Chapter 21.
We hustled through the night unnoticed, apart from a few livestock trucks and one enthusiastic campervan from Idaho. Oil trucks rode the horizon like giant fireflies on a mission. A radio station played a series of Spanish love songs. Teresa moved her lips occasionally to the lyrics between pouts of smoke from her mouth. Ted sat rigidly in the middle of the back seat, with a garbage bag of broken plaster cast and a life’s supply of rubbers in his lap.
“Do you know where this retirement home is?” I asked.
“Si, I know where it is. It’s called ‘Sunny Shire Villas’, Teresa replied. “It’s not far from here. Laredo is not big.”
“Here’s what I think we should do. After we make the stop off at Sunny Shire retirement home, you then can drop us somewhere in the centre of Laredo. Sound good?” I asked.
Teresa looked me up and down suspiciously. I flipped down the sun visor and checked my reflection in the vanity mirror.
“I need to get cleaned up and dump these clothes before I head back to New York.”
“And aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked. “El dinero.”
“Oh shit yeah. Sorry, wasn’t trying to stiff you. You’ve been an angel Teresa, you’ve really saved our asses.”
She raised her eyebrows and pulled a, cut the shit look. I counted out nine, five thousand dollar bales from my bag. She looked at Ted in the rear view mirror and looked at me. She dragged hard on her cigarette.
“Was it worth it? Huh. With all this shit. Was it worth a forty-five measly thousand dollars? No. You two seem like ok guys to me. This doesn’t seem like your bag. Doing this shit. Stupid.”
I was too tired and worn out to answer. And of course she was right – it wasn’t. Her outburst melted into a beautiful Spanish woman’s voice, singing about losing her lover. We sat listening to the sorrow from her broken heart, followed by a silky appreciation from the DJ. Teresa rolled to a stop.
“That’s it down there. There’s a front entrance but there’s no one there. It’s dark. I used to drive past there every night coming from work.”
“Yeah it’s not like the oldies are going to be slinging rope ladders over the wall to get in,” Ted said.
“Ok pull up out side. We’ve gotta move fast Ted. Knock off the lights,” I said.
The car crunched to a halt on the gravel lay-by. Ted and I leapt outside. Two large stone pillars shared an arched sign, that towered over a heavy iron gate. We strained to lift out the body. A few neighbourhood dogs stirred from our scent of delinquency – contained howls and barks rallied through the blocks. We shuffled the body over beside one of the pillars.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Ted whispered, “But what about the tarp and the shower curtains? Couldn’t they trace those? There’s more fingerprints on that tarp, than a porn star’s tits.”
I knew he was right. Unwrapping Betty and leaving her uncovered by a pillar of a retirement home, was without a doubt, the last thing on the planet that I wanted to do right now. I had already violated her beyond all human decency, but self preservation presented itself as a choice between a life of shame and guilt, or life in prison. I peeled back the corner of the tarpaulin. Betty’s expressionless face appeared.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” I said grinding my teeth. “Come on lets unwrap the tarp.”
We rolled and pulled until we separated Betty from the blue covering. We lifted her back against the wall and slid the shower curtains off her. Ted gagged and dry wretched. I kept my eyes squinted even in the very dim light. There wasn’t much blood. I squeezed her passport between her cold hands.
“Prints,” Ted said.
“What?..... FUCK.”
I wiped the passport and rubbed the palms and back of her hands with my shirt. I bundled the shower curtains into the tarpaulin and piled it all back into the trunk. We both scurried to get back into the car.
Teresa snapped, “What the hell are you putting the covers back in my trunk for?”
“We’ve got to dump it somewhere. It’s got our fingerprints all over it. I need to get cleaned up as well,” I said. “Come on let’s go.”
Teresa drove us away, blinkered into the remains of the night, navigating between the sparsely populated streetlights. It was a few kilometers before she switched the headlights back on.
“There’s a truck stop up ahead. They have showers. You need to clean up,” Teresa said. “Then I’ll drop you at the bus depot. There is a bus that will take you to the airport. I’m just a bit freaked out about this whole thing so I don’t need to be seeing a lot of police right now. I’d prefer not to have to drive to the airport. Ok?”
“Understood. The bus depot is good for us,” I said.
“Say hello to Lenny for me when you see him. When are you going?” I asked.
“Day after tomorrow. I’ve got to hide the cash in the gas tank. You know. Drop it in the tank. My brother will do that tomorrow.”
“Nice trick,” I said. “Maybe we should have tried that instead of all the bullshit that we’ve had to go through.”
“No,” she said waving her finger. “The sniffer dogs can still smell the drugs in the gas tank.”
Teresa veered abruptly off the main road and down a dirt track. We skidded to a dead end. The headlights illuminated a large Che Guevara with sleepy eyes, holding a joint, graffitied on a concrete wall.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“Dump the covers that are in the trunk over the side. It’s a waterway it flows into the main river,” she said.
Ted squeezed the garbage bag of rubbers and plaster cast through the front seats.
“Can you do the honours, my leg has gone to sleep. I don’t think the circulation has come back properly since I took the cast off.”
I got out and checked around. It was too remote a place for an affair in the back of an RV – it was the kind of place perverts come for privacy, or junkies come to score. I dragged the tarpaulin out of the trunk and slung it over a low wall. Teresa turned the car around and beamed the full headlights my way. I was standing over a twenty foot sheer drop, into a concrete waterway. I rolled the bloody covers to the edge and pushed them over. It hit the water with a loud hollow thwack. I threw the garbage bag in. The bag exploded on impact sending a school of split condoms swimming down the river. Teresa flashed the headlights at me – the small yellow glow of Laredo dwindled into the vast Texan sunrise.
“I wonder how many people have disposed of evidence here,” I said climbing back into the car. No one responded. We rattled back onto the main highway and gunned it for the city.
‘Spurs ‘n Stirrups’ gas station, advertised showers at ‘Five dollars a Squirt’ on a spinning day-glow sign. Teresa shied the car away from the main office. I gathered fifty cent pieces from Ted – Teresa raided her ashtray to make up the balance and I slipped into the shower area. Five dollars for five minutes, was enough to rake the look of vagrancy from me and an extra two got me a shave. My chin throbbed, as I dragged the two dollar razor across my face. A clot of dried blood survived the ‘Five Dollar Squirt’ and sat menacingly under my thumbnail and nagged at my conscience. I was disgusted with myself – I wanted to remove every memory of what I had done. I scraped it out with a broken toothpick and dropped it down the sink hole. The only clothes I had were a pair of track pants and a ‘Kiss Me I’m Mexican’ t-shirt that I’d bought in Mexico, on Lenny’s advice. I dumped my old dusty clothes in a dumpster behind the truck stop cafe and rejoined my accomplices.
“Nice clothes. You now look like a real tourist,” Teresa said.
We drove in silence. The sun blinked over the horizon, dragging in a new day. Teresa wheeled us up to the main building of the bus depot. Early buses stoked their engines and began the early rally south. Tired and drab looking tourists veiled by maps and guide books shuffled around looking for their bus numbers.
“Ok, this is the end of the line,” Teresa said ominously. “It was nice to meet you both. I wish you the best on the rest of your trip.”
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
“We really appreciate it. We would have been screwed without you, Teresa,” Ted said in agreement.
We waited outside the main building until she drove off.
“Nice t-shirt Harry but I’ll pass,” Ted said, looking at my ‘Kiss Me I’m Mexican’ t-shirt.
“Yeah I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. Think I might need to go and get a shirt. Unless you have a spare that’s not visible from Canada.”
Ted dragged out two shirts that looked like they’d been brawling in his bag. One was red, green and crumpled and the other was yellow, orange and crumpled.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get something later in Nuevo Laredo,” I said. “I’ve gotta give you this cash so lets hit the head.’
The bathroom cubicle was a mosaic of bad graffiti and phone numbers advertising free sex, with the occasional misspelled quote. I wrapped the nine stacks of cash in Ted’s shirts and jammed them to the bottom of his bag. Ted washed his face and hands. He held his front teeth between his fingers and tugged on them.
“I think that big fucker Ochi loosened a few of my teeth,” he said. “Fucking animal, that guy.”
“Well he does work for the Toot Fairy,” I said.
“Real funny Harry, real funny. You know how much front teeth cost these days?”
“Here’s the money. Remember if anything happens to me, give my half to Betty’s mom,” I said.
“You have my word, brother,” he said. “You’ve got the locker key?”
“Yeah, I’m all set.”
I glanced in the mirror. I felt a thousand years old, with a chin that looked like a turned fruit –its colour had changed to a plum-purple shade. I had razor burn, ear to ear from an overworked Bic disposable.
“Good luck amigo,” Ted said sincerely, as he shook my hand.
“You too.”
Ted made his way to the airport bus. I took the CityFlyer, Nuevo Laredo, red-eye. Every muscle and nerve in my body ached. I dreaded the prospect of repeating the process of smuggling another kilo inside me, but in my own mind, it was my one last shot at redemption – making a boatload of money for Betty’s kid would in some way numb the guilt and ease the shame. Cactus Mel pinched a frown of familiarity as I mounted the bus. Deja fucking vu.