Page 52 of A Long Con

Royal asked, “Haole? White guy?”

“Right. I don’t know what Myra sees in him.”

“Money?” I suggested.

Levi sunk his hands deeper in his pockets. “Must be it.”

Since we didn’t want to give away that we were planning to commit a crime on rez land, we shut the hell up until we saw the body. It was halfway hidden by a gnarled, windblown Utah juniper. Men had already started digging, and one guy was wrapping two lengths of rebar into a makeshift cross using leather strips. Royal took up the absent guy’s shovel and nudged me with an elbow.

“You okay with this?”

I tried not to look at the corpse, but it is human nature to want to gape. Shoeless for some reason, his bluish feet looked wrapped in beautiful Japanese rice paper. Actually, I knew from drawing cadavers in school that under the skin, maggots were eating channels of fat. His white T-shirt was yanked up to reveal a belly button squirming with these creatures like grains of rice. But what really sent a knife into my gut was his hands. It looked like he wore clear surgical gloves, the way the skin of the entire hand was slipping off.

I cringed and turned away, toward the guy making the cross. Reminded me too much of Split’s hands as they reached up from the steamy manhole, begging for salvation in his last moments.

“Sit down,” said Royal. “There’s not another shovel anyway.”

What had Split done to deserve such a finale? Indeed, what had Manuel Rivera of Honduras done to earn this fate? Would I die a gruesome death next, because I was too kind to hurt a fly, or a stiff cat cadaver with both eyes on the same side of its head? Or maybe I’d be forced to linger until age 100, sick and infirm, lonely and friendless, to pay God back for the crime of being such a nice guy?

I sat next to the cross-maker and stared at Rivera’s Honduran identification card, tossed on the ground next to a beaded crucifix he must’ve been wearing. The cross-maker had a blue Sharpie and wrote “No Olvidado” on the metal rebar.

“Not forgotten,” the craftsman told me.

I took up his pen and added corny hearts to the cross.

It was pretty much pitch black when we stumbled back to our rides.

“You guys live in California?” I asked Tyler. I’d overheard that.

“Yup. Almost all of us do, except for Levi of course.”

“And you come all this way?”

“Yup. We all work regular day jobs. There’s a graveyard of the forgotten in California near the desert where we bury some that have family looking for them. This guy didn’t, and it’s more imperative to bury the body fast. We turn over their effects to the coroner’s office, just in case someone later comes looking.”

Carlos said, “This guy had eleven dollars.”

Well. I may have had a frozen twin in my freezer, but I had more than eleven dollars, a house, and a man I loved. If I was bitten by a rattlesnake out here, Royal would probably go chase down my next of kin. Who is . . . With a shock, I realized my next of kin was probably my aunt in Phoenix.

Or, if I marry Royal . . .

What was I thinking? I was glad when we said goodbye to the Samaritans and made our way back to the main drag. Levi had pointed on the GPS to a house which we committed to memory.

“Just get that loser away from Myra,” he’d urged.

Oh, we could do that, all right.

Once he realized we’d broken into his car and stolen our stuff back, he’d be up our asses. I wasn’t even going to offer to pay him for the rug, not after what he’d done to Split. This douchetard deserved no quarter, and with the power of the Bent Zealots on our side, we’d be untouchable. If we were smart.

The rainstorm slammed us in the dark. I was pelted with so many buckets of stinging cold water, I had to spit it from my mouth and nose. During a few gusts, it became sideways rain, and I prayed it wouldn’t turn into slush. I hated riding in that shit.

Within twenty minutes, we hung a left past a Giant gas station and were on Indian Route 59. Here was where the difficulty came in, particularly in the dark, sweeping rain. Levi wasn’t sure about Ira’s vehicle, but he picked out Myra’s house from the other bland, tan military-style houses. He said it’d have a row of white-painted metal stakes out front, the sort to prevent people from driving their car into your living room. Her next-door neighbor had a chain link fence because his Australian shepherd would otherwise bolt.

Indeed, we found the house with the white stakes next door to an Australian shepherd who barked in the rain. A run-of-the-mill Chevy sedan was in the driveway. Living room and bedroom lights were on inside. We rode casually down the road to discuss our plan, stopping in front of another box-like house.

Royal had to spit water as he talked. “Let’s keep our rides here, like behind these garbage cans. You jack the trunk with that crowbar while I get into the window. I know the alarm’ll go off, so we have to be super-fast. You up for it?”

Royal had stolen a crowbar from a gas station. I’d already killed my engine and was taking off my lid, that’s how up for it I was. We walked down the shadowy, rain-swept street like two guys in an old west film looking for a showdown. I actually clapped the crowbar in my palm, and Royal motioned for me to stop. His aura shimmered apple red like a Vegas billboard mingled with the curtains of glittering raindrops. It was almost like he was an illusion, someone beaming up onto the bridge.