Finnegan's Week (6 page)

“Shoes? Who the fuck wants
shoes?
”

“Buey!” Abel said, grabbing the big man by his tattooed biceps. “I promise to you two thousand dollar!
Today
!”

“Today? How?”

“Get on forkleeft! Work, Buey!”

In less than twenty minutes the truckers had forklifted every pallet containing boxes marked “shoes” into the bobtail van. “They don't mees them. They got so much they don't mees the shoe,” Abel said, pronouncing it
choo
.

Nobody inspected their load when they wheeled back through the gate. No one had
ever
bothered to inspect a load, not in the thirteen months that Abel Durazo had been hauling toxic waste.

When they were driving beside the Silver Strand State Beach, away from Coronado, the ox exploded. “I must be a fuckin moron! Shoes! I let you talk me into takin a million pair a useless fuckin
shoes
!”

“Two thousand,” Abel said. He'd counted while Shelby had stacked. “We got two thousand.
Más o menos
.”

“Two thousand fuckin pair a shoes!
Now
what?”

“Joo going to see, Buey,” Abel said, confidently.

The ocean along the Silver Strand reflected coral and turquoise in the sparkling light. Abel drove carefully, knowing that Coronado P.D. motor cops patrolled the boulevard because of sailors who piled up their cars on that dog tooth of a highway, returning drunk from Tijuana.

When the bobtail van left the strand and turned toward 1-5, south toward Mexico, a flock of screaming gulls flew directly over them heading toward the Tijuana slough wildlife refuge that borders Imperial Beach on that southwestern tip of the United States. One of the reasons that geese, gulls, and other waterfowl frequented the estuary was because of the raw sewage that seeped into it from the Tijuana River that wound along the international border. Many a bird had plucked a morsel from the slough and died from it.

After driving silently for a while, Abel Durazo looked at his worried partner and said, “Do not worry, '
mano
. Sometimes I borrow truck all night. But only when Mary say okay. See, I haul for guy een Tijuana. I haul for him vegetables and fruits back to San Diego. I make few dollar. Boss, he don't know, nobody know. The guy got paperwork for all produce. I go down, I come back through Otay Mesa crossing. No problem. Never.”

“Don't nobody ever wonder why a waste disposal van's haulin produce?”

“Long as you got paperwork, nobody care what truck say on door. U.S. Customs peek eenside sometime. Sometime no. See fruits, vegetables, paperwork. Truck ain't stole. No problem.”

Shelby studied the handsome young Mexican and said, “Fuckin her, ain'tcha? You're slippin Mary the ol' muscle missile, you little dickhead!”

Abel giggled and said, “I geev her nice present when I take truck to Tijuana. Perfume, sometime.”

“I bet she'd like
my
pink projectile,” Shelby said, showing his tooth-gap. “That bitch must be at least seven months pregnant, but I always did like little baby hands helpin me. Hey, that reminds me, you know how to paralyze a woman from the waist down? Marry her!”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. You Mexicans don't understand jokes. I guess if Mary's old man ever comes home early you can run outside and start mowin the lawn. Tell him you're the new gardener, right?”

“Huh?”

“Fergit it, dude. I'm wastin my fuckin humor.”

The ox turned his cap bill forward to signify he meant
business
, and he said, “So how're you gettin me two grand today?”

“We go to Tijuana. My friend, he buy our shoe for three dollar a pair.”

“What? These shoes must cost sixty!”

“Eeen Mexico, three dollar. Right
now
. Cash.”

Shelby said, “Two thousand pairs times three bucks is
six
thousand. How come I only get
two?
”

Abel watched the big trucker nervously chew at a callus on his fat thumb. Filthy. The calluses were filthy like the rest of him, but Abel liked the ox, filthy or not.

“U.S. Customs, they don' worry about trucks that go
south
, but we got to pay Mexican customs.
Mordida
.”

“What's that?”

“Bite.
Mordida
.” Abel made the motion of a fist clamping shut.

“Graft?”

“Yes,” Abel said. “We go through San Ysidro gate. I know customs man. We borrow boss money from last job. We put boss money back when we collect for navy shoes.”

The job to which Abel referred was the pickup at Southbay Agricultural Supply where Shelby had received an envelope containing $500. Shelby mulled it over for a moment.

“Okay, how we gonna get back to the U.S. with our drums full a who-knows-what kinda poison?”

“We don' come back weeth truck.”

“What the fuck?”

“Our truck get stole. We go to San Diego police to make report.”

“Wait a minute! You're movin too fast.”

“Look, Buey,” Abel said. “I know how to do! We sell shoe, we leave truck een Tijuana. We walk back through border gate.”

“We gonna tell the cops our truck got hijacked? At gunpoint, or what?”

“No. We say we stop for burrito een Chula Vista. Lunchtime. We eat, we come out, truck gone. We don' care. Our job gone anyways.”

“I got a bad feelin about this, dude,” Shelby said, “I got a bad feelin.”

But he didn't object when the Mexican turned south on Interstate 5 and headed toward the San Ysidro crossing.

There were four lanes handling the southbound traffic at the international border. Unlike yellow caution signs at deer crossings that show antlered stags in black silhouette, the caution signs in
these
parts showed the silhouettes of a man, woman and child running. Every year, caution signs or not, many illegals were killed dashing across the freeway. Dying as they ran north to
survive
.

Abel pulled off the freeway at the Virginia Street truck gate, the gate used by commercial vehicles going into Mexico. As the van rumbled along the dusty hardpan road, Shelby saw several mobile homes, permanently on foundations, that served as offices for insurance and customs brokers. Before Abel wheeled the truck into the customs yard, the ox looked off to his right and saw two green and white U.S. Border Patrol Ford Broncos parked on top of the levee over the Tijuana River.

What made it an astonishing sight was that the uniformed Border Patrol officers were smoking and chatting and drinking soda pop, not thirty yards from a dozen Mexicans just on the other side of the broken-down border fence, who were preparing for their dash to
el norte
as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The Border Patrol knew they were coming. The Mexicans knew they knew. No hard feelings on either side.

Shelby Pate didn't want any part of this place. In his entire life, four years of it in the San Diego area, he hadn't been to Tijuana more than twice, once to buy meth and once to buy a hooker. One had been as bad as the other, so now he bought his cringe and pussy in San Diego.

When speaking of drugs or hookers, Shelby Pate always said, “Be a patriot. Buy American.”

After they were inside the customs yard, Abel got out and approached a Mexican customs officer he knew well. Shelby watched Flaco jabber in Spanish to the guy, who wore a light-blue uniform shirt with epaulets, and a rakish cap with a sixty-mission crush.

At first, the customs officer turned away and shook his head, but finally he shrugged and nodded. Then the two Mexicans walked to the far side of the truck, away from traffic, and Shelby watched in the side-view mirror as Abel peeled off several twenty-dollar bills from the money they'd been given at South-bay Agricultural Supply.

When Abel came back to the truck he said, “I pay five hundred. Two-feefty my money, two-feefty from joo.”

“You lyin little asshole!” Shelby said. “I saw you give him on'y two hunnerd at
most
!”

Abel grinned sheepishly and said, “Okay, no problem, no problem. I take one hundred from the two thousand I geev to joo.”

“
Three
thousand. We're partners, goddamnit! Three fer you, three fer me. Fuck this!”

“Okay, Buey, okay,” Abel said, shrugging his eyebrows.

“Ya know, dude,” Shelby said, “we coulda jist dumped the drums out by Brown Field or somewheres. A
real
truck thief mighta did that before drivin south, right?”

“No,” Abel said. “I cannot dump poison.”

Shelby paused, then said, “Good call, dude. Neither can I.”

There was something
else
troubling Shelby Pate after they got waved through the gate, after they were part of the sixty
million
who would cross north and south during the calendar year.

“Did you ever see that old movie on TV where three guys go hunt fer gold in Mexico? And this Mexican bandit with a gold tooth, he whacks one of em with a machete? And the greasers're too fuckin stupid to know the stuff he's carryin is gold dust? Ever see that movie?” the ox wanted to know.

“No, I like funny movie. Bugs Bunny.”

“Those bandits stole his shoes. That's how come they got caught. They jist had to steal his fuckin shoes. I got a bad feelin about this.” Shelby's little eyes widened as he looked around at all the brown faces on the Tijuana streets. “The bandits woulda got away,” he continued, “if on'y they didn't have to stop and steal the
shoes
.”

“So?” Abel was thoroughly puzzled. “So?”

“Them
shoes
. Them fuckin shoes got the Mexicans shot by a firin squad, dude!”

C
HAPTER
5

A
t every stoplight there were vendors selling cigarettes, soft drinks, tamales, flowers. Children scampered through traffic placing Chiclets on the window ledge of cars stopped for traffic signals. And if the motorist did not give the children a few coins for the gum, the waifs would snatch back the Chiclets just before the light changed to green, dodging the fast-moving traffic like tiny matadors.

“We early, Buey,” Abel said, looking at his watch. “I drive aroun' for leetle while. Then we go see Soltero.”

The traffic roundabouts made the ox uneasy, which Abel noticed when a smoking pickup truck cut them off and sped into a hub where streets fed out like spokes of a wheel.

“Thees called
gloriettas
,” Abel said.

“How the fuck you know when it's your turn?” Shelby asked, just as a beat-up Oldsmobile, its side windows patched with plywood, zoomed across in front of the van and rattled off on one of the wheel spokes.

“They work good,” Abel said. “Don' worry.”

“Lotta squids around here,” Shelby said.

“Wha's that?”

“Fast bad drivers. Squids,” Shelby said nervously.

On nearly every street and highway around downtown Tijuana Shelby saw unfamiliar sights that made him anxious. A clown in sad white-face juggled balls and pocketed coins from motorists stopped for the traffic light. A fire-eater on the opposite corner performed for cars going the other way. Bony dogs prowled and rooted inside garbage containers, or just lay dangerously close to the endless traffic flow, inhaling noxious fumes from derelict cars.

“Man, I coulda crapped through a keyhole when you was givin a bribe to that Mexican cop,” Shelby said as they inched through the city traffic. “My shit was syrup and I ain't scared to say it. I don't wanna go to stony lonesome, not down in
this
fuckin country.”

“Wha's that, Buey?”

“Jail, man! The fuckin calaboose. A Mexican jail where they wake you up with cattle prods in your ass. And a course, they don't have no trouble findin your asshole 'cause some four-hundred-pound Indian convict from Sonora jist turned you into his pillow-bitin squaw.
That's
stony lonesome around these parts, dude!”

“I tol' you, '
mano
, don' worry,” Abel said. “That customs man, he jus' turn us back eef he don' take the
mordida
. But he like the money. They all like the
mordida
. They don' get paid
nada
.”

But the ox wasn't reassured, Abel could see that. The hulking trucker was sweating. Beads dripped off his whiskers, and he was starting to smell, and not just from work sweat. Like in those drainpipes when Abel used to cross the frontier between Tijuana and San Diego at night, hoping that if anyone discovered him it would be
la migra
, the Border Patrol, and not Mexican bandits. The other
pollos
who crossed with him, they would smell like this while they waited in those drainpipes by the Canyon of the Dead.

“We going to be out een two, three hour, Buey,” Abel said. “You don' got to worry.”

It was the
multitudes
that Shelby didn't like. People walking, sitting, standing, driving. Shelby didn't like crowds. He never went to Jack Murphy Stadium even though he was a fan of both the Padres and Chargers. He watched his sports on TV to avoid the mobs. And
these
people, many were so small, so dark, so leathery: Indians, without a drop of European blood in them. Like burros, he thought, little Mexican burros, exceptionally strong for their size.

As a child, Shelby had seen lots of these little Indian migrants working in the lettuce fields near Stockton. And after getting the job at Green Earth he was often astonished at how they could muscle big drums onto the trucks, drums that he wouldn't move without a hand dolly, and he was twice the size of any of them.

This Tijuana peasant class, these leathery little Indians, made him very nervous and he couldn't explain it. Maybe it was those black eyes, fathoms deep, no way to read them. He might be indifferent to them when they were on
his
side of the border, but now, on
their
side he was unnerved and didn't know why.