Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  I would let it be there for a while and then I would move it away.

  “What’s your name?” Ray asked.

  I tried to think whether I’d used a name with any of the passengers on the bus. But I hadn’t. I’d been careful.

  “María,” I said.

  Half the girls in my elementary school had been called María. That would do just as well as any other name.

  “Ok, María, you look like you got a nice pair, let me see them tits,” Ray said.

  “We don’t have fucking time for this, man,” Bob grumbled, scanning the horizon, nervously. The gun not pointing at anyone now.

  “Ain’t gonna take but a moment. Ok, María, let me see ’em,” Ray repeated.

  He had ripped two of the buttons off my shirt.

  “Let me do it,” I said in English.

  Carefully, I wriggled my hands free from under his knees. He didn’t stop me. I undid a third button and a fourth. I smiled at him and gently pushed him upright. He resisted at first but then moved back. He was still straddling my pelvis and he still had the knife.

  The knife.

  A four-inch serrated hunting weapon. Lovingly honed. You could skin a bear with that thing.

  He was holding it lightly in his palm, face open. It might be susceptible to a blow to the wrist. He might drop it. But then again, he was big and strong and wary.

  Knife fights are bad news. In self-defense class they tell you that you have to be prepared to lose a hand. You have to commit.

  To save your life, grab the blade and twist and know that it’s going to hurt and it’s going to cost you fingers.

  I undid another button. The shirt was open to my navel.

  “That’s it, that’s my girl,” he said. Slobber at the corner of his mouth. His eyes filming over.

  And me light, floating.

  The knife.

  The grinning face.

  The partner turning away.

  Commit. Lose fingers. The hand. And more. Never killed anyone. Nothing bigger than a wasp.

  Commit. Lose fingers.

  “Yeah, that’s it, let me see,” he said.

  And then, just when I was ready to grab the knife with my left and punch him with my right, he rolled back onto his heels and stood.

  I was puzzled for a second, but then I saw. He was undoing his belt and pulling down his jeans.

  “You, too,” he said excitedly.

  “Ok,” I said.

  I pulled my jeans and underwear to my ankles. I slid them off.

  Half naked.

  The fear a river.

  My arms shaking.

  “Come on then,” I told him and offered another smile.

  He leered back.

  Yeah. He liked this better. He wasn’t getting off on the terror. He wanted a fantasy in his head. The willing victim. The fiery Latina. The sex-starved maid. Just like in his DVDs.

  His jeans came off.

  “Come on, honey,” I said in a voice that was half willing accomplice, half frightened victim. Evidently the right mix.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. He spread my legs with his feet.

  “Hurry up, Ray,” Bob said.

  “Don’t worry, man, you’ll get your turn,” Ray said.

  “Just fuck the bitch,” Bob grunted.

  I opened my shirt.

  “You’re gagging for it,” he said. “It’s going to be like making guac, María, we’re gonna scoop all the love right out of ya. Show you a trick or two. I’ve had compliments from pros.”

  I nodded.

  He kneeled between my legs and put down the knife to take off his boxers.

  There would be one play.

  I knew that he had the capacity to kill me. I knew that as a wetback my life wasn’t worth anything and more than likely if he did kill me, he’d have to kill all of us. Six deaths for what?

  No two ways about it. A commitment. A trade. Your lives for ours. In advance I ask forgiveness.

  His tossed his cartoon-covered boxers and when they were gone he grinned and reached for the knife.

  The knife that wasn’t there.

  “Huh?” he said.

  Watching his brain tick over was like watching a dinosaur step on volcanic glass. Confusion showed between his eyes and before he could say or do anything his own treasonous hunting knife slashed him across the belly.

  Maroon venous blood, stomach fluids, coffee.

  A deep laceration, nothing punctured, but enough to sear his nerve endings and get his attention. He reacted faster than I was expecting. His fist hammered into the ground a few centimeters from my swerving head. I slashed at his face and the serrated blade opened his cheek like a sushi knife into yellowtail.

  “Christ,” he screamed, lurched back, and fell.

  With his weight off me, I got to my feet, and before his head had hit the ground I slashed him again. Gut shot. The blade cutting vertically from his belly down through his urethra and into his scrotum—gravity helped and this one was deeper, piercing his bladder, cutting a chunk from the head of his penis and opening his epididymis. Blood, piss, one of his testicles rolling onto the ground.

  I scooted away from him, kicking up a tornado of dust with my hands and feet.

  “Fuck! Fuck! She cut my balls off,” he managed between screams.

  Bob was horrified. It had happened in about four seconds. He couldn’t compute it. I kicked up more dust and he didn’t even see me running at him until I was three meters away. He tried to raise the shotgun but in his panic discharged both barrels into the ground in front of me. Pellets struck me in the legs, burning like fat flying from the pan. Didn’t stop me at all.

  He looked at the gun. Had he really shot both barrels?

  Yes, Robert, and on such things turn the world. We’ll live and you’ll die.

  I jumped at him like a fucking puma. He didn’t even think to hit me with the seven-kilogram wood-and-metal shotgun. He just sort of crumpled, absorbing the blow and falling.

  The dagger entered his throat, my momentum so great that the serrated edge tore through his larynx and embedded itself in the cerebellum at the bottom of his brain stem.

  He was probably killed instantly, but when we crashed into the ground I removed the knife and stabbed him hard in the forehead just to be on the safe side.

  A crunching sound as the blade wedged itself into his skull.

  I left the knife between his eyes, broke open the shotgun, and took fresh shells from his gun belt. Everyone was up now and the deaf woman had started to scream.

  I pointed at Francisco.

  “Calm her down,” I said.

  He nodded, put his arms around her.

  I found my underwear and jeans and pulled them on. My skin was crawling. It was ninety degrees but I was shivering. I gagged back vomit. No one had ever touched me like that. I wanted to lie down and cry. I wanted to shower for ten hours. I wanted Hector, Ricky. I wanted to swim in the current. I wanted moonshine or a fix. No time for any of that.

  I pulled myself together, loaded the shotgun, and walked over to Ray, scrabbling like a redneck Uranus among the blood and sand for his missing testicle. His voice had taken on the high-pitched whining so familiar to those of us who have worked in abattoirs or the torture chambers of the police headquarters on Plaza de la Revolución.

  He yelled when he saw me coming and threw an arm over his face.

  “No, wait, no,” he said.

  Despite the pain he scrambled to his knees and brought his hands together in a gesture of supplication.

  “Please, I’m a family man,” he said.

  I gave him both barrels from a foot away.

  His head disintegrated.

  His body quivered and fresh oxygen-rich blood spouted like a fountain from his neck. It flowed for half a minute before slowing to a trickle when the heart had no more of it left to pump. His torso kept kneeling there, spookily, until finally I kicked it over.

  I looked at the crew. They were pretty junked.

>   I was pretty junked.

  I walked to Francisco, who had calmed the deaf woman. I took the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

  “Lighter?”

  His eyes glazed.

  “Lighter?” I asked again and snapped my fingers in front of his face.

  “Oh,” he said and reached into his pants.

  I lit three cigarettes, put one in my mouth, gave one to the deaf woman, gave him the other.

  “We’re gonna need to get these bodies in the pickup. I’ll bring it over,” I said.

  He nodded. I passed out smokes to the others, walked to the red Chevy, got in the cab. Keys were in the ignition. I moved the seat closer, turned the key, hit the gas. I drove it next to the Land Rover, wiped my prints from the wheel, and got out.

  Pedro was looking at me.

  “Why did you move the car? Are we going to call the police? This was self-defense,” Pedro asked.

  “What police?” I asked dismissively.

  I left him to think things over and went to the Guatemalan kid. He was sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees, crying hysterically. He was freaked. He’d never seen anything like this, not even in those jungle border towns.

  “What’s your name, partner?” I asked him.

  “F-f-f,” he tried, but he couldn’t get it out.

  “Ok, Fredo, we need you to help us.”

  He looked at me.

  I was covered in blood and brains and bits of skull.

  He shrank away.

  I took him by the wrist. He disengaged my hand immediately.

  “Are you ok?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “Speak to me. Are you ok?”

  “Yes,” he managed. “You?”

  “I’m fine. We gotta move fast. We’re going to need to get everyone back in the Land Rover. You gotta help us. Help the lady first, you and Francisco. Understand?”

  He nodded. I left him, went to the old man and kneeled beside him. “Can you stand, abuelo?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t look too bad.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. Somehow his cheek was bleeding. He was touching it, staring at the blood. Fixated.

  “You’re ok. We’ll get you a Band-Aid in the car. Come on, Poppa,” I said and offered him my hand.

  “You speak English good,” the old man said.

  “I studied it in school,” I replied.

  That fact helped him. Anyone who could speak English that well was practically a Yankee. And Yankees could do this kind of thing to other Yankees. He blinked slowly, rubbed the tears from his cheek. I got him to his feet.

  “Pedro, you and Francisco get over here. Everyone else back in the Land Rover,” I said.

  I rebuttoned my shirt and slid some of Ray’s face from my hair.

  When the Guatemalan kid and the old-timers were in the Land Rover, I rifled the two corpses and took back our money and possessions. Both bodies were still warm.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Pedro said.

  I gave him his billfold and that shut him up for a second.

  “Is there anywhere we can hide this truck?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Is there anywhere we can hide their vehicle?” I repeated with more urgency.

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I don’t remember any gullies or canyons around here. Nothing back on the reservation.”

  “Gotta leave it then. We’ll put the bodies inside, buy us some more time,” I told him.

  “You can’t move those bodies,” he said.

  “Not without help.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Pedro, listen to me. They’re gonna bring birds and attention. Get the bodies in the truck and it might sit here unnoticed till nightfall. Might buy us a whole day. Maybe two.”

  Pedro could see the sense in that. “What do you want us to do?” he asked.

  “Let’s get ’em in the cab. Don’t touch them with your hands if you can help it, they can take prints off anything these days. Roll your sleeves down or make fists.”

  I looked at Francisco. “You gotta help too, ok?”

  He nodded.

  “Good, let’s go.”

  First we went to Ray. I took one leg, Pedro took another, Francisco an arm. We dragged his headless body to the truck. I opened the door and with some difficulty we heaved him into the cab.

  “Good. Let’s get the other one.”

  We dragged Bob to the truck and before we hoisted him up I pulled the knife from his forehead. It made a terrible sucking sound. I’d hit him so hard that I’d punched all the way to the back of his skull, and as we lifted him into the truck, his cranium cracked. Daylight streamed through the hole in his head, sky where his face had been. Sky and brains and blood. Pedro began to throw up but Francisco and I kept at it, heaving Bob into the cab and dumping him in the driver’s seat.

  “Damn it,” Francisco said, wiping goo off his shirt.

  Bob’s brown eyes were still looking at me. Half accusation, half amazement. I wasn’t going to take it. Fuck you. Is this what you wanted, Bob? Is this what you thought would happen when you got up today, when you had your coffee and met up with your good buddy Ray? Save your look, friend, save your accusations, you had a dozen chances to let this go.

  I closed his eyes with my knuckles.

  “Let’s give them something to think about. Gimme one of your bags of coke,” I said to Pedro.

  “I’m not a dealer, it’s just to keep me awake,” Pedro said defensively.

  Mother of God, what was his problem? Was he sniffing cop? Maybe I was being a bit too professional, a bit too cold. If only he knew how sick I felt inside, fighting back the waves, pushing them deep where no one could see.

  “That’s ok, man, we just need to give the feds something to worry over,” I said. He gave me a dime bag of his stash and I opened it and poured a little on Bob’s pants.

  “Make ’em think it was a double cross,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Francisco said. “I can help with that.”

  I wiped prints everywhere I thought they’d be and Francisco dipped the knife in the blood and drew a T on the windshield. We both knew what it meant. CSI would pin this on the Tijuana cartel. At the very least it would set them off on a tangent.

  “Ok, now we can—” I began but was interrupted by Bob’s cell phone. The ring tone was one of those jazzy Vince Guaraldi numbers from Charlie Brown Navidad.

  We stiffened.

  “What do we do?” Francisco asked.

  “Well, we don’t answer it,” I said.

  We let it ring and ring and then we walked back to the Land Rover.

  “Now what?” Pedro asked, his face ashen, his eyes exhausted.

  “We continue on like nothing happened,” I said.

  “How can we just go on?” Francisco muttered.

  He was cold, trembling. I put my arm around him. Poor kid. He’d lost about seven years. Thirteen again. Now I wasn’t the next privileged chiquita in line for his attentions, now I was his way-too-young mother comforting him on the dirt floor of some Managuan shanty.

  “It’s going to be ok,” I said.

  He nodded and tried to believe it. And then he turned and looked at me. “What about you, are you ok?” he asked.

  I hadn’t thought about it.

  I wanted to fall down, I wanted to scald my body, turn it inside out. He had touched my hair, between my breasts, my legs.

  “I don’t know. . . . I think so.”

  “Did, did they?”

  “No.”

  He nodded and stared at the yellow sand spiraling around his shoes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s ok. We’re alive and in one piece,” I said.

  It was one of Hector’s lines. We’re alive and in one piece and we’re not in a DGI dungeon.

  Francisco frowned, said nothing. He was a
bit fucked up, but really it didn’t matter if Francisco was fucked or not. Pedro was the one we needed. He knew the way.

  I walked to him. He had stopped throwing up. He was trying to light another cigarette. I cupped the match and helped him.

  He inhaled, coughed, inhaled again.

  “Ok, Pedro, tell me the story, what were you supposed to do? What was the original plan?”

  But he was too shaken and couldn’t yet manage an answer.

  With the patience of Saint Che I gave him two minutes to drain the cigarette and then repeated the question.

  “I-I’m supposed to drive you up through New Mexico. We meet the 25 and then we stop at a motel we use in Trinidad, Colorado.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know, ten hours.”

  Could I keep my breakdown away for ten hours? I’d have to. I took the keys from his hand, lit him another cigarette, opened the driver’s-side door of the Land Rover, reached across the seat, and turned the ignition.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Ten hours, hermano. We’d better get moving.”

  CHAPTER 3

  HABANA VIEJA

  T

  ears. Tears at the rise of the moon. Tears under a starless sky. Tears down my pale cheeks while Death busses tables in the restaurant.

  I sip the mojito, stare at the busboy, and shake my head.

  That’s a guilty man if ever I saw one. Hector’s right. The baby’s dead.

  I dab my face with a cocktail napkin and shake the glass. The ice melts a little.

  It is, as my mother would say, a close night. Every night for her is close. Way back her family is supposed to be from Galicia, which means, she says, that she is a martyr to the heat.

  “What are you doing over there?” Hector asks in my earpiece. His voice is mock serious, sonorous, gruff. He talks like someone from the provinces who has tried hard to lose the accent, which, of course, he has. “Come on, Mercado, we don’t have all night,” he adds. You can hear the twang of Santiago in some of his vowels, but the way he enunciates is more Castilian Spanish than anything else. I know he watches a lot of illegal U.S. and European DVDs; maybe he’s picked that up from them.

  I raise the Chinese cell phone, which I’ve switched to walkie-talkie mode.

  “Take it easy, Hector, I’m having a drink,” I tell him.