Fifty Grand (18 page)

“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.