“She didn’t want to do it.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “She didn’t want to do it?”
“She says it’s cold up there.”
“Of course it’s cold up there. It’s winter.”
And the first thing she said, when the phone rang again ten minutes later and Arturo answered and then handed it to me, was, “It’s freezing out here.”
“I wish I was there to warm you,” I said.
“So do I,” she told me. “What’s going on? I told Artie, we can’t get the check until next week.”
“Lola,” I said, “hold on. There’s something else.”
“What?”
It was awfully good to hear her voice, but this wasn’t exactly the love scene I’d had in mind. It was all too businesslike, and I could hear her teeth chattering. I said, “In the first place, I miss you a whole lot.”
“I miss you too,” she said, but I know her; I could hear her humoring me.
So I got to it. “Okay, I know you’re cold there. The thing is, we got a little complication here. I can’t tell you about it now, I’ll tell you when you get here—”
“What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. But the thing is, you’ll have to bring sixty thousand dollars in cash with you.”
“What? That’s a whole lot of money!”
“It’s ten percent, if you think about it,” I said. “And I need it in order to leave the country.”
“Something’s going on,” she said.
I said, “Of course something’s going on! It got very complicated down here, wait’ll I tell you about it.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said.
I said, “And I can hardly wait to see you again. To hold you again. You know what I mean.”
Softer, she said, “I do. And I feel the same way.”
I could sense the family’s eyes on me. “I can’t tell you everything I want to,” I said, “you know, in the living room here.” And from the family’s expression, I understood they saw no reason for all this northern restraint.
“Well, I can tell you,” she said.
“Please do.”
“I want you inside me,” she said.
I believe I moaned. The family looked at me with quickened interest. I said, “Oh, yes. Burrow in. Hibernate.”
“Well, don’t go to sleep,” she said.
“Very active hibernation,” I assured her. “Rolling and stretching. Snuggling in.”
“Mmmm,” she said. Then she said a few more things I couldn’t properly respond to, and I could tell she wasn’t feeling as cold as earlier. Her teeth had stopped chattering.
And what power words have to evoke memory. All the senses had come alive. “Come home soon,” I whispered. By that point, nothing much above a whisper was possible to me.
“I will,” she promised. “Wet dreams, sweetheart.”
“Count on it,” I said.
48
She didn’t call Tuesday. She didn’t call Wednesday. She hadn’t called by two o’clock Thursday afternoon when Rafael Rafez came by.
I was in the living room, looking out at nothing happening in the sunshine out there, when that white Land Rover stopped out front and Rafez stuck his head out the car window. He’d seen me up here, and he gestured I should come down.
He was out of the Rover, strolling in the shade of the house, when I came down the stairs. He was snappily dressed, as usual, this time in a flowing amber gaucho shirt and ecru linen pants. “How you going, amigo?” he asked me.
“Pretty good,” I said. “Bueno, I guess.”
“What do you hear from up north?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?” He didn’t like that.
“I talked to Lola on Sunday,” I explained. “Told her to bring the cash but didn’t say why. She’ll bring it.”
He nodded. “When, that’s the question.”
“As soon as she gets the check,” I promised. “Believe me, I want this as much as you do. But you know these bureaucracies.”
“Sure,” he said. “Well, I’ll be around.”
“Great,” I said, and he drove off, with a wave and a smile.
•
When Arturo came home at four-thirty Friday afternoon, I said, “Arturo, call her. You gotta call her, that’s all. What’s the problem? What’s the delay? Is Kaplan making trouble again? Is he coming back down here? Is there a screwup someplace?”
“Slow down, hermano. I’ll call her, okay?”
“Okay.”
It was a fairly long call, though probably not the six hours it felt like. At last he hung up and said, “Sit down, hermano, stop pacing; you’re gonna wear out the floor; we’re gonna fall through, land on Madonna.”
“What’d she say?”
“Sit down,” he said.
“She didn’t say sit down,” I said, but I sat down. “All right, I’m sitting down. What did she say?”
“No check,” he said.
“What? They’re not gonna pay? How can they—”
“No no no,” he said. “No check yet.”
“Okay,” I said. “I know that much. No check yet. But how come? Did she talk to our insurance man?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “She told me, if nothing comes in Monday, she’ll make a lot of phone calls, find out what’s the holdup.”
“Monday? Another damn week!”
“What she gonna do, hermano? The check didn’t show.”
“The check is in the mail,” I said bitterly.
He nodded. “That’s what I figure,” he said.
“No,” I said. “That’s an American idiom. The check is in the mail. It’s ironic, see, it means the check isn’t in the mail, it means they’re gonna stiff you.”
He said, “In America, you say, ‘The check is in the mail,’ when you mean the check is not in the mail?”
“Yes.”
“Americans are crazy, you know,” he said. “No offense, hermano, not you personally, but Americans are loco.”
“Everybody’s loco, Arturo,” I said. “But so far I’m just poco loco. But if that check doesn’t show up goddamn soon, I’m gonna be multo loco.”
“Mucho,” he corrected me.
“Whatever,” I said.
49
No news on Monday, not a sound. “Arturo,” I said, when he came back from cabbing that evening, “I can’t stand this. I’m going nuts here. I feel like I’m nailed to the floor.”
He shook his head, sympathetic. “It is takin’ awhile,” he agreed.
“We have to call her,” I said.
“Why?” he asked me. “If she had news, she’d call us. She said, Today she’s askin’ a lotta questions, the insurance company, all them people. They got to get back to her, right? Maybe the check is lost in the mail. Maybe your post office isn’t so much better than ours.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “Tomorrow, Arturo. If we don’t hear from her by five o’clock tomorrow, we call her. Okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed.
•
Four-twenty Tuesday, and Arturo came thudding up the outside stairs, yawning and scratching his belly. He came in and saw me sitting there in that low armchair, and he said, “No call, hermano?”
“Time to phone Lola,” I said.
“Okay. Just lemme get a beer.”
He did, and came back, and made the call. I watched his face, and saw him look confused. I said, “Arturo?”
Without a word, he extended the phone toward me. I took it, and listened, and heard a recorded announcement: “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed — (five) (five) (five) (nine) (five) (nine) (five) — is no longer in service. There is no forwarding number. We’re sorry, the number you have—”
I pushed it back at him as though it were a snake. I said, “Arturo, she turned the phone off!”
“Oh, man,” he said.
“I’ve got — I don’t have any other way to get in touch wi
th her, to find out what the hell is going on.”
“Hermano—”
“Let me think let me think let me think.”
Had she left me? That was inconceivable, but had the inconceivable happened? We were a tribe of two, we were each other’s net, it was us against the world, we were inseparable.
But we were separated. For four weeks, we’d been apart.
“Arturo,” I said, “I’ve got to get up there. I’ve got to find out what’s going on.” I was pacing again. “Listen,” I said. “Do you need a visa between Guerrera and Colombia?”
“What? No,” he said, scoffing at the idea. “People go back and forth all the time, man. But Rafez won’t let you cross the border. He’ll know if you try to do that.”
“I’ll find a way,” I insisted. “Carlos can smuggle me across, he’ll be glad to get rid of me. Then, in Colombia, I take a plane to New York.”
“And do what, hermano?” he asked, curiously bland.
I looked at him, and he was watching me with amiable curiosity, head cocked to one side. Hmm. I had to remember this was Lola’s brother, after all. I could feel loyalties shifting like tectonic plates.
“Arturo,” I said, “I don’t believe Lola’s left me.”
“Good,” he said.
“I don’t believe we can leave each other,” I said, “not really. But what explanations do I have here? The phone is turned off. You see what I mean? The phone is turned off.”
“It’s a problem,” he agreed.
“Okay,” I said. “Now, it’s possible somebody else knew about the money, and they waited until she got the check and cashed it, and then they killed her and buried her in the basement. And turned off our phone?”
“Mmm,” Arturo said.
“Or,” I said, “it’s possible she put the money in our checking account, and somebody’s holding her prisoner, making her write checks, and they turned off the phone so she couldn’t call for help. Except I don’t believe that, Arturo, and neither do you. All they have to do is leave the answering machine on.”
“Oh, man,” he said.
“In fact,” I said, “come to think of it, that’s all anybody had to do. I mean, let’s say — let’s just for an argument here say that Lola found some other guy. She didn’t, but we’re saying.”
“Sure,” Arturo said.
“So they’ve got all this money,” I said, “and they want to get away before I come looking for them, so they go to California or London or Rio or who knows where, and what do they want?”
“I dunno,” he said.
“Time,” I said. “The longest lead time possible. So do they turn off the phone? Of course not. Why don’t they just leave the answering machine on? That way, I’ll just dick around here another two — three days, maybe even another week, while they’re gone and lost for good. Why turn off the phone, Arturo?”
“Save a couple siapas,” he suggested.
“Arturo,” I said, “they’ve got one billion two hundred million siapas.”
“Well, that’s true,” he said.
I paced. I paced. I stopped. I said, “There’s only one reason to turn off the phone.”
He looked interested. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Lola knows I’m waiting for her to call. She knows if she doesn’t call me, I’ll call her. She turns off the phone. Can’t you see why?”
“No,” he said.
“Because she is in trouble,” I said, “some kind of trouble, and this is the only way she can send me a message.”
“She turns the phone off to send you a message?”
“I know, I know,” I said, “usually it’s the other way around. But not this time.”
“But what’s the message?”
“That she’s in some kind of trouble,” I said.
“So why not call? Call on the phone? Why turn it off?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” I paced some more. I stopped. I said, “What if somebody’s got her in a motel room?”
He looked at me.
“No,” I said, “not for fucking. To hold her there until the money comes in. Let’s think about this, hold on here. Somebody finds out what’s going on. They know the money’s coming in; they say, Give me half, or whatever. Or they’ll turn her in, she’ll go to jail.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“And they make her go move to a motel,” I said, “or someplace where you can’t make a long-distance call, so she can’t warn me or get me to help her. Or someplace where there’d be a record of the call if she did, and this person would see the call and turn her in.”
“Okay,” he said.
“But a call to your phone company business office,” I said, “isn’t charged. It doesn’t even show up on your bill or any records.”
“Jeez, man,” he said.
I said, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth, hermano. I wasn’t gonna, but now I will. When I first heard them announcements on the phone, I figure that’s it, she found some other guy, and I guess I’m stuck with this one here, meaning you, hermano, until either Rafez puts you in jail or Manfredo and them from Tapitepe kill you. No offense, man.”
No offense? I didn’t have time to think about that. I said, “Lola didn’t leave me. Lola sent me a message. And that means there’s only one thing I can do.”
He looked interested. “Yeah? You got something you can do? What’s that?”
“Turn myself in,” I said.
50
Arturo said, “Are you crazy?” Turn yourself in?”
“It’s the only way,” I said. “If Lola’s in trouble somehow, it’s only because of the money. If I say I’m alive, there won’t be any money, and she won’t be in trouble anymore.”
“And you don’t get the money.”
“But I get Lola,” I said. “She and me, once we’re together, we’ll figure something else out. There’s always a scheme somewhere.”
“Hold on, hermano,” he said. “If you say you’re alive, Lola goes to jail.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I assured him. “What I say is, it was a kind of a prank, the marriage wasn’t getting along, I wanted to start over, a whole new life, I did it all myself, Lola didn’t know a thing about it. She put in the claim because she thought I was really dead.”
He considered me. He considered the situation. He said, “All this because the phone got turned off.”
“The message,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah. But what if it ain’t a message?”
“Come on, Arturo,” I said. “What else is it?”
“She found a guy, like we both thought,” he said, “and they took off, and she turned off the phone like it was, you know, automatic. Like make it neat, like people do. What if it’s that?”
“I still turn myself in,” I said, “and she still doesn’t get the money.”
“Only this time she goes to jail,” he said.
I shook my head. “Come on, Arturo, I love her, you know that, no matter what happens. I don’t want Lola in jail. My story’s the same, no matter what.”
He seemed dubious. He said, “What are you gonna do, go tell Rafez?”
“Not on your life,” I said. “He’d put me in jail just out of spite.”
“So what then?” he wanted to know. “How you gonna do this thing, when you’re down here?”
“Leon Kaplan,” I told him. “The insurance investigator. Did he leave a card here, a business card?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said, looking vaguely this way and that way at the room. “It’s around someplace.”
“Could we find it, do you think?”
“I dunno. But, if you call him, and you tell him you ain’t dead, it’s you go to jail.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “The second they don’t have to pay out the money, they lose interest. They’re not gonna pursue me all the way down here. I tried something and it didn’t work, and that�
��s the end of it.”
“That’s a risk, man,” he said.
“I’ve gotta take care of Lola, Arturo,” I told him. “Don’t you feel the same way?”
He sighed and got to his feet. All this time I’d been pacing, and he’d been sitting there watching me, like a slow-motion tennis match. Now he got up and said, “Lemme ask Mamá, maybe she knows where that card is.”
“Thank you, Arturo.”
He started toward the kitchen, then turned back to nod at me and say, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Lola married the right guy,” he said.
I grinned; I couldn’t help it. “You bet,” I said.
“That isn’t always so easy to see, you know,” he said, and went away to the kitchen.
I paced. I paced. I rehearsed the story I would tell Leon Kaplan. I even threw in some gestures, though I knew the effect would be lost over the telephone.
Arturo came back, holding a small white business card. “It was in Mamá’s missal,” he said.
“Well, because it answers our prayers,” I explained, and took the card, and looked at it. Blue letters on white. Mostly it was about the insurance company, their logo and their name and their corporate address, but in the lower right was Kaplan’s name and his business number.
I sat on the sofa next to the phone. I noticed, when I picked up the receiver, my hands were trembling slightly. That’s okay, we just go forward, we don’t worry about that little electrical storm of panic around the edges, we just do this and then it’s done.
I dialed the number. I waited forever, and then a female voice came on and rattled off the company name in such a robotic way I thought at first it was a machine. But it was a receptionist, to whom I said, “Leon Kaplan, please.”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“Barry Lee,” I said.
Across the living room, Arturo sat down heavily in an armchair and watched me.
“One moment,” she said.
It was actually three or four moments, and then she came back on the line to say, “Would you repeat that name, please?”
“Barry Lee,” I said. “Would you like me to spell it?”
“No, that’s all right. And where are you calling from, please?”
“Guerrera, in South America.”
The Scared Stiff Page 21
