Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [37]
The flight attendants came along, collecting cups and glasses. The plane began its steep descent directly over the city of San Diego to Lindbergh Field. I leaned forward, looked across my seatmates to the window, and saw the lights of home.
Home? No—former home. Years and years since I’d lived here. The landscape had changed: high-rises, the Coronado Bridge, tracts that spread as far northeast as Escondido. The north county was now referred to as “north city”; the South Bay bore more resemblance to Tijuana than to San Diego proper. I’d heard the spirit of the city had changed, too—warped by the pressures of too much growth, too much crime, too many immigrants from Mexico. Racial prejudice, both covert and overt, was evident in the statements and actions of many residents. People in the north locked their doors and security gates against Hispanics; people in the south struggled to survive crime, overcrowding, and a swelling drug problem.
Still, the city had been my home for nearly twenty years. There would be landmarks to guide me. And alien and dangerous as the territory might seem on this particular evening, I knew I could make my way across it to familiar, safe ground.
Brer Rabbit was born and bred in a brier patch; when predators threatened, he lay low there. Later on tonight I’d find a brier patch of my own.
Nine
As soon as I saw the Bali Kai, I remembered it from prom night. Pseudo-Polynesian was all the rage back then, and for those of us who considered ourselves the high school’s smart set, nothing would do but to commandeer a wing of rooms for our post-prom party. Parents objected, were cajoled, and gave in. Tuxes and limos were rented; formal dresses and corsages were bought. Actually, what went on in the wee hours of that morning was pretty innocent. Oh, three girls got drunk and threw up, and two couples had sex for the first time, but most of us just drank a little and necked a lot, gobbled up the warmed-over hors d’oeuvres that passed for exotic South Seas fare, and stifled yawns as we waited for the glorious, interminable night to be over.
The intervening years had not been kind to the Bali Kai. The tiki heads that guarded the lobby entrance were cracked and weathered; the bamboo and fake thatching merely looked silly; even the palms flanking the reception desk seemed to suffer from a fungal ailment.
Renshaw’s fax of the letter of credit had arrived, and at its top he’d written and circled a four-digit number, presumably my emergency security code. I stuffed it into my purse, showed the desk clerk my identification, and asked if the night manager or security officer was available. He checked, said both were on break but should be back within the half hour. I told him I’d come back later.
Carrying the map of the motel grounds that the clerk had given me, I went out to my rental car—a tan compact of some indeterminate breed, whose lethally fast automatic seat belt had serious potential to decapitate its driver. The map, on which the clerk had drawn an intricate series of circles and arrows showing how to get to my room, only served to confuse me. After studying it both upside down and sideways, I slipped it into my purse and set off unaided.
The Bali Kai was one of a long string of establishments on the south side of Hotel Circle. It sprawled between the frontage road paralleling Interstate 8 and the cliff face rising to the Mission Hills district where I grew up. Next door to it was an even larger motel where my brother Joey, a man of many trades, had been working as a bartender a couple of summers ago when I’d paid my annual duty visit to my family. Beyond