Paraíso, Page 4

  “Exactly. But this scorpion is a great swimmer. He didn’t even need the ride.”

  “Does this scorpion have green eyes?”

  He looked at her with concern and shook his head. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “I stayed at Judy’s last night. She said I should talk to you about him. She actually gave you as a reference.”

  Clamato laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. Haw shit, this was probably the first time anyone had ever given him as a reference for anything. But yeah. He took her around the other side of the house and gestured at his old black-and-yellow Land Cruiser, a 1975 station wagon model that a friend had just abandoned in his yard three years ago. The mechanic had gotten it running again, no problems ever since.

  The oddly human mooing sound was growing closer. Finally, a big man with a broad grin and completely empty eyes appeared outside Clamato’s gate, raised a hand, and bellowed. Clamato bellowed back, went inside, and came out with a Hershey bar. “Hunh. Must be nine. I thought it was earlier.”

  She watched as he walked to the gate and handed over the Hershey bar while the man mooed loudly and clapped him on the shoulder. The man walked away unwrapping the chocolate, and the mooing sound slowly faded into the background. “Well, that’s Jefe,” Clamato said back in his chair. “The boss, that’s what they call him. This is a great town for nicknames.”

  “This place is right out of Faulkner, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He poured and chuckled. “Ever read Sanctuary?”

  “Wow.” She shook her head in amazement. “As a matter of fact, I was reading it last night. Over at Judy’s.”

  “She have a copy? I’m not surprised. Anyway, you should read it carefully if you’re planning to stick around.”

  “Do I have any other options? Other than just abandoning my car?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “So tell me about this mechanic. What’s his name, to start with?”

  “Marco Blanco is what they call him. But his real name is Mark White. Here. Sit back and drink your drink, and Pancho Clamato will tell you a story.”

  Mark White’s father was an Irish American adventurer from San Diego who’d built one of the first big watering holes in Cabo. This was before the Baja road, and rich gringos would fly in with private planes for fishing and partying. It was a huge success, and his bookkeeper was a smart, handsome woman from Paraíso. Before too long she was pregnant, then they were engaged to be married, then Mark White’s father was bought out by the Hilton chain and went back alone to San Diego a rich man. He married into La Jolla society and had two other sons.

  The summer Mark turned sixteen he called his father and asked if he could visit. Well, okay. His father must have been feeling guilty because he even arranged the visa and paid for the ticket. His wife was not happy but had known about the child and told her own children that their father had been married before. Mark’s half-brothers were two years and four years younger than he was, going to a fancy La Jolla private school with computer camp and soccer league in the summer.

  Mark’s English was terrible, so his father sent him to the only language school he could find. The other students were mainly children of Mexican immigrants and illegal aliens, or were immigrants and aliens themselves. In a month he was speaking passable English, and in two he was fluent, with an accent practically indistinguishable from his half-brothers’. The school had even found him a mechanic’s job, which he’d taken to supplement his small allowance. His father was impressed enough to invite Mark to spend the rest of the year in La Jolla and enroll in the local high school. He acknowledged legal paternity and got him a US passport.

  But his wife disapproved of the mechanic’s job (even though it was an upscale, imported-car garage), and when Robert, her oldest son, began to hang around there after school she asked Mark to quit. If he wanted to work, she could find him a job in a real estate office where she had friends.

  “What would I be doing?” he asked.

  “Why, office work.” She smiled. “You’d learn how to operate a computer, for one thing.”

  Mark’s two half-brothers spent most of their free time hunched over computers. They seemed lost to the real world, although he thought there was hope for the older one.

  So he said he’d rather stay at the garage, and, surprisingly, his father backed him up. “The boy’s a really good wrench. I’ve talked to his boss,” he told his wife.

  At the garage, Mark learned about Windansea Beach and the Pumphouse Gang. He’d surfed occasionally in Paraíso, where the waves could get huge and hollow like the north shore of Hawaii, and when he tried the break on a borrowed board he found he was able to hold his own and then some. He made a few friends and got respect. After a while, the surf crowd at the high school picked him up. They thought he was cool, with his dark Mexican skin and green eyes. And they started calling him Marco Blanco.

  Mark’s stepmother became his bitter enemy, though he didn’t discover the extent of it until later. “He’s fallen in with a really low set,” she told his father. “Drugs, alcohol, you name it, they do it. Robert worships him. Look how he’s started to spend time at that … garage. It’s just a matter of time before Robert gets into surfing.”

  “Surfing’s not the end of the world,” his father said. “I used to do it myself.”

  “It’s different now. Don’t you read the papers? One of them was just charged with being the biggest smuggler of marijuana in the world. There’s a whole gang called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Why, they’re making millions selling drugs to our kids.” She suggested strongly that Robert spend less time with his stepbrother, and Robert did. Gradually, under his mother’s influence, he began to look at Mark with disapproval. Her campaign made even his father distance himself. Family meals became four against one.

  In the spring, Mark came home from the garage to find a Latino cop standing at the door of the La Jolla house. “Hi, Mark,” the cop said in a casual tone. “I’m just a friend of the family. Frank’s the name.”

  “Hi,” Mark said. “You’re Mexican, right?”

  “US citizen,” the cop said. “Since five years old. Listen, your stepmom is a little worried about some things.”

  “What things?” The cop’s badge read Gonzalez.

  “Well, she’s afraid people are taking advantage of you.”

  “What are you talking about? How are people taking advantage of me?”

  “I dunno. Maybe something that happened a while back? She said you wouldn’t mind if I took a look in your room. That okay?”

  Mark stared. “I guess so. Sure.”

  “Well, let’s take a look then, okay?” Gonzalez stood back and motioned him through the door.

  Up in his room, Gonzalez went carelessly through his desk and bureau, whistling the tune from a Mexican corrido. Then he opened the closet door, reached way back on the shelf, and, still whistling, pulled down a medium-sized cardboard box. “Mind if I open this?”

  “I’ve never seen that before. It must have been in there before I came.”

  Gonzalez’s whistle changed to a long falling note when he opened the box. He reached in and pulled out a plastic bag of reddish weed. “About a pound, I’d say.” He opened it and sniffed. “Damn good Mexican red. Probably worth a couple thousand on the street.”

  Mark shook his head to clear it. “Jesus. I told you I’ve never seen that before.”

  “You mean Billy Martin didn’t ask you to drive down to Ensenada and pick this up? Ya que estás Mexicano?”

  Billy Martin was a leather craftsman and older surfer who hung out with the Pumphouse Gang. “Billy Martin has never said a goddamn word to me.”

  “But you know who he is, right?”

  “Sure, I know who he is.”

  “Did you know he was working with Sam Cook?” Cook was the smuggler Mark’s stepmother had read about, recently sentenced to ten years.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. It has nothing to do with me. But I know why th
at stuff was planted in my closet.”

  The cop held up both hands. “Callete, mijo. Now stop right there. Can you prove it was planted?”

  “Of course, I can’t.”

  “Entonces, no me hagas tonterías.” Gonzalez smiled and drummed his fingers on the cardboard. “Look, we’re only trying to help you stay out of real trouble.”

  The deal was, no charges would be filed if Mark went back to Mexico and never entered the US again.

  He headed back to Paraíso in an ancient Chevy pickup he’d rebuilt from the ground up, and a few months later he opened his garage. Clamato said he’d had quite a few novias over the years, all of them gringas and all of them unhappy. “He likes to pull their wings off and watch them crawl,” Clamato said. “It’s part of his revenge on the world.”

  “Wow. And how do you know all this?”

  “I used to surf Windansea myself back in the fifties. I keep in touch. ’Course, he doesn’t know that.” Clamato raised the jug and drank. “In Sanctuary? This guy Popeye? I don’t think old Bill just made him up. He’s the real thing.”

  “You’re saying he’s like Marco? But Marco’s just a mechanic, no?”

  “And Al Capone just owned a bar in Chicago.”

  “You mean he’s—”

  “And more, baby. People have died.”

  The mechanic seemingly hadn’t moved since she saw him last, still at the workbench, still fiddling with a carburetor or something. Reassuring yet unnerving. Work went on, but was there any progress? She waved at him when he looked up, then walked to the Mercedes. Dust was already beginning to settle over it, and she traced a slow question mark with her forefinger on the front fender.

  “What does that mean?” He was behind her.

  She slowly turned, wondering how much her black bra showed through the borrowed white blouse. “It sounds like you’re the only man in Baja Sur who can fix my car. But I don’t even know your name.” Bit of innocent deception to make her feel in control.

  “They call me Marco Blanco around here. And yours?”

  “My name is Wendy.” Her voice sounded oddly formal. “Wendy Davis.”

  “And where are you from, Wendy?”

  “North County. Encinitas.”

  “Encinitas? No way.”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Marco? That’s not a very promising beginning.”

  “I just meant you’re not from Encinitas, even if you live there now. I know people from Encinitas. But you’re from the East someplace, right?”

  “Well, I was born in Philadelphia, and I guess I grew up there. How did you know?”

  “Just a way of acting.” He paused. “You said ‘beginning’?”

  “Well, yeah. You’re going to work on my engine, aren’t you?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “So what’s the first step … in this process?”

  He tossed his head. “I take the engine down, see what the damage is. And I give you an estimate. Then you order the parts, if you want to go ahead.”

  “When can you start?”

  He grinned. Aw shucks. “Well, I already started. Took off the hoses and connections. She’s ready to come out.”

  She’s ready to come out. What if she didn’t want that? She had other options, no?

  “If you want, I can reconnect them,” he said smoothly. “Wouldn’t take more than half an hour. I was just trying to save you time.”

  She watched while he got things ready: unbolting the mounts and the transmission, setting up a wheeled tripod with a chain lift over the open hood, attaching a chain bridle to the engine. Then, moving smoothly and efficiently and sometimes whistling a snatch of tune, he pulled on the chain ratchet to the lift and the engine slowly rose out of the car.

  The damage wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The pistons, rings, and cylinder walls were all in pretty good shape because the problem had been detected early. But yes, like he’d thought, the crankshaft and bearings were badly worn. She could get away with just replacing them, although now that the engine was out and apart he’d recommend a total rebuild.

  “You must think I’m rich,” she said for the second time in two days.

  He turned away. “I’ll give you a list of the parts we’re going to need, and I’ll work up my estimate. How’d you like Judy’s?”

  “Fine.”

  He shook his head. “They’re crazy over there, you know that, don’t you. And they charge too much. Look, my mother’s got a little palapa she rents out up on the hill on the other side of the valley above Pancho Clamato’s. Want me to find out if it’s vacant?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “It’s only thirty dollars a week. Plus I can probably get you a discount if I’m working on your car.”

  “Well, okay. Ask her.” She opened the trunk of the Mercedes and pulled out her bag. “Meanwhile, I’ll take this over to Judy’s.”

  “Put it in the truck and I’ll drive you.” Marco grinned. “It’s way too hot to drag that heavy thing through the streets.”

  When she called her Hell’s Angel mechanic from the town’s only public phone to order the parts, he offered to fly them down himself for nothing. And he offered to stay and do the work for exactly what the other mechanic would ask (not more than $2,500, he figured), plus pay for his own room and board. “I been caretaking that old bus for a long time, Wendy.” She always had trouble fitting his mild voice to his 250-pound body. “If it was ruined, why …” He paused. “I’ve never been south of the border, y’know. I’m due for a goddamn vacation.”

  She was touched, very, but she really couldn’t let him go to all that trouble. What about tools? What about a place to work? The mechanic here seemed very … ah … capable.

  The Hell’s Angel laughed. “A capable Mexican mechanic is like a hen with teeth.”

  “He’s got good teeth.” She laughed self-consciously. “And he speaks perfect English. Must have spent time in the US. Plus people say he’s the best mechanic in the whole state.”

  “Okay,” the Hell’s Angel said. “So you like him, hunh?”

  “Hey! I’ve only just met him.”

  He chuckled. “Look, it’s going to take me a week or two to round up the parts. Can you deal with that?”

  “Of course, I can. You know you’re saving my life.”

  “Just drive carefully, Wendy,” the Hell’s Angel said. “Call me if there’s any trouble. Call me anyway in a week. Want me to go over to your house every once in a while to pick up the mail and stuff?”

  “Greg, that would be so great.” She realized she’d hardly ever used his name.

  Her friend Dave didn’t want to give up his room at the luxurious Twin Dolphins in Cabo for a two-hour bus ride and a funky bed-and-breakfast. “I’ll come if you need me, for sure. But you know I’ve only got five days. I’m really sorry about the car, but hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I won’t.” She tried to keep the relief out of her voice. “Have a great time. I’ll see you back home in a month or so.”

  She canceled with much more regret a shoot for National Geographic Adventure on women competing in the Molokai Channel paddleboard race. She knew the Molokai Channel, thirty-two miles of spectacularly rough, windy open ocean. A plum assignment even though it was her first for them, and who knew if they’d ever give her another?

  Finally, her book editor, a hearty but evasive former sportswriter for the London Times, who wouldn’t tell her how many copies were in the first printing. But he did say Publishers Weekly had given it a “very positive” advance review. “I like it, Wendy. ‘The photographer’s off in the wilds of Mexico and cannot be reached at the moment.’ How can you be reached, by the way? The old cleft stick?”

  “Well, there’s email. There’s a hookup here. Hotmail’s easy.”

  “Hotmail’s everywhere, isn’t it?” He sounded distant. “Well, if there’s anything urgent I’ll let you know. Keep in touch, will you? We won’t tell your public about the car.”


  The telephone operator accepted her money grumpily, and she walked out into brilliant sunshine. A light northwest breeze was just easing in, and the fronds on the taco palms vibrated gently. The beach was about a mile away, down dusty lanes among the irrigated farm fields. Judy had told her the route, but swimming was dangerous. The water was deep right up to the sand, and big ocean waves came in unimpeded. It was called Playa de los Muertos because several people had drowned there.

  The sand crunched merrily under Wendy’s sandals. Quail and white-winged doves called from the big mango trees and taco palms beside the fields. A farmer bent over his hoe straightened up to watch her, and she found herself singing her favorite walking song, “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” The road ended in huge dunes, high enough to give a great view of the green valley, the little town with its white church tower up on the south bank, and the jagged mountains hazy in the distance.

  The huge ocean beach ended in sharp hills to the south and stretched to infinity to the north. Not a soul in sight. A platoon of pelicans surfed the air currents on the wave faces, which Wendy figured might be six feet at most and easily swimmable. She’d brought a towel from the inn to lie on but no bathing suit. Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one is around to hear it? She luxuriously pulled off her clothes, waded into the frothing white soup, and dove into a wave face. Out beyond the break, she jackknifed and swam for the bottom, eyes open to the spangled blue.

  Just before sunset, Marco drove her up to his mother’s palapa in his truck. It was high on the hillside, higher than most of the other houses. Very basic, one room, a palm-thatched roof and walls of woven sticks, no glass in the windows. A one-burner propane gas ring, a propane camping refrigerator, kerosene lamps, a tiny bathroom with a sink, shower, and toilet. Electrical service hadn’t gotten that far up the hill, but water wasn’t a problem because the town storage tank was right behind the house. They’d run their own line into it.

  She tested the bed: a foam pad on a wooden platform with an old brass headboard for decoration. “Did you ask your mother about a discount?”