Someone was shaking her roughly.
“Janeal? Janeal, are you okay?”
She registered a few facts slowly, scientifically, as if they were not in any way connected to her. A sharp rock was digging into her hip. Her right arm was pinned awkwardly underneath her. She smelled dust lining the inside of her nose.
“Janeal.” More shaking. She held up her free hand, and the person made a sound that sounded like relief.
“Get her to sit up,” another voice said. Someone grabbed her uplifted hand and pulled. She allowed her eyes to open a slit and squinted into the sun. Beneath her, the river flowed noisily westward.
“Oh.”
“How on earth did you fall asleep up here?”
Janeal’s mind made a slow connection between voice and name. Katie. Katie’s shoulder-length mass of black curls was barely restrained by a wide headband, the headband she donned when she was in a hurry and didn’t have time to tame her hair. Katie reached up and brushed off Janeal’s cheek. She heard pebbles fall.
“Those rocks might as well have been a feather bed,” the other voice said. Robert’s voice. He sat down on the other side of her and picked gravel off her arm. Janeal covered her eyes with her hands.
“Ugh.” She felt sluggish and hazy.
Robert was punching a number into a cell phone. She leaned against him, eyes closed, and he put an arm around her shoulders while he waited for an answer. Katie patted her back.
“Found her,” he said. “She fell asleep on the mesa.” He listened, then laughed. “Yeah, she is. We’ll come down with her in a bit. Okay.” He closed the phone.
“She is what?” Janeal asked.
“She’s a cowgirl,” Katie said, “sleeping under the stars instead of her own bed. She’s a night snake, hunting for lizards at all hours.”
Janeal felt silent laughter shaking Robert’s body. “She’s a true individualist,” he said, “looking for new ways to raise her father’s blood pressure.”
Katie giggled.
Janeal straightened and frowned at Robert. “Oh stop. My father wouldn’t have said any of that.” She caught him rolling his eyes at Katie and slapped his arm. “Knock it off.” How many jokes would these two share at her expense? She suspected that they shared more than that—a flirtatious touch, a significant gaze. The trio’s mutual friendship didn’t usually anger her, but this morning, Janeal found these two irritating.
“Okay,” Robert conceded. “He wouldn’t have said that.”
“So he said I’m what?”
“Trouble. He said you’re trouble.”
“Or maybe he said you’re in trouble,” Katie mused. She tapped her heels on the downward slope of the mesa.
“She’s never in trouble with him,” Robert said.
“Right. So. You are trouble, Janeal. Not exactly earth-shattering news.”
Robert made another crack but Janeal didn’t hear it. She was looking at the palm of her hand, on which were written ten numbers, trying to remember what these numbers were and why she thought they had something to do with the word trouble.
One million dollars.
Janeal closed her palm into a fist, fully awake. The others seemed not to have noticed her hand. They were too engrossed in each other’s wittiness.
“What would you do if you found a million dollars?” she asked, interrupting something Robert was saying.
Robert looked across Janeal at Katie. “Is she on the same planet with us?” he asked.
“Seriously, guys. If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?” Or a hundred thousand, for that matter. I’ll bet you a tenth of it that you’ll change your mind . . .
“I’d put it in the kumpanía’s general fund,” Katie said, leaning back on the palms of her hands.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Janeal challenged. “A million dollars. You could travel. Start a new life somewhere. Take a few friends with you. Launch a real business of your own instead of having to con a bunch of—”
“If Katie said she’d put it in the general fund, that’s what she’d do.” Robert shot Janeal a warning glance that wounded her. She tried to remember the last time he’d taken her side on anything.
“Why do you think I wouldn’t?” Katie said. The unflappable Katie. Janeal thought she would be more interesting if she’d react now and then, get back in Janeal’s face, get emotional. Fight her for Robert if that was what she wanted.
Was that what Katie wanted? Janeal asked the question seriously for the first time. Katie was talking to her but looking at Robert. “Jason is a good rom baro, Janeal. I’d trust him to do what’s right with the money.”
“It was just a question. There was a time when you would have come up with a more imaginative answer.”
Robert intervened again. “I’d set up an emergency medical fund for the kids.”
Why was he always doing that, coming to Katie’s defense?
Janeal shook her head. “You two are such do-gooders. If you had a million dollars of cash in your hands, I’d bet you half of it that you’d think twice.”
“Maybe,” Robert acknowledged. “I wouldn’t mind going to Egypt.”
“Egypt?” both girls asked at once.
“And South Africa.”
If this was the extent of their thinking, maybe she wouldn’t tell them about Sanso’s claim at all. Definitely not until she found the money.
“I’d go to Greece,” said Janeal. “And then I’d buy one of those new Mercedes, and I’d drive it to New York City.”
“From Greece?” Robert razzed her. Janeal pretended not to hear.
“I’d get a downtown loft and a job at an international political magazine. I'd work my way up and buy books and visit every museum and spend Friday nights at jazz clubs. I’d entertain on Sunday afternoons and cook five-course meals for my friends and colleagues.”
Neither one of them responded for a minute.
“And you’d set aside some money for your father,” Katie said.
Janeal sighed. Katie had changed in the last few months—become stunted in her thinking or maybe too much of a conformist. Janeal had the fleeting thought that Katie was holding Robert back too. Why had she asked these two to do a little dreaming with her?
Perhaps to avoid the larger questions at hand: What did her father plan to do with the money Sanso claimed he had? Or with the money the DEA supposedly promised him? Would he survive to be able to put it to use? And was there a way for her to save both him and the cash?
Robert stood and brushed off his pants, then reached down to help Janeal stand, then Katie.
What was the truth she knew so far? One, she believed that Sanso would kill her father if the money slipped away. Two, there was something about that money that Sanso needed that had nothing to do with its face value.
Janeal wondered if she could get her father not to follow through with his promise to the DEA. They’d give Sanso his money, then act surprised when Sanso didn’t show up for the sting. Of course, the DEA would want its money back, and how would her father repay them?
There might be a way to give Sanso the money then lead the DEA to him after the fact. Of course, she didn’t know where Sanso was, and he’d said he wouldn’t be the one to come claim his cash tomorrow night. But if she could do it, her father might end up with two million dollars: the bait as well as the second half of his deal.
If there was a second half.
If anything Sanso told her was true.
And if her betrayal of Sanso went badly, she’d never forgive herself for her father’s death.
The trio made their way down the slope toward the camp. Many of her neighbors slept in this Monday morning, tired after the rigorous carnival work of the weekend. She imagined that somewhere in that camp—in a tent, in a car, in a hole in the ground—was a million dollars, banded and stacked and ready for a drug swap, and she wondered how hard it would be to find.
Janeal sneaked another look at the numbers on her palm. Ten numbers. A bank account? What would she do with a bank account number, not knowing which bank?
A phone number.
Yes, child, you will be able to call me.
She shoved her hand into her pocket as they made their way down the mesa slope in skidding steps. She could match his nerve. She would.
Robert and Katie went down in front of Janeal. He held Katie’s hand to help her balance. She was smooth in a fortune-teller’s booth but a klutz on a hike. Even so, Katie never turned down an invitation to join them, a fact that irked Janeal now that Katie and Robert had reached a level spot and turned to wait for her.
Robert did not let go of Katie’s hand. A flame of jealousy licked at Janeal’s mind, and she welcomed it. Emotions, at least, were something worth experiencing in this desert place where relationships were dry.
"What if someone told you the money was already hidden in that camp down there, and all you had to do to keep it was find it?” Janeal asked.
"What money?” Katie asked.
"Her million dollars,” Robert supplied, setting his lips in a line.
"I’d start looking!” Katie said.
"But would you keep it to yourself? Would you tell everyone to start looking? Settle for a cut?” She caught up with the pair and moved past them, catching up Robert’s free hand as she went by, yanking him away from Katie. “How far would you go?”
"I’d keep it simple,” Katie said, following slowly. “Tell the rom baro. Let him decide.”
"That’s a no-brainer, Janeal.” Robert dug in to wait for Katie and tried to shake his hand free of his girlfriend’s. Janeal hung on.
It would be a no-brainer if this were a situation where her father could make an objective decision. Janeal was undecided on whether to ask her father about Sanso’s story. He might deny it, or say it was true and send Janeal away until the danger had passed. There was no way for her to ask about it, after all, without divulging that Sanso had seized her. Besides, she wasn’t convinced yet that the money existed, although she could come up with no other explanation for Sanso’s behavior.
"What if the money involved the gajé ,” she persisted, “and they wanted the money too?”
"Is it theirs?” Robert asked.
"Yes and no.”
Robert shook his head, and his smile turned impatient. Janeal decided to release him. “Then tell Jason and the gajé’s police. We don’t break their laws.”
“Never?” Janeal raised her eyebrows.
“I would never. Not in this little scenario of yours. Enough said.”
“Their laws don’t apply to us.”
“That’s what you’d like to think.”
“What if finding the money might mean someone could die?”
Katie gasped. “That’s terrible.”
“But at the same time, finding the money might mean you could save a life? What would you do then?”
“You’re not making any sense,” Robert said.
“I still think Jason would know what to do,” Katie insisted.
“Not if he had a conflict of interest,” Janeal said. “Then the decision is for the three of us to make. The whole burden of the scenario rests on our heads.”
“Sheesh, Janeal. What were you doing up there all night? Dreaming up a novel?”
Katie tilted her head slightly. “It’s kind of an interesting idea though, Robert, don’t you think?”
The gaze Robert bestowed on Katie was not lost on Janeal. For half a second his frustration was replaced by appreciation. He was glad Katie was here. Glad that her generous manner was bigger than his petty annoyance. Glad that he wasn’t alone with Janeal.
“To pass the time, maybe.” The hand he placed on his hip told Janeal he agreed only for the sake of ending the conversation. “If I had the time and wasn’t spending it looking for my wandering girlfriend.”
His accusation stabbed Janeal. She believed he hadn’t meant to wound her, that she’d caused him unnecessary worry and he was only tired. It was wrong of her to pepper them with so many questions but not tell the whole story.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. You two were great to come after me. I didn’t mean to worry anyone.” A flash of regret crossed Robert’s face, as she expected it would. She started back down the hill and sent rocks skittering to the bottom.
“You haven’t said what you would do, Janeal,” Katie said.
“I haven’t decided what to do,” Janeal said. The words were in the air before she recognized her slip. She put her head down and hurried to reach home before they could ask her to explain. Not that they would have known what to ask.