Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella (16 page)

"
We need more booze," she said. "If no
one's got the keys, it looks like we're walking." She headed off
toward the faint yellow light she saw winking in the distance.

"
I've got the keys," Raleigh said, dangling
them from his fingertips. "You left them in the ignition."

She stopped. She had no reason not to stop, to turn
around, to head back toward them, even though that was the last thing
she wanted to do.

"
I'll drive," he said.

She thought about the barbiturates already at work in
his bloodstream. "No, darling, 'fraid not," she said. "It's
against company policy."

"
Company policy?" Victor asked. He slugged
Raleigh's arm with the back of his knuckles. "She is company?"

Raleigh looked from them to the keys to the limo. He
never looked at the river, none of them did. Will they notice, she
wondered, that I'm not looking at the river? What she needed was a
distraction. She turned her back to the men and peeled off the
borrowed shirt, giving them a quick flash of her white breasts in the
moonlight.

"
Let's go swimming," she said, heading for
the riverbank.

"
No," Raleigh said. "You're right.
We're out of booze. Let's head back to town."

She kept her sigh of relief silent and pulled the
shirt back on. "But I drive," she said, holding out her
hand for the keys. Victor spoke up, "Yes, by all means, give her
the keys. You and I will stretch out in the back. "

Raleigh seemed to see the sense of this suggestion
and dropped the keys onto her waiting palm. She quickly unlocked the
driver's door and flipped the master lock control. Resuming her role
as chauffeurette, she held the door open for them as they clambered
back into the car, then took her place behind the wheel.

How long before the effects of the Mickey take hold?
she wondered. She found herself praying, that same hopeful,
close-your-eyes-rea1-tight-and-wish kind of praying she'd learned as
a child.

She hoped, as she had hoped then, that wanting
something really bad would make the difference. But wishing never
changed things. Not then, not with her mother's new husband. He had
always come back. As soon as Mama slipped into her nightly
Valium-induced stupor, old Dwayne baby would come to Ellen's door.
Finally, she'd screwed up the courage to take action. She spent her
salary from the coffee shop and a whole afternoon installing a hasp
and lock on her bedroom door, sneaking drills and screwdrivers from
Dwayne's store of tools in the garage. The man at the hardware store
said the case-hardened padlock offered the best security. The next
day she came home from school and found her door resting against the
hallway wall. Dwayne had even removed the hinges. Later her mother
had confronted her in the kitchen. She'd grabbed Ellen's arms just
below the shoulders with her sweaty hands. Mama's bleary eyes—darting
right to left, twitching in their sockets—had searched her own.

"
You'd never run away, would you?" Mama
asked.

That was the closest thing to an answer Ellen had
ever gotten from God. If you wanted something in this life, she knew,
you had to make it happen.

"Y'all set back there," she asked through
the rearview mirror.

"Let's go," Victor answered. His words came
out as if he were speaking from underwater. His lips had to be
getting numb.

She started the car. The privacy partition went up.
How rude, she thought. Not that she wanted to keep looking at them.
But who did they think they were to shut her out like that?

She grew aware of her hair again, how flat it was,
how dirty and thin and awful. she wondered.
What
difference does it make what these two assholes see and think? What
any of them think?

She rewed the engine and popped the car into reverse.
The sudden shift sent a jolt through the long car, and then the
engine stalled.

"
Shit," she muttered, and turned the key
again. Nothing happened. She switched it off and tried again.
Nothing. A list hammered against the privacy partition followed by
muffled complaints.
Do they think I'm doing
this on purpose?
She looked down and saw that
she was still in reverse. She shifted back to neutral, and this time
the car started immediately She took a deep breath and then noticed
the gas gauge. The indicator was on empty. Great.
How
far will a car this size run on empty?

She goosed the accelerator carefully this time and
cranked the wheel to the right. The narrow, rutted road was more dirt
than asphalt. Working the gas, brakes, and steering wheel, she
maneuvered a three-point U-turn. The tires sank into the soft ground
and spun uselessly for an endless second before finally taking hold.
She allowed herself a thin wedge of hope.

The light up ahead looked like it came from a small
house. Another ten minutes of driving brought her close enough to
make out the details of a darkened gas station with a small store
attached. The sign in the window announced, CERRADO, "closed."
But what really caught her attention was the pay phone. She had told
Munch in her note that she would call. Hopefully, Munch wasn't too
worried.

Victor and Raleigh had to be out by now. On the
control panel over her head were two toggle switches. One was labeled
PRIVACY PARTITION. She toggled, and the panel separating them slid
down. Victor and Raleigh were slumped against each other sound
asleep. She put the partition back up, pulled up to the gas island,
parked, and came around to the back.

She opened the door. Raleigh was closest and snoring.
She clapped her hands next to his ear. His eyes never flickered. The
same was true with Victor when she poked him. Gently she pushed them
apart from each other and went through their pockets. She took the
cash first, then continued to search. When she found the white
surgical tape, she wondered what the hell he was doing with that.
Strapped to the same guy's shin was some kind of short, weird knife
in a black scabbard. The angle of his leg prevented her from
unbuckling it, not that she wanted it bad enough to keep trying.

Raleigh's wallet was difficult to pry out of his back
pocket. She pushed his deadweight, rolling him more on his stomach.
Victor slid into the spot Raleigh vacated, but she still managed to
wedge her hand down between the two of them and slide the wallet out.
He didn't have much cash, and only one credit card, which she wasn't
interested in. Using one of the limo napkins so as not to leave her
fingerprints, she took his gun and threw it into the bushes. Then she
dragged the two men one at a time out of the car and left them faceup
by the side of the road.

Change spilled out of Raleigh's pocket. Ellen was
reminded once more of the phone booth. She picked quarters and dimes
out of the dirt. She had every intention of calling Munch and letting
her know what was going on, but then one of the men groaned.
The
hell with it,
she thought. Munch had waited
this long; no point in waking her up just to deliver bad news.

Ellen pocketed the money, climbed back into the limo,
and pointed the car for the good old U.S. of A. With any luck, she'd
be explaining the whole situation in person in a couple of hours.
Five miles later, the fumes in the gas tank played out, forcing her
to coast to a stop by the side of the dark highway. She searched the
trunk, hoping that Munch kept some spare gas there, but all she found
was more minibar supplies, the spare tire, some tools, and a blanket.
She grabbed the blanket and a screwdriver with a long blade. Before
she hiked off into the darkness, she realized she still had the
mysterious roll of surgical tape. Yau never knout she thought to
herself. Something like this might come in real handy. She tucked the
tape into her waistband, next to the screwdriver.

The moon was long gone. It
was dark, and she was tired. She hoped that the light of day would
bring some solutions. As she dropped off to sleep, cuddled in a small
cave, she resolved to call Munch at the First opportunity.

* * *

Now it was morning. She hiked all the way back to the
gas station, hoping that when Raleigh and Victor had come to that
they headed back for town on a different road. just in case, she
stayed off the open road, clutching her screwdriver like a dagger.
When she finally reached the Pemex station, her heart fell. Not only
were her customers still there, but they were talking to the Mexican
police. She hid in the bushes and watched. The voices of the men
carried to her.

She heard Victor demand to be taken to the Romanian
embassy, heard him say, "Fucking bitch," as he pulled on
the white fabric of his inside-out pants pocket. The "fucking
bitch" would, of course, be herself.

The one who worried her was Raleigh. She watched as
he walked up the road, studying the ground. He pulled one of the
federales
over, showed
him something, and then pointed exactly the way she had left. Shit,
she thought. That Raleigh is on to my scent.

lf she hadn't looked so raggedy-ass, she might have
just tried walking on out there and taken her chances. But you never
knew which direction those
federales
would fall. Only fools believed that the truth alone protected you.
 

CHAPTER 14

Munch and Mace walked the short distance from the
funeral home to the police station. The relief Munch had felt at the
morgue was short-lived when she learned that Ellen still hadn't
checked in. She was still mulling that over when Mace asked, "So
what's the deal with your friend and her wigs? Something wrong with
her real hair? "

"No, that's not it," she said.

He waited for her to elaborate.

"It's more like she needs the extra layer
between who she really is and what you get to see. She puts up a lot
of fronts. It's all part of the life, makes her feel more protected."

"
Wearing a wig makes her feel safer?" he
asked.

"
Or different, like she's playing a part."

"
Why does she need to be somebody else?"

Munch shook her head and decided on a different
approach. "You've worn a uniform before, right?"

'
°Yeah," he said, "but how is that the
same?"

"
It gives you an identity. You go out and be a
cop or a soldier or whatever all day. You talk and walk and do
things, but it's the soldier doing his thing. You go home at night
and take off the outfit, who are you?Just another guy trying to crack
his nut. But when you're out there in the war zone, you want to feel
bigger than life."

"So she puts on her wigs to go on patrol."

"
Yeah," Munch said. "That's about
right. I've been trying to get through to her that the war is over.
We were just about there, and then all this shit had to happen."

"This is it," Mace said, stopping before a
building sporting the Mexican flag. 'just let me do the talking."

"
Fine," she said.

The Tijuana headquarters for the judicial Police of
Mexico was a two-story building in the center of town. The walls of
the ground floor were brick and painted an orangey shade of red. An
air-conditioning unit hung out a window on the second floor,
supported by an unpainted two-by-four. Munch and Mace entered the
smoke-filled reception area. Flies circled in lazy formations. A
potted palm sat dying by the door. They walked up to the counter and
stood under a sign that read: ACCIDENT REPORTS.

Mace waited for the woman seated on the stool across
from him to acknowledge his presence. She finally turned tired eyes
on him.

"Do you speak English?" he asked. She slid
him a form printed in English. "My friend's car was stolen,"
he said.

"
Aiii," she said, "
robar
."
She pointed at an adjacent room.

Mace thanked her and gestured for Munch to follow
him. They entered a whitewashed room where four desks were spaced
haphazardly. Old-fashioned black rotary phones sat on each desk next
to stacks of yellowed paperwork. Munch saw no typewriters, teletype
machines, or even radio equipment. At a table in the corner four
federales
played
dominoes.

The pearl handles of their holstered pistols peeked
out from beneath the square edges of their embroidered shirts. One of
the
federales
said
something and looked at Munch. If she had been wearing a button-down
blouse, she would have secured the top button. She resisted the urge
to cross her arms across her chest.

One of the telephones began ringing. No one jumped up
to answer it. Finally, after some discussion, the cop nearest the
phone slid his chair back, stood, and ambled over to the offending
instrument.

"
Bueno
," he
said. Munch could see the glint of his gold dental work.

"
Who's in charge here?" Mace asked.

The stares that turned on him were blank, giving away
nothing. A yellow, short-haired mongrel ran into the room. Like most
of the dogs they'd seen on the drive through town, this one had no
collar. The dog ran over to one of the desks, lifted his leg, and let
out a stream of urine.