Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  I kneel beside him.

  Our eyes meet.

  Are you close now? Do you have any answers?

  I don’t. Hector says the meaning of life is to be found in the quest for the meaning of life. But that’s Hector.

  Briggs looks at me. A croak. “Help me,” he says.

  I look at the wound. I suppose if we rushed him to a hospital there’d be an outside chance.

  I shake my head.

  “Why?” he asks.

  Why indeed?

  I can’t tell you about the tarot or the Book of Changes or that I am sent by our lady of the moon. But I must tell you something. I must tell you because, before the minute hand on your watch makes another revolution, I will be the instrument of your transfiguration.

  For you, I suppose, it was the fifty thousand.

  “The fifty grand. The price of a dead Mex.”

  He thinks about it, doesn’t get it.

  “That my father’s life could be bought so cheap,” I explain.

  He nods.

  His breath has taken on the sweetness of death. His face is white, his eyes crimson. There are splinters of ice in his hair.

  “Is there a deity with whom you confer?” I ask.

  “No, no, wait . . .”he gurgles.

  “Make thy peace.”

  He grabs my arm with a bloody hand.

  I release his grip, step back, raise my father’s gun. This is not retribution. I have no authority for that. Nevertheless, I deliver you from this world of tears.

  “No, wait, we can make a—”

  Lead crosses the space between us, rips his skin, passes through muscle and bone, punches a hole in his skull the size of a baby’s fist, and exits through his spinal cord.

  He looks at all the blood and lies backward on the ice, dead.

  Jack’s hands are above his head.

  He’s crying. “Don’t shoot me. Please. I’m so sorry. Oh God, I’m so sorry. Whatever I did, I’m so sorry.” Tears, an anguished look. More tears. “Oh God, please don’t, please.”

  “This is your best performance,” I say.

  “It’s not a performance, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever it is that you’re so angry about,” he says. Lips quivering. A cackle at the back of his throat. Snot, spittle.

  The scent of death all around me, in me, makes me want to throw up. On the edge of the ice lake I see Paco in a black coat and carrying Esteban’s rifle. He waves. I wave back.

  He yells something but I can’t hear what it is.

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “I said, I saved your Cuban ass.”

  Gingerly he begins walking across the ice. He’s almost comically slow. I imagine they don’t have many frozen lakes in Nicaragua.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God, you’re going to kill me, I’m going to die,” Jack says.

  He bends over and throws up what’s left of the hors d’oeuvres from Tom Cruise’s house.

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “You’re going to kill me. You’re going to murder me like you killed those others. I’m going to be dead. This is the last thing I’m ever going to see. I don’t even know where we are, I don’t even know where we are!”

  “Wyoming.”

  I sit down next to him on the ice. I turn his face so that he’s looking at me.

  “Listen to me, Jack, that’s my friend Paco coming over to us. That kid has a jones for killing. He says he fought with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua when he was only a boy, and he was so good with the rifle that I think I believe him.”

  “Wait a minute, I’m not going to—”

  “Shut up. This is important. Paco’s going to come over here and he’s going to say: ‘No witnesses. This one too. I don’t care if he’s a big star. All of them in the lake. We gotta protect ourselves.’ ”

  “What are you doing?” Paco yells. I look up. He’s not advancing at record speed. The ice is spooking him but we’ve got about five minutes here, tops.

  Shit. This is not the way I thought it was going to be. Rushed. Bloody. Incompetent. This isn’t the kangaroo court of my imagination. Me remembering the good times and telling my dad’s killer what I’ve lost because of him, because of his drunken carelessness.

  “It was you, Jack, you were driving the car, you were drunk. You knocked my father off the Old Boulder Road. You killed him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying. Please don’t kill me,” Jack says, tears running off his eyelashes in his greatest-ever audition tape.

  “I’m not going to kill you, Jack. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of all this.”

  He’s looking at me with a desperate hope in his eyes. Can she really mean that? His cheeks vermillion. A green stain on his neck. His jeans soaked with piss.

  “I want only one thing from you,” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “I want the truth, Jack. I want you to tell me what happened that night. The night you hit the Mex and Youkilis covered for you and said that you were in Malibu and had been there for days.”

  “I wasn’t there, I don’t know—”

  “Look, look over there at Paco. He’s coming. Now, I’m not going to kill you, but he’s going to want to and it’s going to be up to me to persuade him otherwise. You understand? You dig?”

  “I understand.”

  “Youkilis told me everything. Let me hear it in your words. And fast.”

  “W-who are you?”

  “I’m the daughter of the dead Mex. The anonymous fucking wetback that you killed and that your manager decided was worth fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand bucks. How much do you get for a picture?”

  “It depends, sometimes I work for scale on a—”

  “How much?”

  He starts to shake.

  “I got two million dollars for the last movie I made. I was third lead.”

  “Two million dollars.”

  “I didn’t see all of that, of course. Agent’s cut, manager’s cut, taxes. So really, when it all boils down—”

  “And my father’s life was worth a measly fifty grand.”

  In Havana fifty thousand could buy you out of a murder rap. You could become a general officer in the army for ten thousand. But here that was an insult.

  “How many days did you work on that movie?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know, I—”

  “Out with it.”

  “Five-week shoot, I think.”

  “So my father’s life was worth roughly one day’s work for you.”

  “Well, you see, that’s what I was saying before—”

  I click the hammer back on the 9mm to shut him up.

  Let the silence hold you. I want you to sit with those details for a moment. A man’s life for a few hours’ work on a movie set.

  Paco waves. “This thing is a fucking death trap,” he yells in Spanish.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s cracking. Do you see it’s cracking?” he says.

  “I see.”

  Back to Jack. “Ok now. Tell me what happened that night.”

  He closes his eyes, shakes his head. Sweat pouring from him.

  “Speak.”

  “I can’t,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “I think if I tell you, you’ll kill me. You say you won’t kill me but I think you will.”

  “Open your eyes. Look at me. Look at me!”

  He opens his eyes, finds mine. I rid them of the red mist, the crazy, dark stuff from Santiago de Cuba, from New Mexico, from everywhere. I make them reveal what I am feeling right now. The calmness. The exhaustion.

  “Can you see what I’m thinking? You gotta fucking trust me, I’m not going to kill you. Not now, not ever.”

  “Ok,” he says. He fakes a grin, falters, blinks.

  “Now speak, quick, before Paco comes.”
>
  “It hadn’t been a good year. I was up for a Spirit Award, I didn’t get it. I’d never been nominated for anything major in my whole life, I never won anything in my life. But I got odds on that I would win that night. And they gave it to that bastard Jeremy Piven, who’s won everything. And then after that I lost a couple of big roles and then I was up for this movie Gunmetal and they said I had it in the bag and then those fuckers at Universal gave it to someone else.”

  “The accident.”

  “I lost the movie. But I didn’t go apeshit, not like in my twenties. Cool head. Paul was here. I flew to Vail on a charter. I went into town. Just for one drink. But they know me here and a couple of guys bought me drinks. I didn’t buy anything. I didn’t buy a drink the whole day. Nothing.”

  “How many drinks?”

  “I don’t know. Couple of beers. I wasn’t drunk drunk. I used to go to AA. I used to have a problem. This wasn’t a bender. This was just a few beers. And I don’t know, maybe it was the altitude or whatever, I’d been in L.A. all week.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m driving home and I think I’m doing ok and I get to the hill and then there’s this dude alongside the car and clunk, you know, and I think I might have hit him but I’m not sure and I look in the rearview mirror and there’s nobody there, so I don’t know what to think. I stop and look back and there’s nobody there. I’m tired, and with the altitude and the beers and everything, I think I might have just hallucinated him or something.”

  “Is everything ok?” Paco yells from barely twenty meters away.

  “Interrogating,” I tell him.

  I look at Jack. “Go on, fast,” I whisper.

  “Ok, so I get home and just fucking go to bed. Next day, I don’t remember anything, just the car. So I dump the car at the garage and later that day they find the Me—the, uhm, your father, I mean, and I tell Paul and he just takes over. Private charter to L.A. Gets me into Promises and leaks it that I’ve been there for three days, in other words I never left L.A. Would never hold up if anybody really looked, but I’m not a big enough star for anybody to really look. Just another B-lister going into rehab. Nobody cared.”

  Unattractive self-pity in those azure eyes, but not yet guilt, contrition, understanding.

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, then nothing. I stayed at Promises for a couple of weeks and went back to Fairview to read scripts. Someone dropped out of Gunmetal and they offered it to me again and I took it. It was all good until that son of a bitch came snooping around.”

  “What son of a bitch?”

  “Briggs. Fucking Briggs. But again Paul took care of it. We paid him off. Fifty thousand to some cop charity, a couple of photo ops. Paul promised to use his boys as fucking extras in the next movie. Christ, it was all so pathetic. So fucking small change.”

  I grimaced.

  I’d like to think that that might have been the first of many payments. Briggs was smarter than that.

  “How did you find us up here tonight?” I ask.

  “Paul hit the panic button and Briggs traced the GPS in his car. Woke me up, got his deputies. He could have APB’d it, but he knew it was something to do with this. We had to keep it quiet.”

  I nod, smile. “Ok. Good. You’ve been very good, Jack. Now, listen carefully. Paco is going to want to kill you. He thinks you’ll go to the police about this, but we have to convince him you won’t go to the police.”

  “I won’t go to the police.”

  Tears, trembling, hands together in prayer.

  “I know you won’t go to the police, because if you do, I’ll make sure the press finds out that you killed my father and you and your manager conspired with the local police to cover it up. That’s manslaughter and conspiracy. You might not get a lot of time in jail, but you will go to jail and your career will be finished.”

  “I’m not going to go to the police. I’m not,” he says desperately.

  “My friend Paco is old-school. He’s from the jungle. They take an eye for an eye literally down there. We can’t let him know that you were the one driving the car. Understand? So don’t say anything, I’ll do the talking. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  He looks at me with gratitude and fear. “Why are you doing this? You have every right to kill me. I killed your father.”

  “Killing you won’t bring me one gram of comfort, I see that now. It’ll only make things worse. Much worse.”

  Relief. More fucking tears. Probably real.

  Paco almost beside us. My voice descends to whisper: “I’m going to stop him from killing you, but I want you to do something for me.”

  “Anything. I owe you.”

  “I want you to stop drinking. I want you to stop the bullshit. I want you to live an exemplary life. I want you to become engaged with the world. I want you to give a sizable portion of your income to charity. I want you to go to Africa. To India. I want you to improve the lot of Mexicans who work in your town. The invisibles. You can still act, that’s what you do, you can still make movies, but I want you to be a force for good.”

  He nods. Really bawling now. “Of course. I will. I’m lucky. I’m lucky that you were the one, that it was you. I, I’ll never be able to bring back your dad, I can’t do that, but, but, I’ll do what you say.”

  “I don’t need to threaten you. You know what will happen if I discover you’re caught with cocaine or DUI—”

  “It will never happen. I promise.”

  “Good. Ok. Now, here’s how we handle Paco—we’re going to pin this on Youkilis. We’re going to tell him that he was driving you from the bar and he hit my father and covered it up. Paco’s sharp. He can spot a lie so I’m going to have to hide the truth. I’m going to tell him that Youkilis wouldn’t confess to it, but I’m sure it was him.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say nothing. Nothing at all until I tell you to talk. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ok, shut up, here he is.”

  Paco. Grinning, rifle slung. Knight in fucking shining. My hero. I hug him and burst into tears.

  “You saved me,” I whisper in his ear.

  “Damn right.”

  “I told you to stay out of it.”

  “Man, I haven’t seen this much action since I was eleven.”

  “Christ, you saved me.” I kiss him on the mouth. Hungry for him. This kid.

  “What about this one?” he says, pointing the rifle at Jack.

  “Nothing to do with it.”

  His eyes narrow. “Who killed your father, María?”

  “Youkilis. I think.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “It was Youkilis.”

  “You’re not lying to me, are you?”

  Jesus, Paco, I was lying to you from the very beginning. My name’s not even María . . . But, nevertheless, I want you to believe me. I want this to end.

  “It’s over, Paco. Youkilis is dead and Briggs is dead. It’s finished.”

  “You’ve come all this way to find the person who killed your father and you’re going to leave it like this?”

  “I’m tired and I have to get back. If I don’t a lot of people I care about will be in trouble.”

  Paco takes a step away from me and sights the rifle at Jack. Jack puts up his hands, cowers, whimpers. Oh, Jack, please, act the man for once in your life.

  “It was him, wasn’t it? Youkilis covered it up to protect him. He was in Fairview that night. He was drunk.”

  I shake my head and look hard at Jack: “Tell him. Tell him what you told me.”

  “I was after this part and then I was at a bar and Paul, well, Paul,” Jack begins hesitantly.

  “Just tell him about the drinking and the drive home,” I interrupt.

  “I’d had a few beers. I was too hammered to get back up the mountain. I called Paul and he came and picked me up. He didn’t even know I was in town. He thought I was in L.A. He�
��d had a few too, but not many. He wasn’t drunk. We were going up the mountain and I’m in the backseat and Paul’s turning around to talk to me, you know, and we hear this sort of clumping noise. Paul looks forward and doesn’t see anything. We stop the car but we don’t see anything. So we drive on. Day after that we read about the dead guy by the side of the road. We put two and two together. Course, by then we’d left the car at the shop. That’s how Briggs tracked us down.”

  I’m staring at Paco.

  Don’t hit him, please, he’ll crack like the first huevo of the day. Let him be.

  Paco looks at me. “This is good enough for you?”

  “We’re done here. Finished.”

  “But this one, he will go to the police,” Paco says.

  “We’ve talked that over. He covered up a crime. He’s an accessory to vehicular manslaughter. He’ll get jail and it’ll destroy his career.”

  Paco closes his eyes. Thinks. I take his hand, squeeze it. “No more death,” I whisper.

  Two in New Mexico, two here. Four men I’ve killed. Four too many.

  “You’re bleeding,” he says.

  “Yeah. I got shot.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go,” Paco says.

  Two bodies under the ice.

  A third and fourth faceup, staring at us.

  “What about them?”

  “Sink them.”

  “They’ll come up,” I say.

  “Their vests will drag them down.”

  “Three cops go missing. Bound to be an inquiry.”

  He points at Briggs. “Does this one have a phone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Paco hands me the rifle, searches Briggs. He removes a silver cell phone and a wallet. He skims the wallet. About a thousand dollars in scratch, which he puts in his pocket. He takes out his own cell and smiles.

  “Find Briggs’s number,” he says. “It’ll be on his menu.”

  I flip Briggs’s cell, find the number, and tell Paco.

  Paco dials it. Briggs’s phone rings and Paco waits for the voice mail. He grins at me and affects a chingla Mexican accent. “Briggs, man, where are you? We got the fucking stuff but we don’t see you. We went through a lot to get here. If you don’t show, or you try to pull something, man, you gonna be sorry.”

  He hangs up. Grins.