Rosarito

Sitting on the rubbled beach awaiting Roy’s overdue return, Eddie scowled at the jammed coffee can at his feet. How would he explain a staggering cash deposit to a skeptical bank teller? Would she press a hidden button for security? Swearing, Eddie suddenly understood why Roy kept his fortune in a can. He rose and, kicking at the packed sand, walked to the tide line, picked up a clutch of smooth stones and skimmed them seaward, occasionally glancing back at the wilting highway. He threw until his arm ached, perhaps twenty minutes, and then dove through the shore break to cool himself. Salt thirsty, he hiked up to the van for one of Roy’s beers. 

He tried reading but was distracted by Roy’s lingering absence. After a time, a crumpled Ford Falcon wheezed onto the cliff, stopping near his van. A young, burly Mexican stepped out.

“Wad?” The Mexican asked. 

“Yeah?” 

The Mexican handed him a torn sheet of paper. “Wad, I got busted. I’m stuck here in Rosareto. Tommy’s ready at 9 in 7. Go thru, then get my car and bring it back so I can give it to these dudes to buy my way out of here. Sign this paper with your real name and give it to this dude so I know you got the messige. Double can for coming back. Hurry this place sucks. King.”

Cursing, Eddie read it again, then jotted his name on the note against the driver’s door. “You speak English? Is Roy OK? What did he do?” 

“OK. Smoking the mary-juana,” the Mexican said, pantomiming smoking, then putting his wrists together in the universal sign of arrest. He stepped toward his car, intent on collecting the other half of the hundred-dollar bill the gringo had torn to assure a round trip.

“Does he really have to bribe the federales with a new car? Isn’t a couple hundred bucks enough?” 

The Mexican shrugged, his Falcon coughing into life. He backed up the hill and drove off. Eddie cursed, then grabbed a rock and hurled it toward the beach. “That fucking idiot. Goddamn it.”

He was in trouble.

Why hadn’t he pressed Roy for details? If only he had a phone number, someone to call for advice, somewhere safe to drop the bags in Mexico. But there was nowhere safe in Mexico. “Like they don’t know you and you don’t know them. That’s as good as it gets, Wad,” Roy had assured him. 

He knew Roy was gutless and would do anything—say anything—to get out of jail. He saw Roy squealing “Edward O’Hare Kawadsky” to his interrogators, switching their roles, claiming that he was the innocent friend along for the surfing. Was Roy stupid enough to tell the cops where to find Eddie and the van? To give him up to get out of jail? No, even Roy had to know that the hombres malos were his bigger problem. But could he take that chance? Eddie had to get out of Mexico. How would the hombres react when their delivery didn’t show up? They would track Roy to the Rosarito jail in a heartbeat and then? Roy would cough up every detail he knew about Eddie to save his own hide, somehow even blaming him for his arrest. Within minutes, the narcotraficantes would know where to find Eddie, and then they would kill him… unless he had every kilo at hand. Even then Eddie knew he would be a loose end to men who dealt summarily with loose ends. He had to get the hell out, but it was hours until he could cross the border in Tommy’s line. 

Methodically, he began to repack the van. Almost without thought, he stashed the duffel bags beneath the foam rubber rectangle that served as his bed, then arranged his bedsheets, his father’s canvas flight bag that served as his laundry bag, and finally the wax-laden surfboards on top. He had to drive the cocaine across the border, hide it somewhere, then hide himself until Roy had satisfied his dealers that their shipment was safe. He would call Mrs. Cross and ask her to have Roy leave a number where he could reach him. But where to hide?

He argued to the sun-whitened sky that drug dealers were businessmen, that they were reasonable, that they would listen as long as their shipment was safe. They wouldn’t knife someone just because he was a witness to their crimes. But the indifferent sky mocked him. 

He plopped down in the shade of the van, dropped his head in his hands, and cried.

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