Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  And pack she had.

  Drawers opened, clothes scattered, pictures ripped from the walls, a bed stripped. Method to the madness. They had rehearsed this.

  No photographs, no diaries, no books.

  No books. I thought at the very least I’d see some of his books, maybe flip through the titles while Karen made me a cup of coffee.

  I rummaged in the trash but even that gave no clues, just a few nondescript bills. Everything incriminating gone. Tonight it would be burned and dropped in a trash can at some random truck stop.

  I put a plastic bag over my arm and shoved it down the U bend of the toilet, but that was clean too.

  I did the whole house. A quick brace and then a longer backward trace.

  Nothing.

  I sat on the sofa.

  Memories. Guilt. Tears. Ricky said not to fall for that trip, and he was right.

  Be like an alchemist. Transmogrify guilt to anger. Easy after Karen had brought his death so vividly to my mind.

  I stood, addressed the void: “I don’t know what you thought you were doing here, Dad, I don’t know what you filled her head with, but you did a number on her, all right, just like you did on us. And . . . and I want you to know something: I’m angry at you, I’m angry that you left us, that you didn’t write, that you missed my quince and you sent nothing. I haven’t done a poem since you left, and Mom’s half crazy, and we’re all stuck in Cuba. You fucked us, old man, fucked us good.”

  I left through the front door and had gone a kilometer along Beech before I turned and walked back.

  Something was nagging at me. Something about the sofa.

  In through the window.

  No reason for her to move it.

  I shoved it and found the place where she’d tried to rip up the floorboards.

  She’d spent some time on it but she didn’t have a claw hammer and she was in a terrible rush.

  I did have a hammer.

  I smashed out the nails and ripped up the floor. One board, two boards. Dirt. A plastic bag. Inside the bag another bag, inside the second bag a gun.

  Dad’s? I looked at it. It was strange. It was certainly a clue. If I had the time I’d check it out.

  I sat back on the sofa. Sat there for a long time. Light marched across the floor.

  The patterns changed.

  A gnawing sound. A mouse investigating the mayhem. It looked at me with surprise.

  Run, mouselet, I spare thee.

  Yes. Run, run, run from the Cubans and enemies real and imaginary.

  I fished in my pocket, found where I had written Karen’s license number, ripped it up, and flushed the pieces down the toilet.

  You’ll be safe, Karen.

  Safer, at least, than your husband’s killer.

  No. That poor bastard. I wouldn’t want to be him a few hours from now, on a sad, cold, December night in Nowhere, Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE BOOK OF CHANGES

  T

  he arithmetical process of elimination. Our two primary suspects and Esteban were three of the solutions to the case, but they weren’t all of the solutions, and I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable until I had dealt with every possibility, no matter how remote. At this last stage of the game I knew I was going to have to see about Ricky’s golf cart. I probably should have investigated this one first, but I’d been putting it at the back of my mind. It would be a ridiculous way for a man to die. Run over by a purple golf cart whose speed topped out at ten kph, but all ways to die were equally absurd and somehow in all this craziness it wouldn’t have been inappropriate.

  The Scientology Drop-In Center was next to Donna Karan.

  I decided to drop in.

  Metallic walls, massive air-conditioning pods, dark, uncomfortable-looking chairs around an ebony coffee table. Scientology magazines, newsletters, booklets, and of course various texts by L. Ron Hubbard. The reception desk was a long curve of black marble. I’d never seen black marble before and I was impressed.

  I stood there and ran my fingers along the grain.

  The receptionist looked up.

  Pretty, with a Stepford hairdo and dress, she had a glazed Hero of the Revolution expression about her.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if I could see Toby Armstrong. I’m an insurance inves—”

  “Oh yes. Toby’s available right now if you want to go in. It will have to be brief, he’s auditing at two. IV Room number two, first on the left.”

  IV Room #2.

  Toby was sitting behind a desk, surfing the Web on a tiny silver Toshiba laptop. He was skinny with a raggedy gold sweater, blond hair, and a sallow, distant expression. His eyes were black, tired, and startled when I came in unannounced. He quickly pulled down the cover on the Toshiba.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I read that you crashed a golf cart at—”

  Toby stood and offered me his hand. It was moist, limp, the nails dirty and bitten to the quick. He rubbed his face, sat back down, and reached into a drawer under his desk. He brought out a long white booklet and a pencil and passed them across to me. He didn’t appear to have taken in what I had begun to say. “I suppose they told you that this is going to have to be quick. I’ve got an audit at two,” he muttered.

  “So they said.”

  He stood again, his left eye twitched alarmingly for a moment, and then, abruptly, he left the office.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I went to the door and tried to follow him but it was locked from the outside.

  “Excuse me! Excuse me!” I called out.

  The door opened and the receptionist came back in. She was holding a glass of water.

  “Oh, please take a seat, Miss . . .”

  “Martinez.”

  “Please take a seat, Miss Martinez. Just fill out that questionnaire and Toby will be back in to see you in a moment. And do drink the water, it’s very dry in here.”

  She gave me a winning American smile and I found myself sitting.

  The door closed.

  I drank the water, opened the questionnaire.

  I faked the career history and personal data pages, info dumping a fictional CV I was quite proud of. Inez Martinez 3.0 was a young Latina from Denver, who had become an insurance agent after attending Harvard University. Hmm, was that credible? Harvard, well, it was too late now. I’d made her magna cum laude and a member of the basketball team.

  I started answering the other questions. It was amusing. A distraction.

  They grew increasingly weirder as the pages turned.

  Q. 43: “If your mother divorced your father and married someone of a different race would you A) Be angry? B) Be happy? C) Be worried about the opinion of others? D) Have no opinion?” I wrote D.

  Q. 89: “When you are hunting and the quarry enters your sights, do you squeeze the trigger with A) Satisfaction? B) Regret? C) Joy? D) Emptiness?” I wrote D again, thinking about nightmares of dead men in the desert.

  Q. 100: “If it were proven that there was life on Mars would you A) Move there? B) Stay on Earth? C) Question the findings of the scientists? D) Reevaluate your religious beliefs?”

  Q. 102: “Where are you most at ease: A) The nonsmoking section of a cinema? B) A discotheque? C) An airport departure lounge? D) An airport arrivals lounge?”

  I had just finished question 200 and closed the booklet when Toby came back in.

  “That was good timing,” I said.

  He took the booklet. “No, I was watching you through the monitor. Enjoy your vitamin water?”

  I had barely touched the glass and now I was relieved.

  “Vitamin water?”

  “Drink it, it’s good for you. B Complex mostly, one hundred mg of niacin and lots of other good stuff. High potency, not like that crap in 7-Eleven. Better than coffee. Drink up.”

  “Uh, no thanks.”

  Toby began drawing a line through my answers, forming a kind of chart.

  “Well, this will gi
ve us some idea,” he said. “If I wasn’t pressed for time, we could do the proper thousand-question test; that’s the real deal.”

  “Uhm, look, Toby, I’m an insurance invest—”

  “Ah, you’re from Denver! Denver, Denver, Denver!” Toby exclaimed, his eyes wide, his fist pounding the table.

  “What about it?”

  “Denver holds a special place in our pantheon. Is that the right word? No matter. It was in Denver that Battlefield Earth takes place, surely Denver’s claim to fame as a city.”

  He leaned across to me and his eyes now took on a furtive expression.

  “Do you want me to spill? Do you think you can handle it?”

  “Spill.”

  “There are some of us who don’t think it’s a novel at all.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not a novel, but a . . .” he lowered his voice. “Prediction.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “That’s just between us.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s why some of us think Mr. Cruise has moved to Colorado. And when Xenu returns . . . No, forget that, I’ve said too much, but let’s just say that the rumors about Mr. Cruise’s bunker aren’t just rumors.”

  I leaned back in the chair while Toby finished his chart. When he was done he passed it across the table and began explaining it. It looked like the stock market index after a turbulent week, but according to Toby the fluctuations weren’t the problem, the problem was that the high points and the low points were in the wrong places. My life was a mess, I was rudderless, confused, clearly unhappy; however, there was an answer. He further explained that the Church of Scientology could help me iron out these personality defects, with the assistance of vitamin water, the thousand-question audit, and motivated people like Toby.

  After this little speech he began biting his nails and, when he thought I wasn’t looking, exploring his ear canal with the eraser on the top of the pencil.

  When he began nibbling at the eraser I decided that as amusing as this all was, I’d had just about enough of it.

  I was a serious person, here on serious business.

  I gave him my card and heavy hit him with words like “dead Mexican” and “hit and run” and “intoxication” and “manslaughter” and “leaving the scene” of an accident.

  He was already fragile, on edge. He began to simper and, sipping my vitamin water, confessed that he had been drunk the night of the golf cart incident, but he’d only been trying to drive from the Scientology Center on Pearl Steet to his apartment on Arapahoe, that there was no way he could get up the mountain, and in any case everyone had been given strict instructions to stay away from Mr. Cruise’s estate and not to invade his personal space. The sheriff’s department hadn’t cared.

  Still, he groaned, he knew it was wrong to get drunk, it was weak, and if they found out that he’d been drinking he could get into big trouble. He wanted to talk about it but I’d had enough.

  I assured him that his secret was safe with me, exited IV#2, and, forsaking forever my chance of being accomodated in Tom Cruise’s bunker when the aliens returned, walked back out into Fairview.

  Within a minute I had dismissed Toby from my mind and had steered my trajectory back onto its proper course.

  Got to eat. Call Esteban and eat.

  The long road back.

  The motel.

  Upstairs, look for Paco.

  A note: “Overtime! See you tonight!”

  Stomach rumbling. Needed some food.

  I had money left.

  Paco said there was a good burrito place downtown on Logan Street. Good because it was too greasy for the white people and it was cheap.

  Out again.

  Sun, but a chill in the air, and a hundred meters from the motel Mr. New York Plates still there in a turning circle by the forest. Sipping a coffee, reading a Denver Post. Latino, bald, forty, chubby. Shifty-looking character, possibly an INS agent, possibly not.

  I crossed the street.

  “Good morning,” I said to him.

  He pretended not to hear.

  I tapped the glass.

  Window down, paper down. “Yes?” he said in accentless American.

  “Do you know the way to San Jose?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said.

  “A stranger in paradise, well, that’s ok. Have a nice day.”

  The window whirred back up.

  Now that he’s been made, I’ll never see him again, I thought with what turned out to be poor powers of prescience.

  I walked down the hill.

  I was wearing my third change of clothes of the day. Blue jeans, black shoes, a red blouse, and a raincoat Angela had left for some reason. Didn’t she watch the movies? All those Yuma flicks with Bogart, it’s always raining in L.A.

  Main Street. Gray clouds. Few people about.

  A family with kids. A gaggle of high-maintenance girlfriends buying apresski gear. Half a dozen individuals sitting outside Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee and Tea, some of them still defiantly in flip-flops and shorts.

  They didn’t notice me.

  I didn’t register them.

  I did see Mr. New York Plates again, following me on foot.

  An INS agent almost certainly—the FBI investigating a murder in the New Mexico desert would surely do a better job.

  I found the intersection for the burrito place, turned the corner on Logan, and ducked down an alley.

  Garbage cans, Dumpsters, squirrels.

  I waited for Mr. New York Plates.

  He passed by in a hurry.

  I waited until he had turned at the next block and then I ran back up the hill to the Wetback Motel.

  His Toyota was still there in the turning circle.

  On my second day in the force Lieutenant Díaz showed me a trick with a coat hanger that can open practically every car on the planet. I’ve used it many times. But I didn’t have a coat hanger, and why not give the INS a little of their own back?

  I picked up a log and smashed the passenger’s-side window, opened the door, looked inside the car.

  A sleeping bag, McDonald’s wrappers, soda cans, a water bottle filled with urine. Nothing interesting until I found a digital camera in the glove compartment. I took it, slipped it in my coat pocket, and went back down the hill again.

  Our paths did not cross as I had hoped they would.

  I found the burrito place, ordered a beef fajita, and scanned through Mr. New York Plates’s photographic work on the digital’s tiny screen.

  Pics of the motel, of trees, several of squirrels, of himself, and finally the jackpot: several shots of me, Esteban, Paco, and a few of the others.

  Yeah—INS. Didn’t bother me but I’d have to warn Paco. He should have gone to L.A. If they deported him now he’d be back to square one again. Poor kid.

  I ate the burrito and drank a warm Corona.

  “You’re not good at this,” Mr. New York Plates said in Spanish.

  I looked up.

  “Not good at what?” I asked, attempting sangfroid.

  He didn’t look angry, just tired. He put his hand out. I gave him the camera and he put it in his pocket.

  “I like the ones of the squirrels best.”

  “What else did you take?” he asked.

  “Well, I was spoiled for choice: the bottle of urine or the McDonald’s wrappers?”

  “Good day,” he said and turned to go.

  “Wait. Who are you?” I asked.

  “Me? I’m someone who doesn’t like to get dicked around by stupid fucking bitches!”

  “I can’t imagine you get much opportunity if that’s an example of your small talk.”

  He sighed. “You think you’re smart? We’ll see how smart you really are,” he said and walked out of the restaurant.

  I didn’t think of a snappy comeback until he’d been gone five minutes. “I’m only smart in comparison to some.”

  It was happy hour, so
I ordered a Negra Modelo and considered him for a while, but I didn’t have enough information to work up many hypotheses. And besides, I had other tasks.

  I found the phone Esteban had left for me.

  “Hello.”

  “Who is this?” Esteban asked.

  “María.”

  “What’s up? You wanna borrow the car?”

  I did want to borrow the car. I needed the car tonight, but that’s not why I was calling.

  “No.”

  “Good. Fucking walk to town. Fed up with people using my property for their personal convenience. You all have it easy. Twenty years ago you’d all have had to work for a living. Don’t know what I was thinking. Don’t even try it. I’ll have them check and see if it’s in use with the GPS. Same to everyone else—no one uses the car until I get back on Monday. Give them an inch they take a mile.”

  “I haven’t used it at all.”

  “Somebody’s been driving it. I’ve logged it. Abusing their privileges. Oh yeah, and what’s this I hear about you asking questions about some accident? Briggs left a crazy message on my voice mail.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “A private investigator’s been asking everyone questions about an incident that happened here in May. He’s been hired by the Mexican consulate in Denver. Apparently someone killed a Mexican on the Old Boulder Road and he noticed that your car was involved in an accident around then. He thinks you might be implicated somehow.”

  I took the phone from my ear while Esteban threw out a complex series of curses involving the man’s mother and all sorts of unlikely forms of intercourse.

  When he was finished I pressed home the point. “What should I tell him? He wants to have your car towed to a lab for a forensic examination.”

  “My God, I leave town for one day and Briggs is going crazy and they’re towing my car? What the hell is happening out there?”