She stopped to watch a dog catching a Frisbee, then paused again at the golf course. Although there were lots of navy personnel on the links that day, she didn’t spot anyone she knew. Then she stopped to say hello to the lone sentry on the beach, where public access was divided from the navy land. After that she turned and ran as hard as she could all the way back to the Towers.
It was a strenuous workout. She arrived home, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, and read the paper. It was very hard to concentrate on the boring election coverage. She went to her file folder and removed the copy of the San Diego police report she’d been given by Fin. Bobbie got out her county map book and pinpointed the addresses of Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate. She was dying to know if they’d come home after having driven off with the Mexican who no doubt was the fence for stolen goods.
Bobbie did not dare admit to Fin or to Nell what she still believed in her heart: that Jules Temple was involved. They’d just scoff, and keep repeating that a guy like Jules Temple would not be stealing navy shoes. Still, there was something about him that made her know he had something to hide.
Impulsively, she picked up the phone. If Abel Durazo answered she’d hang up. If anyone else answered, she’d wing it.
A child said, “Bueno?”
“Do you speak English?” Bobbie asked.
“Yes.”
“Is Abel Durazo there?”
“He’s not home.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is … somebody from his job. I need to talk to him. Did he come home last night?”
The child yelled something in Spanish, then came back and said, “My mother says no, he didn’t come home last night.”
“Thank you,” Bobbie said.
After she hung up, she thought about calling Fin, but of course he’d tell her to cool it till Monday. He’d make her feel like a rookie cop. Like a kid.
She picked up the phone and called Shelby Pate’s number. A woman answered.
“Excuse me,” Bobbie said. “Is this Shelby Pate’s residence?”
“No, this is my residence. Who’s this?”
“I have to speak to him. Is he home?”
“No!” the woman said. “He ain’t home! So he’s out fucking around on you too, huh? Are you one a the speed freaks from Hogs Wild?”
“Sorry,” Bobbie said, getting ready to hang up.
“If you see that scum sucker, tell him for me he’s outta here! Tell him I threw his fucking clothes out in the street at eight o’clock this morning!”
After the line went dead, Bobbie immediately called the Tijuana Police and talked to four different people to whom she gave the names of Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate. She got an English-speaking woman on the line, who said, “Who are you inquiring about?”
“Shelby Pate,” Bobbie said. “I’m a detective with the U.S. Navy. I’m just trying to find out if he’s in jail, or in the hospital or something.”
The woman said, “You gave another name. What was that name?”
“Durazo,” Bobbie said. “Abel Durazo.”
“One moment please,” the woman said.
When she came back on the line she said, “Do you have a pencil? I have another number for you to call.”
Bobbie was excited. Maybe they were in jail, and maybe it had to do with being caught selling two thousand pairs of shoes! When she rang the other number she was given over to a man who spoke nearly unaccented English. “This is Rojas,” he said. “Who do you wish to learn about?”
“Shelby Pate,” Bobbie said. “I’m a detective with the U.S. Navy at North Island. And also I wanna know about Abel Durazo. Are they in jail, or what?”
Rojas said, “I am with the state judicial police. Do you know Mister Durazo very well?”
“No,” Bobbie said. “I’m investigating his possible involvement in a large theft of navy shoes.”
The Mexican cop said, “We have a murder victim in our morgue with the name of Abel Durazo on his California driver’s license and on his pasaporte.”
“Good god!” Bobbie said. “How about Shelby Pate?”
“No, but another man was murdered. A man named Porfirio Velásquez Saavedra, better known to us as Juan Soltero.”
“Is he a receiver of stolen property, by any chance?”
“Yes, and other things. It appears that they killed each other. Durazo was stabbed, and then must have got off one shot before he died. A derringer pistol was found beside him.”
“Could you go to the home of the dead man and search for two thousand pairs of U.S. Navy shoes?” Bobbie asked, and then she had a long conversation with Rojas concerning her investigation.
After she hung up she dialed Fin’s number, but got his answering machine. She dialed Nell’s number and got another machine. She hung up and experienced the longest afternoon of her life. She called Fin and Nell no less than fifteen times, leaving several messages for each of them. The messages sounded progressively more impatient and more excited.
After spending three hours on Mission Beach, most of it under a beach umbrella, Fin and Nell decided to go to his apartment to shower and change for dinner.
“And to do what?” Nell asked, after he made the suggestion.
“Ride the roller coaster,” Fin said.
“I haven’t ridden a roller coaster in twenty years,” she said.
“I ride it every once in awhile. It’s very nostalgic for me. When I was a kid my sisters used to take me for rides with their boyfriends. I sat between them usually. The boyfriends hated my guts.”
They were lying under the umbrella when he’d asked her. He thought she had a terrific body, for a woman of a certain age. She thought he had pretty good buns, but ought to work on his tummy.
Late that afternoon, after eating a hot dog and a hamburger, Fin Finnegan and Nell Salter rode the Mission Beach vintage roller coaster, raising their hands in the air and screaming as they sped down the dips, losing themselves for a while in lovely memories of their lost youth.
When Shelby arrived home he found some of his clothes in the driveway. Some were in the street and some were on the little patch of grass in front of the house. He parked the Harley, jumped off and ran to the front door, discovering that his key no longer fit the lock.
He started banging on the door, yelling, “Bitch! You better open this fucker or it’s goin down!”
His next-door neighbor, the tweaker who’d interrupted him when he’d been trying to landscape the neighborhood, opened his window and yelled, “Hey, dude! Your old lady said to tell you she went home to her momma!”
“She changed the fuckin lock!” Shelby hollered.
The tweaker said, “She told me you ain’t got nothin in the house no more. She threw everything out. By the time she told me, there was people from down the street stealin everything. I got some a your stuff in my garage. You kin come get it.”
Shelby ran to the tweaker’s garage and jerked it open. His camouflage jacket was there, and his extra helmet. He ran inside his own garage and pulled things down from the shelf: every box, every tool, every auto part. The boots were gone!
He ran back outside and said to the neighbor, “My boots! I had some boots in the garage!”
“Didn’t see no boots,” the tweaker said. “I saved your shirts and some jeans and I got a bag full a your sox. Them greasers from down the block, they got your boots, I guess.”
The ox just gaped. Finally he said, “You shouldn’t never steal somebody’s shoes.”
“That’s cold, dude,” the tweaker agreed.
Shelby said, “Some Mexicans got the firin squad for takin a man’s shoes.”
“What firin squad?”
“They got shot.”
The tweaker said, “Dude, you shouldn’t be doin that crystal so early in the morning. You ain’t talkin sense.”