“Say, what is this? Are you in Naval Intelligence?”
“I’m working on a case with the FBI.”
“No kiddin’? Wait till I tell the boys.”
“There won’t be anything to tell them if you lose sight of that car.”
“Brother, I’ll run this crate down to an oil spot before I lose ’em.”
Before we reached the intersection the light changed. As the black car leapt away I caught a glimpse of an old evil face at the rear window. I took off my hat and held it in my hands and crouched low in my seat. There was heavy traffic in downtown San Diego that night, and maneuverability was more important than speed. My driver took his cab through impossible openings which closed a foot from the rear fenders. He aimed nonchalantly into traffic snarls which opened up like the Red Sea just before we piled up in them. We curved and skidded across the southern half of San Diego, past the all-night movies, the seedy restaurants and mushroom hamburger stands, the penny arcades, the liquor stores and warehouses, the storefront churches and four-bit flophouses, past the fish factories and the junk yards. Out of San Diego and through National City we kept the black car in sight.
On the other side of National City it accelerated. Its taillight went away from us like a small red comet and was swallowed up by the night. Simultaneously I became aware that I was on the last lap of my long ride from Detroit to Tia Juana.
The driver drove hard for a few minutes, his motor vibrating like a donkey engine. I bounced around in the back seat as the cab climbed and descended the looping coastal hills. At Palm City he slowed down and said over his shoulder:
“I tore the guts out of this baby, but she’s out of her class trying to catch a Cadillac. God damn it.”
“This is the road to Tia Juana, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it looks like they’re going to Tia Juana.”
“Will you take me there?”
“You’re the boss. I’ll have to charge you special fare.”
“This is what I’ve been saving my money for.”
He accelerated to a steady fifty and drove for another ten minutes in silence. We topped a rise and saw the lights of Tia Juana below us. A few minutes later we stopped at the border.
“Did a black Cadillac sedan go through here a few minutes ago?” the cab-driver asked the border guard who looked at my I.D. card. Under the road lights I got my first good look at the driver’s face: fat and forty, pug-nosed, with black Irish eyes. According to the license which was pinned up in front of me, his name was Halloran.
“Yeah. The big time. Uniformed chauffeur and all.”
“You don’t know who she was?”
“Nope. She’s been through here before but I don’t know her. Why? They cut in on you?”
“No. I just thought I seen her before.”
“Some pan,” the guard said as Halloran pushed in the clutch. “She looked like she just crawled out of the woodwork and was just about ready to crawl back in.”
At the first corner in Tia Juana a barefoot boy with a flapping shirttail waved a pasteboard box and cried: “Gum! Chiclets!”
“Wait a minute,” I said to Halloran.
“You come down here to buy gum?” he said cynically. But he stopped the car. The hungry-eyed Mexican boy boarded the car like a buccaneer. “Chiclets – two for a nickel!” he cried.
I held a fifty-cent piece in the light between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. “Did you see a big black Cadillac sedan go past here a little while ago?”
“Yes, señor.”
“Where did it go?”
He pointed to the right, up the hill to the center of the town.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes, señor. That way.”
“Do you know who was in it?”
“No, señor. American lady.”
His eyes were on the coin with an intent and ageless gaze. His thin sallow face could have been anywhere between ten and sixteen. I dropped the coin in his box and he jumped from the running-board and ran away in the dust, his shoulderblades flapping through his shirt like vestigial wings.
We went up the little hill in the direction he had pointed, past weather-warped clapboard dwellings, tamale stands, the one-story establishments of cheapjack lawyers whose signs advertised quick and easy divorces. We stopped at a gas station at the top of the street, and I asked the Mexican attendant if he had seen my friend in the black Cadillac.
“Señora Toulouse?” he said, and widened his mouth with a leer which separated the hairs of his thin black moustache. “I think she has gone home. She is your friend?”
“I met her on the train. She asked me to come and see her in Tia Juana. But I don’t know where she lives.”
“You don’t know where she lives? Then you do not know Tia Juana.” He leered once more, as if there were curiously amusing secrets unknown to those who did not know Tia Juana.
“That’s right, I don’t.”
He turned to Halloran: “You know where the girls are?”
“Yeah.”
“Señora Toulouse has the biggest house in the street. You will see it. It is built of stone.”
I gave him a dollar, which he folded and tucked into his waistband. He stood back and leered us amiably out of sight.
“What the hell is this, anyway?” Halloran said.
We had turned into a noisy street which slanted down between brilliantly lighted houses into final darkness. There was a steady male traffic on the footpaths, and on the lighted porches girls like assorted fruit on display. Between the two, the men in the street and the waiting girls in the houses, there was a low tension which exploded continuously in wisecracks, obscene repartee, and invitations.
We stopped at the first corner and a lean dark youth in a white open-necked shirt appeared from nowhere. He said: “You want something very, very nice?”
“I’m looking for Señora Toulouse.”
“Señora Toulouse phooey,” he said ardently. “They are old stuff and also they supercharge. You come with me. I show you something.” He opened the back door of the cab, leaned forward with his hand on my knee, and whispered: “Virgin!”
I gave him a dollar and said: “Where is Señora Toulouse?”
“Si, señor,” he said courteously. “It is there. The big house in the middle of the block.” He leaned forward again: “Will you tell her Raoul sent you? Raoul?”
I almost closed the door on his narrow, hopeful face. We moved down the road and parked across the street from the big house. It was an imposing mansion of grey stone, not indigenous to the country but squarebuilt like old Ohio farmhouses. It had three stories, all of which were lit, but blinds were drawn over every window. The front door was shut and there were no girls on the porch, but there was the sound of music from inside.
“I’m going in,” I said. “If I don’t come out in half an hour go to the police.”
“No use going to the police. You know what this is, don’t you? These cathouses are protected by the local cops, that’s why they’re here.”
“Go to the police at the border. Then drive back to Diego and go to Mary Thompson at the Grant, got that? Tell her – wait a minute, I’ll write a note.”
I tore a page out of my address-book, wrote a note to Mary telling her to get in touch with Gordon, addressed it and gave it to Halloran. “This is if I don’t come out in half-an-hour. It’s ten now.”
I paid him his fare and some extra, and got out of the cab. I felt awkward and light as I walked up the steps with Halloran’s black eyes on my back, and knocked on the heavy carved door.
A rectangle of face containing two small eyes appeared at a Judas hole. The eyes gave me a once-over, the Judas hole snapped shut, and the door opened.
“What can we do for you?” the doorman said. He was pig-eyed and pig-bodied, shaped like a Japanese wrestler and as wide as the door. His accent was Minnesota Norska. I wondered automatically how deep my fist would sink in the swelling dough of his belly.