Chapter 19.
I should have died trying to save the dignity of my only true friend – I had nothing left to give. Instead, I woke, staring up into a beautiful girls face. I knew she was real – I could feel her hair on my forehead.
“Are you Harry? Are you Harry,” she asked in a soft Mexican accent.
She asked over and over. My chin throbbed. My tongue searched my teeth for gaps. There was only one single source of pain – It was on my chin. I must have a jaw made out of Waterford Crystal – out in one punch.
“Yes, I’m Harry,” I said between my clenched teeth.
I strained to sitting position. My seat back, was a piss and bleach scented toilet bowl. My focus sharpened. She was a beauty, marked by a straight scar from her left temple, to her nose. I pointed over to Ted, tied up and groaning in the bath tub.
“That’s Ted,” I said.
Her face eked a gentle smile.
“You guys are real pro’s,” she said. “I’m Teresa, Lenny’s girl.”
“You’re far too good looking to be Lenny’s girl,” I croaked.
She smiled, attempting to hide her scar behind a wide strand of hair.
“Lenny said you were a bit of a silver tongued devil.”
“Yeah, maybe a few centuries ago,” I said. “What’s happening next door?”
She became animated.
“I saw Doolittle. I hate that guy. He’s sneaky,” she said. “He told me they were getting the drugs out of that woman. It’s inhumane to do that to someone.”
She blessed herself and looked to the heavens.
“These are bad people,” she said.
As if every nerve ending, in my entire body didn’t already know.
“Pardon my language, but no shit,” I said.
Next door a low intermittent mutter grew to a loud solo rant from The Toot Fairy. I could hear his boots thump around the room as he recited his discontent. The pace accelerated and the volume increased. He exited the room next door and entered our room with the drama of a vaudeville queen followed by his train of goons.
“Where the fuck is it?” he demanded impatiently. “If you do not answer me within the next sixty seconds where the third kilo is, on my word I will have Ochi paralyze you. I do not need the hassle of burying you so I will leave you two paralyzed in this hotel room. When you do manage to drag yourselves out of this dump, you’ll never forget this day cos after today you both wake up every morning wallowing in your own piss and shit because you fucked with the wrong guy.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“What I’m talking about is that mule in there was not carrying any goods inside her so it brings me to the question once again – Where the fuck is the third kilo of cocaine?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I repeated.
Doolittle said, “Maybe she didn’t bring it across. Let’s call Lenny.”
“Call that motherfucker Lenny,” The Toot Fairy spat. Sitting in Nuevo La- fucking-redo isn’t much use to me.”
“Ringing,” Doolittle said. “Lenny, Doolittle. The woman had nothing in her. Nothing inside her. She’s gone. Heart attack, I would suspect.”
There was a pause follow by a loud rasping from Doolittle’s phone.
“The black chick,” Doolittle said. “When she arrived she went for a sleep and died in her sleep. They opened her up and there was nothing inside. So she must have left it in her hotel room in Nuevo Laredo.”
“Yeah go check, I’ll stay on the phone,” Doolittle said.
A five minute pause, was filled with The Toot Fairy pacing around the room and Doolittle flicking his thumbnail off his front teeth, waiting for any news. Ochi stood monument-like ready to destroy on command. Ted had wrestled him self to a sitting position. He wriggled to loosen the hand ties.
“Ochi untie him, he’s annoying me with all that grunting and shuffling,” The Toot Fairy commanded.
Ochi snapped the ties with his hands. Doolittle jerked his head away from the phone. There were bleats of rage emitting from the phone. Doolittle tried to interject.
“Listen to me Lenny that’s what we’re trying to figure out. We don’t know that’s why we’re asking you. Now if we had it why the fuck would we be asking you?”
There was a long pause. The Toot Fairy checked his stocks on his IPhone. I prayed for the Dow and the NASDAQ.
“Yes we’ll let you know when we know. Lenny we are not trying to rip you off.”
Doolittle hung up. “It’s not in her room. He turned it over.”
Doolittle turned his attention to Ted. “Did Betty get off the bus at any point? Did she have any other bags with her.”
Ted sat pondering the questions for minutes. “No, we were both on the bus all the time together apart from the bathroom. But now that you mention it I do remember she had a brown satchel with her and it wasn’t in her room here.”
“You don’t think she left it on the bus?” I asked.
I knew Ted was lying. He had texted me earlier, that Betty got off the bus at the bus station. He said she was buying snacks when the bus had a flat tire.
Ted said, “Yeah I’m just trying to remember if she had it in the cab coming from the bus depot here.”
The Toot Fairy stomped slowly out of the bathroom with his hands raised.
“Just fucking abso-fucking-lutely great. My kilo of cocaine is half way to Houston on a bus right now. Great. Someone’s gonna report it a suspicious package and it’s gonna end up a fucking snow blizzard in some anti-terror squad’s fucking ‘Let’s blow the shit out of this funny looking package’ day.”
He directed his disgust towards Ted and I.
“You guys are just too fucking stupid to paralyze. You’re both retards.”
He paced back and forth between the twin beds. He snapped his fingers at Ochi. “Bag.”
The Toot Fairy grabbed thin bales of money from the Louis Vuitton bag. He split his stack of cash in two halves.
“You see I could fuck you guys over but I’m not going to because I’m a businessman and I believe in fair play. That’s why I have been successfully doing it for quite a long time. Ok, I was expecting three kilos of cocaine and you have given me two. I was giving you one-hundred and eighty thousand dollars but now I will give you ninety so I suppose….”
He grinned and flicked through the thick stack of notes he handed me.
“Well, ok I’m going to fuck you over fifty per cent but there’s no point in anyone else dying over a few fractions. So, we are all good here. This never happened and I will never see you again. And more importantly I’m letting you live – And walk.”
Doolittle grabbed his cut. “I’m outta this party folks. Gotta get my tools.”
“An’ what do we do with the exploded orca next door boss?” Skynard sneered.
“Not our problem. Give ‘em a mop and a bucket,” The Toot Fairy said. “Let’s get out of this stinking hotel room away from these cretins. Skynard get the product and lose the blood soaked t-shirt. Ochi, fire up the car and start the air conditioning, I’m sweating my balls off.”
He pointed his phone at me.
“Look on the bright side we opened her up in the bathroom. Just hose it out with the showerhead. It’ll be clean as a whistle. Catch you later, hero.”
The Toot Fairy whistled the tune, ‘Pop goes the weasel’ and disappeared into the vacuum of the desert with his entourage. Ted, Teresa and I sat on the floor in a silenced room. Ted and I were helpless – we had no car and a dead body to dispose of next door.
“What do we do with Betty?” Ted asked.
“Can you help us Teresa?” I asked .
“Jesus, Lenny is gonna go crazy when he hears we only got paid for one and a half kilos,” Teresa said.
“Lenny’s the least of my problems right now,” I said. “I’ve gotta drop Betty’s body off at a hospital or some place she’ll get discovered by someone. I can’t just bury her out here in the desert. She deserves better than that.”
I felt like such a bastard. Within moments of being given the responsibility of her mutilated body, I was trying my best to figure out how to save my own skin. Ted raised his head from between his knees.
“Yeah dingoes will get her. Can’t do that,” he muttered.
“Coyotes, dingoes are from Australia,” Teresa said.
Ted buried his head between his knees.
“Ok I’ll help you but first, you’ve got to call Lenny and tell him the bad news and second, I’m not touching the body. But I know a place we can drop the body off. It’s a retirement village, we can drop her outside the main gates. No security, and they have like, a long driveway up to the main building. We just leave her passport on her body and the Laredo police will ship her back to New York,” she said.
“Thank you. I’ll call Lenny now.”
I checked my watch and nudged Ted.
“Ted you and I have gotta do this. I don’t want to do this anymore than you do but we have to do this and we’ve got to get our shit together now. We’ve got a few hours before it’s light,” I said.
He looked up from his crumpled state.
“Ok,” he said listlessly.
“We’ll wrap her up in shower curtains and some tarpaulin I saw dumped out the back by the pool’, I said. Teresa can you back up your car and get as close to the room as possible?”
“Make sure she’s wrapped properly, I don’t want blood all over my car,” she said.
I called Lenny.
“What the fuck Harry. He only gave you ninety thousand. I’m no Warren fucking Buffett but the way I figure it, is we were giving him three kilos at sixty grand a piece, so how does that work out at only ninety thousand dollars?”
“Fuck the money Lenny, I lost my best friend you inconsiderate prick. For a moment there I was thinking this guy was going to give us nothing and bury us all under a fucking cactus. So stop complaining. You’re girlfriend was here so she can vouch for my story.”
“Hey Harry, it’s not that I don’t believe you. Fuck.”
His rage, yielded to resignation.
“I’m sorry about Betty. She was a good person. I really am sorry to hear it Harry. Ok do what you have to do.”
I handed the phone to Teresa. She tried to wave off talking to Lenny. With a quick snatch of the phone the conversation started with an Hispanic eruption, followed by a soothing, “mi amor”.
“Back in five,” I mouthed to Teresa.
I crept behind the motel office using my cell phone as a flashlight. Ernie was snoring loudly on his cot. His cat hadn’t moved from it’s position on the desk. It was watching a baseball game on a small portable television that sat crookedly on a dusty filing cabinet. I stumbled over a mound of dirt and fell into his murky pool renovations, landing flat on my back.
“Fucking-cunting-motherfucking, fuuuck.”
I floundered in the cruddy hole searching for my phone – an old sneaker silhouetted from its glow, revealed its location. The pool pit was a graveyard of discarded shoes, forgotten toys, old mattresses and building debris. I tugged on a heavy sheet of tarpaulin that was pinned down over a mound of broken swimming pool tiles. A few tiles slipped off the mound and clacked their way back home into the filthy pool. I rolled up the tarpaulin and slung it over my shoulder and clambered my way back out of the hole, over a pile of mattresses and broken bed frames.
“It’s the ghost of Woody Guthrie,” Ted said when I appeared back into the room. I looked like I’d been dragged along a desert road through a sand storm – fine dust and sweat had caked itself to my face.
“Not really the time or place for crap gags Ted. Ok, let’s do this. Don’t think about it too much. Let’s just go and do this,” I said regimentally.
Teresa flashed him a look of concern.
“It’s got to be done Ted. I’m sure that is what your friend would have wanted. Otherwise you could go to jail for the rest of your life,” she said in a soft, convincing tone.
“She’s right Ted, I know this is fucked but Betty would not have wanted us to spend the next twenty years in prison,” I said.