The old Crown Victoria is a majestic pile of junk gliding down the gravel street.  It comes to a halt like a rusty barge running ashore.  When the engine shuts off I can hear the 747s on final approach to the airport again.  The car’s original color is lost to history.  Now it’s blotchy from years in the Mexican sun and a few mismatched replacement parts.  The windshield has a bad chip mark that’s spiderwebbing into opacity.  Through it I can see Mr. Sedesco, my local neighborhood rental agent and archive finder.  Today he’s looking more Norman Rockwell portrait than usual.  Must be the suspenders.

I’m sitting on a cinderblock outside the front door and drinking warm beers.  I’d prefer to be drinking cold ones – or just working on my academic shit – but I need electricity for that.  Ergo the timing of Sedesco’s visit.  I haven’t seen the defrocked Catholic priest lookalike since I paid him the final $100 for finding me the Korea Textile maquiladora archive.  I rise to my boots in greeting, which consists of going inside and leaving the door open behind me.

Sedesco is searching for a kid to pay to watch his car.  Nobody except an auto recycler would steal it, but it’s just part of doing business here.  Got to grease the palms, keep the natives friendly.  Too bad the street is deserted – except for the feral dogs, of course.  He leans on a rusted-out fender and pats at his balding brylcreamed hair and looks around with obvious mercantile intention.  Still no kids materialize.  Finally he gives up and shuffles across the patio pavers, one sloooooow arthritic step after another, making his way into the shadowy house.

“Welcome to Tijuana, kid.  It’s great you got all moved in.”  Sedesco talks around his pipestem, clenched in a fine set of dentures.  He can’t resist a jibe at my indoor camping mode.  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“I bet you say that to every tenant.”  I sip from my can of Budweiser.  “Like I said on the phone, I need electricity.”

“Sure you do.  Why do you think I’m not grousing for one of those beers?  Because I know they’re warm as piss.”  He click-click-clicks a light switch to no effect.  “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.  Never move in during the holidays.  Everybody checks out at the utility companies.  You can’t even find somebody to bribe.”

“Are you telling me I’m screwed until the new year?”

“Of course not.  You’re with me, kid.  I put you in this house, right?  I’ll get you juice too.”

“You said you know people who know people.  That sounds like you’re setting me up for an expensive solution.”  I kick a dust bunny along the floorboards.  Where the hell are they all coming from?  “I’m just a starving grad student trying to stretch my pesos.  Maybe it’s cheaper for me to wait.”

“Sure it’s cheaper.  If you don’t mind living in the dark with no stove or refrigerator.”  Sedesco pauses dramatically.  “Or you could pay me $100 and get juice tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is the day before Christmas Eve.”

“You think I don’t know that?  I’m not kidding.  I know people who know people.  I make a call to start things rolling, you got a meterman at your house in an hour.  He unlocks your meter and presto, you got juice.  How’s that for a Christmas present?”

I herd the dust bunny out the front door.  “$100 is a lot of money for a hookup that’s supposed to be free.  Especially since I’ll have to the pay the meterman too, huh?  That could be another $50 right there.”

“Not for you, kid.  You can negotiate him down to $20.  Maybe even less.” 

“Same as I can negotiate you down?”

“My $100 is firm,” Sedesco laughs.  “You allow smoking in here?”

“Sure.  What the hell.”

He struggles to light his pipe, an awkward ballet of liver-spotted fingers.  “So?  What do you say?  $100 for juice tomorrow?”

I pretend to consider his offer, scowling out the barred front window.  I’m fitting together the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle.  No electricity in the first place.  The electric company’s unresponsiveness.  Sedesco’s fortuitous call to check in.  His offer to help while refusing to discuss specifics on the phone.  The fact I bribed him for cheaper rent on this place.

Yep.  This is a shakedown.  No fucking doubt about it.

Sedesco is conspiring with the local office of the Comision Federal de Electricidad – the national electric company.  His accomplice is somebody who can sit on a customer service complaint during the holidays, when the office is mostly deserted.  Together they’re preying on a fresh American transplant, assuming I’m just another gringo who doesn’t know how Tijuana works and can’t live without his electricity.  What will I pay for light, a stove that works, cold beer in the fridge?

Sedesco is no dumbass.  The elderly dude senses my suspicion, all the untidy details, a payday receding fast.  “I’m trying to help you, that’s all.  A meterman might not make it out until second week in January.  That’s three weeks from now.  21 days of drinking piss-warm beers.  You really want to wait that long?”

“You’re shaking me down, gramps.”

“What?  I drive all the way out here, and you, you…”  He tries to fake injury – which might work better if he’d also learned to fake dismay.  “That hurts, kid.  That really hurts.”

I can’t stop a grin.  “For chrissake.  You’re the worst actor ever.”

“Who says I’m acting here?”

I watch the elderly sleazebag hide behind a gust of pipe smoke.  The sunset of his life, and he’s forced to hustle harder than a corner drug dealer in East LA.  But he knows more people in Tijuana than I ever will – including that accomplice in the electric company.  Before this year of fieldwork is over, I’ll need to know people who know people too.  Sedesco wasn’t the most promising start to my Mexican network, but he’ll have to do.

“Maybe I’ll call you if I get fed up waiting for electricity.  Or maybe I’ll call you if something else comes up, like the maquiladora archive did.  You can always teach me a thing or two about Tijuana, huh?”

“You know what they say about knowledge – it don’t come cheap.”

Sedesco shambles past me and into the daylight.  Not one but two grubby neighborhood kids have materialized to sit on the hood of his Crown Vic.  Their dirty faces turn to him with expectation.  He clacks his dentures at them, stomps an orthopedic shoe.  The kids ignore his demands to scram.  The standoff threatens to escalate past name-calling to rock-throwing.  I’m stuck living in this neighborhood, so I wander outside to wave a couple dollar bills at the kids.  They immediately abandon the car.  Sedesco climbs into his rusty barge, rewarding me with a sour nod through the spiderwebbed windshield.  Our negotiation for whatever comes next has already begun.