Fifty Grand

When I’m out of sight of the house I let the air out of my lungs.

“Closer,” I tell myself.

Now what?

Walk back. Process it.

Only a couple of kilometers to Fairview and another half a klick to Wetback Mountain.

Yeah, walk back, let it bubble like rum in the kettle.

The road, the trees, the endless mountains.

Beautiful, really.

No wonder you hid here, Dad.

The afternoon gone mad with migrating geese, volery after volery. Thousands of them. Where are you going? Mexico? Farther south? I wish you could appreciate what I can see. The cobalt sky, the light bending over the mountains, the vapor trails.

That why you came here, Pop? A landscape that is in every way the opposite of Havana? Or was there another reason?

I make it to the outskirts of Fairview, take out my map, and find Ashleigh Street. I go along about a kilometer before I find a burned-out liquor store. Sure enough, the stop sign on Rochdale Road has recently been replaced. I walk back a few meters and examine the trees. One of them looks bruised, bent, like it may have been hit fairly recently by a vehicle. I look close and change my angle to get the sunlight. Tiny fragments of gray paint on the trunk. I dab my finger on my tongue and raise one of them from the tree. I hold it in the palm of my hand.

The garage report said she drove a cream Mercedes-Benz.

Six months later cream and white probably weather to just about the same shade of gray.

I sit down on a nearby tree trunk.

The sky changes color as the sun sinks behind the Front Range.

Get up. Start back.

The road begins a long, slow incline toward town, and I find myself thinking about what Esteban told me. Not too long ago this road and the Malecón in Havana were both Spain.

Spain. Hard to believe it. Of course, they have long since parted and they don’t remember that they were kin. Here, unlike the Malecón, no one walks. Cars slow, people stare. Who is that person on foot? What can they be about? No good, I’ll be-

“María! María, is that you?”

I look up. A Toyota pickup with half a dozen Mexicans crammed in the back.

“How do you know-”

“It’s me,” Paco says from under a disguise of grime.

He helps me into the truck.

Handshakes. Hellos.

The boys pass me a Corona. I drink it. They tell me they’ve come from a garbage dump on the far side of the mountain, where they threw out perfectly good refrigerators, radiators, air-conditioning units, and other obsolescences that they’ve taken from the building they’re remodeling on Pearl Street. The boys are mostly from Mexico City or Chiapas. None of them is over twenty-five. Paco seems happy to be with them. Sitting there with the others, drinking beer, telling jokes. He’s a different person among these guys, more himself, funnier, younger. I’m a weight. A drag. “We shouldn’t be sharing a room anymore, Paco, you should be with your friends,” I tell him.

“No, no, I like staying with you,” he insists.

“I’m a cramp on your style,” I say.

“Never.”

He grins, finishes another Corona, shakes his head. Someone passes me a bottle of tequila but I decline and the bottle moves on.

“Did you have a good day?” Paco asks.

A good day? Yes. A productive day. Unless she’s got an Oscar stashed away, Mrs. Cooper was not the person who hit my father and left him to die in a ditch. Only one name left on Ricky’s garage list. The perfect suspect. Arrogant, rich, careless. He clearly takes meth, pot, alcohol. Gotta be him.

In fact, he’s almost too perfect, and if I were in Havana and investigating this case for Hector I’d at least look at a DGI angle-the prime suspect being set up as cover for a Party man. But this isn’t Cuba. This is a simpler country.

And Esteban and his deer? A deeper look to take care of that. Maybe also see about that Scientology golf cart. Just to be on the safe side.

We bump along the road. Paco, utterly wiped, lies against me. His eyes are dark and weary. He’s definitely not used to manual labor, no matter what he said before.

“Lie on my lap, little Francisco,” I tell him.

“I’m dirty,” he says.

“Lie down, close your eyes,” I tell him.

He smiles and lies down. Some of the other men give him an obscene roar but he tells them to fuck off. I stroke his hair and his smile widens.

“Keep a look out for the motel,” he says. “When you see it, tell Hernando to bang on the roof. They won’t stop. Angelo’s crew are all going to Denver.”

More bumps. More beer. “Plenty of food, plenty of beer, plenty of fun, that’s America,” he mutters. America. Yes. In Cuba it’s different. In Cuba you think only with your belly. And at the end of the month when the ration book is running thin, your belly tells you what to do.

“What are you thinking about?” Paco asks dreamily.

“My belly,” I tell him, and he laughs and laughs.

“You don’t even have one,” he says finally.

I do, Paco. I have a cop gut and it tells me that Mrs. Cooper is innocent and time is running out and the real killer’s days to walk this Earth are few.

11 PRAYER IS BETTER THAN SLEEP