Fifty Grand (39 page)

I point at the door and sidle around the bed so that he’s ahead of me.

He turns and stares at me. He’s wondering if this is a nightmare.

Yeah, it is.

I point at the door and give him a little push and he walks ahead of me, slowly, onto the landing.

I flip the lights.

All that stuff.

The celeb pics. Caricatures. Expensive art I hadn’t noticed before. Small postwar Picasso lithographs. Jack’s preferences are for the big and splashy but Youkilis, if I recall, attended Princeton. Taste. Class. Discretion.

He comes to the stairs, hesitates, looks back at me, afraid.

What’s he thinking? That I’m going to push him?

I point down. He shakes his head. He’s trembling all over. His penis has practically disappeared.

I point again, this time with the gun.

Gingerly he makes way down the inside part of the curve, rubbing against the railing with his left arm. His back twitches at the bottom and he takes another look at me.

I don’t like it.

He’s up to something, I better keep an—

Suddenly he trips and falls against the phone stand. The phone and a notebook and a cell phone clatter to the ground on top of him.

Accident? Was he trying to call 911? Quickly I pick up the phone and put it back in the cradle.

He’s groaning. He’s cut himself across the chest. I have no sympathy. I kick him in the ribs and direct him to get up. His eyes are calmer, less wide.

I’m uneasy.

He did something there. I don’t know what. But he did something.

I look at the phone and the wall—everything seems ok.

Better get the hell out of here. I point at the kitchen.

We walk in and I open the door to the garage.

I point at the garage door and while he goes ahead I swing the backpack around in front of me, unzip it, and take out the pepper spray.

He stops at the open trunk of his BMW, turns, and looks at me. He shakes his head. He’s not getting in the trunk. Trunk equals death. If he stays in the house he has a chance, but if he gets in the car he’s going to die.

I’ve been expecting this. I pepper spray him in the face.

He screams, his knees buckle. I run at him and ram him onto the lip of the trunk. He’s six-five and built, so if he falls to the ground it’s going to be a hell of a job to get him in there. I drop the gun and pepper spray and shove his pelvis with both hands. Even blinded and in agony he fights me, kicks, but it’s too late, I have him in. I punch him in the nose and, stunned and winded, he tumbles backward into the trunk.

I lift the backpack, take out the tape.

He’s sobbing, bleeding, but he’ll live.

I grab his ankles, pin them under my arm, and wrap them in the duct tape. The punch and the pepper spray have winded him and he’s as docile as a lamb. But that won’t last forever. This has to be
tight
.

Roll after roll.

He starts to fight and buck.

Another loop over his mouth.

I close the trunk.

Muffled screams.

I don’t feel good about this.

I stand there for what seems like forever, then go back into the house and turn off all the lights.

Back to the garage.

He’s quiet.

Maybe he had a heart attack.

It would still be murder.

I click the button that opens the garage door and open the passenger’s-side door of the BMW. I throw my gear in the backseat, get in, close the door, turn the key, start her up, and drive out.

Lights on.

Seatbelt on to stop the alarm.

The BMW drives like a tank, and I would know, since I did part of my military service on a T-72.

The driveway. Full beam. Heart pounding.

I look behind to see if the garage door is going to close by itself.

It doesn’t.

I have to do something. I fumble around until I see a small box clipped onto the sunshade. A button says
OPEN/CLOSE
. I press
CLOSE
.

It closes.

I drive toward the gates.

Somehow they know I’m coming and open automatically.

I turn left down the mountain road.

I take off the ski mask and focus on driving.

I forgot to leave that note about being back in the afternoon. It’s ok. Forget it. The help won’t notice anything’s amiss. I’m the help.

The icy road. The trees. He starts to make noise back there.

I click the radio. Flip, flip, flip until I get a Denver classical station playing Shostakovich.

I take out the map book, hit the interior light.

Where are we?

Ah yes.

The Old Boulder Road to the first junction.

I turn the light off and drive.

Trees. Houses. The junction.

The road splits. The 34 goes east into Rocky Mountain National Park, the 125 goes all the way up to Wyoming.

I want the 125.

I recheck the map. Straight shot to the state line.

Nothing behind me. Banging from the trunk. Ahead on the 125 the lights of cars, trucks.

The snow petering off but still a nuisance. Windshield wipers. Radio louder.

I turn left onto the 125 and accelerate the BMW up to sixty.

When I get on the road, I gun it to eighty and then ninety.

Minutes go by. Ten, twenty, forty-five.

Shostakovich gives way to Purcell gives way to Mozart.

I slow down to go through the small town of Walden, which at this hour is completely dead. I accelerate again, and not long after Walden we’re in Wyoming. A sign says
WELCOME TO THE COWBOY STATE
. Below that someone’s scrawled “Cheney Cuntry.”

An inner voice as persistent as a teenage pimp says this is a big mistake. This is the gamble of your life. And for what? For what? You still don’t even know for sure.

Shut up. Only about twenty minutes now.

But actually the BMW gets me there in fifteen.

We’re going so fast and so effortlessly that I almost miss the turnoff for the lake.

Brakes, a skid.

I drive down the dirt road.

Pitch-black.

Here too early.

Can’t go on the ice in the dark.

Have to wait.

The moon is in the eighth house.

But I want the sun.

I kill the engine.

I pull out the pack of Mexican cigarettes and lift the orange from the floor.

I
mages from Al Andalus. The dogwood minarets. The ice-lake
sajadah
. The raven muezzins. A lake in Wyoming. America.

I try to think of a Cuban metaphor but I can’t. There’s nowhere in Cuba like this.

Clean. Cold. Quiet. Safe.

But even America is only an idea for those who don’t live here. Here you see that it’s a place like other places.

My hand under his arm.

Keeping him up.

My fingers turning blue.

He listens to the story.

I came from Cuba to investigate the death of my father. The poor dead Mex. The town ratcatcher. An anonymous wetback with false papers and a fake ID. A nobody. Barely a mention in the paper.

I posed as a maid in your home. I gathered material. I got evidence. I eavesdropped. It wasn’t Mrs. Cooper. It wasn’t Esteban. It wasn’t Toby. It was you. I know it was you. Jack told me. Everyone told me. You hit my father and you left him to die by the side of the road.

Well . . . Now you know.

What have you got to say?

Nothing.

He can’t speak. He can barely breathe.

The backwater of breath encircling our mouths and merging with the smoke from the cigarettes.

Tell me. Be quick and I will be merciful. For Paco is right, I have no stomach for this. For any of it. Come on. Speak. Let’s get this over with.

Say it. Now. Save yourself. “Tell me.”

Death is mist on the surface of the ice. It collapses his resistance.

“But, but, this is crazy, I didn’t even do it. I wasn’t driving.”

“You would say that, wouldn’t you? Now, for the last time tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth. I wasn’t driving.”

“If it wasn’t you, then who?”

“Jack,” he says with single-syllable finality.

“Of course, bite the hand the feeds, blame the boss. Unfortunately, the boss has an airtight alibi.”

“No alibi. It was h-him,” he insists.

“A lie. Jack was in California. In L.A.”

“No, he wasn’t. Believe me. He definitely was not.”

Jack
was
in L.A. Ricky did the research. Jack was in L.A at a rehab clinic. It was Jack’s car but Jack was in L.A. Jack confirmed it to me himself. This pathetic attempt is doing nothing but making me angry. Your life is in the balance, Youkilis, you need my goodwill, not my wrath.

“Tell me the truth!”

“That is the truth.”

“Jack already told me you were driving the car.”

“That’s the lie. That’s the lie we made up,” he says.

His eyes close.

Open.

They’re red. Weary. Something about those eyes. This doesn’t look like the ploy of a desperate man. This—this has the smell of verisimilitude.

“Jack was in California,” I attempt again.

“Jack was in F-Fairview.”

“No.”

Teeth chattering. Lips blue. Pupils dilated.

“He’d auditioned for this movie. D-down to him and s-s-someone else. David Press at CAA told him he’d m-m-missed out. They went another d-direction. This was a lead in a major m-m-movie. Jack lost it. Went drinking. Flew to Vail. Came here looking for m-me. I w-was in Denver. He went
to a bar, some guys b-bought him drinks, not many. He felt ok to drive up the m-mountain. He m-must have hit him on the way home.”

“No,” I mutter. But it’s only a word. I know truth when I hear it.

Fact is, I’ve known it all along.

Youkilis was easy to hate. Jack was easy to like.

A one-minute cross-examination and he gives me the whole sorry tale: Youkilis gets back from Denver, finds Jack, sees the car, sees blood on the car. Waits for a cop. No cop comes. Maybe a deer, he thinks. Or a dog. Or, at worst, a hit-and-run with no witnesses. He doesn’t panic. His instinct kicks in. He drives Jack to Vail and charters a plane. It lands in L.A in the middle of the night. A limo takes him to the Promises Rehab Center in Malibu. Youkilis leaks a story that Jack’s been in there for two days and is doing well.

I’ve put the wrong guy in the grave.

Maybe I made you detective too soon,
Hector said.

Yeah. Maybe you did.

Mind racing. Wait a minute. He’s still guilty of the cover-up. Accessory after the fact.

“You put him in the rehab and that was it?”

“That was it.”

“But you bought off the cops.”

“No. That was later. Somehow Sheriff B-Briggs f-figured it out. He shook us d-down for fifty grand.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Fifty grand. It was n-nothing. We were relieved it was so l-little. He d-didn’t even take it for him-himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“He p-paid it into the p-police b-benevolent fund.”

Fifty thousand for a dead Mex. Fifty thousand for my father’s whole life.

An insult. Horrible. But . . . but no reason to kill him.

At least not reason enough.

At least not for me.

“Oh no,” I say to myself. “No, no, no.”

“What are you g-going t-to d-do?” he asks.

“Fuck!” I yell out loud and put down the gun.

Going to have to lift you out, you bastard. Going to have to try and save you.

How? Under the armpits, drag him. “Put your arms out,” I tell him.

But in the last minute hypothermia has started to set in. His eyes are fixed. The cigarette is burning him and he doesn’t even notice.

“
Mierde!
I’m going to fucking save you.”

I rip the cig from his mouth.

I kneel behind him, shove my hands under his wet, frozen shoulders, and try to heave him out backward.

I can’t get purchase.

I pull again.

Distracted, I don’t notice, behind me on the hill, Jack Tyrone, Deputy Crawford, Deputy Klein, and Sheriff Briggs get out of the black police Cadillac Escalade. I don’t hear Sheriff Briggs talk about the panic button on Youkilis’s house phone or the homing GPS in his BMW. I don’t notice them examining Youkilis’s car or see them as they follow the footsteps that lead down to the lake. I don’t see any of them look up, startled, when they hear me yell.