Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

I wait for something. Anything. The tension is bending my back like a coconut palm.

Nothing. Yet. Stand there at the top of the stairs.

The carpet I’ve cleaned and cleaned. An ancient Greek drinking vessel. A poster from the motorcycle show at the Guggenheim.

Autographed pictures. Friends of Jack, friends of Peter. Famous friends only. Clooney, Affleck, Pitt, and the neighbors, Cruise and Tambor.

The master bedroom.

The handle.

Bladder feels full. A noise. Look behind me-nothing.

Ski mask restricting my field of vision, making me claustrophobic, jumpy.

Pressure on the handle.

The door opens.

I go in.

The TV’s on, bathing the room in a zigzaggy blue light. Gun up. Flashlight off. Fumbling, I drop the flashlight and it crashes to the floor with a thud. Down on one knee, raise the gun. Wait… Nothing.

Stand again. Check the corners. Go in.

Youkilis lying there on top of the bed, naked, asleep. The TV playing images on his belly.

I walk to the bed. Look at him. Deep gone. Drug sleep. Scan the room. No one else.

Back to the TV. Perfect if he’d been watching child pornography or a snuff movie or something bourgeois and decadent, but it’s not, it’s just the Discovery Channel. A show about blue whales.

I turn it off.

He doesn’t stir. He’s sleeping, spread-eagled with a grin on his face. A ten-milligram tab of Ambien and a glass of hundred-year-old cognac must be the recipe for bliss. What if he’d taken the whole packet of sleeping pills? That would let me off the hook. Wouldn’t it, Dad? Wouldn’t it, Ricky?

I roll up my sleeve and look at my watch. 1:30.

Where did the time go?

I stand there with the gun pointed at him.

He’s not even snoring. And he’s happy.

On the nightstand next to him there’s an open drawer. I look in. A Ziploc bag filled with drugs and currency. I take it, sit on the bed.

“I really don’t want to do this,” I whisper to myself. Then don’t. Go. Walk back down the hill, get a good night’s sleep and the bus to El Paso. Go. Ricky won’t mind. Mom doesn’t care. Karen’s moved on. It’ll be better for everyone. Go, little birdie.

I stand but before I’m even on my feet the chemical messengers have done their work and my synapses have flashed back through one of the good times. Before the affairs, before the blowups, before Santiago. Dad laughing as Ricky and I steer the ferry on the first run of the day, the sun rising over the bay, seagulls on the deck, water sluicing through the gunwales.

Another time: Aunt Lilia’s wedding, Dad in a blue suit, Mom in a black dress, me holding his hand in a sepia photograph and dancing with him to a Yuma tune.

And one more: Ricky, Dad, and me watching Cuba win everything at the Pan American Games, me complaining of thirst and Dad from nowhere producing mangoes he had hidden for hours.

You took all of this, Youkilis. You ended it and now it belongs to you.

You own it and I want it back.

I walk around the bed.

I look at him and force myself to poke him in the ribs with the gun barrel.

“Ugh,” he says and doesn’t move.

I poke him again.

Another “Ugh.” But he still doesn’t wake.

Damn it. Now what?

Use it, Mercado.

Yeah. Use it. I roll him over. I put his hands on his back above his ass. He starts to snore. He’s way deep. Fathoms. Kilometers. I put the flashlight on the bed, take off my backpack, and remove the duct tape.

Five minutes later it’s done.

His wrists are duct-taped together and the Ambien-cognac combo has kept him out.

The next step?

The car.

I go back downstairs and through the kitchen to the garage. I need the keys he keeps on a hook by the door.

I turn on the flashlight and there they are, but even if they hadn’t been there it would have been ok. Every Cuban knows how to hotwire.

I pop the trunk and throw out a crate of seltzer, a pair of ski boots, and a lawn chair.

Nice and roomy.

Back upstairs.

Sleeping beauty sleeps still.

I rip off another line of duct tape and slather it over his mouth.

That’s what wakes him. He groans. Jolts upright. I flip the lights. Ski mask, gun, the twenty-first-century equivalent of the devil in the forest.

Screams behind the tape.

He scrambles away from me, falls off the bed, and bangs his head on the nightstand. I let him lie there for a minute to gather his wits. Then I point the gun at his heart. It’s in this moment I decide that I’m not going to speak. Not a word until he’s at the lake.

He looks at the gun and nods his head. He struggles to his feet.

I point at the door and sidle around the bed so that he’s ahead of me.

He turns and stares at me. He’s wondering if this is a nightmare.

Yeah, it is.

I point at the door and give him a little push and he walks ahead of me, slowly, onto the landing.

I flip the lights.

All that stuff.

The celeb pics. Caricatures. Expensive art I hadn’t noticed before. Small postwar Picasso lithographs. Jack’s preferences are for the big and splashy but Youkilis, if I recall, attended Princeton. Taste. Class. Discretion.

He comes to the stairs, hesitates, looks back at me, afraid.

What’s he thinking? That I’m going to push him?

I point down. He shakes his head. He’s trembling all over. His penis has practically disappeared.

I point again, this time with the gun.

Gingerly he makes way down the inside part of the curve, rubbing against the railing with his left arm. His back twitches at the bottom and he takes another look at me.

I don’t like it.

He’s up to something, I better keep an-

Suddenly he trips and falls against the phone stand. The phone and a notebook and a cell phone clatter to the ground on top of him.

Accident? Was he trying to call 911? Quickly I pick up the phone and put it back in the cradle.

He’s groaning. He’s cut himself across the chest. I have no sympathy. I kick him in the ribs and direct him to get up. His eyes are calmer, less wide.

I’m uneasy.

He did something there. I don’t know what. But he did something.

I look at the phone and the wall-everything seems ok.

Better get the hell out of here. I point at the kitchen.

We walk in and I open the door to the garage.

I point at the garage door and while he goes ahead I swing the backpack around in front of me, unzip it, and take out the pepper spray.

He stops at the open trunk of his BMW, turns, and looks at me. He shakes his head. He’s not getting in the trunk. Trunk equals death. If he stays in the house he has a chance, but if he gets in the car he’s going to die.

I’ve been expecting this. I pepper spray him in the face.

He screams, his knees buckle. I run at him and ram him onto the lip of the trunk. He’s six-five and built, so if he falls to the ground it’s going to be a hell of a job to get him in there. I drop the gun and pepper spray and shove his pelvis with both hands. Even blinded and in agony he fights me, kicks, but it’s too late, I have him in. I punch him in the nose and, stunned and winded, he tumbles backward into the trunk.

I lift the backpack, take out the tape.

He’s sobbing, bleeding, but he’ll live.

I grab his ankles, pin them under my arm, and wrap them in the duct tape. The punch and the pepper spray have winded him and he’s as docile as a lamb. But that won’t last forever. This has to be tight .

Roll after roll.

He starts to fight and buck.

Another loop over his mouth.

I close the trunk.

Muffled screams.

I don’t feel good about this.

I stand there for what seems like forever, then go back into the house and turn off all the lights.