Fifty Grand (19 page)

Maybe now was the time to ask him about the dent on the front left.

“It’s a really nice car,” I said.

“My pride and joy.”

“What happened to your—”

“Oh, fuck,” Esteban interrupted and hit the brakes. Sheriff Briggs’s shiny black Escalade pulled to a halt next to us. To my surprise I found that my hand was shaking. He wasn’t on Ricky’s list but that man made me nervous.

The Escalade flashed its lights.

“What does he want?” Esteban groaned, turned off the engine, and zipped the window.

Sheriff Briggs and Klein, his skinny, nasty-looking deputy, got out of the Escalade. Unlike yesterday Briggs was in full uniform. Black boots, dark green trousers, green shirt with a gold badge on it, dark green cowboy hat, black leather jacket, nightstick, flashlight, gun. The hat flipped me. Made me think,
Mierde, I’m in America
.

Briggs leaned into the driver’s-side window of the Range Rover and took off his sunglasses. He stared at Angela and me in the middle seat before turning his attention to Esteban.

“Seem in an awful hurry,” he said.

“I’m running late,” Esteban replied.

“Hmmm,” Sheriff Briggs said, then caught my gaze and smiled.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” I said in English.

“How do you like our little community now that you’ve had some time to adjust?” Briggs asked.

“It’s very beautiful,” I said.

“That it is, that it is,” he replied.

“Excuse me, Sheriff, but I really should get going. As you can imagine, today is not a good day to be understaffed,” Esteban said.

Briggs nodded. “Oh yeah, almost forgot, how many did you lose?” he asked.

“Apparently seven got taken to the detention center in Denver. My lawyer thinks we can get one of them out tonight, Inez—she’s engaged to an American—and there’s another girl, Juanita, who Flora says is pregnant, so we might be able to get her out too. Won’t release any of the men, of course. And that means we’re still shorthanded at the site on Pearl.”

Sheriff Briggs turned to his deputy. “Things are looking bad for our buddy Esteban here,” he said.

“Looks like it, Sheriff,” Klein replied.

“Not enough men to do the job,” Sheriff Briggs went on, still talking to the deputy.

“But Sheriff, didn’t you conquer the town of Subhan in Kuwait with just half a platoon?” Klein said, clearly having heard that particular story a couple of hundred times.

“I surely did, A.J., but it’s well known that half a platoon of United States Marines can do just about anything in this world.”

“Amen to that,” Klein replied.

“Your Mexican, though. Takes a whole army of Mexicans to do the job of a few white men, ain’t that right, Deputy?” Briggs said.

“I believe that you’re speaking the truth,” the deputy responded. “From the halls of Montezuma, as the song says.”

“From the halls of Montezuma indeed,” Sheriff Briggs agreed with a laugh.

Esteban was becoming impatient. “Sheriff Briggs, it is always a pleasure to see you, but today we are very late and some of my clients will need reassur—”

Sheriff Briggs cut him off. “Get out of the car, Esteban.”

“What is this about?”

“Just get out of the car.”

Angela started to undo her seat belt.

“No, no, you two little ladies can sit tight,” Sheriff Briggs said.

Esteban got out of the car. The deputy turned him around and put Esteban’s hands on the roof of the Range Rover.

“Nice monkey suit,” Klein said, and both he and the sheriff laughed.

“Look, what is this about?” Esteban protested.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sheriff Briggs growled and cracked the end of his nightstick into the back of Esteban’s legs.

The sickening crunch of metal on bone.

Esteban ate asphalt.

Sheriff Briggs hit him again, catching him twice more on a defensively raised arm.

“You can’t do this to me, I’m a U.S. citizen,” Esteban pleaded.

“Do what I damn well please in my town,” Sheriff Briggs said, and he kicked Esteban in the legs. “Show him, A.J.”

Klein reached into his pocket and threw a plastic bag that landed on Esteban’s chest.

I sat up in the seat to get a better view.

“What is this?” Esteban groaned.

“That is five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce British Columbian hydro-fucking-ponic quality four-twenty.”

Esteban tried to get up. Klein drew his gun and pointed it at him. I caught Esteban’s eye through the car window. He stared at me. He didn’t look scared and I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging nod.

“Is that what this is about?” Esteban asked.

“Yeah,” Sheriff Briggs said. “That is what this is all about. Our deal was for cocaine from Mexico and you’ve been dealing ice and meth and pot, bringing it in from fucking Canada. Who do you think you are,
amigo
? Where do you think you are? Nothing escapes me, Esteban. Nothing. I know everything that goes on in this town. Everything you or anybody else tries to do, I fucking know it. Never forget that.”

Esteban got to his feet and rubbed his forearm.

“Is that why you brought in the INS? To fuck me up?” Esteban asked.

The sheriff spat. “The feds don’t tell us when they’re coming. That’s nothing to do with me.”

Esteban nodded and closed his eyes for a second. Thinking. He opened them again and forced a smile.

“I’ll come clean with you, Sheriff. You’re right about this. It’s an angle. I brought in the first small shipment as a trial. An experiment. I was going to tell you if it worked out.”

“Apparently it has worked out,” Sheriff Briggs said.

“Yeah. So far. Risky work, though. The real stuff is coming in tomorrow and then every month, once a month. I’m bringing in ice and pot. Good stuff. With your approval, of course. I was going to tell you all about it,” Esteban said quickly.

“Sure you were,” Briggs said.

Esteban appeared unfazed. “I can show you the paperwork. I’m being straight with you. I’m laying out thirty thousand capital for an expected hundred-thousand take. That’s seventy net. I can give you twenty on this and every batch.”

Sheriff Briggs nodded and hit his nightstick into his hand. “Thirty-five,” Briggs said.

“Thirty-five? I’m taking all the risk,” Esteban protested.

“Thirty-five and I want it by the end of the week.”

“That’s impossible! That’s a month’s supply, it’ll take me weeks to deal it. I’m not unloading to some middleman, I’m selling it carefully to a very select group of people.”

Sheriff Briggs looked at Deputy Klein. Klein grinned and hit Esteban hard in the gut with his nightstick.

Esteban staggered backward, caught himself on the hood of the Range Rover, bent over, and threw up part of a croissant and coffee.

“I guess you didn’t hear me. Thirty-five by the end of the week,” Briggs said softly.

Esteban grunted.

Sheriff Briggs nodded at his deputy. “See, I told you this was nothing to worry about. I was sure we’d be able to come to an arrangement, even if it is a bad time,” he said.

Sheriff Briggs got back into his Escalade.

“What about the four-twenty?” the deputy asked.

“Oh, take the pot, I’m sure our old buddy Steve won’t mind,” Sheriff Briggs said, his dark eyes wide with pleasure.

The two cops got into the prowler, revved the engine for ten aggressive seconds, and drove off along Pearl.

No one had seen the incident, except possibly the Starbucks workers, and they knew better than to say anything about it.

“How often does this happen?” I whispered to Angela.

She put her finger to her lips. “You don’t have to worry about any of this. We’ll talk later,” she whispered.

Esteban said nothing when he got back into the car. He dabbed his face with a silk handkerchief, got his breath back, and started the engine. He didn’t look seriously hurt but I saw that he touched the wheel only with his left hand. In Cuba, where no vehicles had power steering or automatic gear-boxes, he couldn’t have driven at all, but here he managed.

He eased the Range Rover along Pearl and up the Old Boulder Road.

The Old Boulder Road. Ricky’s black-and-whites. The phone call the day after my birthday.

“I’ll leave you at the summit and you can work your way downhill,” Esteban muttered.

We drove past huge houses that got bigger as we got closer to the top of the mountain. When we were almost at the peak Esteban pulled the Range Rover into a turnout marked
VIEWPOINT
on a small green sign. He turned to us and gave Angela a key chain with various house keys on it. Each was attached to a piece of card with a number on it.

“Angela, you’ll be with María today, show her the ropes. Show her where the cleaning supplies are in each house and don’t forget the alarm boxes.” Esteban turned his gaze on me. “You know what an alarm system is?”

I shook my head.

“Each house has an alarm, which we disable when we enter and enable again when we leave. It’s very simple. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I’d never been in a house with a burglar alarm before but I got the concept. It would require a consistent electricity supply and a prompt police response, two things Havana lacked.

“Angela, make sure you show her which clients need the full treatment and which ones only get a surface clean. There’s no point in wasting time on clients who won’t appreciate what we’ve done,” Esteban said.

“Of course,” Angela muttered.

“Ok, both of you out of the car, I want to show María something.”

Esteban was a big man, and in my experience big men take longer to recover from an injury. He was still breathing hard and rubbing his arm as he led us away from the car toward a gap in the trees.

He forced a smile. “Ok, María, here we are. This is where you’ll be working in the mornings. You can see the whole mountain from here. Below us is the Watson residence. Big movie producer. He has his own staff but I’ve been in there. Dealt him coke. Delivered it personally. That house on top of the hill with all the lights and the fence—Tom Cruise.”

“
The
Tom Cruise?” I asked.

“
The
Tom Cruise. Lives here about half the year when he’s not filming. I think his sister lives there year-round.”

“I get to clean Tom Cruise’s house?”

“No, no. He has his own staff. As I was saying, we only get the lesser lights. Not the Watsons and the Cruises of this world. But you might see some famous people. It’s important not to react in any way. They hate that. You’ve got to pretend that you’re not there at all. That you’re invisible. Never make eye contact with any of the clients and never talk to them unless spoken to first. Understand?”

“Sí, Don Esteban.”

“Good.”

Esteban took another few seconds to get his breath back. “I suppose you’re wondering about what happened this morning with the sheriff?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. Angela said nothing.

“The thing is, I’m an American citizen,” he muttered with a smoldering sense of outrage.

I nodded.

“An American citizen, and if that bastard tries to come into my house I’ll shoot him with my rifle. Shoot him. And they can’t do a thing. Cop or not. War hero or not. Without a warrant, the law’s on my side.”

Esteban sat down on a flat, red boulder. He dabbed his forehead.

“Do you want us to go?” Angela asked.

“No. No. Let María get her bearings. Look around you, María.”

I observed the mountains and the forests. Layer after layer of them stretching west for fifty kilometers.

I tried to feel something.

After all, this was it. The place where my father died.

I tried to force an emotion: anger, regret, sadness—nothing came.

“What do you think, María?” Esteban asked.

“Pretty country,” I said.

“All this was Mexico once. A hundred and fifty years ago. Mexico. Our home. Stolen by the Yankees and they don’t even know it. They don’t even know their history. We invited them to our land and then when we told them they couldn’t have slaves they turned on us. Like a changeling in the house of your mother. Like an ungrateful dog.”

His face was pink. He was sweating. For a moment I wondered if he was having a heart attack. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Mexico. All the way to the Pacific. That
cabrón
. That fucking son of a whore,” he muttered.

He started to cry.

“Come on, let’s go,” Angela whispered.

We left him.

I said goodbye but he didn’t seem to hear.

We walked past Watson’s huge mansion and entered the first house on the route. Angela put the key in the lock and showed me how to disable the alarm system.

This house only needed a quick dust and vacuum.