The traffic leaving Tijuana was unusually busy for early evening. The vendors were out in force, and they walked between the traffic lanes hoping to interest the tourists in pottery, leather belts, blankets and plaster figurines.
An old woman in a shawl shuffled among the throng of vendors. She had nothing to sell. She was bony and stooped and so badly wrinkled it would be difficult to say she was a woman were it not for her shawl and long dress. On her feet she wore the remnants of a man’s shoes.
Bobbie thought of the mangy starving dog in the doorway, of how the dog had whimpered in fear. She reached into her purse and handed the old woman a twenty-dollar bill.
* * *
Shelby Pate was hopelessly lost and there was no one to light his way. No one to call him with a golden trumpet. No mother to await him on the Day of the Dead. He was exhausted, panicked, battling wave after wave of hysteria. He’d sometimes hallucinated when he’d snorted this much methamphetamine, and he thought he might be hallucinating now. He wasn’t sure that any of this was real.
He was lying on a dusty hilltop in the darkness and could hear dogs barking, and children shouting in the distance. Out in front of him he saw a road traversing a lonely ridge. A vehicle moved slowly along the road and someone was searching from the vehicle with a flashlight. He was certain it was Soltero’s men hunting him. To kill him with a knife the way they’d killed Abel Durazo. Or to belly-shoot him and let him writhe in agony.
Then he saw a silhouette of a boy coming his way out of the darkness! It was all he could do to keep from screaming! Shelby pressed his face into the earth. When he raised up the child was still there. The child moved without a light, seeming to float through the night. Then the phantom boy vanished into a small tunnel, into the darkness.
Shelby heard a voice down the hillside behind him. It sounded like the Mexican with the Zapata mustache. He got up and ran, staggered, after the boy. Toward the fearful tunnel, and whatever lay beyond!
When Shelby got close he could see that it was not a tunnel but a hole in a tall metal barrier. There was an opening chopped clear through, but he was so fat he almost couldn’t follow the small boy through the hole. He ripped his jacket and cut his hands on the rusty metal. He got stuck for a moment and began to weep, but kept wriggling, finally getting his hips through, tearing his jeans, bloodying his legs. Then Shelby got up and limped across a desolate plateau in the moonlight.
He heard the sound of Mexican music from a boom box far off to the left. He heard voices chattering and laughing off to the right. But there were no lights, none at all, only an occasional dagger of moonlight.
Shelby looked for the boy but couldn’t find him. Then he tripped and fell, rolling down a dusty hillside. When he got up, he couldn’t run anymore. His legs wouldn’t obey him, and he heard a sawing sound, realizing it was coming from himself. His breathing sounded like a hacksaw cutting through steel pipe; a screeching raspy saw-blade was buried deep in his chest. Shelby Pate was sure he would die then, there in the devil’s gorge.
An English-accented voice said, “Arriba las manos!”
Shelby dropped to his knees. In a way, he wanted to die, to get it over with. A flashlight beam struck him like a club. He was blinded. He put his hands up to his face.
A voice said, “Hey, Phil! This guy’s an American!”
Five minutes later, Shelby Pate was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a Bronco, heading toward the Chula Vista Station of the U.S. Border Patrol.
CHAPTER 25
It was nearly 11:00 P.M. by the time Nell’s car arrived back at the main gate of NAS North Island.
Before she parked, Fin said, “I was thinking about stopping someplace in Coronado for a nightcap. Anyone wanna join me?”
“Not me,” Nell said. “I’ve had enough for one evening.” She didn’t say enough of what.
“I’m a little tired,” Bobbie said.
“Okay, guess I’ll have to go it alone,” Fin said.
Almost in unison, both women started to indicate he shouldn’t drink alone. They both stopped, and Nell said, “You go ahead, Bobbie. I’ve really gotta run along.”
Bobbie said, “No, I just didn’t want Fin to have to be by himself. Why don’t you join him? I gotta wash my hair and do some ironing.”
“Well, I won’t be stopping,” Nell said.
“I gotta run along home,” Bobbie said.
Fin said, “All this indecision makes me wanna just go home and improve my mind. Maybe I’ll stop and buy that new book by our country’s greatest living naked author, Madonna.”
When Fin and Bobbie got out, Fin said, “We’ll all team up right here at noon on Monday, right? I’m sure we got enough to arrest Durazo and Pate based on the navy shoe on the severed foot. But I think somebody should positively identify that shoe as being from the stolen shipment. Okay, Bobbie?”
“That’ll be done first thing Monday morning,” Bobbie said. “I’ll go to the morgue myself.”
“After seeing Pate in action tonight, I’m more convinced than ever he’ll spill his guts,” Nell said. “The guy’s a complete psycho in addition to being a doper.”
“I can’t wait till Monday!” Bobbie said.
“But you will, won’t you?” Fin said.
“I’m not gonna go off and do something stupid,” Bobbie said, mischievously. “Like moseying back down to T.J. and staking out Durazo’s car to see what the gang was up to.”
“That’d be about as smart as Julius Caesar moseying on down to the Senate to see what Brutus and the gang was up to,” Fin said.
Bobbie said, “Don’t worry. I’m going straight home, Sherlock.”
“Okay, Watson,” Fin said. “See you Monday.”
Bobbie kissed Fin on the cheek and said, “I wanna be just like you when I grow up.”
He stood watching her drive off, when Nell interrupted his thoughts, saying, “Good night … Sherlock.”
“Give her a break, will ya?” Fin said. “She’s just a kid.”
Before she could stop herself, Nell blurted, “Why don’t you give her a break. She’s obviously ga-ga over the big-city detective. Or is it goo-goo at her age? Kee-rist, you’re old enough to be her …”
“Big brother.”
“Father.”
“I’m only … seventeen years older.”
“Like I said: father.”
Fin didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “Forty-five is a real tough time for an actor, Nell. She just allows me to pretend I’m not over-the-hill. That’s all she does for me.”
While he was walking away, Nell said, “Still wanna have that drink?”
Four separate Border Patrol agents had a crack at Shelby Pate that night. Their questions varied slightly. His answers not at all, usually delivered in a monotone. The chase through the darkness had sobered him a lot, but he was still twitching and perspiring as he sat in the interrogation room.
The last agent to question him was almost as big as Shelby. He gave Shelby a can of Pepsi and said, “We’ve checked your record. You’ve been in jail a few times.”
“Not for running drugs over the border,” Shelby said. He tried to focus on his questioner’s eyes, but his own eyes kept leaping away of their own volition.
“That’s a nice watch you got.”
“My mother gave it to me.”
“You’re loaded on something, aren’t you?”
“Did some drinking early in the evening.”
“You’re loaded on something else.”