I wondered if it was going to cost me more money for him to remember. I was afraid to spend what I had left with me. Who knew what other problems might be in store before the night ended? Suddenly a new idea came to me. I realized how effortlessly Lupe and I had arrived in a foreign country. “Another friend was here also. A tall gringo with red hair.”

Frowning, Lupe shot me a perplexed look. She shifted uncomfortably in her high heels.

“Tall, with red hair,” I repeated.

“Sí, sí, una barba roja. “ She nodded, her face relaxing into a grin. She must have understood what I guessed.

Tommy Hutchings.

It had to be Tommy Hutchings who had been sent by Casa Guatemala to meet Cathy. A latina and an anglo. Just as Lupe and I had been waved through the border, they would have been briefly questioned on their return about whether they had bought anything, then a quick look at the backseat of the automobile by la migra and the two would be headed back toward LA. If Tommy Hutchings was going to cross by himself, Immigration wouldn’t spend much time with him. They were looking for undocumented workers in trunks of cars. He would buy a few cheap souvenirs and a bottle of rum, placing them on the passenger seat as evidence of his time spent in Mexicali.

If she had any drugs on her, Cathy Vega wouldn’t risk traveling with a U.S. passport. She had, according to my calculations, been gone long enough so that she would need it and probably a tourist card. She must have been traveling in Mexico with a phony passport. In LA a fake Social Security card is thirty-five dollars. A green card, about two hundred.

Cathy Vega never planned on crossing any border legally. She was tired of structures, of institutions, of rules, of being told no. She was using a Guatemalan passport, undoubtedly fraudulent, bearing the name of Carmen Luzano. Carmen Lozano would sneak across the border, ditching the Guatemalan passport. Maybe selling it to another illegal. There would never be any record that one Cathy Vega, U.S. citizen, had crossed the fragile boundary between Mexico and the U.S. of A. It seemed so melodramatic. The use of the passport as a prop. So unnecessary for bringing the video into the country. Overly dramatic, but she was an actress.

“I might remember a red beard,” said the desk clerk, now alert, pressing his fingertips together as he tried to look helpful. “Was he a tall man?”

“That’s him!” Lupe exclaimed, leaning toward the desk. “Wasn’t he with a woman?”

The desk clerk leered again. “You say he was looking for a woman?”

“I asked if he found one,” I interrupted, stepping closer to the desk and putting my hand on the counter between Lupe and the desk clerk.