Finnegan's Week (31 page)

“Kee-rist!” Fin said, turning his face away while Bobbie ducked down in the back seat.

“He didn't recognize us!” Nell said, speeding toward the rear of the parking lot, ignoring the man who was trying to direct her.

The guy yelled something in Spanish, but after Nell parked, Fin jumped out and handed him ten dollars. The guy nodded and said, “Okay, okay,” and allowed the Audi to stay where it was.

The three investigators followed Abel and Shelby at a distance of half a block while the truckers strolled through the weekend throngs. The sun had begun its quick autumn descent, after which the city would come to life in all its vibrance.

Shelby stopped at one of the leather shops at the corner of Calle 5, to check the prices on bomber jackets.

“I make you good deal,” the shopkeeper said.

The shopkeeper was about Shelby's age, with a barrel of a torso. He wore a fake Rolex and fake diamond rings on both hands, and had the thickest black hair Shelby had ever seen.

Shelby said to the guy, “I saw one back there in that other joint for fifty bucks less.”

“That ees no good leather. No good,” the shopkeeper said. “You like thees one? I sell to you, fifty dollar off the price. Okay?”

“I'll keep it in mind,” Shelby said, but the man followed him toward the sidewalk.

All the shops were wide open to the masses on the avenue, and when they were disappearing into the crowd, the man yelled, “Seventy-five dollar off the price!”

“Damn!” Shelby said to Abel. “That's a good deal, ain't it?”

Abel shook his head and said, “After we get money we go to
good
place for jacket. Don' worry, Buey.”

“Kin we stop fer a tequila?” Shelby asked, looking at Abel's wristwatch. “I'm goin shithouse waitin fer the fuckin little hand to get on the six.”

“Okay,” Abel said. “We got time.”

A man walked out of a saloon that had a glass-covered collection of photos on the door, pictures of curvy bikini-clad women dancing on a stage.

“Come!” he said, taking Shelby's arm. “Good show here,
amigo
!”

Shelby turned to Abel and said, “Whaddaya think, dude?”

“Okay,” Abel said. “But lousy dancer. No good. Lousy.”

There was a large elevated stage in the center of the barroom, with twenty tables surrounding it. Booths lined two walls, and the third wall was taken up by a long bar. It was dark, dank, seedy and wet.

Shelby said, “Gud-damn, the fuckin floor's covered with water jist like that street up there where Soltero's momma lives. Ain't there no plumbers in this fuckin town?”

The floor was so uneven that the puddles only settled on one side of the saloon, so Abel led Shelby through the darkness to the far side where exhausted-looking women in frumpy dresses tried to smile at passing male customers.

One of them looked at Shelby and patted the plastic bench next to her.

Shelby said to Abel, “These babes're
thrashed
. I'd rather get cranked and jack off. That way I can have anyone I want instead a these bowsers, right?”

Abel said, “We go to
good
bar later.”

They took a seat at one of the tables next to the stage, where Abel had to shoo away two blowsy women. Shelby was busy looking at the redheaded “dancer” on the stage and didn't pay attention when Abel ordered two double tequilas and two beers.

She wore hip-hugging black shorts, white cowboy boots, and a red tube top. Shelby figured she was forty, but Abel said she was no more than thirty. She was already forming serious cellulite, and up close, Shelby saw a surgical scar across her abdomen. It looked like someone had hand-troweled the pancake makeup onto her face.

Three times during the performance, she lifted the tube and showed Shelby her sagging tits. He stuck a dollar bill inside the waistband of her shorts every time she did it, and went “Wooooo!” ending in a giggling, high-pitched snuffle.

Her number consisted of sliding each foot six inches back and forth out of time to taped soft-rock music that Shelby couldn't identify. After a thirty-minute set she shuffled off the stage and disappeared into a closet-sized dressing room.

Shelby slipped another bindle out of his boot and dropped his head below the stage level. When he came back up he downed a tequila and sucked the juice from a Mexican yellow lime protruding from his beer bottle.

Then he grinned and said, “My old lady got better hooters, but I bet that dancer's a nicer person. Right now, I'll settle fer anything wet and warm with a pulse.”

Abel looked at his watch, drank his tequila, and said, “We go now, Buey.”

Fin Finnegan got up from his stool at the opposite end of the long bar, put three dollars next to his glass, and followed the truckers out into the vanishing twilight.

Nell and Bobbie spotted the truckers and quickly turned their backs, examining a sidewalk display of black-velvet paintings: Madonna, Elvis and Batman. Nell picked up Batman and turned it toward the light inside the shop.

Abel and Shelby walked directly behind her, and she heard Shelby Pate say, “Know what, dude? This town ain't
half
as grimy as L.A., and it's gotta be a
lot
safer, right?”

Fin trotted up to Bobbie a few seconds later, saying, “Let's give it no more than an hour. Okay?”

“Then what?” Bobbie asked, as Fin went scurrying after the truckers.

“Then we go home and we bust them Monday morning like responsible
mature
investigators,” Nell informed her.

Nell and Bobbie had to trot to keep up with Fin, who was threading his way through the early Saturday evening mob of U.S. teens and young adults who descend on Tijuana to get drunk, slam-dance in nightclubs, fight, bleed, vomit, and in general, have a wonderful time.

C
HAPTER
23

T
he thing was, nobody would do a
serious
investigation into the death of a Mexican citizen on Mexican soil, Jules was certain of that. He was
not
going to have to face federal officers, or San Diego police, or even that busybody bitch from the District Attorney's Office. It would just play itself out and pass from his life. A pity that the Mexican kids had been contaminated, but there was nothing he could do about it. Everything would work out just fine.

Sitting in the hot tub, Jules took a sip of Scotch and for a brief instant convinced himself that things simply couldn't go wrong. Except that there were several layers to the rotting onion that Shelby Pate could drop into his soup. In the first place, if Southbay Agricultural Supply was brought into it, Jules was sure that Burl Ralston would panic and confess. For an agreement to testify, the authorities might give immunity to the old bastard. They might even grant immunity to the idiot truckers who caused this whole misery. That, in order to convict a real environmental threat: the
owner
of Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. Jules could become a sacrificial lamb to the green administration of Clinton-Gore: a prosperous and greedy waste hauler who illegally manifested hazardous waste that ended up killing a child of the Third World. Good press for the new administration.

Jules thought about offering Shelby Pate $10,000, more than that imbecile had ever seen in his miserable lowlife existence. Jules might even raise it to $20,000 if he could be guaranteed that both Durazo and Pate would maintain their silence. But what if they turned over the manifest to Jules only to blab to the authorities at a later time? Burl Ralston would then be contacted and he'd spill his guts the first time a cop mentioned jail. If Burl Ralston had a fatal heart attack it would be very helpful to Jules's predicament. If Shelby Pate and Abel Durazo died suddenly it would be a time to
rejoice
.

If Jules paid extortion money, what would be his assurance that six months down the line he wouldn't get a visit from Pate and Durazo showing him a photocopy of the manifest? A little something they'd set aside for a rainy day. The fact was, Jules's only real safety lay in the destruction of the manifest, Pate, and probably Durazo, in that order. There was no other way. How could he come this far, with his entire life about to be transformed, only to let it all be controlled and ultimately doomed by two morons?

Even though he had no experience whatsoever with acts of violence, Jules Temple felt certain that he could do what he had to do. They had forced this course of action. There was only one question left in his mind:
How?

Abel and Shelby were working on their second drink, but still Soltero hadn't arrived. The Bongo Room was a cut above the last bar they'd visited. At least this one had some bamboo paneling nailed to the walls, and some blinking colored lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was a similar stage and a similar long bar, and all too similar women sitting in booths and tables, not looking hungrily at gringos with bucks, only looking shabby and
tired
.

So much so that Shelby turned to Abel and said, “I think they feed downers to the babes around here. Or maybe they're all shootin that Mexican tar heroin. Now that's bad stuff. Me, I never even shot meth. I'm scared a needles.”

With that he leaned over and snorted what was left of a bindle of methamphetamine.

“Hey, Buey!” Abel said. “We got work to do!”

“I kin handle it, dude,” Shelby said. “Anyways, I think there's somethin wrong with this cringe. I ain't feelin a rush.”

But Abel knew that was a lie. The ox was twitchy. He kept looking around, twisting up his cocktail napkin, blinking, sniffling.

“Hey, baby!” Shelby yelled to the waitress. “Bring us two more mega shooters!”

After the tequilas arrived, a man slid into the seat beside Abel and said, “I am buying your tequilas, please.”

“What're you, a fag?” Shelby wanted to know.

The man smiled and spoke to Abel in Spanish. Shelby recognized one word that was uttered several times by both men:
Soltero
. Abel looked like he was getting mad, but the man raised both palms as if to say, “It's not my fault.” Then he got up and left the saloon.

“What the fuck's goin on?” Shelby demanded.

Abel said, “He say we see Soltero een one more hours at club by
pasaje
on other side of Revolutión. He say we see Soltero there.”

“Hope it's better than this joint. One hour?”

“Ees okay. There good theengs to buy down below avenue. Many many shops down there. We go now and look at leather jacket. We
stop
dreenking tequila.”

Shelby said, “Know somethin, dude, when we git our money tonight, I might jist reach over and snatch that Soltero's ponytail right off his skinny little head, that's what I might do.”

Abel watched in dismay as the ox gulped the last tequila and reached inside his boot for his stash of meth. Abel Durazo was getting a very bad feeling and wanted to get outside
pronto
.

This time Nell and Bobbie were ready for them when they came out of the bar. Abel walked, Shelby weaved.

“He's amped,” Nell said to Bobbie.

She and Bobbie were standing next to a donkey cart. The sad-eyed animal was painted black-and-white like a zebra, and gringo tourists wearing huge sombreros posed for photos while seated in the donkey cart.

“Where's Fin?” Bobbie wondered aloud.

Bobbie looked worried, and that made Nell ask, “Do you two have something going or what?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Whaddaya
think
I mean?” Then Nell added, “Of course it's none of my business except I hate to see a girl like you get all messed up with a guy like Fin.”

“A guy like Fin?” Bobbie said, just as he came outside, looking the wrong way.

Then Fin spotted Shelby reeling across Revolución, barely dodging traffic. Fin followed after them with Nell and Bobbie bringing up the rear.

Now that it was early evening young Americans were milling everywhere, stopping only long enough to buy more beer cans to toss from car windows. A dozen drunken kids were hanging from the patio of a restaurant directly over their heads, yelling, “Cool it, Pancho!” to a harried traffic cop on the corner.

“Let's move outta the way,” Bobbie said, “before one a those dweebs hunks a bellyful on our heads.”

“Keep an eye on Pate and Durazo,” Fin said. “Something's going down. A guy came in and talked to them.”

“Probably a pimp,” Nell said.

“I don't think so,” Fin said. “The conversation was very …”

“Intense?” Bobbie asked.

“Right,” Fin said. “It was very intense.”

“They're just shopping, for chrissake,” Nell said. “
Intense
.”

Since they now had more time to kill, Abel wanted to keep the ox out of bars. He'd never seen his partner so wild-looking, not even on the night when he'd kicked the biker senseless.

“We got lotsa time,” Shelby said. “Let's go git our knobs jobbed!”

“We walk, Buey!” Abel said. “Joo are drunk already.”

“Me, drunk? Are you mental? I kin drink two quarts a that cheap tequila and not even feel it!”

“Too much speed,” Abel said.

“Naw, this ain't even good cringe,” Shelby said. “I'm jist mellow.”

Abel said, “Le's go see jacket, Buey. We go down to
pasaje
. Good down there.”

Shelby was getting twitchier. He was wrinkling his nose like a hungry rabbit. He jerked his head this way and that every time he spotted something that gleamed, sparkled, or shone. He was blinking and snapping his fingers. And he'd started sweating.

Shelby's anxiety level climbed in relation to their descent down the steep concrete stairway into the narrow passageways below the avenue. Shops were jammed cheek by jowl in a rabbit warren of arcades. There they sold
ponchos
and
sarapes
and papier-mâché birds as big as a human being, and velvet paintings, jewelry, souvenirs, curios and leather goods galore. Shelby stopped for a moment and played with a dangling Bart Simpson puppet. Everywhere he looked there were Bart Simpson dolls and figurines. He was getting light-headed and staggered more.