“Don't forget I've seen your jazz collection, Kurt. You're saying there's a sour note here.”

“More a universal dissonance.” He thought about it some more. “I like your analogy better. I've got the feeling that there's a big bad-ass shark lurking just out of sight and it's hungry as hell.”

Zavala pushed his empty plate away. “As they say back home, the best time to fish is when the fish are hungry.”

“I happen to know you grew up in the desert, amigo,” Austin said, rising. “But I agree with what you're saying. Let's go fishing.”

From Ensenada they got back on the highway and headed south. As in Tijuana, the commercial sprawl thinned out and vanished and the highway went down to two lanes. They turned off the highway past Maneadero and followed back roads past agricultural fields, scattered farm houses, and old missions, eventually coming into rugged, lonely country with fog-shrouded rolling hills that dropped down to the sea. Zavala, who was navigating, checked the map. “We're almost there. Just around the corner,” he said.

Austin didn't know what he was expecting. Even so he was surprised when they rounded the curve and he saw a neatly lettered sign in Spanish and English announcing they were at the home of the Baja Tortilla Company. He pulled over to the side of the road. The sign was at the beginning of a long, clay drive bordered with planted trees. They could see a large building at the end of the driveway.

Austin leaned on the steering wheel and pushed his Foster Grants up onto his forehead. “You're sure this is the right spot?”

Zavala handed the map over for Austin's examination. “This is the place,” he said.

“Looks like we drove all this way for nothing.”

“Maybe not,” Zavala said. “The huevos rancheros were excellent, and I've got a new Hussong's Cantina T-shirt.”

Austin's eyes narrowed. “Coincidence makes me suspicious. The sign says 'Visitors Welcome.' As long as we're here, let's take them at their word.”

He turned the truck off the highway and drove a few hundred yards to a neatly tended gravel parking lot marked with spaces for visitors. Several cars with California plates and a couple of tour buses were parked in front of the building, a corrugated aluminum structure with a portaled adobe facade and tiled roof in the Spanish style. The smell of baking corn wafted through the pickup's open windows.

“Diabolically clever disguise,” Zavala said.

“I hardly expected to see a neon sign that said, 'Welcome from the guys who killed the whales.' ”

“I wish we were toting our guns,” Zavala said with mock gravity. “You never know when a wild tortilla will attack you. I once heard about someone being mauled by a burrito in Nogales-”

“Save it for the drive back.” Austin got out of the car and led the way to the ornately carved front door of dark wood.

They stepped into a whitewashed reception area. A smiling young Mexican woman greeted them from behind a desk. “Buenos dias,” she said. “You are in luck. The tour of the tortilla factory is just starting. You're not with a group from a cruise boat?”