Lomas de Chapultepec is the leafy residential district in Mexico City where Mike Milo studies the approaches to Alexandra Muños de Santis Polk’s house before attempting to reach Rafo. The neighborhood’s quiet spaciousness first offers cover for his reconnaissance, then gives way to walls, alarms, and dogs that expose how much his plan depends on details he cannot see.

Setting and Contrast

As Mike Milo travels through a park toward Lomas de Chapultepec, the city’s noise and smog recede; greenery continues into the district, among mammoth yuccas, exotic flowers, palms, and jacarandas. The houses are elegant and individually designed, but share broad driveways, expanses of lawn, and large flower beds. This carefully maintained landscape is both a visual contrast to the noisy city and the setting for a clandestine attempt to enter a private home.

Mike Milo stops about half a mile from his destination to consult the street map marked by Howard Polk. An automobile-club map protrudes from his pocket, and a camera hangs around his neck, making him look conspicuously like a tourist. He resolves to play the part by pausing to gape as he walks. The district’s apparent ease and openness thus become part of his cover, even as he approaches a house whose boundaries are designed to resist entry.

Alexandra Muños de Santis Polk’s House

The house is more imposing than its neighbors: an ornate, apparently older building with columns, archways, and porticoes. Mike Milo sees it through openings in a tall wall of volcanic red rock, the tezontle stone identified by Howard Polk. Its beauty is set behind a formidable perimeter, with immense wrought-metal front gates joined to the masonry and reinforced by an electrical signal case and a large alarm box. Mike judges that getting through the main entrance once would not solve the problem of carrying a boy through it again.

Howard Polk has also described a rear approach. Along a side street, Mike initially thinks the wall remains too high to climb, until the rising pavement brings its top to within a couple of feet above his head. The rear alley is private and narrow, but it is wide enough for the truck according to Howard Polk’s diagram. Its iron gate, about four feet across, has closely spaced bars and cannot be opened from outside; the release button is inside, at an intercom box some fifteen feet away. The carefully specified route offers a possible way in, but its security features make access uncertain.

Reconnaissance and Nighttime Approach

At the rear gate, Mike Milo peers through the bars and is bitten by two large hounds before he hears them bark or growl. Their presence is the first flaw he finds in Howard Polk’s otherwise detailed directions, and he worries about the unexpected obstacle through the day. The encounter changes the alley from a route on a diagram into a physical danger he will have to face in the dark.

Well past midnight, Mike Milo returns by truck, circles the area to check for police, switches off the headlights, and drives slowly into the alley. He leaves the vehicle door slightly ajar to avoid making noise, then selects tools by touch: a screwdriver, pliers, and small flashlight for one pocket, and a can of 3-IN-ONE oil and a roll of black electrical tape for the other. Carrying his handkerchief and pocketknife, he walks out of the alley and approaches the property from the boulevard. He inspects the parked cars near the wall, apparently considering one in relation to the entrance, and tries the hood of a car before finding it immovable; its driver-side door is locked. The account leaves his effort at this point in progress, with the district’s quiet streets serving as the ground for an increasingly precarious plan.