Fifty Grand

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 Maria 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, Maria, 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?”

“Si, 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 Maria get her bearings. Look around you, Maria.”

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, Maria?” 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 cabron. 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.

As did the next.

I was expecting palatial residences but they weren’t grotesque. About the same size as those of high-ranking Party officials in Vedado but not in such disrepair and most with epic views over the mountains.

The job seemed simple. The first three homes were empty and not a problem to clean. A dead mouse in a sink was the only bit of excitement. The next was occupied by an actress who was in her basement running on a treadmill the whole time we were there. We put away her clothes, ran her dishwasher, cleaned her living space, rearranged the diet shakes and cigarette cartons in her gigantic refrigerator.

The next house, however, was the one I’d been in the night before. The retro-future place with all the curves. Minimalist furniture, a low leather sofa, uncomfortable high-angled chairs, stainless steel light fittings, an ebony living room table. Huge windows facing the Old Boulder Road to the east and the Rockies to the west. It looked better in daylight. Angela showed me how to get in and how to disable the burglar alarm. The code was still the default 9999. Jack Tyrone was in the kitchen reading a newspaper. He had a box of Frosted Flakes in front of him and a french press filled with what I could tell from the hall was overroasted coffee. There was a new bowl of fruit on the breakfast bar. More kiwis to steal.

I scoped Jack in the daylight. Ricky’s notes and his party anecdote flashed in my head. Suspect 2A, Youkilis’s employer, 31, born Denver, Colorado, Hollywood actor, pretty good alibi for the night of the accident-he was sixteen hundred kilometers away in Los Angeles-but I wouldn’t rule him out until I’d spoken to him.

“Do we say good morning?” I whispered to Angela.

She shook her head. We took off our coats, found the cleaning supplies, and began work. I dusted, she vacuumed.

“Maaling, lallies,” Jack said with a full mouth, attempting to carry his newspaper, coffee, and cereal bowl into the living room without a major accident.

“Good morning, Senor Tyrone,” Angela said.

He looked better than when I’d encountered him last night. In fact, more than better, very handsome indeed if you went for pale, blond, athletic, American. And to my surprise I found that I went for ’em in spades. “Those corn-fed western boys,” Ricky once said, and I could see what he meant. Jack’s complexion was pale, but even preshower he radiated health and strength. His body was chiseled and his jaw downy but not weak. His hair was tousled attractively and his blue eyes were the color of the marlin-filled sea off Santiago, rather than last night’s muddy Havana Bay. The blue eyes now were smiling at us. “Might have a job, ladies, Paul knocked a bottle of wine on the Persian. They tried to clean it last night and I fucking Pledged it and Oxy-ed it this morning but it’s still there.”

We looked at the stain. Jack’s efforts had produced a yellow chemical burn. The rug was ruined.

While Angela explained the catastrophe I took the vacuum upstairs. I had to spend twenty minutes picking clothes and food items off the floor before I could begin cleaning.

I hadn’t been up here last night, but this was obviously where Tyrone’s personality fully expressed itself. There were movie posters on the wall and film stills. Apparently he was something of a rising star, but I hadn’t heard of him prior to Ricky’s report. I had seen one or two of the films he’d been in but Jack’s presence had not made an impression. From the stills I saw that he’d appeared in Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise, but obviously in such small roles that his name hadn’t gotten on the posters.

In his bedroom he had headshots of himself, several awards, and a gigantic signed and framed picture of a man and his double in a tacky-looking space uniform.

I examined the awards.

LATO Best Newcomer 1999, Sundance Best New Talent 1998, Sho West Up and Comer Award 2000.

There was nothing recent, and this made me wonder if his career was quite as hot as it had been.

In the upstairs bathroom there were mirrors everywhere and enough hair care product to have started a salon. Even Party wives in Havana didn’t spend this much time on their coiffure.

I was sniffing something called Plum Island Soap Company skin cream with appreciation when he suddenly appeared behind me in the mirror.

He was grinning. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking of that Carly Simon song, aren’t you?”