The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (113 page)

Angelo had noticed a change in Bingo since the cops had jumped them; Bingo seemed happier and more confident about himself. Bingo told Angelo he had always been scared of pain—terrified of being slugged and kicked. But now that Bingo had been hit and kicked by the pigs, he was no longer afraid. He had imagined the pain and the humiliation to be far worse than they had actually been. Of course the big Yaqui Indian women had dragged the undercover pigs off him; the cops had been disgraced by the three-hundred-pound women.

Max Blue was angry at the Tucson police over the missing briefcase full of cash, not because they had kicked the shit out of Sonny Blue. Sonny had needed the beating; Bingo too. Max had been surprised at how angry Sonny Blue was; Max didn’t want Sonny to do something stupid. The Tucson police had their days numbered anyway. Once a U.S. border crisis alert began, Tucson and the entire Mexican border area would be placed under the jurisdiction of the military police or Federal marshalls. Large amounts of cash made the pigs piss their pants. “National security” flights and shipments had been hijacked and stolen by local police in Miami and Baton Rouge. That had been Mr. B.’s
reason for hiring Max Blue and for the relocation of his operations in Tucson.

When the senator and Max played golf alone, Max received his “national security briefing.” The senator served on the select committee on National Security. The senator had invaluable sources to leaks at the highest levels. The senator had already been deeded ten acres of prime commercial property in future downtown Venice, Arizona.

The senator claimed the CIA had bought members of the Mexican aristocracy fifty years ago, and it was only a matter of time before the Mexican president and his cabinet would request U.S. military aid and intervention to prevent the antigovernment forces from taking Mexico City. How could the senator be certain of the events to come in Mexico? Their mutual friend, Mr. B. Mr. B. had been working for more than ten years against the communists in Mexico and Guatemala.

MAX PLAYED ALONE on the back eighteen holes after the judge and the police chief had gone. With each stroke he was driving away the stink of the judge and the police chief. He loved to watch the arc of the ball and the way wind currents held the ball aloft perfectly suspended as if time no longer existed. Max enjoyed the collision of the fairways and greens with the desert boulders, cactus, and shrubs. Desert mesquite and paloverde trees along the edges of the fairway grew tall from the golf course water. Some players were disturbed by the desert setting, and before they left the clubhouse, they would ask Max about rattlesnakes and coyotes. Max had never walked into the desert from the fairway. The desert meant danger and death, but he did not mind that they were close by. The whole thrill of the game was to follow the little ball on its hazardous journey from hole to hole safely. Max feared nothing as long as the sky was open, high overhead and no low, gray clouds of overcast closed overhead like a coffin lid.

Max had laughed at what Tucsonians called “rainstorms”; compared to New Jersey’s gray, suffocating overcast with rain for days on end, even Tucson’s violent summer thunderstorms were trifles. The sun
was almost always shining or partially visible in some part of the valley even as torrential rains fell at other locations. Even downpours did not last long; Max would wait five minutes wrapped in a rain parka, then go right on playing. Max did not stop even when the wind gusted violently and rain mixed with sand stung his face; he kept his head down and swung with all his weight behind the golf club. Storms were invigorating. When the lightning sirens were sounded, the other golfers scurried to the clubhouse for shelter; but Max loved the desert storms. Nothing compared with the first smell of rain in the dry desert air.

Max had briefed Sonny, Bingo, and Angelo. The job was simply to count the suitcases as they were unloaded from the plane. No screwups; that had been Mr. B.’s peeve with others he had worked with in the past—real lowlifes, military and former enlisted men from Florida to Louisiana. Max doesn’t tell the boys that for an operation such as Mr. B.’s, Tucson is a minor-league pit stop. Max let Sonny, Bingo, and Angelo eat it up when Mr. B. said, “Arizona is a welcome change”; B. was a liar. B. had owned the airfield west of Tucson all through the Vietnam War. Max had been introduced to B. by the senator. The government later had got cold feet, but Max had been paid a fabulous sum anyway. The deal had been to supply professional assassins for certain “targets” in a half dozen U.S. cities.

Max knew how Sonny and Bingo felt about the vending machine business—rancid sandwiches and video games jammed with metal slugs. Those jobs had been good experience when they first got out of school, but now Sonny especially was impatient to make money. If everything went smoothly, then Max planned to let the boys run the operation. Max looked at Sonny and Bingo and felt uneasy about the offspring, who did not resemble him or Leah. Not that he thinks Leah cheated. Sonny and Bingo are his sons, but Max saw the family resemblances; they had favored the weaker side of the family. Max remembers his older brother, Bill. Bill is written all over that kid Angelo. Max has never known what to make of the family—his family, and the business. Max feels nothing anymore for “family”—not even his own sons. Leah used to argue with Max that his feelings for people would return, that the doctors had already warned her that Max might experience temporary personality changes including anger, depression, or some memory loss. When Max looks at Leah, he tries to recall memories with feelings for Leah but there is nothing.

Max felt an obligation to offer Angelo something better than watch-dogging crooked racetrack managers. Family could be trusted. If Sonny
did not want to work with his cousin Angelo, Max wanted to know then, not later. The first few times Max wanted Sonny to take Bingo and Angelo to see how things were done. Mr. B. had assured Max that all arrangements had been made. All Sonny and the boys had to do was to meet the plane and watch the transfer of the shipment to the truck while the plane was reloaded with Mr. B.’s cargo for next-day departure back south.

Sonny was excited. This contract work for Mr. B. would be a piece of cake. Mr. B.’s southbound cargo was secure in Leah Blue’s warehouses. There were no cash transactions. The pilots worked for Mr. B. For the occasion, Sonny had rented a new Ferrari for twenty-four hours. The stupid Tucson police could not imagine anyone would dare drive to a million-dollar cocaine delivery in a bright red Testarossa. Sonny had rented a big Lincoln town car for Bingo. From now on they would call themselves “commercial land sales executives.” The landing strip was eighty miles from Tucson in the desert west of Casa Grande. Arrival time had been scheduled for five
P.M
. when Border Patrol and radar surveillance personnel changed shifts. Sonny had insisted Angelo ride with Bingo in the Lincoln, then gave them a half-hour head start.

Bingo had been sipping gin and tonics since lunch; he had a double in a plastic glass with a lime wedge but no ice. Bingo claimed the cocaine helped clear the gin from his head, but Angelo decided to drive anyway. The Lincoln’s clock had a digital readout for elapsed travel time; Bingo seemed gloomy, so Angelo had made a bet with him about how long before the Ferrari screamed past them in a blazing red streak. Angelo and Bingo had never had much to say to each other because Sonny had done all the talking for both of them. Angelo glanced into the rearview mirror watching for the Ferrari—a red speck on the horizon. The Lincoln handled like a huge motorized sofa compared to Angelo’s Porsche. Angelo might have won if he were driving his Porsche, but Sonny always had to have the advantage.

Bingo stared straight ahead at the highway with the gin and tonic between his legs. Angelo remembered how easy it had been to stay pleasantly drunk, removed from noise and confusion, detached from the pain of the loss. Who or what had Bingo lost? “You see him yet?” “No. He can’t open it up until he gets clear of traffic.” Angelo glanced into the rearview mirror; on a hill back in the distance he thought he saw a red speck. Bingo, his face flushed from gin, turned awkwardly to look for the Ferrari’s approach. Sonny was closing on them in the left lane. For a moment the red streak seemed to rise straight up from the earth
to materialize into a Ferrari grill, the windshield filled with a maniac’s grinning face. “Bastard!” Bingo said as the Ferrari flashed past them and disappeared again into the horizon line. “Sometimes I really hate the fucker,” Bingo said, squeezing a wedge of lime into his gin and tonic. “But I can’t complain. Sonny Boy does all the work. He makes all the decisions. He even tells me which women I’m allowed to fuck.”

Angelo set the cruise control at seventy-five. He did not want to talk about Sonny. And Angelo was not sure he could trust Bingo. Too many drunks repeated everything they heard to get free drinks or because they were desperate for attention. Angelo could not stop thinking about Marilyn with Tim. Tim was in trouble if a creep like Mr. B. was looking for him. Mr. B. had lied. Tim had never been a pilot. Mr. B. might want to locate Tim, but Angelo would bet rehiring wasn’t what Mr. B. had planned. Tim might already be dead meat, and Marilyn might come back.

BINGO FINISHED the gin and tonic and dropped the clear plastic glass on the floor mat. He grimaced drunkenly at Angelo to acknowledge his sloppiness, then shrugged his shoulders to make clear he didn’t care about that or anything. Bingo kept talking about when they were kids in New Jersey. Angelo hoped Bingo would quit talking and sleep until they got to the landing strip. Driving on the empty highway under a wide blue sky always reminded Angelo of Marilyn and New Mexico. Bingo slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. “Sonny came down there to my own place, my own house, and he threw her things into garbage bags. She was crying and calling out to me to help her.” Bingo started coughing and rolled down the window; he had leaned so far out the window to puke, Angelo feared he might fall.

Finally Bingo had passed out, and Angelo could think about Marilyn in peace. Marilyn loved the wide-open spaces; that was all New Mexico had going for it anyway, she used to say. She had showed Angelo how people drive in the Southwest. On straight, empty stretches of highway Marilyn loved to give a whoop and holler, “Pedal to the metal!” as the
Porsche had surged ahead. In the West, people were wild, she said. Mostly Angelo remembered the good times; there hadn’t really been a bad time until she left. Marilyn had read Angelo a poem once. She had taken classes at the university in Albuquerque, and the poem had been assigned in a class. The only line of the poem Angelo remembered was, “You will never know the last time we make love.” She might have been trying to let him know her feelings, but instead of talking, Angelo had wanted to make love.

Angelo had tried to push inside Marilyn, but she was too tight, closed to him. He could not look at her face because he knew he would cry, although he did not understand the reason. With his eyes closed, Angelo had seen thick, black shapes twist and turn continually, changing and transforming themselves. Sweat ran from his armpits down his sides. Marilyn had been soaked and their bodies made smacking, sucking sounds together. He did not want to hurt her. He had rolled off her and hit the damp sheet facedown. Marilyn had not seen Angelo cry before. Her eyes filled with tears. She told Angelo how beautiful his body was, his thighs so muscular and full from riding horses, his cock thick and dark, long enough to enter her from behind. No woman had ever loved him the way Marilyn had. She played with the lock of hair at the nape of his neck, making a loose curl around her finger.

Sonny Blue had followed orders step by step, marking off each item as he worked down the list, but Mr. Big’s people had screwed up big time. The pilot had flown the correct north-south corridor, but border surveillance radar personnel had apparently not been briefed. Angelo, Bingo, and Sonny had been standing on the dirt landing strip watching Mr. B.’s pilot and copilot move the suitcases from the plane to a delivery van when a Border Patrol pursuit plane appeared overhead. Mr. B. had guaranteed no problems, even if the worst happened and some hot-dog Border Patrol unit happened to intercept a delivery. Once a pursuit plane had been dispatched to chase suspicious aircraft, it could not be called back without arousing suspicion. Certain procedures would be taken if such interceptions did occur; after one phone call, law enforcement officers would be instructed to take down names of suspects for “further investigation,” but no one would be taken into custody. Mr. B. had acknowledged this was a lame cover story, but it had worked again and again in southern Arizona where the citizens were suspicious but stupid.