The Highway Kind(88)

He had paid the Pemex guy back home to give Maria a ride. If it all worked out, and it would work out, he’d give her a big surprise. She couldn’t be expected to walk or take part in this business. But he had plans. Pinche Pemex! He was spending so much on them, he should be made president of the company.

There it was, fat and yellow and beautiful, that pinche surfer van. Two tones of yellow, pearl-white flames painted down its sides. Tinted windows and little curtains. He’d peeked in when it was in the prison lot. He knew there was a bed back there. Phony-ass surfboards still tied to the luggage racks on top. He shook his head. If you’re going to cut off heads, at least be a man. The first thing Benigno was going to do after he killed El Surfo was get rid of that garbage.

He kept walking. The sicarios standing guard watched him and sneered. Some of them had those long narco boots, with toes so extended that they curled upward for six extra inches and looked like genie slippers. Black cowboy hats. Gold belt buckles with AK-47 insignias. He nodded. They nodded back. Some old bastard hauling a hose down the street.

He coiled the hose in an alley when night fell and made a nest there and slept the sleep of the righteous with his head on the paper bag.


When he’d lost his job at La Mesa, he and Abigail were even more dependent on the Baptists. Word went out in the barrio that Benigno had a crazy woman in his house. Maria would step outside completely naked, and Abigail would chase her back in with the broom. Cops sometimes drove down the alley and paused outside the house. Benigno knew it was only a matter of time. Some bad men of one stripe or another would come along wanting to know who she was and where she’d come from. He was sure the cartel would want to finish the job of protecting Surfo from further hassles. When the Baptists told him they needed a new director for their Casa de Luz orphanage south of Ensenada, he immediately volunteered. Abigail didn’t fight him—a house near the beach? A paycheck and no rent? Away from Tijuana? In her mind, an endless supply of gringo Cristiano goods and utter cachet in her new village. She was delighted.

Aside from the Bible studies and no tequila, it was a good life.

Soon, though, Benigno started to chafe. All the hubbub, all the noise, the smell of kids. It made him mad. He was old now. He just wanted to sleep. He didn’t need much. He needed a room to himself. No snoring Abigail. No six a.m. shouting kids. Well, maybe Maria laughing quietly.

When he was a boy, homesteading the garbage dump in Mexicali with his mother, he loved his small hut made of box slats and plastic sheets. A tidy den where he could hide and dream his days away. There was a spot behind the orphanage. Flat. About ten feet above the high-tide line. He imagined his little hideout there. Maybe get the missionaries to bring him some old American garage doors to hammer into an extra room—he could dig his own outhouse. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Sit out there as long as he wanted, staring out at the waves. Yes.

It was more of his general bad luck when that damned yellow van showed up in Sal Si Puedes. Two years of peace and here was the narco again. He walked down the stony road and stared at the back end of the VW sitting beside the little cantina by the Pemex. There was a four-room motel behind it, and stooges could be seen carrying Surfo’s gym bag to one of them.

Benigno rubbed his jaw and spit and cursed. He was startled when that redheaded asshole stepped out of the bar and waved at him. He was hitting a bottle of Carta Blanca pretty hard. Benigno realized that El Surfo had no idea who he was. He lifted one hand and nodded. Surfo urinated in the street.

The whole plan presented itself like a revelation from Jesus.

Benigno slapped his own forehead.

Surfo zipped up and went back inside.

Yes. Benigno was a genius. He would hop on his little motor scooter and putt up to Wilo’s first thing in the morning. The mule. The garden hose. He rushed back to the house and wheeled the little spindly bike over to the Pemex and put gas in its tank. He didn’t have to drive a car to get around. It was like the super-bicycle. Pedal until you were up to speed and hit the little motor and fly. He didn’t even wear a helmet, just chugged along at five miles an hour.

He put down the kickstand and left the bike chained to a short white steel pole behind the station. No need to wake Abigail pedaling it ten times to get it started in the morning. He’d sneak away and be back before lunch, he thought.

Morning.

He was so happy. He went to the bathroom, where ten pestilential stalls sat in open cubbies. A flimsy plywood wall whitewashed and nailed to uprights separated the boys from the girls. He had been having some problems with their filthy toilet habits lately. He took a small can of black paint and a narrow brush and painted directions on the wall above the sink: DON’T SHIT ON THE FLOOR. DON’T WIPE WITH YOUR FINGERS. DON’T

WIPE YOUR FINGERS ON THE WALL.

Maria followed him out of the orphanage building.

“Go home,” he said.

She turned around and went back inside.

He walked down to the Pemex. His motorbike was crushed and bent against the pole. The pump attendant came out from the garage, wiping his hands on a blue windshield cloth. Benigno was speechless. He just pointed.

“The Volkswagen,” the man said. “Backed out. They were laughing.”

Benigno had taken the Pepsi bottles out of the trash and filled them and started walking. Dirty sons of whores. He saw it was his destiny now. It was always meant to be.

He’d walked up the frontage road, figuring he could trudge along beside the highway. It was fairly flat all the way to Ensenada. But he came up out of the Sal Si Puedes access road and realized why Surfo had come to town. The little cement bridge over the Baja California highway had three naked bodies hanging from it, dangling from nooses. Cops had shut down the roadway and stood atop the bridge staring stupidly at the dead men. That fat bastard had come into town and killed fishermen!