The Squeeze
Daniel Navarro



He was mustachioed, stocky, swarthy, with the eyes of a mouse… no, cunning like a shrew’s.
Self-conscious about his short stature he tried to look important by keeping a bulging wad of bills in his shirt pocket.
Crooked teeth flashed in every direction from his broad smile.
Cuco had a sly look, a measuring gaze that was shifty and hard to read behind those drooping eyelids.
At first glance he seemed pleasant enough but a second look revealed a hint of evil.
The police were after him for murder, he knew that.
Yes there had been a fight but no one was supposed to die.
He had found them intimately wrapped around each other in the trailer.
With his pants down around his knees and his brown bottom facing the sky there wasn't much Cuco could say or do except be embarrassed.
The situation couldn't be denied or concealed, caught in the act!
Ever so quick-witted she got dressed in a flash and began sobbing loudly accusing Cuco of forcing himself on her.
The little man's eyes widened in amazement but he kept a protective silence.
With his own mind clear and lucid as ever he admired her quick thinking (it matched the agility of her hips).
She lied and he admitted.
The offended husband wanted blood to avenge this insult.
A shot rang out.
Cuco fell and the scene before his eyes turned misty then vanished.
He was more dead than alive when they found him.
A doctor removed the bullet and prescribed an antibiotic treatment which Cuco followed religiously until he got better.
Weeks later came a loud pounding on the door of his adobe house frightening the turkeys who scattered gobbling.
Alarmed, suspicious, and born nobody’s fool, he hid from sight under the kitchen table.
Glancing up at the windows his fears were confirmed, a police uniform even if incomplete, old and faded still meant trouble.
He stayed hidden all day and slipped out that night crawling through the undergrowth to his compadre Simon’s house, he was wanted by the police for murder, his friend broke the news.

"I swear it wasn’t me compadre!", Cuco repeated while Simon retold what he knew about the death of Celia’s husband.

They had also found the doctor and knew about his wound which seemed to confirm their suspicions making him the prime suspect.

"Besides that, didn’t you have something going with that broad?", Simon asked a surprised Cuco who thinking he had been discreet about Celia began to stutter.

His friend cut him short, "better run man".

Starting to worry Cuco followed his advice.
He decided to lie about his real intentions, just in case, and said " You're right, I'll head for Mexicali".
Then quietly he slipped into the night disappearing between bushes.
Morning saw him in San Quintín heading southeast into a wasteland of empty desert.
Tall cacti grew instead of trees in this region and the cold penetrated his bones.
Although his rig was heavy it felt light without the trailer quietly abandoned in Tijuana.
Next to him in the helper’s seat Celia made hot coffee as he tucked his scarf against the cold not wanting to turn on the heater.
She snuggled up…
He couldn’t stop smiling …and asked her:

“Tell me the truth, you shot him didn’t you?”

” No” she answered in low a voice, “he shot himself.”

Cuco kept quiet, sipped his coffee and stared at the road.
Celia had been there waiting for him, knowing that her lover wouldn’t leave without seeing her again.
It hadn't taken them long to reach the highway in his rig ‘The Squeeze’.

They stopped at a lonely gas station and she went to the bathroom while he topped up the huge diesel tanks, fifteen minutes later Cuco was back in the cab by himself and starting to get impatient.
He walked over to the rest area and yelled through the bathroom door at her to hurry up, no answer.
An hour later he was still waiting there, his resolve gone replaced by growing doubts.
Not knowing what to do he fell into an uncomfortable sleep and woke up with a start some time later to find the truck surrounded by police, “Where’d they come from?” he wondered while the officers cuffed and dragged him out.
Back at the Tijuana jail he was welcomed with flashing cameras and mug shots.
Front.
Back.
Left.
Right.


Next day the papers were filled with accounts describing how thanks to an anonymous informant,

“Cuco, the Tractor Rig Assassin” a “murdering jackal”, had been captured by police.

He was sentenced to 20 years.
The "fearsome killer" was not allowed any visitors.


Eventually public indignation died down a little and his compadre Simon was let in to see him.
They talked mostly about Cuco’s little adobe house and some neighborhood gossip.
On his way out of one day Simon casually dropped “Oh, by the way, Celia’s become pretty cozy with the chief of police."

Outwardly Cuco laughed and thought, “what a motherless bitch”.

“Say hi when you see her compadre”, he answered carelessly lighting up one of the cigarettes she sent him.

In the darkness of prison night, a woman visits a prisoner.
No one suspects, and a pair of sly cunning eyes light up as a voluptuous shape slides into his cell.



Notes.-
www.thestories.net
Written in 2002.

Louis Claveria, transl. Jan. 2003.