“Are you two packing?” Bobbie asked, when they stood at the mouth of the passage.
“No way,” Nell said.
“Not on your life,” Fin said. “If we got caught down here carrying concealed weapons, they’d just say: Badge? I don’t want to see no steenking badge! And we’d end up in the Tijuana jail. They don’t want any foreigners being armed.”
“I’m packing,” Bobbie said, looping the purse strap over her shoulder. “And I’m glad.”
She led the way down the corridor between two windowless concrete walls of neighboring buildings. They walked perhaps thirty feet before they heard music. The closer they got, the louder it got. Not the heavy metal blaring on Revolución, this was Mexican folk music.
Then they found themselves in a small open patio with a fountain in the center and a pepper tree in a tile planter off to one side. Double wooden doors with huge iron pulls separated them from the festive music inside.
Fin opened the door and Nell took a peek. A white-haired proprietor in a dark blue suit and a pale blue necktie said, “Welcome to Sombras. How many een your party?”
Nell turned to Fin, who said, “If they’re not here, we’ve lost them anyway. Might as well go on in.”
Nell said to the proprietor, “Did a large man in a black leather jacket just come in with a small Mexican gentleman?”
“Yes,” the proprietor said. “They are een the back at Señor Soltero’s table. Shall I take you there?”
“No, he’s just a person I used to know,” Nell said. “We’d prefer a table in the front.”
“Very well,” the proprietor said. “Follow me, please.”
The restaurant seated about eighty people. There was a second fountain inside, constructed of multicolored Mexican tiles. All the tables were solid walnut, as were the chairs, high-backed with tasseled yellow seat cushions. The tables were covered with yellow tablecloths except for those where patrons were just having cocktails. Each table was lit by a huge candle inside an onion-shaped, emerald-colored glass bowl. Three guitar players strolled among the tables singing old favorites.
But the restaurant was not a quiet place to dine in that the bare floor was made of twelve-inch squares of tile with a patina and color of old saddle leather. The wiring inside the low ceiling was concealed by thin reeds lashed together, and lanterns dangled throughout, low enough to make tall men duck their heads.
The patrons, both Mexican and American, were not ordinary tourists, and all were very presentable, with the exception of Shelby Pate, who may as well have been wearing light bulbs.
The investigators spotted the truckers with three other men in a tiny alcove toward the rear of the room.
“We’re okay here in front,” Bobbie said. “It’s too dark for them to make us.”
Fin excused himself after saying to Nell, “Order me whatever you’re having, and a Mexican beer.”
After he had gone to the rest room, Nell ordered three of the house special plates, consisting of a chile relleno, a tamale and a chicken taco.
The waitress was a stunning girl, perhaps eighteen years old, wearing an off-the-shoulder, lace-topped cotton blouse and a red full skirt. Her red shoes were fastened with ankle straps, suggesting that she probably doubled as a dancer.
“That order’s safe enough for everyone,” Nell said.
“Don’t worry about me,” Bobbie said. “I haven’t had much Mexican food, but what I’ve had I really like. I’m experimental in everything.”
“You must be,” Nell said.
“Whaddaya mean by that?”
“Fin,” Nell said.
“Look, this is only the second time I’ve been with him!” Bobbie said.
“Me too,” said Nell.
“Really? I don’t believe it.”
“Now whadda you mean by that?”
“It’s easy to see you got feelings for him, big-time.”
“What?”
“One woman to another,” Bobbie said. “It’s easy to see.”
“Me? Fin?”
“I don’t blame you,” Bobbie said. “He’s cute, and he’s so nice. A real gentleman, in a way. I can see how you might feel. But honest, we’re just friends, is all.”
Nell wanted to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come out. This child was in-furiating! Calmly, she said, “Bobbie, I don’t know what to say about that except that I would rather spend my life arranging flowers and pouring tea in a geisha house than be hooked up with that neurotic cop!”
“I know,” Bobbie said, sympathetically, “but we can’t really follow our heads, can we? Not when our hearts’re pulling us in another direction. Toing-and-froing, right? I know how it is, Nell.”
Nell didn’t get a chance to respond in that Fin returned to the table just as the waitress brought the beer and margaritas. They were hand-shaken margaritas, not gringo slush.
“Salud, as they say in these parts,” Fin said, raising his beer bottle to each woman, with a lingering look at Bobbie.
The strolling guitar players came closer to their table, singing “Guadalajara.” When Bobbie turned to look at the musicians, Nell whispered to Fin, “Did you tell her about your very low sperm count?”
“Nell!” Fin said, shooting a quick glance at Bobbie, but she wasn’t paying attention to them.
“And that you give blood regularly?”
“Nell, what’s wrong with you?” Fin whispered. “She’s a sweet kid!”
“They all are,” Nell said. “Sweet. When they’re kids.”
Fin whispered, “Do you have some sort of … problem with her?”
Nell smiled, but only with her mouth, and said, “Not at all. It’s very predictable.”
“What is?”
“Life is,” she said.
“My whole life’s been a failed effort to please women!” Fin blurted to a strolling guitar player, who didn’t understand a word. “Is this a smoke-free zone or can I just set fire to myself?”
They’d already had two drinks, yet nothing had been said about the money they were owed. Before they’d entered, Abel had tried to warn the ox not to be pushy by telling him that Mexicans were patient, and that Soltero had chosen an elegant restaurant, so he might be playing the gentleman. And that Soltero would talk about money only when he was good and ready.
But after his second double tequila, Shelby wanted action. He only had one more bindle of meth and was needing it. He slipped it out of his boot and put it in the pocket of his Grateful Dead T-shirt, then watched the guitar players and twitched.
One of Soltero’s companions was the man who’d approached them in the Bongo Room. The other was short but very burly, with a mustache so long he could’ve used it for a chin strap. He had a deep scar on the side of his neck, and a piece of his left earlobe was missing. From time to time, Shelby glared at this scarred mustachioed Mexican, but the man kept his eyes on Soltero or on his drink.
Soltero wore a double-breasted suit of gray silk and a charcoal shirt buttoned at the throat, with no necktie. In fact, Abel thought he dressed a lot like their boss, Jules Temple, but he was several years older. Soltero’s ponytail was pulled back more severely than Shelby’s, and was gray-flecked.
Soltero asked dozens of questions, both in Spanish and English, about the business climate in San Diego, and the politics of the presidential election, and if Abel would be interested in hauling other loads from San Diego to Tijuana and sometimes in the other direction. His English was only slightly accented, and his hands gestured gracefully.
Just when Shelby thought Soltero was going to talk about money, he said, “And now it is time to eat.”
He had preordered two kilos of carnitas-marinated pork roasted on a spit. The waiter brought another large plate that held homemade flour tortillas wrapped inside a red tasseled napkin, a bowl heaped with cilantro and onion, and yet another brimming with guacamole. Finally, a bowl of homemade salsa arrived.