Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  “Maybe nobody has to die.”

  A tour group of elderly Canadians comes up from the harbor and files solemnly into the Ambos Mundos. They walk through, buying neither a drink nor anything else. The piano player starts riffing on a song by Céline Dion, either to bring them back or perhaps as ironic commentary.

  Ricky politely disengages my arm. “So how are you going to wangle the visa?” he asks.

  “I’m telling Hector I’m interviewing for a master’s degree at UNAM in Mexico City. I am too.”

  “Jesus Christ, when did you start planning that?”

  “Three days after the funeral.”

  Ricky laughs and takes my hand. “Oh, you’re good, Mercado, like I say, too good for the cops. You need an outlet. When was the last time you wrote a poem?”

  “Are you kidding? When I was thirteen.”

  He smiles. “You had talent. Your place is full of poetry books. You should start up again.”

  “You need to be in love with somebody to write poems,” I tell him.

  “That’s not true. Dad thought you were good.”

  He is getting on my nerves again. “You wanna hear a poem?”

  “Sure.”

  “‘The singing bird is dead as dust, he won’t revive, alas, / so you can take that golden quill and shove it up your ass’—Heinrich Heine.”

  Ricky laughs, shakes his head, looks at his watch, yawns. “Well, I suppose I better . . .” he says.

  He stands and leaves a twenty-dollar bill on the table. I give it back to him.

  “The police are paying for this one,” I tell him.

  “Hey, you want to come with me? Yeah, you should come,” he says.

  “Where to?” I ask suspiciously, imagining some sweaty basement Sodom and Gomorrah filled with rail-thin boys and army colonels with fat mustaches.

  “To see Mom. I smuggled in American chocolate from Miami. Come on, she’ll be thrilled.”

  “To see Mom?” I say, aghast.

  “It won’t be that bad,” he says.

  But of course it is.

  Water leaking in her apartment. Buckets over the voodoo gods. The smell of incense and a backed-up toilet.

  Ricky tells her all about Manhattan.

  An isle of joy, he says. She doesn’t really understand. She brews herbal tea and casts the tarot. Makes predictions. Not a surprise when she mentions death. She always predicts death. We always ignore it. Laugh about it.

  Death.

  Oh God.

  My eyes open.

  Out into the hard blue night I gaze. Through the mountain and the desert. Through the tears. Tears for me. Tears into the black seat. My denim shirt thick with tears. I picked this shirt because it looked sexless, like a drab uniform for a drab nonentity. For an invisible. The person who cleared your table or cleaned your toilet or mowed your lawn.

  I hadn’t wanted to be noticed. But two miles into the United States I’m noticed. I’m nearly raped. And now I’ve killed two men. Unmade them as if they never were.

  And there’s nothing I can do but wipe my tears.

  My face pressed against glass. Yellow lines. Scrub. Incandescent creatures following the van. What do they want?

  More blood.

  The deaf lady talking to me.

  She can see I’m crying.

  “We’re nearly there,” she’s saying.

  Francisco gives me a handkerchief, asks me something.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Headlights lick asphalt.

  Moths call my name.

  Close my eyes. Mom’s apartment, Ricky’s chocolate, me looking for the container holding Dad’s ashes. It isn’t there. No doubt Mother sold it to the witches on the floor below.

  This is stupid.

  This is crazy.

  Hector was right. Ricky was right. They were all right.

  Lights in the distance. Gas station. Another gas station.

  “Ok, friends,” Pedro says. “We’re just about there.”

  A strip mall. 7-Eleven. Liquor store. Smoke shop.

  Bits of tire. Fenders. License plates.

  A gender reassignment clinic.

  What is this place?

  “America.”

  America.

  “I don’t feel good.”

  The car pulls into a parking lot.

  “I don’t feel good, Francisco.”

  “Call me Paco, everyone does.”

  “Paco, I don’t feel . . .”

  “Let me help you out. We’re here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Come on. I’ll help you to the motel room. It’s been a long day.”

  His hand on my arm. The trucks. A chill in the air. Snow clouds to the north.

  “It’s ok, you’re safe now.”

  Safe. Burn this shirt when I get the chance. Burn all these clothes.

  “I need to shower.”

  “Yes, a shower.”

  Voices. Paco to Pedro. “She’s in shock. Delayed reaction. Give her some brandy.”

  “I’ve got some 4H, do you think she would take some of that? Mellow her right out.”

  “Worse thing you can do. Get some hot chocolate.”

  Chocolate.

  Snow clouds.

  An outdoor swimming pool.

  “Does anyone have a bathing suit that I can borrow?”

  “Well, I don’t know, I can check.”

  “Check.”

  A bathing suit.

  “We got it in the lost and found,” Paco says, grinning.

  Flip-flops. The edge of the pool. “Gotta warn you. The guy says it’s not heated.”

  “It’s ok.”

  I step in. The cold clears my head. The chlorine scalds my cuts. I stay in till midnight. Quarter moon. Stars between the clouds.

  A towel.

  Food.

  Whispers.

  “Get some rest. Long day tomorrow.”

  “Rest. Yes.”

  The women in one room. The men in another.

  A picture of Jesus. Mosquito corpses on the walls. A calvary for mosquitoes. The fabled mosquito graveyard.

  The bed sags. I lay the mattress on the floor.

  Sleep comes like a guillotine. And I’m down. No bad dreams. No dreams of any kind.

  It’s ok, Ricky. It’s ok, Mom.

  It’s ok.

  I’m in America and I’ve begun my task and the night is quiet and the world at peace.

  The peace of Carthage.

  The peace of baby María Angela.

  The peace of a frozen grave.

  CHAPTER 4

  SLAVE SOUK

  T

  he warehouse bakes. Outside, snow. Snow I have never seen. I looked for it in Mexico City on top of Popocatépetl. Saw nothing but ozonic haze.

  “The fuck is this?” the man asks, folding his hands behind his back, looking at us skeptically.

  He points his finger at Paco.

  “What the fuck are you supposed to be?” he asks.

  Paco shrugs. The man towers over him, could pulverize him, but somehow Paco’s slouch and silence is all insolence, as if he has the power, not the tall American.

  The man turns to Pedro. “I mean, seriously. Two boys, two women, and a fucking old man. This is gotta be a joke. Where’s the real merchandise?”

  Merchandise. That’s what we are.

  “I just bring them in,” Pedro says.

  “Yeah, that’s right, you just fucking bring ’em in.”

  “At considerable risk,” Pedro adds, and he can’t help but give me half a glance.

  “How old are you?” the man asks Paco.

  Pedro translates the question. “Twenty-eight,” Paco says.

  “Like hell, and the other one’s even younger. Hold out your hands, both of you,” he says.

  Pedro translates again.

  Paco and the Guatemalan kid hold out their hands. He examines them for scar tissue and blisters and shakes his head.

  “These are town boys. Juár
ez trash. Neither’s done a hard day’s work in their fucking lives. Christ . . . This is really pathetic. I need strong guys for construction. Not fucking children, women, and old-timers.”

  He takes off his hat, a peaked cap that says DON’T TREAD ON ME, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  Without the hat he seems even taller. Six foot six. Two hundred and fifty pounds. About forty-five. I give him a cop’s look and memorize the details. Lines on his face, scar below his ear. He dyes his crew-cut hair a chestnut brown, but lets his goatee keep the flecks of gray. His voice is harsh but not strained. He’s used to having authority, to being in command. Likes it. His back is straight and his belly fat is contained. Not like the Americans of The Simpsons or the Yuma flicks. Athletic. Strong. Jaw like an axe head. He’s the type that landed on the moon when Jefe was boasting about a 10 percent increase in sugarcane production.

  “You. What’s your name?”

  “María.”

  “María. Course it is. You know what the problem with your fucking culture is? No fucking originality. Indian blood. Fucking ten thousand years and no one invents the wheel. Shee-it.”

  “María, Elizabeth,” I improvise.

  “Where are you from?” he asks.

  “Yucatán.”

  “The Yucatán. I know it. Ever been to Chicxulub?”

  I shake my head.

  “Fuck no. Why would you? That’s where the comet hit the Earth that wiped out the dinosaurs. Why would you want to go there? Jesus, no fucking curiosity either.”

  I nod and our eyes meet and I look down at the concrete floor.

  “And what do you do María, Elizabeth?” he says, coming close, his sternum an inch from my nose.

  He’s wearing cowboy boots, boot-cut black jeans, and a long wool overcoat. On another man it would be a costume in lieu of a personality, but not him. This is his attire. And you couldn’t see it unless you were looking, but I am looking, and the bulge is a gun in his coat pocket.

  He puts his finger under my chin and tilts my head.

  His eyes are blue-gray, distant, like ash.

  “I was a maid,” I say. “I worked in many of the Western hotels in Cancún.”

  “This ain’t Cancún,” he says.

  Pedro senses trouble. The others think I’m lucky, but Pedro knows I’m good. He’s never seen moves like that before. I’m not a cop or a federale otherwise I’d have called it in. But I am something. And the sooner he’s shut of me, the better.

  “She has worked also as a nurse and she is strong and she is good with children,” Pedro says.

  The man sniffs me like a bear. “Whored before?” he asks in Spanish.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, if you’re gonna start, you better start now. Getting too old as it is.”

  He turns to Pedro. “Is she a breeder or what?”

  Pedro shrugs.

  “You got kids?” the man asks me.

  “No.”

  “A hundred a week, domestic. Hard fucking labor. But five times that giving working guys a little R-and-R. Think about it. Esteban will give you the lowdown,” he says.

  He touches my cheek with his forefinger. Paco flinches, but I look at him to show that it’s all right. The man smiles and strokes my hair. I decide that—despite the plan—if he touches my breasts I’m going to kick him in the ballsack and when he’s down I’ll attempt to break his nose with the bottom of my shoe.

  He looks at me for a long ten seconds.

  What do you see there, friend?

  Do you see the future? Or the past? The dead men in the desert, one with his head blown off, bodies black with egg-laying flies.

  And what do I see when I look at you?

  A hint.

  A glimpse.

  Before New Mexico I hadn’t so much as killed a fish. But now I know there will be more.

  I’m shaking.

  Maybe it should be you, Ricky. I don’t think I can do this either.

  The man parts my hair to look for lice.

  No, if this gets worse I won’t kick him. I’ll just go home. I’ll quit the game and go.

  “She ain’t lousy,” he says.

  “They are all clean,” Pedro insists.

  He opens my mouth with two fingers. The smell of tobacco, leather. He nods to himself.

  “You could make a lot of money . . . Yeah, I like this one. She could pass for white if she weren’t so dumb. Ok, you’ll do, step over here.”

  I walk behind him. Away from the others. The gap between me and them no longer merely metaphorical, but now delineated in geography. Paco twitches, looks at me, looks away. He wants to be on my side of the invisible line.

  The American lights a cigarette.

  Silence.

  Smoke.

  Snow.

  The air in the warehouse perfumed with diesel and Marlboros.

  “You are taking one?” Pedro asks, outraged.

  The American nods.

  “Now you are making the joke,” Pedro says.

  “I don’t see anybody laughing,” the man replies.

  “This is, uh, madness,” Pedro insists. “Do you know the risks that we run?”

  “I don’t like what you brought me. Whatcha gonna do about it? Tell me, little man, whatcha gonna do?”

  Pedro spits on the concrete. “You are right,” Pedro says. “I am nothing. You must not have to worry about me. But the people I work for—”

  The American cuts him off. “Before you say something you’ll regret, let me stop you right there, friend. The people you work for would never try to fuck with me in my town. Now that bullshit might play in fucking El Paso or Juárez but it don’t work here. This is Fairview, Colorado. This is my city. I’ll give you five hundred bucks for the girl. Take it or leave it.”

  “Five hundred dollars!” Pedro says.

  The man nods, throws down the cigarette, clenches and unclenches a fist. His hands are huge. Bigger than my whole head. Meat axes. Hold a basketball upside down with his fingertips. And they say a lot. Tan line where a ring used to be, but no wedding band. Divorced. Knuckle scars. Hint of a tattoo running up his wrist. The bottom of an anchor. Navy. Marines. Something like that. A bruiser whose wife left him when he blew his last chance and beat the shit out of her.

  “Take it or leave it. Take ’em all back, for all I care,” he says.

  “I take them all to Denver. I take them to Kansas City!” Pedro protests.

  “Do that,” the American snaps.

  “This would not happen in L.A.,” Pedro seethes.

  “We’re not in L.A.,” the American says.

  Pedro plays the angles, dreaming cartels and professional icemen who’ll deal with this Yankee fuckface.

  “Where is Esteban? I want to talk to Esteban,” Pedro says.

  Esteban, one of the guys on Ricky’s secondary list—the guy with the dent in his Range Rover.

  “Esteban’s busy, but it doesn’t matter, you ain’t been listening, this is my town. I say who stays here and who goes.” His voice a rasp. Metal grinding on metal—grinding on us. He’s the vise and the plane and we’re the thing in the jaws to be scraped clean.

  “I do not do fieldwork, but I do construction. I lay down bricks. I am skills, my hands are, uh, mis manos . . . no son asperas, uh, because, bricks are skilled. I am waiter in restaurant, I am clean sewers. In Managua I work as house painter in morning and in laundry at night. Eighteen-hour day. I work hard,” Paco says.

  “And you speak English,” the man replies.

  “I speak English, good,” Paco agrees.

  “Yeah, ok. You sold me. You come over here too.”

  Paco crosses to our side of the invisible line.

  When he’s beside me he touches me on the small of the back. It’s comforting, not irritating. I smile at him. Nicaraguan bullshit artist, I want to whisper in his ear but I don’t.

  “For him?” Pedro asks.

  The man walks behind us and this I don’t like. Him behind me. Hairs o
n my neck. He stands there for a beat. Comes around the front. He looks at me and Paco. He reaches into his pocket and feels the money in the billfold.

  “You know how to work a nail gun?” he asks Paco in Spanish.

  “Of course, señor,” Paco says.

  “Sure you do. What’s your name, boy?”

  “Francisco.”

  “Ok, good, I’ll take Miss America here,” he says, putting his big right hand on my head. He claps his left on Paco. “And if for any reason Miss America is unable to fulfill her duties, you, Francisco, the first runner-up, will step into her shoes.”

  Paco doesn’t seem to catch any of it but smiles uncomfortably.

  He turns to Pedro. “Seven-fifty for him. Twelve-fifty for both.”

  Pedro nods. That figure is a bit more reasonable. “Seventeen hundred and fifty and you will have a deal,” he says.

  The American yawns. “I’ll tell you what, I’m feeling generous. Let’s call it fourteen hundred even.”

  “Fifteen hundred and we will shake on it.”

  “Fifteen it is,” the American says.

  “And the others?” Pedro asks.

  “You can take the others to Denver.”

  Pedro shakes his head, but you can tell he’s going to take the deal. Fifteen hundred dollars in all those big bills. And there’s something about the American. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s something to do with his height and the way he carries himself. His authority is absolute. Once he’s decided, the conversation, the negotiation, the interaction are all over.

  “I do not know,” Pedro says.

  “Take a second to think on it.”

  The American goes to the warehouse door, trundles it open. He sucks in air as if he’s getting more than just oxygen from it. As if nature’s rejuvenating him like one of my mother’s voodoo gods.

  Wind blowing around our ankles.

  Pedro pretending to mull it over.

  Time counting out the moments before the grave.

  “Well?” the American asks finally, without turning.

  “Take the other boy,” Pedro says. “He is from Guatemala. He will work hard. Three hundred dollars.”

  “Can’t do it. Too young. Stick out like a sore thumb. This is Tancredo’s district. Motherfucker’s running for president. Immigration’s his bête fucking noir. INS breathing down our necks. Raided the ski resort preseason. Fucking decimated it. Dumb bastards.”

  Pedro nods, looks at the pair of us, gives us a look. We’re both happy to go.