Archibald Samuel - Arvida

When we brought him in on the deal, Bezeau was famous.

He’d just done two years for holding up the Walmart in Chicoutimi. That idiot had gone in with a 12-gauge shotgun and come out with the cash from the registers. Then the cops had got on his heels as he was leaving the parking lot. Don’t ask me how, but he was able to outrun those guys for half an hour with his frigging old Topaz that did zero to 100 kilometres in about twelve minutes. They had to put down spike strips on the Boulevard des Saguenéens in front of the 247 convenience store. People saw him get out of the car and wait for the cops to come up to him, his arms in the air, giving them the finger.

We thought a guy like that must have steady nerves.

We were wrong.

In an old Reader’s Digest at my father’s they told the story of a man-eating tiger in India that had fed its whole litter with human flesh. A tiger that’s tasted human flesh will be a man-eater for the rest of its life, because our meat is salted from the salt we eat.

It took fifty years to get rid of the five crazy tigers and their mother.

The oldest of the Bezeau brothers, he’d done more or less the same thing for his little brothers, but with cocaine.

Mike, the Bezeau who came with us, got into coke when he was twelve. He came from a tribe of thieves and bottom feeders who broke into cottages and garages for about a hundred miles around. And I don’t think we’re going to be rid of them before the end of the world.

A lot later we learned that he’d been totally out of his skull during his famous Walmart coup. He’d heard his brothers talking around the table about a dumb urban legend claiming that in all the Walmarts in the world there was a million dollars in hundred dollar bills stashed in a safe. Bezeau told everyone he was going to the convenience store, he picked up the one-shot 12-gauge that had belonged to his dead grandfather, and he took off for the Place du Royaume. It must have been 8:30 at night. Once there he stormed in, shouting at the top of his voice that he wanted the million. He bonked a cashier who called him a moron, he charged the cash desk, and, somewhat hysterical, he fired in the air, by some miracle not killing anyone. He realized that he’d left the rest of his cartridges in the car, and he fled the scene with about a hundred and sixty dollars in his pockets.

We’d already figured out that our criminal genius was mildly retarded. The day before we left, Big Lé gave him five hundred dollars out of the fifteen hundred he’d received as an advance. He told him to fill up on gas and to buy beer in cans, Molson Ex or Labatt Blue, so they’d look like Coke or Pepsi, and to buy lots to eat so we wouldn’t have to stop much on the way. When Bezeau came back, he’d bought us each a beef jerky, plain chips, vinegar chips, ketchup chips, and five grams of coke.

He apologized for having forgotten the gas and the beer, but he boasted about having got a good deal on the coke.

The worst of it was that crossing south through the parkland was like his very own Kryptonite. He’d only done it once, to go to prison, and by the time we got to the other end he was scared of his own shadow. Everything spooked him, he was afraid of being caught, and the last night, before crossing the border, he said:

“Anyway, if it’s a fuck-up tomorrow, I’m spilling everything. I’m not going back inside just for your stupid plan.”

There were two double beds in the room. América slept in one, Lévis and me in the other, and we’d installed Bezeau on the floor at the end of our bed like a little dog. I was the one who’d wanted to strangle him for the last two days, but finally it was Lévy who jumped him, with his two hundred and forty odd pounds. He threw himself at him on the floor and started hammering him with his fists on both sides of his head, shouting:

“Shut the fuck up, Bezeau. Shut your fucking mouth.”

América, down on the ground, was weeping and wailing, “ Est án locos, están completamente locos. ”

Lévis got up, looked at her, and said:

“ Cállate tú también. No jodas con la policía. No jodas con la coca. Quédate aquí y deja de llorar. Mañana estarás en Estados Unidos. ”

*

Our third mistake was not to have asked for enough money.

We left Montreal early, about seven in the morning. We took the 401 to the Ontario border, and drove until evening to Windsor, stopping to eat.

Before looking for a motel, we went for a walk along the Detroit River. At one point, there was a telescope. Big Lé put a whole quarter into the slot so América could see the other shore. She stayed there for a long time, gazing at Detroit. When Bezeau started getting restless, Lé said, “Just lay off, leave her alone.”

As far as I know, she’d never seen the States so close.

I saw Lévis was getting nervous. We found a seedy-looking motel and checked in. Bezeau went to bed, and América came with the rest of us onto the terrace to take in the sun. Lévis told me there wasn’t much money left out of the $1500. We phoned one of our buddies in Montreal, who knew a lot about the law, to ask his advice. The first thing he asked Lévis was:

“How much are you doing this for?”

“Three thousand.”

“You guys really are babes in the woods.”

Then he asked how we thought we were going to come back into the country with one passenger missing. Especially since Lévis had sponsored her for a visa.

“I thought I’d play dumb. At Canadian customs. I’ll say I got taken and the girl took off with my cash.”

“That’s not bad. You won’t be able to go back to the States for a good long time, but that’s not bad. As long as Jay backs your story like he should. If I were you, I’d leave the other cokehead at the motel.”

We looked at each other, Lé and me. The guy was right.

He went on:

“You’re no big operator, Big Lé, but it’s not worth losing your rep for a lousy three grand.”

We agreed on a plan B. Lévis decided to call Luis to ask him for the rest of the three thousand bucks right away. It was Lévis’s girlfriend in Jonquière who was checking to see if the money had been deposited in our account. We didn’t have the Internet on our cell phones back then. Luis was supposed to fork over the rest of the three thousand for us to get América across the border, and two thousand more once we were on the other side so we wouldn’t haul her back with us. None of that money involved taking the girl all the way to California. We’d said, “Let them deal with it, Christ.”

Lévis said:

“You take care of the girl. I’m calling Luis.”

I said OK, but before hiding himself away around beside the reception desk, he added:

“Fuck it, I’m going to tell him that for two thousand more we can bring him América ourselves. We’ll go down to San Francisco, just the two of us, with the girl. A total road trip. I’ll drive without a licence, we’ll be careful, and that’s that.”

“What do we do with halfwit?”

“Fucking halfwit, we throw him onto a bus, that’s what.”

*

The fourth mistake was to not get everything straight before leaving. When it came to the girl.

When América arrived at the airport, I said to myself, “Me, I’d go to bed with that girl.” I was twenty-three years old, and she wasn’t far off forty. Her face was a bit tired, especially the eyes, and she had a big explosion of black curly hair on her head. She was about so high, almost no breasts but a solid ass, and the most beautiful legs I ever saw on a woman. Above all she had a way of rolling her hips, a way of not being able to stop herself from rolling her hips, that made you choke on your saliva, let’s say.

At first everything went fine with her in the car. Big Lé made her laugh, we pretended to understand her, and Lé’s music rocked. But after a while, his mood changed. I didn’t know why.