The Scared Stiff

28

He stayed upstairs for an hour, driving everybody crazy. Madonna didn’t like me down below any more than I liked the insurance investigator up above, but we both had to put up with it.

At last I heard the clomp-clomp of descending footsteps. I’d been sitting on an old massive television set, leafing through my magazines without really absorbing — or reabsorbing — much content (or contentment), but now I stood, put the magazines atop the TV, and went over to look out the window.

Here he came, a sour-faced, pale-skinned black-haired guy of about forty, wearing black-rimmed glasses. He had a nose like a can opener. He didn’t look satisfied.

Rafez got out of the Land Rover as the insurance investigator reached ground level. They walked toward one another and chatted briefly in the middle of the road. It seemed to me that Rafez asked if the investigator wanted Rafez to go upstairs and kick some ass, and the investigator told him No, or Not yet, or Maybe later. They looked along the street and spoke a bit more, and then they got into the Land Rover, Rafez at the wheel. They made a U-turn and went away.

For sure? Leaving the disgruntled Madonna behind, and my magazines as well, I crept out of the enclosed area and along its outside wall under the house until I could see down the street, just in time to watch the white Land Rover turn left onto La Carretera, headed out of town.

Oh, boy. I raced up the stairs and into the living room; everybody in there was extremely upset. Mamá paced back and forth, rubbing her hands together, and Papá was so overwrought his beer bottle kept clicking against his teeth. Arturo had a beer bottle in each hand. He gave one to me and said, “We gotta talk.” He was very solemn and serious, much more than I’d ever seen him before.

I said, “Arturo, I don’t get it. What’s going on with that guy?”

“He’s suspicious,” he said. “He don’t know what he’s suspicious about; all he knows is, he’s suspicious.”

“His driver,” I said, “is the cop that investigated my death, the one Lola socked.”

Mamá and Papá both wailed at that news, and Arturo’s brows lowered so far it was a miracle he could still see. He said, “Rafez?”

“That’s the one.” I drank beer like Papá, then began to pace like Mamá. “What’s wrong here? What’s the problem? Everything we did was perfect.”

“Maybe too perfect,” Arturo said. “Maybe that’s what got them suspicious, they never seen such a perfect case before.”

“No,” I said, “it doesn’t work that way. If they don’t see something wrong, they don’t follow through. So what the hell do they see wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just so they don’t see you. You can’t stay here no more.”

“Hell and damnation,” I said. “Where can I go next, Arturo? I’ve been all over the country.”

“Well, you can’t be here,” he told me. “They’re sniffin’ around, and so’s Manfredo and them from Tapitepe. They’ll be hearing about a deaf mute up in Rancio and a guy with a vow of silence been livin’ here, and if the insurance guy don’t show up, Manfredo and them will.”

“So where can I go?”

“I’m rackin’ my brain,” he said. “The problem is, you can’t go to nobody else in the family, because everybody that’s lookin’ for you is gonna go to the same people. I don’t know what we do, because you can’t go to nobody we know.”

“That doesn’t leave much,” I said.

We all paced for a while, except Papá, who found walking a distraction when he was drinking beer. Then, dubiously, Arturo said, “Maybe...”

We all looked at him. I said, “Yes?”

Arturo looked at Mamá and said, “Ifigenia?”

Mamá, whose name is Lucia, briskly shook her head and said a lot of words very fast, some of which I caught; it was the Spanish equivalent of Are you out of your mind? Arturo said it was worth a try. Mamma told him it was on his head, not hers. Arturo said what the hell. Then he turned to me. “What the hell, it’s worth a try.”

“What is, Arturo?” I asked him.

“Everybody knows,” he explained, “me and my wife Ifigenia is estranged. I go there every once in a while, we make a baby, have a fight, I come back here for a couple years. In the family, anybody that knows about what you’re doin’ knows Ifigenia never liked Lola, never had any use for her, and didn’t want me to do nothing about this anyway. I had to ’splain to her, over and over, that even if it all went to hell, I wasn’t doin’ any crimes and nothin’ bad could happen to me, but she still don’t want nothin’ to do with it and don’t want me to have nothin’ to do with it. So who would expect you to hide out at her house?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said.

“Including me,” I said. “If she’s that against the whole idea, she won’t let me stay there. Or she’ll turn me in.”

“It’s worth a try,” he repeated. “I can’t think of nothin’ else, so what the hell. Lemme at least call her on the phone.”

“Okay,” I said. “Any port in a storm.”

He looked interested. “Yeah? That’s nice. You just make that up?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re pretty good,” Arturo told me, and crossed over to the telephone to make his call.

Well, I could see him regretting that one right away. He got a few sentences into the conversation, saying, “Ifigenia,” in honeyed tones two or three times, and then the squawks started out of the earpiece. Not in her house. How dare he make such a suggestion, doesn’t he ever think about his children? How long is she supposed to put up with a lowlife? When is he gonna fix that stair he promised to fix last September?

Arturo said this, and he said that. His eyebrows lifted, and they lowered. He bobbed and weaved, moving from foot to foot, as though in an actual physical boxing match. Mamá gave me the evil eye — see what you’ve done to my son? — and Papá went off for more beer, bringing back four bottles. I was grateful for mine.

Well, Arturo finally managed to get off the phone, and when he looked at me his expression was speculative, as though he were wondering if it would relieve his feelings if he kicked the crap out of his troublesome brother-in-law. I said, “Sorry, Arturo.”

“De nada,” he said, and sighed. “I gotta do somethin’ about you, man,” he said. “It’s come down to it now. Either we find someplace safe, or I gotta get rid of you myself.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I wouldn’t give you to Manfredo and them,” he said, “they’d screw it up somehow, leave evidence; they’d get your fingerprints or somethin’, the cops would. I’d rather feed you to Madonna.”

“Arturo,” I said, “don’t joke.”

The look he gave me was not comical. “Barry,” he said, using the wrong name for emphasis, “don’t you know what’s goin’ on?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I don’t.”

“You think we’re goin’ through all this for you?”

“Well, it’s mostly for Lola,” I said. “I understand that.”

“That’s right.”

“And everybody else that’s involved,” I went on. “None of us wants to get caught at this.”

“Caught?” He looked at me as though I was very dumb. “Who’s gonna get caught? Doin’ what? What are you talkin’ about?”

“Well, the family.”

“No,” he said. “Don’t you worry about us, we’re not in trouble, we didn’t do nothin’ to break the law. And neither did you.”

I frowned at him. “I didn’t?”

“No,” he said. “You wanna play a joke, pretend you’re dead, go ahead, nobody can stop you. Nobody can stop us, we go along with the gag. That ain’t a crime.”

“Busting up that car is.”

“Big deal. They make you pay for a Beetle.”

“Arturo, wait a minute,” I said. “You’re wrong about this. We are committing a crime.”

“No, we ain’t,” he insisted. “Don’t you know the only one that broke the law here? That if you get caught, she goes to jail? That’s right, man: Lola. When she put in that insurance claim that was a crime, the only crime anybody committed. They wanna go after you for conspiracy? Too much trouble. They got the one did the fraud; they throw her in jail; that’s it, next case.”

“Arturo—”

“I like you, Felicio,” he said, sounding as though he didn’t like me at all, “but you ain’t my sister. You ain’t even my brother. I’ll do anything for Lola, you know that, so that’s why I’m playing along with this. But I gotta tell you, it’s her I’m worried about, not you. I know she wouldn’t be happy if you got killed, so I’ll do what I can to keep you alive. But one way, you know, Manfredo and them from Tapitepe are right. If you’re dead, nobody’s in trouble. So if it comes down to you dead or Lola in jail, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna lose another brother.”