Fifty Grand

14 KAREN

Blindfolded dawn. Sound, then light. A timer clicks, a motor whirrs, and the curtains pull back by themselves. Snow at morning’s door. A pinkish-white dusting on the balcony rail.

The sun inching over the Front Range but as yet invisible behind a smother of low gray clouds. Above the clouds, a red sky turning American blue.

Hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

Something’s wrong. A shiver.

“Jack?”

But Jack’s asleep. Dreaming of Oscars and Spirit Awards.

I sit up and look around the bedroom.

Maybe Youkilis has come in early.

Maybe I’ve overplayed my hand.

No, the alarm box in the bedroom is still blinking. It hasn’t been disabled. No one’s come in.

Is there someone outside? A deranged fan? I have read about such things in French magazines.

I slip out from between the covers, find a pair of Jack’s sweatpants and one of his T-shirts. I pull on the sweatpants, tie the band tight, and tuck in the T. The T-shirt says “Total Loser” on it. Why would someone buy that? It must be an American joke. How long would I have to be in this country to stop feeling like an alien? Did Dad ever get over it? I think of Mork in that Yuma show from the seventies-that was Colorado too.

I walk to the glass doors and scan the balcony and the gravel drive that leads to the road. Chairs. Bird footprints. Snow. Once I would have run outside. Not now. I’ll never see it again after tomorrow. Not until Jefe and Little Jefe finally go to be with Marx.

Hector’s voice: Well, Mercado, what else do you see with that keen cop eye of yours?

A water tower rising like a Wells tripod from the trees. A breeze ruffling the upper branches. A plane on the approach to Vail.

No psychotic stalkers or fans.

Spotlights at the big Cruise estate at the top of the mountain are making a kind of false dawn. Spotlights and a flashing red landing beacon. The helicopter bringing Mr. Cruise will be here soon.

I walk to the window nearest the bathroom and check the garden and Jack’s car. The gate is closed and the car is still in its spot.

There’s nothing out there, I say to myself.

I sit on the ottoman and pull the hair back from my face. On a desk I find some other one-night stand’s scrunchie and make a short ponytail.

What now?

I could do breakfast, but Jack’s TiVo says it’s only 6:15. Too early to get up quite yet.

I don’t want to go for a walk. I don’t want to sit here.

Hell with this.

I lift the duvet, slide back underneath the cover, and sidle my way next to him.

“Jack,” I whisper but he’s out.

His breathing hushed, slow. One of my hairs falls on his face. His nose twitches.

What am I doing here with this lovely boy? The psalmist has words for you. But not me. I’m content to say nothing, to lose myself in the silence, to ripen in your good looks.

Oh, Jack, you’ll never get taken seriously as an actor with that face. You ought to be in Attica judging beauty contests between Hera and Aphrodite. You ought to be out in the earthblack woods, butterflies alighting at your passing, does sniffing the air.

You’re so un-Cuban. So finely sculpted-masculine, poised, confident. Like the statue of David I will never be allowed to travel to see. You can. You can do whatever you like. You’re one of those imperialist Yankees we read about in high school. One of those white men who run the globe. Sure, I’ll meet your friends, Jack, and you can meet mine. Tell Paco he’ll never be a big cheese like you. Tell Esteban that this isn’t Mexico anymore. This is your land, Jack. You beat them all to it. You were here before Columbus slipped anchor for China. You were here first. Flying your Enola Gay. Singing “Jail-house Rock.” Bunny-hopping on the moon. Let me be here with you, Jack, let me stroke those washboard abs, that botticino marble skin, let me ride that long American cock and lick the sweat from your back.

I slide my hand between his thighs but the Ambien and martinis keep him down.

I’m leaving, Jack. I’m going soon. You’ll come see me? Defy the U.S. Treasury. Rendezvous in the Hotel Nacional. A good career move. Maybe they’ll put your picture up next to Robert Redford’s.

He grins in his sleep and I close my eyes. Feel his warmth. Lie there.

The winter sun burning through clouds. Ice melt. Water tap-tap-tapping on the window. My boy smiling in his dream.

I touch his cheek and his eyelashes flicker.

Wake up and we’ll skip this scene. I could be legal by noon. Drive me to the FBI office in Denver. This year alone five thousand Cubans have come over the border from Mexico, all of them now on the path to citizenship. Citizen Mercado and her boyfriend, Jack.

You like the sound of that?

And I’ll forgive Paul or Esteban or Mrs. Cooper.

María is the sovereign lady of forgiveness.

Forgive. Yes. I don’t even think I’d care if it was you, Jack. Not Youkilis, Youkilis covering for you somehow.

It wouldn’t matter, would it, Jack?

Uhh, he says in agreement.

I put my arm under him. My breasts press against his back.

Yes. Let’s slip away.

You’ll understand, Dad, won’t you? After all, what did you ever care about any of us? What were you thinking about on that slope? Did you see my face? Ricky’s? Not Mom’s. Probably you were drunk or high. Crying out for Karen or the girls you had on the side. Drunk and happy like you were the day you abandoned us in Santiago. Did you see me as you lay dying? You were not on my mind. I wasn’t even in Havana. Wild goose chase for a wife killer. Train to Laguna de la Leche. Reading one of Hector’s extensive collection of banned books. Thucydides. Given to me as a birthday present. Yeah, that’s right… the day after my birthday. Well, Pop, did you even bother to look down on me on your way to eternity? You would have liked Pajero, near Laguna-a perfect shithole. Moonshine shacks, tin houses, open sewers. Our killer-of course-long gone. Girl on a bicycle brought me a message from town. Señora, a phone call from Havana. Phone call? Sí, señora. Back together on the bike. Two of us. East among the sunflowers. East into the dying sunflowers, the words of Pericles by the lake, while you were being unmade.

Ring-ring on a rickety black café phone from the thirties.

Ricky’s voice as distant as the moon.

How did you find me?

Listen, darling sit down, are you sitting? I’m sorry, Dad’s dead, some kind of accident in Colorado.

What? Where?

Colorado.

My first thought: Good riddance. Not one letter. Not one dollar.

But then the memories flooding back.

Crying and Ricky’s voice: I can get permission to go.

How?

Strings. Blow jobs.

Me laughing through tears.

Hang up the black Bakelite receiver.

The café owner, a police narc: Bad news?

Yeah. My father. Dead.

On a road in the mountains of Colorado.

That road, out there. Out the window.

Oh, Papa, there’s nothing I can do for you. This is the Castle of No Escape. And I like it here. Yuma, land of the Yankees. I like it. I asked for the key to my own dungeon, a thousand miles from the dandelions on the salt trail and the bean-fed boys and the red dirt fields and the teardrop skies.

That road. That road. There through the glass.

A creak on the deck outside.

Someone there. This time I’m certain.

I’m alert, fully awake, flooded with adrenaline. I sit up quickly, look for shadows on the balcony. Nothing, but I know I’m not imagining things-that was no squirrel or stray dog. That was boot on wood.

I throw back the duvet, jog to the fireplace, and grab a cast-iron poker with a vicious-looking hook at the end.

I undo the lock on the french doors and walk onto the deck, checking blind spots and the roof.

Fresh powder under my feet.

“Hola?” I ask.

No one answers. But the birds are quiet.

The gate’s closed, no strange cars, nothing out of the ord-

Wait a minute. Bootmarks in the gravel. Bootprints coming to the house.

“Hello,” Sheriff Briggs says behind me.

I bite down a yell and turn.

He’s wearing an overcoat but I can tell he’s got the full uniform on underneath. He’s come as a cop.

“You scared me. I didn’t see you there,” I tell him.

He flashes the pearly grin, rubs the bottom of his chin.

“Yeah.”

He looks at my breasts through Jack’s T-shirt. Fishes into his pocket and pulls out a cigar. Other pocket, Zippo. I shouldn’t be waiting out here. It looks guilty. I should go back inside.

“Excuse me, señor, but I-”

He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”

“But Señor Tyrone is-”

“I’m not after Jack. I’m looking for you.”

Meek. Eyes down. “For me?”

“Yeah, for you.”

“What do you mean, señor?” I say in Spanish.

He grins, blows a smoke ring. “No, no, don’t do that to me. I know your English is just fine. Now be like a good little puppy and take a seat over there.”

He points at a wooden deck chair. I brush off the thin layer of snow and sit. Water seeps up from the wood, through Jack’s sweatpants and against my skin.

“You weren’t in the motel,” Briggs says, leaning forward and taking the poker out of my hand.

“No.”

“Weren’t in the motel so I asked around and figured you were here.”

“Have I broken a law?” I ask.

“Well, if you were whoring here and not cutting Esteban or myself in, I’d say that you were breaking a law, but I don’t think you’re whoring, are you?”

I shake my head.

“No, María, I don’t think you’re whoring, because I don’t think you need the money.”

“I do not understand, señor.”

“It’s just a hunch, but something tells me you don’t need the money that badly,” he says with another grin.

The cold is making me tremble. No. It isn’t the cold. I force myself to stop it.

“If I haven’t done anything wrong, I’d like to go back inside,” I tell him.

“You’re not going anywhere until you answer me a few questions.”

“Ok.”

“‘Ok’… Yeah, that’s the fucking spirit. Ok. How long have you been here? Three days. You should know the score by now. Question number one. Whose fucking town is this?”

“Your town, señor.”

“My town. Absolutely goddamn right. My fucking town. I’m the sheriff. I’m the representative of the republic. I’m the fucking Lord High Executioner. That’s right. We got Tom Cruise but it’s my fucking town.”

His voice has risen. His face is red.

Something’s happened. He’s found something out.

Did Paco blab about New Mexico? Have the federales followed our trail here? What has leaked? Calm. Keep calm. It’s ok. Remember the Havana rule: say nothing-twice.

He unbuttons his coat, places his boot on the arm of my chair, and continues. “You think something could happen here and I wouldn’t know? You’re very much mistaken, señorita. From Malibu Mesa to Wetback Mountain and all the way to fucking Vail, I know what’s going on. It’s my job to know. Get me?”

“Yes, señor.”

“The last time I existed in a state of ignorance was Gulf War One. We thought we were the invasion but we were only the diversion. No one’s played me like that since. No one and certainly not some Mex cunt who’s too fucking proud to whore for us. Why are you so fucking proud? You think you’re going to get Jackie here to marry you? You think he’s going to knock you up? Is that your fucking plan? Or is blackmail more your game? Play both angles at the same fucking time?”

The other shining leather boot lands on my chair with a clump. He crosses his legs and those eyes bore into me.

Take it easy, I tell myself. He doesn’t know anything for sure. He’s still fishing. He’s got something but he doesn’t see everything. Yet.

“No answer?” he says.

“I don’t know what you mean, señor.”

“What did you hear? What rumors are they spreading in that Mex motel of yours?”

Spittle flying from his lips. Real anger in his words. And now I’m afraid. Afraid of those big hands more than the gun. Beat me to death with two blows.

Again an image of a naked body, yellow and blue, bloated, a skull for a face, maggots for eyes. That’s me there in that soft brown earth, under those big trees, unloved, unfound forever.

He pauses to get his breath back, squints at me. “Well?” he says.

I’m supposed to answer.

“But I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say truthfully.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about? I think you fucking do. I think someone has been shooting their mouth off and you’ve seen the chance for a few dollars more. A chance for the big score. Is that right? I mean, why concern yourself with blow-job money when you can shoot for millions?”

Anything I say will only provoke him.

He waits me out.

“Perhaps you could tell me what I have done wrong?”

He nods, smashes his fist into his hand, gets up, and walks behind me. I stare straight ahead. If I don’t look back the monster won’t be there. Right, Dad?

A car driving past on the road. A helicopter landing at the Cruise house.

Surely he can’t kill me out here with all these potential witnesses.

His breath against my cheek.

“You were at the Pearl Street Garage in town. Asking questions about an incident last May.”

The grave. The trees.

I’m fucked. Should have bribed Jackson.

Hector’s first rule of police work: secure your snitches. But where would I have gotten enough money on a salary of thirty dollars a month? Burned most of my savings on the coyote. And besides, Jackson told me about you, why wouldn’t he tell you about me?

And now. Fucked.

Don’t say anything. Don’t deny it, just say nothing.

Briggs takes a long breath, breathes out. Cream, coffee, tobacco. “So why does Little Miss Nobody want to know about a dead Mex? What are you, María? A blackmailer? An opportunist? An undercover journo? What’s in it for you, Señorita X?”

His gloved hands pinch a fold of skin at the back of my neck. He twists it.

Pain. Terrible pain as he lifts me off the seat.

“I could fucking paralyze you with this if I wanted to,” he says or seems to say-I can barely hear him through the fire in my nerve endings.

I try to hit his arms. My legs kick out.

“Stop it!”

“Speak, you little bitch, speak and tell me everything. Why did you go to the garage? Did Esteban put you up to this? What does he want to know?”

He squeezes so hard that I’m seeing stars, passing out…

One second, two, blackness.

He lets go the pinch. My head slumps forward.

He’s facing me.

“Why were you at the garage?” he whispers.

Play for time. Big breaths. Got to get out of here. Hit him with something.

“Why were you at the garage?”

“Señor, I think you’re mis-”

He grabs a handful of hair, drags me out of the chair, and throws me to the deck.

“Who put you up to this? Who? Is Esteban too fucking chicken to do his own legwork? How much did he pay you? What’s his angle? What’s his fucking angle? Answer me, you little bitch.”

I try to scramble away from him but he grabs my ankle and pulls me back across the deck. He kneels down on my legs and draws his gun.

“We’re going to get some fucking answers or you are gonna fucking disappear.”

He slides the hammer back on his.38 and points it between my legs.

“Maybe I’ll just blow your cunt off. Won’t be able to whore then, will ya? Won’t be able to fuck movie stars on the side. What’s Esteban’s cut on that little racket? Eh? Still not talking?”

He pushes down on me with all his weight, crushing my thighs. He points the gun at my head.

“Nah, forget that, I don’t want to wound ya. One in the temple, a group of three beside it to triple check. That’s the ticket. Vanish you off the face of the Earth. Message to that Mex bastard: Mind your business, Esteban.”

“Señor, I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” I stammer.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” he says, leaning forward to slap me across the face. My lip catches a ring on his hand and starts to bleed.

“Think I’m stupid? Is that what you think? Think because you fucking speak English you can beat me in a battle of fucking wits? I’ve been through the fucking war, señorita. I’ve been farther than you’ll ever fucking go. Farther than Esteban, farther than all of ya.”

“Señor, I-”

“No. No. Forget it. Don’t talk. I’ll get it from him. You’re history, little girl. Nobody knows you from Adam. You’re life ain’t worth shit. One less dumb whore for us to worry about. Close your eyes, sugar.”

He climbs off me and stands back so the blood splatter won’t get on his coat. He points the gun, squeezes the trigger.

I start to scream from somewhere deep. From New Mexico. From Havana. And deeper still. Louder than the helicopter at my uncle’s house in Santiago, louder than the prisoners in the Cominado del Este.

Scream and scream.

“Jack! Help me! Help me! Jack!”

“There’s no help coming, little sister, this is my t-”

A blur. A smash.

Jack barreling into him. Knocking him down. The gun going off and simultaneously flying out of Briggs’s hand. No bluff. He would have killed me. Jack punching Briggs twice on the head. Briggs thumping Jack on the back of the neck. Jack crumpling. Briggs getting to his feet, kicking Jack in the stomach. Briggs looking for the pistol, looking on the deck, under the chairs, behind him, and finally at my right hand.

“Ok, now, steady on. Hold on a minute. Let me explain something, let me explain just a little.”

I put my finger to my lips. “Ssshhhh.”

He shushes, puts his hands up.

Jack dry heaves and manages to get into a sitting position.

“What’s going on, María?” Jack says, choking out the words.

What to say? “I don’t know, Jack. I think Sheriff Briggs has gotten me mixed up with one of the other girls. Since coming here I have broken no laws and I have kept to my own business. I only want to work hard and stay out of trouble.”

Briggs looking at the gun. Eyes wide. Still can’t believe it. Are you scared? Are you having a premonition?

“What in the name of all that’s fucking holy is going on, Sheriff?” Jack asks, furiously. Boxer shorts, T-shirt, no shoes. His face white with anger. Jack gets to his feet and I offer him my hand. Show solidarity. Jack takes the hand.

Briggs’s brain up to Mach 5. Thinking escape routes, consequences. The movie star. The movie star’s lawyers. The wetback with the gun. He clears his throat.

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake here, Mr. Tyrone. I got a tip that someone from the Mex motel was asking questions about the, uh, car trouble, that, uh, Mr. Youkilis, that we dealt with in May. I thought it might be a blackmail attempt or an attempt to get a scurrilous story into the tabloids. I showed pictures and María here was ID’ed.”

Jack looks at me, doubt flashing between his eyes. In one sentence the fucker’s changed the game back again.

“But I was with Jack,” I say, though of course Briggs didn’t say when it was.

“She was with you?” he asks Jack.

Jack nods. “Sheriff, María was with me. She wasn’t asking anybody questions. She wasn’t doing anything. She was with me,” Jack insists.

Briggs frowns.

And now is the moment to turn that pond of doubt into an ocean, to show him that I’m completely innocent, that he or someone else has gotten this thing entirely wrong, that the tip was garbled, the ID screwed. Something.

I smile meekly, take two steps across the deck, and offer him his gun.

The barrel glistening. Bullets in the chamber. The death end pointed toward my heart.

He looks at the weapon, looks at me, nods.

He takes the revolver and puts it back in its holster.

“I’m sorry to have caused all this trouble, señor,” I say in my best Mex, my best invisible.

Sheriff Briggs grimaces and it shows me that I’ve convinced him. For now. Somebody fucked up. He’ll find out who.

Briggs shakes his head. “It’s me that should apologize, ma’am, you’re a, uhm, a guest in our country and I thought I was acting in the best interests of the town and I see that I’ve gotten incorrect information. I’ve made an error and I’m sorry.”

Jack grins. “Well, I’m glad that’s sorted out,” he says cheerfully. “Glad and a little disappointed. That’s the most heroic thing I’ve ever done and all for some stupid mistake. That’s not going to make a good story.”

“If you do not mind, Señor Jack, I will go and put some coffee on,” I say.

“Wonderful. By all means, excellent idea. Thank you very much, María,” Jack replies.

I look at Sheriff Briggs. “Would you like some coffee, sir?” I ask him.

His face is red with embarrassment. I repeat the offer of coffee and he shakes his head. This little encounter has given me breathing room. It’ll take him a few hours to pin down the real story-maybe all day. That’s all I need. One more day.

“No, ma’am, no, thank you,” he says stiffly.

I go inside the house and once I’m out of view I run to the kitchen, press the button on the coffeemaker, and wind open the window so that I can hear their conversation.

The two men are standing close, intimately so, like brothers or lovers or confederates.

“Is Youkilis in some kind of trouble?” Jack asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. Probably nothing. You know that girl Marilyn from Ohio that works for Jackson?”

“Yeah. Sure. Not bad-looking.”

“She used to work for me at the sheriff’s station. Got rid of her. She thought it was Bond and fucking Moneypenny. We’re still close, though. Good head on her shoulders.”

“What about her?”

“Calls me up last night and lets me know that someone’s been asking questions about the accident. The day the Mex got killed.”

“Shit. Is it something we should be concerned about?”

Briggs shakes his head. “I don’t know. Something might have gotten garbled down there. I’ll check it out. I’ll ask Esteban. No, to hell with ask, I’ll brace the fucker. I’ll find out what’s going on. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Should I tell Paul?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’ll look into this, really look into it. Let you know Monday.”

“Ok.”

Briggs shakes his head, ruefully gestures at the overturned chair. “And, and I’m sorry about all this, Jack.”

Jack, not Mr. Tyrone.

“It’s a bit much for a Sunday morning. You scared the shit out of María.”

“I’m sorry about that. Maybe made a mistake about her. Anyway, I’ll let you know what’s going on by tomorrow.”

Jack murmurs something that I can’t hear.

I press my face right against the bug screen but I still can’t catch it.

Jack and the sheriff shake hands. Briggs picks up the poker and hands it to Jack.

Jack laughs.

The sheriff laughs.

Very cordial. Very anglo. Is this how they do things here? In Cuba you don’t let a man rough up your woman. You put him in the fucking hospital. You kill him.

This… this seems too easy.

Briggs points back at the house. I shrink from the window. He puts his hands on his hips, spits.

“Thing is, Jackie boy, even if she’s clean, I mean, really, the maid?”

“She’s great.”

“You don’t see me running around with easy pickings and I’ve got plenty of opportunity. You gotta get your act together,” the sheriff says.

“Hey, I wanna-”

“Wait a minute, hear me out. I mean, what do you want? What do you really want out of life?”

“I want a career. A good career,” Jack says.

“You want to do good work, you want to be remembered. Right?”

“Yes. That and friends and a family.”

“You don’t think I want that? You don’t think I want to get married again, have kids? I’m not getting any younger. But I’m trying to build something up here. A town. A community. Something that will last. Even if the Scientologists don’t come, I’ll have made something that’ll be here a hundred, a thousand years from now. This was barely a village before we got started; in a few years we’ll be in full competition with Aspen and Vail. You gotta get with the program, Jack, you have to take life more seriously. Your friend María, Esteban, people like that, they’re not thinking about the future-I doubt they’re thinking at all-don’t let them drag you down to their level. Set your goals high, Jack, make some sacrifices. It’s not about instant gratification, it’s about the long term, it’s about posterity.”

Jack nods solemnly. Briggs puts his big paw on Jack’s shoulder.

Gives me a spine shiver from neck to ass.

Briggs walks down the gravel path. Jack waves and then says, “Hey, Sheriff, you were in the Marines, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You think we could talk some time? I’m playing a British Army officer in this movie I’m doing. Maybe we could have coffee and you could give me a few hints.”

“Sure. Let’s do that. I’ll call you Monday.”

Jack waves again and comes back into the house.

When he appears in the kitchen the coffee’s ready. I pour him a cup.

“Thanks,” he says.

I wait a beat, then two, then almost half a minute before finally he remembers to say it: “God, María, I’m really sorry about Briggs.”

“I was so scared,” I tell him, giving him a big slice of the truth.

“It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok,” he says.

I sit on his lap and have coffee and a stale bagel. Not once does he offer an explanation but several times he looks at his watch.

I shower, scald myself with the water. Wither away that expensive olive oil soap.

I change into my invisible clothes from yesterday. No lipstick, no makeup. Wool hat over my forehead.

Jack’s on the phone when I come out of the bedroom. He hangs up with an enormous smile on his face. “Fucking hell! Sunday lunch at the man’s! Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Beckham’s gonna be there. Not to mention Kelly and Katie. Fuck, he didn’t say Travolta but if Kelly’s gonna be there, who knows, right? Me and Mister C. Jesus! Jesus! Gotta tell Paul and Danny.”

“That’s great,” I say without inflection.

“Wow, he remembered me, all right. Did I tell you we were in Mission Impossible 3 together?”

“Yes.”

“I was little more than a glorified extra, but he must have remembered me. See, that’s how things go. It’s all contacts. And Paul’s right. Do some indies, the big pics follow. I’m not even thirty-officially-and I’m moving into the territory. Lead in Gunmetal and then maybe a second lead in a Cruise flick. Maybe the quirky best friend. Second banana in a Cruise movie. Fuck! That’ll pay the pension. Ever see A Few Good Men? The guy can act. Oh, and don’t think I’m discounting Travolta, hell no. Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, man, two of the all-time classics.”

His eyes glaze over and he stares through me. His face falls.

“Oh, honey, look, I’m sorry, forgot to say, invite’s only for one. Wait a minute, look, tell you what, do you want me to call up and ask if he’d mind or…” His voice trails off.

I try not to smile. Would he really do it if I asked him?

“No, no, thank you, Jack. I have a million things to do.”

Relief. Maybe Katie or Kelly has a sister.

I kiss him on the cheek and he calls Youkilis. I don’t think he even notices me when I slip out.

Five minutes later I’m walking back down the hill to the crossing.

In town I stop at Starbucks and order an espresso. It comes in a giant cup. Even when I add sugar it’s about as far from a Cuban coffee as A Few Good Men is from a real depiction of the naval base at Guantánamo Bay. The espresso costs a dollar seventy-five, which is more than the average daily wage in Havana. I can’t bring myself to finish it.

I shoulder the backpack and continue on. Past the trophy-wife stores, the ski shops, the delis, up the other hill to Wetback Mountain.

A police cruiser waiting outside the motel.

Might be a deputy, might be unrelated to me and the garage, but I can’t take the chance. The last thing I want is another encounter with that psychopath. I step off the road and disappear into the woods. I walk through the pine cones and fallen branches and sit on a log.

There’s a river running through the trees. The quiet glade reminds me of Río Jaimanitas, just outside Havana.

Time to think. Think about suspects, think about the clock.

Suspects. Their talk has more or less cleared Esteban. They thought he was involved in a blackmail plot about the accident. Ergo it can’t be him. I never thought it was. Ricky’s hunch-who kills a man and leaves his car unrepaired for six months? Still, I’d like one last interview to ask him about his deer.

Not E. Not Mrs. C., not in a million years. It’s Y.

Jack has given him to me. Jack and his good buddy the sheriff. Y. Y. Y.

The clock. Sunday morning. My flight from Mexico City to Havana is early Tuesday. So by this time tomorrow I need to be on the bus to El Paso. Cross over, to Juárez. Flight from Juárez to Mexico City. Jesus, it’s tight. I certainly don’t have all the information. In Havana I’d call this half a case. I’d need another full week’s work before I’d even think about going to Hector with the file. But that’s there and this is here. Here Briggs is on my neck and my options have collapsed into one simple thought: If I’m going to do this then it has to be tonight.

Fairview disappeared. The road narrowed from four lanes to two and the houses on either side quickly became swallowed up by forest. Beech Street was not meant for pedestrians. There was no sidewalk, and when cars approached they pulled all the way over to the left lane, annoyed at the presence of someone on foot.

In another five minutes so thick were the trees that it was hard to believe there were any houses at all. Mailboxes and driveways the only clues. The smell of douglas fir, aspen. The crunch underfoot of golden, red, and black pinecones.

I counted down the addresses on the mailboxes. 94, 92, 90.

A cold, prickly feeling on my scalp as I got closer, and I had to pause for a moment when the mailbox said 88.

“This is it,” I said aloud.

When Ricky came to Fairview, he’d gone to the garage, he’d walked the Old Boulder Road, he’d visited the motel, he’d taken photographs of Jack’s car and Esteban’s Range Rover, but this little job he’d left for me.

I hesitated at the gate and then went in. Cement driveway. Underfoot more pinecones, beech leaves, a flattened Starbucks cup. The path bent to the left and there, suddenly, was the house. Single-story Colorado ranch style. Modest in proportion to other homes in Fairview but boldly painted yellow and elaborately festooned with flowerpots and hanging baskets, some of the blooms gamely hanging on even though it was December.

It was shady here and frost coated a neat square of garden and several of the close-trimmed rosebushes that surrounded the house like a primitive siege defense.

I stepped over an ornamental gnome with a fishing pole, half a dozen free newspapers, and squirrel shit. I knocked on the door.

She took a minute to open it.

She was pretty. She looked about thirty but I knew she was older than that. She had black hair cut short in bangs, cornflower-blue eyes, arched, surprised-looking dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, full lips with a crease in the lower. If it wasn’t early on Sunday and if the past few months hadn’t been such an obvious trial to her, she’d be a knockout. Dad’s type? Certainly. And I had a feeling that a year from now she wouldn’t be alone.

“Hello?” she said, groggily. Her breath: coffee, cigarettes, last night’s red wine.

“My name is Sue Hernandez, I’m from the Mexican consulate in Denver,” I said and offered her my hand. After a second’s hesitation she shook it.

“What can I do for you, Señorita Hernandez?” she asked.

“We’re looking into the death of Alberto Suarez. I’ve come here to ask you a few questions, if that’s ok.”

She stood there in the doorway, pulled her nightgown tighter about her. It only accentuated her big breasts.

“On a Sunday?”

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Fuck it. What’s all this about?” she asked.

“Señora Suarez, your husband was a Mexican citizen, and the embassy routinely investigates all suspicious deaths of Mexican citizens in the United States.”

“Not this again.”

“This will be the last time, I assure you. May I come in?”

She shook her head. “The place is a mess.”

“I don’t mind that,” I said, realizing that I was actually more desperate to get in the house than I was to meet her. I wanted to see relics: family photographs, art, souvenirs. The interior of number 88 would be a ghost house filled with memories.

“No. I’ve been through this before. With the cops and someone who phoned me from your embassy, already. And now you’re here. Clearly, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing.”

I smiled. “It’s just a few questions. Please, may I come in?”

“No, you can’t. Look, I don’t have all day. What are your questions?”

“They’re about the accident.”

“Yeah, you said that. Just ask the questions.”

“You husband worked as a pest controller.”

“Yeah, he was overqualified for that. He was a smart guy. Killing rats, trapping raccoons, it was gross.”

“Yes. But what was your husband doing on the Old Boulder Road? According to our records his last job was at the Hermès store on Pearl Street. He didn’t have-”

“He was drinking.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I didn’t like him to drink, so he used to go up there. There’s a viewpoint two-thirds of the way up, a cliff where you can see the whole Front Range. A couple of kids committed suicide there. He used to go there, drink, look at the mountains, walk it off before he saw me.”

“So he was drunk the night of the accident?” I asked. The local paper had said he was drunk but there hadn’t been obvious signs of alcohol and the consulate hadn’t felt the need to conduct a tox report.

Karen shook her head. “I doubt it. We had a big blowup last year, I threatened to leave him, I’ve never seen him blind drunk since then. He was smart about it.”

“I see, so he may have been drinking when the car hit, but he wasn’t intoxicated.”

“Something like that.”

Hmm. Ricky said that it was just a coincidence that it had happened on my birthday. But maybe not. All those years without letters, without sending us a dime, maybe guilt had finally got to him. Had he had too many? Was he staggering all over the road? Maybe the consulate in Denver had hushed up the toxicology for fear of contributing to a stereotype. Maybe a million things.

Karen sniffed. “I hope he was drunk. I hope he was totally hammered.”

“Why?”

“Lady who found him, walking her dog. I know her. She talked to me. She told me the truth, the people around here are pretty blunt.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Told me his face was frozen. It was May but it’s been cold up here. Face frozen, fingers broken, blood and dirt all over him, he’d been trying to climb up that slope all night. It took him four or five hours to die. Drowning in his own blood the whole time, drowning, freezing, ribs broken, the pain must have been awful, and just a few feet from rescue up on the embankment. The goddamn torment. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through that. So yeah, I hope he was drunk.”

My head felt light. I swayed back on my heels.

“I, uh, I only have a couple more questions. Are you sure we wouldn’t be more comfortable inside?”

Karen gave me a skeptical glance. Feelers out. Nervous.

Damn it.

“All this is irrelevant anyway,” she said.

“How so?”

“I told you guys, Albert, or I should say Juan, wasn’t Mexican,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said, affecting surprise.

“He was Cuban. A defector. He came over in the early nineties.”

“But our information was that-”

“He bought that passport in Kansas City. It cost two thousand dollars. A passport and a Social Security number and a green card.”

“But-”

“So you see, Señorita Hernandez, you’ve wasted your time. This isn’t a job for your people at all. I told you guys already, ok? Who do you think called his family in Cuba? Me. They flew his son out. From Cuba. Christ, how dumb are you people? So thanks for the interest but really, I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

The brush-off.

“Well, that certainly contradicts the information I’ve been given. I’ll need to confirm this against our records. Do you have any photographs or-”

“For Christ’s sake. Wait here.”

She took a step backward and went into a side room. Now I could see tantalizing glimpses of a smallish living room. Hardwood floor, white sofa, white chairs. More flowers and paintings, perhaps done by Karen herself. Dad was never much in the drawing line and I couldn’t imagine that he had changed so greatly that he taken to painting fairies in forest glades and white horses galloping across impossibly sandy beaches. Karen’s “mess” appeared to be a few piles of laundry on the living room floor.

She came back with a fifteen-year-old Cuban driver’s license and handed it over.

“You can have this if you want. No good to me.”

I looked at the black-and-white photograph of Dad in his Russian wool suit and that little mustache he thought made him a dead ringer for Clark Gable. Ricky and I used to tease him about it, but in fact he really did resemble the late Yuma movie star. Quickly I put the license in my purse for fear she’d snatch it back.

“This doesn’t much look like the man in the autopsy photographs. Do you have a more recent photograph?”

“Oh, Jesus. Never ends. Hold on. I’ll get you one.”

An inner voice warned me that this wasn’t necessary, I didn’t need a photograph, I just wanted to open the floodgates, to wallow in the emotion. Careful, Mercado, once the sluices open, they’re pretty hard to close. She came back with something she’d just taken out of a frame.

“Here,” she said. “I put them all away. It was too painful to have him around looking at me, but I couldn’t throw any of them out.”

The photograph was of her standing next to a bearded man, a little heavier, but with sharp brown eyes and mostly black hair. He had a sarcastic, self-mocking expression on his face. I hadn’t seen him for fourteen years but it was definitely him. He looked like one of those public intellectuals on Channel 1, talking about trade with China or the Glorious Revolution’s prospects in the twenty-first century.

“Satisfied?” Karen asked, taking the photo back.

“Perhaps I could ask you a few more questions for the record?” I wondered.

“You can have one more minute. This is all still pretty hard on me. And Jeopardy!’s on early on Sundays and I never miss it. It’s a routine. Routines help you get through the day, don’t you find?”

“Yes. I don’t mind if you watch while we talk. Perhaps if I could come in for just a-”

“I’d prefer not.”

“So there seems to be at least some confusion, regarding Señor-”

“There’s no confusion. He bought that passport because he wanted to pose as a Mexican permanent resident called Suarez, so he could work in the United States.”

I smiled. “Ah, but this is where I am confused, Señora Suarez. Cuban defectors are automatically granted green cards, Social Security numbers, and so on, are they not? Why would your husband even need to pose as a Mexican?”

Something came into Karen’s face. A darkening. A suspicion.

“Where did you say you were from, Miss Hernandez?”

“I’m from the consulate in Denver.”

“Can I see some ID?”

Mierde.

On to me.

The old man must have prepped her. If someone comes asking about me, ever, check their credentials at once.

My mind raced while I fumbled in my purse. Who was he hiding from? He was a defector hero among the Miamistas. Cuban intelligence never went after defectors. There were literally millions of them in the United States: baseball players, boxers, politicians, doctors, engineers. And Dad was a lowly ferry attendant. What was his game?

“Well, this is a little embarrassing, Señora Suarez, but I think I must have left my papers in my other bag back in Denver. I could come back the day after tomorrow and show them to you if that will help?”

A slight nod of the head. A narrowing of the eyes. She didn’t like that one bit. A furtive sideways glance into the bedroom. That’s where she kept the guard dog or the phone or the gun.

“I’ll come back when I have my ID?” I asked.

“Yes, I think I’d prefer that,” she replied in a frightened monotone.

“Shall we say Tuesday at ten in the morning?”

“Fine.”

“Tuesday, excellent. Well, in that case I’ll be on my way. I apologize if I have inconvenienced you in any way and hopefully we can get this resolved next week.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I smiled, turned, and walked down the driveway. Bye, Stepmom.

I didn’t look back but I knew she was in her bedroom, calling someone, looking for the emergency cash, packing a suitcase… Dad had told her about this day and the day had come.

I couldn’t begin to understand it.

Was his death not an accident? Was he something more than met the eye? Had Ricky gotten it completely wrong?

When the house was out of sight behind the trees, I crossed the road, vanished into the forest, and waited.

It took only an hour for her to load a beat-up eighties-style Volvo with suitcases and cardboard boxes. She turned right on Beech Street. I cursed at not having Esteban’s car to tail her, but it didn’t really matter. Right was south toward I-70, the big cross-country highway that could take her all the way to Los Angeles in the west or New Jersey in the east. I memorized the license plate, wrote it down for future use, walked back up the driveway, broke in through a side window. The white furniture was the only thing that wasn’t tossed, although the sofa had been pushed way up against the wall, maybe to give her room to pack.

And pack she had.

Drawers opened, clothes scattered, pictures ripped from the walls, a bed stripped. Method to the madness. They had rehearsed this.

No photographs, no diaries, no books.

No books. I thought at the very least I’d see some of his books, maybe flip through the titles while Karen made me a cup of coffee.

I rummaged in the trash but even that gave no clues, just a few nondescript bills. Everything incriminating gone. Tonight it would be burned and dropped in a trash can at some random truck stop.

I put a plastic bag over my arm and shoved it down the U bend of the toilet, but that was clean too.

I did the whole house. A quick brace and then a longer backward trace.

Nothing.

I sat on the sofa.

Memories. Guilt. Tears. Ricky said not to fall for that trip, and he was right.

Be like an alchemist. Transmogrify guilt to anger. Easy after Karen had brought his death so vividly to my mind.

I stood, addressed the void: “I don’t know what you thought you were doing here, Dad, I don’t know what you filled her head with, but you did a number on her, all right, just like you did on us. And… and I want you to know something: I’m angry at you, I’m angry that you left us, that you didn’t write, that you missed my quince and you sent nothing. I haven’t done a poem since you left, and Mom’s half crazy, and we’re all stuck in Cuba. You fucked us, old man, fucked us good.”

I left through the front door and had gone a kilometer along Beech before I turned and walked back.

Something was nagging at me. Something about the sofa.

In through the window.

No reason for her to move it.

I shoved it and found the place where she’d tried to rip up the floorboards.

She’d spent some time on it but she didn’t have a claw hammer and she was in a terrible rush.

I did have a hammer.

I smashed out the nails and ripped up the floor. One board, two boards. Dirt. A plastic bag. Inside the bag another bag, inside the second bag a gun.

Dad’s? I looked at it. It was strange. It was certainly a clue. If I had the time I’d check it out.

I sat back on the sofa. Sat there for a long time. Light marched across the floor.

The patterns changed.

A gnawing sound. A mouse investigating the mayhem. It looked at me with surprise.

Run, mouselet, I spare thee.

Yes. Run, run, run from the Cubans and enemies real and imaginary.

I fished in my pocket, found where I had written Karen’s license number, ripped it up, and flushed the pieces down the toilet.

You’ll be safe, Karen.

Safer, at least, than your husband’s killer.

No. That poor bastard. I wouldn’t want to be him a few hours from now, on a sad, cold, December night in Nowhere, Wyoming.