Роберт Стивенсон: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 3, March 1990

I nodded, even though I had no idea what I was agreeing to.

I decided to check out Schroeder’s house. I thought about ’loiding the lock to see what was inside, but there was an unmarked police car parked down by the street corner, which changed my mind for me. I wondered how Miggy was doing on the case, and tried to remember what I’d told him about Schroeder. Even if I hadn’t mentioned C. Hendricks to him, surely he would have picked up on the phone number on the credit app and checked it out. Maybe not — she hadn’t mentioned the police being there to question her. I decided to ask Alicia to call Miggy in the morning and tell him. She could do it tactfully.

The sunglass windows of Schroeder’s building looked droopy and wavy in the light from the street lamp. The parking lot was deserted. I was starting to have some doubts. Had Miggy and his friends been here and decided there wasn’t anything useful? Was I barking up the wrong tree?

I was in and out in a couple of minutes with no problem. The only thing different about the office was that there was fingerprint dust all over the place, which restored my faith in the San Diego Police Department. The phone bills had been in the mess of papers near the file cabinet in the front office. It didn’t take a genius to find them.

By midnight, I had a list of four numbers that Schroeder had called frequently. One was a toll number in San Diego that was hooked to a squeaky-voiced kid’s answering machine, complete with Star Trek music in the background. The kid said his name was Don Gervase. The second was a long-distance number that gave commodities quotes. Gold and silver were down; platinum was up. The third was an exchange that I recognized as being in Tijuana. The sexy female voice that answered on the recording said in both Spanish and English that La Marqueta was closed for the day and would open promptly at nine the next morning. The fourth number was answered by a gravelly-voiced man whose accent sounded more Puerto Rican than Mexican. I didn’t recognize the exchange, but I knew the number was somewhere on the Baja Peninsula.

The next morning, early, I persuaded Alicia to use her contacts at the phone company to find out who the Puerto Rican voice belonged to. Then I called Bowie and asked him if he wanted to take a little trip across the border to Tijuana. He said he’d see if he could switch shifts with the evening guy and call me back. While I waited, I ate some really disgusting bran cereal and decided I’d go back to churritos and doughnuts and the hell with being healthy.

Alicia confirmed what I suspected — the number belonged to Enrique Moreno, and the exchange was a Rosarita one.

Once Bowie gave me the okay, I called in sick, then met Bowie at Dobbin’s bus stop so I could give him the car. Dobbin looked nervous driving off by himself in my wheels, and I felt like I was sending a kid off to his first day of school. I don’t know how he and the Creeper managed while I was in the hospital.

I explained what was up to Bowie while he drove south. There wasn’t very much traffic, so we crossed the border fast. The main tourist drag was already crowded, but we didn’t have much trouble finding a parking space. I bought myself a bottle of Kahlua and some tequila añejo with a worm in it for Bowie. He thought I was kidding about the worm. He’d find out soon enough. I taught Bowie how to haggle for stuff, and he got a pretty good deal on a donkey piñata for Dobbin. I also bought the Creeper a thick blanket, just in case he really does sleep in the park.

By then it was almost lunchtime, and we decided to go out to La Marqueta and see if we could hustle up some information. It was out past the airport, near Otay, in a cluster of long, low adobe buildings. There were a couple of dusty stores and a faded building with a crooked, hand-painted sign that said ROSA’S CANTINA — CERVEZA. The parking lots were full of old beaters with blue Mexican license plates.

We parked outside Rosa’s and went in to have lunch. It was still early, and the place was nearly empty. Rosa herself was there. She was short and stout, with high, flat cheekbones and orange-clay skin. She was a talker — actually, a complainer — and it didn’t take long for me to find out that La Marqueta was a maquiladora that made electronic parts for Anglo companies, and that Enrique Moreno, who ran the place, was a slick Nuyorican with fancy clothes who didn’t pay his workers well enough for all the money he was making. Bowie sort of nodded in the right places and pretended he was following what was going on. I’d never asked him if he spoke any Spanish.

It turned out he does, a little. He told me Nuyorican wasn’t an insult — it was just what Puerto Rican New Yorkers called themselves. And I explained to him that a maquiladora was a factory where Anglo companies got parts made at cheap Mexican wages with no union hassles.

“You think there’s something fishy going on at the maquiladora?” Bowie asked as I gave him directions to the Otay crossing.

“Probably not,” I said. “Customs is really tough on those shops. But it’s got to have some connection to what’s going on.”

As usual, I had trouble at the border. I know customs has to be careful, but I always end up feeling like I’m crossing illegally, which is why I don’t go to Tijuana much any more. I showed my driver’s license and Standley’s I.D., and finally they let me through.

When we were back on the highway, Bowie smiled and said, “That was a really interesting experience, man.”

“You like Mexico?”

“Nah. I like the way they let a brother in, no problem, but you they hassle.”

“Yeah? Let’s try crossing the Alabama border sometime and see what happens.”

Bowie chuckled.

Neither one of us had any particular plans for the afternoon, so we decided to get some carry-out food and eat in Balboa Park. We watched a pickup game some teenage boys were having on the lawn and talked about what we had come up with so far.

When I told Bowie about how Schroeder’s office had been torn up, he pointed out to me that if they had trashed the coffeepot, they were probably looking for something small. I hadn’t thought of that before. But that was as far as we got.

I don’t understand Dobbin or the Creeper. They got it into their heads that I was really sick, so they both showed up in the car and the four of us ended up going back to my place to have a few beers. They stayed until about midnight, and after they left, I realized how much I had had to drink that day and how much weird food I had eaten. I got the cleaning bucket out from under the sink and put it by the bed, then prayed that I would live until morning before I fell on the mattress.

It was my worst nightmare — the kind that could make you use birth control forever. When I woke up, a sweaty, wheezy, overweight asthmatic kid with thick black glasses held together by masking tape was standing over me, peering at me through milky blue eyes.

I stared at him for a moment through narrowed eyes that were trying to focus.

“I said I want my toy back,” the kid said.

“ Ay, Dios. Why me?” I said, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t have any toys. Since you let yourself into my apartment, you can probably tell I don’t have any kids, either. What I do have is a terrible hangover, so go away.”

The fat kid crossed his arms and looked at me stubbornly. “No.”

“At least go blow your nose, then,” I said. “Your wheezing is giving me a headache.”

He looked around. “In the bathroom,” I said. “And it would be better if I didn’t have to hear you do it.”

I tried to sit up. The fat kid came back out, sounding a lot less noisy, and said, “It really stinks in here. You smell like a brewery.”