Fifty Grand

“You can trust me. And look, Maria, before you explain, I was only kidding about those American girls. I don’t care about them. I was trying to make you feel… I was… You see, over the last few days, I’ve become, I’ve…”

His voice fades.

Even in the half-light I can see that his face is crimson with embarrassment.

“Don’t say any more,” I tell him. “Please.”

“No, I want to. I know it’s a weird situation. All this. Maybe because we’re sharing the same room or because of what happened in New Mexico. I should have protected you there. I felt bad. Terrible. And now this, me and you, you know, I didn’t want this to happen, it wasn’t part of my big master plan for America, it’s just that, well, you know. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

I shake my head.

He looks at the floor. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“Besides, I’m older than you,” I tell him.

“I’m older than you think,” he mutters.

I put my arm around him and kiss him on the cheek. “Paco, I’m sorry. There are lots of reasons. You’re too young for me. I’m not-You’re not my type.”

He looks at me. “You are gay,” he says, hurt, angry.

“No.”

He smacks his hand into his fist. “It’s the fucking Americans, isn’t it? All those gringo cocksuckers. They’re all fags. They fake it for the movies, but it’s a well-known fact that they’re all sucking each other’s dicks.”

He’s humiliated. He put it all out there on the line and I’ve shot him down.

“No, it’s not them.”

He mutters something I don’t get and stands and looks at me, like an actor in a play who has forgotten his lines.

He shakes his head, walks to the window, and peers through the blinds.

Silence creeps into the room and lingers there like a louche relation.

“Cuba,” he says at last.

“Yes.”

“I can keep a secret,” he says.

My lips part, my diaphragm contracts, I breathe in. Oh shit, I’m going to tell him. “I can’t tell you,” I reply, and then in a deluge of words I unburden myself of the whole thing…

Francisco, it turns out, has many shades.

I wouldn’t have taken him for a good listener, but he is.

And the questions he does ask are short and to the point.

“How long was your brother in Fairview?”

“Three days.”

“Is that long enough?”

“It’s all the time we had. But Ricky’s good.”

“What did your father do here?”

“He worked for High Country Extermination-as a pest controller.”

“What’s that?”

“A ratcatcher.”

“What if Ricky got it wrong?”

“I went to the garage. I looked at their books. I think he got it right.”

“What if the person who hit your father didn’t use the Fairview garage? What if they had their car towed to Denver?”

“Ricky managed to check the Fairview Towing Company records for all of May.”

“Very resourceful, but what if they used a Denver towing company and a Denver garage to do the repairs?”

“In that case, they’re going to get away with it. There’s no way I can check every garage and every towing company in Denver for May and June.”

“If you turn this over to the U.S. police-” he begins but then changes tack. “You already know, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve eliminated one suspect, but there are many things up in the air.”

“Who’s your prime suspect? Tell me. You know I’m not a yapper, I won’t tell anyone,” he says eagerly.

“No.”

A pause. Yellow light filtering in through the window. Someone yelling in drunken Spanish at the far end of the parking lot.

“What are you going to do once you’ve found him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

His eyes narrow to a Mongolian squint. “You came here to kill him, didn’t you? He hit your father and left the scene of the accident. He left him to die by the side of the road.”

“It was worse than that. He knocked him off the Old Boulder Road into a gully. He tried to climb back up to the road but he couldn’t make it. His lung was punctured. He drowned in his own blood.”

Paco’s face loses its color. “The Old Boulder Road?”

“Yeah.”

“So this hypothetical driver of yours was one of those fucking movie people?”

I don’t want him to jump to any conclusions. I don’t want him going up there himself. You were the man in New Mexico, Maria, but now I’ll show you what I can do. He’s the type.

“No. Not necessarily. I don’t know for sure.”

“It’s one of those guys whose homes you’ve been cleaning. Someone up on Malibu Mountain. It’s Cruise, isn’t it? Fucking Tom Cruise killed your old man and the Scientologists covered it up.”

I roll my eyes. “Francisco, calm down, it’s not Tom Cruise.”

He nods, clucks his tongue. “So, when are you leaving town?” he asks casually, but we both know it’s the key question.

I don’t answer.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says.

He opens the window to let in fresh air. He keeps his back turned. He doesn’t want me to see his face.

“I have to be back in Mexico by Monday night.”

“Monday!” He turns. “What’s today? Saturday? Monday! Christ, when were you planning on telling me?”

“I was going to tell you,” I lie.

“You played me for a sap.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t have all the pieces yet, I have a lot to do, when I had it all I would have told you.”

“Jesus, Maria. I should have stayed in Denver. No, I should be going to fucking L.A. with everyone else. I only wanted to be here because I thought you’d be here.”

“I’m sorry I screwed you up.”

“Yeah, you did screw me up. You fucking did.”

“Paco-”

“Chupame la turca,” he says sadly, goes to the door, opens it, and tries to slam it behind him but even that fucks up and it catches on the back of his heel, tripping him.

“How far are you going to get in your socks?” I yell after him.

I wait for him for a minute. Two.

Bathroom. Mirror. Sink. Splash water. Reflect. My fault. A conversation I should not have had. There’s a time for the truth and there’s a time for silence. Any good interrogator knows that. Paco’s too young to understand. Too immature to be any kind of a confidant for me.

Faucet off.