He did not, however, give the correct make or license number of his car, for he had parked out of sight of the office for the very purpose of keeping those details from the clerk.
They paid for only one room and kept Einstein with them because they were not going to need privacy for lovemaking. Exhausted, Travis barely managed to kiss Nora before falling into a deep sleep. He dreamed of things With yellow eyes, misshapen heads, and crocodile mouths full of sharks’ teeth.
He woke five hours later, at twelve-ten Thursday afternoon.
Nora had gotten up before him, showered, and dressed again in the only Clothes she had. Her hair was damp and clung alluringly to the nape of her fleck. “The water’s hot and forceful,” she told him.
“So am I,” he said, embracing her, kissing her.
“Then you better cool off,” she said, pulling away from him. “Little ears are listening.”
“Einstein? He has big ears.”
In the bathroom, he found Einstein standing on the counter, drinking out of a sinkful of cold water that Nora had drawn for him.
“You know, fur face, for most dogs, the toilet is a perfectly adequate source of drinking water.”
Einstein sneezed at him, jumped down from the counter, and padded out of the bathroom.
Travis had no means of shaving, but he decided a day’s growth of beard would give him the look he needed for the work he would have to do this evening in the Tenderloin district.
They left the motel and ate at the first McDonald’s they could find. After lunch, they drove to a local branch of the Santa Barbara bank where Travis had his checking account. They used his computer-banking card, his MasterCard, and two of his Visa cards to make cash withdrawals totaling fourteen hundred dollars. Next they went to an American Express office, and using one of Travis’s checks and his Gold Card, they acquired the maximum allowable five hundred dollars in cash and forty-five hundred in traveler’s checks. Combined with the twenty-one hundred in cash and traveler’s checks left over from their honeymoon, they had eighty-five hundred in liquid assets.
During the rest of the afternoon and early evening, they went shopping. With credit cards, they bought a complete set of luggage and purchased enough clothes to fill the bags. They got toiletries for both of them and an electric razor for Travis.
Travis also bought a Scrabble game, and Nora said, “You don’t really feel in the mood for games, do you?”
“No,” he replied cryptically, enjoying her puzzlement. “I’ll explain later.”
Half an hour before sunset, with their purchases packed tightly in the spacious trunk of the Mercedes, Travis drove into the heart of San Francisco ’s Tenderloin, which was the area of the city that lay below O’Farrell Street, wedged between Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. It was a district of sleazy bars featuring topless dancers, go-go joints where the girls wore nothing at all, rap parlors where men paid by the minute to sit with nude young women and talk about sex and where more than talk was usually accomplished.
This degeneracy was a shocking revelation to Nora, who had begun to think of herself as experienced and sophisticated. She was not prepared for the cesspool of the Tenderloin. She gaped at the gaudy neon signs that advertised peep shows, female mud wrestling, female impersonators, gay baths, and massage parlors. The meaning of some of the billboard come-ons at the worst bars baffled her, and she said, “What do they mean when the marquee says ‘Get a Wink at the Pink’?”
Looking for a parking place, Travis said, “It means their girls dance entirely nude and that, during the dance, they spread their labia to show themselves more completely.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“My God. I don’t believe it. I mean, I do believe it-but I don’t believe it. What’s it mean-’Extreme Close-Up’?”
“The girls dance right at the customers’ tables. The law doesn’t allow touching, but the girls dance close, swinging their bare breasts in the customers’ faces. You could insert one, maybe two, but not three sheets of paper between their nipples and the men’s lips.”
In the back seat, Einstein snorted as if with disgust.
“I agree, fella,” Travis told him.
They passed a cancerous-looking place with flashing red and yellow bulbs and rippling bands of blue and purple neon, where the sign promised LIVE SEX SHOW.
Appalled, Nora said, “My God, are there other shows where they have sex with the dead?”
Travis laughed so hard he almost back-ended a carload of gawking college boys. “No, no, no. Even the Tenderloin has some limits. They mean ‘live’ as opposed to ‘on film.’ You can see plenty of sex on film, theaters that show only pornography, but that place promises live sex, on stage. I don’t know if they deliver on the promise.”
“And I don’t care to find out!” Nora said, sounding as if she were Dorothy from Kansas and had just wandered into an unspeakable new neighborhood of Oz. “What’re we doing here?”
“This is the place you come to when you’re trying to find things they don’t sell on Nob Hill-like young boys or really large amounts of dope. Or phony driver’s licenses and other counterfeit ID.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes, I see. This area is controlled by the underworld, by people like the Corleones in The Godfather.”
“I’m sure the mob owns more of these places than not,” he said as he maneuvered the Mercedes into a parking space at the curb. “But don’t ever make the mistake of thinking-the real mob is a bunch of honorable cuties like the Corleones.”
Einstein was agreeable to remaining with the Mercedes.
“Tell you what, fur face. If we’re real lucky,” Travis joked, “we’ll get you a new identity, too. We’ll make you into a poodle.”
Nora was surprised to discover that, as twilight settled over the city, the breeze off the bay was chilly enough for them to need the nylon, quilt-lined Jackets they had bought earlier in the day.
“Even in summer, nights can be cool here,” he said. “Soon, the fog rolls in. The stored-up heat of the day pulls it off the water.”
He would have worn his jacket even if the evening air had been mild, for he was carrying his loaded revolver under his belt and needed the jacket to Conceal it.
“Is there really a chance you’ll need the gun?” she asked as they walked away from the car.
“Not likely. I’m carrying it mainly for ID.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see.”
She looked back at the car, where Einstein was staring out the rear window, looking forlorn. She felt bad leaving him there. But she was quite certain that even if these establishments would admit dogs such places were not good for Einstein’s moral welfare.
Travis seemed interested solely in those bars whose signs were either in both English and Spanish or in Spanish only. Some places were downright shabby and did not conceal the peeling paint and the moldy carpeting, while others used mirrors and glitzy lighting to try to hide their true roach-hole nature. A few were actually clean and expensively decorated. In each, Travis spoke in Spanish with the bartender, sometimes with musicians if there were any and if they were on a break, and a few times he distributed folded twenty-dollar bills. Since she spoke no Spanish, Nora did not know what he was asking about or why he was paying these people.
On the street, searching for another sleazy lounge, he explained that the biggest illegal migration was Mexican, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan-desperate people escaping economic chaos and political repression. Therefore, more Spanish-speaking illegals were in the market for phony papers than were Vietnamese, Chinese, or those in all other language groups put together. “So the quickest way to get a lead on a supplier of phony paper is through the Latino underworld.”