Hot Sur (65 page)

Yours forever, Cuchi-Cuchi

P.S. Sorry again about the dog, Hot Ass, I really did not intend to let it go so far, but when we’re finally together wherever we end up, I promise to buy you a better and prettier pet that will be yours forever. I would have preferred to tell you all this in person but because of your ingratitude this has not been possible.

“There’s definitely a problem with my theory,” I say to Rose, after reading that novella masquerading as a receipt. “There was no complicity from Wendy Mellons, clearly. Nobody writes such a document with a gun to his temple. So I’m completely lost. I need some hints.”

“Wendy Mellons does not live alone.”

“Bubba! How could I have forgotten about Bubba? At some point, Bubba peeks out from the hovel. Or tucks himself between the stacks of towers, to prick himself with syringes. You see him out there, and tell yourself, that is my ticket.”

“Not bad,” Rose encourages me.

“You need to know when and where Wendy Mellons plans to meet Sleepy Joe. So you approach Bubba and offer him cash in exchange for information. Two hundred dollars. Maybe five hundred. Bubba knows who Sleepy Joe is because he always comes back to that house that is like his mother’s house. And an easy task for Bubba. You arrange a method of communicating with him, a daily appointment, or every other day, at a certain time in a certain pool hall, or bar, or even street corner.”

Two days later, Rose is there at the pool hall, or bar, or street corner. Bubba also gets there on time, but has nothing to report. He knows nothing about Sleepy Joe or his mother, who has left home and has not returned. Perfect, Wendy Mellons and Sleepy Joe are already together, Rose deduces. The beast approaches, and its breath is heard.

“Don’t underestimate Bubba,” Rose warns me. “He may be a junkie, but he’s not daft.”

“Bubba is not daft? Well, that means that he is perceptive. He notices things. What would Bubba notice? Let me think. I got it. He puts two and two together, and he realizes that you aim to kill Sleepy Joe. It’s the only thing that makes sense from the way you have relentlessly and secretly engaged his services.”

“Bubba is insightful, but he is also a drug addict.”

“Precisely, and he would do almost anything for a few bills. So during that first meeting, Bubba just comes right out with it. Save yourself a few steps, mister, for X amount of dollars, I’ll take care of the deed. You don’t hesitate for a moment about taking that offer, and leave the dirty work to Bubba. Maybe you lend him Ming’s pistol to move things along . . . No, wait, that’s wrong. Rewind. You don’t lend him Ming’s gun, that would be a blunder, and why would you, there is no need. Bubba lives among tools that may be used for murder, at least one carbine, two deer traps, a steel deck, a heap of dangerous tools . . .”

“Bubba turned manhole covers into pots,” Rose reminds me.

“That’s right, so he owned a collection of blacksmith tongs. A blow from Bubba using one of those things would have devastating consequences. This satisfies you enough to pass on the responsibility for the doing of the deed to him, and you sit back and enjoy your cold ones.”

Enjoy them, sure, but not for long. Rose must also man the second surveillance center, the business office of the hotel, where he checks the e-mail address that he and María Paz had created for the sole purpose of receiving proof of the receipt that Sleepy Joe had agreed to send, and eventually did send: the famous epistle to Hot Ass, which Rose printed and brought back to the chalet for her to read. First goal met. Sleepy Joe had the money, and María Paz had the receipt. Now two things needed to happen: the cyber-coyote had to give the green light for the border crossing, and Bubba had to put those heavy tongs to good use. Rose started making a trip to the pool hall, anxious to know the outcome and carrying in his pocket the six thousand dollars that he had promised his partner when the job was completed. But a week went by, and there was no sign of Bubba. A week and a half, and nothing.

Meanwhile, María Paz was making great progress in her skiing classes. She had passed all the tests and graduated from the beginner’s level, which came as a surprise to Rose, and now fearlessly hit the green trails from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, when the chairlift stopped. With a rather inelegant and suicidal audacity, she plummeted down the slopes over and over again, like Atom Ant, or as if she were desperately fleeing from something. She did in fact ski with that kind of frenetic style of those who are fleeing everything and everyone. As night began to fall, she returned to the hotel, radiant and exhausted, pulled her gloves off, took off one boot, then the other, took off her sweater, her thermal underwear, and left all her stuff, neatly piled up in a corner. Then she quickly drank the hot chocolate that Rose brought her, took an oceanic shower, applied liniment to the bruises all over her body caused by the blows from her spills, took two aspirin, slumped into bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep until the next day, just in time to be on the slopes again at nine.

“How nice, María Paz, you really love skiing!” Rose ventured, suspecting that her hyperactivity was just a camouflage for the riptides that were forcefully flowing inside her. “Really, congratulations, it’s amazing how fast you have learned.”

“Yes,” she responded. “I have the whole shit down.”

The cyber-coyote, meanwhile, has come to the conclusion that this María Paz was a quarrelsome, unbearable, and unpredictable client, more annoying than a poorly tuned piano. He retaliated by charging her exorbitant fees every time he had to change the details of the border crossing, and let her know that he was gathering his current group somewhere near Sunland Park, New Mexico, en route to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. She would need to go there very soon, as soon as she got the signal from him. She would make the crossing along with other outlaws and fugitives like her, and like almost anyone else who was smuggled across the border not from south to north, but from north to south.

“What do you really know about this guy the cyber-coyote?” Rose asked María Paz.

“Really know?” she replied. “Almost nothing. That he is an evangelist and owns a Blackberry.”

“But yet you are putting your fate in his hands.”

You had to be a good deal two-faced to say that last sentence aloud. What did Rose know about Bubba, on whom he had placed his complete trust? Nothing, or worse than nothing: he knew all the bad parts, that he was a devious and timorous scoundrel who would do anything for money. And that he had not shown up for any of their recent meetings. Something very weird must be happening. Deeply concerned, Rose began to lose sleep and his appetite, became sullen, silent, and irritable. Because she had thrown herself headlong into the physical aspects of her new sport, María Paz did not register the subtle changes in his mood, but the dogs noticed, and they grew restless. They scrutinized their master with long looks and licked his hands as if to console him: they also sniffed that something was horribly wrong. Rose returned to the pool hall, and again nothing. The following morning, after hours of insomnia, he remembered that he had not erased Sleepy Joe’s e-mail message. This was an unforgivable mistake, to leave such incriminating evidence floating in cyberspace. How could he have been so neglectful? Without even waiting for the sun to come up, he threw on some clothes over his pajamas and hurried to the business office, to remove the body of the crime-to-be with a tap of a key. After logging in to the account, he found there was a second message from Sleepy Joe. He hesitated a few seconds, letting his heart quiet down, finally daring to look. This time it was only an image. In a fuzzy snapshot, a stack of tires around a post is aflame. The fire is just a little flash of light, the flames leaning left from the wind, but the smoke that rises from it is thick and black and distorts most of the rest of the picture, forcing Rose to put on his reading glasses and move closer to the screen. Tied to the stake and in the middle of the tires, Rose discerned the figure of a naked man, half-burned, perhaps still alive.

Rose managed to figure out the mouse well enough to enlarge the image. The blackened and blistered skin had disfigured the features of the face, but there was no doubt that this was Bubba. The ritual had taken place in the backyard of his house. On a piece of wood nailed to the post about one quarter of the way up above the head of the figure, the initials
INRI
are visible.

A rush of fever bathed Rose in sweat. Sleepy Joe was alive. Not only was he alive, now he was very well informed about who was trying to kill him. Just thinking about the magnitude of the disaster that he himself had unleashed, Rose sank inside his own body. His eyes clouded over, the blood dropped from his brain, and his whole body weakened.
I’m going to die,
he thought, and that feeling flooded him with lethargy, a momentary sense of relief. But he did not die; he remained suspended and conscious in that intolerable moment. The extreme suffering of the dying man became an alarm that Rose felt would burst his ears. Rose sensed Bubba burning like mustard gas on every one of his nerve endings. The guilt overpowered him. Any logical thought escaped him, knowing he was responsible for the horror that occurred, and the horror to come. Blinded by stupidity, naive as a child, he had been waving a red cloth at the beast, gibing it, and now the beast responded. Rose covered his face with his hands not to see: he needed to save himself from his own anguish. But the martyrdom of Bubba had made its way inside and now took the form of others—those in line waiting their turn. That girl Violeta would be next. And María Paz. And Rose himself, although this last possibility did not bother him.

It’s the others. The girls. Because of Rose, they had been exposed, and now he needed to make a superhuman effort to think, to think well and thoroughly, and then act, trying to prevent the chain of atrocities he had set off. But how, when he couldn’t even regain control of himself? He couldn’t even get up from that chair. He could not even digest and expel that calcified being inside him that radiated with an unbearable intensity, forcing Rose to cross the limits of his own endurance. The sacrificial victim was raw, in the flesh, poisonous and contagious. And it wasn’t the wretched Bubba incarnated inside him. Now it was Cleve, crowned with thorns, stuck to the inner membrane of Rose’s eyelids, preventing him from opening them. A fog blanketed his thoughts before they could rise.

“I have to think,” he said aloud, and the phrase reached him from afar, as if an echo. “I have to think,” he said again, but he was sure he was falling asleep.

He wasn’t quite sure how he managed, but he was at the door of his chalet, holding the key in his hand. He was about to go on, but didn’t have the strength. The dogs soon sensed his presence and started going crazy, scraping the door. They wanted to go for a walk, but Rose didn’t dare. He had to warn María Paz, but wasn’t sure how.
It’s my fault,
he thought. That’s all he could think about, the fault he bore. What happened had happened because of him. Not just that, also what
would
happen. He had to prevent it, go back to Vermont right now to protect the girl. But before this, he had to face María Paz, show her the picture of the man burned, confess everything; she needed to know. But how could Rose confess something as unmentionable as his plot to murder Sleepy Joe behind her back? And to cap it off, relate to her how the murderer failed? He would have to admit his mistakes in pursuing the plot, his systematic deception, his selfish machinations, his grand stupidity, his poor old fool’s ignorance, his despicable uselessness, his pulp fiction avenger charade woefully mocked.

Sleepy Joe did not know the whereabouts of María Paz; as ardently as he searched for her to kill her, it would be a while before he found her, if he found her at all. But Violeta was a fish in a barrel within easy reach of his claws. They should be leaving for Vermont at that very moment, but Rose’s legs were leaden, his will deadened, his soul entombed. The dogs were going to destroy the door with their clawing, and Rose pushed it ajar. They stampeded out and jumped up to greet him. Then they stopped, all three at the same time, dazzled by the sheer whiteness that had blanketed the countryside. Then, slowly, they moved away, each on his own, sniffing and peeing here and there. Rose closed the door without going inside. He leaned against the wall, took in the divergent lines of the paw prints left behind in the snow as the dogs moved away from each other, then crossed.

“Sometimes you do things,” Rose tells me. “When you’re at a loss, you do funny things. I remember overhearing María Paz inside the chalet finishing in the shower. Then I heard her moving around on the creaky wooden floor. I should have gone in and faced her. And yet I walked away. I took refuge in the laundry room, practically hid between machines. I sat on the floor next to a running dryer. I still remember feeling the heat and vibration against my forearm. I thought of nothing, or only of Effexor pills. I had stopped taking them a long time ago, but at that moment I would have taken two, three, the whole bottle.”

Rose managed to emerge out of his well of anguish and return to the chalet, but there was no one there. The dog-care service left a note informing him that it had the dogs, and María Paz had left with all her ski gear. Already on the slopes? It couldn’t be; they weren’t even open yet. He went searching in the dining room and found her there, but she was having breakfast with some friends she had made, and Rose did not dare interrupt. As much of a hurry as there was, it wasn’t smart to make a fuss. Stay under the radar, and keep the police at bay. Rose decided to wait for María Paz to come out of the dining room. He would take her by the arm, and tell her what had happened, or maybe not everything, not now. Only the essentials: he would inform her that something very serious had happened and explain the details later. For the moment, they had to fly out of there. They had ten minutes to gather all their things, pay the hotel bill, and hit the road.