I adjusted the Harbor Inn bath towel Id wrapped around myself when I stripped off my pee-soaked jeans and drawers and dropped them in the bed of the Apache.
– I know what I owe, Jaime. Ill pay it. Now please, fuck off.
He flapped his arms.
– Yeah, fuck yourself, asshole. Just you better come up with my dough.
He started for the motel.
– Cmon, sis, get my stuff from my room and grab my ride. We can skip the bill. I put it on your dads credit card anyway. And he wont mind. I can crash in Malibu tonight, yeah?
I looked at Soledad.
– You want to ride with him?
She looked at her brothers retreating back.
– No.
– Should I bother asking if you want to ride with me?
She wiped at a clot of eye snot.
– Yeah.
– So you want to ride with me, or what?
– Yeah.
– Get in.
She got in and slammed the door and Jaime turned and watched as I rolled toward the exit.
– Oh, oh yeah, go on, you two, go have fun. Fuckin’ ditchers! Get rid of me and go do your thing!
He walked behind the truck and we drove slow across the lot.
– Just better get me that cash, asshole! You dont, know what happens!
I pulled out, Jaime at our heels.
– Cut you, asshole! Fucking cut you!
We drove.
She fiddled with the chrome knob on Chevs antique truck radio, watching the little red line scan the frequencies, stopping when she found a womans voice singing something slow and very sad in Spanish.
She looked through the windshield at the sign announcing the 405 and 110 interchange.
– You gonna take me home?
I stayed lined up for the 405 North.
– Someplace youd rather be?
She pulled her feet up on the seat and hugged her knees.
– You take me to your home?
I jerked the wheel over, skidding onto the shoulder fifty yards from the split in the freeways. The truck stalled out, headlights spotted on a spider-web of graffiti covering the tall cinder-block wall edging the freeway, traffic barreling past, Spanish song playing on the old speakers.
We looked at each other.
Eyes on mine, she put her head on her knees and started to sing along with the radio. I looked away and stretched my arm behind the seat and felt around and came out with a nine-millimeter bullet like the one that killed her father. I showed it to her.
– Know it?
She stopped singing.
– Its a bullet.
I set it carefully on the dash, business end pointing at the sky.
– Yeah. In somewhat more detail, its a bullet from the nine-millimeter pistol you gave your brother.
She unfolded her legs.
– What?
– Dont what me. Dont. Just. Just tell me thats not a bullet from your gun. Tell me you were never involved with Harris and Talbot and that other hick. Tell me you didnt drag me into all this shit to make it end like this.
– End like?
I banged the dash and the bullet jumped and fell into the footwell.
– Like this! Like its all cleaned up! Like those guys are out of the picture and you dont have to worry about them. Like! Jesus! Like. You know.
I spread my arms.
– This.
I dropped my arms.
She bent and picked up the bullet and rolled it between her fingers.
– Web.
She held up the bullet.
– This isnt from my gun.
She set it on the dash.
I stared at the bullet.
– Well. Good.
She dragged fingers through her hair.
– But if you got that bullet from Jaime, its from one of my dads guns. And I did drag you into things. And I was involved with Harris and those guys.
I slapped my forehead.
– Awww, man! I knew it.
– Listen.
– This is fucked.
– Listen, goddamn it!
I listened.
She stared out at the spray-painted wall and I listened.
– Web, my dad, he was, he was great. A great dad. But he was a dirty businessman. No, thats not true. He was a criminal. A smuggler. And I knew. For a long time. And not just almonds. Other things.
An eighteen-wheeler washed past, its wind rocking the Apache on its shocks.
She watched it disappear down the ramp.
– People. Human trafficking.
She went through her clothes.
– Im out of cigarettes.
She opened the ashtray and found the longest butt she could. She fitted it to her lips and blew through it, then lit it, and the cab filled with smoke.
– Chinese. These people, poor as hell. Poor as. We dont have a frame of reference. They just want a new life. Or something. Freedom. Or something. I dont know. They get locked inside a cargo container. Forty, fifty people. Two weeks on the ocean. A chem toilet. Packaged food. Bottled water. Sometimes, their container gets loaded out of sequence.
She cracked a window and some of the smoke drifted free.
– The people who set this up, they try to arrange it so these cans get loaded onto the ships last, at the top of the stacks. In the air. Sometimes something happens. A can gets mixed up, ends up loading in the hold instead of the deck, buried under dozens of other cans. The heat. No air.
She dropped a spent match out the window crack.
– One time that happened with a can my dad had helped to set up. They all died. Forty.
She looked at me.
– And I found out about that. When he started getting sick, I began taking care of some of the business for him, and I found out about that.
She looked away from me.
– But I didnt. You know, I never did anything. About that. Except I had to talk to him. I. Jesus. It was. He was my dad and hed been involved in this awful thing and I never. I mean, how was that possible? How did he live? Right? I couldnt begin to fathom how he could get up and go to work and, and he was still smuggling. After that. Like. So. And I thought, Maybe Im wrong. I have to be wrong. He couldnt have done that. He couldnt have been responsible for those people and let them die and hid it and never had it show. Because he didnt, you know? Let it show. In himself. I could look at the dates, after I put it together, see when it happened, remember that I was fifteen, remember how there was never a change in how he behaved at home, around me. So I had to be wrong. Because people cant be like that.
She took a drag.
– So I asked him.
She exhaled through the crack, into the air outside.
– I asked him, I asked him if it was true.
She watched the cigarette burn for a while, got tired of watching.
– And he told me it was. He told me he didnt do it anymore. That hed stopped after that. But it had happened. Those people, they come over, they promise to work for someone, pay off the fifty thousand dollars it costs to get here. They become slaves. They go from these miserable lives, to worse. And some die horribly. But he said, he promised, that he didnt do it anymore. Like that made it better.
A crease formed between her eyes.
– And I told him what I thought of that.
She stuck her thumbnail in the crease and pressed till the flesh around it turned white.
– That night he killed himself.
She pressed harder.
– Which could have been his plan all along. Or not. His note didnt spec-ify
She looked at the butt in her hand, frowned, rolled the window down a little more and tossed it out.
– He was wrong about that whole blowing through the filter thing. Doesnt make it any better at all.
She looked at me.
– So where to now?
I started the truck.
I could have told her about her dads continued interest in human trafficking. I could have told her what else he might have been thinking about when he wrote that note. But I didnt much see the point. She was going to know soon enough that hed broken that promise. And I didnt feel like being the guy to tell her.