Fifty Grand

7 DESPIERTA AMERICA

Too late, Hector. Too late now, my friend, to heed your words. I’m here and I’ve killed human beings and that chance to turn your brightness outward is in the distant past.

I suppose I must have been awake, but it was only on the third or fourth iteration that I became vaguely aware of the voice.

“María… María…vamonos.”

What?

“María, vamonos.”

María? Who is María?

“María, vamonos.”

Oh, yeah, I’m María.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Six. I’m leaving for the day. How did you sleep?”

“Good. I slept good. The first full night’s sleep…”

I didn’t finish the sentence. The first full night’s sleep I’d had in one hundred and eighty days. Six months since the day after my birthday in Laguna. Six months since Ricky’s phone call. Six months since I’d begun this plan.

“Look at me,” Paco said.

I rubbed the blear out of my eyes. Paco was wearing jeans, work boots, a heavy black sweater, a bright yellow hard hat. He seemed excited.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Construction site, downtown, do you like the hat? I look like a real Yankee, don’t I? A real American,” he said, and then in a gravelly voice he added, “Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?”-an impersonation that completely escaped me.

“You look like a regular American,” I agreed.

His grin grew even wider before a look of concern darkened his visage. “You better get up too, Esteban’s already here to take the girls up the mountain. He’s in a mood and he’s dressed like a pimp.”

“Screw him,” I muttered and closed my eyes again. In Havana I didn’t get up until I could smell the coffee brewing in the ice cream parlor on O’Reilly.

“Shit, María, they’re calling me, I have to go,” Paco said.

“Go then,” I said, and then, remembering basic civility for someone who has slept literally under one’s own roof, I added, “Have a good day, Paco, look after yourself.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

I nodded and drifted for a minute or two. I didn’t hear him leave the room, I didn’t hear the Toyota pickup full of Mexicans drive away, I did feel the poke of Esteban’s snakeskin boot nudge my ankle.

I sat up with a jolt. “Who the fuck-” I began furiously and then remembered where I was.

“I’m running a business here, you got two minutes to make yourself look presentable,” Esteban said.

“Sorry, I-” I began but Esteban cut me off.

“These are important people. You’re a smart girl, you can see that our whole operation is on a knife edge. We gotta project a feeling of competence and calm. The feds didn’t touch us. Everything’s running smoothly. Get me? So no fuckups. This is your first day, I’d hop to it if I were you. I don’t care how bad things get, I’ll fucking can you and everybody else if I want to. Put this uniform on and meet me outside in the parking lot in two minutes,” Esteban said.

He was wearing a charcoal gray suit. His hair was combed, his face washed, his beard trimmed. He had a large diamond ring on his little finger but apart from that he looked good. Few straight men can resist a compliment from a younger woman, so I gave him both barrels at point-blank. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Esteban, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. Can I just add I think you’re bearing up very well under all this pressure? You look very together today.”

Handsome like a bear, as we say in Cuba.

Esteban’s mouth twitched and his cheeks took on a rosy complection. He grunted.

“Yes… well, uhm, I have to meet some of our clients this morning, reassure them that the Mountain State Employment Agency does not hire illegals and has not been affected by the INS raids.”

“Well, you look great. I love the suit.”

“Tailored. In Denver,” he said, and then, remembering why he’d come, muttered, “Uhm, María, we all need to be downstairs in, say, five minutes?”

“Oh, no problem, I’ll see you down there.”

He stood there for a moment. Something was on his mind. He got to it. “I don’t normally give people the choice, but, well, do you want to work what we call Malibu Mountain or would you prefer to be downtown, where it’s a bit easier? You’ll probably end up doing both, but the mountain’s good because in about two weeks they’re going to start giving out Christmas tips. Could be lucrative.”

I had to work the mountain, there was no question about it.

“The mountain,” I said.

“I have an arrangement with the other girls. Remember, I get half of all the tips, no exceptions, ok?”

“Ok,” I said.

I’d be gone by Christmas. What the hell did I care?

Esteban seemed relieved. “Great. Thought I’d remind you. Didn’t want to have to strong-arm you later.”

“You think you could?” I asked with a smile, ironically flexing my skinny arms.

He grinned. “I like you, María. If this works out maybe you could even work for me in our office on Pearl Street.”

“Ok.”

“Good. I’ll see you down there.” He turned to leave and then paused in the doorway. “It won’t be much, you know, don’t get your hopes up,” he said.

I had lost the drift. “What won’t be much?”

“The Christmas tips. When we used to clean the Cruise estate, Margarita and Luisa got a thousand bucks each. But these fuckers we do now, they’re all the lesser lights.”

“That’s ok,” I said.

“Hurry up now,” he said and finally left the room.

I put on the maid’s uniform, a somber short-sleeved black affair with blue piping, but infinitely better than those I’d seen around the Hotel Nacional or the Sevilla. I smoothed the straggles from my hair, brushed my teeth, washed my face. I looked mousy but rested and fresh.

Angela, a slender young thing from Mexico City, had made Nescafé in the kitchen. I took a few sips of the acrid liquid before joining her and the other girls in the back of Esteban’s Range Rover.

Esteban sped off, talking as fast as he drove. “Luisa, Anna, I’m going to drop you on Pearl Street. A lot of people are jittery, but I’m not. If the INS still has agents in town-which I doubt-remember that they’re civil servants, so no one’s gonna be up and about before ten o’clock. You understand what I’m saying?”

Both Anna and Luisa looked blank.

“Jesus. Am I the only one who does any thinking around here? You gotta be finished by ten o’clock.”

Luisa looked at me and Angela with an expression I couldn’t decipher but which Angela seemed to get. Angela nodded. Luisa leaned forward in the seat until her face was only a few centimeters from Esteban’s. “Don Esteban, how are we supposed to do all the businesses on Pearl Street before ten o’clock? We are not miracle workers. You must be crazy,” she said.

Luisa was an older woman from Guadalajara, and I could tell that she was allowed a little more leeway with Esteban than the others; but even so, Angela and Anna seemed surprised to hear her speak so freely.

Esteban stared at her for a moment, thought about one possible reply-almost certainly a profane one-but chose to select another. “Look, just do your best, Luisa. Make sure you cover the important clients: Hermès, Gucci, DKNY-you know, the big ones. Just get it done and get off the street before ten. We’re in a jam and we all gotta pull together.”

He dropped Luisa and Anna outside Brooks Brothers and drove off toward the so-called Malibu Mountain.

Before he’d gotten a block his phone rang.

“Yes?… Yes?… Yes!”

He hung up, reversed the Range Rover. Luisa was having a last cigarette while Anna was inside the store turning on the power. Esteban wound the window down and called Luisa over. He was excited. “They didn’t get Josefina. She was at her boyfriend’s house. Christ, when she didn’t show up I thought they’d grabbed her. But she got away.”

“Josefina? Ok,” Luisa replied with considerably less excitement.

“So it shouldn’t be any problem to get finished by ten, Josefina will be joining you,” Esteban said.

“It’ll still be difficult to do everything,” Luisa said.

“Just get on with it!” Esteban muttered, and the window whirred back up.

“Good news,” Esteban said, turning to the pair of us. “Great news. Who wants a Starbucks? My treat, eh?”

Angela rolled her eyes as if to say he’s only doing this to impress you. But I wanted coffee after three days without.

“I do,” I said.

Starbucks: my first experience of white America.

The smell of vanilla. Paul McCartney singing a love song. Scruffy men in five-dollar flip-flops working on five-thousand-dollar laptops.

White people serving us.

Esteban ordered for us, got coffee, croissants, and cakes, and put a dollar in the tip jar.

I sipped the con leche and it tasted almost like a con leche.

“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.

“It’s ok, thank you,” I said.

Angela had gotten a beverage that was covered in whipped cream and required a straw to consume. “Mine’s absolutely delicious,” she said.

“See, it’s not like Rome, sometimes we’re the masters,” Esteban muttered apropos of nothing.

Esteban spotted a Fairview Post in the used newspaper rack. He grabbed it. The headline was “Tancredo Hails INS Raids.” Esteban read the story and passed it across to me. “Can you read, María?” he asked.

“Letters and such?” I asked, doing my best peasant voice.

“Just read it, see what I’m up against,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm.

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), hailed last night’s INS raids in Denver, Boulder, Fairview, and Vail, which netted an estimated three dozen illegal immigrants. “It’s only a small step but the message has gone out,” Tancredo commented from Washington, “that Colorado is not a safe haven for illegal immigrants from Mexico.”

Congressman Tancredo, who is running for President, will be on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN later today to talk about his new plan for dealing with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

A spokesman for the Mexican consulate in Denver noted, “Twenty-six Mexican citizens, all of whom have jobs and none of whom have a criminal record, have been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Their cases are under investigation.”

With an estimated fifty thousand Mexican citizens living in Denver alone, an INS spokesman denied that these raids were only a cosmetic measure.

“Without us this whole country would grind to a halt,” Esteban said.

I was about to pass the paper back when I noticed an ad: “For sale: Thorpe hunting rifle new 750 dollars. Smith and Wesson M &P 9mm good con with ammo 400 dollars OBO,” with an address on Lime Kiln Road, Fairview. I carefully ripped out the ad, sipped the con leche, and said nothing.

Esteban nodded at the barista. “Romanian,” he whispered under his breath. “Nothing to do with me. Whole different organization.”

The girl was pale, blond, pretty, and, despite the hour, high.

“What’s her story?” I wondered aloud.

“Come on, let’s go outside. It’s not too cold today,” he said. Esteban sat us at a cast-iron table in the sun. It might not have been cold for Colorado in December but I was freezing. My teeth chattered and my hands shook as I sipped the coffee.

“Romanians and Russians,” Esteban said. “I know you wanted to do nanny work, María, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Up here they want European nannies. Most of them are from Eastern Europe. Sheriff Briggs brings them direct from Denver. He’s the silent partner in the local company, Superior Child Minding Services-thinks it’s a big secret, but I know all about it. Dumb fuck. Not as smart as he pretends to be.”

“I see,” I muttered, losing interest now.

“Pays a lot more than housecleaning. They’re always desperate. Last thing the wives and girlfriends want to do when they come here is look after their own kids. The big guns have permanent help but the minor players are always looking. Shit, you can nail ’em for twenty bucks an hour and more. It’s a hell of a racket.”

He examined me for a moment. “No. Forget it. Won’t even try, you don’t even look Russian. And we’re shorthanded as it is.”

Of course I didn’t tell him that I spoke a little Russian.

“Why do they want Russians?” I asked instead.

“They want Eastern Europeans because the wives like bossing white chicks around and the husbands think they can fuck ’em-which, of course, they can. You know, you’re not bad looking, María, I can get you that kind of work if you want. Steady work. We cut in the Sheriff’s Department, but you could be earning four or five hundred a week.”

“I already told you I’m not a whore.”

“Not a whore-a high-class call girl. Do it for a year or two, you’ve got enough saved for a little restaurant or something back in-where you say you were from?”

“Valladolíd in Yucatán.”

“Well, I don’t know if you want to live there, but you could move to the DF. Think about it. Anyway, finish up, enough chitchat, we’re running late.”

We finished our coffee drinks, got into the Range Rover.

Maybe now was the time to ask him about the dent on the front left.

“It’s a really nice car,” I said.

“My pride and joy.”

“What happened to your-”

“Oh, fuck,” Esteban interrupted and hit the brakes. Sheriff Briggs’s shiny black Escalade pulled to a halt next to us. To my surprise I found that my hand was shaking. He wasn’t on Ricky’s list but that man made me nervous.

The Escalade flashed its lights.

“What does he want?” Esteban groaned, turned off the engine, and zipped the window.

Sheriff Briggs and Klein, his skinny, nasty-looking deputy, got out of the Escalade. Unlike yesterday Briggs was in full uniform. Black boots, dark green trousers, green shirt with a gold badge on it, dark green cowboy hat, black leather jacket, nightstick, flashlight, gun. The hat flipped me. Made me think, Mierde, I’m in America.

Briggs leaned into the driver’s-side window of the Range Rover and took off his sunglasses. He stared at Angela and me in the middle seat before turning his attention to Esteban.

“Seem in an awful hurry,” he said.

“I’m running late,” Esteban replied.

“Hmmm,” Sheriff Briggs said, then caught my gaze and smiled.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” I said in English.

“How do you like our little community now that you’ve had some time to adjust?” Briggs asked.

“It’s very beautiful,” I said.

“That it is, that it is,” he replied.

“Excuse me, Sheriff, but I really should get going. As you can imagine, today is not a good day to be understaffed,” Esteban said.

Briggs nodded. “Oh yeah, almost forgot, how many did you lose?” he asked.

“Apparently seven got taken to the detention center in Denver. My lawyer thinks we can get one of them out tonight, Inez-she’s engaged to an American-and there’s another girl, Juanita, who Flora says is pregnant, so we might be able to get her out too. Won’t release any of the men, of course. And that means we’re still shorthanded at the site on Pearl.”

Sheriff Briggs turned to his deputy. “Things are looking bad for our buddy Esteban here,” he said.

“Looks like it, Sheriff,” Klein replied.

“Not enough men to do the job,” Sheriff Briggs went on, still talking to the deputy.

“But Sheriff, didn’t you conquer the town of Subhan in Kuwait with just half a platoon?” Klein said, clearly having heard that particular story a couple of hundred times.

“I surely did, A.J., but it’s well known that half a platoon of United States Marines can do just about anything in this world.”

“Amen to that,” Klein replied.

“Your Mexican, though. Takes a whole army of Mexicans to do the job of a few white men, ain’t that right, Deputy?” Briggs said.

“I believe that you’re speaking the truth,” the deputy responded. “From the halls of Montezuma, as the song says.”

“From the halls of Montezuma indeed,” Sheriff Briggs agreed with a laugh.

Esteban was becoming impatient. “Sheriff Briggs, it is always a pleasure to see you, but today we are very late and some of my clients will need reassur-”

Sheriff Briggs cut him off. “Get out of the car, Esteban.”

“What is this about?”

“Just get out of the car.”

Angela started to undo her seat belt.

“No, no, you two little ladies can sit tight,” Sheriff Briggs said.

Esteban got out of the car. The deputy turned him around and put Esteban’s hands on the roof of the Range Rover.

“Nice monkey suit,” Klein said, and both he and the sheriff laughed.

“Look, what is this about?” Esteban protested.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sheriff Briggs growled and cracked the end of his nightstick into the back of Esteban’s legs.

The sickening crunch of metal on bone.

Esteban ate asphalt.

Sheriff Briggs hit him again, catching him twice more on a defensively raised arm.

“You can’t do this to me, I’m a U.S. citizen,” Esteban pleaded.

“Do what I damn well please in my town,” Sheriff Briggs said, and he kicked Esteban in the legs. “Show him, A.J.”

Klein reached into his pocket and threw a plastic bag that landed on Esteban’s chest.

I sat up in the seat to get a better view.

“What is this?” Esteban groaned.

“That is five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce British Columbian hydro-fucking-ponic quality four-twenty.”

Esteban tried to get up. Klein drew his gun and pointed it at him. I caught Esteban’s eye through the car window. He stared at me. He didn’t look scared and I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging nod.

“Is that what this is about?” Esteban asked.

“Yeah,” Sheriff Briggs said. “That is what this is all about. Our deal was for cocaine from Mexico and you’ve been dealing ice and meth and pot, bringing it in from fucking Canada. Who do you think you are, amigo? Where do you think you are? Nothing escapes me, Esteban. Nothing. I know everything that goes on in this town. Everything you or anybody else tries to do, I fucking know it. Never forget that.”

Esteban got to his feet and rubbed his forearm.

“Is that why you brought in the INS? To fuck me up?” Esteban asked.

The sheriff spat. “The feds don’t tell us when they’re coming. That’s nothing to do with me.”

Esteban nodded and closed his eyes for a second. Thinking. He opened them again and forced a smile.

“I’ll come clean with you, Sheriff. You’re right about this. It’s an angle. I brought in the first small shipment as a trial. An experiment. I was going to tell you if it worked out.”

“Apparently it has worked out,” Sheriff Briggs said.

“Yeah. So far. Risky work, though. The real stuff is coming in tomorrow and then every month, once a month. I’m bringing in ice and pot. Good stuff. With your approval, of course. I was going to tell you all about it,” Esteban said quickly.

“Sure you were,” Briggs said.

Esteban appeared unfazed. “I can show you the paperwork. I’m being straight with you. I’m laying out thirty thousand capital for an expected hundred-thousand take. That’s seventy net. I can give you twenty on this and every batch.”

Sheriff Briggs nodded and hit his nightstick into his hand. “Thirty-five,” Briggs said.

“Thirty-five? I’m taking all the risk,” Esteban protested.

“Thirty-five and I want it by the end of the week.”

“That’s impossible! That’s a month’s supply, it’ll take me weeks to deal it. I’m not unloading to some middleman, I’m selling it carefully to a very select group of people.”

Sheriff Briggs looked at Deputy Klein. Klein grinned and hit Esteban hard in the gut with his nightstick.

Esteban staggered backward, caught himself on the hood of the Range Rover, bent over, and threw up part of a croissant and coffee.

“I guess you didn’t hear me. Thirty-five by the end of the week,” Briggs said softly.

Esteban grunted.

Sheriff Briggs nodded at his deputy. “See, I told you this was nothing to worry about. I was sure we’d be able to come to an arrangement, even if it is a bad time,” he said.

Sheriff Briggs got back into his Escalade.

“What about the four-twenty?” the deputy asked.

“Oh, take the pot, I’m sure our old buddy Steve won’t mind,” Sheriff Briggs said, his dark eyes wide with pleasure.

The two cops got into the prowler, revved the engine for ten aggressive seconds, and drove off along Pearl.

No one had seen the incident, except possibly the Starbucks workers, and they knew better than to say anything about it.

“How often does this happen?” I whispered to Angela.

She put her finger to her lips. “You don’t have to worry about any of this. We’ll talk later,” she whispered.

Esteban said nothing when he got back into the car. He dabbed his face with a silk handkerchief, got his breath back, and started the engine. He didn’t look seriously hurt but I saw that he touched the wheel only with his left hand. In Cuba, where no vehicles had power steering or automatic gear-boxes, he couldn’t have driven at all, but here he managed.

He eased the Range Rover along Pearl and up the Old Boulder Road.

The Old Boulder Road. Ricky’s black-and-whites. The phone call the day after my birthday.

“I’ll leave you at the summit and you can work your way downhill,” Esteban muttered.

We drove past huge houses that got bigger as we got closer to the top of the mountain. When we were almost at the peak Esteban pulled the Range Rover into a turnout marked VIEWPOINT on a small green sign. He turned to us and gave Angela a key chain with various house keys on it. Each was attached to a piece of card with a number on it.

“Angela, you’ll be with María today, show her the ropes. Show her where the cleaning supplies are in each house and don’t forget the alarm boxes.” Esteban turned his gaze on me. “You know what an alarm system is?”

I shook my head.

“Each house has an alarm, which we disable when we enter and enable again when we leave. It’s very simple. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I’d never been in a house with a burglar alarm before but I got the concept. It would require a consistent electricity supply and a prompt police response, two things Havana lacked.

“Angela, make sure you show her which clients need the full treatment and which ones only get a surface clean. There’s no point in wasting time on clients who won’t appreciate what we’ve done,” Esteban said.

“Of course,” Angela muttered.

“Ok, both of you out of the car, I want to show María something.”

Esteban was a big man, and in my experience big men take longer to recover from an injury. He was still breathing hard and rubbing his arm as he led us away from the car toward a gap in the trees.

He forced a smile. “Ok, María, here we are. This is where you’ll be working in the mornings. You can see the whole mountain from here. Below us is the Watson residence. Big movie producer. He has his own staff but I’ve been in there. Dealt him coke. Delivered it personally. That house on top of the hill with all the lights and the fence-Tom Cruise.”

“The Tom Cruise?” I asked.

“The Tom Cruise. Lives here about half the year when he’s not filming. I think his sister lives there year-round.”

“I get to clean Tom Cruise’s house?”

“No, no. He has his own staff. As I was saying, we only get the lesser lights. Not the Watsons and the Cruises of this world. But you might see some famous people. It’s important not to react in any way. They hate that. You’ve got to pretend that you’re not there at all. That you’re invisible. Never make eye contact with any of the clients and never talk to them unless spoken to first. Understand?”

“Sí, Don Esteban.”

“Good.”

Esteban took another few seconds to get his breath back. “I suppose you’re wondering about what happened this morning with the sheriff?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. Angela said nothing.

“The thing is, I’m an American citizen,” he muttered with a smoldering sense of outrage.

I nodded.

“An American citizen, and if that bastard tries to come into my house I’ll shoot him with my rifle. Shoot him. And they can’t do a thing. Cop or not. War hero or not. Without a warrant, the law’s on my side.”

Esteban sat down on a flat, red boulder. He dabbed his forehead.

“Do you want us to go?” Angela asked.

“No. No. Let María get her bearings. Look around you, María.”

I observed the mountains and the forests. Layer after layer of them stretching west for fifty kilometers.

I tried to feel something.

After all, this was it. The place where my father died.

I tried to force an emotion: anger, regret, sadness-nothing came.

“What do you think, María?” Esteban asked.

“Pretty country,” I said.

“All this was Mexico once. A hundred and fifty years ago. Mexico. Our home. Stolen by the Yankees and they don’t even know it. They don’t even know their history. We invited them to our land and then when we told them they couldn’t have slaves they turned on us. Like a changeling in the house of your mother. Like an ungrateful dog.”

His face was pink. He was sweating. For a moment I wondered if he was having a heart attack. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Mexico. All the way to the Pacific. That cabrón. That fucking son of a whore,” he muttered.

He started to cry.

“Come on, let’s go,” Angela whispered.

We left him.

I said goodbye but he didn’t seem to hear.

We walked past Watson’s huge mansion and entered the first house on the route. Angela put the key in the lock and showed me how to disable the alarm system.

This house only needed a quick dust and vacuum.

As did the next.

I was expecting palatial residences but they weren’t grotesque. About the same size as those of high-ranking Party officials in Vedado but not in such disrepair and most with epic views over the mountains.

The job seemed simple. The first three homes were empty and not a problem to clean. A dead mouse in a sink was the only bit of excitement. The next was occupied by an actress who was in her basement running on a treadmill the whole time we were there. We put away her clothes, ran her dishwasher, cleaned her living space, rearranged the diet shakes and cigarette cartons in her gigantic refrigerator.

The next house, however, was the one I’d been in the night before. The retro-future place with all the curves. Minimalist furniture, a low leather sofa, uncomfortable high-angled chairs, stainless steel light fittings, an ebony living room table. Huge windows facing the Old Boulder Road to the east and the Rockies to the west. It looked better in daylight. Angela showed me how to get in and how to disable the burglar alarm. The code was still the default 9999. Jack Tyrone was in the kitchen reading a newspaper. He had a box of Frosted Flakes in front of him and a french press filled with what I could tell from the hall was overroasted coffee. There was a new bowl of fruit on the breakfast bar. More kiwis to steal.

I scoped Jack in the daylight. Ricky’s notes and his party anecdote flashed in my head. Suspect 2A, Youkilis’s employer, 31, born Denver, Colorado, Hollywood actor, pretty good alibi for the night of the accident-he was sixteen hundred kilometers away in Los Angeles-but I wouldn’t rule him out until I’d spoken to him.

“Do we say good morning?” I whispered to Angela.

She shook her head. We took off our coats, found the cleaning supplies, and began work. I dusted, she vacuumed.

“Maaling, lallies,” Jack said with a full mouth, attempting to carry his newspaper, coffee, and cereal bowl into the living room without a major accident.

“Good morning, Señor Tyrone,” Angela said.

He looked better than when I’d encountered him last night. In fact, more than better, very handsome indeed if you went for pale, blond, athletic, American. And to my surprise I found that I went for ’em in spades. “Those corn-fed western boys,” Ricky once said, and I could see what he meant. Jack’s complexion was pale, but even preshower he radiated health and strength. His body was chiseled and his jaw downy but not weak. His hair was tousled attractively and his blue eyes were the color of the marlin-filled sea off Santiago, rather than last night’s muddy Havana Bay. The blue eyes now were smiling at us. “Might have a job, ladies, Paul knocked a bottle of wine on the Persian. They tried to clean it last night and I fucking Pledged it and Oxy-ed it this morning but it’s still there.”

We looked at the stain. Jack’s efforts had produced a yellow chemical burn. The rug was ruined.

While Angela explained the catastrophe I took the vacuum upstairs. I had to spend twenty minutes picking clothes and food items off the floor before I could begin cleaning.

I hadn’t been up here last night, but this was obviously where Tyrone’s personality fully expressed itself. There were movie posters on the wall and film stills. Apparently he was something of a rising star, but I hadn’t heard of him prior to Ricky’s report. I had seen one or two of the films he’d been in but Jack’s presence had not made an impression. From the stills I saw that he’d appeared in Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise, but obviously in such small roles that his name hadn’t gotten on the posters.

In his bedroom he had headshots of himself, several awards, and a gigantic signed and framed picture of a man and his double in a tacky-looking space uniform.

I examined the awards.

LATO Best Newcomer 1999, Sundance Best New Talent 1998, Sho West Up and Comer Award 2000.

There was nothing recent, and this made me wonder if his career was quite as hot as it had been.

In the upstairs bathroom there were mirrors everywhere and enough hair care product to have started a salon. Even Party wives in Havana didn’t spend this much time on their coiffure.

I was sniffing something called Plum Island Soap Company skin cream with appreciation when he suddenly appeared behind me in the mirror.

He was grinning. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking of that Carly Simon song, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me,” I said, quickly putting the lid back on the cream.

“Carly Simon… the Warren Beatty song. Ok, you’re drawing a blank, before your time, I guess, don’t worry about it. Uhm, what’s your name?”

“María.”

“‘María, I just met a girl called María,’ ” he sang in a thin baritone. It was a song I didn’t know, but I smiled encouragingly.

“I haven’t seen you before, when did you start?” he asked.

“I was here last night,” I said.

“Oh, God, you were? Saw me at my worst. Sorry about that. Honestly, I’m not that big of an asshole.”

“No, you were very polite to me,” I said.

“I was? Huh. Well, of course I was. Mind if I just brush my teeth? Paul’s coming in a minute.”

He began brushing his teeth while I made the bed.

“What do you think of the old abode?” he asked, foaming at the mouth.

“Very nice.”

“Yeah, I like it. Live here a lot of the year, ski season. L.A. the rest. That explains the headshots. Want to be clear about that. I’m not a nutcase. I mean, you never know. Veronica Lake in the coffee shop. Natalie Portman walking down the street.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He noticed my bafflement, spat, and rubbed a towel on his face.

“The headshots. On the wall. I rent this house out when I’m filming. You don’t know who’ll be staying here. Casting agents, whatever. Hence the headshots. It’s all contacts. That’s all it is. Talent is about five percent of it.”

“Sí. Contacts. You meeting me, for example. My cousin is Salma Hayek, she’s looking for a costar,” I said.

His eyes widened, but before I could further extend the fib I broke into a smile. When he saw that I was kidding, he laughed out loud. A pleasant, infectious laugh that filled the room.

“Oooh, good one. I’m going to have to watch out for you, I can tell. Where are you from?”

“Yucatán.”

“The Yucatán, uh, that’s down somewhere, uhm, in the Central American area, I think, right?”

“Geography is not your strong suit,” I said.

“Wow, you’re totally unimpressed by me. Refreshing. I had a maid in L.A. who sold my pubes on eBay.”

I didn’t know the words pubes or eBay but I could tell from the creases around his eyes that he was being funny, so I gave him a smile.

“She got a hundred bucks. Not a lot, and I put in two fake bids to get the price up.” He leaned against the wall and shook his head. “It’s a crazy business. Crazy. I could tell you stories. I won’t, though, I know that guy you work for, uh, the one with the beard, keeps you on a pretty tight schedule.”

“Esteban.”

“Yeah, Esteban, Paul says he can get us just about anything we… well, never mind that. Have you time for one quick story?”

“Sí, señor.”

“Jack, please.”

“Sí, Señor Jack.”

“Just Jack, but anyway, so I’m on MI3 with Cruise. Two-page role. Probably doesn’t remember me. Been here a year now and not one invite to the fucking house, excuse my French. Fucking Kidman’s been there more than I have and she and Katie are like matter and antimatter… Lost my train of… Oh, yeah, so the grips tell me on MI3 that he has a special shredder in his trailer that vaporizes everything, burns everything to a crisp, you know, so no one can go through his garbage and sell it on the Net. What do you think of that? Paranoid, huh?” Jack said. His face fell. “Not much of a story, actually, was it?”

“It was a good story. Tom Cruise is very famous,” I said in slightly more broken English than I was capable of. Better if he underestimated me a little.

Jack sighed and looked unhappy.

Below us the front doorbell rang. “That’ll be the brains of the operation. I better go,” he said. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You too, señor,” I said.

I finished cleaning and when I went downstairs Paul was in the hall impatiently waiting for Jack. The man from last night. Paul Youkilis. Again Ricky’s file: 39, born in Austin, Texas, Ivy League, Jack’s manager and fixer, no known alibi for the night of the accident, hence suspect #1 or #2.

He was wearing a bright red shirt, yellow tinted glasses, black shorts, and flip-flops. He seemed dressed for a beach in Havana rather than a mountain town in Colorado. For some reason this sartorial choice filled me with annoyance.

“And who are you?” he asked, like Jack, failing to remember as far back as ten hours ago.

“María, I’m new. I work for Esteban.”

“New. I don’t like new,” Paul said.

Jack appeared, also in shorts and carrying a racket of some kind.

“All set?” Jack said.

Paul sighed. “I hate fucking squash. When are we going to get to go skiing? Isn’t this supposed to be Colorado? Where’s the fucking snow?”

Jack laughed. “Skiing? Skiing, you say? Nobody under forty goes skiing anymore, you old man.” He turned to me. “Ever been snowboarding, María? It’s the bomb.”

“No, señor.”

Jack punched Youkilis on the shoulder. “Anyway, it’s your fuckup, dude. Cruise makes his own snow. Get us invited to his house and we can ski all fucking day.”

“I’m trying man, I’m trying,” Paul said.

“Try harder. David Beckham’s coming for the weekend and he’s like huge all over Europe and Asia. I was just telling María here what big buddies me and Mr. Cruise are. Don’t show me up, brother.”

Paul examined me again. “When did you start working for Esteban?”

“Yesterday,” I said.

“Yesterday?” Paul muttered.

“Yeah, didn’t you read today’s paper, Paul? Looks like our old buddy Esteban is going to have a lot of new people on his staff,” Jack said.

“What are you talking about?” Paul asked.

“Fairview Post. María here very cleverly escaped the net,” Jack said, winking at me.

“I have no idea what you’re blathering about,” Paul muttered.

“As per fucking usual,” Jack muttered. He waved, blew kisses at Angela and me, and led Paul outside.

When they were gone, Angela called me over. “María, can you keep a secret?” she asked.

“Let me guess, you’re in love with Señor Jack,” I replied.

“With Señor Tyrone? No. A thousand times no, he’s skinny and has all those mirrors. Didn’t you see that he has pictures of himself on his bedroom wall? He’s crazy.”

“Ok, what’s the secret?”

“I wanted to tell you before, but I wanted to see if I could trust you.”

And because I did such a good job vacuuming carpets you reckon you can? I thought but didn’t say.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“When we get back to the motel tonight, we’re clearing out of here for Los Angeles. Victor has bought a Volkswagen bus and we’re driving to L.A. We’ve had enough of Esteban cheating us, paying us nothing, and now with the federales breathing down our necks, it’s time to go. We can get good jobs in L.A. Better jobs. And we won’t have to work for that fat thief.”

Ahh, so that’s what all the furtive looks were about.

“Who’s going?” I asked.

“Myself, Anna, Luisa, Victor, Josefina. We can take you if you want to come,” Angela said.

“To L.A.?”

“Sí, we can just disappear. Victor has cousins out there. He can get us Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, good jobs. And no Esteban.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“There’s no need. You haven’t even seen winter here yet. In January and February we have to walk up this hill in the snow and ice. L.A. doesn’t have snow.”

“I’ll think about it,” I reiterated.

“No, no, no, we need a decision now.”

“Then it’s a no.”

She stared at me and shook her head. “Let me call Luisa and tell her you’re coming. You won’t be sorry.”

“No. Don’t. Look, Angela, I don’t want to move so soon. We only just got here and I have a lot of things to do,” I said.

The words were out before I could call them back.

“What things?” she asked.

I knew I had to change tack immediately.

“Nothing. Forget it. Look, the person you should ask is Francisco. He’ll go with you, especially if you tell him that he’ll make more money.”

“You and Francisco are not together?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I will ask him.”

“Do that.”

Angela’s lips narrowed and she went back to the trash bags and I picked up the cleaning spray. Through the living room window I watched Jack and Paul reverse out of the driveway.

Things to do, I thought.

Things to do.