Fifty Grand

Francisco frowned, said nothing. He was a bit fucked up, but really it didn’t matter if Francisco was fucked or not. Pedro was the one we needed. He knew the way.

I walked to him. He had stopped throwing up. He was trying to light another cigarette. I cupped the match and helped him.

He inhaled, coughed, inhaled again.

“Ok, Pedro, tell me the story, what were you supposed to do? What was the original plan?”

But he was too shaken and couldn’t yet manage an answer.

With the patience of Saint Che I gave him two minutes to drain the cigarette and then repeated the question.

“I-I’m supposed to drive you up through New Mexico. We meet the 25 and then we stop at a motel we use in Trinidad, Colorado.”

“How long will that take?”

“I don’t know, ten hours.”

Could I keep my breakdown away for ten hours? I’d have to. I took the keys from his hand, lit him another cigarette, opened the driver’s-side door of the Land Rover, reached across the seat, and turned the ignition.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Ten hours, hermano. We’d better get moving.”

3 HABANA VIEJA

Tears. Tears at the rise of the moon. Tears under a starless sky. Tears down my pale cheeks while Death busses tables in the restaurant.

I sip the mojito, stare at the busboy, and shake my head.

That’s a guilty man if ever I saw one. Hector’s right. The baby’s dead.

I dab my face with a cocktail napkin and shake the glass. The ice melts a little.

It is, as my mother would say, a close night. Every night for her is close. Way back her family is supposed to be from Galicia, which means, she says, that she is a martyr to the heat.

“What are you doing over there?” Hector asks in my earpiece. His voice is mock serious, sonorous, gruff. He talks like someone from the provinces who has tried hard to lose the accent, which, of course, he has. “Come on, Mercado, we don’t have all night,” he adds. You can hear the twang of Santiago in some of his vowels, but the way he enunciates is more Castilian Spanish than anything else. I know he watches a lot of illegal U.S. and European DVDs; maybe he’s picked that up from them.

I raise the Chinese cell phone, which I’ve switched to walkie-talkie mode.

“Take it easy, Hector, I’m having a drink,” I tell him.

“Did you make the arrest?”

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Father my babies, Hector. They’ll be ugly sons of bitches, but with that big brain of yours I’m sure they’ll go far,” I say into the mouthpiece.

He doesn’t respond.

A kid comes to the rail. Normally you don’t see beggars in the Vieja because the CDR goons will chase them away with baseball bats. Whores aplenty but not beggars, because pimps have dollars to kick back. The CDR is something between a police auxiliary and a neighborhood watch. Real cops hate them because they’re even more corrupt than they are. Than we are, I should say.

The panhandler is a skinny little boy with long black hair. Picked a good spot. Stone’s throw from the plaza, which is packed with Canadians and Europeans. Behind me the cathedral is lit up by spotlights and the relentless music from the street musicians is entertaining those tourists who don’t realize that they’re having their pockets picked.

“You’re too old to have babies. A woman of your advanced years,” Hector says in my earpiece. I’m twenty- seven, Hector, I almost yell with indignation, but that’s what he wants.

“In a minute and ten seconds that’s the best line you can come up with? You should tell Diaz to write you some fresh material, he’s got the filthiest mouth in the station,” I say instead.

“Can you see us?” Diaz asks.

Certainly can. A bright green Yugo near the Ambos Mundos with the windows wound up and the two of them looking as suspicious as hell. If they weren’t cops they were Interior Ministry secret police or something. All the pimps and dealers had cleared out of here twenty minutes ago.

“Yeah, I see you.”

“Watch this.”

I see him wave at me from the front seat of the car, a wave that quickly becomes a sexual pantomime I can’t really follow. Some kind of insult, I’m sure. Diaz was originally from Pinar del Rio, and they’re an odd crew over there.

“I feel lucky to have met you, Lieutenant Diaz,” I tell him.

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” he asks, taking the bait.

“To know that such an idiot can rise so high in the cops gives hope for all of us junior detectives.”

“You’re not rising anywhere, Mercado, you’re lucky you’re not handing out parking tickets or sweating with the other girls down in the typing pool,” Hector says quickly.

“The typing pool? That dates you, man. I think the department got rid of the typing pool ten years ago,” I tell him, but actually I take his point. I’m not likely to go anywhere in the PNR. He knows it, I know it, even the kingpins who pay off the rising stars know it. No envelopes filled with dollars left on my doorstep-not because I’m not susceptible to corruption but simply because no one thinks I’m important enough to corrupt.

“At least the typing pool girls knew their place,” Hector mutters.

“Yeah, anywhere but under you,” I tell him.

There’s an annoyed grunt in my earpiece that is Hector trying to conceal his laughter.

The kid’s looking at me with big dark eyes. Not saying anything. It’s a fantastic angle, makes you think that he can’t speak. Mute, cancer, could be anything. I give him a few pesos and tell him to beat it. He takes the money but he only drifts back a couple of meters toward Palma. He looks at me with infinite sadness. Yeah, he’s good. I check that my watch is still on my wrist.

Hector’s mood is better when he comes back on a minute later.

“What’s keeping you? Come on, we have other things to do,” he says.

“Ok. Ok. I was waiting for an opening but if you want I’ll just call him over.”

“Yes, do that. Do it now.”

“You’re looking for an admission?”

“Anything. Anything at all. We’ll have to try this new directive for a while before the even newer directive comes in.”

The new directive, straight from the president’s office, was an end (or more likely a suspension) of coerced confessions. Now we were supposed to gather evidence and arrest people in the modern manner. With an American election coming up in less than a year, the powers that be wanted us to look like we were a country in transition, ready for a new chance. And that’s why they had me out here tonight, because that was one of the things I’d been pushing since I’d made detective.

“Ok. See what I can do,” I say.

I scan the place and spot him waiting on a gabacho table near the fountain. Two Quebecois executives who’d probably tip 15 percent. The restaurant is a staple of the Vieja, with spillover from Hemingway groupies at the Ambos. All the trendy people and the youngsters are farther up O’Reilly, but this is an older crowd who appreciate a good cocktail and slightly out-of-date cuisine. Almost all tourists.

“Ok, Hector, I’m going to go for it. I’ll leave this on. If it looks like things are going bad I expect you and Sancho Panza to come charging in,” I say, and before they can give me further instructions or Diaz asks if that was a crack about his weight I remove the earpiece and push the phone away from me.