Illegal (5 page)

Marisol and Tino sat with their backs pressed against the rear of the metal toolbox that ran the width of the cab. They each wore one backpack. Before they left home, Marisol fought back tears as she told Tino they could only take what they could carry. Not the plates or silverware that had been her grandmother's. Not the kitchen table handmade by her father from mahogany scraps.

Just three changes of clothing each. Tino's baseball glove. Photographs of his
abuela y abuelo,
both gone now. Everything else they left behind.

They each wore jeans and their new Reeboks, purchased in Mexicali along with "travel kits." Tins of sardines and crackers and gallon jugs of water. Band-Aids, blister cream, and sunblock. Everything for the aspiring
pollo
except a green card. Still, Marisol could not shake the feeling that disaster faced them at every bend in the road.

"All right, my little
valiente.
"

"I am not so little,
Mami.
"

The truck headed west through a mountain pass on Federal Highway 2, then across a rocky, barren landscape, over bridges that traversed ravines and dry washes, finally curling up a mountain road through narrow canyons, dangerously close to steep cliffs. It was a moonless night—helpful for crossing undetected—the only light the twinkling stars overhead.

"It's okay,
Mami,
" Tino said. "Everything will be okay."

Marisol hadn't realized it, but she was squeezing her son's hand. Squeezing so hard, he had to pry her fingers loose.

"Of course it will," she said.

They came to a mountain town called "La Rumorosa"
—
named for the winds that whistled through the canyons—and stopped outside a small house of sand-colored rocks. A threadbare sofa and two living room chairs, springs sprung, sagged in the front yard, facing a fire of mesquite wood. Three young men lounged on the furniture, one cleaning what looked like a sub-machine gun, the other breaking down a handgun. The third man smoked a joint. He waved in the general direction of the truck but didn't get off the sofa.

El Tigre banged his horn. "Let's go, Rey!"

Rey, the pot smoker, looked to be about twenty years old. Baggy pants, shaved head, his body all cords and wires. A muscle-tee displayed his tattoos: Aztec symbols, Mexican flag, and a green snake that crawled up his neck. His goal in life appeared to be to spend as much time as possible in prison.

Heavy-lidded, Rey jammed a handgun into the front of his pants, lazed his way around the truck, and peered into the bed.

"Who are you?" Tino asked, before Marisol could keep him quiet.

"You ever hear of the Avenue 57 Chicos?" Rey's smile showed yellow teeth and undisguised malice.

"No."

"You will,
chico
."

Great, Marisol thought. A gangbanger. Or, at the very least, someone who wanted to be.

El Tigre hit the horn again. He must like the sound. Then he swung his bulk out of the cab, stood on the running board, and said, "Rey's my nephew. He'll watch for bandits until we cross over. But stay out of his way. He is a terrible shot."

Rey telling his uncle to have sex with himself. The family must be very proud of the young man, Marisol thought.

El Tigre plopped back into the cab, and his nephew slithered into the passenger seat. With a final toot of the horn, El Tigre gunned the engine. Spitting up dirt, the truck bounced onto the mountain road and into the darkness of the Mexican night.

Payne called 911 and was immediately cross-examined.

A woman at the other end of the line asked him to hold a moment.

Payne paced in a tight circle. Fully awake now, wound tight, filled with regret. Judge Rollins was corrupt, but he didn't deserve this.

"Is this Mr. James Payne?" asked the woman on the phone.

He hadn't given his name.

The woman recited his home address and the fact that he had three unpaid parking tickets and two citations for failing to clear brush from his property.

Technology would lead the cops straight to his front door. They would ask all those nosy cop questions about his visit to the judge. They probably wouldn't do a Rodney King on his skull, but who wants another Grand Jury looking into his affairs?

Payne clicked off without saying good-bye. He needed time to think, and this wasn't the place. He dressed hurriedly, grabbed the envelope with the five grand he had skimmed, and hopped into his car. Headed west on Oxnard, hung a right on Van Nuys, and parked on Delano, two blocks from his office. Payne was seldom in his office between nine and five, much less in the middle of the night. Still, no use advertising his presence with his Lexus by the door.

The chambers of J. Atticus Payne, Esquire, solo practitioner, occupied a one-story, wood-shingled bungalow built in the 1920s and not updated since. The paint was peeling, the porch sagging, and the siding tearing loose. A California Craftsman gone to seed.

Rent was cheap, and the place was close to the courthouse, bail bondsman's office, and the police station. The small backyard had been paved over to provide parking for three cars, even though many of Payne's clients arrived by bus, walking the last few blocks from the Van Nuys Civic Center.

The shelves were lined with law books that Payne never read, the desk cluttered with mail never to be answered. Atop his first-generation fax machine, a single slice of pepperoni pizza looked alarmingly like a chunk of plasterboard with skin cancer. He tossed the envelope with the hundred-dollar bills into a desk drawer and opened a cabinet that was intended for litigation files but contained vodka, bourbon, Scotch, tequila, and coffee liqueur. Payne had not been much of a drinker until the accident. After his surgery, he sought relief from the pain by washing down Vicodin with white Russians.

He contented himself now with some Maker's Mark, neat, in a dirty cup. He kicked some files off an old corduroy sofa and stretched out. He did not know what he would do in the morning, though he vaguely recollected that he had an eight a.m. hearing in Superior Court, just down the street.

Exhaustion kicked in along with the bourbon. His eyes drifted closed, then opened, then descended again like balky garage doors. His last conscious thought was of Adam tossing a ball to him. The boy was rangy, all legs and elbows, with a rubbery arm. He could throw hard. Just like Payne at that age, fast but wild. With that thought, and the timeless echo of a leather ball smacking into the pocket of a finely oiled glove, Jimmy finally cruised into a restless sleep.

El Tigre pulled the pickup truck off the highway, onto a dirt road west of La Rumorosa. Nothing for miles except dark canyons and sheer cliffs.

Everyone piled out of the truck bed. Two of the
campesinos
from the south began urinating several feet away, the splashing audible. Barnyard animals, Marisol thought, so inconsiderate they cannot walk twenty feet to relieve themselves behind a cactus.

She heard El Tigre screaming into his cell phone.

"
¡Chingalo!
One car? I told you, a van! Asshole! I got ten
pollos
."

"What's happening?" Mirasol asked Rey, his leaden eyes hidden now behind sunglasses.

"Stupid
gabacho
driver on other side only has one car," Rey said. "We got to make two trips across."

Once again, Marisol tightened her grip on Tino's hand.

After another explosion of Spanish curses, El Tigre clicked off the phone and, for the second time tonight, counted his passengers. Luckily, he had just enough fingers to complete the tabulation. "Five men, five women." He looked toward Tino. "I'm putting you with the men. Are you a good runner?"

"The fastest in Caborca," Tino said.

El Tigre showed his gold-toothed smile. "New plan. Women first."

He explained his strategy as if he were Pancho Villa at the Battle of Chihuahua. He would take the women through the canyons and across the border to his idiot
gabacho
friend, who had a single car waiting. Then El Tigre would come back and lead the men down the same path. By the time they got across, the driver would have taken the women to a stash house near Calexico and returned to his hiding spot near the border. El Tigre would then take the five men—including Tino—to the same stash house. There would be no charge for El Tigre's extra effort.

"It will all work out." He sounded pleased with his brilliant tactics.

Marisol shook her head. "My son goes with me."

He gave her a poisonous look. "The woman who asks for credit does not make the rules. By the time the second group gets to the border fence, the sun will be up, and we can be spotted. We may need to run."

"I can run as fast as any man here," Marisol said.

"
Chingad.
You will do as I say."

She knew she had embarrassed El Tigre by arguing with him. Backed him into a corner. Now he had to save face. Still, she would not relent.

"My son goes with me."

His face colored.
"¡Chinga to putas!"

"If my son does not go, neither do I. Please give back our money."

El Tigre's laugh was liquid, a toilet flushing. Then he shouted, "Rey!"

The sleepy-eyed nephew seemed to wake up. He pulled the gun from his waistband and stuck it under Marisol's nose. "Shut up, woman."

Tino leapt at Rey, knocked the gun to the ground, then pummeled him with a flurry of punches. The boy was skinny, but his long arms whirled like propellor blades, and several blows landed, breaking Rey's sunglasses. Off balance, Rey fell awkwardly into an ocotillo shrub, cursing in Spanish and English and maybe some words he just made up.

El Tigre grabbed Tino by the back of his T-shirt, lifted him off his feet, and swung him against the side of the truck.

"Don't touch my son!" Marisol flew at the man, tearing his hand away.

A gunshot echoed off the canyon walls.

Rey stood there, eyes wide, pupils dilated, gun pointing in the air. "We do what my uncle says, or I swear, I will kill someone tonight."

"I'm not afraid of you,
grifo,
" Tino said.

"Tino, quiet!" Marisol ordered.

"Listen to your mother,
pendejo,
" Rey said. "You die out here, nobody gives a shit. Birds eat your eyeballs for breakfast and your balls for lunch. Out here, you're nothing but a grease spot in the sand."

They had walked two hours, down one canyon, and up another, El Tigre shoving Marisol every time she looked back over her shoulder.

"The little bastard will be fine," he said.

She had long dreamed of leaving Mexico. But not at the barrel of a gun. And not leaving her son behind. She wondered if the separation suited El Tigre's intentions.

She could not run from the stash house until he returned with her son.

"When we get to Calexico," El Tigre had told her, "you can take a bath and change your clothes and I will have your boy there in time for lunch. After dark, there will be a ride to Los Angeles. Between morning and evening, we will have some time together."

Marisol wondered if there might not be something more pleasant to occupy her afternoon. Being bitten by a scorpion perhaps.

"Bring my son to me," she said. "Then we shall see."

He grunted like a pig rooting out a tasty morsel. In the dim light of the stars, she could not make out his expression, but in her imagination, he licked the saliva from his lips.

They followed a rocky trail, the five women and their coyote. In the dark, it was a shadowy landscape of volcanic rocks and sand washes. Scrub oaks and greasewoods. In the distance, outlines of mountains formed the backdrop for the night sky. Marisol realized those mountains were in the United States. Part of the same mountains on this side of the border. The dirt would be the same, the rocks, too. And the people?

The land leveled out as they neared the border. El Tigre shushed them, for sound carried great distances in the desert night. They were exposed here. Visible to border agents with infrared binoculars.

El Tigre had boasted that he never used the same entrance point twice. Marisol hoped the man knew what he was doing. They were close enough to see the border fence, steel mesh twelve feet high topped by razor wire. No sounds but the crunch of their shoes and the hoot of owls.

Marisol shortened her breaths as she neared the fence, as if her very exhalations might set off an alarm. El Tigre used wire cutters to make an opening, and within seconds, Marisol stood on the hard-baked earth of
los Estados Unidos.
It felt strangely anticlimactic. Certainly, there was no joy. Not with Tino left behind. But even when he got here, what would her feelings be? What would the future hold? The beginning of some grand adventure, the fulfillment of her father's dream? Or were greater catastrophes ahead?

Lights flashed, and Marisol stiffened. Border Patrol?

But then El Tigre shouted, "Ay! There's the
gabacho
now."

Car headlights. Two more quick flashes. The car hidden in some pinyon trees several hundred yards from the fence. The women ran toward the headlights.