Fifty Grand

“You drove all the way to Vail to do your shopping?” Jimmy interrupts, shocked.

“No, no, of course not, but they don’t have a Chinese market in Fairview. Where else am I going to go, Denver?”

“You can get everything at the deli on Pearl Street. Mr. Wozeck-” Jimmy begins.

“Mr. Wozeck is a robber baron who charges an arm and a leg for-”

A brief conversation ensues in Mandarin before Jimmy turns to me and makes a slight solicitous bow. “Miss Inez, excuse us.”

“Not at all.”

“You don’t know, Fairview has really changed in the last few years,” Jimmy says.

Mrs. Cooper takes up the theme. “Oh yes, the prices in those stores on Pearl Street and Camberwick Street are preposterous. And they never have anything I want. Expensive delicatessens. Import stores. No, no. There is the 7-Eleven, but that’s in Brown Town. I wouldn’t go there. Old woman like me. No. You see the movie stars…”

I can see that I’m going to have to bring her back to business. “Now, Mrs. Cooper, this is important. At the time of the accident can you remember what road you were on?” I ask.

“What road I was on?”

Mrs. Cooper had not filed a police report and she hadn’t told the garage where the accident had taken place. This, therefore, was the key question. From this answer all things would flow. “If you could try to recall where the accident happened, I’ll be able to put it in our report and get the claim resolved as quickly as possible.”

Mrs. Cooper thinks.

Time slows.

The angel holds his breath. He knows. He can see the half dozen lifelines beating in the air above her head.

“I think it was on Ashleigh Street,” she says.

I write that down in the notebook. “Ashleigh Street?” I ask for confirmation and show her my spelling, which she corrects.

“Yes, that tree on the bend there, where the old liquor store used to be, just after the turn,” Mrs. Cooper says and looks at her son. “It wasn’t my fault, dear, there was ice on the road, I know it was May but you have no idea what it’s been like up here.”

Ashleigh Street. A tree at a bend in front of a former liquor store. Might be possible to check. Paint scrape, glass, a million things.

I nod and smile. “At any point during that day, Mrs. Cooper, did you happen to drive on the Old Boulder Road?”

“The what?”

“The Old Boulder Road,” I repeat.

“The Old Boulder Road? Never heard of it,” she says gruffly, not too gruffly but enough to raise my interest.

Hmmmm. Maybe Ricky’s hunch was wrong. Could this be our girl? And what the hell would I do if she was? Probably nothing. Probably I’d get the two o’clock bus to Denver and the first night bus to El Paso. Slip over the border. The plane from Juarez to Mexico City and an earlier flight back to Havana.

No one would be the wiser.

Hector would breathe a huge sigh of relief. Ricky wouldn’t care. Better for everyone.

“The Old Boulder Road is the road that goes from Main Street to what they call Malibu Mountain,” Jimmy says.

Mrs. Cooper nods to herself. “I know what you are talking about. Yes, that was the Old Boulder Road before they built the Eisenhower Tunnel. That was a long time ago. It is a freak-show road nowadays. Those movie-star types. Their helicopters. They’re all in that cult, they can control things with their minds. Jane Adams’s son, Jeff, he’s in with them. She cries every night. He never calls her, they do not allow him.”

Bring her back. “Mrs. Cooper, did you have any occasion to be on the Old Boulder Road on the twenty-seventh or even the twenty-eighth of May?”

The old lady shrugs. “I don’t think so. I don’t know, but I don’t think so. My thing wasn’t there though.”

“Your accident wasn’t there?”

“No. I just said. That’s completely out of my way. Haven’t been there for a long time. Not this year.”

“Can you take me through the accident in detail?”

“I don’t know about detail, but I remember it ok. I was driving on Ashleigh and I had on NPR, it was Colorado Matters. I hate that show ever since Dan Drayer left, he was good. Anyway, I slipped on the road and hit the tree and then, when I was pulling out, I don’t know, I was all shaken up, I turned the car and I hit the stop sign at the corner of Ashleigh and Rochdale Road. Knocked it clean over. That’s why we had all those dents on the hood.”

“You knocked over a stop sign?” her son interjects, looking at me nervously.

“I did. They have it planted right in the road with a couple of whatchama-call-’em orange lines painted in front of it. How are you supposed to see those?”

“Mother, did you report the fact that you knocked over the stop sign?”

“Well, not exactly. I didn’t tell the other woman.”

“What other woman?” Jimmy asks.

“From the insurance company,” Mrs. Cooper says.

Two women from the insurance company? Jimmy gives me a suspicious look.

“What was the name of this other woman?” I ask.

Mrs. Cooper fishes around in a giant glass bowl on the phone table. It takes forever but finally she passes me the card. “Sally Wren. Great Northern Insurance Claims Adjuster,” I read out loud and pass the card to the son. “Miss Wren is no longer with the company,” I say with mild disdain, and lowering my voice, I add, “That explains the delay. I’ll make sure I expedite this very quickly.”

Jimmy looks at the card and frowns at Miss Wren’s imaginary crimes. He turns to me. “Is Mom going to get in trouble for the stop sign?”

I shake my head. “It is not my job to give information to the police, in fact it would be illegal for me to do so. If you or your mother want to report it, that’s fine, but it is nothing to do with me,” I bluff, assuming this to be the case from all those Yuma lawyer movies. I don’t really know, though, and of course in Cuba anyone who fails to report a crime can be sentenced to up to ten years in prison under the general category “Enemy of the Revolution.”

Relief courses over Jimmy’s face. “You’re a good person, Miss Inez. Tancredo’s wrong about M-about immigrants.”

But I’m hardly paying attention. The accident did not take place on the Old Boulder Road. She hasn’t been on the Old Boulder Road at all this year.

Satisfied, I get up and Jimmy shows me to the door. He thanks me.

“Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” I tell him and then, remembering my American TV, I add, “Have a nice day.”

“I will, thank you. And when will that check be coming?”

“Oh, very soon,” I say.

“Excellent. Thank you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” I walk to the path and before the door closes I look at Jimmy. “Uh, you weren’t driving the car anytime around the twenty-seventh, were you?”

“Me? No. I was in San Francisco,” he says flatly.

“Ok, thank you.”

When I’m out of sight of the house I let the air out of my lungs.

“Closer,” I tell myself.

Now what?

Walk back. Process it.

Only a couple of kilometers to Fairview and another half a klick to Wetback Mountain.

Yeah, walk back, let it bubble like rum in the kettle.