Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Soledad opened the door and got out.

– Come on, Jaime.

– Yeah, but.

He looked from me to her and back.

– Well, let's all go get something to eat first? Yeah?

She tugged his sleeve.

– Come on, little brother.

– Shiiit.

He got out.

– Hey, hey, asshole, so how ‘bout my cash? My ten percent.

I rubbed my forehead.

– I don't have it.

– Well. What? That's not cool. I got a hotel bill to pay here. I got to pay for those sheets. Expenses eating my capital.

He pointed at Soledad.

– She got anymore in that shirt?

I looked at her.

– No. That's all there was.

– Man, you owe. None of this would have worked out without me. You owe. That cash is to pay my talent. This was my project!

I adjusted the Harbor Inn bath towel I'd wrapped around myself when I stripped off my pee-soaked jeans and drawers and dropped them in the bed of the Apache.

– I know what I owe, Jaime. I'll pay it. Now please, fuck off.

He flapped his arms.

– Yeah, fuck yourself, asshole. Just you better come up with my dough.

He started for the motel.

– C'mon, sis, get my stuff from my room and grab my ride. We can skip the bill. I put it on your dad's credit card anyway. And he won't mind. I can crash in Malibu tonight, yeah?

I looked at Soledad.

– You want to ride with him?

She looked at her brother's retreating back.

– No.

– Should I bother asking if you want to ride with me?

She wiped at a clot of eye snot.

– Yeah.

– So you want to ride with me, or what?

– Yeah.

– Get in.

She got in and slammed the door and Jaime turned and watched as I rolled toward the exit.

– Oh, oh yeah, go on, you two, go have fun. Fuckin’ ditchers! Get rid of me and go do your thing!

He walked behind the truck and we drove slow across the lot.

– Just better get me that cash, asshole! You don't, know what happens!

I pulled out, Jaime at our heels.

– Cut you, asshole! Fucking cut you!

We drove.

She fiddled with the chrome knob on Chev's antique truck radio, watching the little red line scan the frequencies, stopping when she found a woman's voice singing something slow and very sad in Spanish.

She looked through the windshield at the sign announcing the 405 and 110 interchange.

– You gonna take me home?

I stayed lined up for the 405 North.

– Someplace you'd rather be?

She pulled her feet up on the seat and hugged her knees.

– You take me to your home?

I jerked the wheel over, skidding onto the shoulder fifty yards from the split in the freeways. The truck stalled out, headlights spotted on a spider-web of graffiti covering the tall cinder-block wall edging the freeway, traffic barreling past, Spanish song playing on the old speakers.

We looked at each other.

Eyes on mine, she put her head on her knees and started to sing along with the radio. I looked away and stretched my arm behind the seat and felt around and came out with a nine-millimeter bullet like the one that killed her father. I showed it to her.

– Know it?

She stopped singing.

– It's a bullet.

I set it carefully on the dash, business end pointing at the sky.

– Yeah. In somewhat more detail, it's a bullet from the nine-millimeter pistol you gave your brother.

She unfolded her legs.

– What?

– Don't what me. Don't. Just. Just tell me that's not a bullet from your gun. Tell me you were never involved with Harris and Talbot and that other hick. Tell me you didn't drag me into all this shit to make it end like this.

– End like?

I banged the dash and the bullet jumped and fell into the footwell.

– Like this! Like it's all cleaned up! Like those guys are out of the picture and you don't have to worry about them. Like! Jesus! Like. You know.

I spread my arms.

– This.

I dropped my arms.

She bent and picked up the bullet and rolled it between her fingers.

– Web.

She held up the bullet.

– This isn't from my gun.

She set it on the dash.

I stared at the bullet.

– Well. Good.

She dragged fingers through her hair.

– But if you got that bullet from Jaime, it's from one of my dad's guns. And I did drag you into things. And I was involved with Harris and those guys.

I slapped my forehead.

– Awww, man! I knew it.

– Listen.

– This is fucked.

– Listen, goddamn it!

I listened.

She stared out at the spray-painted wall and I listened.

– Web, my dad, he was, he was great. A great dad. But he was a dirty businessman. No, that's not true. He was a criminal. A smuggler. And I knew. For a long time. And not just almonds. Other things.

An eighteen-wheeler washed past, its wind rocking the Apache on its shocks.

She watched it disappear down the ramp.

– People. Human trafficking.

She went through her clothes.

– I'm out of cigarettes.

She opened the ashtray and found the longest butt she could. She fitted it to her lips and blew through it, then lit it, and the cab filled with smoke.

– Chinese. These people, poor as hell. Poor as. We don't have a frame of reference. They just want a new life. Or something. Freedom. Or something. I don't know. They get locked inside a cargo container. Forty, fifty people. Two weeks on the ocean. A chem toilet. Packaged food. Bottled water. Sometimes, their container gets loaded out of sequence.

She cracked a window and some of the smoke drifted free.

– The people who set this up, they try to arrange it so these cans get loaded onto the ships last, at the top of the stacks. In the air. Sometimes something happens. A can gets mixed up, ends up loading in the hold instead of the deck, buried under dozens of other cans. The heat. No air.

She dropped a spent match out the window crack.

– One time that happened with a can my dad had helped to set up. They all died. Forty.

She looked at me.

– And I found out about that. When he started getting sick, I began taking care of some of the business for him, and I found out about that.

She looked away from me.

– But I didn't. You know, I never did anything. About that. Except I had to talk to him. I. Jesus. It was. He was my dad and he'd been involved in this awful thing and I never. I mean, how was that possible? How did he live? Right? I couldn't begin to fathom how he could get up and go to work and, and he was still smuggling. After that. Like. So. And I thought, Maybe I'm wrong. I have to be wrong. He couldn't have done that. He couldn't have been responsible for those people and let them die and hid it and never had it show. Because he didn't, you know? Let it show. In himself. I could look at the dates, after I put it together, see when it happened, remember that I was fifteen, remember how there was never a change in how he behaved at home, around me. So I had to be wrong. Because people can't be like that.

She took a drag.

– So I asked him.

She exhaled through the crack, into the air outside.

– I asked him, I asked him if it was true.

She watched the cigarette burn for a while, got tired of watching.

– And he told me it was. He told me he didn't do it anymore. That he'd stopped after that. But it had happened. Those people, they come over, they promise to work for someone, pay off the fifty thousand dollars it costs to get here. They become slaves. They go from these miserable lives, to worse. And some die horribly. But he said, he promised, that he didn't do it anymore. Like that made it better.

A crease formed between her eyes.

– And I told him what I thought of that.