Fifty Grand

Angela rolled her eyes as if to say he’s only doing this to impress you. But I wanted coffee after three days without.

“I do,” I said.

Starbucks: my first experience of white America.

The smell of vanilla. Paul McCartney singing a love song. Scruffy men in five-dollar flip-flops working on five- thousand-dollar laptops.

White people serving us.

Esteban ordered for us, got coffee, croissants, and cakes, and put a dollar in the tip jar.

I sipped the con leche and it tasted almost like a con leche.

“How do you like your coffee?” he asked.

“It’s ok, thank you,” I said.

Angela had gotten a beverage that was covered in whipped cream and required a straw to consume. “Mine’s absolutely delicious,” she said.

“See, it’s not like Rome, sometimes we’re the masters,” Esteban muttered apropos of nothing.

Esteban spotted a Fairview Post in the used newspaper rack. He grabbed it. The headline was “Tancredo Hails INS Raids.” Esteban read the story and passed it across to me. “Can you read, Maria?” he asked.

“Letters and such?” I asked, doing my best peasant voice.

“Just read it, see what I’m up against,” he said, ignoring the sarcasm.

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), hailed last night’s INS raids in Denver, Boulder, Fairview, and Vail, which netted an estimated three dozen illegal immigrants. “It’s only a small step but the message has gone out,” Tancredo commented from Washington, “that Colorado is not a safe haven for illegal immigrants from Mexico.”

Congressman Tancredo, who is running for President, will be on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN later today to talk about his new plan for dealing with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

A spokesman for the Mexican consulate in Denver noted, “Twenty-six Mexican citizens, all of whom have jobs and none of whom have a criminal record, have been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Their cases are under investigation.”

With an estimated fifty thousand Mexican citizens living in Denver alone, an INS spokesman denied that these raids were only a cosmetic measure.

“Without us this whole country would grind to a halt,” Esteban said.

I was about to pass the paper back when I noticed an ad: “For sale: Thorpe hunting rifle new 750 dollars. Smith and Wesson M &P 9mm good con with ammo 400 dollars OBO,” with an address on Lime Kiln Road, Fairview. I carefully ripped out the ad, sipped the con leche, and said nothing.

Esteban nodded at the barista. “Romanian,” he whispered under his breath. “Nothing to do with me. Whole different organization.”

The girl was pale, blond, pretty, and, despite the hour, high.

“What’s her story?” I wondered aloud.

“Come on, let’s go outside. It’s not too cold today,” he said. Esteban sat us at a cast-iron table in the sun. It might not have been cold for Colorado in December but I was freezing. My teeth chattered and my hands shook as I sipped the coffee.

“Romanians and Russians,” Esteban said. “I know you wanted to do nanny work, Maria, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Up here they want European nannies. Most of them are from Eastern Europe. Sheriff Briggs brings them direct from Denver. He’s the silent partner in the local company, Superior Child Minding Services- thinks it’s a big secret, but I know all about it. Dumb fuck. Not as smart as he pretends to be.”

“I see,” I muttered, losing interest now.

“Pays a lot more than housecleaning. They’re always desperate. Last thing the wives and girlfriends want to do when they come here is look after their own kids. The big guns have permanent help but the minor players are always looking. Shit, you can nail ’em for twenty bucks an hour and more. It’s a hell of a racket.”

He examined me for a moment. “No. Forget it. Won’t even try, you don’t even look Russian. And we’re shorthanded as it is.”

Of course I didn’t tell him that I spoke a little Russian.

“Why do they want Russians?” I asked instead.

“They want Eastern Europeans because the wives like bossing white chicks around and the husbands think they can fuck ’em-which, of course, they can. You know, you’re not bad looking, Maria, I can get you that kind of work if you want. Steady work. We cut in the Sheriff’s Department, but you could be earning four or five hundred a week.”

“I already told you I’m not a whore.”

“Not a whore-a high-class call girl. Do it for a year or two, you’ve got enough saved for a little restaurant or something back in-where you say you were from?”

“Valladolid in Yucatan.”

“Well, I don’t know if you want to live there, but you could move to the DF. Think about it. Anyway, finish up, enough chitchat, we’re running late.”

We finished our coffee drinks, got into the Range Rover.

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.