A guard booth less than fifty yards ahead was manned by a Mexican policeman wearing what looked like a bus driver's uniform with a gun belt and holster. LaMonica looked at his wristwatch and took a deep breath. The breeze made his hands feel clammy on the steering wheel, though he knew that logically there was nothing to worry about at this point. Even if a border lookout were in effect, the slob policeman wouldn't have received notice yet. Besides, the only picture the feds had of him was three years old. If he was lucky, maybe they hadn't even found her body yet, and there was certainly no law against transporting printing supplies into Mexico. He would cross the border and be safe.
The lines of vehicles moved closer, and the policeman waved him forward. LaMonica took another deep breath and pulled ahead. "Wait," the policeman said, fumbling for something in his trouser pockets. LaMonica noticed that the officer needed a shave. Without changing his somber expression, the policeman stepped backward into the guard booth and opened a drawer. LaMonica felt piano wires cinch tightly around his forehead. His foot felt magnetized to the accelerator.
The cop pulled a white card out of the drawer. He stepped out of the booth and handed it to LaMonica. It read:
CLUB DISCO
GIRLS GIRLSGIRLS
THIS COUPON GOOD FOR ONE FREE DRINK
On the reverse of the card was a crude map of downtown Tijuana marked with an X. "Here is where you find what you want," said the cop.
"Gracias," LaMonica said. His throat was dry. The policeman waved him on.
LaMonica drove along a highway that followed the northern edge of Tijuana. He followed the signs to Ensenada. After a while he crossed a bridge over a wide gully cluttered with huts made of cardboard and scrap lumber; makeshift homes that would be washed away with the first rain.
The road ahead was clear. LaMonica felt tired, day-dreamy. The memory of his first arrest often came back to him when he was feeling this way. He had been sitting in his car across the street from the bank. A talk show was on the radio. "My son keeps things hidden from me," a woman whined. "He screams at me every time I go into his room. I think he's afraid I'll see him naked." The woman's voice was probing, headachy, like his mother's. The talk-show host was Dr. Robert C. Mendenhall the radio counselor, L.A.'s "Voice of Health."
He had turned off the radio in the middle of Mendenhall's advice and climbed out of the car. Pulling the briefcase out of the trunk, he marched straight into the bank.
Inside the air-conditioned lobby, he waited his turn in a long line in front of a window marked "Commercial Accounts." Oddly, he wasn't the least bit nervous. Finally, he reached the window. The bespectacled woman behind the counter had bluish-gray hair and wore a buttoned-to-the-neck suit of the same color.
"I own the car lot down the street," he said as he snapped open the briefcase. He dumped the rubber-banded stacks of ten-dollar bills on the counter. "An elderly couple just bought a Mercedes and paid for it in cash. Can you believe that?" He chuckled.
The woman's face was expressionless. Like a robot, she pulled off the rubber bands and counted the bills. With each stack, she made a mark on a little white pad. "Is this for deposit?" she said without looking up.
"I'd like the whole amount in hundred-dollar bills. I'm going to an antique-automobile auction tonight. The purchases are all in cash, but I'd rather just carry a nice neat little bundle of hundreds than-"
"I don't have that many hundred-dollar bills," she interrupted. "I'll have to go get some out of the vault." She opened her cash drawer and set the tens inside it. Using a key she removed from her pocket, she locked the drawer. She shuffled into the vault.
He was still waiting at the teller window when the police arrived.
The woman pointed a finger at him (her lack of expression even when doing this was remarkable). The policeman twisted his arms behind his back. The handcuffs clicked on. "Those tens have been on the warning list for over a month," he heard her say. The cops dragged him out the front door of the bank. He went to trial and then to prison. It was the first time.
Never again, he'd promised himself on that day, would he make such a mistake. In the future he would weigh risks and attempt to control variables as carefully as a test pilot would.
The road wound around a bill crowned with shacks and finally led down past the turnoff for the bullring by the sea. With the first whiff of salt air LaMonica felt secure again, safe from those who would put him back in prison clothes.
In less than an hour he reached Ensenada. The town proper comprised a collection of kitschy hotels and souvenir shops accordioned together. Like other cities on the U.S. border, the town lived off camper-truck travelers in cowboy hats, sports-car types, and college kids looking for a cheap weekend.
LaMonica pulled up at a stop sign. Across the street a newly built sports-betting office overlooked a dry riverbed where brown children played with empty pop bottles. The light turned green. He drove out of Ensenada and along a road that followed the coast.
At a clump of trees, LaMonica turned onto a dirt road and continued until he was fully within sight of a one-story, wood-frame house. The structure's sheet-metal roof glistened with sea-level heat. He stopped the car. Using binoculars, he watched the house for a few minutes. There was no activity, no sign that anything had been disturbed. He put the binoculars down and continued on.
In a swirl of red dust, LaMonica pulled up in front of the cabin, which the Mexican realtor who'd sold it to him had described as a beach house. He got out of the car and stretched. From the trunk, he unloaded cardboard boxes filled with reams of paper and ink cans. Having carted them to the door, he used a key to unfasten a large padlock. Inside, the air was oven temperature and smelled like printer's ink.
LaMonica flipped the light switch. In the middle of the room an offset printing press rested next to a worktable. Above it, a fluorescent light fixture hung from a rafter. Under the table, gallon bottles of printing chemicals were lined up exactly as he had left them. Next to the press a lithographic camera covered by a bed-sheet loomed like an apparition. A darkroom fashioned out of tarp and lumber protruded from the wall. Beside it, a pillow rested on a canvas folding-cot.
LaMonica pulled the sheet off the man-sized camera and used it to wipe off the lens. He paused for a moment to stare at his reflection: fair features; whitish hair one could describe as "distinguished"; firm biceps; the eyes and hands of a technician, a scientist, a man patient enough to endure prison-one whose symbol could be the forged and tempered steel that was the material of daggers.
Rummaging among his box of "Priority One" supplies — printers' manuals, color charts, half-tone screens, aluminum offset printing plates, lithographic film — LaMonica finally found an electric fan. He pulled it out of the box and plugged it in.
With the fan blowing on his sweaty frame, he took off his clothes and piled them on a chair. Naked, he was finally ready to get down to business. He sat at the table and resumed work on the passport. Using a razor blade, he separated the cover from the pages. He held a page up to the light. It had neither stamp marks nor folds. The bluish American eagle design, with its fine, unending lines of color, was pristine. He tossed the other pages under the table and began the work of mounting the pattern page for his copy camera. He accomplished this task as he did the rest of his printing efforts, without regard to time.
By early afternoon the heat in the workshop had become more than stifling. For a respite, LaMonica stepped in front of the fan and allowed the air to blow-dry his perspiration-soaked chest, genitals, and underarms. This refreshment was followed by a long drink from the jug of bottled water he had brought along. He repeated the process often.