The Scared Stiff

39

“Listen,” I said, talking fast, “let me explain something. The situation isn’t what—”

One of them, walking by me, gave me a casual open-handed push on the chest that made me sit down quite suddenly on the bed. So I stayed there and went on talking, while they fanned out around the room.

“—you think it is, there isn’t that much money anyway, not as much as you think, and anyway you aren’t getting any—”

They were gathering my stuff. They put the green vinyl bag on the desk and started dumping my stuff into it, talking to each other in that guttural Guerreran Spanish all the while. They weren’t listening to me, I knew they weren’t, but I kept on anyway.

“—of it, none of it is coming down here, you don’t gain anything by killing me, the scam worked, will you listen—”

Two of them went into the bathroom and came back out with my toilet kit and the hotel’s shampoo and body lotion, and dumped everything into the vinyl bag.

“—to me, this isn’t necessary, you’re only going to get yourselves in terrible trouble, the insurance company’s paying off, there’s nothing to worry about, there’s no risk in me being alive and you aren’t getting anything out of it anyway, and — will you listen to me, for Christ’s sake, will you just listen?”

No. One of them came over, pulled a long length of cord out of his pants pocket, that hairy kind of cord that’s put on packages, blond in color, and stood in front of me to say, “Manos.”

He didn’t speak English. “You don’t speak English?” None of them spoke English. “None of you speaks fucking English?”

“Manos” he said. He was beginning to look impatient.

I didn’t want to give him my hands. I didn’t want to give him anything. For Christ’s sake, why can’t I speak adequate Spanish? Or why can’t at least one of these brain-dead assholes speak English? Why do we have to have all these different languages anyway? Why can’t we all speak together, all understand one another, why can’t we all be brothers?

No. We’ve got to be fucking homicidal cousins.

“Manos.”

Two of the others came over. One of them lifted my left forearm and the other lifted my right forearm. They didn’t seem to notice I was resisting, I was even fighting back. I was still saying words, too, in that useless English, but by now even I wasn’t listening to me.

The two assistant executioners moved my forearms closer to each other until my wrists touched, when my pal Manos tied them together with the hairy cord. I knew enough to clench my hand and forearm muscles, so I’d have at least a little slack when he was done, but it was still pretty tight.

Meantime, another one had gone to one knee in front of me and was tying my ankles together with a similar piece of cord. Over to my left, my clothing was being removed from the closet and dresser and jammed any which way into the vinyl bag. The one who’d pushed me onto the bed in the first place came over now and pulled something out from under his shirt.

Oh, they’re going to slit my throat right here, I thought, in horror and despair, but what he brought out was a bundle of white cloth. He shook it open, and it was a giant cotton laundry bag, with CASA MONTANA MOJOCA stenciled on it, the kind of bag they would use for dirty sheets. Full, it would stand about four feet high, with a white drawstring at the top. The bag was frayed here and there, but I’m afraid it looked sturdy.

The guy holding this bag gave me a second push, which flopped me onto my back on the bed. The two who’d helped with the hands now lifted my tied-together feet, and the pusher slid the opening of the bag over my shoes.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said, and one of the others came over from my vinyl bag to stuff one of my socks into my mouth. A clean one, but still.

“Ngngngngng,” I said, which they understood about as well as they’d understood everything else I’d said so far and cared about as much, too.

They stood me up. They raised the bag up around me. They pushed down on my head, crumpling me so that I bent at the ankle and knee and hip and neck and would have bent at other spots too, if I could. They drew the drawstring closed over my head and I heard them knot it. And then I heard the vinyl bag zip shut.

They weren’t going to kill me here. They were going to remove me, along with everything connected with me, so that I would never have existed in this room. They were going to take me and my vinyl bag away to somewhere private. I wasn’t sure what they’d do with the vinyl bag once they got it there, but I was pretty sure I knew what they meant to do with me.

I was completely off balance, scrunched up in the laundry bag, but they didn’t let me topple over. They held me, casually but firmly, and after a minute I was lifted, and two of them carried me, one with an arm wrapped around my ankles, the other holding the laundry bag knot over his shoulder, so that the back of my head was against his shoulder blade and I would be transported head first.

I heard the hall door open. I felt myself being lurched forward. Behind me, I heard the hall door shut.

We moved in sporadic treks. I suppose two of them stayed out ahead to be sure the coast was clear, and two brought up the rear to be sure no one overtook us, while my two porters bore me on. Then, as we stopped yet again, I heard some sort of metallic rattling sound, and a pause, and my stomach spasmed as we dropped!

No, not drop. An elevator. Not the regular elevator, the service elevator.

Of course. Somebody who worked here was connected to the cousins somehow and had recognized me, or learned about me, and passed the word on. How the cousins had got onto the ferry I had no idea — maybe they had a boat and came down the river — but their inside man (or woman) had led them straight to me and was now leading them — with me — back out again.

But how could they possibly get me across the river? Was there reason for hope after all?

The elevator stopped with a whump. More metallic rattling sounds, which I now realized was the elevator door opening, and then the stop-start progress began again.

We were outdoors. Even within the bag, I could sense the difference in the air. We were outside, and we’d stopped again, and I heard a metallic rattling sound once more, but slightly different. Another elevator?

No. I was turned upright — head at the top, fortunately — and then I was jammed into something tall and narrow, hard sides pressing close against me, and I had a moment of panic, thinking it was a coffin — they weren’t going to take me across the river, they meant to bury me right here on the hotel grounds, bury me alive — and then my back hit hard things that moved, bumpy uncomfortable things that were a bit unsteady, rocking this way and that, no more than an inch or two in any direction. I was trying to figure out what the hell this was — where am I? what’s going on here? — when I heard the metallic rattling sound again, and the light went away from in front of me as something descended.

Something sliding downward in front of me, cutting off the light. Various square-shaped boxy things behind me, jerking around slightly. A faint familiar smell in the air.

All at once, I knew where I was, and then I understood the whole thing: who had betrayed me to the cousins, and how they would get me across the river.

I was in the beer truck.