Fifty Grand

“I see, so he may have been drinking when the car hit, but he wasn’t intoxicated.”

“Something like that.”

Hmm. Ricky said that it was just a coincidence that it had happened on my birthday. But maybe not. All those years without letters, without sending us a dime, maybe guilt had finally got to him. Had he had too many? Was he staggering all over the road? Maybe the consulate in Denver had hushed up the toxicology for fear of contributing to a stereotype. Maybe a million things.

Karen sniffed. “I hope he was drunk. I hope he was totally hammered.”

“Why?”

“Lady who found him, walking her dog. I know her. She talked to me. She told me the truth, the people around here are pretty blunt.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Told me his face was frozen. It was May but it’s been cold up here. Face frozen, fingers broken, blood and dirt all over him, he’d been trying to climb up that slope all night. It took him four or five hours to die. Drowning in his own blood the whole time, drowning, freezing, ribs broken, the pain must have been awful, and just a few feet from rescue up on the embankment. The goddamn torment. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through that. So yeah, I hope he was drunk.”

My head felt light. I swayed back on my heels.

“I, uh, I only have a couple more questions. Are you sure we wouldn’t be more comfortable inside?”

Karen gave me a skeptical glance. Feelers out. Nervous.

Damn it.

“All this is irrelevant anyway,” she said.

“How so?”

“I told you guys, Albert, or I should say Juan, wasn’t Mexican,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said, affecting surprise.

“He was Cuban. A defector. He came over in the early nineties.”

“But our information was that-”

“He bought that passport in Kansas City. It cost two thousand dollars. A passport and a Social Security number and a green card.”

“But-”

“So you see, Senorita Hernandez, you’ve wasted your time. This isn’t a job for your people at all. I told you guys already, ok? Who do you think called his family in Cuba? Me. They flew his son out. From Cuba. Christ, how dumb are you people? So thanks for the interest but really, I’ve got nothing to tell you.”

The brush-off.

“Well, that certainly contradicts the information I’ve been given. I’ll need to confirm this against our records. Do you have any photographs or-”

“For Christ’s sake. Wait here.”

She took a step backward and went into a side room. Now I could see tantalizing glimpses of a smallish living room. Hardwood floor, white sofa, white chairs. More flowers and paintings, perhaps done by Karen herself. Dad was never much in the drawing line and I couldn’t imagine that he had changed so greatly that he taken to painting fairies in forest glades and white horses galloping across impossibly sandy beaches. Karen’s “mess” appeared to be a few piles of laundry on the living room floor.

She came back with a fifteen-year-old Cuban driver’s license and handed it over.

“You can have this if you want. No good to me.”

I looked at the black-and-white photograph of Dad in his Russian wool suit and that little mustache he thought made him a dead ringer for Clark Gable. Ricky and I used to tease him about it, but in fact he really did resemble the late Yuma movie star. Quickly I put the license in my purse for fear she’d snatch it back.

“This doesn’t much look like the man in the autopsy photographs. Do you have a more recent photograph?”

“Oh, Jesus. Never ends. Hold on. I’ll get you one.”

An inner voice warned me that this wasn’t necessary, I didn’t need a photograph, I just wanted to open the floodgates, to wallow in the emotion. Careful, Mercado, once the sluices open, they’re pretty hard to close. She came back with something she’d just taken out of a frame.

“Here,” she said. “I put them all away. It was too painful to have him around looking at me, but I couldn’t throw any of them out.”

The photograph was of her standing next to a bearded man, a little heavier, but with sharp brown eyes and mostly black hair. He had a sarcastic, self-mocking expression on his face. I hadn’t seen him for fourteen years but it was definitely him. He looked like one of those public intellectuals on Channel 1, talking about trade with China or the Glorious Revolution’s prospects in the twenty-first century.

“Satisfied?” Karen asked, taking the photo back.

“Perhaps I could ask you a few more questions for the record?” I wondered.

“You can have one more minute. This is all still pretty hard on me. And Jeopardy!’s on early on Sundays and I never miss it. It’s a routine. Routines help you get through the day, don’t you find?”

“Yes. I don’t mind if you watch while we talk. Perhaps if I could come in for just a-”

“I’d prefer not.”

“So there seems to be at least some confusion, regarding Senor-”

“There’s no confusion. He bought that passport because he wanted to pose as a Mexican permanent resident called Suarez, so he could work in the United States.”

I smiled. “Ah, but this is where I am confused, Senora Suarez. Cuban defectors are automatically granted green cards, Social Security numbers, and so on, are they not? Why would your husband even need to pose as a Mexican?”

Something came into Karen’s face. A darkening. A suspicion.

“Where did you say you were from, Miss Hernandez?”

“I’m from the consulate in Denver.”

“Can I see some ID?”

Mierde.

On to me.

The old man must have prepped her. If someone comes asking about me, ever, check their credentials at once.

My mind raced while I fumbled in my purse. Who was he hiding from? He was a defector hero among the Miamistas. Cuban intelligence never went after defectors. There were literally millions of them in the United States: baseball players, boxers, politicians, doctors, engineers. And Dad was a lowly ferry attendant. What was his game?

“Well, this is a little embarrassing, Senora Suarez, but I think I must have left my papers in my other bag back in Denver. I could come back the day after tomorrow and show them to you if that will help?”

A slight nod of the head. A narrowing of the eyes. She didn’t like that one bit. A furtive sideways glance into the bedroom. That’s where she kept the guard dog or the phone or the gun.

“I’ll come back when I have my ID?” I asked.

“Yes, I think I’d prefer that,” she replied in a frightened monotone.

“Shall we say Tuesday at ten in the morning?”

“Fine.”

“Tuesday, excellent. Well, in that case I’ll be on my way. I apologize if I have inconvenienced you in any way and hopefully we can get this resolved next week.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I smiled, turned, and walked down the driveway. Bye, Stepmom.

I didn’t look back but I knew she was in her bedroom, calling someone, looking for the emergency cash, packing a suitcase… Dad had told her about this day and the day had come.

I couldn’t begin to understand it.