Charles put his fork down. “Look, man, I’ll be straight with you. I’m broke. The cash you gave me saved my neck, but can I make some real money out here?”
Thompson took Charles’ honesty with ease. “Cody Branch has made a lot of people rich, but never out of kindness. If he wants you in the real money, he’ll have an angle. He invests a dollar expecting five back. Tell me more.”
Charles wondered how much of a return Thompson was expecting out of him.
“We’re in a crowded office, nice place, real nice, next to the Capitol. But the only people working on the airport are me, a young research assistant and a woman named Diana Salazar. Supposedly I’m the PR manager, but Salazar’s in charge of it all. She cuts through the bullshit.”
“Damn right, she does.” Thompson finished his wine. “I didn’t know about her involvement. Should have guessed, though.”
“Why is that?”
“Branch and his friends, which includes the governor and a senator or two, and a few people who are actually important, go to Salazar when they want something done right.”
“Am I working for crooks? I can’t work for more crooks.”
“I would not say ‘crooks.’ Others might, but I would not.” Thompson laughed. “The silver-haired lady in question was chief of staff in DC for Senator Baca. Managed his campaigns out here, managed the gubernatorial race a few years ago. Kingmaker Salazar. Old school. And she’s been skating a hair in front of investigations and allegations for years. Nothing crazy. It’s never anything crazy, right? You know that. Favors for donors, state contracts to supporters, maybe a few salaries that get paid out of multiple campaign accounts over multiple years. Most of it probably isn’t even illegal.”
“You had me thinking I could make some money out here. Now I’m worried my boss will go to prison. Again.”
“Hey, I’m probably exaggerating. This isn’t The Godfather. You’re working for people who push the rules. What else is new?”
“I suppose.” The food felt heavy in his stomach, and Charles began to hate the lingering taste of spice and heat.
“Although, a few of Branch and Salazar’s previous employees have found themselves in trouble.”
“Prison trouble? Or resign-in-wealthy-disgrace trouble?”
“Usually the second, but not always.” Thompson lowered his voice and Charles leaned forward. “Their two most recent big projects were a mall and a new racetrack. At a certain point Branch’s company forms a new organization to finish the project. Totally separate on paper. The money is still going to Branch, but the connections are more obscure. New Mexico takes corporate privacy very serious.”
“They form a shell corporation?”
Thompson rolled his eyes. “Nobody calls it that, but kind of. So, when things go wrong, and in those two examples things went wrong, the newer, smaller organization goes down and the head of that organization falls on his gold-plated sword. Branch and Salazar live to fight another day.”
“But the Feds would notice that. Someone would notice that pattern.”
“They come in, sniff around, can’t quite put anything together. Federal law enforcement works on immigration and drugs out here. Short attention spans for millionaires in the mountains. The little guy gets a fine and probation, then moves to Montana and dissolves the corporation. Branch buys another neighborhood.”
Charles put his fork down “What the hell? Why can’t I just get a straight job?”
Thompson laughed. A waiter cleared their plates, giving Charles a minute to unclench his jaw. He took a sip of his martini. It burned his mouth.
“Maybe tread lightly,” Thompson said. “Has it occurred to you that your new employer knew about your troubles and maybe thought, ‘Now there’s the kind of gentlemen not above telling a teeny, tiny fib or two?’”
“No, that had not occurred to me.”
Thompson smiled. “You’ll be fine, but keep me updated. I know the angles.”
“And your clients pay for only the best angles.”
The bill arrived. Thompson dropped a card onto the table and slid over a plain envelope full of twenties. Charles’ consulting fee looked dirty but felt so wonderful. As they walked towards the door, Thompson clapped Charles on the back. The gesture felt both familiar and condescending.
“Living in the mountains has made you melodramatic,” Charles said. “I’m here to do a job. Although, you make it seem like I’m involved with people that could make my future much more . . . remunerative.”
“That you are,” Thompson said. “Myself included.”
They stepped outside into bright daylight. The comradely grin on Thompson’s face was drenched in sunshine. “And, speaking of money, would you happen to know if Branch’s airport contract has any limitations on gaming?”
“Gaming?”
“Gambling. People have noticed the airport is located on a Native American pueblo. Might some enterprising folk build a lovely, upscale casino resort nearby? Maybe, even, on the top floor of the new terminal?”
Charles laughed. “Why would I know that? I don’t know about gaming. Besides, even if I did know, wouldn’t this be entering into that ‘insider information’ area? That federal prison area?”
“Is it? Oh, that’s such a vague area.” Thompson thrust his hands into his pockets. “I have a lot of clients, wealthy clients. And they are convinced that a cute boutique hotel and a cute casino and golf course, right next to this cute little airport, might start exercising credit cards. Everyone wants an invitation to that party. If someone had that information, or any relevant information about the project, then that person might be hired on as a consultant. A freelancer, if that person would prefer. Cash, if that person is worried about taxes or debt collectors.”
For the first time, Charles smelled the trees, the thin mountain air.
“You said you felt more sanitary working in finance. I’m not sure you should feel that way.”
Thompson smiled.
Charles was getting sick of his friend’s smiles.
“You stopped being sanitary well before Delaware, my friend, and what do you have to show for it? Stay in touch.”
Strolling back to the office, passing so many happy tourists, Charles breathed deep through his nose to dispel the booze.
For years, he ate rubber chicken dinners and cold pizza, slept on lumpy hotel beds and drank too much with kids like Jordan. Money flowed through politics like blood. Every palm was greased, but never his.
There would be nothing to it, nothing at all. Glance at some paperwork. Call up an old friend. Maybe get onboard with Branch as well. Two streams of income, two sources of stability, two guarantees for the future.
What time was it? He turned his phone on. Four missed calls, two voicemails and three text messages—all from Salazar or Jordan: There’s a problem. Get back here. Where the hell are you?
Getting rich, he thought. Finally.
SEVEN
GABE LIVED HALFWAY between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. On a good day, before the construction started, he could zip downtown in under thirty minutes. Once it was complete, the airport could push the trip to an hour. His small town had become the suburbs, but Albuquerque was getting farther away. That new geographic math confused the hell out of him.
Traffic slowed as he approached the construction site. A line of news vans was pulling into the gravel lot. Everything had been shut down for weeks, but now the site hummed.
Gabe cut in front of the vans and gave his name to a man in a hard-hat. The way this new guy scanned his clipboard made Gabe nervous. Being hunted for in official-looking papers made him nervous. After too long, the guy grunted, then tapped his pen against the page.
“Eh, there you are.” He sounded disappointed, like Gabe’s money was coming out of his own paycheck. “Go to the trailer where you clock in. Bobby’s got your check.”
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked. “We starting back up?”
The guy pulled open the gate for Gabe to whe
el his bike through, then shut it fast, as if the hordes were clamoring to get in.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s about the bones. I don’t know. Was quiet until today.”
The site looked different. Slick cars dotted the parking area and news vans were raising satellite dishes. Suited men moved in clumps, like gangs sizing each other up. Maybe Rey was up to something after all. Inside the fence, Gabe started his bike and rode to the foreman’s trailer. Reporters interviewed a group of older Native Americans, and a handful of nervous-looking men in suits stood to the side. Gabe climbed the steps to the trailer, his bad ankle flaring.
Bobby, the assistant foreman, was peering through the blinds. He snapped back when Gabe opened the door.
“Gabey, Gabe, Gabe, you never learned to knock?”
“Don’t mess with me, Bobby. I’m just here for my money.”
Bobby huffed and grabbed a stack of white envelopes off the desk. He pressed his meaty thumb against his tongue and flipped through the checks.
“You going to lick them all or just mine?”
“You’re not here.” Bobby dropped the stack and went back to the window.
“No, don’t mess with me, you remember I get cash.”
“Oh, right, then you’re in the other stack.
Gabe picked up the stack of envelopes meant for the guys without socials and people who had negotiated being paid off the books. He flipped through six or seven envelopes before realizing there was enough cash right here to make his problems go away. Quick scenarios flipped through his head. Grab the cash while Bobby had his back turned. Everyone would know he took the money but maybe Gabe didn’t care. Hit the road with ten grand and a bushel of marijuana. Start a new life with a new name and die somewhere in Utah. Alone.
Gabe dropped the envelopes back on Bobby’s desk. Feeling that money leave his hands almost hurt.
“Dude, you look like you’re peeping into the girl’s locker room,” Gabe said.
“Something’s happening out there, Gaber, and damn if I like it. What I like is getting paid for sitting on my ass.”
“Don’t call me that,” Gabe said. “So we starting back up?”
Bobby slid open the window and leaned out on the sill. “They stopped telling me shit yesterday.”
Bobby shut the window. “Can’t hear a damn thing, anyways. You haven’t picked up anything, huh? You always hear something.”
“I’ve been hearing my couch break under my ass.”
“You know, most guys who come in here aren’t this happy. They get all squinty and sweaty when they see the checks. I’m tired of hearing about sick kids and empty gas tanks.”
“Guess you have one of those fat, trustworthy faces,” Gabe said. “Today is your lucky day. No sob stories from me. Hey, maybe that makes me the lucky one?”
Bobby shook his head and picked up a clipboard. “Yeah, Gabe, that’s you. The lucky one. Let me know if you hear anything.”
Back outside, the reporters were talking to the guy who had been driving the bulldozer that scooped up the rocks and bones. He swept his hands through the air and pulled broad faces like he was recreating what happened. Gabe sat on his bike, watching the scene. They found the skeleton weeks ago. Who the hell cared what some bulldozer saw?
Yet another news van pulled in. Gabe revved his engine once, twice. At the noise, the bulldozer operator looked up, recognized Gabe and pointed in his direction. The cameras and reporters swung around as if on a pulley and started advancing towards the trailer. His first instinct was to bolt, get out of there before they spotted him. Gabe straddled his bike. The reporters stepped through the dirt and rocks on their tiptoes. The women wobbled on their high heels, and the men looked like they thought the ground would give way.
Bobby opened the trailer door, smoothing his shirt over his belly and touching the sides of his hair. The crowd swarmed in a semi-circle around Gabe and his bike.
A small woman with eyes more white than blue thrust her mic forward. “Sir, Mr. Lula, how do you feel about this latest development?”
“Luna,” Gabe said, “I’m Luna.”
The reporters seemed taken aback.
“But this latest development?”
Gabe assumed she was talking about the airport.
“It is what it is, not that I like what it is.” He tried to spot someone laughing, someone who would admit this was a prank.
“Not much you can do about it, though. Change, you know? It is what it is.”
“What are your thoughts on Geronimo?” another person asked.
Gabe grinned. “Haven’t jumped out of a plane in a while, so I don’t know that I have lots of them.”
A few people chuckled. Gabe started to relax. “I’ll be on the news, I guess?”
“After what you saw, yes sir.”
“You mean out with Jefe on the rez?”
Gabe wanted to kick himself. It was the first thing that popped into his head. The reporters made eye contact with each other, with the cameramen, no one quite understanding.
Another reporter held his mic forward. “Sir, a group of Apaches is now claiming that Geronimo’s skull was dumped into your truck. Geronimo. How does that feel?”
Red lights glared from each camera.
“Right, this shit ain’t funny no more. Rey set you up on this?”
No one moved. Gabe was still straddling his bike, hunched forward over his handlebars. He felt pinned to the ground, stakes driven through his boots. “Sir?” a voice asked. “Don’t you have something to say?”
A life of accusations came back to him. Can’t you explain yourself? Don’t you have a reason for the things you do? Say something. Gabe started his bike. The gaggle took a quick step back.
“I didn’t do shit,” Gabe shouted. “I don’t know shit. And I didn’t do shit.” He peeled out, kicking dust up around the cameras, and sped off the construction site.
After hitting traffic and a line of broken-down people picking up disability checks, Gabe was an hour and a half late to Micah’s school. The check-cashing places were all closed, so all he could give Helen was the cash from the construction site.
Micah was slouched on a concrete bench near the main building. His hair was cut into a style almost devoid of style—short on the sides, a little long on top, combed to the left. Gabe had never seen the kid in T-shirts or ripped jeans. He looked like a stockbroker stuck in high school.
“Mikey, what’s happening, man?”
Micah caved in like a crushed beer can when he saw the bike. He stayed seated for a beat and looked around to make sure his friends weren’t watching, or maybe not watching.
He pulled out an earbud. “You’re late.”
“This is when your mom told me to be here. She said you had a thing after school.”
“I thought you were bringing the truck,” Micah said. He hooked his thumbs on the straps of his backpack and rocked his head to the side. “I don’t even fit on the bike anymore.”
“Nah, hop on, there’s plenty of room.”
Micah worried the earbuds like an old woman with a rosary. By the time Gabe was sixteen, his personality was set. That kid who skipped school after lunch never went away.
Maybe Micah would be the same. Scared of the world at sixteen and scared of the world at sixty. “What about my helmet?”
Gabe looked back at the bike. The helmet was behind the blue recliner in the living room, where he had bowled it after the previous failed attempt to get Micah on the bike. That was a year ago, and he had hoped the kid would at least have grown curious about the Harley.
“I thought we could get you a new one,” Gabe said. “One that fits better.”
Micah arched an eyebrow, wanting, for a brief moment, to believe his father. He pulled out his phone. “Whatever. It’s fine. Mom’ll be off work in thirty minutes, anyway.”
“No, no, it’ll be cool. We’ll go slow, take surface roads, no highway. Slow.”
“Mom said you were supposed to have cash.”
> Gabe straightened. “She’s not supposed to talk to you about that stuff.”
“She said you’d help with the camping trip.”
“Here.” Gabe unzipped a side pocket in his leather riding vest and pulled out the envelope. “I got paid. I’m giving the cash to your mother today.”
Micah nodded and looked at the ground. Gabe knew they had crossed some sort of boundary there. His son talking about money, about his father’s deficiencies. It stung.
A man emerged from the school and made his way towards Gabe and Micah. He wore a striped white shirt tucked into slacks. He approached them at a casual angle, as if to look less threatening. Ray used to describe that move as “White Man on Patrol.”
Gabe jammed the money back into his vest. “Everything fine here, son?” the man asked.
“Son?” Gabe interrupted. “My son, not yours. Unless his mother has something to tell me.”
“It’s okay, Mr. González. This is my dad.”
González looked at Gabe and tried to keep his face neutral. Since growing his hair long and letting his mustache go wild, Gabe had seen that look ripple over countless faces. Some people, the best people, never blinked twice, but everyone else shook their head and tried to wish him away.
“Nice to meet you, sir.” González smiled.
Gabe nodded and kept staring at González but didn’t say anything. His presence made Gabe realize how different he and his son looked. They had the same sharp nose, and everyone said they had the same eyes, but Micah was light-skinned and his hair was dark blonde. The kid looked white, like his mother.
González grew very interested in his keys and drifted away. “Can you believe that guy?” Gabe asked.
“He’s fine.” Micah shook his head. “Not a lot of motorcycle parents here.”
“You mean not a lot of badass parents here.”
Micah smiled and let out a quick dismissive laugh through his nose. Gabe felt the impact in his gut.
“You know, if a girl sees you getting on this thing, she’ll want to . . . she’ll be impressed.”
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