Scout’s Honor: Chapter 8

K-39

Eddie and Roy stood next to the van on a bluff overlooking a small, dingy beach. A faded signpost, K-39—the distance in kilometers from the California border—lay off to the side, knocked over by territorial surfers. Brown, muddy, and cobbled with stones, the beach was littered with bits of ancient, surf-polished plastic. The rusted hulk of a truck lay half buried above the high-tide line. They had been surfing until Roy wiped out a few minutes before, gashing his shoulder on a submerged rock. While he whined, Eddie daubed the inch-long cut with Merthiolate from his first aid kit, wondering why Roy, a dolphin in water, was surfing so poorly. It wasn’t the joint Roy had smoked on the drive down—Roy was always high. Yet he seemed skittish. Was he that worried about their border crossing? Overselling, he’d called his plan foolproof so many times that, mocking him, Eddie had taken to labeling everything from his car radio to the impressive surf foolproof. 

Roy tapped the gauze and winced. Lighting a cigarette, he reached for his brush, but cried out in pain attempting to stroke his shoulder-length hair. He switched to his left hand, bent over and slowly, methodically brushed his hair, counting his strokes.

Eddie stowed the kit, pulled a sheet from the van, wedged two corners into its doors, and tied the others to makeshift tent poles, creating a shaded porch. He spread a plastic drop cloth, unzipped his sleeping bag, and the boys sat, propped against the van, protecting themselves from its heating metal with their threadbare Inn towels. “You want to go out again?” asked Eddie. “The ocean’s got to be less germy than half the girls you screw.”

“No way. The salt would sting like hell. Not my day.” Roy threw his head back and drained a beer in one impressive swallow and reached for another. “Cerveza?”

“Nah, I’m good.” Eddie leaned back and looked up at the cotton sheet, the sun working through its worn fibers. He wondered if Roy’s edginess was catching, and checked his hands for tremors. They were steady. He closed his eyes and after a time unmoored, drifting into thoughts of the next two years—at the university—paid for with one day’s work. He saw himself treated as an equal, instead of as an overly clever servant, a dog that could stand on its hind legs. Away from Jonnie. His pleasant reverie meandered until, finishing his second beer, Roy asked, “You ever think about just disappearing? Leaving town, so no one can ever find you again?”

Amused, supposing his drug-dealing friend had ample reason to contemplate getaways, Eddie considered the question, unearthing a distant memory. “Once when I was a kid, I saw a headline in True—something like “50,000 men vanish each year.” I thought it meant getting zapped by some Martian ray-gun so I opened the magazine. But the article was just about husbands taking off. Going out for a loaf of bread and never coming back.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Never coming back.” Roy pressed against the gauze pad on his shoulder. “But have you ever thought about it?” 

 “No,” Eddie said, rueful, kicking at the sand with his sandal, thinking about what might have been. “Why would I? My life vanished on its own.”

“Dude, cut the downer crap. C’mon. How about Montana?”

“No,” said Eddie. “It’d have to be a big city, somewhere you could really hide.”

“Like LA or maybe Frisco?” 

“New York. They’re always finding some Nazi hiding in New York. I’d disappear there, three thousand miles away.” Turning away, he shut his eyes, hoping to revive his pleasant musing.

“New York…” Roy smoked while Eddie dozed, pondering what little he knew about Manhattan: Central Park, the Empire State Building, and what Juan Sierra had told him about Fire Island. Juan, he thought, scratching a nasty itch. Juan would be all right. No one could blame him for Roy’s betrayal. How angry could Ramirez get, he wondered for perhaps the tenth time. Colombia produced tons of cocaine every day, smugglers lost shipments all the time to the border police. Ramirez would get over it. He rose, then trod down to the beach, distancing himself from his treachery. Roy pitied Eddie for a moment but swatted the thought away by assuring himself that Schmidt would change his mind; he would merely arrest him. A couple years in prison was no big deal. Holding his cigarette aloft, he dunked his head in the mottled soapy shore break, careful to keep his shoulder dry. He flicked his yellowed-straw hair back, stretched, and then trembled. Doubts had rushed in, slipping through the cracks of his near sobriety. The Colombians would figure it out, Eddie would get busted at the border, the crooked cop Schmidt would screw him. No, no, no. It would go according to his plan, he insisted, conjuring his magical island of turquoise waters, white sand, heavy-shouldered waves, beautiful girls, and drugs as plentiful as coconuts. 

Time limped in the Mexican heat. At last, the dozing Eddie woke to the strike of a match.

“Here’s the plan,” Roy said, taking a hit from his third joint of the day. “You do some waves or just chill and I’ll go pick up the shit in Rosarito. No risk for Wad. Cool?” High again—his hour in the Garden of Gethsemane past—Roy had consigned one and all to their separate fates and himself to paradise. “Toss me the keys.”

 An hour later, Roy was back. “Wad, I got a joke for you. What’s the difference between dope and blow? I mean, cocaine.”

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing. You get twenty years selling either one,” Roy said.

“What?” Eddie asked, bewildered. 

“The dope dudes gave me a way better offer and we can make some really big bucks.” 

“What the fuck,” cried Eddie, catching on instantly. “You’re talking about smuggling cocaine.”

Roy slid open the van’s door, yanked out a khaki duffel bag. “Check it out.”

Eddie lifted the bag, unhooked the strap, and pulled out a kilogram of Trujillo cocaine. He turned the tannish block over in his hands. It was the size of a shallow shoe box, encased in resin, marked with an inlaid black eagle. He held it at arm’s length, but with interest, a biologist with a viper. 

“This is a kilo? How many did you get?” He noticed another duffel inside the van. 

“Twenty-five.” 

“Do you ever tell the fucking truth, Roy?” Eddie snapped, his anger flaring. “This bag is heavier than fifty pounds, and that one looks full, too.”

“I meant twenty-five in each bag. Why would I shit you when you can count them?” Roy pinched his cigarette between his lips, tucked his hands into his armpits and rocked back and forth, eyeing Eddie. “C’mon, Wad, it’s no big deal.”

“This why you’ve been so jumpy? The penalty for coke is way worse than pot? You lied to me again. Goddamn it.”

“Twenty years is twenty years. But we’re not getting caught.”

 “What’s coke sell for in San Diego?” Examining the rigid kilo, he questioned the eagle’s significance, guessing it was a brand. What little Eddie knew about cocaine came in snippets from the Inn’s fast set: it was the world’s greatest party drug, Freud loved it, Sherlock Holmes used it to solve cases, and coke-fueled sex was amazing. It was the original coca in Coca-Cola, a simple pick-me-up that prohibitionist puritans had outlawed. No one spoke of its Shiva power to destroy. 

“Doesn’t matter, man, we’re just bringing it across, you know, like mailmen. We drop it off tonight to los hombres malos.”

“You bullshitted me again.”

“Five thousand, muchacho.” Roy held up a slender hand with five fingers extended. “Five big ones. The King’s sorry for the surprise, but he’ll make the pot right.” 

“How much is in your can?” Eddie demanded, Roy’s money screaming at him, clouding his judgment, telling him this was his life-changing moment. He knew Roy’s promises were worthless. Any payment had to be cash in hand. 

 “Count it, I don’t know.”

Eddie pulled out a plum from the Maxwell House can. A fat roll of hundreds. “I’ll take it all.” 

“Fuck you, Wad, take it, take it all, I don’t care,” Roy said. “There’s enough for everybody. I’ve got to get back to the hotel, call Tommy’s wife to check on the lane number.”

 “Careful shifting into second this time.” 

“No, dude, I’ll hitch. Can’t cruise with the weight. You guard it.” With that, Roy trudged toward the road. Out of Eddie’s sight, he smiled big, relieved. Then he remembered what he was doing—and who would pay—and glanced back over his shoulder at his boyhood friend with what passed for regret. “Later, Wad.”

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