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.