Five
The Asp paused, kneeling ten meters behind and left of the car. It was parked, switched off, on a small rise facing southeast. Blocky in silhouette against the false dawn it was an enormous American Ford Expedition utility vehicle. More truck-like, and older, than the guide’s Jeep had been, the vehicle had the all-wheel drive, stout suspension, and high ground clearance appropriate to its use far from any paved road.
If he simply took the car, he would be delayed by disposal of at least one additional body. Worse, he would have to navigate rugged, unfamiliar terrain in darkness until he found a road. A vehicle stranded in daylight due to a broken axle, or high-centered, would be difficult at best.
He knelt behind a saw-toothed cactus, outside the driver’s sight lines. The driver’s window, and the window on the passenger’s side, were open, allowing the night breeze to flow through the car.
A girl, twenty or younger, sat alone behind the wheel. She tapped her palms on its rim, to the metallic whisper of music that leaked from white-corded earbuds she wore.
As he crept, crouching, along the car’s flank he drew, then flicked open his knife. The dead man’s knife was too bulky, and now also too incriminating. He had buried it along the way, along with the bloody, filthy dungarees and shirt he had changed from.
He advanced noiselessly, although the breeze in his face and the noise in her ears made stealth superfluous.
When he clapped one hand across her mouth, and pricked the blade against her throat, she stiffened. His hand muffled her squeal.
He whispered, in Spanish, “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She froze for two breaths, then he felt her relax. He pulled the blade’s tip away from her throat, then released his grip. She crabbed backward onto the car’s center console, gasping and wide-eyed.
She tore her earbuds out, rubbed her throat, examined her fingers, found no blood. “You fucking psycho!”
She stared at him, cocked her head. “Where’s Arturo?”
He stared back.
She pointed south. “He just left you out there, didn’t he? He only does that when he’s bringing in junk along with his clients. He was supposed to tell you to signal back to me with a flashlight.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Somebody else is picking him up. You better not be carrying dope. My deal with him is to drive illegals. Period. He doesn’t pay me enough to smuggle drugs.”
Rather than test his “Peruvian” Spanish further, the Asp said in English, “I understand. He did leave me, and headed west. I didn’t realize he was smuggling drugs. I’m not. I’m just an honest man, looking for honest work.”
She raised her eyebrows, nodded, then replied in English. “With English that good, you won’t be looking for work long. Where are the others?”
“There’s just me.”
“Fuck!” Perched on the console, her earbuds dangling, she slapped her palm on the dashboard so hard that dust rose.
“There’s a problem?”
“Yes, there’s a problem! Houston’s a seventeen-hour round trip. With four passengers, I make money. Driving this gas pig, with one passenger, I barely cover expenses.”
“How much does he pay you?”
“A lot less than you paid him. I’ll bet on that.”
Three hundred dollars was the portion of the Asp’s fee that the coyote had told him represented transportation to Houston. The Asp doubted that the guide paid the girl more than one hundred fifty per head. And if “somebody” was nearby, awaiting Arturo’s arrival, the Asp needed to leave this area quickly.
He counted hundred-dollar bills, then held them out to her. “How far will one thousand dollars get me?”
Her jaw dropped as she snatched the money and counted it herself. “For a thousand bucks, I’ll drive you past Beyoncé’s house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a joke. Rock stars live in California. Not crappy Houston. Mi amigo, there’s a lot you don’t understand about America.” The girl slid back behind the wheel and nodded at the passenger’s seat. “Climb in. Pay attention to every word I tell you. And by the time we get to Houston, you’ll understand America better than George fuckin’ Washington.”
* * *
He woke, but remained motionless in the Expedition’s passenger seat with his eyes closed. He realized that what had startled him was the sun’s dazzle, as it sprang above the eastern horizon, toward which the girl drove.
She was still lecturing.
“—in fact, a lot of the big cities avoid asking. A big city cop who turns an undocumented Latino in to ICE will probably get a total ass chew from the mayor.”
The Asp opened one eye, turned his head toward her.
In daylight, her complexion resembled his, but acne scars pocked her chubby cheeks. Her dark brown hair hung, uncovered, to her shoulders, and her lips and eyes were painted. Her legs and arms were bare, and her right arm tattooed, from wrist to shoulder, as though overgrown with black vines.
She said, “I crossed the Rio Grande with my family when I was eight. I’ve worked undocumented as a grocery cashier for six years. I’ve never been hassled.”
He had assumed from her appearance that she was a prostitute. It didn’t trouble him that Western men allowed their women to dress, and to paint themselves, like whores. In fact, he had passed hours in Amsterdam cafés sipping coffee, while watching them walk by on the sidewalk. It was just that the West seduced decent Islamic women to do likewise.
The highways here were concrete, wide, little different from those in northern Europe, really. Save that more of the cars were enormous American models, and the distances were marked in miles.
An hour’s further driving and he began to realize America’s vastness, in a way no map could teach. He and the girl had begun their drive eastward roughly halfway across the single state of Texas. They would remain in the same state for hours, and could have continued within the state for hours longer, if they continued east, or turned north beyond Houston. Texas was the largest of the continental United States. But there were fully forty-seven more.
Slaying so colossal a beast as the United States seemed impossible. Yet an elephant could be slain by a single bullet, no larger than a finger. He had now penetrated the beast’s hide, and was free to circulate within its body. All he needed now was the bullet.
Ten minutes later the girl exited the highway. She stopped at an enormous box of a retail store that appeared to sell virtually everything. There was even a counter that sold pistols, rifles, and ammunition, alongside aisles displaying garden hoses, and children’s playthings. The place was immaculate. Every shelf was neatly filled, and music purred from the ceiling.
In the early morning, the vast store was deserted, save for employees, all of whom were obese.
He purchased a smartphone, with prepaid network service, for cash. The polite male Negro who sold it did not appear to be carrying a pistol.
Meanwhile, the girl bought what she described as “road food,” which they consumed as she drove. Once he removed the bacon from his sandwich, the remainder was warm, and tasty. The coffee was hot, although thin, and bland. After all he had endured, it failed to keep him awake.
* * *
The girl said, “You’re not going to Arturo’s safe house?”
The Asp shook his head. That had never been his plan, and now anything associated with Arturo the Coyote was out of the question.
“You got family here, already? Or do you want me to drop you at a motel?”
They had stopped again in central Houston, for natural relief and more watery coffee. Humid, flat, and punctuated by sleek skyscrapers, the city reminded him of the nouveau splendor of the Gulf States’ capitals. Except that where the Gulf capitals had sand, Houston had fields of unkempt grass, littered with windblown trash. Houston, like those places, was a Babylon, built on a gulf’s shores, and nourished by oil.
But in one important way all of those cities, from Houston to Dubai, were unlike Old Europe’s capitals. And that posed a problem. In Amsterdam, people moved unnoticed from place to place by tram, or on foot, or even by bicycle and canal boat. American cities sprawled, built on the assumption that everyone owned a car. Summoning and paying a car service or taxi, or renting a car, involved others in one’s business. What public transport there was in America went from nowhere to nowhere with intermediate stops at nowhere still. Therefore, he had planned, from the beginning, to confront the issue of acquiring a vehicle sooner or later.
With the girl’s question, sooner had arrived.
As they walked across sun-scorched asphalt from the restaurant back to the girl’s car, he circled the vehicle. He squatted alongside, and examined each of the Ford’s four enormous tires. It was equipped with a tow hitch, and the sun had faded its black paint. But its all-wheel drive mode, suspension, and engine, had performed perfectly during the drive across the desert, and on the highways.
Its front and rear Texas license plates matched, and were current. It was neither shabby enough to be stopped as a nuisance, nor flashy enough to appear out of place in the hands of a common Mexican. It had no navigation system, and was old. So most probably it could not be tracked by an embedded GPS chip. That was important. Changing phones, he had just confirmed, would be simple. Changing vehicles less so.
He asked, “What model year is your car?”
“It’s not my car. It’s my boyfriend’s. 2010, I think.”
The Asp thumbed his new phone, consulted an automobile selling application, then asked her, “Would he sell it?”
She shrugged. “He’s a mechanic. Fixing up cars and reselling them is what he does. I get a different car every month. One month I got to drive a Mustang. That was awesome.” She inclined her head. “But he keeps his business on the down-low.”
“This is just what I’m looking for.”
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows, then called on her phone. She spoke as she paced the parking lot. Two minutes later she held the phone against her chest, then said, “He’s got a clean title to this one at his shop. And the plates are current, so you can drive on them for a while if you don’t get caught. But getting a loan with no job, no driver’s license, and no social? He says that could cause you trouble.”
The Asp eyed his new phone’s screen. “I’ll pay retail plus a thousand. Cash.”
Eyes wide, she whispered into the phone.
The Asp said, “If he has to see a driver’s license and social security number, I have both. But I’d rather not show them to anyone if I don’t have to.”
The girl raised her palm. “Dude. You had him at ‘cash.’”
* * *
One half hour later the girl drove the big Ford utility through a sparsely trafficked neighborhood of metal-box business buildings. She turned in through the open gate of one, then parked. A half dozen dust covered sedans, in various states of disrepair, were enclosed within a two-meter-high fence topped with concertina razor wire. The Asp followed the girl through the open overhead door of a steel-sided box garage.
The Asp blinked as his eyes adjusted from sunlight to shadow. From the garage’s concrete floor a hydraulic lift grew like a greasy steel tree. Atop the lift perched a Japanese sedan. Three of the sedan’s wheels had been removed and stacked at the lift’s base, like cake layers.
A pneumatic wrench, wielded by a coverall-clad man, screeched as he removed the sedan’s fourth wheel. He stacked it atop the other three, then wiped his hands with a rag as he walked to them.
He pecked the girl’s cheek, then turned to the Asp, and said, “Bienvenido a Los Estados Unidos!”
The girl laughed. “English, baby. His is better than yours.”
Her boyfriend smiled. “You’ll like it up here, man. Keep your head down, work hard. You’ll eat good and have money to send home.” His complexion was as dark as hers, tattoos showing on his neck, above his coverall’s collar. His cheeks were shaven, and his mustache black.
The boyfriend stepped to a desk, then dug through papers stacked on it, beside a dusty beige computer and monitor, then lifted one sheet.
He said, “Ah! Here we go. Fill this title in with the name on your license when you need to.” He handed over another sheet. “This is a bill of sale. From the guy who sold it to me. I just filled it in, to you. But I didn’t date it. If it’s all the same to you, I don’t exist.” He put his arm around the girl. “Neither of us are documented.”
“I understand. And you do not know me, either.”
“Exactly. The last thing people like us want in this country is to get noticed. The plates came with the car. They don’t expire for seven months. You shouldn’t get stopped if you don’t speed, or run a light, or hit something. But if you do get stopped, show ’em the title and bill of sale. Tell them you just bought the car, and you’re on the way to the tag office. Okay?”
The Asp nodded. “What if I decide to cross the border? Into a different state?”
The girl and the boyfriend turned to each other, then laughed.
She said, “Just go. Any state’s plates are good in any other state. If you settle in a different state, you’re supposed to apply for new plates. But they won’t stop you to check. Unless you’re dumb enough to put a sign in your window that says, ‘Tag Applied For.’ Anglos don’t much mind getting stopped and warned to get local tags. You mind.”
The boyfriend said, “If you’ve really got a good license, in Texas the worst you’ll get is a ticket, for no proof of insurance. A Houston cop might even just let you off with a warning.”
“I understand. Thank you.” The Asp handed the money across.
The boyfriend handed across the car’s ignition key, on a wire ring attached to a paper tag. “Our pleasure.”
The girl asked, “You need directions?”
The Asp raised his phone and smiled. “I should be able to find my way.”
As he walked to the car, the girl called, “Good luck. It’s been nice not knowing you.”
* * *
It took the Asp twenty minutes searching online to determine which of the vendors that could provide the equipment he needed was nearest to him. He had chosen Houston for his destination because it boasted several similar vendors. The first might not stock everything he needed.
Browsing online, as long as one was not browsing for something like plastic explosive, was unlikely to trigger a second look in a vast universe of electronic traffic. But buying online, however convenient, left a trail.
* * *
The vendor’s warehouse was enormous, but few of its customers actually visited its tiny showroom. The Asp browsed equipment displayed on racks and in glass cases until the counterman returned. He towed a four-wheeled cart, piled with the items the Asp had recited from memory.
As the Asp picked through the pile, the counterman squinted at the screen of the terminal on the counter, while he tapped a keyboard. He was white, middle aged, and balding, and he squinted over the top of his glasses at the screen. “We had everything on your list. Account?”
The Asp cupped a hand behind his ear. “Pardon me?”
“The company you’re working for. Where do we bill this?”
Most of the Asp’s list could have been purchased from a consumer shop. But he had chosen a retailer that catered to businesses and professionals, because several of the items no consumer retailer would carry.
He said, “I’ll pay for it myself.”
The clerk pursed his lips. “Really? This is gonna push thirty grand.” Then he smiled and nodded. “Got it. You want the points. What card will you be using today?”
“I’ll pay for it in cash.”
The counterman puckered his lips and the Asp realized his error. Americans were rich, but they didn’t pay cash for large purchases.
The Asp said, “The firm I’m working for prefers not to be identified with the project yet. I got an expense advance for this stuff.”
The counterman nodded again, slowly. “Oo-kay. Cash and no questions works fine here.”
The man tapped more keys. “Printed receipt or email?”
“Printed.”
As the Asp paid the bill, the counterman’s eyes widened at the stack of currency. The Asp realized that this man would remember this transaction, because it was outside his routine. Therefore, what he remembered had to lead in the wrong direction.
The counterman pointed at the high-piled cart. “You need help out with that?”
The Asp shook his head. “I can manage. But can you tell me the best way to get to the airport?”
“Which one? Hobby or Intercontinental?”
The Asp made a show of consulting his phone. “The one where I’d catch a flight to Barcelona.”
“That’s Intercontinental. Take a right out of our lot. Left at the third light, to the freeway. Then follow the signs.”
Ten minutes later, the Asp returned from his second trip to the Ford. Even with both of the Expedition’s rear seat rows folded flat, his extensive shopping list had filled the vehicle.
Its rear lift gate was centimeters short of latching, and had to be secured with twine that the Asp had begged from the counterman.
* * *
When the Asp reached the third traffic light, he turned right, instead of left as the counterman had instructed him.
If the counterman were ever asked to speculate where his anonymous customer had been headed, he would probably remember that the Asp was flying out of Houston, which was wrong. Perhaps to Barcelona. Which was wronger.
* * *
The Asp lay on his bed, in a room rented in a motel alongside the interstate highway. He had traveled north from Houston for three hours. He read the weekly local newspaper, published in the small town near the highway exit.
The girl had recommended this practice, whether on paper or by online editions. Such papers reported mundane information, like newcomers to communities, and local celebrations. Such information pointed the way to temporary jobs, such as furniture moving and clearing trash, for which Americans hired unskilled, temporary laborers, and paid in cash.
Mundane employment did not concern him. Fitting in to the middle of America concerned him greatly. Local newspapers provided guidance to custom, to local government procedures, and to manners of speech and behavior.
His motel room had two beds. The bed alongside the bed in which he lay was piled high with all the gear he had purchased in Houston. He had removed it all from the Expedition because otherwise the Ford’s rear lift gate could not be fully closed and locked. When he tired of the small-town news he tossed the paper onto the mound of gear.
He had not planned to stop for the night, but learned that Americans often repaired their highways by night. That minimized inconvenience to commuting workers, but maximized inconvenience to someone who preferred to be seen as little as possible. He had also learned that, in America, driving at the posted speed limit was more conspicuous than racing along with the flow. But with each detail he learned, and each kilometer he traveled north of the Mexican border, he became less a potential terrorist, and more one quiet, undocumented Latino looking for work, in a sea of others just like him.
Too exhausted to sleep, he read again the document the Sheik had given him, so long ago, and so far away. Whether it was fact or fantasy the next days would reveal.
Then he opened the laptop resting on his stomach, scrolled through his reading list, and selected a title. At first, he had almost not downloaded the volume, thinking it was a joke book. Surely there was no such discipline as “Jewish Physics”?