Fifty Grand

8 THE GARAGE

When I was thirteen I won a poetry competition-the Dr. Ernesto Guevara Young Poets’ Prize. The competition was open to all children under the age of sixteen, though really it was open only to the children of Party members. The prize was a trip to St. Petersburg to study composition at the Pushkin School. My poem wasn’t very good, it was about the harbor lights on Havana Bay watching themselves on a still January night. I imagined all the events the harbor had seen over the last five hundred years and wrote about them. The metaphors were weak, the images childish, and the good bits were echoes from José Martí and García Lorca. It was a bad poem but my father knew how to play the game. He changed my title from “Night Harbor” to “Time Can Be Either Particle or Wave” and threw in a line about quantum physics. It was the early 1990s. Things were changing in Cuba. We were ending our ties with Russia, America had a new president, and for a brief while all things seemed possible. It wasn’t quite our Prague Spring but it was something. The judges read my poem and lapped it up. I won the prize and at a big ceremony in the Teatro Karl Marx I got a medal from Vilma Espín-Mrs. Raúl Castro.

Of course they never flew me to St. Petersburg. The trip kept getting pushed back and pushed back and finally, after Dad defected, it was quietly forgotten about. I didn’t write any more poems after that. But the point of this story isn’t my aborted poetry career, or the evils of the Party, or my father’s cunning-no, the point is the change of title. “Night Harbor” would never have won anything, but “Time Can Be Either Particle or Wave” sounded very hip back then. As Dad said, you’ve got to give people what they want, not what they need. You have to change yourself to fit the circumstances. When you’re an undercover detective you have to own every room you’re in.

Like a lot of actors I began with the clothes. I had bought an outfit in Mexico City, an expensive-looking dark gray suit: pencil-thin skirt, light, well-cut jacket, white blouse, black stockings, black high-heeled patent leather shoes, black fake Gucci clutch purse. I’d had to spot clean the jacket since it had been tossed from my bag and had lain on the desert floor while I killed two men.

I had the suit, I had the lie, I had a card.

My voice wasn’t my voice. My face wasn’t my face. Red lips, dark eyes, and that unpleasant local look-a thick layer of orange bronzer that made the skeletal Fairview women resemble victims of some nuclear disaster.

There wasn’t much I could do with my hair but I had gelled it for more bulk and I sat with the poise of an American businesswoman, cross-legged, relaxed, coolly regarding the glossy magazines in the waiting room.

Marilyn, the blond, good-looking, fortysomething secretary, finally announced me: “Miss Martinez from Great Northern Insurance,” she said.

I entered the office.

“Miss Martinez,” the man said, not getting up from his desk.

“Mr. Jackson,” I replied with a smile and passed him the card with the fictitious name and cell phone number.

“I’m a very busy man, what’s this about?” he asked, taking the card Ricky had made for me, crumpling it, and throwing it in a wastebasket.

“The next piece of paper I’m going to give you will be a subpoena, I hope you take better care of that,” I said, annoyed but inwardly thanking him for letting me enter the role without the necessity of small talk.

“You can’t touch me, you’re not a cop,” he said with a little tremor.

“No?” I said with a look that told him I knew everything. Every little scam he’d pulled over the last five years. A bend of the law here, a few false accounts there. There wasn’t a garage in the world that hadn’t defrauded an insurance company at some point, and the Pearl Street Garage of Fairview, Colorado, was surely no different.

He grimaced. His mouth opened and closed like a dying snapper.

I sat back in the chair. Breathed. Watched.

The TV news tells us that Americans are all bloated capitalists but this was not the case in Colorado. The trophy wives on Pearl Street, the Hollywood types, the hardworking Mexicans in the Wetback Motel-lean. Mr. Jackson was no exception. Mid-fifties, but trim. Skinny arms, prominent Adam’s apple, dyed black hair, and dead, beady, blue-black eyes. Like those of a stuffed animal. I had the feeling that Mr. Jackson was one of those people undergoing a starvation diet in the hope of living longer.

There was certainly something not quite together about him.

Sweat on the temple. Tremble in the lip.

It made me depressed. Did everyone have a dark secret? Did everyone lie? No wonder cops got worse as they got older. Ten years in you’d need a machete to cut through the layers of cynicism.

I couldn’t bear to look at his face so I examined his clothes. A color-blind ensemble. Beige shirt, purple slacks, bright red tie with some kind of crest on it. After the clothes the room. Neat freak. A few landscapes on the wall. Empty desk. Phone. Pic of wife and four kids. A long sofa where he and Marilyn probably fucked.

Behind him, in the distance, I could see a ski lift carrying little empty chairs up a mountain. Empty because there wasn’t much snow, I assumed. I watched them for a while.

The silence cracked him, as I knew it would.

People, and especially people in sales, hate quiet. It reminds them of the eternity of lost mercantile opportunities under the coffin lid.

He fished the card from the trash. “Inez Martinez, Great Northern Insurance,” he read slowly. I nodded. “What can I do for you, Miss Martinez?”

“I’m investigating a fraudulent insurance claim,” I began. “I think you know what I’m talking about.”

His face whitened and he sat on his hands to stop them shaking. Christ, this character would last precisely thirty seconds in one of my basement interrogation rooms.

“I, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Mr. Jackson, let me put your mind at rest, this has nothing whatsoever to do with your garage or the work you’re doing.”

An all-too-visible sigh of relief. Come mierda, lela, you should be on the stage, you’d be too big for the movies, but perfect for the theater. Everything’s right there on your face.

“You’re not investigating us? But why would you? We run a very tight ship here. That kind of thing is a stranger to our… I mean, we’re not the… What I mean is, we always maintain the highest standards of…” He lost his train of thought.

“Mr. Jackson, my company’s experience with your garage has always been first-rate, so let me just say again that this is nothing to do with you or the work you’ve done for us.”

His smile broadened and I knew I had to hit him now while the relief endorphins were at full tilt. “It’s nothing major, but my supervisor in the fraud department asked me to come up here and ask you for a favor since he knew I was going to be in Denver for a quite different matter,” I said.

“Of course. What can I help you with?” he asked.

“Well, as you know, fraud is most common in cases of personal injury, but sometimes we do see it in fully comprehensive cases too. It’s unusual but it does happen.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

Thin smile, more sweat.

“Generally it’s not worth the risk unless you have double or even triple insured yourself. With different insurance companies, of course.”

Mr. Jackson nodded enthusiastically. “God, yeah, I see what you’re saying. Someone had an accident. We did the work and he claimed it off more than one insurance company, is that what you’re talking about?”

“Exactly.”

“So, like you said, this, uh, wouldn’t be a reflection on the work we’ve done. We’d be, uh, we’d be-”

“Tangential.”

“Yeah, yeah, tangential. Hit the nail on the head. Ok, what do you want me to do?”

“Since this is an ongoing investigation I am not permitted to reveal particulars of the case.”

“No, of course not.”

“What I need are your records for the last week of May.”

“Of this year? May 2007?”

“Yes.”

“No problem. Hold on.”

He pressed an intercom on his desk. “Marilyn, can you bring me the accounts book for May, the red one. The red one,” he said.

She brought the red book. The official book, not the real book with what things actually cost. I scanned the names.

The two names for the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth were the same ones that Ricky had already found. I passed the book back.

Two minutes’ work. Two thousand miles. Two dead men.

“Is that it?” he asked.

That was it. Marilyn saw me out.

Pearl Street was busy. Zombie perras in high-heeled boots, bearded men in sandals and ripped jeans. Pepper-spray perfume. Mustard-gas aftershave.

I started to lose character. Shoulders drooped. Face relaxed.

“Miss Martinez?”

I turned. Marilyn.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Jackson remembered something else that might be of use.”

Back inside.

The office again. Stuffed animal eyes. Fuck sofa. Empty ski lift. His stomach making a rumbling noise.

“Yes?”

“Look, I don’t know if this is important or not.”

“Go on.”

He coughed. “Well, like I say, I don’t know if this is a big deal or not but two other people have been asking questions about our records for the end of May.”

“Have they?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if I-”

“One of them was a Latino reporter from Denver, a few weeks back, apparently he talked to one of our mechanics.”

Ricky.

“Who was the other?”

“Sheriff Briggs.”

The day departing behind mountains, saying goodbye with yellow hands and an orange-colored carapace.

Angela shook her head and dissolved in the lotus light. “It’s not just that Esteban pays shit and he’s unreliable. He drinks and he has a gun and he deals drugs.”

Paco looked at me with stupid, tired eyes. “What are you going to do, María?” he asked.

I was dead tired too. I didn’t want to make a thing of it.

“I’m staying,” I said simply.

The Volkswagen microbus honked its horn. Luisa slid open the side door and waved to hurry us up. I acknowledged her wave and shook my head.

“I don’t know,” Paco said.

“We’d like you to come,” Angela said, touching him on the arm.

“Jualo and all my crew are at the other motel on I-70, some of them are in Denver, are you gonna take those guys?” Paco asked.

Angela shook her head. “We’ve got room for two more. Come with us, Francisco. Come on, we want to have you, things will be better in L.A., please come,” Angela insisted.

She hadn’t begged me this much. She liked him. She was a sensible girl. She’d be good for him.

“Listen to her. You should go, Paco, you’ll have more opportunities in Los Angeles,” I said.

“But Esteban’s done so much for us,” he replied lamely.

“Fuck Esteban,” Angela muttered.

The VW honked again.

“Vamonos!” someone shouted.

“Well?” Angela asked.

“How far is L.A.?” Paco wondered.

Angela shrugged. “L.A.? I think it’s just over the mountains. A few hours. Not far. Not very far.”

“Do you have a map?” Paco asked.

Angela was getting impatient. “I don’t know. L.A. is huge. You can’t miss it. You just keep going west.”

Paco looked at me. It was hard, if not impossible, to read him but I had a stab: “Francisco, my friend, my brother, do not feel that you have an obligation to stay here because of me. I am able to look after myself,” I said in formal Spanish.

He grinned. “María, that I know only too well. But we’ve been through a lot together and I don’t want to go anywhere without you,” he said, and his eyes flicked down to the motel parking lot to cover his embarrassment.

“You could make a lot more money in L.A.,” I tried.

“So could you.”

Angela spat. “You’re both crazy,” she muttered. “Come on, I need an answer.”

“I’m not going,” I said.

“Me either,” Paco agreed.

Angela nodded. “Well, it’s your funeral,” she said in English.

I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. Paco hugged her. She ran across the parking lot and Luisa helped her into the VW.

They waved as they drove out, honking the horn and flashing the lights like they were going to a fair, which I suppose they were, after this shitty town.

Lucky they left when they did. Twenty minutes after they made the highway Esteban’s Range Rover pulled in.

Paco and I retreated to the kitchen to prepare dinner but one of Esteban’s remaining goons must have told him what had happened, because soon after we heard him yelling and screaming and running from room to room to see who was missing. When he found us in the kitchen he wasn’t relieved, he was pissed off. “They didn’t want you? What’s your fucking problem?” he demanded.

“Watch your language, there’s a lady present,” Paco said.

Esteban snorted, glared at us, and then left without saying anything more.

“Dinner?” Paco asked.

“I’ll make something,” I said, more than happy, again, to cook for someone else. For a man.

I opened the freezer and found strip steak. I fried it in garlic and olive oil.

We could still hear Esteban outside yelling and ranting like a child but we ignored him. In another pan I fried squash and plantains. Paco put on the rice.

He cut me two kiwifruits and an orange.

The juice ran over his fingers and for a moment I wanted him to feed me the fruit from his sticky hands. His hair had fallen over his face again and he smelled of pine and sun.

I took a beer from the fridge and pressed it against my forehead and asked him to set the table.

There were at least a score of other people in the motel at that moment and most of them worked for Esteban, but even so, for some reason, when he’d calmed down he came back to us.

He was carrying a bottle of tequila and three glasses.

“Excuse me,” he said when he saw that we were eating.

“Pull up a chair,” Paco said.

“Join us,” I agreed.

I halved my steak and gave him rice and a tortilla.

He poured three measures of tequila.

“Salud,” he muttered.

We knocked back the tequila and Esteban refilled our glasses.

“Eat something,” I said.

He ate. “Not bad,” he admitted.

“How are you doing after this morning?” I asked him.

Esteban grunted and told Paco an abbreviated and much more heroic account of this morning’s episode with the sheriff.

“Sheriff seems to have a lot of power around here,” I said.

“Don’t worry about him. I have him in my pocket. He’s a fool, he acts big but he has the brain of a cow.”

“I heard some of the guys say he was in the war. He was in Iraq,” Paco said.

“No, no, not this war, the first one. He was in the Marines. He was in Kuwait. Not this one,” Esteban said with a dismissive sniff.

“He is a frightening man,” I found myself saying.

And he did frighten me. Why was he at the garage? Why was he looking into the accident? What was his angle? Something Ricky missed?

“Worry not, little rabbit. He is nothing. If this were Mexico I would deal with him, but here…” Esteban muttered and waved his hand in the air with contempt.

“He seems to have a finger in a lot of pies,” I asked, probing perhaps too hard. Esteban glanced at me, took another sip of tequila. His eyes narrowed a little and even Paco gave me a second look.

Too many questions.

I played meek, eating, looking down at my plate. I tuned out as the boys talked soccer. Esteban swallowed tequila, two shots for every one of ours.

Finally he stopped eating, banged the table with the flat of his hand, looked at me, time traveled back to the end of our conversation.

“No, don’t worry about him. He thinks he’s a player. He thinks he runs this town. If truth be told, it’s me-I run it. He doesn’t know half of what’s going on. Not half of it. Motherfucker, he’ll get his one day, you’ll see. You’ll see.”

His eyes dark, violent.

I thought about his Range Rover.

Of course, as Ricky pointed out, if you were very stupid, or very bold, you could hit a man, kill him, and never bother to get the car repaired at all, just drive around without a care in the world, knowing that up here the life of a dead Mex wasn’t worth a goddamn thing.

Esteban swallowed the last of his steak, smacked his lips. His cheeks were red, his face puffed.

I switched the conversation back to sports and Esteban tried to explain the difference between rugby and American football. Of all the subjects I wasn’t interested in, this proved to be near the top.

Time dragged.

When he was finished with his meal Paco thanked me solicitously and gave Esteban such a black look that despite his mood he remembered his manners. “Oh, this was perfect, María, thank you so much for making it for us,” he said. “There’s nothing like good food to raise your spirits.”

“It’s just something I threw together,” I replied, finding that I wasn’t immune to the compliment.

“No, no, it was delicious,” Esteban replied.

We had no sweetmeats but we had cigarettes and the rest of the tequila.

We moved together to the upstairs balcony of the motel.

Esteban stared at us and shook his head. “They didn’t trust you. Too new. Fuckers. Ungrateful fuckers. I’ll show them,” he said, and he stomped off to his suite at the east end of the motel.

“He’s drunk,” I said to Paco.

“No, he can hold it better than that,” he replied.

But either I was right or Esteban had serious mental problems, because a couple of minutes later he came out of his room with a hunting rifle. He shot it into the woods half a dozen times yelling Chinga tu madre and other obscenities, and when he tired of that he went into his room and turned on his Mexican polka music at full blast, singing along, shouting the lyrics over the desultory sound of electric accordions.

“This place is messed up. We should have gone to L.A. with the others,” Paco said sadly.

“You should have gone, I need to be here,” I replied.

Paco looked at me for a long time. He could sense that I was keeping something back. “Tell me,” he said, at last.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said weakly.

“Oh, I know this one,” Paco said.

I listened to the tune but I didn’t recognize it.

“I don’t know it.”

“Really? It’s called ‘Ghost Dance,’ it’s very popular. It’s about the Day of the Dead,” Paco said, giving me another skeptical look.

“Blood and death! Blood and death!” Esteban was shouting until he grew hoarse.

Eventually the tape stopped and someone helped Esteban into bed.

The clouds cleared. Mars rose between the branches of a blue spruce, and after Mars, Venus and then the big glassy seashore of stars, the Via Lactea.

“Hell with this, let’s go to bed,” I muttered.

Paco smiled.

“Separately,” I clarified.

“Of course,” he replied with an even bigger smile.

But neither of us moved.

We sat there, smoking, listening to the silence and gazing at the Milky Way.

It was quiet now and I felt strangely at ease here in the town where my father had found comfort and lived and loved. “It won’t last,” I said.

“It never does,” Paco said.

It never does because waiting in the wings are blood and death.

“Blood and death,” I whispered, and Paco grinned.