The Watch - Mexico Stories

The Watch

I won't go into too many details but it happened in Acapulco in 2003 right after I got back from two months in Haiti. I was lying in bed and I caught the guy that delivers the water breaking into my apartment red handed. He climbed over the outer door and just came in after I didn't respons to his annocunement "agua....agua...agua, agua, agua." I just came out of the bedroom and there he was in the middle of the living room serveying the merchandise. I was mad. He looked scared as hell. I was about a foot taller, 50 pounds heavier, and 10 years yonger and my country had just invaded Iraq.

I walked toward him with thoughts of my foot connecting with his ass but I sort of crapped out at the last minute and just grabbed him and threw him out while he tried lamely to explain that he had just broken in to my apartment to check to see if we needed any water. No biggie, I thought. I guess he got the message. Dont mess with the gringo in # 203.

It wasn't until later in the evening that I noticed he had gotten away with my watch. Now, it's not that the watch was expensive, it was a Guess WaterPro. Nothing expensive about that. No, it's that this watch was my good luck charm. Also that it was a rare model that not only had a silver/grey face, but silver/grey eyelets. I checked online and and they didn't make 'em like that anymore. I loved the watch and it was my companion during my first months in Acapulco so yes, it had sentimntal value. It was the watch that I looked at all those nights in the bar when life was grand and the good times were rolling.

The next day I woke up pissed. How could I let that little grubby bastard steal my special watch? I decided I was going to take action.

I put on my clothes without even bothering to shower and went down to the Police Station, which was ironically only about two blocks from my then apartment in the Progresso. I decided that I was going to report it and that I was going to get my watch back. After all, I thought, this would be an open an shut case. This was the neighborhood agua guy, everyone must have known him. We'll go, ask a few people where he lives, track him down and I'll have my watch back inside of an hour. I gave my report and they said they would send an investigator by my place.

At about 9am the next day, they sent me one of Acapulco's finest. Chucho stood outside yelling something that sounded like my name. I invited him into the apartment to survey the scene and reenact the crime, but Chucho sort of wandered around seeming more interested in the value of some of the items or knowing what this was for or what that was for than the theft. After explaining the situation, I urged that he ask a couple of the folks in the neighborhood who this agua guy was so we could go get him. The guy had been coming ever since I moved in so someone had to know him. This was Mexico. Everyone seems to know each other.

Chucho decided this wasn't the proper investigative technique for case riddled with such complexity and nuance and asked me to provide him with a label from the water bottels our agua man had delivered. Chucho surmized that if we can find out which company he worked for, we could go right to his work, I could identify him, and that would be that.

We went down stairs to his car which was a total piece of shit. In fact, I doubt I've ever seen a bigger piece of shit in my life. All the windows were broken, all the seats were torn, and there were holes in the floorboard so I had to watch my feet as we drove. This was standard department issue he informed me. After asking one person about the origin of the label and getting an informative "I don't know," he decided that the trail had gone cold. That this was going to be one tough case to crack, and all after all the hard work he had already put in this morning he required some breakfast.

Chucho parked in front of a small restaurant that I happened to frequent and he walked in waving me in to join him. We sat at a table and he ordered some huevos racheros, bread, and a beer. I had a coffee. Chucho immidiately launched into a converation about all the girls he was currently shagging. He maticulously named each one and gave me their approximate age, body type, and the colonia in which they lived. He seemed especially interested in presing home the point that he had a girl in each colonia.

When Chucho got up to go to the batroom, the owner came over and wispered to me to be careful, to watch my money, and to never to let him into him house. When the check came, he passed it over to me. I thanked the Señora who gave me a look as if to say "it was nice knowing ya dear child" and we were back on the hot street.

We drove around town in awkward silence for a half hour while Chucho asked a couple more people about the label. Appearanly, this was a generic label that could not be traced to a specific company not to mention that there were about a dozen companies with an untold number of employees. Real crack police work.

I suggested that we return to the scene of the crime and ask someone from the neighborhood about the agau guy's identity but Chucho had a better plan.

The next thing I know where were heading up into the mountians. We kept going up and up. We finally pulled onto an abandonded street where the mountian gets too steep for development. We creeped slowly down a dirt road before stopping in front of a little shack. I took a good look around. Nobody in sight. Chucho got out while I sat motionless in the car. He then said 'watch this for me" and tossed a loaded gun though the window onto the front seat. Yes, right about this time I was getting completely wierded out. Where the hell was I and why did he want me to watch a loaded gun? What about the investigation? How do I get myself into these things? And, most importantly, where in the hell was my watch?

A few minutes later, he comes out of the little shack and motions for me to come in. I leave the gun in its resting place on the fornt seat and enter the shack which is mainly cement inside with a few shabby furnishings and big windows with no glass looking upon the distant city the way a lonely old women looks at the moon. As I'm standing there, he walks over to a shabby old refrigerator and brings back a couple beers and cracks one open and hands it to me. He motions me over to the window where there is the city view and an enourmous pile of beer cans below. This shack was his house. Chucho was inviting me over to hang out!

We chatted for a while about the view, the muder rate, and some more about the girls he's sleeping with. We finshed the beers and tossed the cans out the window and slowly made our way back to the car. I guess we were now friends. He insisted on getting my number so I could go out to some clubs to chase the ladies with him. I was no longer just Joanthan, but "pinche Joanthan" now. Which translated litterally means "fucking Jonathan", but was meant as a term of endearment. So on the ride down the mountian, it was pinche Joanthan this and pinche Jonathan that. We pulled up to the station and I said thanks a lot and he gave me an a manly hug and said he'd give me a call soon so we could hang out some more.

I never got a chance to hang out with Chucho. Some speculate he was setting me up for a big score, but I don't think so. This is about the time I moved out of the neighborhood and like the Jeffersons, on up. I never saw Chucho again. I haven't seen my watch either. Life hasn't really been the same since. In retrospect, I may have passed up a chance to have a girl in every colonia.