Fifty Grand

“I’ll be the judge of that. Take off the pack.”

I let it drop. Gently.

Towering over me, he pats me down, his big horrendous paws touching my sides and ass. He looks inside my shoes and pulls my sweater forward to look down my bra.

“What’s in the backpack?”

Lies. Lies that won’t get believed.

Here it comes-

The big paws pummeling me. Smashing down and down. Blood pouring from my nose and mouth. From my eyes. Drowning in blood. Screaming nerve endings. Pain. Mercy shot to the head. Shallow grave in the woods. A missing Mex. The world doesn’t hesitate on its ellipse.

“Fucking deaf? What’s in the backpack?”

“Cleaning supplies.”

“Open it up.”

The radio crackles inside the SUV.

“Sheriff?”

Briggs reaches through the window and grabs the mike. “This is Briggs.”

“Sheriff, we got a twenty-two on the Interstate. Messy one.”

“Shit. Deaths?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff, at least three vehicles. One of them’s on fire, so I reckon Channel Nine will send up the chopper.”

“I’ll be right over,” Briggs says and gets back in the Escalade.

“Mex town is at the top of the hill and turn left,” he says.

“Thank you, señor.”

“And don’t let me catch you in this neighborhood again. Decent folks along here.”

“No, sir.”

He starts the engine, drives off.

When the SUV disappears over the brow of the next hill my body wilts.

Relief. Exhaustion.

I sit down on the grass verge. December in Colorado, but the sun is shining and it’s warm-not Havana warm, not hot enough to melt that lake in Wyoming; but a dry, wearisome mountain heat.

Get up. Hoof it.

After a klick I find a sign on a forest trail that says ROAD CLOSED-SUBSIDENCE DANGER. That might come in handy. I roll up the sign, put it in my backpack. As I’m zipping another car slows and a voice says, “Me to the rescue. Need a ride?”

13 THE PRINCES OF MALIBU

The white Bentley, Jack leaning his head out the passenger’s-side window.

“Yes, please,” I replied, and once again I was annoyed that I wasn’t wearing lipstick or looking my best.

“Get in. Ever been in a Bentley before?”

“No.”

“Get in, get in. I’ll put the top down. You can’t put the top down without a beautiful girl next to you, it’s obligatory, says it right there in the owner’s manual.”

I sat in the passenger’s seat. He pressed a button and the roof slid back. The Bentley accelerated away from the curb with a feline roar.

“I’m probably the oldest ‘girl’ you’ve had in this car.”

“How old are you?”

I gave him what I hoped was an ironic look.

“Yeah, I know, not the sort of question you’re supposed to ask. Tip-don’t ask actors, either.”

“I know how old you are,” I told him.

“You looked me up in Wikipedia?”

“I don’t know what that is. At that party you had I heard you say that you tell producers you’re twenty-nine, but your older résumés say you’re thirty and really you’re thirty-one.”

“Goddammit, in vino veritas, eh? Shit.”

“I don’t think it was vino.”

“No it wasn’t. A-rated, two-fifty-a-spliff Vancouver hemp-that’s what it was. We got it in for Pitt, except he didn’t stay. His loss-supremo shit. Course I don’t need to tell you, you’re from Mexico.”

I gave him another look that he missed. “If that acting career doesn’t work out, I’m sure they’ll hire you in the diplomatic corps, Señor Jack.”

He burst out laughing. “Yeah, I guess that was a bit crass.”

I smiled to show I wasn’t in the least offended and for some reason this made him grin like an idiot. He touched me on the leg. The Bentley had barely been going thirty but as the undulating road flattened out he gunned it up to seventy. It accelerated so smoothly it was as if we were in a studio and the landscape was a back projection.

“Beaut, isn’t she? Valet parkers fucking kill themselves for the keys. Like it?”

Like it? Nothing in Cuba moved like this. The fifties Yankee cars with Russian engines and jerry-rigged suspensions, the cheap Chinese imports, the Mexican Beetles. I thought all cars rattled and roared until I rode in the back of Sheriff Briggs’s Escalade.

“It’s ok,” I told him.

“Yeah, it’ll do,” he agreed.

It was a break to actually be in this car with him. I couldn’t let it go by.

Men loved to talk about their cars. “Is it from this year?” I asked prepping the ground so I could slip in an important question.

“Oh yeah, 2007, I’ll keep it for a couple of years and then I’m thinking of getting a DB9. Course it won’t be a DB9 in a few years, but it’ll still be an Aston Martin. The valets will love that, too.”

“I noticed a little repair on the hood.”

“Oh God, yeah. My dad told me once, never lend a friend money and never let anyone drive your car. Never.”

“What happened?”

“Few months back, I was in L.A., something wrong’s with Paul’s Beemer. Borrowed the Bentley to drive downtown. Couldn’t handle it. The Bentley needs care and attention. You treat it like a lady. Jesus, he’s a fucking idiot. I love him, of course, but he’s still an idiot.”

“He was in an accident?”

“Oh yeah, but he was fine. Dent and a ding. No big deal.”

“He crashed your car?”