Finnegan's week

CHAPTER 7

“We don’t know how many pallets’re gone, but we know there’s been a major theft,” the warehouse superintendent said to Detective Bobbie Ann Doggett. “We’ll have to do a complete inventory.”

“When did somebody last see pallets in this spot?” Bobbie asked, indicating the only vacant space in that part of the quayside warehouse.

“Five days ago,” he said. “One of our people can definitely say they were here then.”

“And you’re sure the pallets contained boxes of shoes?” Bobbie asked, glancing at the report she’d received from a patrolman.

“Flight-deck shoes,” the supervisor said. “Like these.” He pulled up his right trouser leg and showed Bobbie his steel-toe high-top shoe. “I could be wrong, but I think there’s hundreds of pairs missing. Maybe more. We’ll soon know.”

“How many civilian truckers would you say had access to this warehouse during the past five days?” Bobbie asked. “Both day and night?”

“Well, we’re prestaging,” he said, “so I’d say a dozen. Maybe a dozen haulers.”

“A dozen. No more than that?”

“Could be more, I don’t really know,” the supervisor said.

It was the same story every time: no suspects, uncertainty as to what was stolen, not sure when the crime occurred. At least this time it was narrowed down to the past five days.

When Bobbie was leaving, the supervisor said, “Guess our security around here ain’t too good, huh?”

“I’d rank it with domestic beer and the House Armed Services Committee,” Bobbie replied.

After returning to the office Bobbie notified Naval Investigative Service of the grand theft, figuring they’d want to deal with it due to the large amount stolen. She got a female special agent on the phone, and after explaining the case to the woman, Bobbie said, “Guess we could handle it if you want us to. A dozen different civilian haulers coulda done it. Maybe more.”

“A dozen? Hopeless,” the special agent said. “We’re still snowed under around here. The Tailhook business is taking forever. Tailhook’s turning into the thing-that-wouldn’t-die. Halloween, part ten!”

“I don’t mind working on this one,” Bobbie said eagerly. “It’s pretty dead around here right now.”

“You got it, honey,” the special agent said. “Let us know if you come up with a suspect.”

After Bobbie hung up she had other things to think about besides navy shoes. Tomorrow night was quarterly qualification with her.45 automatic. They’d be using the North Island pistol range for the night shoot instead of the Border Patrol range. Bobbie liked it when she got to shoot the practical weapons course. She enjoyed the challenge of speed-loading, running, dropping to her knee to shoot multiple targets. But night shooting also had its charms. The smell of cordite and the muzzle flash were thrilling. And it was a relief to discover that the navy’s trusty 1911 model.45 didn’t kick all that much, not like a.357 magnum.

An instructor had said to her: “It’s a great old handgun. When you got a big punkin ball going at your target from that huge black hole, you know that if you hit what you’re aiming at nothing’s gonna be coming back at you. Very reassuring, this old gun.”

It was a big pistol for such a small woman, but Bobbie Ann Doggett had surprised everyone including herself by being a very competent shooter.

By the time that the thief, Pepe Palmera, awoke before dawn, his toes were black and swollen, but not quite as painful as before. Still, he was too sore to wear his new shoes, so using a broom as a cane he hobbled barefoot down the pothole-studded street to the stolen van.

When he got to the truck he stumbled into a pool of liquid. He used his flashlight and saw that a drum had been pried open and tipped over, spilling onto the road. The oily liquid had a horrible odor, but wasn’t scorching his feet, so he knew it wasn’t acid. It smelled something like the D.D.T. they used when he was a boy.

Pepe wiped off some of the stinking stuff in the weeds by the road. He’d felt some discomfort when that slime slithered between his toes and bathed the deep fungal cracks in his skin-that dermal absorbent slime.

After going home and drinking coffee, he found his broken toes felt better, so Pepe eased into the steel-toe shoes, not bothering to wash his feet. If only he’d been wearing those shoes when the drum had toppled over! Then Pepe drove the van to a pottery maker named Rubén Ochoa who sold his goods to customers in San Diego and Los Angeles. Rubén was always in need of a truck.

The pottery maker was happy to see the thief that morning. It seemed that he had a consignment of pottery that had to get to San Diego, and the truck he’d planned to use had transmission problems. Pepe had a pasaporte, a laminated border-crossing card good for seventy-two-hour visits to the U.S. but not good more than twenty-five miles from the border. Since the delivery was to San Diego, Pepe could do the job for him, and when Pepe returned to Tijuana, Rubén would pay him top price for the delivery, and take the stolen truck off his hands for a good price.

Striking a deal was a sure thing, so while the two men haggled over details, one of Rubén Ochoa’s workers carried the pottery consignment to the van while another spray-painted the doors to obliterate GREEN EARTH HAULING AND DISPOSAL.

Still another worker drove to a nearby junkyard to buy an ignition with a key that worked, to replace the damaged one. While en route, he stole a pair of Mexican license plates from a truck parked on the street.

The U.S. Customs officers might check license plates, but they’d seldom do a check on vehicle identification numbers, and if they did, Pepe was prepared to say that he couldn’t find his vehicle registration card. And he could even produce bogus documentation claiming that he was the owner/hauler of the pottery.

By the time that Pepe was ready to leave for the Otay Mesa border gate, he wasn’t feeling well. The little thief was perspiring, and had a terrible headache. Also, he had to keep swallowing saliva that kept forming in his mouth. He ran to the toilet and vomited, feeling a little better afterward.

Influenza was going around Colonia Libertad, and the other colonias as well. He’d been stricken by it a week ago and, until now, thought he was getting better. Pepe hoped that the wait at U.S. Customs would not be a long one. He wanted to deliver the pottery, get back to Tijuana, buy some marijuana, and go to bed until the fever passed.

Luis Zúniga, though younger, had always been stronger than his friend Jaime Cisneros. Jaime had asthma and had been sickly all his life, but even Luis got nauseated after they’d tipped over the drum full of oily liquid. The liquid was slimy and smelled terrible. Both children knew it was not motor oil, new or reclaimed. Luis got splashed with the stuff, but Jaime got absolutely drenched. It splashed onto their faces, hands and clothing, and they ran to Luis’s house to rinse it off as best they could in a tub of water outside.

Luis got very sick to his stomach when he went to bed that night, and he developed the worst headache of his life. His mother gave him aspirin but it didn’t help. Jaime got what his mother thought was his worst asthma attack ever. In the middle of the night she gave him some medicine but he couldn’t hold it down. He tried his inhaler but it didn’t seem to have any effect.

The mother of Jaime Cisneros became extremely frightened when her son began to salivate. He started drooling like a hungry dog. He also got very short of breath, but the most frightening thing of all was that his pupils seemed to bounce!

Jaime’s mother got a flashlight and looked into her son’s eyes. One pupil looked small, one looked large. Then they seemed to trade sizes! Within fifteen minutes he was convulsing. By the time the uncle of Jaime Cisneros drove the boy to the Hospital Civil, Jaime was not conscious.

Later that morning Luis Zúniga was admitted to the same hospital with symptoms similar to Jaime’s. He had lost control of bowels and bladder during the night. He had tried to get up to get a drink of water, but his vision was so blurred that he tripped over a kitchen chair and fell. His father found him on the floor and drove him to the hospital.

After examining Luis Zúniga a doctor asked the boy’s mother what her son had had to eat the night before. His symptoms were similar to a person who had been poisoned, the doctor said. He asked if the rest of the family was all right.

She told the doctor that her family was well, but then she remembered that Luis had been playing with his friend Jaime Cisneros all evening, and they had come home very late. She suspected that the boys had bought tamales from a street vendor. She’d always warned Luis about street vendors. They used cat and dog meat in their tamales, she’d always told her son.