Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

“So a humongous treasure in the carriage,” María Paz sighed, “just like in this Toyota. What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Mr. Rose, running around with an escaped fugitive and a stolen treasure.”

“It was comical to an extent,” Rose tells me. “When we wanted to brush our teeth, we had to find the toothpaste under the bundle of bills.”

“Were you going back to the Catskills?” I ask.

“No. With María Paz directing, we were heading for a roadside bar called Chikki Charmers, where one of Sleepy Joe’s girlfriends had worked. The one who had drowned in the Jacuzzi.”

“Maraya,” I say. “The one who was skinny in all the right places and full where it was best to be full.”

“Yeah, well, that was a while before, as I came to learn. Near the end of her life, she was as emaciated as an old alley cat, skinny all over from her addiction.”

“Cocaine?” I ask.

“Heroin. She was overcome with these itching attacks that could only be relieved by submerging herself in the Jacuzzi.”

“Like Marat.”

“María Paz thought that Maraya’s coworkers may have known the whereabouts of Sleepy Joe. So we headed down there. Seeking information, you know. She intended to give the man his money. I wanted to burst his liver with a kick to the gut.”

Meanwhile, her relationship with the cyber-coyote had begun to deteriorate. Whenever María Paz postponed departure, the guy delivered a whole sermon about time schedules and agreements and tacked on four hundred additional dollars for each modification of the original plan. Every so often, on the highway, María Paz asked Rose to pull over and stepped out of the car to try to find a signal for her cell phone. Rose watched her arguing into the phone while walking up and down and up and down the shoulder of the road, and coming back either enraged or depressed because she had had another nasty fight with the guy.

“It must be true what they say about coyotes,” grumbled María Paz, “mysterious but stupid creatures.”

“What if he’s not so stupid? What if your cyber-coyote has turned into a bounty hunter?” Rose asked. “What if he already found out who you are, and is simply helping them capture you?”

“It may be,” she sighed. “I don’t know if he’s become a bounty hunter, but I know for sure he’s a thief. Can you believe it? Now he wants another four hundred dollars.”

“There’s more than enough in that bag for that.”

“No, what are you saying? That money is Sleepy Joe’s.”

“Sleepy Joe’s, my ass. That money is now yours, and before that it was your sister’s, and even before that your husband’s, and before that the police’s, and before that the state’s, and ultimately before that it belonged to the taxpayers, that money belonged to me and millions of other idiots like me. Sleepy Joe? Fuck him. I don’t see how he belongs in this chain at all. Your loyalty to him sickens me, María Paz, makes me suspect your own value scales.”

“Value scales! My value scales! I have plenty on my scales. Well, who would have thought it, Mr. Rose? That you begin to lecture me as if you were my father.”

“In some ways, I am.”

Chikki Charmers was supposedly located about twelve miles north of Ithaca. Rose had gotten the information online, and María Paz said she had memorized it. But heated as they were by their arguments, they passed it more than once without noticing, and before finding it they must have driven the same stretch of twenty miles for over an hour, arguing this way and arguing back that way too.

Judging by its outward appearance, the place was a bar for truckers, a dingy spot with a parking lot out front that was four times the area as the spot the structure took up. Since it was early afternoon, the place was closed and deserted, and they could not interview the employees. Instead, they contented themselves with making out the information on the neon billboard that was turned off, where the silhouettes of a couple of naked women in a frozen dance and wearing only boots, announced the following:

CHIKKI CHARMERS, EXOTIC BODIES IN MOTION.

OPEN 8PM-3AM.

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO TOUCH THE DANCERS.

NO ALCOHOL. NO SMOKING. NO CELL PHONES, CAMERAS, OR VIDEO.

MANDATORY GRATUITY FOR STAGE SEAT.

IF NUDITY OFFENDS YOU OR YOU DISAGREE WITH OUR RULES DO NOT ENTER.

VIOLATORS WILL BE REPORTED OR KICKED OUT OR BOTH.

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

There wasn’t much to do but wait until Chikki Charmers opened. Then they might be able to get some information from someone who had known Maraya, or more specifically Maraya’s boyfriend, a certain Sleepy Joe, a tall, handsome blond, although a little weary looking. He chewed on spicy candies, and often wore a retro nylon satin jacket with Castrol and Pennzoil patches on the sleeves. That’s how María Paz would put it, feigning complete ignorance to elicit information. And if they asked what she wanted with him, she would say she wanted to make good on some money she owed him. The message would get to him, and Sleepy Joe would be motivated to come out of his hole.

They were no longer in a forested area, though the surroundings were still very rural, with barely any trees, trailers half-buried in the snow, impoverished fields, fallen fences, miserable-looking farms abandoned to the harsh winter. They passed a rotted wood barn with some signs of flaking red paint. Rose told María Paz that a long time ago, barns were painted with animal blood, and she grimaced in disgust. They spotted a café and decided to stop there for something to eat, but Rose wanted to sit back and observe so he could figure out what kind of enemy territory they had crossed into. From the moment he noticed the beat-up pickups parked near the entrance, heard country music coming from the jukebox, and saw cheap paintings of hunting scenes decorating the interior of the premises, Rose considered himself warned. Then he felt the tactile stress that María Paz unleashed among the cluster of rednecks seated inside, making them shoot jets of racist adrenaline even to the tips of their ears. They were typical poor white field workers with necks permanently blazed by hours working in the sun, and ultraconservative, immigrant haters. Rose knew this class of individuals well. It was not the first time he had associated with them, the type of people who did not look you in the eyes when you talked to them, but rather stared at an area somewhere around the mouth as a silent warning that you should watch how you talk. Any of the men who congregated there, silently bent over mugs of beer, sausage dishes, and oat porridges, any one of them, thought Rose, would more than willing to denounce an illegal alien, beaner, wetback, brown fucking bitch to the authorities. If they decided not to go with direct aggression, which could also happen, all it would take was one spark to unleash a hellfire. Hence, Rose suggested that María Paz return to the car to avoid trouble; he would get hot dogs to go and they would eat where the winds blew cooler. Besides, no one was watching the Gucci bag; it hadn’t been wise to leave that kind of money within the reach of the white rabble.

“Prussian rabble,” she said.

“I did bring the dogs with me, though,” Rose tells me, “placed them by the entrance, and gave them the order to stay. Just in case. The presence of my dogs is very intimidating. They have that mean appearance of hang dogs, especially Dix, who can be very friendly, but also can put on a dark disposition, and is strong and black, crisscrossed with scars, the trophies of old battles. They can play it ugly, that’s for sure, and if someone ever tries to threaten or hurt me, they will tear him apart. These rednecks were no fools. They quickly got the message, or were not interested in pursuing any litigation. Maybe it was just my anxiety playing tricks on me. I really don’t know what may have been the reason, but they didn’t mess with us, and we walked away without an incident.”