Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

Walk it.

Twenty minutes along the wood.

Cars and SUVs racing past on the downhill lane at close to a hundred kilometers per hour.

The dull clothes better than camouflage, just another Mex going about her silent business, just another invisible with no plans or dreams or thoughts in her head. No one slows to avoid showering me with stones, no one notices me at all.

After half an hour the gradient increases and the trees thin out and there are half a dozen houses next to one another. I read numbers on mailboxes.

Number 44 is a little yellow trailer home set off from the others.

A whole lot of people around. Kids playing, people raking leaves, a lady with a blanket over her legs reading a book.

All these witnesses. This is fucked. Should have scouted this yesterday. This is a night op.

It’s two kilometers back to town. I’m not going back.

Before they notice me I dart into the woods to check out the approach from the rear.

Some of the houses have tall antibear fences but number 44 does not. Just a grassy yard and a well-worn path leading into the woods.

Tires, a workbench, a lathe, half a Dodge pickup parked in the yard.

If I was a pro I’d scout and make notes and wait but I have no time for that, and besides, something tells me to go for it, now. That something is desperation.

I walk out from under the tree cover and approach the rear of the trailer home. I reach into the backpack, remove the ski mask, and pull it over my head. I put the knife into the lock on the screen door. Pull. The plastic gives with a loud snap.

Two houses over, a dog barks. The barking becomes a low growl and then stops.

Heart hammering. This is crazy. Get out now. I turn the handle on the back door and enter a tiny, dirty kitchen. Pots and pans on a gas stove, a box of pancake mix on a table next to a carton of milk. A smallish black dog is sleeping in a wool-lined box near a washing machine. The dog blinks and looks up at me. He registers my presence and rests his head back down on his paws.

This is stupid, Mercado. Get out of here .

I tighten the grip on my knife and push the door to the next room.

A living/dining room and a man, watching TV in a reclining chair. His back is to me but I can see a white hand holding a can of beer. I can’t tell if he’s big, small, young, old. The other hand must have the TV remote because every fifteen or twenty seconds the channel flips.

The room is painted a dull yellow and, apart from a few newspaper fragments on the floor, is quite tidy. There are cupboards along the wall, and through the front window I can see the children throwing an American football to one another.

The longer I stand here the harder it’s going to be.

I pad gently across the floor with as much silence and economy of movement as my nerves will permit.

I look at the knife.

How am I going to do this?

Quickly.

One op. No second chances.

I stand behind him, look down at the top of his head. Bald, with a gray fringe around the edge.

I grip the knife, take a deep breath, and in one fast slice of air it’s at his throat.

“Don’t move,” I tell him.

“The fuck,” he says but doesn’t move.

“This is a hunting knife and it’s on your jugular vein. Don’t move or I’ll cut the vein and you’ll be dead in under a minute. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand,” he says with surprising equanimity-as if one of the hassles of everyday life was the occasional knife-wielding maniac jumping up from your sofa while you’re watching TV.

“Put down the beer,” I tell him.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

“Put down the beer.”

He sets the beer can on a side table next to the chair.

“What do you want from me?” he asks again.

Keeping the knife against his vein, I reach out with the handcuffs and place them on his thigh.

“Very slowly handcuff your wrists together,” I tell him.

“I ain’t gonna do it. You’re going to kill me,” he says.

“No one is going to die. Soon I’ll be leaving and you’ll go back to your TV show. I promise if you do what I say you will not be hurt.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” he says.

“Do I sound like a killer?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Just do it!”

He slides his wrists into the cuffs. “Never had a pair of these on before,” he mutters.

When his hands are fully clipped I step out from behind the chair. The ski mask startles him and I take that stunned second to check the cuffs. Tight. Good.

He’s not what I’m expecting. About sixty-five, maybe seventy, wearing a plaid shirt and dark blue jeans. His face says that he’s lived a lot of life. Blue-collar outdoor stuff. His eyes are green and sharp and kindly. It would be very hard to have to kill this man.

“Why don’t you sit down?” he says.

“I will.”

I turn off the TV and sit in the rocking chair opposite him. Rocking chair. A heartbeat ago I was in Santiago de Cuba watching little Ricky sitting down triumphantly in Uncle Arturo’s rocking chair, winning the game, Mom laughing, Dad winking, Lizzy bursting into floods of tears. A blink and the years are gone like playing cards. And Cuba’s gone and I’m in the dream world, America, opposite an elderly man in an unnamed hamlet outside a mountain town in Colorado and Dad’s dead and Ricky’s gay and Mom’s got pre-Alzheimer’s and I haven’t spoken to Lizzy or Esme or Uncle Arturo for a decade.

“Well,” the man says. “What can I do ye for?”

“Pardon?”

“What can I do ye for?”

“I have come about your advertisement in the newspaper.”

“What ad?”

“For the guns.”

“I can detect by your accent that you ain’t from around these parts.”

“No.”

His eyes twinkle. “Well, I have to tell you, ma’am, that in general this here thing with the knife and the handcuffs is not how you’re supposed to respond to a small ad in the newspaper.”

“I need the handgun,” I tell him.

He nods, scratches his nose. “Why is that? If you don’t mind me asking,” he says.

“I need it for protection and I don’t have enough money to buy one downtown.”

He clears his throat. “Ok. Just let me get this straight. You think someone’s trying to harm you and you want to get a gun to protect yourself, but you don’t have much money, so you thought you’d break into my house and steal one of my weapons?”

“Yes.”

He thinks for a second and nods. “Well, ma’am, if you’re willing to take a risk like that then I reckon you’re in a heap of trouble, all right.”

I nod in agreement.

“I got two daughters myself. Both in California.”

“Hmmm.”

“Two daughters, four grandchildren. All girls. Not a boy among them. Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t complaining. Thank the Lord they is all healthy.”

“Mister, uh…”

“Oh, you can call me Jonesy, everyone pretty much calls me Jonesy. And I won’t take it as a sign of disrespect if you don’t want to tell me your name considering the circumstances.”

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

A pause and then a look of cunning. “Well now, missy, how much money you got?” he asks.

“About ninety dollars.”

“Ninety bucks? My oh my. You’re right about that. That ain’t a whole lot of nothing these days. Well, I know you’ve kind of got me over a barrel here, but I’d be very reluctant to part with that brand-new Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter for less than a hundred dollars, no matter how I come to it, but I’ve got some older models you might wanna use for personal protection. Good guns. Stop any ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, that kind of thing. Stop a bull elephant if you was close enough. Lessen you is set on the M and P.”