"We can't rush into this," she says. "We're only going to get one chance. If we lose her, we'll never find her again." It is Susan who settles me down. For someone who is taking the ultimate career plunge, cliff-dive onto the rocks, she is amazingly cool. She is all business.
Strangely with all that has fallen on her, the roasting by Ryan on the stand, she does not seem to blame me for this. It is just that her actions are now more measured, less trusting.
I think she sees herself as the unavoidable victim in all that has happened.
"She probably won't come back with us." Susan is talking about Jessica Hale. "Are you prepared to accept that?"
"I could use her testimony," I tell her. Jessica could provide the vital link between Ontaveroz and Suade. The fact that Jessica knew him, had lived with him, might give me the evidence I need to satisfy Peltro and open up the defense.
"Our goal is the child," says Susan. "I think we have to start with the assumption that Jessica is not coming. She's here for a reason.
She's running."
"She's running because of the child."
"Yes. And she may follow if we take Amanda back. But to try to take them both through the airport, through immigration and customs, would be a big mistake. If Jessica makes a scene, it's all for nothing." As much as I don't like it, Susan is right. The child we might be able to convince, keep her in check. An adult, especially someone as volatile as Jessica, there's no way.
"Agreed."
"Good." Susan's drink comes. She starts to sip through the thin straw.
"We're going to need some identification for the girl," she says.
"That means a passport, something with a picture on it. Its possible that Suade provided some false identification. When we find the apartment, one of our tasks is going to be to find this. Search their luggage, look in drawers. We're going to need it to get out." I nod. I am amazed at how carefully she has thought this all out.
"If worse comes to worst, if all else fails, we take her to the American consulate in town. I've checked. There is one here," she says. Susan opens her purse on the table. She removes an envelope and passes it to me. It's a certified copy of the court order of custody in Jonah and Mary's name.
"That and my county credentials," she says, "should at least cause them to slow down and hold the child for a while, until we can straighten it out. Get whatever authority we need to take Amanda back to the States.
"When we find the place, one of us should go to the front door. Maybe that should be me," she says. "A woman would be less threatening."
"And what are you going to tell her?"
"I don't know. Just occupy her time. Tell her something. That the landlord sent me to look at the place. That I'm getting ready to rent one just like it. Anything to get in the door."
"And what am I supposed to do?"
"See if there's a back way in." According to Susan this would prevent Jessica from running, and presumably it would allow us to keep the child between us.
"And what do we do with Jessica?"
"Leave that to me," she says.
"What are you going to do?"
"If we have to, we subdue Jessica." It is clear that Susan is prepared to go the whole nine yards, risk a Mexican jail if necessary.
"And what if there's someone else in the house?"
"I don't know. That's why I don't want to rush in. We should watch the place for a little while. Right after lunch," she says. we CHANGE to shorts, cooler clothes, Dark Glasses.
I rent a small Wrangler, a Jeep, something I'm used to driving that can handle dirt roads and maneuver on narrow back streets.
In all our planning, there is one vast assumption: that the child will come with us willingly, that if we mention Jonah's name or Mary's, tell her that we are working for her grandparents, that Amanda Hale will walk out the door and get into the car.
According to Susan this would be preferable, but she tells me that in any event, Amanda will be leaving with us, even it we have to use force.
We stop at a market off the main drag downtown. I sit in the parking lot as Susan goes inside. Five minutes later she comes out carrying a single plastic bag. She climbs into the passenger seat and closes the door.
Inside the bag is a fifty-foot coil of quarter-inch cotton rope, the kind you might use for a clothesline, and a roll of duct tape.
"One more stop. Lady inside says it's just up the hill." I drive and Susan looks for signs. Two blocks up she finds it. The pharmacy. This time it takes her less than two minutes, and when she comes out she's carrying a pint-sized metal can with a screwon lid. She gets it.
"What's that?"
"Ether." It's now clear how Susan is planning on dealing with Jessica: some sleeping juice on a rag, tie her up and tape her mouth. By the time they find her, we'll be in San Diego or L.A. or wherever the next plane for the States out of Los Cabos is bound.
We find the American consulate on a small tourist map. It is over near the harbor. We drive by it several times from different directions to get our bearings. The problem is that many of the streets are not only narrow, but one-way.
Within an hour we realize that our hotel doesn't work. It is too far from downtown. It also has the disadvantage that the police station is situated between us and the consulate should we have to retreat to the room with the child for any reason.
We spend an hour moving to another hotel, a place more centrally located. The Hotel Plaza Las Glorias backs up onto the marina, and is only two blocks from the consulate.
Several times, navigating from the passenger seat with a map in her lap, Susan directs me past the tourist area of Cabo. We miss a turn and end up in front of our hotel across the street.
This part of town is mostly a strip of bars and T-shirt shops, discos and dives. It is a traffic nightmare, even in the off-season. The population swells with each cruise ship that pulls into the harbor.
Two of them are sitting like floating hotels a mile out from the beach today. Motor launches ferry the passengers to the marina, where they clog the streets looking for deals from the vendors and wander in and out of the small shops.
It takes us ten minutes to find our way back out.
Susan takes another shot at the map, new directions. We backtrack, and this time we get it right, the main drag toward town, but we stay to the right when we get to the light in front of the market.
Here the street is one-way, narrowing as we head uphill, just enough room for two cars to travel side by side. Toward the top, Susan tells me to look for a place to park. Here some of the curbs are four feet high, with stairs to climb as you proceed up the sidewalk.
The shops are thinning out, mostly small businesses. I find an opening and pull in.
Susan studies the map. The detail on it is not great, one of those tourist maps provided by the car-rental agency. The streets seem to disappear in the area where the hotel concierge told us the address was located.
"It should be two blocks up," she says.
We get out and climb, first up the sidewalk, then the stairs. To the left and down the hill are the tourist hangouts and nightspots, Cabo Wabo, the Giggling Marlin, and Squid Row.
Up the hill ahead should be the plaza. There are fewer tourists here. We cross the street, what appears to be the last busy intersection, one-way traffic down into town, then climb stairs into what is the city square, an open area with a few trees. It covers a small block.
Susan and I look like two tourists. She's wearing a large straw hat, something to keep the sun off her head and out of her eyes.
She's left the rope, the tape, and the ether back in the car, under the seat. For the moment, we are just trying to find the place.
We locate the mission, the Catholic church on the map. The Mexican customs office is next door, and farther down is an antique shop, a two-story building with a veranda reaching out over the sidewalk.
Susan heads in that direction, and I follow her.
We cross the street, pass the storefront, mamma elis's original curious shop, antiques and knickknacks. In the cool shade under the overhanging veranda we hug the building and come to the end of the block. As we step around the corner, Susan suddenly stops.
Up the street no more than a hundred feet away is a set of wroughtiron gates where the street dead-ends. The gates open onto a driveway, and overhead is a large wooden sign, las ventanas ue cabo.
Susan takes a deep breath. "That's it." We step back into the shade of the veranda. The condos are nestled into the terraced hillside with a steep driveway that disappears around a turn. From the street it is clear we're not going to be able to see much. The units are carved into the hillside high above us. It looks as if there may be ten or twelve separate units.
"Do we know which one she's in?" Susan shakes her head. "I just have the name of the place."
"Let's hope the information is correct. Otherwise we've made a long trip for nothing," I tell her.
I start up the hill.
"Where are you going?"
"See if there's an office."
"You can't just go barging in."
"Why not? Jessica doesn't know us. We tell whoever's up there we're looking for a rental. Check it out." Susan comes out of the shadows of the veranda, adjusts her hat, one hand on top of her head to hold it on as she cranes her neck to look up at the units on the hillside. I begin trudging up the hill, Susan following me.
Once through the gates we climb steeply to the left until we find ourselves in front of several garage units, a series of overhead doors with a set of narrow steps leading up the hillside through gardens planted between the units. There is no sign telling us where the office is, or whether there is one.
The heat of the afternoon sun is withering, taking its toll on both of us. My dark glasses are beginning to fog up. I stop on the steps to wipe them, take in the lay of the land. Small paths branch off from the steps in different directions, winding through landscaped gardens toward the condos nestled into the hillside.
"Can I help you?" A woman's voice comes from behind on a lower level.
As I turn to look I notice, for the first time, a good-sized lap pool built into the hillside, over the garage units, a patio with a railing around it and a commanding view of the town below.
"We were looking for the office"
"You found it. I'm the manager," she says.
Susan and I make our way toward the pool.
The woman is in her early thirties, wearing shorts with a tank top. She has on dark glasses and seems to be studying us with some interest, as if perhaps this far off the beaten path they don't get many visitors.
"Hello. My name's Paul. My wife, Susan. We saw your place from down below. It looks pretty nice. We're looking for a place that has privacy.
We were wondering if you might have any vacancies?"
"At the moment we're full up," she says. "I could take your name, and a phone number." I remove my dark glasses. Offer her my best smile. A friend once told me that the key to conversation is not the mouth, but the eyes.
The woman doesn't reciprocate, still studying me from behind smoked glass.
"Are you looking for short-term or something longer?"
"Through the summer," says Susan.
"Actually we might be interested in leasing for a year," I tell her.
With this, the glasses come off. She smiles. "I might have an opening at the end of the month."
"Do you take children?" Susan with the sixty-four-thousanddollar question.
"Usually I would say no. But we have one woman with a child right now."
Bingo.
"Really. We weren't sure if we wanted to bring our daughter down here,"
says Susan. "She's eight ..."
"Same age as the child who's here. Very quiet," she says. "Both mother and child. Not sure if it's a boy or a girl, to tell you the truth.
Doesn't seem to ever come out. They're paid up to the end of next month.
But it could be vacant any day now. She told me just this morning they would be leaving."
"When?"
"She didn't say exactly Sometime before the end of the month." Susan smiles, but I can sense some desperation in her expression as she looks at me. If it's Jessica and she gets away, we'll never find her again.
"As I said, if you wane to leave a name and a phone number I could call you," says the woman.
"Any chance we could see the unit?" I ask.
"I'm afraid not," she says. "I tried to show it last week, and she said no. The tenant likes her privacy." I nod as if I understand. I'm running out of questions.
"Does the unit have an ocean view?" Susan is good at this.
"I'm. afraid not." The woman's gaze travels up the hillside over my shoulder. Susan's eyes follow it. I turn and look.
"One of those up there?" says Susan.
"Unit three," she says. "The one on the right."
"It looks very nice," says Susan. "You're sure we can't take a peek?
We'd be very discreet. Very quiet," Susan can be so sweet. Just let us get our rope and ether.
"I can't do that. I'm sorry."
"How many rooms? Maybe you have a floor plan of the unit?" Susan is not missing a beat.
"Afraid I don't have any floor plans. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, and living area. Two and a half baths. Some of them have a small den. I can't remember if that one does or not."
"I suppose you have to come down here to get your car?" Susan looks down over the railing toward the driveway, and up toward the endless stairs.
"Actually there's a road that runs up behind," she says. "You can drive right up to the units and down into town."
"Oh. really. That is convenient." I can see Susan giving me a glance as she hears this, both of us thinking the same thing, wondering if this road shows up on our map.
i check my watch. it's seven-Fifteen. the sun Has begun to set over Lovers' Beach, the bright orange ball of fire slowly descending behind the sandstone cliffs of Land's End.
After some searching, we managed to find the road that winds up the hill behind the condos. We have driven it twice, making Uturns up top and coming back down. There is a small parking area behind each of the units.