The Hemingway Thief (25 page)

Dutch drove. He was on loan to us, along with a gunny sack full of weaponry from Elmo. The pickup truck we were in was Dutch's and was part of the package. We drew straws for our seats. I was lucky enough to be crammed in the cab with Dutch, the leather satchel tucked between us and out of sight. Grady and Milch rode in the bed, flailing and cursing as we bounced along, with nothing but a thin layer of hay to protect their hindquarters. It was only a fifteen-mile drive, but Dutch thought it would take about an hour. The road was a smattering of dust and rubble spread over a series of rocky shelves that looked like they'd been under mortar attack for the last twenty years. Dutch manhandled the gearshift with gusto, turning the wheel like he was steering a teacup at Disney World. My tailbone steadily made its way toward my brainstem, and I knew I would be at least half a foot shorter by the time we got to the camp.

Sleep would have been impossible even without the cacophony of the truck's diesel and the hammer-and-anvil cracking going on beneath the chassis. Dutch proved to be a dedicated storyteller, and he refused to let the ambient decibel level, or even obvious lack of interest from his audience, dissuade him from spinning tales about his life in the Madres. But he'd given me a pack of cigarettes when I'd only tried to bum one, so I decided to like him.

“I wish I could hire Pieta to kill the mochomos,” Dutch said, gunning the engine and swerving around a coyote carcass. Mochomos were the red, swarming, ravenous leafcutter ants that made their home in the Madres. In the epic tale of Dutch's life, the mochomos, like Tolkien's orcs, were a constant threat and convenient shorthand for all the little problems in his world. The mochomos' favorite meal was the marijuana leaf; the same leaf Dutch had dedicated his life to perfecting.

Dutch had been born Moonshadow Kesey Dubois to an obscure beat poet going by the name Denim and working out of the Haight in San Francisco. Denim disappeared a year later during the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. All accounts confirmed that she had dropped a blotter of acid at the beginning of “Sympathy for the Devil,” but by the time Mick Jagger laid tracks for troubadours she had vanished. Young Dutch had been left in the studio apartment of the man most likely to be his father, known to his child and the rest of the world as Monkey Vest. Monkey Vest continued to care for the child while using his horticulture degree to pursue ever more potent strains of
Cannabis sativa
. Dutch credits Monkey Vest as developing the early prototypes of aeroponics, along with a rare strain known as Millennium Vulcan.

“'Course Dad never had to deal with the mochomos,” Dutch said. Dutch had been his father's lab assistant and later his salesman. He had been in his thirties when his father sent him on a trip to Mexico to research and sample some of the amazing strains that had been emerging from the region. He was in Acapulco when he received the news that Monkey Vest had been killed. A former Grateful Dead roadie cum ad exec had succumbed to a horrific acid flashback and leapt from the forty-sixth floor of the Transamerica Pyramid. Monkey Vest had been stopped in front of the building, finishing a hot dog, at that very moment.

“Lost both my parents because of LSD,” Dutch said with a woeful sniff. “I don't remember nobody ever jumping off a building 'cause they were on mota, ya know?” After the news of his father's death, Dutch wandered around Mexico, hiring out his green thumb to whoever needed it. He had worked for all of the major cartels at one time or another. By the end of the nineties, he had created a niche market for himself teaching wealthy Americans how to set up small, easy-to-care-for, hydroponic labs in the garages of their luxurious vacation homes.

“That's where Elmo found me,” he said. “I was setting up a lab for the son of some big shot LA politician. We had been partying nonstop for like a week. Woke up in the pool of one a them luxury resorts in La Paz. The people I was with had bolted and the hotel owner was calling the cops. Elmo was there. Don't ask me why. He was wearing one a them terry-cloth robes and eating a big ole hamburger. He tells the owner I'm with him and buys me lunch. By the time we finished coffee, I was joined up with him. Been battling the fucking mochomos ever since.”

Dutch was not excited about taking us to Ebenezer's camp, and I could understand his apprehension. Dutch was a grower, not a fighter. Before we hit the road again, I was hoping that anyone out of Elmo's outfit would be equally adept with a gun as Digby—a leading-man type. Dutch was more of a narrator. It made me nervous.
I
was the Nick Caraway in this troupe, and we didn't need another one. What we needed was a killer.

“And you're a writer?” Dutch said. It took me a moment to realize it was a question. It was the first time Dutch had deigned to include me in the conversation. The pause must have been longer than Dutch cared for because he pushed on without an answer. “You don't want to talk about it, that's fine. Ebbie told me all about it while we were packing the truck.”

“What did he tell you?” I asked. Dutch pursed his lips and looked at a crack in the dashboard plastic, mulling over what he wanted to tell me. “Come on, Dutch. What did he say?”

“He said you wrote a bunch of chick books,” Dutch said. Then he saw the look on my face and added, “His words, not mine.”

“It's alright,” I said, and leaned my head back against the headrest's worn fabric. “He's not wrong. They're pretty shitty.”

“You think you're a shitty writer,” Dutch said.

“Yeah. Every writer thinks they're shitty,” I said.

“Do people buy your books?” Dutch asked.

“In droves.”

“Then they're not so shitty.”

“Dutch, just because something sells doesn't mean it's any good,” I said, aware of the condescension in my voice. “That
Transformers
sequel is one of the twenty-five highest grossing movies of all time.”

“I never saw that one,” Dutch said.

“You're a better man for it,” I said. Dutch smiled and downshifted as the suspension contended with another series of boulder-size rocks in the road.

“But this Hemingway guy,” Dutch said. “He's big-time, right? Even I've heard of him.”

“Yeah, he's a pretty big deal,” I said with a chuckle. A hole in the road caught a tire, and Dutch swung the wheel wildly to regain control. “He's maybe the greatest American novelist, although there are a few other contenders.”

“So, you've read all his books?”

“I've read a couple,” I said. “
The Old Man and the Sea
in high school, and couple of others in a class I took in college.
Death in the Afternoon
was interesting.”

“But you own all of his books, right?” Dutch said. “You're going to read them.”

“Probably not,” I said with a shrug.

“And he's the greatest American novelist,” Dutch said.

“That's what they tell me,” I said.

“Why?”

“It would take too long to explain.”

“You like beer?” Dutch said. I was glad he'd changed the subject.

“Sure.”

“What do you drink?”

“Whatever's available,” I said. Dutch sucked his teeth and shook his head.

“That's a shame,” he said. “'Cause there is some really good beer out there; craft beers with all sorts of flavor. There are some real artists brewing today. I brew my own. Spent the last couple of years learning how to homebrew, refining my palate, learning about what makes a beer good or bad.”

“So what makes it good?” I asked.

“It would take too long to explain,” Dutch said, in a dead-on mimic of my patronizing voice. “It takes a lot of work to be a connoisseur of beer. Had to study the different strains of hops and their various smells. Had to teach my tongue to get the subtle complexities and fruity undertones of each brew. It's taken a long time is my point.”

“I see,” I said.

“Still,” Dutch said, and clicked his tongue. “Nothing's better than an ice-cold Pabst on a hot afternoon.”

“That's comforting,” I said.

“Is it?”

Elmo had a reason for sending Dutch as our guide rather than a hard-nosed gun tough. The Monte was a closed society. Your passport was whom you knew, the names and acquaintances you could rattle off when questioned by a stranger. It was uncommon to be allowed into a place you hadn't been before, and it was impossible to do so without at least a reference. Dutch, out of all the men and women in Elmo's camp, was the most well-known and universally liked in the Madres. His wanderings as a traveling weed cultivator had put him in the good graces of everyone from the narcos to the legitimate farmers. He may not have been the best with a gun, but his connections would make it less likely we would need one.

Ebenezer's camp was located on the outskirts of a small village named Pobo. It had been formed in the midsixties when the families that made up the local
ejido
had huddled their homes together for the illusion of security. The
ejido
eventually failed, and the village was taken over by a small-time
narcotraficante
who shared his name with the Mexican colloquialism for the AK-47, El Cuerno de Chivo—the goat's horn. Pobo was the perfect site for El Cuerno's operation, as it abutted the mouth of a small canyon with high, inaccessible walls. The other end of the canyon, where Ebenezer had built his camp, emptied onto a plateau high above a wide river. If anyone unfriendly ever came a-callin', El Cuerno could order his men into the canyon, where they could live off of a cache of supplies kept under the canyon's natural protection. Of course, Dutch had once worked for El Cuerno and was still held in high regard for his rehabilitation of the
ejido
land into a vibrant marijuana plantation.

The town—more of a compound than a village, really—consisted of a series of low-slung wood–and-stucco buildings that all looked like they were about to collapse. A barbed-wire fence extended around the length of the village with a high gate made up of rebar and scavenged highway barriers in the center. When he spotted the gate as it emerged over the horizon, Dutch reached back and knocked on the rear window. Grady opened it and slid his head inside.

“Please tell me we're there,” Grady said. We hit a bump and his head collided with the roof. “Fuck.”

“Yes, we're almost there,” Dutch said. “You should know the last time someone these men didn't know tried to pass through here, they tied him to a chair and hammered a six-inch galvanized nail through his scrotum.”

“OK,” Grady said, and started to pull his head back through the window. Dutch grabbed Grady's collar, but not roughly.

“Just saying, you might want to try being polite. No cop stuff,” he said. “They don't like strangers. Tell Ebbie, too. Just sit in the back. Don't smile. Don't speak. Don't look them in the eye.”

“Got it,” Grady said. We hit another bump and his head cracked against mine. “Fuck,” we said together.

“One more thing,” Dutch said. “They tug down on the brim of their hats, you get down flat and hold on.”

“Why,” Grady said.

“It means they intend to kill us,” Dutch said. “It's like a warning. Like a tradition. Don't ask me why. I don't get it either.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Three Mexicans stood by the gate. Dutch insisted there were more out of sight—at least one sniper. They were dressed alike, in black silk shirts festooned with embroidered skulls and roses, unbuttoned down to the navel. They were bulging and out of shape, but no less menacing for the AKs they held, the stocks propped against their hips and the barrels pointed at the cloudless sky. Dutch slowed to a crawl and stopped fifteen yards from the gate, allowing the men to come to him.

“
Mira, está
Dutch
,” the one approaching the driver's side said to the others through a mouth missing several teeth.

“
Y otros
,” the one on my side said. He poked his head inside, along with the gun barrel, and I could smell several terrible and unidentifiable odors. The third stood in front of the truck and put his snakeskin boot on the bumper.

“
Hola
,
Jorge
,” Dutch said he put his elbow on the open window and poked his head out. “
Cómo está
El Cuerno.
”

“He skinned a thief this morning,” Jorge said in English. The language shift was clearly for my benefit.

“Not wise to steal from El Cuerno,” Dutch said. I hazarded a glance behind me. Milch and Grady were sitting with their legs crossed, heads down, and their hands clearly visible on their knees.

“No, not wise at all, Dutch,” Jorge agreed.

“How are the crops?”

“Goddamn mochomos,” Jorge said. “You have gringos in your car.”

“The old place through the canyon. The gringo in the back is the grandson, uh,
nieto
, to the guy used to live there.” Dutch said.

Jorge nodded and stuck out his lower lip, considering this information. “So?” he said.

“Wants to see his grandfather's place,” Dutch said. “Might want to take some family items.”

“Take?”

“Nothing valuable,” Dutch said with a noncommittal shrug. “A suitcase with some old letters. You think El Cuerno would mind?”

“And the others?”

“Ex-pats from the
Estados
. Might want to join up with Elmo. Showing them around,” Dutch said.

The unnamed Mexican at my window leaned in closer and sniffed at me.

“Ex-pat? They make you leave?” he said.

“More or less,” I said. We were supposed to be wanted criminals lamming it in the Madres. It was a common story, and one El Cuerno's people were likely to believe. The trick was trying to act tough enough to make it believable without pissing them off.