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dead."
    As initial interviews go, Bo admitted as she tossed the camera and bottle into her car, this one was a disaster. At least she had a snapshot for Es. A snapshot of some cement blocks and a pile of blankets. Not exactly an award-winning document.
    At her feet a collection of pigeons rose from pecking at a gum wrapper in the gutter, and flapped southward as if they'd been called. Bo watched the birds swoop over the border and climb the air above Tijuana, only a half mile away. It looked easy.
    "Why not?" she asked her right hand as it turned the ignition switch. Acito's mother was over there, somewhere. A nightclub singer named Chac, Madge had said. And most establishments that might qualify, however marginally, as nightclubs were in Tijuana's tourist district. On Avenida Revolución. Only a few blocks from the border.
    It would, Bo decided, be ridiculous not to make some casual inquiries regarding the whereabouts of the missing mother. She'd just get the address of the singer's place of employment for the report. Unofficially, of course.
    Officially, she reminded herself as she headed toward the border parking lots, the jurisdiction of San Diego County ended where Mexico began. San Diego County Child Protective Services, by international law, could not set foot over that border. But Bo Bradley, U.S. citizen, could. Without a passport, visa, or any form of identification she could walk through two clanging metal turnstiles and into another country. To get back, she needed only to be able to state in unaccented English that she was a U.S. citizen. So much for security at an international border known to see its share of illegal traffic. Too easy to pass up.
     
    Bo found a parking space in an area of packed dirt near the rotary where buses discharged Mexico-bound passengers. A short walk along a fifteen-yard iron fence led into Mexico.
    Through the fence Bo watched the Border Patrol drug dogs at work on the U.S. side, happily sniffing cars selected by U.S. border officials for canine scrutiny as they left Mexico. A young German shepherd seemed to smile in her direction, and Bo waved. "Win one for the Gipper!" she yelled at the dog.
    After the second turnstile, everything changed. It always did, but today the change seemed portentous. Mexico, whatever it was, began at that turnstile. Impossibly, the air smelled different. Dusty, with an acidic undertone like hot plastic. Bo quickened her pace to avoid two skinny little Indian girls heading toward her with boxes of cellophane-wrapped chiclets.
    "Chicle?" the children insisted, their black eyes unreadable as those of birds. "Chicle, señorita?"
    On the ground against the wall bordering the main tourist thoroughfare into Tijuana were what appeared to be piles of cloth. These were the mothers of the beggar children, most with babies at the breast. Each draped figure held up one gracefully cupped hand as Bo passed. Yaqui Indians. A Stone Age people living on scraps thrown down by the current century. Acito might be one of these, Bo thought. Except none of the swarming children along the sidewalk had that nose. That oddly bent nose.
    Distracted by a pushcart laden with slab-quartz wind chimes cut in the shape of parrots, Bo lost the concentration necessary for running the gauntlet of begging children. A two-year-old boy in a grubby sweater approached her knee and looked up. His nose was running and in his dull eyes Bo recognized exhaustion. Impossible to ignore.
    "Here," she sighed, and emptied her coin purse into his sticky hands. It wouldn't do any good, but she'd have nightmares if she did nothing.
    "I hate this place," she smiled at a man following her and repeating, "Taxi?" over and over. "I've always hated it and today's even worse. No taxi. Thanks anyway."
    The street was a sociology textbook, opened to the chapter on social stratification. Beyond the beggars, Indian women of mixed blood sold woven bracelets and abalone earrings from sheets on the ground. A row of food