Illegal (20 page)

"Ain't my fault you're starving," the man continued. "Vans are late."

He stomped through the chicken droppings, chewing on a green apple, surveying the migrants. "You people eat roadkill, doncha? Hushed puppies. Asphalt armadillo. Pavement possum."

He cackled at his own stupid joke, drool trickling down one corner of his mouth.

It had been several hours since the old driver had rescued her from the slaughterhouse. As he drove, she tearfully told him about the attack in the locker room and how she had fought off the foreman, perhaps even killing him. Alarmed, the driver called Wanda, repeated the story, then listened a moment before hanging up.

"
La jefa
says it is too dangerous for you to come back," he told Marisol.

He had driven along a lake, through a desert, across dry washes, and into the mountains. He turned onto a dirt road and stopped at the old chicken farm, virtually surrounded by steep mountain walls. Vans were supposed to be there to take a group of migrants to farms upstate.

"Watch out for the
encargado,
" the driver had warned her, before driving off. "A
drogadicto
who thinks he is a Nazi. Probably insane. Just wait for the van and stay away from him."

With that, Marisol was left in the shade among defecating chickens and snoring migrants, the corrugated roof hot as a griddle.

She heard a scream. A woman yelling, "No! No! No!"

Marisol squinted into the sunlight. The woman's husband, a Mexican of perhaps forty, stood with his back against a tree, his hands up by his ears, holding onto a squirming, squawking chicken. Thirty feet away, the Nazi aimed his rifle at the man.

The Nazi was trying to shoot the chicken off the man's head. A surreal sight, a scene from a nightmare, a hallucination.

"Hold still, Pancho!" the Nazi yelled. "Christ! Hold that bird still before it shits on your head!"

Trembles shook the man's body. The chicken flapped its wings and screeched.

The man's wife wailed in Spanish, invoking the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

"Stand up straight, goddammit!" the Nazi ordered.

The man's knees buckled.

"I can shoot the freckle off a rabbit's nose at fifty feet. But you gotta hold still, Pancho."

The man squeezed his eyes shut.

The sound of the gunshot echoed off the canyon walls. The man fell to the ground, screaming, his face covered with blood.

"You ain't hit, Pancho! If you was hit, you wouldn't be yelling."

The decapitated chicken flopped on the ground, spurting gore.

"Who's next? Who wants to be in the circus?"

The driver was right, Marisol thought.
This man is insane.

"C'mon now! Deadeye Dickie Chitwood is just warming up."

The migrants studied the tops of their boots, sneakers, and huaraches.

"You! Come on down!" Pointing at a man next to Marisol. Mid-twenties. Honduran, she thought, coppery complexion with Indian features. The man didn't resist, didn't say a word. Just walked to the blood-spattered tree and stood there. Like he'd taken orders all his life.

"My man!" the Nazi shouted. "See!" He gestured to the silent migrants under the corrugated sheet metal. "No fear. This greaser's gonna make a lot of money climbing peach trees for Mr. Rutledge."

The Nazi took an apple from the back pocket of his jeans, placed it on the Honduran's head. The apple fell to the ground.

"Pick that up, goddammit! You let it drop again, I'll dig you a third eye."

The man put the apple back on his head. This time, it stayed in place, even as the man's legs swayed.

The Nazi moved back to a mark he had made in the dirt, then sighted the rifle. "Gotta adjust for wind and curvature of the earth." Another cackle of laughter. He was still laughing when he pulled the trigger.

An explosion blew apart the man's forehead, and he sank to the ground as if his knees were made of butter.

"Oh, shit!" the Nazi said. "Gonna be one wet short for Mr. Rutledge."

Her stomach clenching, Marisol turned away.

One more day, Tino, she promised herself.

In Mexicali, heading north toward the border, the souped-up Mustang passed rows of whitewashed wooden crosses, printed with block-lettered names. Honoring the
pollos
who died trying to reach
El Norte
.

Tino watched the crosses fly by, reading the names in the headlights.

Serafin Rivera Lopez.

Pedro Morranchel Quintero.

Graciela Gonzalez.

Several crosses simply said,
No Identificado
.

Tino felt his gut tighten. He knew where his mother had been left. A stash house called "Sugarloaf Lodge." But was she still there? She could have been taken someplace. To another state, even. What if he searched the rest of his life and never found her? What if she was
no identificado
?

It was nearly midnight, but the road north was crowded.
Campesinos
from the countryside pushed carts filled with fruits and vegetables. Along the berm, women sold travel gear. Backpacks, plastic jugs of water, cans of tuna and sardines.
Pollos
buying last-minute supplies before venturing north.

They passed a small stucco building painted red.
Grupo Beta.
A government agency that tried to discourage border crossings. Letters two feet high were painted across the front of the building.
La Búsqueda de un Sueño Americano Puede Ser Tu Peor Pesadilla—
The search for the American dream could be your worst nightmare.

Too late for that warning, Tino thought.

They traveled in silence a few moments before the boy blurted out, "Who's Adam?"

"What?" The question seemed to stun Payne. "Why do you ask?"

"This morning, on the highway, when the cop asked my name, you said 'Adam.' "

Payne let out a long train whistle of a sigh. "My son. He was killed in a car accident. Fourteen months ago. Drunk driver."

"Garcia? The Mexican?"

Payne shot him a look. "How'd you know that?"

"Back in the pretty lady's kitchen. You said you were going to Mexico to kill a man named Garcia."

"Jesus. What else did you hear?"

"Everything you said. Why do grown-ups think kids aren't listening? Where's Garcia now?"

"The best I can figure, back in Oaxaca. Fled the scene of the accident. Left the country."

"No papers, right?"

"Right."

Tino tried to process the information. "What about those Mexicans who got fried in the trailer truck?"

"What about them?"

"You helped them."

"I helped the survivors stay in the country."

"Before or after your accident?"

"Before. Why?"

Tino took a moment, not sure he should ask. "If it had been the other way around, if Garcia had killed Adam first, would you have still helped the
mojados
?"

"I don't hold it against the entire country that one drunk Mexican ran a red light. But I haven't gone out of my way to help anyone—American, Mexican, or Martian—since Adam died."

"You still would have helped the
mojados
."

"What makes you think so?"

"You're helping me, aren't you?"

Payne shot him a glance. "Sharon made me, kiddo."

"Sure, Himmy. Sure."

Turning back to the road, Payne swerved to give room to three old Mexican men walking along the pavement. They wore long-sleeve shirts buttoned up to the neck and carried canvas sacks. Tino had seen men like this all his life. But now, for some unexplainable reason, now the
Mexicanos
looked foreign to him.

"Himmy, I'm real sorry for you and the pretty lady."

Payne took his hand off the wheel and tousled Tino's mop of hair. "Thanks, kiddo."

"I saw his picture. Adam, I mean."

"Where?"

"In your office. He was wearing a uniform."

"Little League. He liked to catch. Used to wear his shin guards around the house."

"That baseball bat." Tino gestured toward the backseat. "Adam's, right?"

"Right."

"I bet you coached his team, too."

"Yep. You keep this up, the L.A.P.D. will give you a detective's shield." Payne was quiet another moment before saying, "It wasn't all Garcia's fault."

"What do you mean? You said he was drunk and ran a red light."

"I was looking out the window at the ocean. Just before Garcia hit us, I was watching some terns feeding in the shore-break. One second, two seconds, maybe. If I'd been looking straight ahead, maybe I'd have seen Garcia's truck coming. Maybe I could have done something."

The memory crashed over Payne, swept by an incoming tide of bone-chilling cold.

If he'd seen the truck . . .

He'd be playing catch with Adam today. He'd still be married to Sharon. He wouldn't have gone nuts and said:
"Screw the rules; I don't care anymore."
He wouldn't be the guy the cops set up to bribe a judge. At this very moment, he wouldn't be sneaking back into the United States with phony papers, in a stolen car.

His entire adult life, what Payne wanted most was to be a good father. His own father had abandoned the family when Jimmy was eleven. Leonard Payne considered himself both a wheeler-dealer and an inventor. That sounded better than traveling salesman and tinkerer. The man simply could not hold a job. What he could hold was a grudge. Deluded and bitter, he filed dozens of lawsuits, claiming to have invented various sports drinks, protein bars, and muscle-building powders. With each invention came a "royal screwing," as he called it, "a corporate corn-holing by the big boys."

Leonard Payne went through periods of manic highs, working on top-secret projects in the garage, followed by bouts of near-suicidal depression.

Once he took off, the man never called, never wrote, never sent money. Payne pictured him selling gym equipment on commission somewhere, still railing against the big boys who won't let a man get ahead.

Payne wondered which was worse for a boy—to know the father who abandoned him or, like Tino, to never have even met him. He tried to stir up a warm memory of Leonard Payne. Remembered his father taking him bowling.

Leonard bowled and dragged Jimmy along to watch. San Bernardino, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Banning. Anywhere his old man could find suckers to bet. First for beer, then a dollar a pin, then five dollars a pin. It was how Leonard made the rent money. A broad-shouldered man, he threw a sweeping, powerful hook with his custom-made "Black Beauty." The ball would scatter the pins with a thunderous clatter, probably because it weighed sixteen pounds, thirteen ounces, nearly a full pound over the legal limit.

"Your head's playing tricks on you, Himmy," Tino said, dragging him back to the present.

"What?"

"The accident. No way it was your fault, man."

"The week after it happened, I was supposed to take Adam on a trip. Just the two of us. Visit every Major League ballpark west of the Mississippi. Had it all planned, down to the last hot dog."

"My mother always says,
Si quieres qué Dios se ría, dile tus planes.
If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

"Your mother's a smart woman."

Payne heard Tino suck in a breath. "There, Himmy."

Just ahead, sodium vapor lights turned the night air into a misty green fog. Traffic slowed as U.S. border agents guided cars into lanes approaching the station. Vendors in baseball caps hawked sodas, pastries, and souvenirs. A grim midnight carnival.

"Mexico" was painted on the asphalt. If they could run this gauntlet, Payne thought, they would see "U.S." on the far side of the station. He sensed Tino stiffen as they approached the invisible line that separated the two countries. The line that separated the boy from his mother, his past from his future.

They were surrounded now. Cars, in front, on both sides, and behind them.

"We're gonna make it, kiddo."

Tino shot him a look. Wanting to believe but maybe not quite buying it. Which made two of them.

Payne pulled the Mustang into a line of cars at the border station. Six lanes were open, each with twenty or so cars backed up.

"Tino, no matter what happens, don't panic."

"I won't."

"Don't get out of the car unless you're ordered to. Don't run."

"Okay. Okay."

"And no mouthing off to the agents."

"I'm not an
idiota,
Himmy."

A husky agent in a blue uniform tugged the leash of a German shepherd that happily sniffed the fenders and trunks of the cars in front of them. Payne hoped the prior owner of the Mustang hadn't been hauling any loco weed. When they were the third car in line, a cute female agent, her dark hair pulled back in a bun, walked along the row with a clipboard. She checked each car's license plate and punched the numbers into a handheld computer.

Payne gave her a "Good evening, ma'am" as she walked past the top-down Mustang. She returned a tight smile and an official nod. Her name tag read
"Rodriguez,"
the patch on her sleeve,
"U.S. Customs and Border Protection."
Payne kept his eyes on her as she jiggled past. Her uniform pants were a size too small, accentuating her bubble butt. Not quite a Jennifer Lopez model, but still what the Greeks would call "callipygous." She examined the Mustang's Land of Lincoln plate, Payne murmuring a little prayer that the car hadn't been recently used in a bank robbery in Cicero.