Fifty Grand

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.

17 FIFTY GRAND

Images 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.