Deceit

TWENTY-NINE

I can hear helicopters outside my motel room.

They sound military. If I had to guess, I’d say Black Hawks, buzzing low in formation, out on a search-and-destroy.

My first instinct is to hide, to dive under the bed and stay put until they pass.

I can’t move. I am frozen stiff. I am stuck in quicksand.

Then I wake up.

My TV’s on. It’s 4 a.m. They’re showing a movie about Vietnam. Bursts of napalm and the rat-a-tat of hopped-up machine gunners as thatch-hatted villagers run for their lives.

Okay, no helicopters.

Still, it reminds me.

They’re looking for me.

I have a deadline.

I am writing as fast as I can.

I am.

I’ll get no extensions. Either I’ll make it, or I won’t.

I’d say the odds are fifty-fifty. No better than that.

I’ve taken to peeking out the window to see if that man is there.

The one Luiza said asked about me.

When I asked her what he looked like, she shrugged and made a distasteful face.

I asked her what he wanted to know.

How long you be here, Luiza said.

Did you tell him?

She shook her head. I say I no know.

That’s it?

He ask what you look like.

Okay, fine. Did you tell him what I look like?

Yes.

Luiza remembered he had a badge.

She didn’t know if it was a policeman’s badge or a dogcatcher’s.

Only that she was afraid of them. Badges.

There was Immigration, after all.

Which is why I don’t 100 percent trust her. I can’t.

They can do things to an illegal. She’d confided in me when she understood I didn’t care and couldn’t hurt her. Her torturous journey up the Central American isthmus and across the Rio Grande at the mercy of a nineteen-year-old coyote high on mesquite. The paper mill that will supply you with a very legitimate-looking license. Not to someone from the INS, though. No. Not to them.

And I’m at a crucial part of the story-the crux of it.

You can sense it, can’t you?

You’re sitting there connecting the dots like I did. I need to present it to you this way, chronologically, so you can follow along and see the way it unfolded, piece by piece. So in the end, you’ll believe. As much as you distrust the messenger, you’ll believe the message.

You’ll know what to do.