Mexico greeted them with its well-known clichés. They had never been in Tijuana before and were expecting a sleepy little town, but instead found themselves in a city that went on forever, brimming with color and noise, people and traffic, where dilapidated buses and modern cars sped alongside carts and donkeys. In the same store you could buy Mexican artifacts and American household appliances, shoes and musical instruments, spare parts and furniture, caged birds and tortillas. The air was filled with the smell of fried food and garbage, and the din of popular music, evangelical preachers, and football commentators on the radios in bars and taco joints. They had difficulty finding their way, because many of the streets had no names or numbers, and so had to ask every three or four blocks, but didn’t understand the directions they were given in Spanish, which more often than not consisted of a vague wave of the arm and a “right here, just round the corner.” In their frustration they parked the Lincoln near a gas station and walked until they came to the agreed corner, which turned out to be at the intersection of four busy streets. They waited arm in arm, stared at shamelessly by a lone dog and a group of ragged children begging for money. The only indication they had been given, apart from the name of one of the streets at the intersection, was a store for first communion dresses and images of holy virgins and Catholic saints, bizarrely named Viva Zapata.
After they had waited for twenty minutes, Nathaniel decided they had been tricked and ought to go back home, but Alma reminded him that punctuality was not exactly a Mexican characteristic and went into Viva Zapata. She gesticulated to use the telephone and dialed Ramón’s number. It rang nine times before a woman’s voice answered in Spanish, which she couldn’t understand. At four in the afternoon, by which time Alma had accepted they might as well give up, a pea-colored 1949 Ford with tinted rear windows just as Ramón had described it pulled up at the corner. Two men sat in the front seats: a youngster with a pockmarked face, a pompadour, and bushy sideburns was in the driver’s seat; the other one got out to let them in, because the car was two doored. He introduced himself as Ramón. He was thirtysomething, with a carefully groomed mustache, slicked-back hair, a white shirt, and pointed high-heeled boots. Both men were smoking. “The cash,” Ramón demanded as soon as they were inside the car. Nathaniel handed it over; Ramón counted it and stuffed the bills in his pocket. Neither of the men spoke during the journey, which to Alma and Nathaniel seemed endless: they were certain they were being driven around and around to get them lost—an unnecessary precaution, as neither of them knew the city. Clinging to Nathaniel the whole time, Alma was thinking how much worse the situation would have been if she had come on her own, while Nathaniel calculated that the men had already got their money and so could quite easily put a bullet in their heads and throw them down a ravine. They hadn’t told anyone where they were going, and weeks or months would go by before their family found out what had become of them.
Finally the car came to a halt, and they were told to wait while the driver went into the house and the other man kept watch. They were outside a cheap-looking house similar to others along the street, in a neighborhood that to Nathaniel looked poor and dirty, although he could not judge it by San Francisco standards. After a couple of minutes the youngster reappeared, and the pair told Nathaniel to get out of the car. They patted him down and made as if to lead him away, but he swatted them off and confronted them, cursing in English. Taken aback, Ramón raised his hands to mollify him.
“Slow down, man, everything’s okay.” He laughed, flashing a pair of gold teeth.
He offered Nathaniel a cigarette, which he accepted, while the other Mexican helped Alma out of the car. They all went into the house, which was not the gangsters’ den that Nathaniel had feared, but a modest family home, with low ceilings and small windows. Inside, it was hot and dark. In the living room, two children were sprawled on the floor playing with lead toy soldiers next to a table and chairs, a plastic-covered sofa, a showy lamp with a fringed shade, and a refrigerator as noisy as an outboard motor. A smell of fried onions came from the kitchen, and they caught sight of a woman in black stirring something in a pan. She showed as little interest in the newcomers as the children had. The younger of the two men pointed Nathaniel to a chair and disappeared into the kitchen, while Ramón led Alma down a short corridor to another room with a blanket over the entrance instead of a door.
“Wait!” shouted Nathaniel. “Who’s going to perform the operation?”
“I am,” said Ramón, who apparently was the only one who spoke English.