Fifty Grand

“All right, I’ll give you a précis of the big speech I was going to hit you with. Basically it’s this: There’s no point at all risking your life and your career for Dad. Dad didn’t give a fuck about us. Not one letter, not one dollar in all those years. Dad was a selfish bastard and although I’m sorry he’s dead, that’s about all I feel. We don’t owe him a thing. And furthermore, he probably was drunk that night, and although I’m upset that he went the way he went, it’s nothing to do with us.”

Ricky smiles grimly and takes a long draw on the cigarillo.

I can see his point of view, but it’s not mine.

“Who else is going to do anything about it?” I ask him.

“That’s not the issue.”

“What is the issue, Ricky?”

“The point is that this isn’t how grown-ups do things,” he says.

“How do grown-ups do things?” I say with a trace of anger. Sometimes his condescension is hard to take.

“Not like this. This is the way people behave in comic books or TV shows. It’s preposterous. It’s a throwback. It’s theatrical.”

“I’m theatrical?”

“Yes. You’re pretending. You’re acting. Look at you. You’re someone with a promising career, a cheap apartment, a new promotion. And you want to throw all that away? For what?”

“I’m not throwing anything away. I’m taking a week’s vacation, I’ve planned it all out in adv-”

“Planned what out? How dumb do you think they are in the DGI? If you don’t defect when you get there, if you really do come back, you’re going to be spending the next ten years in some plantation prison.”

“I told you. I’m not defecting. I’ll be back, I’ve got a plan all worked out.”

“Fuck the plan. The DGI, the DGSE, the Interior Ministry are always one step ahead. It took me all day to lose my tail in New York.”

“But you lost him.”

“Yeah, I did, I’ve done it before. You never have.”

“I’m a cop, I know when I’m being followed.”

“Ojalá,” Ricky mumbles, looks at the stars, and shakes his head.

Another long silence. Jiniteros and jiniteras start filtering back into the street. The boy beggar resumes his perch. The piano player at the Ambos breaks into the “Moonlight Sonata.”

“What does Hector think about all this?” Ricky asks.

“I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t trust him. Why do you mention Hector?” I ask.

“You’re screwing him, aren’t you?” he says.

“Mother of God, what makes you think that?”

“Well, because he promoted you to detective and because you always talk about him.”

“I’m not screwing him. I got promoted because I’m good at my job, Ricky.”

Ricky orders another rum and Coke. He looks at his watch. Obviously I’m only the first of several appointments in his busy evening. I smile gently. “Look, Ricky, I know you’ve risked a lot, slipping out of Manhattan, going to Colorado, but I can take care of myself too.”

He nods slowly and sinks back into the chair. His shoulders slump as if all the life has been sucked out of him, as if I’ve just told him I’ve got terminal cancer. He starts to say something and stops. “You’ve never been out of Cuba,” he says.

“No, but I can speak English as well as you and I’m a damn fine cop.”

Before he can respond the beggar boy pulls at his arm. Really pushing his luck, this one.

“It’s your turn,” I tell Ricky.

Ricky reaches into his pocket and gives the kid a few pesos. The kid takes it to one of the jiniteras, who might be his mother.

Ricky looks at me, beams me that get-out-of-jail smile. “Ah, fuck it, it’s your decision, if you want to go, you go.”

“Thanks for the permission. Now let’s end this. You know I’ve made up my mind. And once it’s made, it’s made.”

“I like your outfit,” he says.

“Shut up. I didn’t want to look like a cop.”

“You don’t.”

The street has completely filled now. Whores back under the streetlamps, pimps playing craps against alley walls. A CDR man I know shooting dice with the pimps. Ricky finishes the cigarillo. “I suppose it should be me. The only son,” he says.

I hide the surprise on my face. “You’ve done enough,” I tell him.

“It should be the son. It’s my responsibility. I owe it to Mom, to you.”

I shuffle my chair next to him and put my arm around him. I kiss him on the cheek.

“No.”

He blinks, turns his head away. “It should be me,” he continues. “I thought about it when I was up there, but then-well, then I knew I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“You did what I asked you to do.”

He nods. “It wouldn’t be justice. It would be murder.”

“Maybe nobody has to die.”

A tour group of elderly Canadians comes up from the harbor and files solemnly into the Ambos Mundos. They walk through, buying neither a drink nor anything else. The piano player starts riffing on a song by Céline Dion, either to bring them back or perhaps as ironic commentary.

Ricky politely disengages my arm. “So how are you going to wangle the visa?” he asks.

“I’m telling Hector I’m interviewing for a master’s degree at UNAM in Mexico City. I am too.”

“Jesus Christ, when did you start planning that?”

“Three days after the funeral.”