Something for Nothing (14 page)

That's how he felt now as he realized he was moving away from his plane. He wouldn't be sleeping in his own bed tonight, after all. Instead, he'd be going to bed in a foreign country “south of the border,” listening
to strange sounds and smelling strange smells and just generally feeling the texture of somewhere else—somewhere new and unknown.

F
ORTY MINUTES LATER THEY
were on the outskirts of Ensenada. The lights of the city rose into the night sky as they drew near, making Martin think of a fair at night—the glow cast on empty fields and parking lots, and the promise of fun and excitement the light seemed to contain. With any luck, he'd make it home for the Pleasanton fair in July, where he'd take the family, watch the kids on the rides, give them some money for the carnival games, and then kiss Linda and head on over to the track. Later in the day they'd all meet him, and the four of them would watch Temperature's Rising run in the big race. Maybe he'd win, and it would be one of those days when they all went home happy and complete—no arguing, no latent resentment, no crap.

“So here's what's going to happen,” Hano said. He had his head resting on the seatback, and he was leaning sideways toward Martin just a bit, talking a little closer to his ear. He looked pretty relaxed for a guy making a drug run. “We're gonna get dropped off at a hotel,” he said. “Or a motel, I guess. It's one I stayed at before. It's fine—it's not bad. But don't drink the water, of course. You know that, right?”

He paused, waiting for a reaction, and so Martin nodded. Yes, he'd known that, but he would definitely have made that mistake, anyway.

“We'll get something to eat,” Hano said, “and we can check out Ensenada if you want. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty hungry. And the food's really good—not the kind of fake Mexican shit you get in San Francisco or wherever. Plus, I could use a drink. Definitely we should have some tequila.”

They were quiet for a minute as the driver laid on the horn and leaned out his side window to yell in rapid-fire Spanish at a truck that was changing lanes and cutting them off.

“And then in the morning,” Hano said, continuing, “we get up, have some pastries and eggs or whatever, and wait. They also have a kind
of hot chocolate that's really good for breakfast. It's better than coffee, almost. It's the sugar, I guess. It gives you a real rush, and it kills a hangover.”

Martin looked out the window at what was now Ensenada proper. Most of the buildings were square two-story edifices with simple plaster exteriors. They looked like cheap motels from the U.S. that had been plopped down over the border. The only difference was the rooftops, most of which had the curved, clay tiles that were apparently a requirement south of the Bay Area. That and the colors of the buildings. Practically every building was a different pastel color—light blue, yellow, green, light green. Strings of lights hung along the eaves or along second-story balconies. The colors and the lights gave the town an almost festive look—a little like a fair, actually.

People were out in the streets, standing in doorways, or sitting at tables. It seemed like there were tables everywhere—in front of small restaurants, markets, and even what looked like residential buildings. There were a lot of Americans. They tended to have nicer clothes, and most of them looked drunk. Martin watched a group of college-age kids—white kids, Americans—laughing and staggering as they tried to prop up a girl who could barely walk.

Farther up the street a group of sailors, probably from the naval base in San Diego, looked equally sauced. They were all wearing their white uniforms, with blue stripes on the sleeves and the flap that folded over onto their backs. One guy had another in a headlock, but they were both laughing; another was yelling to a group of Mexican girls standing across the street. Martin didn't get a good look at the girls, but it occurred to him that they were prostitutes. They were wearing miniskirts and high heels, and they had the practiced, bored posture of having stood on the street for hours.

They drove past a nice town square with a church on one side of it, and a big cement fountain in the middle. The fountain had been painted a deep orange color, and the spraying water was lit up by lights at the base of the fountain. Lots of people were gathered there. A few
kids ran around or rode their bikes (though it seemed awfully late for them to be out). But for the most part Martin saw young men, some of them a little rough-looking in their jeans and white T-shirts.

They checked into their hotel, but because they didn't have any luggage, it was really just a matter of paying and then standing there while they made sure that Martin's leather satchel was tucked safely into the large safe behind the clerk's counter. Martin looked over at Hano as the safe clicked shut, and Hano nodded, satisfied.

Out in the street it was warm and bustling. Every half block or so a different song streamed out from a radio or a record player. Most of them were in English. He heard a few that Sarah listened to in her bedroom. But he also heard Mexican music. At one point they walked past a band standing in front of a club and playing what Martin assumed was some sort of Mexican folk music. One guy was playing a big fat guitar, and another guy had a bass that was almost as tall as he was; there was also someone on saxophone, and another guy with an accordion. Martin and Hano stood there in the street watching them for a couple of minutes, part of a small group that had gathered. An American sailor was standing near Martin; he had a bottle of Mexican beer in one hand, and he had his other arm around a young Mexican woman. He smiled at Martin. “Pretty good, huh?” he said, and Martin nodded.

They sat down at an open-air cantina, on tall stools along a wooden bar that looked onto the street. It was really just a big, wide window sill that doubled as a long table. The table and the surrounding window frame were painted a bright aqua color, and it occurred to Martin that someone might take a nice photo of him and Hano from outside the cantina as they sat there, elbows propped on the bar, drinking beer. It would be the sort of photo he could put up in the office (next to the shot of Sal Bando standing with him and Peter at the marina). People would notice it, and he'd explain with feigned reluctance that he liked to fly down to Mexico once in a while, drink in the culture a bit, do some deep-sea fishing, that sort of thing.

But even as he thought this, he realized that the photo could be used as evidence against him. “As you can see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Anderson made frequent trips to Ensenada, and he was clearly quite comfortable there. The state will seek to prove that, along with Mr. Hano, he was part of an elaborate smuggling operation, one that involved large quantities of heroin, easily the most addictive and certainly the most pernicious drug now threatening our nation's youth.”

The menu, which was old and stained and creased, was a mystery to Martin, and so Hano ordered for both of them. “I've been here a couple of times,” Hano said. “I know what's good.”

They had a spicy soup of some sort, and then fried cakes made of plantains and stuffed with cheese. And then they had a big plate of shrimp in a brown sauce that was thick and hot. While they ate they drank, and pretty soon the bar was filled with their small bottles of Mexican beer.

“Wow,” Martin said to Hano. “This food is really good.”

“I know,” Hano said. “It's like I told you—this is real Mexican food.”

There was something so obvious about this that Martin didn't know how to respond, and so he didn't say anything. He figured it was about eleven o'clock. The street was becoming more crowded. The road was jammed now with cars, windows down and radios blaring. There were more and more sailors, shouting and reeling around and generally being obnoxious, but there were also lots of locals. They were young and looked like they were heading out to the bars and clubs. It was really bustling.

He and Hano talked about race horses, and about the A's. Hano was a big fan, and he seemed genuinely impressed that Martin lived near Sal Bando. And he believed Martin—or he seemed to believe him—when Martin told him that they'd been to neighborhood barbecues together, and that Martin and Bando had gotten to know each other pretty well. Martin also told him that he'd sold planes to several members of the A's, Reggie Jackson included.

“He was a jerk about it, though,” Martin said, describing Jackson's purchase of a Cessna. “We actually had to threaten a lawsuit to get some of our money.”

Martin knew he was pushing it with this last set of lies, but the alcohol was starting to take over and he couldn't help himself.

Hano, for his part, told him he'd been born on the naval base in Pearl Harbor not long before it was attacked by the Japanese.

“My father was on the USS
Shaw,
” he said. “He was killed in the second wave of bombings. So I never really knew him.”

He went on to tell Martin that his mother moved him and his brother to California. Hano wasn't even a year old yet, he said, and they'd almost been sent to an internment camp because his mother was Japanese (it was his father who was Hawaiian).

Martin was impressed by this story, but he also knew that, like his own, it might be a tissue of lies. For all he knew, Hano had grown up in Santa Monica or Redondo Beach, an adopted kid in an all-white family that dragged him to church on Sundays. Sure, this was cynical, but how much could you really expect from someone who was willing to fly down to Mexico and smuggle heroin back into the U.S.?

At some point—Martin couldn't have said when—Hano had started ordering tequila. It wasn't long after this that things began to blur around the edges. He'd been getting steadily drunk on the little Mexican beers, but after the first shot of tequila he shifted into a different state of being. They both did. Suddenly they were chatting with people on the street as they passed by—women, of course, but pretty much anyone. They had a round of tequila shots with a group of sailors who were wandering past, and Martin was pleased when he made them all laugh with a series of imitations of Hollywood actors: Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne got the best response. The sailors were so impressed (and so drunk) that they began stopping passersby just to watch Martin's imitations. Martin was only too happy to comply. He wasn't even drunk so much as high—the tequila was like some
sort of drug. He was having a great time. He felt uninhibited and confident—his money woes and Val Desmond and Ramirez and the drugs were a million miles away. They were problems that belonged to someone else.

Later, a couple of the waiters agreed to have a shot of tequila with them. Martin had his arm around the shoulders of one of them, and, at the waiter's suggestion, they sang “Country Roads,” the John Denver song. The waiter had the words written down on a piece of paper that he pulled out of his pants pocket and unfolded and held out so that Martin and Hano could see it. Martin realized that the waiter probably did this with a lot of customers, maybe as a way to angle for a big tip, but he didn't really care. Singing this song, looking down at the man's scrawled-out English lyric sheet when he forgot the words, Martin felt suddenly as if he were in the midst of something—as if, rather than being outside and looking in, as was so often the case for him, he was in it, somehow, and a part of it.

And then they were with a couple of Mexican women. Young Mexican women, that is. He couldn't have said when or how they had joined them, but there they were. One was wearing a light blue minidress getup; it was one of those halter-top, bare shouldered things, and the dress itself was very short. She had great breasts. She was wearing white sandals, and her legs were all there, brown and smooth. Martin figured she was about twenty-five, or maybe a little older. Her teeth were a little crooked, something she tried to hide when she smiled, but she was actually pretty cute. She was sitting next to Hano, with her chair pulled up close to his, so that he could put his arm around her. Her brown hair was feathered back and held in place in stiff curls that framed her face, and she was wearing blue eye shadow that matched her dress. Her name was Maria.

The other one, Lucille, was wearing leather shorts and a tight, sequined shirt that was shoulderless on one side. The shorts were brown, and the shirt was a reddish pink. She was wearing thick platform shoes and red lipstick. Her outfit was a little ridiculous, but she was even
better looking than her friend. She had deep brown eyes and long brown hair, down to the middle of her back, almost. She was younger than Maria; she said she was twenty-one, but Martin figured probably eighteen or nineteen. Maybe even seventeen, though Martin didn't want to think about it, especially when after a while she sat on his lap. The four of them had some tequila shots, toasting one another. The girls spoke a smattering of English, mostly gleaned from American television—beamed in free from San Diego, Martin guessed. It was funny, listening to them refer to Scope mouthwash,
The Flintstones,
and
The Jetsons,
and nice to watch the two of them look at each other and giggle. It was like being in high school again.

But this didn't last very long, because pretty soon (like in high school, actually) they paired off. Hano seemed to be playing it cool, chatting with Maria and joking around. But Martin wasn't able to contain himself. He ran his hand along Lucille's bare legs. She squirmed and pushed his hand away a few times, but she was also laughing and nibbling on his ear, licking it, and whispering something to him in Spanish. He could barely stand it.

Pretty soon he was kissing the girl, eagerly and sloppily, and after a while she said in her broken English that they should go somewhere else. Did he have a room they could go to? Martin looked over to check this out with Hano, but he and Maria were gone. Lucille laughed when she saw Martin's confusion, and she told him, mostly through gesturing, that Hano had already paid for all of them.