All the way to my next stop, I puzzled over Mourning’s shooting. An accident? Perhaps someone had mistaken her for a burglar. The early hours of the morning were a bad time to be wandering through the home of someone as security-conscious as Fontes. Well, I told myself, no amount of worrying at the question would provide an answer now. My immediate business deserved my undivided attention.
When I got to Gooden’s, I found the pictures were ready early, thanks to a slack Sunday business. They’d also turned out focused and clear. Next I went to a nearby branch of Bank of America and drew out the maximum—two hundred dollars—on my automatic teller card. That, coupled with what was left from the check I’d cashed in Coronado on Friday, came to a little over six hundred dollars; I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it all.
* * *
No one was home at Luis Abrego’s apartment in National City, but I wasn’t too concerned. If I didn’t find him waiting to arrange one of his coyote jobs at the Tradewinds, I could always contact Vic at the Holiday Market. I left the car in front of the apartment building and walked the few blocks to the bar. The streets were pretty much deserted; even on Highland traffic was so light that I could hear the rattle and hum of the Tradewinds’ air conditioners at a fair distance. Inside, the bar was as dark and smoky and crowded as it had been the last time I was there; Abrego sat on the same stool, idly watching a Padres game on the big-screen TV. Again a hush fell over the room as I entered; Luis looked around to see what had caused it, saw me, and got up, grinning. Immediately the rest of the patrons lost interest and resumed their conversations.
I took the stool next to him; he offered to buy me a drink, and I asked for a club soda. When it came I drank half of it down, feeling a rush of cold as it hit my empty stomach. If I was to get through the rest of the day, I’d have to eat sometime. Maybe some fast food on my way back to Tijuana.
Abrego said, “You cut your hair since last week. You’re looking better, too.”
“That’s because I found my friend. He’s not dead, after all.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So who’s the guy Salazar shot?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story someday. Right now I need some information from you—the name of somebody in Colonia Libertad.” It was the poorest section of Tijuana, where things and people were bought and sold cheap.
“Why?”
“I need somebody to help some people get where they need to go.”
“Your friend?”
“And two others, maybe three.”
He seemed to understand that one of the others would be me. “You’re Americans. You should be able to clear the border control. Or are you bringing in something illegal?”
“Nothing illegal. It’s not Customs I’m worried about. There may be somebody waiting for us on the T.J. side.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yes, you know how it is there. You’re in a car, standing in gridlock; a person with a rifle on the other side of the fence in Colonia Libertad can pick you off easily. If you’re on foot, it’s even more dangerous: you’re closer to the fence, funneled through that outdoor corridor before the customs building. Then there’s that long inside corridor before you come to the officials; anybody can slip inside, fire a round, run back out.”
“You really think somebody’s gonna go after you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t go into it now.”
He considered. “So why don’t you just cross at Tecate or Calexico? Or fly?”
“If they have somebody at San Ysidro, they’ll cover those places and the airport, too. And we’d be in even more danger then, because I don’t know the territory.”
Luis was silent, sipping beer. “This have to do with Salazar?”
“Among others.”
Again he considered for a moment. “You know, I don’t like to cross over, even though I got my permanent green card. Man with my sideline—well, you know how that goes. But this time I could see my way to it. I owe you.”
“Why?”
“Ana. She went to that doctor John gave me the name of. Remember I said something was wrong with the pregnancy? Well, there was. Female stuff, I don’t understand it, don’t want to, but the doctor said if she hadn’t’ve come in when she did, she’d’ve been bad off. The doctor, that Gina, she kept Ana there in the clinic a couple of days, took care of her real good. Charged just what Ana had, two hundred ninety-five bucks. She’s on her way home now.”
Immediately I realized that John had taken care of any fees over and above that. What a good guy, my big brother.
“So I owe you,” Luis added. “I’ll bring you and your friends through.”
I couldn’t let him do it. “No, you don’t owe me that much. We’ll be even if you give me a name.”
“You’d be better off with me.”
“But you wouldn’t be better off getting involved in this. I want you here, for the people you help. And it’ll be easier for me down there if it’s strictly a business proposition.”
He thought for a moment, staring unseeingly at the TV. Then he said, “Okay,” and pulled a cocktail napkin toward him. “You got a pen?”
I nodded and fished one from my bag.
Luis wrote two names and an address and phone number for each. “This first guy I trust, but the only reason you should go to him is if you can’t get hold of the other. He’s not really what you’re looking for—not tough or smart enough. This other guy, he’s sly, he’ll steal you blind if you don’t watch him, but I think you got what it takes to control him. If you can, he’ll get you through.”
I took the napkin and tucked it into my bag. “How much will he charge?”
“How many of you did you say?”
“Three, maybe four.”
“He’ll start out asking a lot, because he’ll know you’re in trouble. But he’ll settle for five, six hundred American.”
“Thanks, Luis. I appreciate this.”
“You really have to do it that way?”
“I think so.” I consulted my watch: four thirty-three. “I’ve got to go see somebody now who might help me, but I doubt he will.”
“Why not?”
I hesitated; in Luis’s world, RKI’s policy of not going into Mexico wouldn’t make a bit of sense, and I didn’t have time to explain. “He just won’t, that’s all,” I said, slipping off the barstool.
“Guy’s an asshole, then.” Luis got up too and followed me to the door. “Where’s your car?”
“In front of your apartment building.”
“I’ll walk with you. I sit around this place too damn much.”
We walked in comfortable silence. Luis didn’t press me for more information about what I was involved in, and for that I was grateful. When we got to where I’d parked the Tercel in the shade of an old pepper tree, I shook his hand, then unlocked the door and climbed in. Looked up to see him staring, perplexed, at the donkey piñata. His eyes moved to the backseat and he frowned.
“What’s all this?”
“I bought it to make myself look like a tourist when I crossed the border. Do you know anybody who would like it?”
“… Uh, sure, but—”
“Then will you take it, please? I don’t have any use for it.”
“Okay. I know some people who’re real homesick. Maybe this stuff ll cheer them up.”
As he removed the donkey, sombrero, wood carvings, serape, and marionettes from the car, Luis handled them gently, almost reverently. One person’s tourist crap was another’s treasure from home. He placed them on the steps of his apartment, then returned and leaned in my window, taking my right hand in both of his.
“Stay safe,” he said, “and call me later to tell me about it.”
“I will.”
Then he said something softly in Spanish.
“What?”
He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. “Just something I tell the people I drive when I let them off.”
“An
d it means?”
“Trust in no one but yourself and God.”
Twenty-Five
I got to Hotel Del ten minutes early for my appointment with Gage Renshaw. While crossing its baronial darkpaneled lobby, I looked around for signs of RKI operatives lurking behind potted palms, but saw only well-heeled visitors and a contingent of Japanese tourists who stood near their heaped luggage, eyes glazed by jet lag. Downstairs by the ladies’ room I found a pay phone and called Gary Viner.
“I assume you haven’t been able to contact Stanley Brockowitz’s widow yet,” I said.
“No. We asked Orange County to send a man out to their place in Blossom Hill. Nobody home, but you know what? There’d been a break-in.”
“Burglary?”
“None of the obvious things had been taken. And no vandalism.”
Salazar’s man, snatching Tim Mourning.
“And here’s another peculiar thing,” Viner added. “Looked like somebody’d been held prisoner in one of the bedrooms. Would you know anything about that, McCone?”
“How could I?” In order to derail that train of thought, I said, “I do know where Brockowitz’s wife is, though, and I plan to see her later this evening. I’ll break the news about her husband, if you like, and have her call you to verify it.”
“Why don’t you just tell me where she is and let us take care of it?”
“Can’t. I’m … meeting her in a public place and don’t know where she’s actually staying. But I promise to have her call you right away.”
“What time?”
“I’m not sure. Fairly late.”
“I’m on night duty this week—ten P.M. to six A.M. So call me at the department. McCone, did the wife kill him?”
“I know for a fact she didn’t.”
“Then why all this …? You know, I’m getting real tired of—”
“Got to go, Gary. I’ll be in touch.” I hung up and moved toward the exit.
Hotel Del’s terrace stretches between the outdoor swimming pool and the white sand beach. On it is a bar housed in a white turreted gazebo that matches the main building’s Victorian architecture, and a profusion of white umbrellaed tables. Most were occupied this afternoon, and on the beach a few sunbathers were still soaking up the rays. I moved through the crowd, checking it out from behind my dark glasses; stopped at the bar and bought a glass of their fresh-squeezed lemonade. Kept going toward the south end until I spotted Gage Renshaw at a table wedged between the beach-side wall and a planter containing an evergreen shrub.
Renshaw slumped spinelessly in a molded plastic chair that was dwarfed by his long body, right foot propped on the chair opposite. From the way he was dressed, I assumed my earlier phone call had summoned him from the golf course—although what self-respecting course would admit someone wearing such disreputable-looking golfing clothes was something I couldn’t begin to fathom. There was, however, no place under the faded yellow knit shirt and shabby madras pants for a concealed weapon. I scanned the people around him, a couple of families and a hand-holding pair who looked like honeymooners. Unless RKI’s operatives went in for elaborate camouflage, Renshaw was here alone.
As I approached the table, he saw me and stood. Bowed mockingly and pulled out a chair for me. “How nice of you to favor me with your company,” he said.
I set my lemonade on the table and took off my dark glasses. “How are you, Mr. Renshaw?”
“Not as well as I could be, thanks to you. Satisfy my curiosity on one point: it was you I saw change directions at La Encantadora yesterday?”
“Right.”
“The haircut threw me off. As it was meant to, no doubt. You’re quite skilled at evading surveillance.”
“Let’s not dwell on our past difficulties. I asked to meet with you to tell you that as of last night Tim Mourning was alive and reasonably well. Ripinsky’s alive and reasonably well, too, and innocent of anything except, perhaps, bad judgment. He plans to deliver Mourning and possibly Phoenix Labs’s letter of credit to you by daybreak tomorrow.”
Renshaw shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
I reached into my bag and took out the packet of photos I’d picked up at Gooden’s. Removed the picture of Mourning stumbling onto Fontes’s terrace and passed it to him.
He studied it for a moment, then dropped it carelessly to the table. “This could be an old picture.”
“Look at the date stamped on the back.”
He turned it over. “So? All this proves is that you had it developed today.”
“Now, where would I have gotten my hands on an old roll of film that just happened to have a picture of Mourning on it? I took that last night, in Baja. Mourning had just been brought there from the place where his kidnappers were holding him in eastern Orange County. As you can see, he’s not in the best of shape.”
Renshaw turned the photo over again and scrutinized his client.
I removed the second picture from the envelope and slid that toward him. “I took this one a few seconds later.” It was of Tim stumbling toward Diane; her hands were extended to ward him off, and fear distorted her features.
Renshaw’s eyes narrowed. He picked the photo up and looked closely, turned it over and checked the date. “We wondered why we hadn’t been able to contact Diane.”
“She’s been in Baja since Friday night, at the home of a man called Gilbert Fontes. So has one of the kidnappers, the contact woman, Ann Navarro. As well as an evil man named Marty Salazar, who took the letter of credit off Ripinsky and shot the other kidnapper, Stanley Brockowitz, Navarro’s husband.”
“When did this happen? Sunday night?”
I nodded.
“He’s had the L.C. all that time and hasn’t bothered to put it through?” His tone was shaded by disbelief.
“Initially Salazar didn’t know what it was or what to do with it. Then he peddled it to Fontes, whose brother owns Colores Internacional. The two are estranged, and the brother knows nothing about the kidnapping, so Gilbert can’t put it through, either. Ann Navarro can—she has a contact there, I think—but she’s been driving a hard bargain.”
Renshaw looked at the second photograph again. “And Diane?”
“Diane is not so innocent as we thought she was.” I explained about her setting up the kidnapping, about her getting shot, and about Fontes facilitating her return to the U.S. “If I read the situation correctly, they’ll draw on the letter of credit sometime tomorrow.”
Renshaw slumped lower in the chair, drumming his fingers on the table. “You say this Fontes is wealthy and influential?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll get no cooperation from the authorities down there. And we can’t just go in and snatch Mourning; I explained about our policy vis-à-vis Mexico.”
“No exceptions?”
“None. Especially in a sensitive case like this.”
It was the response I’d been prepared for, but still my spirits plummeted. I thought of Fontes’s well-guarded house and Salazar’s fondness for killing. Of the coyote Luis Abrego had recommended, who was sly and untrustworthy. Of the border fence, the perilous canyons …
Renshaw was watching me, eyes narrowed. I said, “Then we’ll get him out of there without your help.”
“We?”
“Ripinsky and I.”
“You don’t really think you can manage that.”
“We will. We’ve got some leverage with Navarro.”
He nodded, his fingers toying with one of the photographs. “Let me ask you this: why are you involving yourself? Why not walk away from it, let Ripinsky handle it on his own?”
“I saw the photograph of Mourning they sent you. I saw him through my telephoto last night. I can’t let him die.”
He shook his head. “More to it than that.”
More to it than that—yes. But it was a reason that simply wouldn’t compute in a mind like Renshaw’s.
Finally I said, “Money.”
“Money.”
“Where am I supposed to get that kind of cash on a Sunday?”
“You’ll manage. Oh—and Ripinsky wants the balance of whatever you promised him, too.”
Renshaw rolled his eyes.
“And we’ll need a car.”
“A car.”
“We’ll be crossing the border down by Monument Road, near Border Field State Park. When we arrive, we’ll need transportation.”
“We’ll pick you up.”
I shook my head. “We’ll deliver Mourning to you. As well as tell you where you can find Diane. You’ll give us our money, and we’ll leave in the car you provide—without surveillance or tracking devices. And that, Mr. Renshaw, will be the end of our association,”
“What about the letter of credit?”
“If we can get hold of it, we’ll turn it over. Otherwise, all you have to do is contact Emanuel Fontes. No way he’ll allow it to be put through.”
“And Navarro?”
“I may be able to convince her to come back with us and give herself up. Otherwise you’ll have to get Diane to open up and testify against her. I’m sure you can accomplish that easily.”
“What about this Salazar?”
“I’ll let the SDPD or the FBI handle him.”
“If he ever returns to the U.S.”
“Even if he—or Navarro—doesn’t, I think you’ll get cooperation out of Mexico. They’re guilty of transporting a kidnap victim over an international boundary.”
“We won’t be able to touch Gilbert Fontes, though. Mexico fights extradition of its citizens tooth and nail.”
I shrugged. “Fontes is really peripheral to the case. Accessory after the fact is all you’d have him on, and any good attorney could get the case thrown out of court.”
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