Brown's Requiem

8

The following morning, rested yet apprehensive, I crossed the border.

Tijuana is situated on a plain nestled among shallow brown foothills. Even with the ocean just a few miles to the north it swelters, and the sun reflecting off the iron roofs of the hundreds of shacks that cover those foothills gave my entrance to Mexico the surreal look of a bad hangover morning.

Coming into T. J. proper, past scores of giant liquor stores, auto upholstery dumps, and body shops, I ran through my itinerary: low-life bars, betting palaces, and the dog track. If they didn’t pan out, I would try to run down a lead from the porno photos I had in my trunk: they were a more than coincidental link between Fat Dog and Richard Ralston.

Tijuana was teeming with activity as I turned onto Revalucion, its main drag. It was hot and noisy, the streets jammed with cars and the sidewalks packed with tourists and Mexican Nationals bartering in front of the profusion of curio stores that lined both sides of the street.

T.J. had changed since my first visit in 1962. I was still in high school then and had driven down with a group of buddies, bent on getting laid, getting drunk, and viewing the famous mule act. Except for our getting drunk, it was not to be. We did, however, get rolled by a Mexican tough who promised to fix us up with his sister, for free, because we were “cool dudes.” My most overpowering impression of T.J. then was the poverty. There were endless streams of children hawking cheap blankets and religious medals by throwing them up at your face and screaming at you, hands outstretched, bodies planted firmly in front of you to block your progress, and hungry dogs, and comatose old beggars, too near starvation to give you a hard time. The poverty was still here — Tijuana eighteen years later was redolent of poverty — but it was poverty with hustle. The child beggars looked healthier and less desperate, and the streets looked like they were swept at least once a week.

I decided not to waste time and inquired after what used to be the heart of T.J. low-life, the Chicago Club. The on-leave marine I talked to leered at me and gave me directions. I walked south of Revalucion, where the sidewalks were slightly less crowded. It was broiling now and my shirt, which I wore out to conceal my gun, was soaked and stuck to my back. After about four blocks I hit the real poverty. Victim land. Streets populated by people — Mexican and turista — with the predator look. A skinny white youth brushed by me. “Reds, whites, three dollars a roll,” he said. I told him to fuck off.

I hit my first in a long series of cheap bars. They were interchangeable; the people looked and smelled the same, the same fat Mexican girls danced nude on stage to bored catcalls. I described Fat Dog in detail to over fifty people, slipping out over two hundred dollars to bilingual Mexicans to translate for me. Nothing. Just a massive headache from over four hours of maudlin, saccharine Mexican music.

I walked back to Revalucion, deciding to hit a few nicer-looking joints before trying the dog track. I walked through three off-track betting palaces on my way over. No Fat Dog and no one willing to take time off from placing bets to talk to me.

I was getting hungry and decided to chance the food in the first halfway decent-looking juke joint I came to, which was La Carabelle. I knew right off the bat that this was a class place by T.J. standards: it was clean, the bar was well-stocked, the patrons looked a cut above the ones I had been questioning and the girls who danced on stage were pretty and slender and wore bikinis. I took a table near the edge of the dance runway. A waiter materialized and I ordered huevos rancheros and coffee.

The table adjoining mine was occupied by outsized, red-faced American men doing some hard drinking. From their short hair and the peremptory way they treated their waiter, I judged them to be Marine Corps brass, not likely to have information on my quarry. Still, they were talking loudly and when their conversation turned to golf, I listened.

“I was fucking surprised,” one of them said, “a shit-ass town like this having a championship course. Par seventy-two! Greens like lightning. I was lucky to get away with an eighty-seven! Jesus, all those years at Pendleton and I didn’t even know it existed!”

I leaned over and asked him where this golf course bonanza was.

The man started to get annoyed, then smiled broadly. His companions joined him and they all started jabbering drunkenly: “T.J. Country Club,” “Are you from Pendleton, fella?” “Just south of town,” “Near the dog track, greatest fucking Margaritas this side of La Paz,” “Watch out for that trap on the fourth hole, it...”

I didn’t wait for them to finish. I jammed out of the bar and maneuvered my way through the crowds on Revalucion to the lot where my car was parked. I couldn’t believe it: the Tijuana Country Club? But the parking attendant told me it was true and gave me specific instructions on how to get there.

I drove south to the edge of town. The T.J. Country Club course was hard to miss: it was a giant patch of light green in an otherwise brown landscape. Signs directed me to the clubhouse, which looked like a miniature of the Alamo, with a poorly printed, peeling sign announcing “Club Social Y Deportivo De Tijuana.”

I pushed my way through knots of golfers drinking beer and hoisting golf bags, looking for someone in charge. The room was dingy, the walls the same sandblasted adobe as outside. And the golfers looked crazed, not unlike some junkies I had seen, lining up in queues to buy golf provisions, pushing and shoving in their anxiousness to get to the first hole. It would be futile to attempt questioning here. I followed a group of prosperous-looking Mexicans outside, where the course opened up before me like a breath of clean air: rolling, strangely soft-looking green hills only slightly tainted by the omnipresent Tijuana brownness. The only thing to ruin it were the golf maniacs, dozens of them, milling around on the large patio, waiting to load their bags onto the scores of dilapidated golf carts parked in a blacktop loading area adjacent to the first tee. The whole scene had the air of an ancient ritual, completely American, prosaic and profound at the same time.

I walked over to a Mexican youth pulling beer bottles out of a large plastic trash can and handing them to golfers who grabbed them hungrily. When the trash can was empty, he took it back to a service shed to reload. I followed. “Habla Ingles?” I said, as he dipped his hands into a large ice machine.

“Yeah, I speak English,” he replied, with a purely American-Chicano accent, “but it won’t do you no good. You get one beer in the package deal and that’s it. Two Margaritas and a golf cart. Todos. Comprende?”

“I dig you. What I’m looking for is the caddy master.”

He stopped and stared at me as if I were an idiot child. “Caddy master? Are you jiving me? This dump don’t have no caddies. Only class clubs have caddies.”

“I should have known. Listen, I’m looking for a caddy. I know he’s somewhere near Tijuana. He’s hard to miss: an Anglo, about forty, short, sunburned, and very fat. He always wears dirty golf clothes. Have you seen him?”

“I ain’t seen him. But we get lots of golf course bums around here. Ask Ernie in the pro shop.” He pointed to a white one-man cubicle, where a fat Chicano was handing out golf balls. I walked over and got in line. All the golfers seemed to be high on some new drug I knew nothing about, chattering in English and Spanish about incomprehensible matters. I felt as out of place as Beethoven at a rock concert.

The tournament, or whatever it was, was starting and interest shifted to the first tee. The beer line had petered out and the golf ball line I was in had ended. Ernie gave me a harsh look that softened somewhat when he saw the twenty dollar bill I waved flag-like in front of him. “I don’t want golf balls, I want information,” I said, as he nodded, his eyes fixed on my money. I described Fat Dog.

Recognition flashed into Ernie’s eyes. He grabbed for the twenty, but I pulled it away. “I seen that guy,” he said. “He unloaded some balls on me a couple of days ago.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“Naw, he’s just a bum. A fly-by-night.”

“Did you talk to him about anything other than golf balls?”

“Yeah. He told me he wanted to buy racing dogs. I told him to go to the dog track. I thought he was shitting me. He didn’t look like he had the money to buy no racing dogs. Then he flashes this roll on me. A couple of grand. Fuck me. A loco, you know? That kind of dinero and he’s selling golf balls. Crazy.”

“So you sent him to the dog track, right?”

“Hell no, man. I sent him to see my cousin Armando. He’s got two litters of greyhound pups.”

I gave Ernie the twenty and pulled another one out of my billfold. “Where can I find Armando?”

“Who are you, man?”

“I’m a nice guy. I want that bastard who sold you the golf balls.” I pulled out another twenty.

“I’ll take you to see my cousin,” he said.

I followed Ernie’s ancient Ford pickup. We drove east, through a maze of dirt roads, through shanty towns and hobo jungles of abandoned cars. Armando lived in an incongruous red-brick house on the edge of a giant culvert. The place was enclosed with accordion wire and as I pulled up behind Ernie I could see and hear children and greyhound puppies frolicking behind the fence.

Ernie told me to wait by my car, that he would get his cousin. I waited, restlessly. I felt I was getting close, that Fat Dog was nearby and at my mercy. I could hear arguing from within the house. A few minutes later Ernie came out followed by an older, even fatter Chicano.

Armando disdained my offer of a handshake. “My cousin says you want to find the fat gringo I sold two dogs to.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“It will cost you fifty dollars,” Ernie interjected.

“You’ve got it. Where is he?”

“First you give me the money,” Armando said.

I was getting pissed, but reached for my billfold without hesitation. I handed Armando two twenties and a ten. He looked at me with contempt. “Where is he?” I asked angrily.

“You gonna fuck him up, gringo?”

“Maybe. Where is he?” I was ready to blow it all and trash the fat greasers right on the spot, but I held it in. I felt the blood start to pound in my head and the periphery of my vision blackened, but I said nothing, just let the two Mexicans play mind-fuck.

Finally Armando spoke: “That fat puto deserves what he gets. I got a feeling about him. About you, too, gabacho, so I tell you. I rented him a shack I got. You take the Ensenada Toll Road, past the first toll booth, about forty miles from Tijuana, half mile from the sign that says ‘Alisistos ½ mile.’ Then you drive past the lakebed till you see a dirt road cut in toward the mountains on your left. You got to bang your car on the divider in the middle of the road to cross. Then you take the dirt road for three miles, to a fork. Then you go left for half a mile to the shack.” I committed the information to memory while Armando and Ernie eyed me coldly. “Maybe you do me a favor, mano,” Armando said. “Maybe you take care of the fat puto and I rent the shack to someone else. A shack like that, how do you say? In the middle of nowhere? Who knows what happens.”

“Fuck yourself, greaseball.”

“I forget you said that, man. This guy got two pups of mine. You bring them back, I give you twenty dollars.” He spat in the dirt at my feet, an invitation for me to try something. I didn’t. It was their country, their rules. I got in my car and drove away.

I headed for the Ensenada Toll Road, driving through Tijuana on my way. Just outside of T.J. I found a side road that dead-ended. I pulled off and got my shotgun out of the trunk, loaded it, and placed it beside me on the front seat, covered by a blanket.

The toll road southbound was wide open and beautiful, with the sea yawning wide and bright blue off to my right and the hillside shanty towns thinning out as I moved away from Tijuana. I was adrenalin-expectation high, but put all thoughts of the future out of my mind and concentrated on the moment: sunny, seaside uncharted territory, untainted by the grimness of my mission here.

I passed through the first toll booth and a few minutes later I spotted the “Alisistos ½ mile” sign, then the dry lakebed. I saw the dirt road immediately, so I slowed down and got ready to jump the concrete divider. I came to a complete halt and scraped over it with what seemed like a minimum of damage to my underbody.

The road led up into greenish-brown mesquite country, past several garbage dumps and a shanty town of adobe huts where several old women were tending a collection of chickens and pigs. Soon I caught sight of the fork. The road to the right led higher up into the hills; the left — the one I was to take — led downward, into what looked like a box canyon.

I turned off my engine and coasted in, keeping a foot on my brake. After one quarter mile by my speedometer, the road leveled out and turned one last time. I could see a beaten-up wooden shack in the distance, about three hundred yards away. I got out of the car and locked it, taking the shotgun with me. There was no one in sight.

As I drew closer, staying to the side of the road along a stretch of bushes, I could see that the shack was encompassed by a low fence of unevenly matched pickets driven into the ground at irregular intervals and linked together by heavy wire. About fifty yards behind the shack was a large wooded area. Nailed to the wall of the shack was a bus sign, depicting a greyhound in full stride.

When I drew up alongside the picket fence a putrid smell hit my nostrils. I saw a large swarm of flies buzzing about a foot above the ground and a half dozen rats scrambling beneath them. When I saw what they were interested in, my stomach turned. Two dead greyhound puppies lay in the sandy makeshift front yard, their stomachs open and spilling guts.

I pumped a shell into the chamber, stepped over the fence and approached the shack. I felt the hackles on my neck rise and my skin started to tingle. I could see that the flimsy wooden door was ajar, so I found a large rock and hurled it. The door flew inward, the wood splintering and giving off a ghostly echo. But no other sounds came at me and I could see no movement inside.

I approached cautiously, my shotgun held in front of me at body level. The same stench that pervaded the yard doubled as I walked through the doorway, so I knew there was something dead inside. It was Fat Dog. He was lying on the floor, nude, in a lake of dried blood. His throat had been slit and there were puncture wounds all over his torso and legs. A large rat was nibbling at one fleshy thigh. His mouth had been ripped open from ear to ear, exposing cartilage and rotten teeth. His nose had been smashed.

I picked up an empty tin can and threw it at the rat. It scurried out the door, flesh hanging from its teeth. I surveyed the room: walls of the cheapest grade building material, floors of rough wood, a formica coffee table with a case of dog food underneath it, a duffel bag containing golf balls and nothing else. No furnishings, plumbing, or lighting. Nothing but the corpse of Frederick “Fat Dog” Baker, caddy and arsonist, and my would-be gravy train.

I walked outside to the far corner of the pathetic little yard, away from the dead puppies, in order to get away from the smell of the dead looper and collect my thoughts. I felt composed and detached as I thought about the last stand of this psychotic dreamer. I felt absolute pity that anyone should have to live as Fat Dog did and die as terribly; tortured for hours or maybe longer. For his money? For the roll he may have been flashing in T.J.? I went back into the charnel house to look for clues. I was right the first time. There was nothing. When I walked back outside, my memory jogged: Fat Dog never lived indoors. He was a notorious hobo and pack rat. I charged into the wooded area behind the shack. It was about one hundred-fifty yards deep and thick with desert pines that allowed almost no light to enter.

It took me three hours of poking in bushes and checking out the bases of tree trunks to find what I was looking for. It was behind an uprooted scrub bush, nestled in a hollow tree trunk and wrapped in three giant plastic bags: a sleeping bag, two books on the care of greyhounds, a wallet containing $1,600 and no identification, the May issue of Penthouse, a 6-iron, and a pebble-grained leather ledger, almost identical to the ones Omar Gonzalez had found in Richard Ralston’s house in Encino.

I opened the ledger, which was wrapped in its own smaller bag. It was set up in five columns, the first two containing lists of Latin and Anglo surnames followed by initials, the two columns separated by dashes in red ink. The third column held dates in no particular order. The fourth column listed amounts of money, ranging from $198.00 to $244.89. The fifth column was allotted the largest space: it held comments written in a minute hand in Spanish. The ledger had thirty-two pages set up this way and it spelled one thing: extortion, somehow featuring Richard Ralston.

I transferred the money from Fat Dog’s wallet to my own and tucked the ledger under my arm. I walked back to my car, skirting the death house, feeling certain that Fat Dog had been attempting to blackmail Richard Ralston, or someone, and had paid for the crime with his life; that somehow Sol Kupferman and the Club Utopia firebombing were also connected. What nagged at me was the missing link: Omar Gonzalez’s anonymous caller.

When I got back to the car I locked my shotgun and new evidence in the trunk and drove back to T.J. to find someone who could read Spanish.

It was almost six o’clock when I got back to Tijuana. The traffic was impossible, so I parked in the first space available in the downtown area. Street peddlers were out in force, hawking firecrackers and elaborate sets of fireworks: Roman candles, pin-wheels, “atom bombs,” and “houses on fire,” selling them out of large open boxes leaned up against parked cars. T.J. was going to rock with the antics of swinging expatriates tonight.

My first stop was at an Army-Navy store, where I purchased a sturdy-looking shovel. Fat Dog deserved a decent burial and I was the only one to see that he got it. His golf balls would accompany him. I returned to the car and locked the grave-digging tool in the front seat, then went looking for an educated Mexican who looked like he could keep his mouth shut.

As I walked, I kept pushing thoughts of Jane out of my mind. I was likely to be down in Mexico longer than expected. Fat Dog had mentioned a “rich friend” with a “big castle.” It would bear checking out. There was also the matter of Fat Dog’s killer or killers — I might be able to dig up some leads on people who had been searching for the late unlamented looper.

I turned into an alley to avoid the sidewalk bustle, and heard footsteps crunching on gravel immediately behind me. I swung around, but it was too late. A fist crashed into my jaw. I tottered, but kept my balance, the ledger flying out of my hand. It was dark in the alley, but as I recovered from the blow and put up my arms to ward off others I recognized my assailant. It was Omar Gonzalez. That made me angry. As recognition and amazement lit up my face, Gonzalez followed with a left to my head and a right to my rib cage. He was fast and strong. The left caught me high on the cheekbone, the ring on his finger drawing blood; the right I deflected with an elbow. He was wide open and overconfident. I feinted with my left shoulder and as he drew away I slammed a right cross to the side of his nose. He went down, but came up fast, his knees wobbling. As he struggled to get up, wiping the blood from his eyes, I kneed him in the chin, full force. He went down again and was still.

I caught my breath and patted him down for weapons. Nothing. How had he gotten here so fast? And how had he known to come here? He would be rousing soon, so I picked up the dusty ledger, hoisted him onto my shoulder and carried him out to the busy sidewalk, where I sat him down beside a fire hydrant. Being T.J., this got only a few curious stares from passersby. Keeping a hand on his shoulder to keep him from tipping over, I applied pressure to the cut on my cheek. It was deep, but razor sharp, and the blood was already starting to congeal.

Gonzalez came to with a start. He tried to stand up and start swinging, but was too woozy. He wiped blood torn his nose. I kept a firm hand on his shoulder. “No go, Omar. Too many people around. The T.J. jail is a bitch. But I’ve got some very good news for you, if you’ll listen...”

He didn’t want to listen. The expletives began, first in Spanish, ending in English. “... Filthy scum-sucking fascist pig! Parasite!...” I let him go on and on.

When he ran out of epithets and breath, I spoke soothingly: “The man who was responsible for killing your brother is dead. Murdered. He’s lying in an old shack outside of T.J. I’ll show him to you, if you want. No tricks this time. I’ll tell you the whole story of my involvement in this thing. The truth. You want to listen?”

“I’ll listen, puto. I got nothing better to do.”

“Good. It’s a long story. Let’s find a cantina.”

I gave Gonzalez a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his battered nose. It wasn’t broken, which made me feel good. After a block’s walk, we found a combination restaurant-bar that looked clean and wasn’t too crowded. From the window by our table we could see fireworks begin to light up the twilight sky. I told Omar everything — from the beginning, including the incredible coincidence of my recognizing Kupferman from a split-second meeting years before. The only thing I omitted was my involvement with Jane. Watching him as I recounted the tragedy that had been the central fact of his life for a decade I saw anger, grief, and fierce love light up his face. After I finished I sipped my coffee in silence and waited for his response. Finally it came, much more stoic than stunned. “Who do you think killed Fat Dog?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. He’s tied in to Ralston from Hillcrest, ten years ago. They’re connected by the similar ledgers they both had in their possession. It could well be that Fat Dog was trying to blackmail Ralston. I’m not sure. We’ll know more when we decipher this ledger.” I handed him the leather bound book. “You read Spanish, don’t you?”

“Of course, yo soy Chicano.” He said it with pride. We were moving toward becoming allies, but he was keeping his distance. I respected him for it.

“Read it,” I said, “then we’ll go and bury Fat Dog. Or I will, I should say. You can wait here.”

“No, I’ll go. I want to see this putrid piece of dog shit with its guts hanging out. I want to burn the sight into my brain.”

“Then hurry up and read the ledger. It’s getting dark. I want to be sure we can find the place.”

Omar read fast, his eyes skimming the pages, showing no emotion. He read page by page for several minutes, then closed the book and stared at me. “It’s not a bookie ledger like the ones I found at Ralston’s house,” he said. “The first four columns are the same thing. Names, some Latino, some Anglo, some that sound kind of black, followed by initials — R.R., that would have to be Ralston, J.L., H.H., D.D., G.V. Don’t ask me what that means. The next column is odd amounts of money, with a dash, then a date, no particular order. The dates go back eight years to ’72. After the dates, there’s all these really odd amounts of dough — 211.83, 367.00, 411.10. Like that. Funny. With no dollar signs, just the decimal points. Weird. In the next column there’s another name, most of the time matching the one in the first column. Then, there’s comments — spooky stuff. For instance — ‘Cousin, dead ten years,’ ‘Uncle, born here, valid D.O.B., died Mexico, ’55,’ ‘Played ball with R.R., died 6–21–59.’ Every line in this last column seems to refer to some dead person, or one of their relatives. Spooky. What do you think, repo?”

Another loose end seemed to be tying itself up. “I think maybe this ledger details some kind of welfare scam. Remember those blank checks stuck in the ledgers you ripped off of Ralston? Everything in this new ledger seems to bear it out — the names, the amounts of money — all small and within the range of a monthly Welfare payment, and the comments in the last column — died such and such a date. I think that Ralston is working a Welfare ripoff, and that Fat Dog was involved somehow, or found out about it, and tried to blackmail Ralston, and was killed.”

Omar was nodding his head, taking in the information and kicking it around. “What do we do now?” he said.

“Let’s bury Fat Dog and head back to L.A. Ralston is the key to this case, I’m sure of that. When we get back I’m going to brace him.”

We got up and left the cantina, my coffee and his beer practically untouched. We walked to the car, then headed for the Ensenada Toll Road.

It was almost dark and cooling off. We drove south on the toll road, skirting the ocean. As we pulled out of Tijuana I could see bonfires being lit in the shanty towns that filled the canyons on the land side of the road. The people who lived in the makeshift communities had no electricity, but their fires provided light and a glow that swept all the way across the highway to illuminate the Pacific with strands of gold. Given the corruption of Tijuana, where most of them probably worked, I wondered if they were jaded beyond redemption, as I was, or innocent enough to fill their lives with the simple beauty that surrounded them. Omar was evidently thinking along parallel lines.

“So much fucking beauty, and so much fucking poverty. But it’s the poverty that finally gets you. So you come to America, meaning L.A., and you find some kind of chickenshit job and raise a big family, and stay poor. And you know what kills me, repo? There’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it. Except to help the kids who rebel at the poverty and look for the answer in dope. You win one, and you lose twenty. But you know, it’s worth the effort.”

“Yeah. One thing you haven’t mentioned: How the hell did you find me? How did you know to come to T.J.?”

“Easy. There was no place else to go. The only lead I had was those porno pictures, which spelled T.J. Also, you shanghaied me north, in the opposite direction. I cut through the rope about three in the morning and hitched into Santa Barbara. I caught the six o’clock bus to Dago and walked across the border. I been looking all over town for your car since eleven o’clock. Finally, I spotted it. Then I found you.

“You’re a smart, resourceful guy, Omar. I have no doubt you’ll go far in life, now that you’re free of your obsession.”

“But it’s not over, repo. This puto Fat Dog is dead, but there’s a lot more going on, you said so yourself. I want to know all of it.”

“You will. But you’re strictly a noncombatant. Remember that. When we get back to L.A., I’m going after Ralston alone. We’re dealing with killers here, not Barrio punks with switchblades and a snootful of angel dust. So you take a good look at Fat Dog’s corpse, and hold your nose while you’re doing it. If you’ve got the stomach for it, I’ll even let you desecrate it before the burial. He’s the one who killed your brother, no one else. The rest is icing on the cake and that’s my obsession. So when we get back to L.A., you keep out of it. You got shot once and survived. You were lucky. I’m going to find you a place with some friends of mine. You can stay there until this thing blows over.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll do it. I’ll make sure you know what’s happening. Just stay out of sight.”

“All right. You know, this feels strange. I’ve been waiting for this moment for over ten years, but it feels like a big letdown. I wanted to kill the puto myself, slowly. And I would have done it. Scum like this Fat Dog don’t deserve to live.”

“You’ve got that all wrong, amigo. You might have killed Fat Dog — if the timing had been right and your conscience and conditioning shut off long enough for you to do it. I might have, too, if I hadn’t been able to get him to confess and thought he might kill again. But he deserved to live. He just never had the chance. He had no choice in the matter. It was locked in, from the beginning. He was destined to become what he became. I’m no liberal, but I learned one thing from being a cop: that some people have to do what they are doing, that they can’t help it. I tried to explain this to my fellow officers, but they laughed me off as a bleeding heart. I’m doing what I have to do, so are you, so was Fat Dog. The only difference between us and Fat Dog is that our conditioning was tempered with some love and gentleness. His wasn’t. All he knew was anger, hatred, and meanness. That’s why I’m going back to bury him. He deserved better.”

“I didn’t think you were so soft-hearted. Do you consider what happens to the poor Chicano in El Barrio when you repo the car he needs to get to work in?”

“Yeah, I consider the consequences. And I come up with this: He knew what he was getting into when he signed the contract. All the repossessions I go out on are at least two months’ delinquent. So tough shit.”

“You’re a tough nut to crack, repo.”

“So are you.”

We both got a laugh out of that one. For the second time that day I pulled my Camaro over the concrete divider, giving the undercarriage a good wracking. As I hit the dirt road, I turned on my high beams, throwing light on small hills of brown scrub, dust, and a rodent family on the move. I took it slowly, staying squarely on the road. This time I drove all the way up to the death shack, turning the car around so that I could drive straight out.

There was a large Coleman lantern in my trunk. I lit it and mounted it on the hood of the car to provide light to work by. A slight breeze cut through the stench of the rotting greyhound pups in the front yard, leaving just a smell redolent of meat left out too long. I got the shovel and the large five-cell flashlight, which I handed to Omar.

“Dig this scene,” I said, “you’ll never see another one like it. The man who killed your brother is in the shack.”

Omar followed my directions, playing his light over the dead puppies. He seemed to be hesitant about going into the shack, though, like a kid at the amusement park with a ticket for the haunted house, knowing it’s the real thrill, yet afraid to go for it. “Go on, Omar. Get it over with. I want to get out of here.”

He nodded and walked up the steps while I began to dig, I was at it for about three minutes when he came crashing out the door, bent over and holding his stomach. He went around to the side of the shack and vomited, then retched dry, his whole body shaking with each convulsion. Finally he finished and walked up to me. He was pale and the look in his eyes aged him by ten years. “Jesus,” he said.

“Did you enjoy that?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “I wanted to look at his face, to try to read it, but there was no face to read. God. There were these bugs coming out of his nose and his guts hang... Jesus.”

“He’s been dead at the least three days. Have you had enough?”

“Yes.”

“Then you go and sit in the car. I’ll bury him and we’ll split.”

I dug some Kleenex out of my back pocket, tore off a few small pieces and wadded them into my nostrils. Carrying the flashlight that Omar had left on the ground, I entered the shack. I was somewhat inured to violent death and stiffs, but Fat Dog’s was too much: the stench crept through the wadded-up Kleenex and my eyes stung from the acidity of rotting flesh. I grabbed the corpse by both wrists and pulled. The left arm came loose at its socket, flying up in the air, spraying decomposing matter. I lost my balance and almost fell, letting out a strangled cry when a viscous glob of rented flesh flew up and hit me in the cheek. I brushed it off and took a moment to compose myself, then grabbed Fat Dog by the ankles and began pulling him toward the door.

I was about to begin my descent down the three shallow steps when I heard a gunshot ring out from the direction of my car. I dropped Fat Dog’s ankles, grabbed my flashlight, and pulled my .38 from my waistband. Flattening myself up against the wall, I took frantic deep breaths to stifle my fear and allow my mind to operate. Some seconds passed, then I heard voices speaking in Spanish. Through the door crack I saw the shapes of two men approaching the shack. I waited. As they got closer, I could see that the man on the left was carrying a rifle, held in the crook of his arm, pointed downward.

When they were about two feet from the steps, I swung out and flashed my light dead in their faces and fired all six shots into them at chest level. They both went down and I hurled myself back against the inside wall and reloaded from the loose shells I kept in my back pocket. I heard moaning and in the next instant a volley of rifle shots tore into the shack, splintering the wood around me. I grabbed hold of a chunk of the splintered wood and yanked, cutting my hand in the process. I stuck my flashlight in the hole and surveyed the scene: one man lay in front of the steps; I couldn’t see the other man, the one with the rifle, until an instant later when I heard a weak thumping and stifled moaning coming from the steps. He was trying to crawl into the shack, his rifle held out in front of him. I held my breath for a few seconds, then as I saw the rifle barrel make its way into the shack, I padded over and flattened it to the floor with my foot. The man who held it looked up at me from his place on the steps. I couldn’t discern his features, but I could see a bright trickle of blood dripping from his mouth. It was over for him. I placed my gun up against his temple and squeezed off three shots. His head burst inward like a crushed eggshell. I walked over to where the other man lay. I was sure he was dead, but I emptied my remaining three rounds into the back of his neck anyway.

I walked back to my car, knowing what I would find. Omar Gonzalez lay dead, sprawled across the front seat, shot in the head. There was very little blood, the bullet obviously still embedded in his brain. I pulled him out by his arms and carried him gently to the incomplete grave I had intended for Fat Dog. If Fat Dog had deserved better, then Omar Gonzalez had deserved the best life had to offer. It took me half an hour to bury him. When I finished, I tried to bring to mind a Dylan Thomas poem about “Death having no dominion,” but I couldn’t recall the words.

I went over to the car and siphoned gas into a gallon can and carried it to the shack. I dragged the two killers inside to rest beside Fat Dog. After lifting their wallets, I doused the three bodies with gasoline and dropped a match on them. As they started to burn, I thought what a fitting end it was for Fat Dog.

By the time I got back to my car and pulled out, the shack was engulfed in flames. I headed straight for the toll road. Before I got there, I realized I was weeping for the first time since my early childhood discovery that tears did no good. Now they were streaming down my face and I was trembling like a child. For the third time in one day, I banged my car across the concrete divider. This time I was going south, toward Ensenada and an all-night liquor store.

9

I don’t know how I made it into Ensenada or even why I fled south, deeper into a foreign country. When a body cries “alcohol,” logic does not apply. Driving the winding coast road, I passed two toll booths and headed south. I shielded my dirt- and tear-stained face from the toll takers, handing them a dollar bill and zooming past with what I hoped passed for a friendly wave. My body was functioning — the ritual of driving, of keeping all senses alert to the needs of the road, kept me from breaking down into total hysteria — but my mind wasn’t. Fear, and the inchoate realization that my life had exploded into irreparable fragments kept my head slamming painfully, causing the windshield and highway to blur in front of me.

After a while, my panic became almost familiar, and the edge of it softened. I knew there was a panacea that would put everything in perspective: booze. And the only thing that mattered now was getting it.

Ensenada opened up below me in a scatter of light. Hugging the outside lane and concentrating on driving slowly, I saw the lights of ships illuminating the harbor. On the outskirts of town I found a road that led down to the beach. After about a mile I found what I was looking for: a beachside men’s room. I sat on the toilet and let go of my bowels and bladder. Then I took deep breaths for one minute, gauging the time by the second hand of my watch. I washed my crusty face, first with warm water, then cool, and smeared some abrasive powdered soap under my arms in an attempt to eradicate the smell of fear. I combed my hair and started to feel a little bit better; my survival instincts were still intact. My tremors were all internal now, so I felt ready to face civilization.

I drove into town. Ensenada was a muted version of T.J., less low-life, quieter, and featuring a sea breeze. The night was perfectly clear, and as I parked in front of the first liquor store I came to I glanced north, expecting to see the dusty brown Mexican Hills afire with my handiwork, but there was nothing.

The liquor store proprietor didn’t give me a second glance when I purchased two fifths of Scotch, a bag of ice, and a quart of ginger ale. Now all I needed was a safe house, a place to hole up and drink. The sleazy downtown hotels would provide protective coloration for an outsized gringo, but they were too noisy, too close to the arena of tourism. So I drove south, feeling secure with my booze on the seat beside me.

On the south border of Ensenada, nestled on the edge of a housing development, I found my safe harbor: a two-story white stucco rooming house. The big sign out front said “cuartos” — rooms. I left my shotgun in the trunk and collected my suitcase and brown paper bag of booze. I rang the bell on the door lettered “managerio,” and inquired in broken Spanish after a room for a week. The woman led me down the musty hallway to an open room with a bed, table, two chairs, a wash basin, and a huge lightbulb dangling on a cord from the ceiling, “Si,” I told her. “Quantos?”

She replied. “Fifteen dollar.” I turned my back to her, not wanting her to see the size of my roll, then handed her the money. She reached into her housecoat and gave me a key. Then she looked me up and down sagely and turned and walked away.

I locked the door behind me and checked out my image in the cracked mirror above the basin. I looked gaunt and scared. I placed the two fifths of Scotch on the table and stared at them. They didn’t go away, so I stared some more. I dumped my bag of ice in the sink, making sure the plug was securely in the drain. I put three ice cubes in one of the paper cups the previous tenant had kindly left behind. My mind was raging, but I felt perfectly calm. For one split second, clarity hit and I knew what the consequences would be if I drank, but I shunted them aside. Pouring the cup full of Scotch, I drank it in one greedy gulp.

And I knew. The chickens had come back to roost. I had been saved again. I let the booze shake and warm my body. I sat down in one of the stiff wooden chairs., fondling my paper cup. My mind was just inches away from clicking into place, rushing forth with epigrams, pronouncements, and profundity.

I picked up the two wallets I had taken from the men I killed and placed them on a high shelf in the closet. The men I killed. That caused me to shake, so I had another drink. This time relief was instantaneous, my mind running with sentimental meanderings, fragments of my relationship with Walter and odd bits and pieces of symphonies and concertos. In stereo. I had been away a long time, and Mother Booze was being generous, throwing me a mellifluous parade as a welcome home present. I was with Beethoven at the first performance of the Eroica, with Bruckner as he sought God in the Tyrolean Alps, with Liszt as he seduced the most beautiful women of his day.

I went to the mirror and checked myself out: I looked indent again, even handsome. My indently ruddy face looked a little more florid than usual, but I attributed that to too much sun. I studied the planes and angles of my face, and decided that Fritz Brown, thirty-three-year-old ex-L.A.P.D. bimbo and repo king of the greater L.A. area, would do. That caused me to smile and I amended my opinion slightly: my teeth were too small, and my eyes should be blue. Blue eyes were in. Women dug them. Even ghetto blacks were sporting blue contact lenses and getting laid as a result.

I looked around for a phone. Of course there wasn’t one. I felt like calling Walter and telling him everything was okay. I thought of an old girlfriend named Charlotte who had been in love with the Chopin “Heroic Polonaise.” She always wanted to listen to it before we went to bed. I always advanced the opinion, derived from Walter, that Chopin was a cornball and a sentimentalist. Now the “Polonaise” was banging through my brain like the repeated drone of an air raid siren.

My mind swung from Charlotte to women in general and from there to Jane. She was real, she was now. When I couldn’t shake the image of our night together, I started to panic. I grabbed the bottle and drank until I passed out.

I awoke the next morning around nine without the shakes, not knowing where I was. When I saw the empty fifth of Scotch on the table, my memory kicked in and it all came back. I held my breath against a sudden burst of panic. It never arrived. That gave me heart. I was utterly dehydrated, so I dug the remnants of the bag of ice out of the sink and wolfed them down, sending chills throughout my body. As if in answer, a lightweight case of the shakes started, but I held them at bay while I shaved and walked down the hall for a quick shower. The hallway was dirty and the shower room even dirtier. The hall rug was threadbare and no thicker than a tortilla. The shower emitted a sluggish stream of brownish water and I had to tiptoe to avoid cutting my feet on the stucco chips that covered the floor.

Back in my room I counted the money in my bulging billfold — $3,123. As soon as I realized I had time and money on my hands, the shakes started again. It got bad fast this time. My ten months of sober living had not inured me to the payment that booze demanded. The case went through my mind. It was waiting for me, but for now it was out of my control. There was an easy remedy for the shakes: drink. So I did, this time sipping the Scotch slowly from the paper cup, mixed half and half with the lukewarm ginger ale.

I decided that if I could limit my plans to this single day, today, Monday, I would be all right. I could lie low for a few days, drink, then taper off and detox. Then back to L.A. But after a few drinks, my mind became mired in a welter of plans and conspiracies, always reaching toward the ultimate: the case and Jane. It was too much. I took a large slug, straight from the bottle, locked up the room and went outside. The “managerio” gave me a slight nod and a suspicious look as I walked down the hall.

At 10:45 A.M., it was already reaching one hundred degrees. There was a sea breeze that did its best to help, but failed. I decided to leave the car and walked into town — a 502 in a foreign country was all I needed. I walked through the streets of the housing development, a blatant ripoff of American values that nonetheless carried the essence of the Mexican ethos: women and toddlers sunning themselves on the steps of the plain one-story stucco dwellings, dogs cavorting happily and chickens squawking in their low, fenced enclosures. I waved to several groups of children and they waved back. I was never a child. I came out of my mother’s womb full-grown, clutching a biography of Beethoven and an empty glass. My first words were “Where’s the booze?”

I walked down to the road that paralleled the ocean. There were fewer turistas out now. Most of the people I saw driving were Mexicans with Baja license plates. The Coast Highway took me north into Ensenada proper, past scores of signs advertising fishing, lobster dinners, and Jai alai. I passed an impressive monument similar to the American one at Mount Rushmore, this one heralding three great Mexican patriots, their heads in striking bas relief.

I was drenched with sweat now, the alcohol spreading out through my pores. I found a bar that looked like a good place to replenish my liquid content and stepped inside, but the loud Mexican disco music that blared from the jukebox drove me straight back out the door. I tried a few other dives, but the “music” was the same. Finally, I found a quiet bar on a side street. I needed a drink now, and as I sat down at the bar I arranged a stack of one dollar bills in front of me. The bartender understood and when I said “Scotch” he brought it to me wordlessly, taking a single dollar bill as payment.

I was starting to feel nervous: Armando, who I was certain had nothing to do with Fat Dog’s murder, might discover the destruction of his property and finger me to the cops. The fire I started might have spread. I was at a disadvantage not knowing Spanish — I could have checked the newspapers for mention of it. The tire marks I had left at the scene could be traced to my Camaro. My passage through the toll booths might have been noted. Fear breeds fear, and booze quells fear, temporarily.

I drank a toast to fear, draining my glass. The bar Scotch was good, so I set out on a regular procession of toasts: to Herbert Von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, to Vladimir Horowitz, to Richard Wagner, and to the guy who designed the Hollywood Bowl. Since each of these toasts was a solid two ounces of juice, my fears were soon pretty well under wraps and I started feeling good, humming along with my fantasies again. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced myself to eat a greasy plate of eggs and sausage that the barman’s wife served me with a fetching smile.

After I had had about six drinks, a rational train of thought began to emerge, along with a syllogism: I am in a bad way. I am in a bad way because there are big pieces missing in the puzzle I am trying to solve. There are big pieces in the puzzle I am trying to solve because my mind is closed to new concepts in general, and new concepts in music in specific. Wino Walter Cur-ran, my best friend, had been warning me for years of the danger of o.d.’ing on German Romanticism. Since music frees the mind, new music would free my old mind to fit together the big pieces in the puzzle I was trying to solve.

Brilliant. Booze does it again. It was time to hunt down some new music to play Greek chorus to the new mind of Fritz Brown. Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Haydn, et al. had had their day, and would have it again, in a better time, a time of reminiscence, shared with Jane. Now it was time for Bartok, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel — all those dissonant guys Walter had been fruitlessly urging on me for so long — to come to my aid.

I left a three dollar tip on the bar and walked outside. The afternoon sun hit like a blow from a sledgehammer. I adjusted my cave dweller mentality to fit the needs of a Mexican seaside town, and went searching for music to think by. It seemed like an insurmountable task at first, given the cultural ambience of the city I was digging through, but soon I warmed to the job. The booze seemed to pop out of every cell of my body, yet I stayed pleasantly, floatingly high.

Ciudad Juarez, the main drag of Ensenada, was a miniature version of L.A.’s 2nd and Broadway: giant outlet stores featuring cheap clothing, cheap radios, cheap appliances, and an incredible selection of cheap watches. I tore through the record bins, past piles of Mexi-Rock, Mexi-Disco, Mexi-Folk, Punk Rock in English, and scores of old albums by such washed-up superstars as Perry Como, Tony Bennett and Nat “King” Cole. At my third outlet store, I hit my first jackpot — a battered copy of “The Planets” by Gustav Hoist, Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Philharmonic. It was a collector’s item; it said so right there on the album cover. It set me back thirty-five cents. I inquired with the English-speaking salesgirl about record shops and she gave me detailed instructions to another one four blocks away. She repeated herself several times, no doubt on the valid assumption that drunks are bad listeners.

I really did smell like a still. I would have to clean up when I got back to my room with my booty. I found the record store. It was the most profound advertisement I had ever seen toward advancing the concept of the “ugly American.” Every wall was festooned with bigger-than-life-size posters of current American rock and pop stars. The women looked vapid and challenging at the same time. They seemed to be challenging their male counterparts — equally vapid teenagers with tight pants, blow-dried hair, and pouts that looked like an incipient offer of a head job to an electronic thrill-out featuring seven amplifiers, eight biofeedback machines, thirty-seven dildos, cocaine, quaaludes, angel dust, and that porno guy with the fourteen-inch dick.

A hard rock record was playing at peak decibel. There was a strobe light flashing at two in the afternoon. I was behind the times; I thought strobe lights were out. A pretty, buxom Mexican girl wearing a T-shirt with Mick Jagger sticking his tongue out of it approached me like a long lost music lover. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I turned around and walked back out the door, not looking back. It was too much, too soon.

I persisted in my quest and was rewarded down the street: “La Mer” and “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by Debussy — Szell and the Cleveland. Also the “Petrouchka Suite” by Stravinsky — Ozawa and the Boston Symphony — and the grand prize: a boxed set of the Bartok “String Quartets” by the Guarneri Quartet. These cost me a fast three scoots. The Stravinsky was badly scratched, but the other records were in passable condition.

It was enough to begin my journey, but I wasn’t satisfied. I hit a few more bargain bazaars and came up with “Kostelanetz Plays Gershwin,” a disc of dubious merit. The only thing now missing was a stereo. I walked back to the first jumbo outlet store and for $149.63 bought a Panasonic “Zoom” Stereo System — two dinky three-inch speakers, a turntable with an automatic changer and a cheapshit, built-in amplifier. It hardly compared with my state-of-the-art system back in L.A., but it would be enough to rock my tiny fleabag room.

I hailed a taxi and loaded my merchandise in the back seat. On the way out of town I had the cabbie stop at a liquor store where I loaded up on goodies: three half-gallons of Scotch, two six-packs of ginger ale, three bags of ice and a variety of canned meats and processed cheese food. I was storing up for what might be a long process of evolution.

My musical metamorphosis didn’t happen. I listened and I drank for two solid days, fighting off anger, fear, and paranoia. I couldn’t think of the case. When I tried to, my mind shut off and I reached for a drink or turned up the volume on the stereo in fatuous hope of speeding up my thought processes. The music didn’t help at all. I didn’t like it. It was great music that expressed profound thoughts, but it just plain didn’t send me. I found the moderns and impressionists too abstract and dissonant. There was none of the heroism of Beethoven or the lyrical passion of Brahms. The Bartok “Quartets” made me think of Jane, so I couldn’t listen to them at all.

I was getting a bad play from the manager, too: on the first day of my quest I ventured down the hall a half-dozen times to urinate, getting a contemptuous look each time. Somehow I got the feeling that she knew my history and regarded me as the precursor to bad times. So I didn’t go out of my room again, electing instead to piss in the sink.

After two days I had had enough. I had tried eating the canned meat, but threw up immediately. Twice I had awakened dehydrated to the bone and had begun sobbing. I was afraid of the d.t.’s; they seemed imminent now. The room was stifling hot, even at night. On the third night I decided to go for a walk. I shaved and went down the hall and showered off the booze and sweat stink, this time avoiding the manager. The idea of movement and the performing of old rituals heartened me a little. Back in my room I filled a pint ginger ale bottle with Scotch and put on the last of my clean clothes.

I went out to the parking lot and checked my car. It was dusty, but unharmed; the shotgun and tape deck were still in the trunk. I patted them, for luck, and left them there. I got a box of bullets out of the glove compartment and loaded my .38, slipping a dozen extra into my pocket. I walked toward the beach, feeling less tired as the ocean breeze embraced me. After half a mile or so I reached the stone steps that led down to the water. Signs proclaimed “Estero Beach.” I walked south, away from Ensenada; there would be less chance of running into people in that direction. Energy began to course through me, as I traversed the edge of the tide, the wet sand nestling my footsteps and propelling me forward.

I hadn’t had a drink in over four hours, so technically I was sober. The booze that had permeated and putrefied my system seemed to be lying in abeyance, waiting for me to make the first move. I secured my bottle in a mantle of sand, got down and cranked off twenty pushups. It wasn’t too hard; the slight stiffness as I got to my feet felt good. Maybe it wasn’t too bad, I thought. Maybe you can go back to L.A. as if none of this ever happened. Maybe it was time to get sober and stay sober.

The sound of muffled voices and the strumming of a guitar interrupted my thoughts. I was walking toward people, a late-night seaside gathering. As I crossed a rise in the sand, I saw a fire some hundred yards away and smelled roasting meat. The voices became louder and I could discern that the people were speaking in English. They were directly in my path, so I walked right up to them, feeling, strangely, only the slightest twinge of paranoia which I shrugged off — I was armed and they probably weren’t. The aroma of the roasting meat was getting to me, as was, also strangely, the need to be with people. I reached into my chest and threw a big, booming “Hi!” at the people sitting in the sand — the first word I had spoken in days.

“Friend or foe?” a male voice returned.

“Friend,” I said.

“Pull up a seat, friend,” the voice answered.

I sat down in the sand. There were eight people — five men and three women. They were young — in their twenties, and seemed to be the counter-culture type at first glance. They were sitting on blankets and sleeping bags, knapsacks and backpacks piled in a heap behind them. The slightest trace of marijuana hung in the air.

I opened with what seemed like a warm remark: “You’re the first Americans I’ve seen since I’ve been down here. That’s a gas. My Spanish is lousy.”

“National origin doesn’t mean shit,” a girl said coldly. “National origin is bourgeois pride. True friendship supersedes all that petty jive. True...”

“He doesn’t mean racism,” a bearded man interrupted. “He’s just lonely. Right, man?”

“You could say that,” I said. “I’ve been down here for a while and I don’t know anybody.”

“What’s your name, man?” he asked.

“Fritz,” said. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Brother Lee. Going around to your left we have Brother Mark, Brother Randy, Sister Julie, Sister Carol, Brother Kevin, Sister Kallie, and Brother Bob. Sister Vicky is doing the cooking tonight.” He pointed to a woman tending the fire a few yards away. I squinted to make her out. She was basting a carcass on a spit. I couldn’t place the aroma.

“Are you people a commune?” I asked.

There was general laughter. One of the girls, I think it was Sister Julie, answered me. “Commune is a tired concept, Brother Fritz. We’re together because we love each other and we care about the same things.”

I forced a smile, “You band together to survive, camping out here on the beach, right? You share your food, your shelter, and your possessions, right?” Most of the group was nodding, and as I got accustomed to the orange light from the cooking fire, I could see that they were smiling. “Doesn’t it get cold in the wintertime? What do you do then?”

“Then we move indoors man, what do you think?” This was from Brother Bob. He looked tougher than the rest, a white-trash, low-rider type. Maybe an ex-con. He was easily as big as I.

“Back off there, Brother Bob,” I said. “I’m on your side and just making friendly overtures.”

“You ask a lot of questions, man, and you look like the heat.”

“I’m just curious, that’s all. I’m a big city hick, tied down to a dull job that I have to go back to soon. You people have got a lot of freedom. I envy you.” It was the right thing to say, a superb icebreaker. I proffered my ginger ale bottle. “Here,” I said, “let’s drink to friendship. It’s good Scotch.”

I took a long drink and passed it to Brother Mark, who passed it on to Brother Randy and the others. When it came back to me again it was almost empty. I didn’t care. I had already decided this would be my last night of drinking. I ventured another question. “What’s that you’re cooking? I can’t place the smell.”

This got a big laugh all around. “It’s a dog, Brother Fritz!” Sister Kallie called gleefully, “Come look.”

I couldn’t believe it. These gentle, if somewhat strident young souls looked like dog lovers, not dog eaters. I got up and walked the few yards to the fire. Sister Kallie followed me, presumably to dig the shocked look on the big square’s face. When I checked out the barbecue close up, I started to laugh. I have never laughed as hard, before or since. The shape on the spit was unmistakably canine: a medium-sized, meaty tailwagger with gaping jaws, plucked out eyes and an amputated tail. He smelled delicious. I fell in the sand, convulsed with spasms of mad laughter.

Sister Kallie was jumping up and down, large breasts shaking beneath her peasant blouse, squealing: “He digs it! He digs it! He loves it!”

Finally I got to my feet, wiping tears from my eyes. Two of the men went to work carving up the beast as the rest of us looked on. I stroked the dog’s head, petting it tenderly, as though it were still the loyal family pet. This caused another outbreak of laughter. Two cases of beer were dragged back from the surf in a net and we popped cans and dug into our feast.

I was ravenous. All eyes were on me as I poised my fork above a jumbo slice of dog meat. Finally, casting all trepidation and social conditioning aside, I dug in. It was salty, smoky and gamey, much like a venison steak I had once eaten. I choked on it a little at first, but gradually forced it down, followed by a huge gulp of beer. This brought a rousing cheer from my newfound friends. After that it was easy and I scarfed the rest of my plate greedily. I forewent the bottle of soy sauce that was being passed around: I was a purist.

The city-bred protein entered my system, my first real food in several days, and a sublime elation came over me. It’s going to be all right, I thought. This feeling was quickly engulfed by a wave of sweaty lust — directed at Sister Kallie and her big chi-chi’s. Maybe dog meat was an aphrodisiac.

As I lay sated, staring up at the starry Mexican night, the girls cleaned up and Brother Bob expertly rolled joints. It was party time. Soon the entire group was sitting around the fire, while I remained a few yards away, staring heavenward, wanting to be coaxed. I was. Sister Julie called to me. “Come on, Fritz, join us. It’s sharing time.” So I joined them.

I didn’t want to destroy the moment, but there was a question I had to ask. “Where the hell did you get that delicious dog?” I said. “I want to thank his master.”

Brother Lee answered me, lighting a joint and passing it. “We get our meat from two sources. There’s a guy who runs a bait store down by the pier. He traps dogs and sells them to his cousin, who has a taco stand in T.J. The cheapest, juiciest, meatiest tacos in Baja. All perro meat. We trade him a bag of weed for two juicy hounds. Sometimes we find dead dogs south of here off a bend in the Coast Road. Cars squash them. Wham. Lots of times we have to ignore them, though. Their ribs get all smashed up and embedded in their skin. Too dangerous to eat.”

“I toast all of you,” I said. “Truly you are the survivors of both capitalism and the rapacious, fanatic counter-culture it spawned. When I said earlier that I envied you your freedom, I was bullshitting. I thought you were just another cadre of dumb hippies. But I was wrong to condescend. I apologize. In a small way, you have life by the ass and I salute you.” They didn’t quite know how to react. The joint was passed to me and I inhaled deeply. I was expecting more applause or laughter. Instead, through the blazing fire I got warm smiles and puzzled looks.

“What do you do back in L.A., man?” Brother Randy asked.

I gave it some thought. Another joint came my way and I hit again. This time even deeper. It was good shit. I hadn’t been blown away on weed since my Hollywood Vice days, but I was getting there now; drifting into a shadow world of fantasy. I considered Brother Randy’s question for a second, then answered: “I do my best to survive. Most of the time it’s easy, but lately it’s been tough. Mostly I repossess cars. I hope you people dig property rights enough to realize that repo men are necessary. We keep the credit racket in line, and keep America from going insane and bringing back the days of debtor’s prison. People like you, the so-called counter-culture, can exist only in places where capitalism is strong. I used to be a cop, but I gave it up. I saw too much stuff I couldn’t tolerate.”

I stopped and took a blow off the pipe that was handed to me, became full-out zonked and surveyed my rapt audience. The women looked very beautiful. When I returned to my story, I took off on a rhapsody of poetic lies: “The corruption, the racism, the violence, I couldn’t handle it. Dealing with so many lost people, most of whom were wearing blue uniforms, the young people trying to live differently, more honestly than their parents, and how the cops reviled them for their lifestyle. The blacks in the ghettos, the winos, the homeless derelicts of Skid Row. There was a gentle side to me I couldn’t express, so in the end I quit. What I really wanted to do was learn to play the violin. But I didn’t have the patience or the drive to pursue it.” It had started out to be rhapsodic bullshit, but on finishing I felt that the whole fabric of lies contained some intrinsic truth that I couldn’t put my finger on. I was floating so high on weed and dog meat that everything seemed within my reach, but this eluded me.

“So you came to Baja looking for something, right, Fritz?” This was from Sister Carol.

I laughed. “You could say that.”

“Do you think you’ll find it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How old are you?” my favorite, Sister Kallie, asked. Warm antennas or tendrils seemed to drift toward me from her direction. Her head seemed to be enclosed in a halo.

“Thirty-three.”

“That’s not too old to change your life,” she said. “You’ve been through some heavy shit. Pain causes growth. You could still be a great violin player. I learned the guitar when I was twenty-four.”

“Thanks. Maybe you’re right.”

The party started to break up. Everyone except the sullen Brother Bob wished me good night and invited me to return any evening to enjoy their hospitality. I told them I would take them up on it, only next time I would bring steaks and beer. They then wandered off, grabbing their bedrolls and heading for cozy sand drifts. Except for Kallie. She stayed behind, sitting cross-legged across from me by the remnants of the fire.

“Are you the odd woman out, Kallie?” I asked.

“Not really. Mark and I are together. I just felt like staying behind and rapping for a while.”

“Thanks. I wasn’t quite ready to walk back to my room yet.”

“You know, I didn’t believe most of what you told us. I believe you were a cop, all right. You look like one. But the rest of it was a con job, right? I mean about being sickened by the violence and racism and all that. Right?”

“I guess so.”

“Why did you lie?”

“I’m not sure. I wanted you people to like me and I wanted to move you on a level you could appreciate, but I didn’t want to give up too much of myself in the process, I guess.”

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Bad trouble?”

I nodded.

“I knew it. It’s your eyes. They’re scary. They’re not indent, whatever that is.”

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“No. You’re scared enough for the both of us. I’ve got good antenna. I can tell when someone’s hurting. You’re hurting bad.”

“I’ll be all right, I think. There are some things I have to do down here, and a big mess waiting for me back in L.A. I’ve been drinking, but that’s over, so I should be okay. I appreciate your concern, Kallie. You’re a lovely young woman.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I hope so. I got involved with a woman in L.A. just before I left, but I’m not sure what will happen when I return.”

“I was just wondering.”

“I’ve got some business to attend to that should keep me busy down here another few days. I’d like to see you again.”

“I don’t think that’s possible. I want to give you something, but I don’t want to get involved.”

“I guess I was being forward. I’m sorry. I’m very stoned. It’s a strange sensation.”

“Don’t be sorry, Fritz. I like you. I’ve got a thing for men who are hurting. It’s kind of sick, I guess. If you want, you could stay with me tonight.”

“I’d like that.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to get it on. I’m not promiscuous. I’ve got an aura. I can impart good feelings to people in trouble without sex. I’m a love carrier. I can help you. If you could see your own face, then you’d know how bad your vibes are.”

“I’ll do anything you like, sweetheart.”

Kallie led me to a high sand drift away from the other brothers and sisters. We laid out a large double sleeping bag and got in with our clothes on. We held hands and cracked jokes for about an hour. After a while exhaustion caught up with me and I started to drift off. Kallie placed my head on her breasts and gently ran her fingers through my hair until I fell asleep. I awoke in that same position hours later, as dawn broke across the water. Kallie had bared her breasts during the night and they were flushed and sweaty from the weight of my head. As I came awake, she did too. I looked at her expectantly, hoping her nakedness meant that we could now make love, but Kallie shook her head. We stood up and embraced.

“Thank you,” I said.

Kallie nodded and squeezed my hand. “Don’t come back, Fritz. I know you. You’ll do something to blow it here. I’ll remember you in my meditations. Count on that.” It was very final. I kissed her on the cheek and walked back to my life.

My room looked different when I returned to it. The squalor of peeling paint, the musty smell and the rusty furnishings caused me a long moment of self-revulsion. But that passed. The past was dead and there was a future to contend with. I started by pouring the remains of my Scotch down the sink. Then I carted my records up the fire escape to the roof of the building and sailed them off” in the direction of the housing development. Most of them died abruptly, but some managed to land on the roofs and gravel front yards of the impoverished dwellings. It made me feel good, like a god sending culture to the culturally deprived.

Back in my room I hemmed and hawed, worried and fretted. It was time to shit or get off the pot. I opened the closet and reached up to the high shelf for the wallets of the two men I killed.

The first wallet belonged to one Reyes Sandoval. It contained a car registration, a baptism certificate dated 1941, scores of Catholic blessing cards, some Mexican currency, and a valid Baja California driver’s license, sans photograph. He was born in Juarez, October 1, 1940, making him thirty-nine at the time of his death. His height and weight were in kilos and meters, from which I figured him to be medium-sized. Neither man had weighed much as I dragged them into the hideous death shack. The important thing was his address, which was right here in Ensenada: 1179 Felicia Terraco. There was a photograph of a nice-looking, pleasantly overweight woman holding two cuddly children, a boy and a girl. Reyes Sandoval, Mexican gunsel, was a family man.

There was nothing else of any interest in the billfold — no notations or papers of any kind. I kept the driver’s license and ripped the rest of the papers into tiny pieces and placed them in an ashtray.

The second wallet, a gaudy machine-tooled Tijuana souvenir job, yielded more: Henry Cruz, forty-two, was American born and possessed a California driver’s license, issued to an address in Bell Gardens, a white-trash suburb of L.A. From the mug-shot-like photograph and my vague recollection of that horrible night, Cruz was the man who came into the shack after me, the one I killed at close range. There was forty dollars in American money in the billfold along with a piece of paper with a telephone number. I wrote it down and, except for his California license, burned the remains of both wallets, including the Mexican money. I took the ashtray full of charred paper down the hallway to the bathroom, dumped it into the toilet and flushed. I locked the room, got into my car, and headed for 1179 Felicia Terraco.

A friendly English-speaking news vendor in downtown Ensenada gave me directions, pointing north to a large scrub-covered hillside dotted with small houses. I drove up, taking a dirt trail that ran out of Ensenada proper straight through a large bean field. My trusty Camaro strained in low up steep, narrow streets lined with dwellings that ranged from “Tobacco Road” sharecropper shacks to proudly tended stucco four-flats with rock gardens. The street signs were hard to follow and inexplicably the numbers ran out of sequence. After backtracking repeatedly I found 1179, a cube-like, off-white hut of aluminum siding — the kind of material trailers are made of. It was small, but looked comfortable. I could see airconditioning units attached to the side windows, denoting the Sandovals as members of the Ensenada middle-class. All I could do was wait.

I parked against a wooden railing that separated the road from the edge of the bluff. The view was spectacular: Ensenada to my left and directly below; to my right the crystal blue Pacific laced with darker seaweed beds and dotted with small boats.

After an hour or so I was rewarded. The Sandoval widow came out of the house, alone. She had lost weight since the picture in Sandoval’s wallet had been taken and she looked troubled. She walked three houses down and got into an old Chevy and drove away, toward Ensenada. I let her go. What I wanted was probably in the house, whatever it was. I decided not to risk a daytime B&E. Too many prying eyes about. Since I would have to wait until nightfall, I drove down into Ensenada for a lobster dinner.

After the meal, I got a sudden urge to call Jane and tell her I was all right; I had been gone six days now. But I decided not to risk it. She would ask too many questions that as yet I couldn’t answer. There was another call to be made, though. I dug out the number I had copied from the effects of Henry Cruz. He was an L.A. homeboy, so Los Angeles was the obvious place to dial.

I found a bank of enclosed phone booths in a dark passageway at the back of the restaurant and shoved a handful of Mexican coins into the slot, first to reach the L.A. operator and then to get through to my number. No answer. After thirty rings the operator refunded my money, flooding the coin box like a Vegas payoff. I dialed again. This time the phone was answered on the third ring. A friendly sing-song voice called out “Hillcrest Country Club. May I help you?”

I almost died right there. Cruz. Ralston. Fat Dog. Kupferman. Hillcrest. The woman was cooing into the mouthpiece, her voice melding into my colossal adrenalin rush. “May I help you? This is Hillcrest. May I help you?” I hung up. There was nothing to say.

Henry Cruz, one of Fat Dog’s killers, had been calling someone — undoubtedly Richard Ralston — at Hillcrest. Fat Dog was blackmailing Ralston and had been knocked off for his perfidy. On impulse I called Hillcrest back. The same operator answered. “Richard Ralston, please,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the voice returned, “the first tee is closed for the day. Did you wish a starting time for mixed foursomes tomorrow?... I...” She wanted to continue her sing-song helpfulness, but I cut her off:

“Is Ralston the starter there? The caddy master?”

“Yes, sir, he is. If you’ll...”

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up.

I paid my check and cruised the Ensenada streets, killing time before dark. The seaside town was coming alive with the setting sun — servicemen in civvies beginning an evening of barhopping, Mexican Nationals out for a stroll en familia, the curio shops jammed. As the sun dropped below the ocean horizon, I headed toward the high bluff north of town. This time it didn’t take me long to find the place. I parked in the same spot and walked across the dirt road to the darkened house.

I had good cover; the night was dark and Mexi-rock was blasting from the adjoining houses. I knocked on the front door and then the back, getting no response. Looking both ways for signs of trouble, I picked the back door lock with a straight pin, sliding the bolt back with a jammed-in credit card. I entered into a room that was part service porch, part playroom. A beat-up washing machine and dryer competed for space with a huge welter of dolls and broken model airplanes.

Keeping my flashlight low to avoid creating glare, I walked into the living room. I had to laugh. It was crammed with T.V. sets and cheap stereo consoles, at least two dozen of them, covering every bit of floor space. It was safe to assume the late Reyes Sandoval was a burglar and/or a fence. I flashed my light into corners. Nothing. No dressers, no tables, no shelves.

To the right of the living room was a kiddie-room-sewing-room combo. More broken toys and an elaborate loom of the kind that turns out Mexican souvenir blankets. On the floor were a dozen Singer sewing machines. Reyes was an inept killer, but a good thief. I checked the closet, tearing through racks of gaudy dresses and men’s suits. Nothing. Nothing in the pockets except cleaning tags.

I saved the bedroom at the end of the narrow hall for last. It slept the whole family: there was a set of children’s bunk beds against the wall and a jumbo canopied bed in the middle of the room. I closed the door and risked turning on the light. A score of cheap oil paintings of Jesus stared down at me from every wall. The artists had all portrayed Him as a Mexican. Above the bed a different, more somber holy man gave me the eye. I couldn’t place him. He was a tough-looking Biblical Chicano with a shepherd’s staff. Maybe he was the patron saint of low-lifers.

There were three sets of dresser drawers against one wall and a large walk-in closet. I dug into the dressers first and hit pay dirt. Pay stubs, a big pile of them, made out to Reyes Juan Sandoval and bearing the imprimatur of the Baja Nacional Cannerio de Pescado. Mrs. Galino’s high school Spanish class finally did me some good: Reyes was a recent employee of the Baja Fish Cannery. I put one pay stub into my pocket. The job designation seemed to be “laborero,” but the numerical computations were beyond my comprehension. The walk-in closet contained fishing gear: rods, poles, bait, and tackle boxes.

I was getting nervous and sweating in the sealed-up house, so I turned off the light and gave the kitchen a quick going-over — boxes of canned tuna fish, a refrigerator packed with leftovers, and a dirty sink. But I had a lead. I went out the way I came in, closing the door gently.

I consumed time on Sunday with swimming and aimless sightseeing. I located the fish cannery, a smelly factory on a low, flat wharf. I got up at four on Monday morning and drove there dressed for work.

It was lucky that I got there early. Some hippie types and destitute Mexican Nationals were milling outside the gate when I arrived, passing a bottle of Gallo White Port. From them I learned that there was a fleet of tuna boats coming in today and that a large number of swampers would be needed to unload them at eighteen dollars American or x number of pesos. I decided it was worth a try.

The crowd of work-hungry men swelled to about forty. At dawn a group of officious-looking Mexicans came down and began handing out “work cards” which we were exhorted to keep in our pockets, lest we lose them and forfeit our day’s pay. Next we were formed into work crews of ten men each, and sent down to the dock to await the arrival of the tuna fleet. I was hoping they would never show, allowing me plenty of time to gently question my coworkers about Reyes Sandoval. But it was not to be — after a half hour’s wait the ocean was churning and bubbling with scores of small fishing craft heading straight toward us.

It was the hardest day’s work of my life. We formed a line at dockside and huge oilcloth bundles of smelly, greasy fish were passed to us from the ships. We passed them on up the line where pickup trucks waited to take them to the processing area. Soon I was drenched in sweat and my brand new work clothes were covered with fish oil. When one boat was unloaded, we took a two- or three-minute break while another one moored to the dock. There was little time for conversation. At eleven o’clock we took forty-five minutes for lunch. A vendor came by and dispensed chorizo, tacos, and burritos to the hungry slaves.

During our break I broached the subject of Reyes Sandoval to three gringos and three Chicanos. They didn’t know who the hell I was talking about and couldn’t have cared less. We resumed work and I vowed never to touch another tuna sandwich, ever again.

At long last the workday ended. I was beyond tired, the resident of a new realm of exhaustion. As the last tuna boat headed back to sea a beaming Mexican came down to the dock and distributed our pay envelopes.

As we filed out toward the gate in small talkative groups, I saw her. I knew I knew her, a severe, fiercely sexual woman in her mid-twenties with a red natural. A gringa.

I followed her. She was walking ahead of a crowd of women dressed in smocks — assembly line workers in the cannery, probably — but she was no factory peon. She walked ahead, aloof and proud, smartly dressed in a tailored pantsuit. I wondered what she would look like nude, then I remembered — she was the girl performing in the porno photos I had found in Fat Dog’s arson shack! She was older now a mature woman with the mien and sexual charisma of the very worldly. I remembered that she was the only girl in the pictures not performing with animals. It was too good, too right to pass up.

Keeping a safe distance behind, I followed her out the gate and down the broad boulevard that led into Ensenada. After a block she got into an old Mercedes. I dashed for my car, got in and jammed a U-turn up to the first parking space available behind her. Then I waited. She was still sitting at the wheel of her car, as if deciding on a course of action. Finally she pulled out, turning left into the middle of the Ensenada shopping district. I was right behind her. She turned left again on Ciudad D’Juarez and drove north, out of the city. Soon we were heading across the scrubland that fronted the bluff where the Sandoval family lived.

Keeping a car between us, I followed the old Mercedes up the bluff and around a mile or so of winding roads to Felicia Terraco. I wasn’t surprised. Walter used to tell me that everything in life was connected. I didn’t believe him. Now I did. It was eerie, almost like proof of the existence of God.

When she rounded the final turn before the Sandoval casa, I stayed behind. I waited five minutes, then left the car and walked around the corner. Sure enough, Red’s Mercedes was pulled up in the Sandoval driveway. She had to return my way; Felicia Terraco dead-ended a quarter mile in the opposite direction. I waited nervously, discarding my fish-permeated shirt and tilting back the driver’s seat so I could prop my feet on the dashboard.

Red skidded around the corner a few minutes later, narrowly missing the divider. I caught a glimpse of her fear-flushed face. She looked anguished and disoriented. I counted to ten and began pursuit. We were back in Ensenada in half the time it took us to make the trip up. Red Top was driving fast and erratically, sending up clouds of dust that kept me hidden behind her as she tore through the sandy area outside of town. I was getting frightened for her; she was distraught, self-destructive, and in imminent danger of totaling her car.

When she hit the busy Ensenada streets she cleaned up her act, slowing down and driving with restraint through town to a quiet residential block on its east side. This was a side of Ensenada I hadn’t seen: tree-lined streets and up-to-date condo-convenience apartments that reminded me of L.A.’s better suburbs. She pulled up to the curb in front of an elegant, pseudo-French chateau apartment house, and I pulled up directly behind her. I was throwing caution to the wind, because there was no possible ploy I could use in confronting her. It would have to be direct, and that scared me. This was not my country.

She had not yet noticed me, I was sure of that. She was in some nether world of fear and self-obsession, staring up at the building as if debating the risk of entering. Then she bolted, slamming the car door and running into the large vestibule. I tucked my gun into my pocket and ran after her, entering the foyer just in time to catch sight of her going up a flight of carpeted stairs off to my left. I followed, taking the stairs three at a time. My rubber-soled work shoes made my approach soundless and I caught her in the fourth floor hallway, nervously unlocking an apartment door.

I waited until she was almost inside, then shoved the door open and grabbed her just as she began to scream, putting a hand over her mouth and wrestling her to a couch in the middle of the room. She was straining hard in my grip, with the unnatural strength of the very scared. As I sat her down, my hand still clamped over her mouth, I spoke as gently as I could: I’m not going to hurt you. Please believe me. I know you’re in trouble. I’m going to mention some names. You nod if you believe I want to help you, okay? Then I’ll let go of you and we can talk, okay?” She nodded, the terror in her eyes lessening slightly. “Fat Dog Baker, Richard Ralston, Omar Gonzalez, Reyes Sandoval, Henry Cruz.” At the mention of the last two names she began nodding vigorously and squirming in my grasp. I let her go and sat back on the couch holding my breath.

She started to cry, and I made no effort to stop her. “Who are you?” she finally got out between sobs.

“My name is Brown. I’m a private investigator,” I said. “The people I mentioned are all involved in a case I’m working on. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Are Henry and Reyes all right?”

“I don’t know. Is this your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“I followed you here from the cannery. I could tell you were scared. What is it? What’s frightening you?”

“Henry and Reyes are gone. They’ve been gone for a week. I know they’re in trouble.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. They were supposed to do this job for this rich man. This guy Henry used to play baseball with fixed it up. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was dangerous. I told Henry that, but he wouldn’t believe me. He wanted the stuff too bad.”

“What stuff?”

“You know. Stuff. Smack. This rich guy was going to give Henry a lifetime supply. Because the job was dangerous.”

“Was Henry a dealer?”

“What do you mean ‘was’? Is Henry all right? Tell me!”

I hesitated.

“He’s all right as far as I know. Is he strung out?”

“Yeah. Bad.”

“Was this guy Henry used to play baseball with named Richard Ralston?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of job was he supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay. Look, what’s your name?”

“Dorcas. I mean Dori. Dorcas is a shitty name. It sounds like dork, so I use Dori.”

“Dori, I know Reyes Sandoval is a burglar, and you tell me Henry is strung out. I don’t care. I don’t want to bust anyone. This case I’m involved in is too complicated to explain to you. I need the man who hired Henry to do this job. Then maybe I can find out if Henry is all right. We both know that this man wanted Henry to kill somebody, right? That’s the only thing it could be.”

Dori collapsed in sobs, her body quaking. “I know, I know, I know! Now this guy Ralston is after me. He says Henry is gone, Reyes is gone, and the dope is gone. He thinks I know where Henry is. I told him I know where the dope is — he can have it back — but Henry is gone and Reyes is gone and I just know they’re dead!”

“Sssh. Maybe they’re not. Ralston wouldn’t be bothering you if he knew they were dead, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Better than maybe. Probably. Can you tell me who hired Henry and Reyes to do this job?”

“I don’t know his name. Ralston set it up. He’s a rich American, I know that. He’s got a huge house down the coast. Henry told me about it, and I remembered passing by there once.”

“Can you take me there?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Has Ralston been hassling Sandoval’s wife? I know you know her. I followed you there.”

“Yes. Tina’s scared, too. She sent her kids to T.J. to live with her parents.”

“I think you and Tina should lay low for a while. I’ll make you a deal. Show me this rich guy’s place tonight, and I’ll give you and Tina Sandoval some money to hide out on. I’ll even drive you to the border.”

“How much money?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Really?” Dori smiled for the first time.

“Really. I’ve got it right here.” I patted my wallet.

“What about my things?”

“Forget them. You’re probably in danger. Forget your job, too. You can always come back to it. If you can take me to this place, then I’ll drop you with the Sandoval woman. We’ll ditch Mexico tomorrow.

“But Tina’s Mexican. She don’t have a green card.”

“Let me worry about that. Now pack a bag so we can split.”

She went into the adjoining room and I surveyed the apartment: it was cheap plush, an unschooled person’s idea of high class. Dori came back, suitcase in hand, surprisingly fast. She was pulling together nicely. The hardness I had discerned in her at the cannery was real. “One thing before we leave,” I said, “where’s this supply of dope Henry received?”

She nodded toward the bedroom. We walked in. She opened up a dresser. Hidden underneath some men’s shirts were six plastic baggies of white powder. A fortune in heroin if the stuff was pure. I opened a baggie and tasted: the blood rushed to my head and my body shook for a brief instant. It was very pure. If I hadn’t killed Henry Cruz he would have died of an overdose before too long. I looked at Dori.

“It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Extremely,” I said. “Stuff like this doesn’t deserve to live. We’re going to hold a funeral service for it.”

“But it’s worth a lot of money.”

“The money you’d get from selling it wouldn’t deserve to live, either. Where’s the bathroom?” It was adjacent to the kitchen. I carried the baggies in, and emptied them, one by one, into the toilet. It made me feel pure and very moral. When I flushed, it was almost like an act of penance for my old sins. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We drove south in my car and we talked, or mostly Dori did. She was nervous, worried, but excited over the prospect of my thousand dollars. She had had a long, hard relationship with Henry Cruz. She was an L.A. girl, and Cruz had taken her virginity when she was fifteen. They had been together ever since. He had turned her on to sex, which she loved, and to the L.A. doper ripoff underworld, whose intrigue she found fascinating, and to drugs, which she hated and never used more than nominally, to placate Henry.

They had had their ups and downs. Henry had gone to jail and she had hustled to keep him on dope while he was inside. He had made her pose for specially photographed “Deluxe Collectors Item” pornography books that he had given his friends. He had fixed her up with the owner of the cannery, where she worked as a combination typist/party girl. The cannery mogul paid for her apartment and gave her a grand a month in exchange for frequent nighttime visits.

Henry was a rat, she admitted, but she loved him, and that was that. To my dismay, she was turning me on. My mind was reverberating away from the case toward various sleazy ploys to bed her. Her sexual power was overwhelming. To keep it at bay, I opened up a new line of questioning. “Tell me about Richard Ralston.”

“What about him?”

“Everything. Think about it for a minute.” While Dori thought, I concentrated on my driving. The terrain was unspectacular at night, dark hills on my left and the dark Pacific on my right. I was concerned about Dori’s reliability. Would she be able to find the place?

She read my mind: “Don’t worry, I’m not conning you,” she said. “Henry showed me the place. He was in fucking awe of it. It’s some crib.”

“You’re a mind-reader, Dori. Tell me about Ralston.”

“Ralston is kind of a low-level manipulator. A ladies’ man, too. He’s known as ‘Hot Rod’ because he’s hung like a barracuda. I know, because Henry made me fuck him once. He and Henry used to play baseball together, minor league. Back in the fifties. He’s into a lot of shit, gambling, bookmaking, all that. He’s got this golf course job that’s really a front, and he’s got this hotel and bar that he owns. Really a sleazo racket. He’s got all these poor old guys on pensions and Welfare living there, all boozehounds. They live in his fleabag hotel and drink in his bar. It’s their whole fucking life. Hot Rod collects their checks each month, subtracts their bar tab and rent, sells them cigarettes that he gets from a fence dirt cheap, and gives them a few bucks spending money. No shit! He told me about it once. Most of the old fuckers at the hotel are caddies too old to carry bags. Hot Rod says he’s keeping them alive, if you can call it living. Personally, he’s got a lot of style; you know, he’s sexy and charming and all that. But basically he’s a shit. That’s okay, though. I like shits. I relate to them. Henry’s a shit and we’ve been together a long time. You’re a kind of a shit, too. I can tell.”

“Thanks.”

“No, really. I meant it as a compliment.”

“Thanks.”

We drove in silence, I was keyed up. My case was moving upward, in power, property and prestige from the depths of caddy despair to the seaside casas of the rich, and I was furiously anxious to unravel it, conclude it, mete out whatever justice I could, and return to Jane and Walter and some kind of peace. I checked my watch. We had been driving for fifty minutes. Dori started getting nervous, muttering to herself.

“Now?” I asked.

“Soon,” she replied, sticking her head out the window to look for landmarks. “Okay, now,” she said. “There’s a road just beyond the next bend. Slow down and turn when I tell you.”

I did and my headlights caught a wide, well-traveled dirt road leading straight up toward what looked like a pass between two large mountains. As we approached, the terrain flattened out and the mountains became hills. We passed between them, going inland toward a dark, cold, nothingness. It was very silent. Far in the distance coyotes bayed. The road meandered up and down among a series of small hills. It was utterly dark, my high beams the only light.

Gradually the road widened and off to my right a large white shape began to emerge and take form.

“There,” Dori said, pointing toward it, “that’s the place.”

I pulled off the road. “You stay here,” I said. “I’ll be back within half an hour. Don’t leave the car.”

She nodded nervously. I took my shotgun and flashlight from the trunk and walked toward my objective. As I got within two hundred yards I realized I was looking at a rancho that would have made a Texas land baron proud. It was two stories high, of white stucco, and had three wings running in different directions. It was a stylistic mishmash, a cross between an American prison and a Turkish mosque. Lights burning in a huge picture window in the main front wing cast an orange glow over a carport that held three cars.

Surprisingly, there was no fence or surrounding wall. Whoever owned this palatial rancho evidently believed in the safety of the wide open spaces, so I walked right up to the cars and examined them: A ’76 Ford Ranchero wagon, a four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruiser, and a late model Volvo sedan. All bore California plates, which I committed to memory.

I circled the house at a radius of fifty yards or so, to avoid being seen from the darkened rooms. The rancho was set on a foundation of concrete that extended out into the mesquite land that bordered it. By my watch it took me seven minutes to make a complete circuit of la casa grande. There was nothing out of the ordinary, only an eerie desert stillness. Suddenly music cut the night. It was unmistakable: the Schumann Fourth Symphony, the opening movement, the brass pounding up and down like a drum roll. My adversary was an aesthetic and he possessed a stereo system even better than my own, sending shock waves of German romanticism into mesquite land and canyons for miles around.

Dori was frightened, dropping her cigarette into her lap and burning herself as I opened my car door. I put the shotgun into the back seat and hit the ignition. “What’s that creepy music?” she said. “It scared the shit out of me.”

“That’s the good stuff,” I said, digging into the glove compartment and writing down the license numbers. “Learn to dig it, it’ll set you free. The guy who owns that pad has taste.”

“I think his taste sucks. Give me rock any day.”

“Rock causes cancer, acne, and the creeping crud. Back to Ensenada. I’ll help you move some more of your stuff up to the Sandoval place. Then I’m taking off.”

“What about the money you promised?”

“You’ll get it. A grand for you and a grand for Tina. I’m feeling magnanimous.”

Dori grabbed me, hugged me fiercely and planted a big wet one on my cheek. “You’re really a nice shit. You know that?”

“Thanks.”

I pulled a U-turn and we began our return trip. Walter had indeed been right. Everything was connected. But was it decipherable? For the first time since Fat Dog knocked on my office door over two long weeks ago, I wondered if anything was.

When we got back to Dori’s apartment, I gave her fifteen minutes to move as much of her stuff out as would fit into both our cars. She went about it hurriedly, hauling large armloads of clothes out the door and running down the stairs. I followed suit, not running. I noticed that she left untouched the men’s clothing I had seen earlier. Within twenty minutes, both our cars were packed with feminine goodies and a lurid library of pop writers.

We then headed north, toward Sandoval Bluff. When we arrived at the Sandovals’, I hurried to unload my car, stacking Dori’s things neatly on the ground. No lights were on in the house. That was good; it would be easier to drop my bad news. I dug into my wallet, bloated with other men’s money, pulled out two thousand in fifties and C-notes and placed them in Dori’s hand. She just looked at me. A period in her life was over and she knew it. “Henry’s dead, Dori,” I said. “Reyes Sandoval, too. I saw their bodies. There’s a big time bad scene going on and it’s going to get worse. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but you and Tina had better get the hell out of here and don’t come back. Go to San Francisco, or Phoenix, or some place you’ve never seen before. Thanks for helping me.”

She didn’t say anything. When I kissed her cheek, I felt a slow trickle of tears. I got in my car and headed for the border, leaving behind in my room the cheap phonograph and an assortment of soiled clothes.

I pulled into T.J. at 2:00 A.M. I bought Jane a handbag made out of armadillo’s skin. I laughed when I paid for it. Its claws unlocked makeup compartments and it had beady rhinestone eyes. I fingered it for luck as I crossed the border back into California.