The Quality of the Informant

out in the parking lot. He'll have his bitch drive the dope across the border tonight. When she gets busted he'll actually wonder why. And when she hands him up he'll wonder why again. It'll probably never occur to the poor dumb shit that he did everything wrong; that, for all anybody knows, half the customers in this place are federal snitches waiting to tip off the customs people at the border. To that young jack-off, life is what he sees on TV. All the young punks today are out of touch with reality. To them everything is just a game. Maybe it's because they all get probation the first time out these days.' Mora leaned into another shot of tequila and bit a lemon wedge. 'People have been dropping like flies around here,' he said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'There's gotta be a turkey in the crowd,' he whispered, 'but I just can't figure out who. Somebody gets arrested almost every day, it seems like. This place is getting a bad name. Couple of American narcs bust in here the other day with the Mexican cops. They handcuffed a guy sitting right at the bar and dragged his ass out of here like a dog-some fugitive from L.A. I mean, like how in the hell did they know he was here?' Teddy's eyes surveyed the other tables suspiciously. 'When I figure out who it is, I'll have the cocksucker snuffed out.' Teddy chuckled. 'Thank God down here it only costs two or three hundred bucks.'

'Or just tell me and I'll do the job for free,' LaMonica said. He smiled.

Prune-faced Teddy licked the rim of his shot glass. 'Remind me never to piss you off, Paulie the Printer,' he said.

Chapter 10

After an hour or so of driving up and down the streets of Ensenada like a tourist looking for a room, LaMonica found the gold Cadillac with the MR COOL license plate. It was parked in front of a motel that looked like the others in town, a place with lots of rooms built around a swimming pool that was too small and a bar that was larger than the restaurant. He pulled into a lot across the street, where he could keep an eye on the rooms and the car at the same time.

For the next couple of hours he watched the comings and goings of the guests, mostly blue-collar types: hefty men in Bermuda shorts and uninteresting women carrying straw purses. Everyone was in various stages of tanning. They splashed one another in the pool, chased kids, and passed around bags of potato chips.

Leaning back in the seat, LaMonica recalled how he and Sandy Hartzbecker had first met. They'd been sitting on plastic-covered sofas in the dingy reception area of the federal parole office in downtown Los Angeles. His first impression of her was that she was a woman who would be impossible to describe. She was neither homely nor attractive, and her face, as well as her height, weight, bra size, and shape of hips, was totally unremarkable. Even her age would be difficult to guess. She had crow's-feet but it was difficult to tell whether they were caused by excessive exposure to sun and wind or the normal aging process. She wore a loose-fitting blouse and jeans, and cheap tennis shoes. Her mousy-brown hair was in pigtails, and her complexion was forgettable; unblemished and devoid of makeup of any kind.

She was precisely the type of woman he had been looking for.

He could tell by the form letter she kept folding and unfolding that it was probably her first post-release visit.

'Who's your parole officer?' he said.

She referred to the form. 'Mr. Askew.'

'He's mine, too,' LaMonica said. He lowered his voice. 'He's big on playing big brother — a God-squad type. Cry on his shoulder a little bit and ask for advice on something. He'll love it. If you ask, he'll go for waiving the monthly visits.'

'Thanks for the information.' Her German accent was muted and as dreary as her appearance.

After his visit to the parole officer, LaMonica waited in the hallway outside the office. When she came out, they entered the elevator together. The door closed.

'You were right,' she said. 'He went for it.'

'Where'd you do your time?' he said.

'Terminal Island.'

The elevator door opened. They dodged through a crowded lobby onto the street. LaMonica offered her a ride and she accepted.

'What are you into?' she said when they were in the car.

'Paper.' LaMonica started the engine and slipped into the halting downtown traffic.

'I did some once,' she said. 'Hundreds. I passed them in clothing stores in the San Fernando Valley.' She gave an amused smile. 'I bought so many cheap blouses I could have opened my own shop.'

'What's your business?'

'My old man's business was heroin. I did time because I carried for him. I saw the feds following me so I got scared and threw the bundles out the window. It was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my whole life. I just lost my cool. When they arrested me they told me that if I hadn't thrown the stuff, they never would have known I was carrying. Every time I think about it it makes me sick.'

'Who's your old man?'

'He's dead,' she said. 'A rip-off. It happened while I was in.' She sighed. 'But it may have been for the best. If I was with him now I'd probably be right back in all the shit.'

LaMonica pulled up to a run-down apartment house in the shadow of the Ambassador Hotel. Without asking, he turned off the engine and accompanied her up some steps to her door. She unlocked it and he followed her in. The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished: a worn sofa and chair, a stack of German-language paperbacks on an end table next to a framed photograph of Sandy holding hands with a black man and dressed in army fatigues. They were posed on a cobblestone street.

'That was my old man, in case you were wondering,' she said without emotion. She tossed her purse down and sauntered into the tiny kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. 'He was a dope fiend and pusher, but he was always good to me.'

'I guess that's what it's all about,' LaMonica said in his most sincere tone.

They spent the rest of the afternoon sharing the quart of bourbon. Red-cheeked and tipsy from the liquor, she recounted her life story: a small town outside Munich, a taxi-driver father whose goal in life was to sell enough black-market G.I. liquor to buy his own Gasthaus, a mother who ran away with the town butcher and later came back, a Roman Catholic school whose nuns administered swats at the drop of a hat, and finally the story of her sister. Sandy Hartzbecker told the tale as if she were recounting the success story of the century: 'She tricked in a fancy whorehouse in Stuttgart for three years and saved her money. When she left, she had enough to buy a Mercedes-Benz and a new identity. She moved to Frankfurt and started life all over again; told everyone she was a widow, that her husband had been a doctor who lost his life in a car accident. She ended up marrying a rich lawyer. It proved to me that people can make something of themselves if they really want to. I knew that I could be more than a waitress in a G.I. bar for the rest of my life. I left Germany and came to the U.S. with my old man.'

That evening after some sex talk he followed her into the bedroom. As they undressed he noticed her sinewy housemaid's shoulders, her proud, dark nipples. She threw back the covers and climbed on the bed. He joined her and discovered that her sexual abilities were pretty much along the lines of her general appearance: mediocre at best. Afterward, they lay in the perspiration-soaked bed. She lit a cigarette.

'You're different than other men,' she said.

'Howzat?'

'Because you're gentle,' she said. 'I loved the way you went for my tits. You took your time with me and didn't rush. A tit man is a gentle man. I hate to be just used.'

The next year of nights was a blur of hotels and motels from Las Vegas to Newport Beach, the days spent passing and selling counterfeit money. Passing one bill at a time at shopping centers and department stores, fast- food joints, grocery markets. LaMonica would wait in the car as Sandy Hartzbecker went from store to store getting change for a twenty or fifty. With package deals, he would make the arrangements with a buyer and she would deliver the bills to a phone booth or a rental locker or a hotel room and pick up the payment. All in all, it was just like the song: a really good year … until Sandy's arrest.