Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

The white Bentley, Jack leaning his head out the passenger’s-side window.

“Yes, please,” I replied, and once again I was annoyed that I wasn’t wearing lipstick or looking my best.

“Get in. Ever been in a Bentley before?”

“No.”

“Get in, get in. I’ll put the top down. You can’t put the top down without a beautiful girl next to you, it’s obligatory, says it right there in the owner’s manual.”

I sat in the passenger’s seat. He pressed a button and the roof slid back. The Bentley accelerated away from the curb with a feline roar.

“I’m probably the oldest ‘girl’ you’ve had in this car.”

“How old are you?”

I gave him what I hoped was an ironic look.

“Yeah, I know, not the sort of question you’re supposed to ask. Tip-don’t ask actors, either.”

“I know how old you are,” I told him.

“You looked me up in Wikipedia?”

“I don’t know what that is. At that party you had I heard you say that you tell producers you’re twenty-nine, but your older résumés say you’re thirty and really you’re thirty-one.”

“Goddammit, in vino veritas, eh? Shit.”

“I don’t think it was vino.”

“No it wasn’t. A-rated, two-fifty-a-spliff Vancouver hemp-that’s what it was. We got it in for Pitt, except he didn’t stay. His loss-supremo shit. Course I don’t need to tell you, you’re from Mexico.”

I gave him another look that he missed. “If that acting career doesn’t work out, I’m sure they’ll hire you in the diplomatic corps, Señor Jack.”

He burst out laughing. “Yeah, I guess that was a bit crass.”

I smiled to show I wasn’t in the least offended and for some reason this made him grin like an idiot. He touched me on the leg. The Bentley had barely been going thirty but as the undulating road flattened out he gunned it up to seventy. It accelerated so smoothly it was as if we were in a studio and the landscape was a back projection.

“Beaut, isn’t she? Valet parkers fucking kill themselves for the keys. Like it?”

Like it? Nothing in Cuba moved like this. The fifties Yankee cars with Russian engines and jerry-rigged suspensions, the cheap Chinese imports, the Mexican Beetles. I thought all cars rattled and roared until I rode in the back of Sheriff Briggs’s Escalade.

“It’s ok,” I told him.

“Yeah, it’ll do,” he agreed.

It was a break to actually be in this car with him. I couldn’t let it go by.

Men loved to talk about their cars. “Is it from this year?” I asked prepping the ground so I could slip in an important question.

“Oh yeah, 2007, I’ll keep it for a couple of years and then I’m thinking of getting a DB9. Course it won’t be a DB9 in a few years, but it’ll still be an Aston Martin. The valets will love that, too.”

“I noticed a little repair on the hood.”

“Oh God, yeah. My dad told me once, never lend a friend money and never let anyone drive your car. Never.”

“What happened?”

“Few months back, I was in L.A., something wrong’s with Paul’s Beemer. Borrowed the Bentley to drive downtown. Couldn’t handle it. The Bentley needs care and attention. You treat it like a lady. Jesus, he’s a fucking idiot. I love him, of course, but he’s still an idiot.”

“He was in an accident?”

“Oh yeah, but he was fine. Dent and a ding. No big deal.”

“He crashed your car?”

“No, no, well, yes, but it wasn’t a biggie. The garage fucked up the repair, if you want to know. You shouldn’t even be able to see it. Nearest dealership is in Texas and I’m not driving it to Texas. So anyway, what about you? What are you doing out here?”

“I wanted to see some of the country.”

“Should have been here a few weeks ago, the leaves were at their peak.”

When we hit the outskirts of Fairview, Jack turned to me. His face had assumed a rigid intensity. He was either about to lie to me or he was going to try some of his acting.

“Listen, uh, M…”

“María.”

“I remembered! Come on. María, of course, listen, I’ve been invited to this dinner party and they said bring a date and I called Paul and he couldn’t come up with anybody this late and I know this is kind of short notice, but, hell, do you wanna come?”

“Paul won’t be there?”

“No.”

“I’ll come.”

“What’s the matter, you don’t like Paul?”

“No.”

“Lot of women don’t like him. He’s a good guy, you know, comes across as a bit of an ass. But basically a good chap, a really good egg.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell that that was an English accent?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never drunk tea or met an Englishman in my life.”

“Lucky old you. L.A. is plagued by them. They’re all very insecure. I know a couple of writers. They’re the worst. Chain-smoking Marlboro reds, ridiculous.”

“You know English writers? Have you read the poet Philip Larkin?” I asked him.

“The what? The who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Anyway, where were we? Oh yes. So you’ll come?”

“To a party, yes,” and wordlessly I added It’s been a trying day .

“You’ll come? You’ll be my date?” he asked insecurely.

“I said yes.”

“Ok, well, don’t freak, but I’m kind of on my way over there right now.”

I wasn’t following him. “Why would I freak ?”

“It’s a party. Don’t you need, like, three hours to get ready?”

“No, but I’ll bet you do.”

He laughed. “Low blow, yet strangely accurate. We’re all fags now, although I’m not as vain as some, believe me, I could tell you stories,” he says, fluffing his gelled hair in the rearview.

“But I do want some time. Look at me.”

“You look great.”

“Pull in there.”

Gas station. He spent a small fortune filling the Bentley while I washed my face and attempted to make my hair slightly interesting with the hot-air hand dryer.

I pinched some color into my cheeks and applied red lipstick.

I looked ok and if anyone said I didn’t I had a sledgehammer and a Smith & Wesson to change their mind.

“Whose house is it?” I asked when we’re back in the car.

“Oh, no one you would know, unless you read the trades, which you probably don’t. Not someone conventionally famous, but very A-list, a producer, big enchilada in a behind-the-scenes kind of way.”

“What’s his name?”

“Alan Watson. Look him up on IMDB, more movies this year than Judd fucking Apatow. Producing or coproducing credit on half a dozen flicks. Playa with a capital P. Total wacko, of course. All the big ones are. The house is only two doors away from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain. And with Cruise shooting pickups for that Nazi movie, this week Watson is the big bear on Malibu Mountain.”

The house was indeed only two doors from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain, but those doors were at least half a kilometer apart. The homes up here were all huge poronga affairs, faux Swiss chalets or supersized mountain ski lodges with ample grounds, guesthouses, outdoor Jacuzzis, pools, stables. Esteban said that Cruise and a few others had their own private ski runs to the valley and even chairlifts that ran back up to the house.

Watson’s house did not have a private ski run that I could see but it did have three floors and was the size of a small Havana apartment building. The style was Spanish hacienda with ultramodern features: radio antennae, quadruple garage, satellite dishes, swimming pool, solar panels, and a wind turbine that probably massacred local birds by the score. Even without Esteban’s and Jack’s prep it would have been obvious to me that Watson was in the upper echelons of the power elite.