Wearing the black wig, Gemma went downstairs to the Cabrero Inn's business office. She had thought out her strategy. The office was closed this time of night, but she tipped the desk clerk to open it for her. On the computer, she booked a flight out of El Cabrero to Los Angeles for the next morning. She used her own name and charged it on her usual credit card, the same one she'd been using at Sofitel Legend.
Then she asked the clerk where she could buy a car for cash. He said there was a dealer who worked out of a backyard who could sell her something in the morning for American dollars. He wrote down an address, on Ortiz off Ejido, he said.
Sam was tracking credit cards. She had to be, or she'd never have found Gemma. Now the detective would see the new charge and go to LA. Gemma herself would buy a car for cash and drive toward Maracaibo. From Maracaibo, she'd get a boat and eventually make her way to the island of Culebra in Puerto Rico, where there were loads of Americans who never showed their passports to anyone.
She thanked the clerk for the information about the car dealer. "You're not going to remember our conversation, are you?" she said, pushing another twenty across the counter to him.
"I might," he said.
"No you won't." She added a fifty.
"I never saw you," he said.