The Renegades

20

Of course the boy wants to hear more of the story but his reasons are different now. His face is different now, too. A man’s face looks back at me through the smoke-laced darkness. The change is small but the difference is everything.

“Move forward to May of last year,” I say. “We’re heading south on I-5 for Mexico with $338,000 in the trunk of the car. We’ve made a run every Friday for nine months. Seven grand a week. Sometimes more, sometimes a little less. Out of nowhere, Terry tells me he’s met someone. He’s been divorced for a couple of years, doing okay with the ladies. But this new one is everything he’s ever dreamed of in a woman. She has unbelievable legs. Terry Laws is drinking from his stainless steel flask. He’s been hitting it since Cudahy and if tonight is like the last several Friday nights, he’ll fill it up again in Orange County and be done with the whole damned bottle by the time we hit El Dorado.

– Good for you, I say.

– Laurel, says Terry.

– There’s a coffee place on this next street, I say to Terry. You can tell me all about Laurel.

“So I park the car at the Coffee Stop in San Ysidro. Laws wobbles as he gets out of the car. We sit at a window table to see the car and make sure nobody takes the money. The night is hot and Laws takes off his jacket, and of course everybody in the coffee bar looks at him, Mr. Wonderful, with a shoulder holster and a forty-cal autoloader inside it.

– I made Laurel laugh on our first date, he tells me. I did my Arnold, and my Jack, and my George Bush. She was dying the whole time.

– Divorced?

– Yeah. A wannabe movie guy.

– Children?

– No, man. She’s only twenty-five. Says she’s going to wait on that.

– What about you, Terry? You want more?”

– I got my girls. That’s enough for me. But you know, if Laurel and I really hook up…

“Laws looks at me and I can see the eagerness in his eyes, the need to please her. I see the childlike happiness that will be so brittle and easily dashed by Laurel. And I see delamination. It started that night out on Avenue M nine months ago. I smell it on Terry’s breath.

“The moon is nearly full and I steer the car along the toll road south of Tijuana. The black-and-white bars of the highway divider blur by. I blast past a big rig on its way south. Laws’s bottle is empty and he’s gone quiet on me. I think that just a few months ago that one flask full would have lasted him all the way to Herredia’s compound. Now Terry’s head is back on the rest and he’s gazing out the window and thinking God knows what.

– Terry, I worry about you. You’re drinking more.

– What do you mean? I’m in really good shape.

– I know you’re working out more, too. But a man who drinks a lot isn’t balanced. I need you to be balanced.

– You need me period. We’re partners.

– Be real careful what you say to this Laurel person.

– I think I’m in love with this Laurel person.

– Then be extra careful, okay? It’s easy to say things you shouldn’t when you’re in love.

– It’s just that…

– Just what? Tell me, Terry. I’m your partner in all this.

– Man, he says, I thought I had it all put away, you know? All contained. Every day I’d lift more weight, do more reps. Every day it seemed a little further away. Not so real. Then these dreams. And this thing where my heart speeds up and it feels like it’s coming up in my throat, and my whole shirt gets soaked in sweat in about half a second. And I can’t hardly even breathe. Man, it feels like I’m being electrocuted or something. Lethally injected. I don’t know.

– It’s anxiety, Terry, I say. There are good drugs for that. Keep you locked down tight.

– That’s what I need, Coleman. Everything locked down tight. But with Laurel? When I’m with her? Nothing needs to be locked down. I’m Terry and I can make her laugh. I feel open and free, instead of like I’m carrying around a giant black mountain inside me.

– Forgive yourself, Terry. Forgive and forget.

– I’m sorry. I try. But I can’t forget you blowing those guys’ brains all over the windshield. And the damned strawberries flying everywhere. It just will not go away.

– I’ve forgotten the details, actually.

– Not me. I remember you making the tip call with your head out the window, faking like a drunk Mexican. I still hear your voice in my dreams. And remember that black eye you gave me? It never healed up all the way. It’s still swollen. Just a little, but I can tell. There are reminders everywhere.

– Well, if it’s any consolation, the three stitches they took on my eyebrow are still puffy and sore. That was one helluva punch, Terry.

– What a scene, two friends beating on each other so they can frame a dude they just clubbed half to death.

– We’re blood brothers, Terry.

– Blood something. Let me ask you a serious question. And I mean this, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

– Okay.

– If you had it to do all over again, would you do it?

I look at the man/boy sitting across from me here in the cigar bar, and I can tell he’s nearly hypnotized by the story, the beer, the smoke, the tremendous weight of what he’s having to learn. He is changing. He is ripening.

“I can tell you, at that moment, my heart fell,” I say. Sometimes the deep animal stupidity of Terry Laws surprised me. This was one of those times.

– Terry, take the seven grand a week for driving a few hours. Cheer up.

– I wonder.

– You can’t afford wonder. Wonder is for children. Have you told Laurel what we did or what we’re doing?

– Hell. No.

– What am I supposed to do if you tell Laurel?

– What do you mean by that?

– Have you told anyone?

– No.

– Terry, let me break this off for you real simple: keep your goddamned mouth shut.

“That’s what I would have told him,” says the boy.

“After reweighing the bills and drinking and dinner we went out for a swim. It’s late and warm. Terry is spectacularly drunk. He approaches one of the women, trips and falls into the swimming pool. He struggles comically, flailing the water, spitting and screaming that he can’t swim. The women laugh at the performance. It sure beats the Jack imitation he did at dinner. But I watch and see that he’s floundering not closer to the edge but closer to the middle of the pool. And he’s getting less and less breath. His voice sounds to me like pure panic. All of a sudden the women go quiet and Herredia takes my arm.

– I don’t know what to do with him, Herredia says quietly.

– He needs direction, I say. I’ll take care of it.

– Do you know what is wrong with him?

– He’s developing a conscience.

– A man like this is dangerous. We can let him remain where he is and we will never have to worry about him again. The desert is made for secrets.

“I look to the pool and Laws is a tangle of hair and shirt and muscles and bubbles now, a storm percolating mostly beneath the surface. I pick up the skimmer and telescope the handle all the way and when Terry’s gasping head comes up for what looks like the last time, I whack him. His hands fly up and clutch the basket. I pull him across the water, hand over hand. Laws grabs the side of the pool deck and he vomits water and gags and coughs and vomits again. I throw down the skimmer and walk back to my casita. I lie awake all night because no matter how I look at it, I keep seeing that this is the beginning of the end of everything we worked for.”