He eased the Range Rover along Pearl and up the Old Boulder Road.
The Old Boulder Road. Ricky’s black-and-whites. The phone call the day after my birthday.
“I’ll leave you at the summit and you can work your way downhill,” Esteban muttered.
We drove past huge houses that got bigger as we got closer to the top of the mountain. When we were almost at the peak Esteban pulled the Range Rover into a turnout marked VIEWPOINT on a small green sign. He turned to us and gave Angela a key chain with various house keys on it. Each was attached to a piece of card with a number on it.
“Angela, you’ll be with María today, show her the ropes. Show her where the cleaning supplies are in each house and don’t forget the alarm boxes.” Esteban turned his gaze on me. “You know what an alarm system is?”
I shook my head.
“Each house has an alarm, which we disable when we enter and enable again when we leave. It’s very simple. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said. I’d never been in a house with a burglar alarm before but I got the concept. It would require a consistent electricity supply and a prompt police response, two things Havana lacked.
“Angela, make sure you show her which clients need the full treatment and which ones only get a surface clean. There’s no point in wasting time on clients who won’t appreciate what we’ve done,” Esteban said.
“Of course,” Angela muttered.
“Ok, both of you out of the car, I want to show María something.”
Esteban was a big man, and in my experience big men take longer to recover from an injury. He was still breathing hard and rubbing his arm as he led us away from the car toward a gap in the trees.
He forced a smile. “Ok, María, here we are. This is where you’ll be working in the mornings. You can see the whole mountain from here. Below us is the Watson residence. Big movie producer. He has his own staff but I’ve been in there. Dealt him coke. Delivered it personally. That house on top of the hill with all the lights and the fence-Tom Cruise.”
“The Tom Cruise?” I asked.
“The Tom Cruise. Lives here about half the year when he’s not filming. I think his sister lives there year-round.”
“I get to clean Tom Cruise’s house?”
“No, no. He has his own staff. As I was saying, we only get the lesser lights. Not the Watsons and the Cruises of this world. But you might see some famous people. It’s important not to react in any way. They hate that. You’ve got to pretend that you’re not there at all. That you’re invisible. Never make eye contact with any of the clients and never talk to them unless spoken to first. Understand?”
“Sí, Don Esteban.”
“Good.”
Esteban took another few seconds to get his breath back. “I suppose you’re wondering about what happened this morning with the sheriff?”
“Yes,” I said quietly. Angela said nothing.
“The thing is, I’m an American citizen,” he muttered with a smoldering sense of outrage.
I nodded.
“An American citizen, and if that bastard tries to come into my house I’ll shoot him with my rifle. Shoot him. And they can’t do a thing. Cop or not. War hero or not. Without a warrant, the law’s on my side.”
Esteban sat down on a flat, red boulder. He dabbed his forehead.
“Do you want us to go?” Angela asked.
“No. No. Let María get her bearings. Look around you, María.”
I observed the mountains and the forests. Layer after layer of them stretching west for fifty kilometers.
I tried to feel something.
After all, this was it. The place where my father died.
I tried to force an emotion: anger, regret, sadness-nothing came.
“What do you think, María?” Esteban asked.
“Pretty country,” I said.
“All this was Mexico once. A hundred and fifty years ago. Mexico. Our home. Stolen by the Yankees and they don’t even know it. They don’t even know their history. We invited them to our land and then when we told them they couldn’t have slaves they turned on us. Like a changeling in the house of your mother. Like an ungrateful dog.”
His face was pink. He was sweating. For a moment I wondered if he was having a heart attack. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Mexico. All the way to the Pacific. That cabrón. That fucking son of a whore,” he muttered.
He started to cry.
“Come on, let’s go,” Angela whispered.
We left him.
I said goodbye but he didn’t seem to hear.
We walked past Watson’s huge mansion and entered the first house on the route. Angela put the key in the lock and showed me how to disable the alarm system.
This house only needed a quick dust and vacuum.
As did the next.
I was expecting palatial residences but they weren’t grotesque. About the same size as those of high-ranking Party officials in Vedado but not in such disrepair and most with epic views over the mountains.
The job seemed simple. The first three homes were empty and not a problem to clean. A dead mouse in a sink was the only bit of excitement. The next was occupied by an actress who was in her basement running on a treadmill the whole time we were there. We put away her clothes, ran her dishwasher, cleaned her living space, rearranged the diet shakes and cigarette cartons in her gigantic refrigerator.
The next house, however, was the one I’d been in the night before. The retro-future place with all the curves. Minimalist furniture, a low leather sofa, uncomfortable high-angled chairs, stainless steel light fittings, an ebony living room table. Huge windows facing the Old Boulder Road to the east and the Rockies to the west. It looked better in daylight. Angela showed me how to get in and how to disable the burglar alarm. The code was still the default 9999. Jack Tyrone was in the kitchen reading a newspaper. He had a box of Frosted Flakes in front of him and a french press filled with what I could tell from the hall was overroasted coffee. There was a new bowl of fruit on the breakfast bar. More kiwis to steal.
I scoped Jack in the daylight. Ricky’s notes and his party anecdote flashed in my head. Suspect 2A, Youkilis’s employer, 31, born Denver, Colorado, Hollywood actor, pretty good alibi for the night of the accident-he was sixteen hundred kilometers away in Los Angeles-but I wouldn’t rule him out until I’d spoken to him.
“Do we say good morning?” I whispered to Angela.
She shook her head. We took off our coats, found the cleaning supplies, and began work. I dusted, she vacuumed.
“Maaling, lallies,” Jack said with a full mouth, attempting to carry his newspaper, coffee, and cereal bowl into the living room without a major accident.
“Good morning, Señor Tyrone,” Angela said.
He looked better than when I’d encountered him last night. In fact, more than better, very handsome indeed if you went for pale, blond, athletic, American. And to my surprise I found that I went for ’em in spades. “Those corn-fed western boys,” Ricky once said, and I could see what he meant. Jack’s complexion was pale, but even preshower he radiated health and strength. His body was chiseled and his jaw downy but not weak. His hair was tousled attractively and his blue eyes were the color of the marlin-filled sea off Santiago, rather than last night’s muddy Havana Bay. The blue eyes now were smiling at us. “Might have a job, ladies, Paul knocked a bottle of wine on the Persian. They tried to clean it last night and I fucking Pledged it and Oxy-ed it this morning but it’s still there.”
We looked at the stain. Jack’s efforts had produced a yellow chemical burn. The rug was ruined.
While Angela explained the catastrophe I took the vacuum upstairs. I had to spend twenty minutes picking clothes and food items off the floor before I could begin cleaning.