by Mike Bond
After a while the heat woke him and he could not breathe under the hot canvas. The engine started and the truck shook but then it sat for a long time with the engine running. Then the door slammed and the truck creaked out on the highway, the concrete pipes grinding against their chains.
The truck traveled all day. Zacatecas, a sign said, then before dark another, Aguascalientes, where it stopped for diesel and food. Murphy followed the driver into the restaurant, a roly man in sneakers and a yellow Caterpillar hat. The man went into the toilets then sat at the counter and Murphy went into the toilets and looked into the mirror.
Dirty, dusty and sunburnt, thin-faced and hungry: the look that draws cops like sharks. He smoothed and washed off his clothes, his face and scabby hands with their red infections where tips of cactus spines festered. “You look like shit,” he said to the man in the mirror, who smiled revealing yellow teeth with brown chunks between them. He brushed his teeth with toilet paper and hand soap, went into the restaurant, ate quickly and paid, watching the roly driver across the counter, returned to the parking lot and climbed back inside the concrete pipe.
Dusk came, dawn went, the air was thick with diesel fumes then thin with the high pine taste of the hills. The truck kept rumbling on, the whirr of the wheels sewing and dismembering, keening and snickering over the curves and downgrades, over the moments and hours that stretched and contracted, appeared and disappeared, phantasms and nightmares, and is this death, he wondered. How can you ever tell if you’re dead?
LYMAN sat on the edge of the motel bed watching dawn burn down across the Oakland Hills. Strings of headlights trailed down their sides; below them, square squat buildings were lighting up along the Bay, the Bay Bridge a gray filigree of half-lit steel bearing a serpent of headlights into San Francisco. He made himself a cup of instant and Coffee-Mate and sat on the bed again; it burned his lips.
Soon the coffee was cooler but his tongue kept stinging. He looked down at his naked arms with the tendons and veins sticking out: Come near me if you dare, they said. He stretched his shoulders out and up, arms in a cross then vertical, the sleepy muscles stretching like awakened cats, the pectorals hard as steel. He smiled to think there was not a single thing in this room he couldn’t break with one hand. Sipping the cooler coffee, he began to do his wake-up exercises.
The east grew bright; a tallowy fog coated the Bay. He showered, dressed in Levis, work shirt and worn leather jacket, went downstairs to eat, then walked up Market Street to Tenth and across Mission to Alabama Street, entered 154 Alabama and climbed to the second floor. A television roared somewhere behind thin walls, a puppy was squealing. He knocked hard on Sherrie Cunningham’s door.
III
House of
Fire
46
FOOTSTEPS at the door. “Yes?” A girl’s voice.
“Sherrie? It’s Steve Williams, I’m a friend of Joe Murphy’s. Saul Friedman asked me to come.”
Her face in the door. “Saul Friedman?”
“The guy who came yesterday. The lawyer.”
“Oh yeah!” She opened the door, looked up at him. He shut the door behind him. She went to the sink, wiped her hands on a T-shirt. “What can I do for you?”
“Can I sit?”
She nodded at a chair. “Sure.”
She had on new black Levis and a bright blue sweater that came down to her wrists. “How are things?” he said.
She smiled, a kind of off-sides grin. “They sure have changed.”
“Been celebrating?”
She shrugged, shoulder blades up into her long straight hair, sat at the table, smoothing an edge of vinyl tablecloth. “A little bit... I bought some clothes, paid my rent. He sure was astonished, the landlord, to have me paying the rent.”
“What’d you do before, give it to him on the side?”
Again she shrugged. “He said that wasn’t enough.”
“You have enough now, don’t you?”
“When Saul gave me the money − that’s his name, right? − I couldn’t believe it. I sat here a long time, right there where you’re sitting, saying to myself, Sherrie, you don’t deserve this. You’ve been mean and hard and you don’t deserve this.”
“Sure you do,” Lyman said.
She looked at him, surprised. “I sure don’t. But I’ve promised myself I’m going to make myself good for it, that I’m not going to let him down.”
“Saul?”
“No , Mr. Murphy.”
“What else he tell you?”
“Mr. Murphy?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing.” She cocked her head, appraising. “You’re his friend – you ask him.”
“He won’t tell me why he did it, just wants me to watch over you, give you a hand. So what’s up? Why’d he do it?”
“You a cop?”
Lyman chuckled. “Me? Never.” He watched her fingers, nervous on the table top. His own hand rested against his cheek, like a cleaver ready to fall. “Just tell me why he’s giving you the money, not just for a quick fuck?”
She looked hurt, then angry, stood. “Maybe I ain’t saying.” She walked toward the door but he jammed his foot across it, reached up and yanked her down, hand across her mouth. “I want you to tell me.”
She watched his eyes. He loosened his grip. “He said he was a friend of my dad’s, in Vietnam. My dad died. Mr. Murphy wanted to take care of me a little, that’s all... I’ll give you the money if you want.”
Softly he massaged down her slim neck, her breast, felt the little nipple harden. “That’s not all I want.” He shoved her face down against the sink, her hands on the edge. “One sound will kill you. Otherwise you’ll be fine.” He unbuckled her belt and pushed down the black Levis and underpants, licking down the inside of her thigh as he knelt to yank her pants off one leg, bent her over the sink and pushed into her; she gasped and he reached up and broke her neck.
MURPHY came into Villahermosa after midnight in the driving rain on a flatbed carrying a yellow bulldozer, crouched under the bulldozer’s dripping engine, between its two massive treads, half sheltered by its blade. Roots, creepers and dirt clods hung down from its treads and made a muddy trail of windblown rain across the flatbed’s deck. A heavy cold spray came over the blade.
He was hoping it would stop but the truck drove straight through Villahermosa’s pale concrete boulevards and cheap international hotels, through the barrios stinking of open sewers, the stinging haze of crude distillation, vegetation’s sweet rot.
On and on it rolled through the Campeche lowlands. Tree frogs chirped in scraps of jungle; the rain stopped and the moon was a silver stain down the middle of the highway. At dawn roosters brayed from roadside hovels in the gray wool of cooking fires and the smell of asbestos brake linings, red mud and warming asphalt. Once there was a mighty mahogany tree towering over hills of brush and stumps. They crossed a wide river, the bridge shivering under the truck’s weight. An hour later the truck rumbled into Escárcega; when it halted in heavy traffic he jumped from the back of the trailer, a woman in a pink Passat staring at him as he stepped round her bumper and walked to the curb. The light changed and the truck lumbered with the traffic toward Campeche, trailing its yellow bulldozer.
He bought tortillas and oranges for three thousand four hundred pesos and walked out of Escárcega in warm morning sun. Where the road went into the jungle there was a blackwater marsh with cattails and egrets; he washed his clothes and himself and dried in the hot sun, then ate tortillas and oranges, woke with the sun in the middle of the sky. He hitched a ride with a small bearded priest in an old hearse all the way to Nicolás Bravo, another on a farm truck to the Chetumal turnoff and Belize border.
He waited till dusk then walked an hour west in jungle along the Río Hondo, past the last trails, swam the Río, walked back to the highway and hitched into Corozal.
“I told you this’d happen,” Lovejoy said.
“Not lik
e this.”
“You was goin’ up there with a hardon and you was goin’ to get it cut off and handed to you. Yes you was. Did’n matter what I said. ”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“What the Hell did’n you jes’ let things be ‘lone? What you gotta go makin’ trouble?”
“Don’t be angry at me, for Chrissake.”
“Who else I s’posed to be angry with? Ain’ you the one what did it? Jes’ like you wen’ in Mother Teresa’s place breakin’ ever’thin’ all up. Fightin’ with those Americans, Murph when you goin’ wake up?”
“So you would’ve said nothing, up in the States?”
“What? ‘Bout thet Guatemala stuff? What the Hell good thet do? Other ‘n kill some other people an’ make you feel good ‘bout yourself? What difference it make to them Guatemalans how much you talk on American television? You can be a TV star for all they care. You just get yourself kill’, thet’s all!”
“I made it down here.”
“An’ you fuckin’ lucky! Is’n no thanks to you that you made it, you had the breaks.”
“Once I wire some money from CI, I’ll be fine.”
“You got enough to live on over there?”
“Enough to buy another plane, go somewhere, start again.”
“Minute you get a plane they find you. You still tryin’ to fock up you life ain’ you? And you better get thet money out of the Channel Islands fast before DEA track it down.”
“They can’t find it.”
“Anythin’ DEA want to find, it find.”
Murphy stood on the terrace watching the stars rise out of Corozal Bay. “Ten days ago I stood here and didn’t know what was going to happen. That people would die just because I went up there, trying to tell the truth...”
“What I told you, Murph, is don’ walk in death’s way. As it is, it goin’ come get you far too soon.”
“What would you do?”
“I certain would’n go after thet doctor woman. You ain’ goin’ change her mind. You certain ain’ bringin’ her no luck. Shit, I should’n get you any money, then you can’t go back to Guatemala.”
Murphy smiled. “I’d go anyway.”
“Thing about you, Murph, you’s the stupidest person I ever seen.”
“I told those kids I’d come back for them. Would you leave Desirée?”
“I’m keepin’ you damn money.”
“I don’t need money to get in, Love. It’s just safer to have it when you’re inside.”
You make it sound like ice, Guatemala.”
Murphy shrugged, biting his lip.
“I was inside five years, in El Paso.”
“I know. For sticking that dude.”
“Lucky he lived. So I didn’t get life. Thet prison was the bottom of Hell, Murph.”
“The House of Fire.”
“Wha’s thet?”
“The Mayan Hell had six houses. The House of Fire was the worst.”
“Them Mayans, they should see Guatemala now.”
“Guatemala’s a tourist destination, Love.”
47
LOVEJOY drove the needle in and out of the ripped knee of his trousers, pulling the thread through. “It’s for you I’m worried. Not that I get back my money.”
“It’ll clear on Monday from CI to Kingston. There’ll be fifty extra for me, for when I get back.”
“You ain’ goin’ come back.”
On Corozal Bay the wind was scraping white riffles off the blue water. A string of cormorants laced eastwards. The air was warming and redolent with soil and grass and sea salt and jungle. “Would you leave her, someone you cared about, in Guatemala? Not try to talk her into coming out?”
“Comin’ out wit’ you? What kind of safety is thet?”
“And that General Arena, he’s the one, Love! My friends paid him ten grand a month. It was his soldiers that shot us up and blew away my village. He’s the one who sent the word up north, got Melissa killed...”
Lovejoy tugged the thread tight, circled the needle twice through it and bent over and bit it off. “You know thet trail there, goes into the jungle?”
“Out back? Sure.”
“Luther Tallow, thet lived up the road, he had a woman in Revelation Town, used to take thet trail through the jungle to go see her. There was this crazy Mexican, Willie the Fireman, lived back in the jungle, gone crazy on wood alcohol. Willie hated Luther, used to wait for him in the brush with his machete, try to cut him up. I used to say Luther someday he goin’ get you, and Luther said he’s always too drunk and I ain’t afraid of no Mexican.”
Murphy stood, stretching his back. “You’re so full of shit, Love!”
Lovejoy spread the trousers over his knee, smoothing down the mend. “Willie’s dead now. They chase him in the Bay and drown him. After he kill Luther Tallow.”
LYMAN sat in his kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hands. The Minnie Mouse clock showed nine-thirty. The dishwasher hummed, amber light on. An icicle clinked as it fell from the window. There were blue sky and white clouds, bare maple branches and the spikes of Normandy firs beyond the double glass. A squirrel ran along a bough, a bluejay called; under Lyman’s feet the floor rumbled as the heater in the basement kicked on.
He shivered, in undershorts and T-shirt, bare feet cold on the yellow tile-patterned linoleum. You let Nancy go free, he told himself, she can fuck anybody she wants. At least married she’s got to hide it. Say she’s not doing it.
He stepped into the shower, let the hot massaging water eat into the back of his neck. Oh Jesus good. He rubbed himself hard with the thick new towels Nancy’d bought for when they’d move into the McCormacks’ house. Yellow and green. With Nancy everything had to be yellow and green.
He flipped on CNN but it was just another white face looking earnest about some shit. So sickeningly tiring all these white faces. After a lifetime of trying to be nice, have to admit they suck. Even Kit Gallagher. He winced, seeing Kit Gallagher sucking Nancy’s cunt.
The reason I hate them. But I’ve always hated them, and setting Kit up with Nancy was just giving myself another reason. To see if she would do it with a white man.
Now that I’m older and wiser, I see so many reasons, but where’s the truth? Was I trying to keep distance from Nancy by enticing her to screw a white man? Or is she right, that I was trying to live out my own desire for Kit through her?
That’s just Nancy’s psychological bullshit. Marrying Nancy was giving myself another reason, because she doesn’t hate whites and even likes some of them. A triumph of integration, Nancy. Bringing up my kids like pigs. Little white pigs.
He dressed in the same Levis and work shirt he’d worn when he’d offed the junkie hooker in San Francisco. Who wouldn’t say where Murphy was.
He could see Curt Merck sitting there, his desk, little white penguin feet hanging down. Saw himself standing before Curt in these clothes he’d killed her in. Free and strong as an animal. Smart as an animal. Curt a little white toad as the wolf circles round. Breaking the rule that says you have to disappear the clothes you do a job in. Completely disappear them. Fire and the river. Out to the sea. Never a shred of fabric to recognize. Telling Curt what he was wearing. Watching the little penguin stutter. You’re done, Howie, Curt Merck will say. You can cut the grass.
But Curt won’t ever let you cut the grass. Doesn’t even like to talk about the grass. About how he gets his cut, the Agency’s. Hilarious that liberals in the States never realize the grass they smoke pays for guns to kill liberals in Central America. How what goes around comes around.
Little white penguin with his Bratislava accent on his little pointed tongue. Little fingers in his pockets. Little white flippers. Who doesn’t dream I’d break the silence. If you’re not loyal to us, Howie, you’re not loyal to yourself. And the moment you tell the story, the Congregation’s lifeline drops dead. Along with you, Howie. And a lot of other people.
You hauled us over here in boats, Curt, but it was us who built this fucking country. The one you own.
Lyman bent up his leg to put on the running shoe, liking the feel of power round his shoulders and down his arms. Skin like black oil, tendons and muscles rippling. Not like steel – mahogany. Black heartwood.
Curt Merck weighing the odds in his little white paws. Kill me or just send me outside. When you have something on a man, don’t let him know. Until you need it. Like a sudden stiletto between friends.
He shrugged into the leather jacket, reminded himself to stand straight. “Keep your shoulders back!” his father used to say. Before he’d gone away for good. “You don’t have no burden, son, bowin’ you down.”
He turned to scan the house. Wide rooms and carpets, sense of warmth. Pictures on the piano, everybody smiling. Never trust a smile.
In the garage he revved the black BMW, dropped the window to inhale warm exhaust. A few good breaths is all it takes. Never did anybody that way. But do it right and it has a nice twist: the shame of a man who took his own life. He pushed the garage door button and drove up the street, singing
Left my little blue-eyed darlin’
down by the sewer-side,
down by the suicide . . .
Curt won’t kill you here. He’ll send you away somewhere. Guatemala. Like he did to Kit.
He jerked the car off the road, staring across the steering wheel and tinted glass and down the long black hood to leaves and macadam and rough beech trunks umbered by winter and pale grass and cyclone wire and a schoolyard where boys and girls ran in winter clothing. It had been Curt’s idea to send Kit down there.
No, but Curt didn’t kill Kit; Murphy did. Murphy who’s disappeared into the Sonora desert and they think he’s dead. But I know him too well, Lyman thought. Only I can kill Murphy.
