Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

The American cuts him off. “Before you say something you’ll regret, let me stop you right there, friend . The people you work for would never try to fuck with me in my town. Now that bullshit might play in fucking El Paso or Juárez but it don’t work here. This is Fairview, Colorado. This is my city. I’ll give you five hundred bucks for the girl. Take it or leave it.”

“Five hundred dollars!” Pedro says.

The man nods, throws down the cigarette, clenches and unclenches a fist. His hands are huge. Bigger than my whole head. Meat axes. Hold a basketball upside down with his fingertips. And they say a lot. Tan line where a ring used to be, but no wedding band. Divorced. Knuckle scars. Hint of a tattoo running up his wrist. The bottom of an anchor. Navy. Marines. Something like that. A bruiser whose wife left him when he blew his last chance and beat the shit out of her.

“Take it or leave it. Take ’em all back, for all I care,” he says.

“I take them all to Denver. I take them to Kansas City!” Pedro protests.

“Do that,” the American snaps.

“This would not happen in L.A.,” Pedro seethes.

“We’re not in L.A.,” the American says.

Pedro plays the angles, dreaming cartels and professional icemen who’ll deal with this Yankee fuckface.

“Where is Esteban? I want to talk to Esteban,” Pedro says.

Esteban, one of the guys on Ricky’s secondary list-the guy with the dent in his Range Rover.

“Esteban’s busy, but it doesn’t matter, you ain’t been listening, this is my town. I say who stays here and who goes.” His voice a rasp. Metal grinding on metal-grinding on us. He’s the vise and the plane and we’re the thing in the jaws to be scraped clean.

“I do not do fieldwork, but I do construction. I lay down bricks. I am skills, my hands are, uh, mis manos… no son asperas , uh, because, bricks are skilled. I am waiter in restaurant, I am clean sewers. In Managua I work as house painter in morning and in laundry at night. Eighteen-hour day. I work hard,” Paco says.

“And you speak English,” the man replies.

“I speak English, good,” Paco agrees.

“Yeah, ok. You sold me. You come over here too.”

Paco crosses to our side of the invisible line.

When he’s beside me he touches me on the small of the back. It’s comforting, not irritating. I smile at him. Nicaraguan bullshit artist , I want to whisper in his ear but I don’t.

“For him?” Pedro asks.

The man walks behind us and this I don’t like. Him behind me. Hairs on my neck. He stands there for a beat. Comes around the front. He looks at me and Paco. He reaches into his pocket and feels the money in the billfold.

“You know how to work a nail gun?” he asks Paco in Spanish.

“Of course, señor,” Paco says.

“Sure you do. What’s your name, boy?”

“Francisco.”

“Ok, good, I’ll take Miss America here,” he says, putting his big right hand on my head. He claps his left on Paco. “And if for any reason Miss America is unable to fulfill her duties, you, Francisco, the first runner-up, will step into her shoes.”

Paco doesn’t seem to catch any of it but smiles uncomfortably.

He turns to Pedro. “Seven-fifty for him. Twelve-fifty for both.”

Pedro nods. That figure is a bit more reasonable. “Seventeen hundred and fifty and you will have a deal,” he says.

The American yawns. “I’ll tell you what, I’m feeling generous. Let’s call it fourteen hundred even.”

“Fifteen hundred and we will shake on it.”

“Fifteen it is,” the American says.

“And the others?” Pedro asks.

“You can take the others to Denver.”

Pedro shakes his head, but you can tell he’s going to take the deal. Fifteen hundred dollars in all those big bills. And there’s something about the American. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s something to do with his height and the way he carries himself. His authority is absolute. Once he’s decided, the conversation, the negotiation, the interaction are all over.

“I do not know,” Pedro says.

“Take a second to think on it.”

The American goes to the warehouse door, trundles it open. He sucks in air as if he’s getting more than just oxygen from it. As if nature’s rejuvenating him like one of my mother’s voodoo gods.

Wind blowing around our ankles.

Pedro pretending to mull it over.

Time counting out the moments before the grave.

“Well?” the American asks finally, without turning.

“Take the other boy,” Pedro says. “He is from Guatemala. He will work hard. Three hundred dollars.”

“Can’t do it. Too young. Stick out like a sore thumb. This is Tancredo’s district. Motherfucker’s running for president. Immigration’s his bête fucking noir. INS breathing down our necks. Raided the ski resort preseason. Fucking decimated it. Dumb bastards.”

Pedro nods, looks at the pair of us, gives us a look. We’re both happy to go.

“Ok, a deal. You will have these and I will take the rest to Denver.”

“Made a wise choice, friend,” the American says.

In a dizzying two minutes we’re bought and paid for and led outside to a new black Cadillac Escalade.

We get in the back.

The old lady and the Guatemalan kid wave.

Blub, blub. Never see them again. Have a good life.

Paco puts his hand up to the window.

“Get your greasy paws from the goddamn glass,” the American says from the front seat. “Should have put the fucking sheet down. Forgot. Esteban normally does this.”

Paco’s hand falls.

We drive away from the warehouse and down a gravel slope to the highway.

The American flips the stations on the radio until he finds seventies rock.

We join the highway and head west into a sinking sun.

More mountains. Light snow. Dry air. Paco’s jittery. Not talking. Nervous. Jesus, what about? The worst that can happen to you is the INS and a one-way back to Juárez. I’m the mark who’s all in.

The snow comes on wetter and changes to rain.

“Ach,” the man says and doubles the wiper speed.

The window shows Rockies. Never seen mountains before. Unreal. Hypercubed. Landscape by Henri Rousseau. Absurdly overblown. Too much. Aspens, firs, pine. Jagged peaks, crazy high.

Paco starts biting his nails. Fidgeting. But not for long. His eyes are drooping and soon he’s dozing next to me like a big dead bird. I wonder how old he really is. Certainly a lot younger than I am. Kids need more sleep.

We follow the highway for an hour and then turn off on a two-lane road winding its way deep into the mountains.

The spine of America.

The same mountains that run from the Arctic Ocean all the way to southern Mexico. “Rockies” is a juvenile name. Doesn’t do them justice. In Spanish they’re called the Montanas Rocosas, which is much more dignified.

Paco starts whimpering. Hair over his eyes. Lips pouting. Bad dreams. I look away. Trouble, that boy. Corrupter of nuns and babysitters.

The rain stops and the sun comes out.

“Are you ok back there?” the American asks.

“Yes, we are fine.”

“Not far now, look around, useful to learn a few landmarks.”

Power lines. Telegraph poles. The occasional house between trees. And then the outskirts of the town.

“That’ll do us,” the man says.

The Escalade slows.

I nudge Paco. “We’re here,” I tell him.

We stare through the tinted glass.

A long street with huge sidewalks on either side. A lot of wealthy-looking people walking, talking on cell phones, window shopping. White, tall, healthy. Blond wives, older guys, but mostly women at this time of day. The stores are names from magazines: Gucci, DKNY, Versace, Dior, Prada. The restaurants are black, minimalist affairs with big windows. There are a few ski apparel shops but no fast-food restaurants, no bars, no lottery vendors, nothing messy. It looks different from Ricky’s photographs. Smaller. Much smaller than Havana or even Santiago. It’s not much bigger than a village. The main street, a few side streets, parking lots, and then trees. Five thousand people in the town and outlying districts, Ricky says. But he also pointed out that Fairview has doubled its population in just three years and it’s supposed to double again in another three. Huge tracts of forest have been zoned for condos and a new ski resort.