Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

“Eighty-one? I thought you were in your early seventies,” I tell her, truthfully. With Americans, I realized, it was very hard to tell.

Mrs. Cooper smiles.

“Would you like anything to drink, Miss Inez?” Jimmy asks.

I can’t resist. “Do you have any orange juice?”

American orange juice is light-years from the ersatz stuff they pedal in Havana.

“We’ve got some fresh-squeezed,” Jimmy says. “Is that ok?”

Fresh-squeezed orange? It’s like breakfast with one of Ricky’s high-powered friends.

“That would be perfect,” I reply.

Jimmy smiles. “I got this new machine for squeezing juice.”

“Very nice.”

“A present. Little bonus we all got. I work for Pixar.”

Obviously Jimmy is trying to impress me, but I don’t know what Pixar is.

“Pixar, very impressive,” I tell him.

“We’re setting up a studio in Denver at the old Gates Plant. Us and Redford. You know, Sundance. I’m not one of the creative ones, but, you know, we all do our thing-”

“What is this all about?” Mrs. Cooper wonders, looking at me sharply.

“Madam, I represent your former insurance company-Great Northern Insurance, I’m a claims investigator. We’re looking into an accident that you had on May twenty-sixth of this year,” I say.

“I’ll get that orange juice,” Jimmy says and slips out.

“What accident?” Mrs. Cooper wonders.

“The accident that occurred on May twenty-sixth, when you were driving your Mercedes,” I say with a mild panic-I couldn’t have screwed up the names, could I?

Mrs. Cooper shakes her head. “I wouldn’t call that an accident,” she says.

“Is there anything wrong?” Jimmy asks, coming back with a glass of orange juice.

“Nothing wrong at all, this is just routine,” I say with a reassuring smile.

“Mother admitted fault and they told us that it wouldn’t be a problem,” Jimmy continues.

“Oh no, it’s nothing to worry about, I’m only here to get the details of the accident, this doesn’t affect the claim in any way. In fact, confidentially, I can tell you that the check has already been cut. But for anything over ten thousand dollars we need to interview the claimant in person, it’s just our policy.”

Jimmy nods. It sounds plausible, and once you tell people that money is on the way that’s generally all they can subsequently think about.

“Mrs. Cooper, if I could bring you back to the afternoon or evening of May twenty-sixth, 2007.”

Mrs. Cooper still isn’t sure, though, and looks at her son for a prompt.

“Go on, Mother, tell her about it,” Jimmy says. “It’s all right.”

“Well, now that I think about it I do remember a little. There was still snow on the ground. It was a terrible winter, did they tell you that? We had a terrible winter up here, seven storms in seven weeks. One of the worst ones I can remember and I’ve been here for fifteen years,” Mrs. Cooper says with a soft and not unpleasant Chinese accent. The Chinese apparatchiks I knew in Cuba all spoke in harsh, clipped, imperative tones.

“Can you understand her, Miss Inez? Mother’s from Shanghai. Dad met her just after the war, he was an airman, the Flying Tigers. English isn’t her first language.”

“I can understand her perfectly,” I say with another reassuring smile. I give him a little nod as if to say, And aren’t you great, Jimmy, looking after your widowed mother-the things you must have had to put up with all these years . A lot to convey in a nod, but I do my best.

Jimmy returns the smile, completely warmed to me now. He walks to the mantel, picks up the oval ball, and begins tossing it from hand to hand.

“Go on, Mom, tell her,” Jimmy says. “Spill the beans.”

“I was coming back from the market in Vail,” Mrs. Cooper continues.

“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 Juárez 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.”