He turned sour. “Is not my job. I don’t find women, and I don’t remember if other people find them. I write things down in the book—that’s how I remember.” He leaned protectively across the guest register.

I pulled ten dollars out of Lupe’s hand and put it in front of him. Examining the picture of Alexander Hamilton, he made a big deal out of smoothing the crumpled bill before shoving the register toward me.

How good were the odds Tommy Hutchings had used his real name or written it in red ink so I’d be sure to find it? I was tired of spending money. I was tired of talking to people like I was in a late night movie. I was tired of having a headache. I wrestled another five out of Lupe’s fist.

“Hey, buddy, how about a bottle of tequila?”

He whistled, and a teenage boy only a few years younger than himself appeared, rubbing his eyes. He growled at the kid, who disappeared through the back door. Then the desk clerk sat back down to his magazine.

I turned the register pages to the middle of July. An unusual number of people named Mr. and Mrs. John Doe liked to stay at the El Nido. They came from places like San Bernardino and Riverside. To buy cheap leather goods, get laid in whore houses, take quack cancer cures at the clinics dotting the border, run away from home to get married, get tattoos, raise hell, drive off-road vehicles, destroy the environment and smuggle drugs. Feeling increasingly morose, I studied the John Does and thought about unpaid for Oldsmobiles with bad mufflers, fat men drinking White Russians, underage girls getting drunk and fingerbanged by eighteen year old sailors from the nearby Salton Sea naval test area.

I didn’t see Tommy Hutchings’s name but someone in a crabbed handwriting and calling himself Che Guevara had stayed there the night before Cathy Vega was killed.

“Is this the guy with the red beard?” I asked, pointing to the signature in the register.

The desk clerk didn’t say anything, but I could tell from his eyes and the way he quickly looked away as though he were disinterested that it was.

I was right. It was Tommy Hutchings they’d sent to meet Cathy Vega. Tommy Hutchings was to pick up the video. What was his relation to Cathy? He had been the one who brought her to the organization. Did he know she was one of the sources of tension between Emma Garcia and Tony Guerrero? What did he think of that? Maybe he didn’t think at all. Maybe he just did what he was told. But who was he taking directions from?