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.