“Wanna try some cringe?” Shelby asked.
“No, I don’ wan’ that stuff. Leetle marijuana good for you. No’ that speed. Bad, ‘mano.”
“Thing it does for me is, it makes me harder than a tax return. I could do the Sisters of Mary or the whole Mustang Ranch when I got some go-fast in me. So you better find us some babes tonight.”
“I try,” Abel said.
“It’s my old lady’s fault,” Shelby said. “That bitch could douche with battery acid and never feel it. Cold. She’s cold, man. She says she wants a baby! I says to her, ‘You’d end up with a frozen fetus.’ A womb or a tomb, in her case it’s all the same thing. She’s cold.”
Abel Durazo looked at his watch and said, “We going to park down by Frontón where they play the jai alai. We going to walk for leetle while. We going to be late.”
“Why?”
“I wan’ Soltero to wait. Let heem wait teel seex o’clock. We eemportant peoples too.”
Shelby was feeling the methamphetamine rush. He grinned and said, “You may end up bein glad I brought my little chrome-plated pal along.”
“Be careful, Buey. We een Mexico.”
“You don’t hafta remind me,” said the ox.
He looked with trepidation at the lanes of cars crawling along beside them, all heading into the center, some for a Saturday night on the town. Many of the Mexican cars had religious medals or good-luck amulets or rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirrors. This troubled Shelby. He didn’t want to admit it to Abel, but all those dangling charms and trinkets and religious symbols bothered him.
“Voodoo,” he finally said.
“Huh?”
“All that fuckin shit hangin from the mirrors. Like voodoo, dude. My bitch is a Catholic and she wears a medal and talks about Holy Ghosts and all that voodoo shit.”
In that Abel didn’t understand the ox most of the time, he just shrugged and smiled.
“This is the first time in my life I’ve driven to T.J. without buying Mexican car insurance,” Nell said.
“Most U.S. policies cover you twenty-five miles from the border,” Fin said.
“If something happens to this car …”
“It sure is a nice car,” Bobbie said. “For a while there everybody thought Audis were like Christine in the Stephen King movie. The car from hell that took off when you stepped on the brake.”
After Nell drove across the Tijuana River, Fin said, “They’re turning down Avenida Revolución.”
“Predictable,” Nell said with disgust. “They’re not going to see their fence. They’re going to a skin joint for a cheap night out.”
“We’ve come this far,” Bobbie said. “We can’t give up.”
Abel drove down Avenida Revolución and parked by the Palacio Frontón, the Tijuana landmark where jai alai players from Spain and Cuba join the Mexicans in the art of hurling hard rubber balls from wicker baskets lashed to their wrists. The Palacio was huge, with Moorish arches and a fountain in front near a statue of a jai alai player leaping in the air.
Abel had once tried explaining the game to the ox, but Shelby was a lot less interested in hearing about a goat-skin sphere that travels 180 m.p.h., than he was in knowing that he could wager on the men, like they were horses or greyhounds.
Abel was directed to a parking place by a kid in a Dodgers baseball cap, and after Abel parked, Shelby gave the boy five dollars, telling him to watch the car.
“We geev the boy too much,” Abel said.
“So what? We’re gonna be rich,” Shelby reminded him.
The Mexican kid then ran toward a Cadillac driven by an elderly American and waved the guy toward a parking space near Abel’s car.
Shelby Pate wondered if under that Dodgers cap the kid had ringworm.
Momentarily losing the Chevy in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Avenida Revolución, Nell wheeled into the Frontón parking lot just to turn around. She practically ran over Abel Durazo, who had to jump out of her way!
“Kee-rist!” Fin said, turning his face away while Bobbie ducked down in the back seat.
“He didn’t recognize us!” Nell said, speeding toward the rear of the parking lot, ignoring the man who was trying to direct her.
The guy yelled something in Spanish, but after Nell parked, Fin jumped out and handed him ten dollars. The guy nodded and said, “Okay, okay,” and allowed the Audi to stay where it was.
The three investigators followed Abel and Shelby at a distance of half a block while the truckers strolled through the weekend throngs. The sun had begun its quick autumn descent, after which the city would come to life in all its vibrance.
Shelby stopped at one of the leather shops at the corner of Calle 5, to check the prices on bomber jackets.
“I make you good deal,” the shopkeeper said.
The shopkeeper was about Shelby’s age, with a barrel of a torso. He wore a fake Rolex and fake diamond rings on both hands, and had the thickest black hair Shelby had ever seen.
Shelby said to the guy, “I saw one back there in that other joint for fifty bucks less.”
“That ees no good leather. No good,” the shopkeeper said. “You like thees one? I sell to you, fifty dollar off the price. Okay?”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Shelby said, but the man followed him toward the sidewalk.
All the shops were wide open to the masses on the avenue, and when they were disappearing into the crowd, the man yelled, “Seventy-five dollar off the price!”
“Damn!” Shelby said to Abel. “That’s a good deal, ain’t it?”
Abel shook his head and said, “After we get money we go to good place for jacket. Don’ worry, Buey.”
“Kin we stop fer a tequila?” Shelby asked, looking at Abel’s wristwatch. “I’m goin shithouse waitin fer the fuckin little hand to get on the six.”
“Okay,” Abel said. “We got time.”
A man walked out of a saloon that had a glass-covered collection of photos on the door, pictures of curvy bikini-clad women dancing on a stage.
“Come!” he said, taking Shelby’s arm. “Good show here, amigo!”
Shelby turned to Abel and said, “Whaddaya think, dude?”
“Okay,” Abel said. “But lousy dancer. No good. Lousy.”
There was a large elevated stage in the center of the barroom, with twenty tables surrounding it. Booths lined two walls, and the third wall was taken up by a long bar. It was dark, dank, seedy and wet.
Shelby said, “Gud-damn, the fuckin floor’s covered with water jist like that street up there where Soltero’s momma lives. Ain’t there no plumbers in this fuckin town?”
The floor was so uneven that the puddles only settled on one side of the saloon, so Abel led Shelby through the darkness to the far side where exhausted-looking women in frumpy dresses tried to smile at passing male customers.
One of them looked at Shelby and patted the plastic bench next to her.
Shelby said to Abel, “These babes’re thrashed. I’d rather get cranked and jack off. That way I can have anyone I want instead a these bowsers, right?”
Abel said, “We go to good bar later.”
They took a seat at one of the tables next to the stage, where Abel had to shoo away two blowsy women. Shelby was busy looking at the redheaded “dancer” on the stage and didn’t pay attention when Abel ordered two double tequilas and two beers.
She wore hip-hugging black shorts, white cowboy boots, and a red tube top. Shelby figured she was forty, but Abel said she was no more than thirty. She was already forming serious cellulite, and up close, Shelby saw a surgical scar across her abdomen. It looked like someone had hand-troweled the pancake makeup onto her face.