Fifty Grand (45 page)

Two in New Mexico, two here. Four men I’ve killed. Four too many.

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

“Yeah. I got shot.”

“You got lucky.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go,” Paco says.

Two bodies under the ice.

A third and fourth faceup, staring at us.

“What about them?”

“Sink them.”

“They’ll come up,” I say.

“Their vests will drag them down.”

“Three cops go missing. Bound to be an inquiry.”

He points at Briggs. “Does this one have a phone?”

“I don’t know.”

Paco hands me the rifle, searches Briggs. He removes a silver cell phone and a wallet. He skims the wallet. About a thousand dollars in scratch, which he puts in his pocket. He takes out his own cell and smiles.

“Find Briggs’s number,” he says. “It’ll be on his menu.”

I flip Briggs’s cell, find the number, and tell Paco.

Paco dials it. Briggs’s phone rings and Paco waits for the voice mail. He grins at me and affects a chingla Mexican accent. “Briggs, man, where are you? We got the fucking stuff but we don’t see you. We went through a lot to get here. If you don’t show, or you try to pull something, man, you gonna be sorry.”

He hangs up. Grins.

“They won’t buy that,” I tell him.

“It’ll give them something to think about. We’ll sink the bodies, put Briggs’s phone in his car, leave the car where someone will find it. Ok, let’s go. Can you guys help?”

Paco stares at Jack and me. We’re both exhausted.

“Hell with ya, I’ll do it,” he mutters in Spanish.

He walks to Briggs, slides him into the nearest ice fissure. Briggs rolls over, floats for a second, and then sinks in a froth of bubbles. Paco does the same to Crawford, who joins his buddies at the bottom of the lake.

Carefully Paco picks up all the shells and puts them in his pocket. He points at Jack. “Ok, we go back. You first, and you better not run and you better not fall in the fucking water.”

Jack begins walking to the shore. Paco puts his arm around me.

“I think we’d better kill him,” Paco whispers.

“No,” I insist.

“Are you sure it wasn’t him?”

“It wasn’t him. Just an unlucky guy. A passenger. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Paco nods. “What’s that you’ve got?” he asks, looking at my father’s gun.

“You can have it,” I tell him. I’m done with guns.

We get to the shore. Paco starts telling Jack about the cars. We’ll drive one each. Jack will take Paul’s BMW. I’ll take Esteban’s Range Rover, which of course Paco drove here since Esteban isn’t expected back until tonight—a white lie of his that nearly got me killed. Paco will drive Briggs’s Escalade. We’ll dump the Escalade at a truck stop on I-25 and Paco will drive Jack back in the Beemer.

The plan seems sound.

I change my sweater, smoke a cigarette, take a last look at the lake.

Cracks already freezing over.

It reminds me of a poem by Basho:
An old pond / a jumping frog / ripples
.

This was not the way I wanted it to be. I don’t really know what I wanted it to be, but it wasn’t this.

Blood, gore, corpses under the water.

Hector’s niece is a nurse who works in a hospice for terminally ill babies. Babies who won’t live out a year. She feeds them, and cleans them, and loves them, and every night she whispers over them, “Grow, little baby, grow.”

That’s what a hero does.

Not this.

I shiver.

Paco puts his hand on my back. “Ok,” he says. “Let’s go.”

D
enver. The Greyhound Station. The bus to El Paso. His unruly hair brushed, his face shaved. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, cowboy boots. The clear green of his eyes twinkles.

Our lips part.

He looks at me.

Not my best. Pale, bruised, and a beanie hat on to cover the bandage above my right ear.

“Do you really have to go back?” he asks.

“I do,” I tell him. “If I don’t, my boss, my mom, and my brother will all get in big trouble.”

He grins. “So the Cubans think you’ve been in Mexico this whole time?”

I nod.

“Quite the little secret agent,” he says.

The bus driver starts the engine.

“It’s a long drive to El Paso. You got something to read?”

I shake my head. “I’ll think.”

“Four hours from now you’ll be sorry.”

“Maybe.”

He looks at me. I look at the ground.

“Well,” he says. “You better . . .”

“Yeah.”

I kiss him again. This time chastely on the cheek. I pick up my bag.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Paco?”

“Plenty,” he says and grinds his hips.

“Not that,” I say, laughing. “I’m serious.”

He considers it.

“You saved me,” I explain. “I owe you.”

“My mother has cancer,” he says.

I peer into his face. He has never talked about his family. In fact, I know nothing about him at all. Brothers? Sisters? Orphan? He’s a cipher, a nowhere man.

“Your mother has cancer?”

“Yes. It’s breast cancer. The doctors rate her chances as fifty-fifty. I’d like to increase the odds, if possible.”

“Bring her to Cuba, we have some of the finest doctors in Latin America. They will treat her. I’m sure it’s better than Nicaragua. Bring her. And besides, I, I’d like to see you again.”

He shakes his head. “I’d like that too, but I can’t bring her to Cuba. She’s not well enough to travel and I have to earn money in the U.S.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He clears his throat. “If you have the time I would like you to light a candle for me at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Our Lady of Guadalupe? I’ve heard of it but I’m not sure what it is exactly,” I reply.

“It’s in the north of Mexico City. I know you’re in a rush to get back, you have a plane to catch, but if you get the time.”

“I never pegged you for the religious type,” I say with a little smile, and as soon as the words are out I remember that time I caught him praying.

Paco grins. “In many ways, María, you’re not very observant at all.”

“What does that mean?”

The smile widens. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

I punch him on his arm. “Ever since you saved my life, there’s a sly confidence that’s come over you that I don’t like at all.”

“Oh, you like it.”

The bus driver revs the engine. All the other passengers are on. I kiss him one more time. Lips. Tongue. Lips.

“The shrine of Our Lady,” I say seriously to let him know that I will do it if it means that much to him.

He clasps his hands together in fake prayer.

“God is generous to virgins,” he says and begins muttering in pretend Latin.

“I’m not a—”

“Sssh, you’re spoiling it.”

“Are you getting on or not?” the driver asks me in Spanish.

“Sí. Momento.”

“Hurry,” the driver says.

“Say goodbye to Esteban for me.”

“I will.”

“And watch out for the INS.”

“I’m one step ahead.”

I get in. Doors close. I find a seat at the back.

Paco waves as the bus pulls out onto Broadway.

The last thing I see him do is hail a cab.

The Denver to El Paso bus is all Mexican, and before we’re even out of the city, I’ve been offered cake, seen baby photographs, watched part of a telenovela, and entertained one semiserious offer of marriage.

Eventually I pretend to fall asleep. South through New Mexico.

Gone are the mountains, the great spine of North America. Gone is the snow. My last look at snow until after the Castro brothers leave us. But it’s ok, I’ll remember it, cold and white on the lakeshore and red from our footprints dipped in the blood of dead men.

The #4 subway train to Martín Carrera. The #6 to Villa Basilica. Thread through the religious souvenir stands. The knockoff merchants. The lame. The halt. Pickpockets.

Traffic, street noise, the kind of density of people and vehicles you never see in Havana. Motorcycles, scooters, ice cream vendors, big cars, small cars, trucks.

The stalls are there to cure you of piety. Jesus pictures with eyes that move. Gaudy life-size statues of María. A photographer who will take a picture of your kid and produce a print of him sitting on Christ’s lap in a shady dell. The tip of the iceberg as you get closer to the Basilica of Our Lady. Crosses of every type, María pics, holy water, holy blood, holy dust. Hundreds of icon merchants and thousands of people buying stuff. Worry beads, rosaries, postcards.

Everywhere the sick, the old, the young, parties of school children, pilgrim tourists from all over Latin America, Europe, the United States.

The hill of Cerro Tepeyac.

Here, five centuries ago, the Aztec nobleman Cuauhtaoctzin saw the Holy Virgin. The bishop demands proof. An image of
la virgen morena
appears on the nobleman’s coat. A church is built and then a bigger one and finally an entire complex. In 2002 Pope John Paul makes Cuauhtaoctzin a saint. The context for a doubter, for a daughter of the Revolution, for a Cuban: when Cuauhtaoctzin sees the Virgin, Aztec civilization has just been destroyed by Cortés—the Aztecs and their gods are on the run and Cerro Tepeyac is the most important shrine to the brown-skinned female harvest goddess Tonantzin. So you could say worship of the goddess continues in another form.

Dad never believed in any of that stuff, nor Ricky, and Mom believes too much. Her ghosts and goblins are another inoculation against a moment of revelation.

The plaza of the basilica.

An old church, earthquake-damaged, being held up by scaffolding. Side churches and temples. The new church, which looks for all the world like an unfinished terminal at José Martí Airport. But this is where the pilgrims are going—this is where María haunts the building. I’m now wearing a black beret to cover the bandage above my ear. I take it off when I go inside.

Midnight mass, but only a few empty seats in the swooping basilica.

I am unaccustomed to religious services and the thing is still in Latin despite Vatican II. Men and women beside me, kneeling, standing up, reciting the rosary. I copy them. Stand when they stand. Kneel when they kneel.

Where is the María?

What is it that they have come to see?

A girl comes by with a collection plate. I throw in a few pesos and am given a picture of the dark-skinned Virgin. I realize that it is the double of a big picture behind the altar. The focus of the church. The mother of Jesus, the goddess protector of all Mexicans, of all women.

For many Cubans, of course, the dark Virgin is Ochún, the sensuous Santería goddess of love and protection.

When the ceremony is over, I light a candle and place it as close to the image as I am permitted.

I bow my face.

“Accept this candle on behalf of another,” I whisper.

The Virgin sees. Understands.

A moving walkway means that no one is allowed to remain directly under the image. It seems like a joke, but it isn’t. The devout are in tears. Mothers are showing the Virgin barren wombs, deformed babies, terminal cancers.

Crying, candle smoke, prayers.

Too much.

I back away and run outside.

Take a breath.

My head hurts. It’s a reminder. A centimeter to the left and that .270 round would have smashed my skull. A centimeter to the right and it would have been a clean miss and Briggs would have gone for a chest shot before I’d even heard the crack of the first.