice did I have? Besides, it would only be this one time. I'd land in Sacramento, meet Darren's guy, grab the stuff, hop over to Rita's, then get myself on the road.

I searched rental cars; I knew I wanted a hatchback. I'd learned in my reading that most smugglers used cars with trunks because the cops had to get a warrant to open them. The cops profiled vehicles with trunks for that very reason, so I didn't want one. A four-day, one-way economy hatchback from Sacramento to Sarasota cost $700. Why so much? I called Avis to talk to a person. The woman said, "The surcharges and recovery fees on the one-way are what make it so expensive, sir."

I reserved it anyway. I already had a thousand dollars in expenses. MapQuest said the drive across the country would cost me $360 in gas. Even adding another $200 for motels and food on top of that, we'd still be clearing $31,000.

I stayed on the computer through the afternoon. The route would be I-5 south through Cali, then across to Barstow and the Mojave. Needles, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Amarillo on the 40. Then Austin lay at the center of Texas with no direct interstate access. What would be the best way to go? I went to Kinko's, printed out routes that would take me through Roswell and Carlsbad, down to Pecos, and onto the I-10 in Texas. Or was that route too rural with not enough cars to hide in? How about cutting through Clovis, slipping back into traffic at Lubbock? Or should I just stick to the crowded interstates, head all the way to Oklahoma City, drop down through Dallas–Fort Worth? With maps and travel documents scattered over the floor, our room felt like army headquarters. Of course we'd locked the door against my mother.

Mason's money orders came to the house via FedEx on Thursday afternoon, two each from the post office and Money­Gram. "What did you get?" my mother asked. "Plane tickets," I told her.

"Plane tickets to where?"

"Sacramento. Got an interview out there this weekend."

"They're paying for the trip?"

"Flight, hotel, per diem."

"Thank God. They must really be interested in you."

I texted Mason: "fedex came thanks."

Mason texted back: "c u mon/tues?"

"let u know."

"b safe. u got our life savings with u."

"ours too."

Kate and I put the baby in her car seat, drove up the Tamiami Trail to Bradenton, and cashed the money orders. I went into three places, Kate went into one. The one Kate went into paid out in twenties. I made her go back in and get hundreds. After seeing the sheer bulk of that drug money at Eric's, I began to understand the importance of hundreds, obviously for their value, but also for their compactness. I already knew I was going to carry the money onto the plane hidden somewhere on my body.

We went to the Sarasota airport, parked in the short-term lot, took the baby inside in her stroller. On the second level was a bar and grill, and from its seats we had a view of the security screening point. The travelers were winding their way through the cordoned lines. Kate said in a whisper across the table from me, "I don't feel good about doing this."

I'd been on enough flights to know I would have to pass through security only once on the trip. We watched the TSA officers wave their wands over people, send a few of them into the bomb-sniffing booth. They called aside a middle-aged woman in a business suit. A female TSA had the woman raise her arms, ran her gloved hands closely over the woman's body. She touched her upper body, her legs, her stomach, her waist; the only places she didn't touch were her crotch and the soles of her feet. However I ended up carrying the money, I would have to beat that kind of pat-down.

Kate whispered, "We shouldn't have brought the baby here. We can't do anything that'll get her taken away."

"We'll never do anything that would ever involve the two of you."

"What if you get caught?"

"You'll say you didn't know."

"I'm your wife. They'll never believe I didn't know."

"You'll say I did it behind your back."

"And if they don't believe me?"

"They're going to believe you."

"But what if they don't?"

"Kate, they always leave the wives alone, okay? They're not interested in breaking up families."

"How do you know that?"

"It was in everything I read."

"What if everything you read is full of shit?"

"I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. Do we really have to do this right now?"

I watched them pat down another guy: the arms, the legs, the front, the back. But not the crotch.

Kate said, "Are we done yet?"

I said, "Yeah, we're done. Most likely, I'm going to walk through the detector and nothing's going to happen. But there'll be a moment when I don't know."

"And then?"

"I'll call you when I've gotten through."

"What if they find the money?"

"I'll have the receipt on me."

"But what are you going to say about having that much money on you?"

"I'll say I was going to gamble it in Reno."

Kate shook her head. She got up, grabbed the stroller by the handles. She said as she walked away, "This is so fucking stupid. You know they're not going to believe any of that."

When I caught up to her, I grabbed her arm. "What's the matter with you?" I snapped at her so loudly the people around us turned their heads to look.

We were quiet the whole ride home. As I pulled into my mother's driveway, I told Kate, "Don't you know how fucking nervous I am?"

"Well, I'm fucking nervous, too. We can't do this if we can't handle the stress. We definitely can't do this if it's going to make you mean."

 

Thursday, the check cleared. Friday afternoon, I drove to the WaMu to pick up the cash. Should I dress up again? I didn't. I was leaving tomorrow no matter what, and if they were going to file a Suspicious Activity Report on me, so be it.

Susan and the manager took me into a spartan backroom. We sat at the desk and Susan walked me through a security document while the manager looked on like he was bored. She was required to tell me that it was unwise to take into my personal possession such a large amount of cash, that the bank offered more secure monetary instruments like checks and wire transfers, that my account was covered by FDIC, that the bank was solvent, that the money would be my responsibility now, that the bank could not be held liable in the event of a loss. She ticked off the boxes beside each point on the paper as we went through them, then we took turns signing at the bottom of the page. She told me they would have to file a Currency Transaction Report and would need a copy of my driver's license. I pulled out my wallet, gave her the license, then she left the room. What were they thinking about me?

The manager leaned back in his chair. "How about those Patriots?"

"The football team?"

He made a face at me like he couldn't believe it. "You're not following the undefeated season?"

Susan returned with my license and a stack of money an inch and a half thick. The hundreds were crisp and new, not a fold in any of them. I dealt them out onto the desk, once, twice, one hundred and ninety-five bills. It was all there both times. I gathered the pile, knocked it into a stack, and put it inside the empty laptop case I brought with me for that purpose. The manager stood up, offered his hand. "We'll be here if you want to put it back."

Eight months later, WaMu collapsed.

***

When I returned from the bank, I showed the money to Kate, everything we had in our lives boiled down to a stack the thickness of a paperback. I added the money we had left from the first trip, the money from Mason, the money from Eric Deveny, wrapped it with a rubber band: $32,500, enough to buy thirteen pounds of Siskiyou County weed. I unzipped my jeans, stuffed that brick between my legs, inside my boxer shorts. I walked back and forth in the room for Kate to see.

"That's not going to work at all, James," she said. "You look like you crapped your pants."

Could I tape it around my ankles? Stuff it under the insoles of my shoes? My flight to Sacramento was in less than fourteen hours. How was I going to hide the goddamn money?

I checked my e-mail to take a break, found a foreign number waiting for me, called it through Skype. Darren sounded groggy when he picked up. It was hot in Bangkok, he said, the flight had been brutal, and the ladies had been tiring him out even more. After a few more days of fun and adventure in the Big Mango, he'd be heading up to the tranquility of his farm at Chiang Rai.

"You all set?" Darren asked.

"Everything's fine."