Nipped in the Bud (11 page)

“Con supermiso, señor, Yo quiero
—” she began, in her high-school Spanish.

Horns were blaring behind her. “You’re blocking trafeek!” the border guard cried, waving her on. “Get the lead out, lady!” And then, with a fanfare of crashing gears, she was suddenly in the romantic land of roses and guitars.

Crossing the long bridge over the muddy trickle of the Tijuana River, Miss Withers sniffed sharply, remembering Coleridge’s poem about the city of Cologne and its two-and-seventy stenches. The way led up a steep, narrow street and suddenly burst into the town itself, no town at all now, but a booming city that had somehow exploded all over the surrounding hills. The glare in the hazy sky of early evening seemed brighter than that over Broadway during the theater hour; the sidewalks were spilling with humanity of all ages, conditions and colors.

A thousand blinding, flickering neon lights offered information on mail-order marriage and divorce, girl shows, curios,
licores,
food and amusement—almost every conceivable kind of amusement. The spinster schoolteacher bewilderedly clung to the wheel and let herself be carried along by the tide of other cars down what she remembered as the sleepy Main Street of the town—now it had become the
Avenida de la Revolucíon.

This wasn’t Tijuana at all; it was Reno and Skid Row and Coney Island gone mad. Signs implored her to attend the
jai-alai
games at the Fronton Palace or the greyhound races or the Foreign Book (track odds anywhere) or to see the death-defying girl
matadorables
at the Torero; to purchase tax-free gasoline or duty-free perfumes; to drink half a hundred brands of beer or tequila or whiskey.

Miss Withers was borne along for three or four blocks past blaring, blazing dance halls, honky-tonks, saloons, all interspersed with curio stores, divorce mills, arcades, more curio stores, more honky-tonks. Even on a Sunday everything was wide-open. People, mostly young males between eighteen and thirty, swarmed the sidewalks and poured recklessly back and forth across the Avenida, jaywalking with a magnificent disregard for life and limb and fender. Whenever traffic slowed or snarled dozens of hawkers rushed out from the sidewalk to offer trays loaded with junk jewelry, plaster animals, belts and billfolds and poisonously hued blankets and candies.

As soon as possible the schoolteacher edged her rented car up a darkish side street, and pulled into the curb with a sigh of relief. Even here the blare of cantina orchestras, the mingled roar of voices and laughter and barkers’ cries and auto horns was almost deafening. It occurred to Miss Withers that finding anybody in this hurdy-gurdy atmosphere was going to take a bit of doing. “Talk about your needle in a haystack!” she murmured, and prepared to disembark.

A smallish brown ghost materialized suddenly out of the shadows, a ghost wearing a ragged T-shirt, blue jeans, and an electric-orange jockey cap. Thrusting his face into the car window he cried, “For one quarter I watch your car, lady?” He might have been eleven or twelve, but the dark
mestizo
eyes were older.

“No thank you, little boy. My dog will watch the car very nicely.”

“I watch the dog, no? Fine dog like that, somebody could steal it for the big reward.”

“No.” She started the motor, and the car lurched backward. But the boy clung to the door. “I am Vito,” he said cheerfully. “I show you much better parking place. I show you anything you like in town, anything at all. I speak good English, because one year when my father is alive he pay to have me go across the line to American school.” He had somehow contrived to open the door, and was within. “You want nice curios, fine leather
huaraches
twenty percent off?”

It was the time for Talley to play the protecting role, but he had obligingly leaped over into the back seat and was licking the intruder’s neck in welcome. “Now, young man—” began Miss Withers severely. Then she thought of something. “Do you happen to know what store here in Tijuana sells little toy horses and riders made of plaited straw?”

“You make fun, lady.” Vito looked searchingly up into her face. “Two, three hundred curio stores here—every one sells the
caballito de paja.
” He lowered his voice. “Maybe you want sleepy pills, no prescription? You want Paris postcards, absinthe, maybe Mary Warners? You want dorty books? I take you to one very fine dorty bookstore, you can buy
Fanny Heel
and
Life an’ Loves of Frank ’Arris?
”

“No! Get out, you nasty child. Must I call a policeman?”

“But, lady, no policeman even can show you anything in thees town I can’t!” Vito insisted proudly. “Tell me, what you really come for, eh?”

Miss Withers hesitated, looking down on her self-appointed guide with sudden compassion. He did look rather hungry. “Vito,” she said, “is there a place nearby where we can get a nice chocolate ice-cream soda?”

It was her theory that a boy is a boy anywhere. The dazed youth gave her directions, and a few minutes later—leaving Talley locked and unhappy in the car—they were inside a little
botica
which looked exactly like a corner drugstore anywhere. Craftily the schoolteacher waited until Vito’s straw made sucking sounds in the glass, and then over her own coffee she remarked casually, “Young man, you have guessed that I did not come down here for ice cream. I am—I’m looking for someone, and I don’t know just where to begin.”

Dark eyes comprehended. “Your man, he run off with some pretty
ramera?
”

“Er—no, Vito. I am looking for a girl, or more probably two girls. Americans, but they do not go back across the border, even to sleep.”

“I catch. You are the mama, or the relative. You do not like that the gorls work in one of the hook shops over on Negrete or maybe do the strip tease in some
cantina.
You wish to find them and take them home.”

She explained somewhat. Vito frowned. “They are hiding here, yes?”

“Yes. At least if they are here at all they won’t exactly be advertising their presence. Perhaps a bright boy like you could help me to locate them, without their knowing.” She added, whispering, “I am something of a detective.”

Brown eyes bugged. “A detective like Deek Tracy?”

“More, I hope, like Sherlock Holmes.” Miss Withers went on to outline the functions of the original Baker Street Irregulars, and never did seed fall on more fertile ground. “Five bucks,” said Vito firmly. Then, as she nodded, “And five more when I find out what you want, okay?” Nor were pesos acceptable; only American dollars were legal tender here. But the boy scorned her card with the hotel address scribbled thereon. “You come with me, we find ’em now if they’re here.”

“But how? This must be a city of at least fifty thousand—it’s spread out all over the hills and both banks of the river. There must be hundreds of apartments and auto courts and rooming houses.”

He grinned wisely. “Maybe so. But you say they are rich gorls. They know how to cook? They make all their own meals?” Miss Withers had her doubts about that. “Then you listen, lady. Such high-class
turistas
would only go to extra-special place to eat, which here in Tijuana we got very few of. Let’s go!”

Doubtful but willing, Miss Withers found herself out on the Avenida again, playing chauffeur to a big, sleepy poodle and a small, alert Mexican boy. She stopped the car outside half a dozen restaurants—Caesar’s, Chez Goldman, Nacho’s, The Original Nacho’s.

Each time Vito would pop hopefully inside, and then come out smiling and shaking his head. “If only you had a peecture of the gorls!” he said finally.

“No picture,” Miss Withers admitted. “But they are very pretty girls—and one of them has bright-red hair, or at least she did have. And even if it’s dyed the roots should be showing by now.”

He nodded, and tried again at a place called Los Coyotitos, drawing another blank. “They all say maybe so, maybe no,” he confessed. “Now we try the last shot in our locket. Is the Primero Hotel restaurant, where my cousin Carlos is busboy.” They went back down the Avenida for over a mile and turned into an almost-filled parking lot in the shadow of a block-long cathedral whose pink towers and buttresses were illuminated by mammoth floodlights. It looked, she decided, as if the architect’s mother had been frightened by a Moorish pastry cook. “Don’t tell me that is the hotel!” Miss Withers gasped.

“No, lady. That is the Fronton, where they play handball with baskets. Very fast game, much big betting. Another cousin of mine, he is locker boy in the dressing rooms, he get many hot tips …”

“Some other time,” said Miss Withers firmly. Vito pointed out to her a small hotel across the street, a teetering, five-story building bristling with sagging ornamental balconies, whose gap-toothed electric sign spelled out “—OT— — —RIM—RO,” and beneath that the words,
“Cuisine Célèbre”
“I think,” said the schoolteacher, “that this time I shall join you. I could do with a bit of that
cuisine célèbre
myself.”

The boy was already leading her across the street. Doors swung shut behind them, cutting off the noises of the town. She found herself being guided across a wide and almost deserted lobby, past flaking marble pillars and dusty potted palms. A desk clerk looked up from his newspaper, photographed her with one blink of his bulging, ophidian eyes, and turned away forever disinterested.

They passed the wide arched entrance to a bar—obviously a respectable bar, for there were more women than men in the place, young women in sedate black gowns whose eyes were intent on the small glasses of vermouth before them. Then on into the dining room, a vaulted space somewhat smaller than Grand Central Station, filled with white empty tables and lined with booths, some filled with family parties. A few waiters hovered about, like seagulls looking for a place to light. There was a patina about the place, an ancient, mellowed odor of oil and garlic and spices like that of a fine old salad bowl.

Vito led her to a booth at the rear of the room. “Better I talk to Carlos alone,” he said softly. “My cousin has not much of the English. Order the family dinner. And lay off the Peruvian wines, they’re sour.”

He left her, and Miss Withers tapped her toe impatiently for some time. The family dinner, when it arrived, turned out to be a superb venison steak with an odd orange sauce, browned potatoes, new asparagus, and a mammoth romaine salad. The schoolteacher, who had resigned herself to the usual steaming platter of traditional Mexican dishes consisting mostly of chili peppers, set to with a will. The cooking, she decided, would compare with the best Manhattan could offer. So, unfortunately for her peace of mind, did the check when it came.

Yet even that shock was forgotten when she saw Vito slipping back across the long room, arriving at the booth at the same instant as a smallish, worried man with buck teeth, who immediately set about cleaning up the table with considerable clattering of china and glasses. “My cousin Carlos,” said the boy proudly.

Miss Withers nodded, and Carlos burst into a flood of
sotto-voce
Spanish, of which the schoolteacher caught not one word in ten. “He says yes,” Vito translated.

“Yes
what?
”

“Yes, he knows the young ladies. You want to give him something?”

The schoolteacher produced another five-dollar bill. “He says,” continued Vito, “that they are a Miss Jones and her companion. They eat here almost every night. One very sweet and
simpática,
one very proud and haughty and difficult to please. He noticed them particularly because of what he calls the peenk hair—
color de rosa.
”

“Eureka!” gasped Miss Withers. Never until this moment had she actually believed that her hunch would come true. “And does your cousin know where they live?”

Vito shrugged. “No. But he will try to find out for us later, perhaps. Anyway, there is nothing more to be done now. Nobody would be at home on Sunday night. They would be at the
jai-alai,
or the greyhound races, or …”

“We’ll look for them!” decided the schoolteacher, picking up her pocketbook. Vito looked pleased at the evidence that this oil well was not going to run dry on him, but Carlos’ worried face brightened even more. He spouted Spanish again.

“He says,” translated the boy, “that when the young ladies were having dinner here earlier this evening, he happened to notice that they were studying the list of entries for the
corrida de lebrel,
the greyhounds. It is only two small miles, lady—”

“Off to the races!” decided Miss Hildegarde Withers. It would, she felt, be most valuable to have a quiet look at her quarry while they were still unaware of her interest. She followed Vito out of the place, at the doorway giving a quick backward look toward the busboy. Carlos still stood by the booth with his tray of dishes, smiling an odd smile. Probably, she thought, the poor little man was dazed with his sudden wealth.

Coming back to the car, the schoolteacher found Talley the poodle howling softly, in a way he had of indicating that he was at the end of his patience. She placated him with a paper napkin filled with the remains of her dinner, and ten minutes later was pulling up toward the Agua Caliente race track, which at night rather resembled one of the country clubs in the Los Angeles area.

“The fifth race just comes up,” Vito advised her. “We hurry.”

As they stopped at one end of the parking lot, Talley made it very clear indeed that he was having no more of playing prisoner. It might have been different if he had had his beloved rubber rat along for company, but he was all for getting out of the car and staying out.

“No, Talley,” said Miss Withers. “Be good for just a bit longer, and I’ll bring you a hamburger or something.” Hardening her heart, she pushed the eager apricot-colored face back inside and slammed the door, leaving the windows down on each side enough to give the dog plenty of air. He whined softly, then subsided and fell to worrying the paper napkin.

As they approached the turnstiles, Vito gallantly produced a pair of passes to the track, explaining that they were given away in Tijuana with any purchase of five cents or more. Late as it was, people were still hurrying in. Miss Withers and her young escort moved along with the current, winding up on a lower level of the sparsely filled grandstand. The wide slope between stand and rail was filled with a few thousand spectators milling thither and yon, people of all conceivable colors and conditions. There were whole Mexican families, from the proud
papacito
to the smallest
niña
sucking a
dulce;
there were impassive Chinese with fistfuls of pari-mutuel tickets; there were groups of well-dressed Negroes obviously enjoying themselves, and a great many white norteamericanos—most of them in uniform—who were feeling no pain.