All Grass Isn't Green

3

I drove through the Beaumont and Banning Pass with the San Gorgonio Mountains on my left and San Jacinto towering high on my right.

We made a charge to clients of fifteen cents a mile for the agency car, and as the miles clicked off I wondered how Bertha and the client were going to react to the expense account.

Bertha was always screaming to keep expenses down because that meant more of a fee for the agency, and driving down to Calexico was going to put a big nick in the client’s three hundred and fifty bucks — by the time I charged mileage and my living expenses on top of that.

There was still snow on the north side of San Jacinto, which towers more than two miles above sea level, but it was hot down in the valley, and by the time I had left Indio behind and the road dropped down to below sea level it was too hot for comfort. Bertha would never listen to having an agency heap with air conditioning. She claimed all of our driving was around the city and air conditioning was more of a nuisance that a benefit there.

I hadn’t reported to the office or told Bertha where I was going. I knew she’d have a fit. But the Calexico lead was the only one I had.

It was late afternoon when I reached Calexico.

Calexico and Mexicali are twin cities. Calexico on the north, Mexicali on the south, and the international boundary fence between the United States and Mexico is about all that separates the two cities.

Now, Nanncie had no car. She had taken a bus. She evidently wasn’t too flush with money. I felt she wouldn’t be staying at the rather swank De Anza Hotel. In fact, wasn’t sure that she was in Calexico at all. The only thing I had to go by was that address of General Delivery. She could very well have crossed the border and gone into Mexicali.

I knew that I was going to have to do a lot of routine work.

I had a decoy envelope with me which I had addressed to Nanncie Armstrong at General Delivery, and I dropped it into the mall.

Unless you’re a Federal officer, the post office will give out no information about its customers, but the decoy envelope is a good way to get you the information you want in a reasonably small town.

The decoy envelope is manufactured especially for that purpose. It is too big to be put in a pocket or in a purse. It has red and green stripes on it so it is as conspicuous as a bright-red necktie at a funeral. You mall the envelope, get a parking place where you can watch the door of the post office and keep an eye on the people who come and go, particularly at about the time the mall is being distributed.

If the subject calls for mail at the General Delivery window and gets the decoy envelope, he can’t put it in his pocket if he’s a man, or if it is a woman it won’t fit in her purse. The subject comes out the door holding the decoy envelope and usually pauses on the sidewalk to open it.

The decoy envelope has an ad in it, a routine solicitation to buy real estate, and the subject thinks it’s just part of a broadside mailing campaign.

The detective covering the post office gets a good look at the subject and a chance to follow.

After I mailed my envelope I drove up and down the street listing the motels and rooming houses. I didn’t have too much hope here because I had a feeling the subject had crossed over to Mexico but would continue to get mall at Calexico.

However, having made out a list of the motels, I got to a public telephone and started making calls.

With each one I said, “This is the Acme Credit Agency. You have a woman who is registered with you who doesn’t have an automobile but who came in a taxicab. Her name is Debora Smith. Can you tell me what unit she’s occupying?”

I got a turndown in three places and then at the Maple Leaf I struck unexpected pay dirt.

“We have a woman such as you describe,” the voice said, “who come here by taxicab carrying two suitcases, but her name is not Debora Smith.”

“What unit does she occupy?” I asked.

“Unit twelve.”

I said, “The party I want is about sixty-two years old. She comes from New York City. She’s about five feet six, rather slender, and—”

“No, no, no,” the voice interrupted me. “This person is around twenty-six with auburn hair. She’s medium height, has a good figure and...”

“That’s not the one I’m after,” I said. “My party is in the sixties and rather slender, a little above average height.”

“I’m sorry, we have no one by that description.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, and hung up.

I got in the agency car, drove to the Maple Leaf, registered and was assigned to Unit 7.

It was a fairly good motel with a small swimming a patio and some beach chairs around the pool.

It was getting late, but a couple of kids and a matronly woman were in the pool.

I put on my suit, went to the pool, hesitated a getting in, and then went to one of the beach chairs relaxed, sitting where I could keep my eye on Unit 12.

It was no dice.

It got dark. The swimmers left the pool and I was getting chilled. I went in and dressed, sat in my parked and kept my eye on Unit 12.

Nothing happened until twenty minutes to nine when my party came in.

I had her spotted as soon as I saw her, even before she fitted the key to the door of Unit 12. She was a nice looker. She arrived by taxicab and she looked dejected.

I waited until I saw she was headed for Unit 12; then started the agency heap, overtook the taxicab, which was headed toward the border, and signaled him over to curb.

The driver was an alert-looking Mexican.

“Is this a Mexican cab?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I want to go across the border,” I said, “but I don’t want to take my car. Can I park it here and go across with you?”

“It is illegal for me to pick up a fare on a return trip,” he said.

“I came across from Mexicali with you,” I told him. “Don’t you remember?”

White teeth flashed in the dim light from the instrument panel. “Now I remember,” he said. “Get in.”

I parked and locked my car and got in the cab.

“We have to make a little detour to cross the border,” he said, “but we make a flat rate. Where do you want to go?”

He looked at the five dollars I handed him.

“You just delivered a young woman at the Maple Leaf Motel,” I said. “Where did you pick her up?”

“Oh ho,” he said, “a detective!”

I grinned at him and said, “A caballero who is lonesome. I would like very much to pick up that young woman, but I don’t think the usual approach would be any good.”

“She came to me,” the driver said, “from the Monte Carlo Café in Mexicali.”

“And that is where you are taking me,” I said.

Again his teeth flashed in a wide smile. “But certainly,” he said.

Pedestrians can walk straight across the border of Calexico, but the automotive traffic has to make a detour around through a side street, then along a street which parallels the border, until it comes to the north and south road where it is stopped by a traffic signal, then has to make a right-hand turn in order to cross into Mexico.

This gave me time for a little conversation with the driver.

“You Mexican taxicab drivers are permitted to drive across and deliver fares in the United States?”

“Si, señor,” he said. “And the American cab can cross into Mexico and deliver a fare in Mexicali, but we are not supposed to pick up a fare in Calexico to return to Mexico.” He shrugged his shoulder. “Perhaps there is trouble. I do not know. If I am unfortunate I could have a fine.”

I thought perhaps that was an approach for a touch so said nothing.

After a while he said, “That is peculiar, that case of the woman who goes to the Maple Leaf Motel.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

There was a period of silence.

This time I interpreted the silence correctly and he had made the right approach. I produced another five-dollar bill.

He took it eagerly, said, “I have much trouble at home. I have four children, another is coming, and the cost of living is very high.”

“The cost of living is very high for me,” I said. “What is peculiar about the woman?”

“She does not speak Spanish,” he said. “The waiter that she asked to call the cab called me. He told me he had a passenger for me to deliver in the United States. Then he told me she had gone to the café, she had ordered one drink. She had waited, waited, waited. Then she had ordered another drink. She had waited, waited, waited. The she ordered a meal and she ate very, very slowly, very slowly, indeed, señor... She was waiting for someone who did not come. Does that help, señor?”

“It may help,” I said.

Then he said, suddenly stopping the car, “Get out, please, and walk the one block until you have passed the border. I will be waiting for you there and I will deliver you the rest of the way. It is better this way. I cannot afford the trouble.”

I got out of the cab at the corner, walked down the street and crossed the border. I would not have been surprised if I had never see the cab driver again, but he was there waiting to drive me the four blocks to the Monte Carlo Café.

The café was fairly large restaurant, although the entrance was modest, a single room with a bar at the back and a few tables. There was a door leading into another room and then a door into still another room. These rooms had many tables and there was a good sprinkling of customers.

There was quite a bit of family trade. The restaurant was quiet, conservative, respectable, and the aroma of the food was so appetizing that I sat down and ordered a meal.

While the meal was coming I found a telephone and put through a call to Bertha’s unlisted number at her apartment.

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha gasped. “You can disappear longer and make fewer reports! Where the hell are you now?”

“Mexicali,” I said.

“Mexicali!” she screamed at me. “What are you doing down there?”

“Following clues.”

“You’ll use up all of the retainer money in expenses,” she complained.

“I’ve used up plenty of it so far.”

“That’s the worst of you. You throw money away as though it grew on bushes. Why don’t you ever make a report?”

“I didn’t have anything to report.”

“Well, our client has been chewing his fingernails as far as the elbow.”

“You’ve seen him again?”

“Have I seen him again! He’s been in once, and he’s been on the telephone three times. He hung up about half an hour ago and told me if you reported before midnight tonight to let him know. I was to give you his number and you were to call him at once.”

I said, “I’m following a lead that has taken me south of the border. That’s all. I can tell him. You call him and tell him I’m on a hot trail — and, by the way, if he’s so worked up about things it might be a good plan to touch him for another hundred and fifty.”

“He’s worked up all right,” Bertha said, “but he doesn’t seem to be in a generous mood. He’s in an anxious mood. You’ll have to call him yourself. The number is six-seven-six-two-three-o-two.”

“All right. I’ll call him. I’m staying in Calexico. I followed a lead across to Mexicali, and I expect to have something definite by tomorrow.”

“You’re on a hot trail?”

“A hot trail.”

“At fifteen cents a mile,” Bertha said.

“We’re making money at fifteen cents a mile,” I reminded her.

“Not when it cuts into our retainer,” Bertha said. “It’s easier to sell personal services at fifty dollars a day than cars at fifteen cents a mile.”

“All right,” I told her. “This case has been more complicated than we had anticipated and there’ll be a bill for expenses.”

“Where are you going to be tonight, Donald? Where are you staying?”

“In Unit Number Seven at the Maple Leaf Motel in Calexico. I think that the man we want is going to show up within twenty-four hours. I’ll give you a ring just as soon as I get anything definite.”

“Well, call up and tell our client,” Bertha said. “He’s wearing holes in the carpet.”

“All right. I’ll call him,” I promised, “but I don’t want him messing into the play.”

“Be sure to call him right away,” Bertha said. “He said if I heard from you before midnight you were to call him. You have the number — six-seven-six-two-three-o-two. Now, play it cool, Donald, and keep the guy happy with what we’re doing.”

I promised her I would and hung up.

I called the number Bertha had given me.

Calhoun’s voice came rasping over the line. “Hello, who is it?”

“Donald Lam,” I said.

“Well, it’s about time!” he exclaimed.

“About time for what?”

“About time for you to make a report.”

“You didn’t hire me to make reports,” I said. “You hired me to find somebody.”

“Have you found him?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“At the moment I’m in Mexico.”

“In Mexico!”

“That’s right.”

“What the hell are you doing in Mexico?”

“Looking for the person I’m supposed to find.”

“Well, you’re not going to find him down there.”

“Are you sure?”

When he hesitated at that one, I said, “I’ve followed what I think is a live lead.”

“What is it?”

“His girl friend,” I said.

“His what?”

“His girl friend.”

“Who?”

“I don’t like to mention names over the telephone, but she lives not too far from where the man you want lived and she disappeared at about the same...”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found her?”

“I’ve found her.”

“The hell you have?”

“Why?” I asked. “Is that important?”

“I agree with you, Lam,” he said, his voice suddenly friendly. “That’s a very, very live lead. Is she near where you are now?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I’m talking over a public telephone,” I said, “on the south side of the international border. I don’t want to go into details.”

“Damn it, Lam,” he said, his voice sharp with irritation, “I’m the one to take the responsibility. I’m the one who’s paying you. Where is she?”

I said, “She’s on the other side of the line at Calexico.”

“Where?”

“At a motel.”

“What’s the name of the motel?”

I hesitated a moment, then said, “The Maple Leaf. She’s in Unit Number Twelve, but I don’t think our man is going to join her there. I think the rendezvous is to be somewhere south of the border.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

“Not at this time. I had quite a job locating her. She tried to cover her back trail and she’s here under an assumed name.”

“What name?” he asked.

I said firmly, “I’m not going to give that out over telephone. What’s your interest in the girl? You hired to find somebody else.”

“I’m interested in finding out what you’re doing. I spend money, I want to know what I get in return it.”

I said, “Hello, operator... operator... you’ve cut off... operator.”

Then I gently slid the receiver into its cradle and went back to enjoy my dinner.

It was a wonderful dinner. The sweet-meated lobsters Baja California, a side dish of chile con carne, not bean dish which is really a misnomer, but chunks tender meat swimming in hot, red sauce.

There were also tortillas and frijoles refritos.

Just as I was finishing my meal a man came up to manager at the cash register, which was directly behind the table where I was sitting.

“I was expecting to meet someone here,” he said, “but I was delayed on the road. Did anyone leave any messages for me?”

“What’s the name?”

“Sutton.”

The manager shook his head. “No messages, Sutton.”

The man looked around the restaurant dubiously.

The manager said, “There was a señorita, an American girl, who came here and waited and waited, then had dinner and departed in a taxicab.”

“But no message?” Sutton asked.

“I am sorry, señor, no message.”

The man walked out.

I grabbed a bill, threw it at the cashier, didn’t wait for the check or any change, but hurried to the door. I was in too much of a hurry. My waiter grabbed me. “The check, señor. You have not paid.”

“I paid,” I told him. “I put money on the counter at the cash register.”

“It is not possible to pay without the check,” he insisted.

Trouble in Mexico can be serious trouble. I lost precious seconds convincing the guy.

When I finally had him convinced, I brushed aside his apologies and made it out to the street. There was no sign of the man. He had turned the corner, but I couldn’t tell which corner. I tried the one to the east. It was the wrong comer. It had started to rain while I had been eating.

It had been cloudy during the evening, but it rains very little there in the desert and I had expected the clouds would simply blow over. Now there was a steady drizzle of rain.

When it rains in the Imperial Valley it makes trouble.

The crops in that fertile soil are predicated upon moisture from irrigation and the ranchers don’t want rain. The soil is largely silt from the prehistoric deposits of the Colorado River, and rain turns that soil into a slick clay that is as adhesive as wet paint. Automobile tires spread it over the pavement. It sticks to the soles of the shoes and, on certain surfaces, makes it as difficult to proceed as if one were walking on glare ice.

I went back into the restaurant.

“That man who was just in here saying someone was to have met him — do you know him?” I asked the manager.

“No, señor, I have never seen him before.”

“Can you get me a taxi, quick?” I asked.

He went to the door, looked out, looked up at clouds, looked up and down the street, and shook head. “Not tonight, I am afraid, señor. This is not across the border in the United States. Here we usually have one, sometimes two taxicabs. Tonight it is and there is none.”

Mexico is a wonderful country, but there are things Mexicans can’t understand or don’t want to understand. Our hurry and sense of urgency leave them cold.

My man had given me the slip, but I had had a good look at him. I wouldn’t forget him.

I had to go to the place where I had left my car, and it being a rainy evening, there was only one way to get there.

It wasn’t too long a walk. I buttoned my coat and made the best of it, keeping under the protection buildings, porches and awnings wherever possible, and hurrying across the intersections.

Soon I came to the line of cars that was waiting to clear United States Customs at Calexico.

It was a long line.

Overworked immigration men and customs inspectors were at the checking point far up ahead, asking motorists what country they were citizens of, whether they had anything they had bought in Mexico, occasionally putting a sticker on the windshield which meant the car had to pull over out of the fine for a detailed search. For the most part, however, after a brief inspection, the cars were waved on.

I’d read up on smuggling, and statistics show that literally tons of marijuana come across the border with a goodly sprinkling of heroin and other contraband mixed in for good measure.

The customs inspectors are unbelievably skillful in sizing up drivers but they are snowed under by the sheer volume of numbers.

Do you know what is the leading tourist city in the world? Rome? Paris? London? Cairo? Guess again. The answer is Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, and while there aren’t nearly as many cars crossing at Mexicali as at Tijuana, the volume is still terrific.

Right now the cars were in a long line, the drivers waiting impatiently with motors running, the windshield wipers beating a monotonous, rhythmic cadence.

I saw a pickup carrying a small houseboat on a trailer and it aroused my curiosity.

Quite a few boating enthusiasts trail their boats down through Mexicali to the fishing port of San Felipe, a hundred and twenty miles to the south. There is a good surfaced road, and fishing and ocean adventure are at the end of it.

Other enthusiasts who are more venturesome go on another fifty-odd miles to the south of San Felipe to Puertecitos, a little gem of a bay, where there are a few dwellings, a few house trailers, supplies, and the warm blue of a gulf which is generally quite tranquil.

A houseboat, however, is something of a novelty.

This one was rather short and was mounted on twin pontoons powered with two outboard motors. The pickup which was pulling the outfit was powerful enough to snake it over roads all the way to Puertecitos if the driver had been so inclined.

My eyes came up to the driver and suddenly I snapped to attention. He was the man I was looking for, the one who had been in the Monte Carlo Café a short time before, asking if there was someone there waiting for him, saying that he had been delayed.

I could readily understand the reason for the delay. If he had been fighting his way up from San Felipe over pavement which had suddenly turned wet while he dragging a pontoon houseboat on a trailer, a delay was have been expected.

I moved on, just about keeping pace with the slow moving double line of cars, studying the driver of pickup.

I noticed that my party had a passenger with him, male, but I couldn’t see much of the man’s face because he was on the side away from me and the shadow obscured his features.

Then I crossed the line of traffic and went through the border station myself, giving my citizenship, stating that I had purchased nothing in Mexico.

Again I tried for a taxicab but in vain. I hurried to point where I had my automobile parked by the side the road and drove back to the road that led from border crossing. The pickup with its houseboat had gone. However, I had jotted down the license numbers of the pickup and the trailer. I felt I would find my man again, although from the description I had of Hale, I knew this man wasn’t the one I had been hired to find.

I couldn’t be certain about the other man in the pickup, however. He could have been the man I wanted.

I gambled I could follow up the lead I now had.

The rain had got me good and damp.

I finally drove to the Maple Leaf Motel, got a flask out of my suitcase, had a good swig of whiskey and went sleep.