Fifty Grand

I get up. “I have to go. You can keep the gun. I don’t want it.”

He shakes his head. “This belongs to you,” he says.

Ok. I throw it in the backpack, forget about it.

A thank-you. A goodbye. Even a good luck.

I get out, breathe the cold air.

What does it mean?

Dad had a spook’s gun. Did they send someone to kill him? Had he survived the attack and taken the gun? Was he a spook himself?

No, they were after him. That’s why he was calling himself Suarez and living as a Mexican. Had he stolen the gun in Havana? Bought it? Killed someone? How long had he been planning his defection? What exactly happened that weekend we went to Santiago?

Too many questions. Information overload.

Fuck it. Just drive.

I get in the car. Hit the lights. Back to town. Malibu Mountain. The Old Boulder Road.

Cruise. Watson. Tambor. Tyrone. Lights off.

Youkilis. Lights on.

Park the car. Cut the beams. Wait… Wait… Wait.

Snow stops. Moon comes out.

A car drives past. Damn it. Can’t sit here all night.

“I’ll kill half an hour at the motel and then come back,” I say to myself.

Down the hill.

I pull into the motel parking lot and there, standing in front of me with his arms folded, is Paco.

T-shirt, boxer shorts, coat, cigarette, no shoes. Furious. A button winds down the driver’s-side window. “Francisco, you’ll catch your death, go back inside,” I say like a big sister.

He walks to the Range Rover. “I’m not cold. Where are you going?”

“That’s my business.”

He shakes his head. “No. It isn’t. It’s our business. We’re in this together.”

“Nicaraguan idiot. You’re out of your depth.”

“I think it’s you that’s out of your depth,” he says.

He reaches into the car and tries to grab the keys.

“Fuck off!” I tell him and push his hand away.

“Get out of the car!” he hisses.

“Who do you think you are?”

“I’m someone who doesn’t want to see you get killed. Get out of the car.”

“Why the hell should I?”

Paco thinks for a moment. “For one thing, you don’t know that Esteban’s changed his plans. He’s going to be back tomorrow morning by seven and he seems the type that’ll notice if his fucking car is missing. He’ll call the cops. How long were you planning on taking it?”

Two-hour drive to the lake. One-hour interrogation. Two hours back. Not enough time. On my return the police would be looking for a stolen car.

“Mierde,” I mutter.

Paco nods. “Let me get dressed. I’ll drive you to the house.”

“What good will that do?”

“You can steal Youkilis’s car,” Paco says with a wolfish grin.

He’s figured out everything.

I underestimated him. What else have I got wrong?

“Won’t someone report that his car has been stolen?” I ask.

“Who? Youkilis will be in the trunk, going wherever it is you’re taking him, and you can leave a note on the kitchen table that says, ‘Gone for drive, back at noon’ or something… Right?”

“Right.”

“Good, now wait there,” he says and runs upstairs to pull on his jeans and a sweater.

I shift to the passenger side.

Make a decision.

Whatever else he says, he’s not coming with me.

“You’re not coming with me,” I tell him when he returns.

“Why not?”

“This is personal. This is nothing to do with you. And… and I want to do it by myself.”

He doesn’t answer. “Did you hear what I said?” I ask him.

He turns to look at me. He nods, slowly. “I heard and I know why you said it,” he replies hesitantly.

“But what?” I ask.

“But I’m just not sure you can handle it. Kidnapping a man from his house, interrogating him. It’s not you.”

“I’m a cop. I’m in the Cuban PNR. A detective. I’ve done my fair share of shaking people down, bracing defendants. All the heavy play, all the games. I know what I’m doing.”

“A cop? You?”

“Me.”

He coughs to hide his skepticism. “Well, ok, but when I was a kid in Nicaragua-”

“Jesus, if I never hear that line again…”

“This is pertinent.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Your loss. I am a fucking font of knowledge,” he says with a laugh.

“Come on, I don’t have time for this.”

Paco fakes a hurt look, nods, reverses the Range Rover out of the spot, and heads it up the mountain.

“How did you figure it was Youkilis?” he asks.

“I could ask you the same question.”

“The way you looked at him. It was the way you looked at those men in New Mexico.”

“I had him from the get-go. My brother, Ricky, ran the garages and found that only two cars had been brought in that weekend. An old lady called Mrs. Cooper whose story checks out and Jack Tyrone’s Bentley.”

“Tyrone.”

“Yeah, except that Jack was in L.A.”

“So you think Youkilis was driving Tyrone’s car?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

Paco looks at me doubtfully, knitting the eyebrows of his kid’s face. “You’ve covered all the angles?”

“All the ones I need to cover.”

“Why was your father hiding under a Mexican passport?”

“I don’t know. He was paranoid. I guess he thought the DGI was going to kill him, which is just crazy-a million Cubans have defected and the DGI is going to go after him?”

But then those doubts again. The gun. Karen’s escape plan.

I hesitate and continue almost to myself, “Shit, Paco, maybe he wasn’t so paranoid, maybe they did come after him.”