The Fourth of July weekend get-out-of-town traffic was heavy and we slowed to a crawl nearing Oxnard and Ventura. After that, it was smooth sailing and twenty minutes later I pulled off the highway near the Casitas Reservoir and took surface streets down to the long stretch of beach just south of Carpinteria. I was sure the Beach View Motel would still be there and would still be deserted. Walter and I had discovered the Beach View about five years ago. We were driving back from San Francisco, drunk, when a torrential rainstorm hit. Walter wanted to press on and catch The War of the Worlds on the Late Show, but I insisted we park on the beach and sleep it off. We found a beach access road, expecting to find a parking lot at the end of it, but we were wrong; what we found was the Beach View Motel, a squat, ugly, lime-green structure on a particularly barren stretch of oceanfront sand obscured from the highway. We spent the night there drinking and bullshitting. The dump had been born to lose and born for losers; but it would serve my purpose tonight.
The night was pitch black and it took me a while to find the sandy blacktop that led down to our destination. When I did locate it, Omar came out of his trance and started jabbering: “Are we here, man? Is this it?”
“This is it,” I said, “we’re a little early. The guy said ten-thirty. It’s just after ten now. But that’s good. I want to make sure we see him coming, in case he brought friends.” Omar nodded staunchly. He was a courageous vato, but out of his league. To my chagrin, I was beginning to like him.
As we pulled up in front of the motel, my headlights caught litter-covered pavement, open doors, broken windows, and a profusion of empty beer cans, I killed the engine and said, “Take this flashlight and look around. I’ve got to get something out of the trunk.”
I handed Omar the large five-cell, got out of the car, and walked around to open the trunk. Omar left the car and began flashing his light into the broken windows and battered doors. I counted to twenty, then walked over to him, and sapped him from behind with a blackjack. He crumpled in a heap, dropping the flashlight. I checked his pulse, which was steady, then bound his wrists and ankles with the nylon cord.
I dragged him into the room farthest from the access road and laid him down on a smelly sand-covered mattress. I wrapped my hand in my windbreaker and punched out the side and front windows. Omar would have plenty of air. Next I located half a dozen good-sized rocks and laid them outside of Omar’s room. I went inside and checked his pulse again. It was still steady. I closed the door on Omar and barricaded it with my rock collection. Pleasant dreams, Omar. In the morning, I would call the Carpinteria fuzz and clue them into the overnight guest at the Beach View.
I pulled the car around, almost getting stuck in the sand, and drove away, the sea making eerie noises in the background. I took 101 southbound to its juncture with Interstate 5 near Nixon’s pad at San Clemente. When I pulled into San Diego just after midnight I heard firecrackers going off all over the city. Happy birthday, America.
III
Lower California
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...”