City of Strangers (12 page)

He could not go back to his father; he had burned that bridge two months earlier, with a startling and unexpected assist from Rebecca. But he couldn't stay with his friends and the sheik's people any longer, either. He had no confidence that Hassan had any sense of right and wrong whatsoever, though the man seemed bright enough and actually talked about moral issues. Fariborz was certain that it was time to start doing something right to make up for everything he had done wrong—even if you could never really make up the balance. There was no one he could approach to talk it out, and he knew he had to face all these moral and political choices alone.

“Jack, Art here.”

“Hi, there, Arturo.” He had found the ringing telephone by hauling its cord hand over hand out of a pile of books and papers, elementary detective work. It was nine in the morning, but he still hadn't got it together enough to tidy up. He sat down on an overturned drawer. “Things looking up for you at the office?”

“They haven't taken away my file cabinet yet.

That's something.”

“That's something.”

“I may have news for you. Jaime wants you to come down to Ensenada.”

“Has he found her?” Jack Liffey straightened his back and alerted all his senses. That would be a shift toward the positive, after a very bad day.

“He didn't want to talk about it on the phone. In fact, I think he was on a pay phone.”

“What would that mean?”

“I have no idea, dude. But he had a healthy little quaver in his voice. Go today. The police station is at Obregon and Second, right in the heart of things, but he says to stay away from there and meet him near the big flag at two.”

“The big flag?”

“You'll know, Jack. Take my word.”

“How will we recognize each other?”

“You're both detectives, aren't you? What do you want him to do, carry a rose in his teeth? If I know Jaime, he'll be in a cowboy shirt. He's scared of something, Jack.”

“Man, I'm going to a place where I don't speak the language, not much at all, and I don't know any of the rules. If he's scared, I'm
really
scared.”

The last thing he did before heading off for Mexico was memorize the map on the back of the crumpled and then flattened business card, and then mail it to Art Castro with a note to hold on to it for him. He had no idea if that had anything to do with what the apartment wreckers had been after, but there was no point having it on his person. He drove straight down to Tijuana and followed the toll road south from there to Ensenada. He hadn't wanted to use the toll road, but larcenous road signs just over the border had sent him to the toll road by default, calling it the “scenic route” but not mentioning any other.

Art Castro was absolutely right about the flag. The road skirted around a rocky point and into town, and there it was, on a flagpole as tall as a twenty-story building. The huge Mexican flag, billowing inland on the sea breeze, was so ludicrously overlarge that it virtually reduced the good-sized city in the basin to a toytown.

The big flagpole turned out to be in a plaza next to the sleepy harbor, and parking nearby was easy. He sat on a bench for half an hour, listening to the eerie
flup-flap
overhead like the landing approach of some malign Flying Dutchman. He had never noticed before, but there was something inherently nightmarish in very large things that made noise. Perhaps he was just attuned to nightmares now, having spent his short night's sleep retreating block by block as a flood slowly inundated the town he had grown up in. He didn't even want to speculate on what it might mean.

Finally a man in a cowboy shirt approached across the cement expanse. He had his black hair slicked back in a pompadour and he wore expensive-looking cowboy boots. It was either the cop, or Jack Liffey was about to be offered a bag of dope.

“Jack?”

“Jaime?” They shook hands.

“You can call me James if you want. James Torres.” He spoke nearly perfect English.

“I can get my mouth around ‘Jaime.' ”

“Come.”

The cop nodded and began to stroll toward the harbor and he followed, noting a bulge or two at odd points under the man's clothing. “Your English is very good.”

“Garfield High in East Los,” he said. “My parents sent me up there to learn about your country and get my education. Our public schools, I must admit, are not very good.”

Jaime Torres looked around now and then, as if suspecting a tail. It seemed strange for such a chunky, stolid-looking man to act so skittish. They turned onto a harborside promenade lined with mostly sport-fishing boats nodding gently on the placid water. On the land side were dry docks and closed-up restaurants. There were several little knots of strollers, heading both ways. Jaime's cowboy boots had taps that clicked and clacked on the cement, which didn't seem particularly advisable for a cop, but what did Jack Liffey know about Mexican police work?

“Let me tell you a tale.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Two months ago, a college student in town comes to a real estate office to buy a nice house. Up on Chapultepec Hill. He's got it picked out, and he closes the deal right away. This is in the neighborhood of $100,000 U.S. In cash—used hundreds. Now, this real estate lady doesn't say too much because cash has been used in this town before. Large amounts of cash are not unheard of in Baja California. Some of the
narcotráficos
buy nice homes here and in Rosarito with cash, to get their families out of the horrors of Tijuana. And there are legitimate ways of coming up with North American cash, too, of course. Especially in the tourist trade.”

They approached two men in work clothes peering into a trash bin, as if it might contain something interesting. “Galleons have been stopping in this bay since Cabrillo.” The policeman switched subjects without missing a beat. “It is the only sheltered bay on the whole north coast of Baja and I'm sure you will find it's a fascinating town.”

“Nice flag, too.”

The cop was silent for a while until the two men were well astern. “Now the real estate lady notices something else odd. This college boy isn't really the one to move into the house, she discovers. It's a very nice house, I might add. It is a
norteamericana
moving in, maybe eighteen. She calls herself ‘Betty Olson,' and she looks a lot like the photograph Art sent on the fax, except her hair is bright red now. She is seen several times at the El Gigante supermarket stocking up on food, and buying some furniture over on Juarez, like somebody planning to stay awhile.”

They had to come to a stop as a bell clanged and the sidewalk lifted all of a sudden ahead of them like a drawbridge. A beautiful two-masted wooden yacht began to wheel seaward across their path in a dry dock, freshly varnished. Men yelled at each other to direct the operation. “If you look at those islands out in the bay, those are the Islas de Todos Los Santos. They are supposed to have buried treasure from the galleons. Your Robert Louis Stevenson lived in San Miguel up the coast for many years, and those islands are supposed to have inspired
Treasure Island.
”

“He isn't really
my
Robert Louis Stevenson, I don't think, but I
did
like him as a child.”

Jaime Torres crooked his neck as a signal and they turned around and headed back along the promenade.

“It was the connection to the college boy, information that Art passed on to me—well, I think that is what made my search successful so quickly. I suppose the other people looking for this girl did not know about that.”

“What other people?”

“Do you know who the
judiciales
are?”

“Maybe you better tell me.”

“They are a federal police agency. They have a certain reputation.”

He glanced at Jack Liffey as if trying to decide how far to trust him.

“I don't think it's a big secret, but maybe you better tell me the reputation, too.”

“They have been known to be very close to the
narcotráficos,
to protect them, to act as bodyguards for their drug shipments, and to do their
tareas
—their dirty work, I think you say. Some parts of my English are rusty. But who knows, perhaps in this case, the
judiciales
are only cooperating with your authorities. They must do
some
legitimate police work, after all. Your federal agencies have this girl listed as a class-one offender. That is very bad. It means they really, really want her.”

“And you found her. It sounds like you earned your money.”

He nodded. “And it was enough money for me to report to you and not them. And also because Arturo is my good
carnalito.
”

Jack Liffey noticed that the policeman hadn't actually told him anything yet, except the name of the hill. He wondered if there was going to be a surcharge. A deep horn bleated out in the bay and he saw a sleek white cruise ship rounding the breakwater with a lot of people on deck.

“In forty-five minutes this town will be overrun with your countrymen asking the way to Hussong's, and trying to buy a human skull made into an ashtray. There is one thing else,
amigo.
”

“As long as it's not my skull made into an ashtray.” Here came the
mordida,
he thought.

“I paid a visit to my
adivina
this morning. My fortune-teller. I asked about you, because I knew I was going to have to do business with you, and she said you are honorable, but you have a rare thing, a duplicate out there in the world. No, I wonder how to say ‘doppelganger'?”

“It's ‘doppelganger.' ” Jesus, Jack Liffey thought. He really was an outsider here. In his wildest fancies, he couldn't imagine a Culver City cop telling him he'd dropped by the palm reader that morning to ask about him.

“Okay. She says only a few of us have this doppelganger somewhere in the world who is a complement of our soul. Normally we never meet him in the journey of our life. But if we do, there are explosions and surprises. Our soul struggles with this other, and some bad shit goes down. Or very good shit, but not very often. This is what Madame Sosostris told me.”

The name seemed familiar, and then he remembered that the name was from Eliot, from
The Waste Land.
Super-duper, he thought, personal messages from a Mexican soothsayer who had named herself out of one of the great English poems of despair. It didn't do much for the dread he had felt ever since Jaime Torres had mentioned the
judiciales.
They troubled him a lot more than any doppelgangers. “Did Madame Sosostris say where she got her information?” he asked to be polite.

“She talks to the dead.”

They were almost back to the flag, and he heard it flupping again, beating and whapping the air. Something big and bad descending from far above.

“Fuck the dead,” Jack Liffey said, suddenly tired of all the nonsense. “What the hell makes her think the dead tell the truth? They probably lie just as much as your ordinary Joe. Are you going to tell me where the girl lives, or am I going to have to pay extra?”

“Go down to the bus depot. It's on Calle 2a, but you won't find any street signs saying that. Go north on this street and it becomes Alemán and takes you up the hill. Keep going to the pink house with the dolphins on the posts.”

“Thank you, Jaime.” He was relieved.

“See those two men by the food stand? Don't look directly.”

There were two preoccupied-looking men in dark suits, with white cowboy shirts a lot like Jaime's. They seemed to be eating tacos.

“So you know what
judiciales
look like.
Buena suerte, amigo.”

* * *

They might have been dolphins, but they might as easily have been big concrete tunas sitting on their bent-under tails, or even bass. The house was on the flank of the hill and looked out over the entire basin, with the huge flag smack in the middle of things since the coast curved out again behind the flag. There was probably meant to be an automatic gate on rollers between the guard fish, but it didn't seem to be functioning yet and sat open. Everything looked brand-new, just built. He parked in the courtyard, where the cement had been stained red and grooved to suggest tiles. There was a spiffy new purple Toyota RAV-4 with
Frontera
plates.

She opened the massive antiqued door right away to his knock, with a big silver revolver pointed straight at his face. “Who are you?” Her voice was very jumpy.

“Relax, Becky. The guys to worry about won't struggle up your hill in an old VW.” He opened his jacket to show there were no guns in his waistband.

She seemed to be trying to hide her face behind both fists and the big pistol, but a lot of bright red hair stuck out all around.

“How do you know my name?”

“Your father sent me to find you. Don't worry. I never take anybody back if they don't want to go. I just need to find out if you're okay.”

“My
fucking
father, the jerk-off,” she said contemptuously.

“Right, the fucking jerk-off. Could you put the pistol down, please. It makes me nervous.”

“Me, too.” She lowered it but kept it ready. He could see she was a lot more attractive than the photo. She had one of those faces that relied on mobility, and freezing its expression in a single instant would never do it justice. She was wearing a Mexican peasant blouse and a big skirt—protective coloration.

“Let's sit down,” he suggested, “and talk a bit so I can reassure your father, and then I'll get out of your life. Is that satisfactory?”

She didn't say anything but she beckoned him through the living room, out glass doors onto a rock patio that looked out over the town and the monster flag again. She left him for a moment and then brought out a tray that held the pistol, a pitcher of lemonade, and two handmade deep blue glasses. Judging from the barrel, the pistol used some odd oversize ammunition—maybe a .44.

“Hold the gun,” he said, waving it off. “I'll just have the lemonade.”

She smiled just a little, but remained very nervous. “What's your name?”

“Jack Liffey.”

“So my tool belt of a father hired a private dick to find me.
Mierda!
Like, do you know how aggravating that man is?”

“I think I know a bit of it.”

She sat and poured them some lemonade. She seemed to relax a little.

“When I was growing up, I'd, like,
do
something, and he was always, Why are you
doing
that? And then he'd
tell
me why I was doing it. He, like, couldn't stop digging at me.”

He took his glass and sipped. It was bitter, but refreshing.

“I mean, all the time,
at
me. Interpreting. Inspecting. Like, cross-examining. I couldn't get in a word edgewise about my own motives, before he was making me the absolutely perfect object lesson in some goddamn
theory.
”

“And his theories are nowhere near as bright as he thinks they are,” Jack Liffey offered.

She focused on him all of a sudden. “Huh? Yeah. That's exactly true. It's nice to have somebody agree with your reality. Did he annoy you, too?”

“Some. Not enough for me to screw up my whole life out of spite.”

She grinned. “Well, that's your opinion,
Jack.
You're not his daughter. And anyway I feel pretty good these days. Wanna go inside and get down, a little recreational sex, feel like it? This is Mexico—all things are permitted.”

It wasn't a serious offer, just showing off, so he didn't have to deal with it. “Could you tell me how you can afford all this?”

“I'd rather not.”

There was a hoot from the harbor, echoing between the hills, and a second cruise ship came slowly around the point, looking top-heavy with so many decks.

“How about the idea of going back with me, maybe just for a visit?”

She laughed. “You don't get it, do you? This is, like, a done deal. I can't go home. Why do you think I've got red hair and the horrible name ‘Betty Olson'? Wasn't she something in the Archie comics?”