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Walker took the only vacant stool at the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary. Thedrink when it came was bitter, hefty with cheap vodka. Strong drinks were a selling point of the place.
    On the stool next to Walker sat a blond woman who was drinking rather hungrily of her gin-and-tonic and toying with a pack of Virginia Slims. She appeared to be in her early thirties and attractive, but Walker was not certain of either impression. He was not altogether sober and it was difficult to see people clearly in the lighting of the Miramar Lounge. That was the way they liked it there.
    At the entrance to the bar, adjoining the corridor through which he had passed, was a phone booth, one from the old days decorated with sea horses and dolphins in blue and white tile. After a moment, Walker picked up his drink and went to the phone booth. He took out his black book with its listing of the Baja location numbers and his telephone credit card.
    He took a long sip, held his breath and dialed. The resonance of submarine depths hummed in the wires as he waited for the ring. When it came, he closed his eyes.

 
    W hen the telephone rang she was outside, in a lounge chair on the sand, looking into the afterglow of sunset. Her children were playing with their father at the water’s edge; she had watched the three forms darken to silhouettes in the dying light. The soft honey glow of the children’s bodies had faded in the quick dusk; now their scamperings and her husband’s thin-limbed gestures against the radiant foam and magenta sky suggested puppetry to her. It was an ugly thought and she forced it aside. She let the phone ring until she saw that her husband had heard it; knee deep in light surf, he had turned at the sound. She stood up and took her sunglasses off.
    “I’ll get it,” she called to him.
    She jogged up to the open door of their bungalow, wiped her sandy feet on the straw mat and rushed to the phone.
    “Lu Anne,” said the voice on the far end when she answered. “Lu Anne, it’s Gordon. Gordon Walker.”
    She had known, she thought, who it would be. Watching the sun go down she had been thinking of him and thinking that he would call that night.
    “Hello? Lu Anne? Can you hear me?”
    His voice sounded from the receiver in her hand as clearly as though he were there in Mexico, somewhere in the same hotel.
    “Lu Anne?”
    Slowly, guiltily, she replaced the receiver.
    It had grown dark in the stone bungalow. The only light came from fading pastel sky framed in the doorway. She sat on a high-backed wicker chair looking out. In the darkness behind her she could feel a presence gathering. A confusion of sounds rang in her ears and among them she heard Walker’s voice saying her name. Watchful, perfectly still, she stayed where she was until she saw a figure in the doorway. At first she thought it had to do with the things that were manifesting themselves behind her back; she watched fascinated, virtually unafraid.
    “Señora?”
    She knew who it was then.
    “
Sí, sí
,” she said, and she reached out for the light that was right over the phone. “Hello, Helga. Good evening.”
    Helga Machado was the children’s nanny, supplied by the production unit through the hotel. A stout, pale, heavy-browed young woman, she watched Lee Verger with caution and a formal smile.
    “Now,” Helga said, “I may take the children for their dinner. Or else I can come back a little later.”
    Lu Anne was blinking in the sudden light. The wariness in Helga’s expression did not escape her.
    “Well,” she said cheerfully, “let’s see. Why don’t we call them and they can go to dinner and I’ll say good night to them when we get back.”
    “Very good, señora.”
    Lu Anne went past Helga and through the doorway. At the water’s edge, Lionel and the children were still playing in the darkness. The shallows flashed phosphorescence where they ran.
    “David and Laura,” Lu Anne called to her children. “Dinner time, you-all.”
    She