The Scared Stiff

42

No. What I ran into was worse than bandits.

I became aware of light from behind me and looked over my shoulder, and here they came, a set of extremely bright headlights barreling toward me through the night.

No. Not at night. I didn’t want a lift at night, didn’t want to meet anyone at night. It could be the cousins again, it could be somebody worse, it could be somebody who would tangle my stories and my identities even more than they already were. In the morning I’d be happy to thumb a ride, when I can see who my driver will be, but not now.

So I immediately ran off the road to hide in the thick shrubbery along its side, hoping I’d been too far away to be seen by whoever was in that car. Just let them zoom on by, okay?

I crouched down, and the dark roadway out in front of me got lighter and lighter, swept by the washed-out white light from high-beam headlights, and then the vehicle behind it appeared, moving very slowly, more slowly, more slowly... stopped. In front of me.

I hunkered down. They’d seen movement, far away. It was an animal, that’s all; it was a deer, or whatever they have in Guerrera instead of deer; it was nothing, drive on.

A spotlight switched on. It was mounted on a swivel at the left side of the car, by the driver. He angled it across the car body to shine along the right verge, where I was hidden.

I hunkered lower and lower. I wasn’t breathing. The light moved this way, it moved that way, it moved this way. It stopped.

Pointed at me.

A voice called to me to come out, in Spanish.

I didn’t move. In the first place, I was afraid to move. And in the second place, I didn’t know which way to move. Toward them? Away from them into the jungle behind me? Who were these people, that they had a spotlight like that mounted on their car?

The voice called a second time. There was a brief silence while no response was forthcoming, and then the rear door on this side opened and somebody stepped out.

A light had clicked on in the inside of the door when he’d opened it, and he left it open, standing beside it, so I could see his tan lace-up shoes and the bottoms of his light-gray trouser legs. Above that he was a kind of silhouette.

He called something. This was a different voice, so the first caller must have been the driver. He waited, called something else, and then reached inside his jacket and came out with a pistol.

Oh, my God. I could see the light bounce off its gleaming blackness as he pointed it in my direction. Did bandits drive cars like that, with searchlights like that? Well, what else would they do with their loot?

For a third time, the man standing over there called to me, and for the third time I didn’t respond, so he took a shot at me. I heard, or thought I heard, the bullet slice through greenery above my head.

“All right!” I yelled. “All right!”

And I jumped up and stumbled through the undergrowth out to the road, hands in the air, the straps of my vinyl bag around my upper right arm.

The man sounded surprised. “An American?”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Hi, there. American. Hi. Yes, that’s me.”

“Put your arms down,” he said, sounding insulted, as though I were making fun of him.

So I put my arms down, and stepped up onto the blacktop in front of him, and it was Rafael Rafez.

Oh, no. I didn’t need this. Fervently wishing my mustache was still a removable fake, long since removed, I said, “I didn’t know who you were,” to explain my hiding. But then I realized what I’d said implied I now did know who he was, so I quickly added, “But now I see you’re all right.”

“Do you,” he said. He was looking me up and down, and I knew what I looked like. He put his pistol away. “I must admit,” he said, “I am confused. I don’t expect to see a person such as you here so late at night.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “I’m staying at Casa Montana Mojoca. I have a rental car, I wanted to drive to Tapitepe, see it, see the border. I took too long, and it was after dark when I started back.”

He nodded, not quite unsympathetic. “And?”

“I was driving along,” I said, “and there was a pickup truck beside the road.”

He looked interested. “Yes?”

“There was a man, he had a withered arm,” I said, implicating Cousin Luis, “he flagged me down, something was wrong with the truck.”

“And you stopped,” he said, deadpan.

“I thought, it’s only one man, he’s got that bad arm, it’s safe to stop, but then—”

“More men,” he suggested.

“From the other side of the car,” I told him. “I don’t know, five of them, maybe more. They had machetes. I think they were going to kill me.”

“I’m surprised they did not,” he said.

“I had this bag,” I said, slapping it, “in case I found a place to go swimming, you know.”

Briefly he closed his eyes. Even for a Northerner, my stupidity was amazing. “No,” he said. “You do not find places to go swimming. But never mind. You had this bag.”

“I hit the first one in the face with it,” I said, “and I ran. The rest were on the other side of the car. I ran into the woods and hid, and after a while I heard my car drive away. I went back to the road and the truck was still there, but I couldn’t get it to start, so I started walking. When I saw your lights, I thought you were them again.”

The driver, who stood on the other side of the car with the spotlight still aimed at the spot where I’d been hiding, said something, and I thought I picked up the word camion. Rafez replied briefly, not looking away from me.

“Did he say something about a truck?” I said.

“We have seen the truck,” he told me. “It is out of gas.”

“Oh,” I said. “So that’s why I couldn’t get it started.”

“You are very lucky, Mr...?”

I was so busy making up stories, it was hard to go back and repeat an older one. At the Casa, who the hell was I at the Casa? Not Garry Brine, that’s who I really am. Oh, shit. “Emory,” I said. “Keith Emory.”

“Mr. Emory,” he said, not offering to shake hands. “I am Inspector Rafael Rafez of the national police.”

“Oh, am I glad to see you!” I cried, and I did offer to shake hands. He seemed bewildered by the gesture but accepted it. “Am I lucky you came along!”

“You are,” he agreed. “It happens I was at a conference in Tapitepe this evening on the very subject of the banditry along this road; otherwise you would have found no one out here tonight. That is, if you were lucky you would have found no one. But are you all right?”

“Now I am,” I said.

He said something to the driver. I didn’t realize what he meant to do until suddenly the spotlight turned to catch me in its glare. Not the full glare, just enough so Rafez could see me clearly, search my face for bruises and scratches.

And recognition. He frowned at me. “But I know you,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’d remember you, I’m sure.”

“And you say your name is—?”

“Keith Emory.”

“Keith Emory.” He tasted the name, like a dubious recipe. He squinted at me, and then faintly he smiled. Gently, he said, “Why don’t you sit beside the driver, Mr. Emory, and I will return you to your hotel.”