The Scared Stiff (12 page)

"They come to the funeral!"

I sat back and stared at her. "They came to the funeral, so I'm supposed to give them millions of dollars?"

"Everybody knows it," she said. "The whole family knows it."

"From you."

"I tol' a couple people, Barry, I'm sorry—"

"Felicio."

"—I was wrong, but I tol' a couple people, and
they
tol' everybody else. Just in the family, Barry, I swear."

"Felicio."

"But this is what happen," she said. "So Manfredo and Luis and the other Luis with the bad arm and José and Pedro and
poco
Pedro, they come to me and say, Where is he? and I say, At Carlos's house, and they say, Luz, you can get a man to do things, get him to come out of Carlos's house — see, they don't want trouble with Carlos, they're much afraid of Carlos — and I say, Why? and they say, If we gonna get millions if he's dead how come he's alive? and I say, You can't mean you gonna kill him, and they say, Why not? He's dead already; we went to the funeral."

"Luz," I said, "that's completely wrong. Nobody's going to get millions, and
they
aren't going to get anything."

"Not if the insurance find out you alive."

"Not at all."

"If it just Lola," she pointed out, "they can tell her, You gotta give us the money. Some for everybody."

I sat back and thought about that. I'm truly dead, and these lowlifes from the least-civilized branch of the family lean on Lola. Or if Lola isn't around they lean on Mamá and Papá. And they'll never believe there isn't millions. Money from America. That's what everybody wants, and this is how they'll get it.

So now what? Here's Luz, fidgeting, saying she's sorry, falling out of her dress — already I know for sure she isn't wearing underwear — and telling me I've got in-laws that plan to kill me for the insurance money.

I'm
killing me for the insurance money! There's no room in this scheme for freeloaders. I said, "So you're here because you're supposed to talk me into going outside, so they can kill me."

"No, no, not now," she said. "Barry, I come to—"

"Felicio, Luz,
please
."

"Whoever," she said.
"Who ever.
I come to
warn
you. What they plan they gonna do, tomorrow a couple of them, they go talk with Carlos at his place, make sure he stay there, and that's when I come get you take me out for a beer.
Then
they do it. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"They need to get trucks and guns and things," she explained. "Shovels."

"Shovels."

"So they not ready today, but they gonna be ready tomorrow. So I come
now,
to warn you."

"So I shouldn't go out," I said. "That's easy."

"Not that easy, Barry. Whoever! Not that easy. If you don' come out, they gonna come in."

"I thought they were afraid of Carlos."

"But they want the money. So if you don' come out, they come in by the river."

"There's razor wire out there," I told her. "They can't get in."

"They know about the stuff in the water," she said. "They gonna steal a boat, run it onto the ground, right over that cuttin' stuff. Come in that way, it look like robbers. Kill you, kill Esilda, steal some stuff, Carlos never gonna know it was them."

"Carlos will know," I told her.

She shook her head. A nipple flashed and retired. "They
think
Carlos not gonna know. They think they smart, Ba — you."

"Felicio."

"Felicio."

"Thank you," I said. "They aren't smart, Luz, they're stupid."

"Very stupid," she agreed. "But they don' know that. They think they smart."

"Shit," I commented.

What was I going to do? If I stayed here, they'd come after me. But where else could I go? The only other people I knew in all Guerrera were Arturo and Mamá and Papá, and if I went to them the cousins would find me right away. I don't sound like a Guerreran, I don't have any money, I don't know anybody, where can I go? What can I do?

Is Luz telling the truth? I thought about that, and I believed she was. She wasn't an actress, Luz, she was very up front; she let it all hang out in more ways than one. She was truly agitated and truly remorseful, and she was certainly enough of a bigmouth to have told everybody in Guerrera that Barry Lee wasn't really dead, Barry Lee was making believe he was dead so he could get millions from the insurance company and share it with the entire Tobón family, that good old Barry Lee. What a great guy Barry Lee is. Let's kill him.

I said, "What if I tell Carlos? Couldn't he stop—"

But she was already shaking her head. "Carlos ain' gonna stop them," she said.

"Why not? He's too smart to believe in all that money."

"Millions," she said.

"Luz, it isn't millions," I insisted, "and Carlos knows that. If I tell him what's going on, he could talk to—"

"He ain' gonna do it," she said.

"Why not?"

"On accounta Maria."

I looked at her. She gave me a very significant nod. Her legs moved. I looked firmly into her eyes. I said, "I'm not doing anything with Maria."

"That don' matter," she said.

"You mean, he
thinks
I'm doing something?"

"He don' know," she said. "He don' wanna know. He don' ever wanna know what Maria do or don' do or nothing. He woulda thrown you out already, but she want you here. So if somebody come take you away and kill you, that not Carlos's fault. Not if he don' know about it. But you outa the house, and that's okay by him."

"Maria," I said. "Maria could—"

"Gone on a trip," she pointed out. "Anyway, the cousins don' listen to Maria."

"Arturo," I said.

"If Artie talk to the cousins," she said, "they gonna think he want all the millions for himself."

"Oh, shit," I said. "What the hell am I gonna do?"

"I'll hide you," she told me, and moved all of her parts and bounced this way and that. "It's all my fault, Ba — Felicio."

"Luz—"

"I gotta help you, Felicio," she said, "because it's all my fault, I opened my big mouth. I do that all the time."

"Right," I said. "Who told you about me anyway? Did Arturo tell you?"

She looked indignant, shoulders back, chest out. "What do you think?" she demanded. "I'm stupid, just 'cause I like to fuck?"

"No, no, I—"

"I figured it out," she said. "Artie say all this silly stuff, you can' talk and hear 'cause you got the curse and all that, I know what's goin' on."

"Okay," I said.

"But
now
what we gotta do," she told me, "we gotta hide you. You come to my place in Napalma, we—"

"No, Luz, thank you, but no, I can't…"

I can't go live with Luz, with her bouncing around, falling out of her clothes all the time, telling me she likes to fuck. I'm true to Lola, like I discussed it with Maria, but that doesn't mean I have to torture myself.

She leaned toward me, just to emphasize the problem. "What else you gonna do?" she asked me. "I'm tellin' you the truth, Felicio. See? I'm even callin' you Felicio."

"Thank you."

"You stay here," she said, "you gonna die. For real. Where else you gonna go?"

I looked away from her, as an aid to thought. Where else
would
I go? Maybe it was true, I was going to have to hide out with Luz until I could figure out something else. Maybe get a message to Arturo, have him come pick me up, hide me somewhere safe. Safer.

I said, "You want me to go with you now?"

"Not now," she said. "They all around, those guys, they see you in the car, they gonna come get you. Wait till tonight. After Carlos go to bed tonight, you come out. You know where he keep that big car?"

"Sure, across the street."

"Next to it, on that side," she said, and waved a breast as she pointed, "is just dirt. I'm there in my car, orange Honda Civic."

"What time?"

"Whenever," she said. An accommodating girl. "I come around ten, you come out after Carlos goes to bed. You don' wanna have to tell him where you goin'."

"You're right about that," I said.

She jumped to her feet, shrugged her breasts back into the blouse, and as I also stood she grabbed my hand in both of hers and said, "I'm really sorry. Felicio. I don' want nobody gets hurt."

"I feel that way too," I assured her, and disengaged my hand.

She started away, then turned back and shook her head and other parts and said, "You know, Felicio, every time I think,
Well, now I know how stupid men can be,
I'm wrong. They always stupider."

"You're right," I said.

"See you tonight," she said, and bounced out of there, and I went the other way to jump headfirst into the pool, causing the water to steam.

Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.

There was a car over there, in the darkness beside that building, its headlight glass picking up a glint from the streetlight down at the corner. In Rancio, as in most Guerreran towns, there are public lights only at intersections, so the mid-blocks tend to be very dark.

Still, I felt exposed out here. The street side of the wall around Carlos's property was whitewashed, and even in the darkness it seemed to me I must make a clear silhouette against it. But I forced myself to move slowly, to shut the outer door carefully, silently. In my other hand I held the cardboard suitcase, my only weapon of defense. Which meant, if I was attacked, I was dead.

The door was closed. I released the knob. I did not run across the street, but I strode fast.

Yes, that was a Honda Civic in the darkness, and by day it was probably orange. At the moment, it was merely metallic and dark, with a person at the wheel. I opened the passenger door, and the interior light leaped on, and it was Luz, wearing blue jeans cut off at the hip and a very tight white T-shirt that said LECHE in large red letters across the front.

"Hello," I whispered, and shoved the suitcase onto the minimal seat in back.

"Get in, get in." She sounded like a violin tuned too high.

I got in and shut the door, bringing darkness back, and immediately she started the engine, with a great grinding noise they could probably hear all the way to Brasilia. Then she put it in gear, and the car lurched forward and stalled. She said a word that contained one jagged syllable.

I said, "Luz, take it easy, nobody can see us."

"I heard
that
one before," she said, and started the car again, with the same racket, and this time managed to move it forward.

I wanted to settle her down some before she ran us into a tree. Trying to sound nothing but calm and serene, I said, "I really appreciate this, Luz. Thank you."

"Lemme get us outa town," she said, spinning the wheel and accelerating down the dark street.
"Then
we be okay."

I twisted around to look back at the neighborhood we were leaving and saw no one, nothing. The time was a little after eleven on a Wednesday night, and Rancio was asleep.

Luz made a fast turn at the next corner, and only then did she switch on the headlights, which meant the dashboard lights came on as well. I looked at her, shoulder to shoulder in this small car, as she concentrated fiercely on the street ahead. My own concentration was a bit more scattered.
Leche
means milk in Spanish; spelled with a slight difference, it means something else in English.

Napalma, where Luz lived, was another town along the Inarida River, like Rancio and San Cristobal. It was beyond San Cristobal, another seventy-five miles of meandering road alongside the meandering river, and a few miles after San Cristobal it gives up being asphalt to become dirt. Napalma is the end of the road. Not a happy thought.

Luz's tension continued until we were well out of Rancio, and even then she would clench up at every sight of headlights, either behind us or in front. Fortunately, there was very little traffic. It was clear that nobody was following us, nobody knew what Luz was up to, but she was extremely nervous anyway. I thought she probably knew her own cousins well enough that all this fear was justified, so I didn't try to argue her out of it.

There was little conversation until we got past San Cristobal. I tried to keep my eyes on the road. Luz did keep her eyes on the road, and we did the thirty miles from Rancio to San Cristobal in twenty-eight minutes, according to her little dashboard clock, which on that road was pretty spectacular.

She had to slow going through San Cristobal, but she didn't like it. "Crouch down," she told me. "Like you're asleep."

"There's no room to crouch down."

"Then put your head in my lap."

"I'll just keep my hand over my face like this," I said.

That didn't really satisfy her, but she accepted it. San Cristobal, being the capital, was still awake at eleven-thirty of a midweek night, with bars and restaurants open, cars moving, pedestrians here and there, groups talking in little parks along the way. Luz was convinced every one of those people was in league with her cousins, and by the time we got out of town I was beginning to feel almost as paranoid as she was.

But now we had the road to ourselves. Nobody was going to Napalma tonight, and whatever farmers or suburbanites lived along here were asleep, with no lights on. By crouching a little, but not putting my head in Luz's lap, I could see in the outside mirror on my side the lights of San Cristobal dwindling behind us, then erased, and there was nothing back there but black.

Luz had seen it too. The sigh she gave was so long and heartfelt she must have been holding her breath since Saturday. "Ho-kay," she said. "We gonna be all right now."

"Good," I said.

"Time for some rum," she decided.

"Rum? Where are we going to get rum?"

"I
got
rum," she told me. "On the floor behind you. Can you get it? Should I?"

She turned, moving her arm, and LECHE loomed. "No, that's okay," I said. "I can do it."

I waited till she had both hands back on the steering wheel and then reached into the narrow space between us, down to the floor behind my seat, and there it was, a bottle wedged under the seat to keep it from rolling. I eased it out and brought it up front with us.