Lines and shadows (17 page)

Clouds like banks of foam blew in over the canyon mouth when Manny and Joe Castillo started in. Stunted trees with withered fingers pointed up and away from the canyon floor. Joe remembered the trees.

Manny and Joe walked about 250 yards along the creek bottom and soon they came to a curve in the creek where the trickle of polluted water snaked sideways and the brush grew thick. There seemed to be cloud shadow everywhere. Then from the twilight shadows a very ragged alien stepped from behind a hill of mesquite and stood silently staring at them. Then another man, this one twenty-three years old, the same as Joe Castillo, and wearing a creamy leather jacket, mocha slacks and boots. Joe admired the young man's clothes. There was never a pollo
or
bandit dressed like this. His left hand was down at his side. When he brought it up and extended it, they saw that his taste extended to firearms. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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He was holding a beautiful .45-caliber automatic pistol with silver grips. He was pointing it right at Manny Lopez right eyebrow, which had leaped into a shocked and spiky interrogation point.

The two Barfers went instinctively to their haunches and tried to get into character, which wasn't easy. Joe Castillo customarily talked with his hands, long graceful fingers fluttering like bird wings. Ordinarily he was the world champ of body language. He hunched his shoulders, dipped his head, swayed his torso, squirmed his hips, always with the hands fluttering and gesturing. But not now. This was the first time in his young life that he had ever been face to face with a gun muzzle. Joe Castillo had turned to stone. The gunman said, "
Migra
!" letting them know he was an immigration officer—from which country he didn't say.

The shafts of light from half a sunball dropping below the hills glinted on the blue steel barrel of that gun and Joe Castillo remembered thinking: That's such a
pretty
gun. It was something that was to happen a great deal from this moment on, a game they would play in their heads. The game was called, "What was I thinking
when
?"

"I like guns," Joe Castillo said later. "That's why I thought: That's a
pretty
gun, with the light bouncing off the barrel. And those silver grips."

The man held the gun in his left hand. He kept it just a few feet from the face of Manny Lopez. This was the third time a man representing himself to be a Mexican lawman had shoved a gun into the face of Manny Lopez. But this time Manny didn't pull a gun and badge and have a Mexican standoff. Not by a long shot. This time Manny had a very bad thought about himself slithering through his brain. The thought was this: You're gonna
die
. Manny Lopez had not been in Vietnam. Manny had never shot at a human being before, only at targets on the police pistol range. Manny didn't even know much about guns except for his own service revolver, and he wasn't that great a shot. He could only think that very evil thought: You're gonna
die
. It's too bad. It's too bad you're gonna die. The .45 was cocked. Then for some reason the dapper stranger moved the gun to his left and pointed it at the face of Joe Castillo, who squatted four or five inches to the right of his sergeant.

It was all happening so slowly that Manny Lopez couldn't believe it. It is like in the movies, he thought. Time
does
slow down. And then Manny stopped thinking that he was going to die and stopped thinking about time slowing down and stopped thinking about anything but the two-inch Smith & Wesson .38 in his shoulder holster. While the .45 was aimed at the face of motionless Joe Castillo, who thought of inching his long fingers file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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toward his own gun, Manny snatched the .38 from his holster and began jerking the trigger as it came up.

PLOOM PLOOM PLOOM PLOOM PLOOM! is the way it sounded in the ears of Joe Castillo. Then things speeded up for him as the dapper stranger began whirling, spinning, jerking. He was jerking back and forth like a wolf in a shooting gallery. Then Joe heard a BOP! as he saw the dressy dude going down.

The shot was from Joe's own gun and he found himself firing at the raggedy partner, who was flying across the creek bed, screaming his head off. Joe popped another cap and the raggedy partner went down.

The only transmission received by the frantic cover team of Dick Snider and Robbie Hurt was Joe Castillo yelling into the Handie-Talkie: "He's shot! We need cover!" which sent the Barfers running in all directions, mostly wrong.

Joe Castillo was, in his words, totally
bughouse
. He didn't know if he was alive or dead for an instant. He went running after the raggedy alien he'd just shot down and remembered jumping on the screaming ragbag and beating the living shit out of him. The slightly injured alien started fighting back but Joe Castillo was past rage. He wanted to beat the guy to
death
. He stopped when the adrenaline seemed to gush out his fingernails. He'd never felt like this. He hardly had the strength to drag the guy back to Manny. Manny Lopez was on the ground holding the dressy dude by the shirt front. Manny was also bughouse and found himself yelling into the guy's face. "You asshole! You asshole!" Then Manny Lopez remembered that the only word the guy said was
migra
. "Are you
really
an immigration officer?" Manny asked him.

"Yes," the man answered. But he was turning gray.

"You stupid bastard!" Manny said. "Why did you
do
this?"

"I thought you were smugglers," the man gasped, and somehow he managed to pull himself up on one elbow.

"Bullshit!" Manny Lopez said. "You're a thief. You carry a badge and you're a thief!"

"How bad am I?" the man asked, and he was panting heavily. Manny looked at the blood-soaked, bullet-riddled body. The guy was body shot three times, one through the right nipple, two in the groin. He was also arm shot. He was even ass shot, caught by a slug while spinning like a wolf in a shooting gallery. He looked
bad
. And Manny Lopez, never having been accused of sentimentality, shrugged and said,

"You're gonna die."

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"Oh, nooooooo!" the guy cried out. But he pulled up his own blood-soaked shirt and examined the wounds. In fact, he sat up. In fact, he was trying to get to his
feet!

Except that Joe Castillo, breathing like a marathoner, with eyes all beady and scowling like the boss ayatollah, came raging back to the creek bed, dragging the handcuffed, bloody partner of the dressy dude. He saw the guy from behind just sitting there talking to Manny Lopez. And Joe Castillo, with his ears still ringing from the gunshots and his face full of lead shavings and the smell of gunpowder running clear through his nasal cavity to his brain, thought that Manny had missed. This son of a bitch had a cocked and loaded .45 in our faces and we almost
died
and Manny missed!

Then Manny was stunned to see the handcuffed alien go hurtling through the air and land belly first at his feet, while Joe Castillo, looking wild and bughouse, took three steps and kicked the dressy dude right in the chest, doing more harm, it turned out, than the tit shot which ricocheted off the breastbone and came out the chest cavity, causing very little damage.

"What're you doing, fucker?" Manny yelled. "The asshole's
dying
."

"Oh," Joe said, looking at the Mexican immigration cop, who was writhing on the ground in more pain from the kick than from the gunshots.

When the other Barfers came panting across the canyon toward the direction of the gunfire, they found Joe Castillo putting surgical dressings on the man, trying to apologize for kicking the shit out of him while he was dying.

Except that he
wasn't
dying. He pushed Joe away and got to his feet on his own. Then he waved away all help and said, "I can do it myself."

And he walked with them out of the canyons to the nearest dirt road just as the ambulance came bouncing over the horizon.

And he continued a running dialogue with Manny Lopez all the time he was leaking blood, saying things like: "Yes, I know it's a bad way to work smugglers." And, "Yes, it was stupid to be on U.S. soil." And, "It was wrong of me to draw my gun on you even though I thought you were smugglers." And, "I really screwed up and understand perfectly why you shot me."

He understood
perfectly
. He was full of holes and dripping all over the canyons and he could cook up a story as he walked out unassisted.

The Barfers were amazed. By now Carlos Chacon was on the scene trying to direct the Border Patrol chopper via Handie-Talkie. Joe Vasquez was stumbling around with a radio earpiece in his ear and the cord dragging the ground, thinking that his new job might be file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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interesting. Darkness had fallen and they were staggering all over the place trying to fight their way up the embankment with two prisoners, one on a gurney. Everyone was yelling and bitching and slipping and falling and finally the wounded Mexican said, "Leave me alone! I can do it better
myself
!"

Shot full of holes, he apparently had only one worry: that these coconut assholes might accidentally drop him over a cliff and kill him. And in fact he climbed the escarpment better than any of them and walked all the way out.

There was of course pandemonium on all police frequencies. The Border Patrol chopper was WOP-WOP-WOPPING over their heads. The Mexican
judiciales
and municipal police had heard the action on their frequencies and were pouring into the canyons from the direction of Colonia Libertad. There were rubberneckers flowing out of the lantern-lit shacks south of the line and Manny Lopez was screaming, "Let's get the hell
out
a here!" Just then some kids from Colonia Libertad decided to have a little fun and set some tires afire, rolling them down into the canyons at them, which made it a bit tough for the San Diego P.D.'s homicide team to come in and investigate, as they must, officer-involved shootings. When they arrived it was all they could do to keep from getting set on fire by rowdy Mexican kids who were bombarding them with rocks and burning tires. The tire rolling stopped after about thirty minutes, and Carlos Chacon, who was guarding the shooting scene, found another well-dressed stranger making his way down the hill into the canyon. He was a Mexican immigration official and he was carrying a walkie-talkie and speaking into it. He wasn't very happy and advised Carlos Chacon that others were following him into the canyons to find out what had happened.

The wounded immigration officer, Luis Tamez, was booked into the San Diego jail, as was his companion, who told the cops that he was an informant for the wounded
migra
. They both stuck to the story that they were looking for alien smugglers and mistook the Barfers for their men.

There was a bit of difficulty in making a case, since Tamez had never said anything but

"
migra
." It was true that two weeks earlier they had received a report from an arrested alien that he had been robbed in the canyons by an armed man in the uniform of the Mexican Immigration Service. Nevertheless, Luis Tamez had not uttered anything except

"Immigration" prior to being ventilated by Manny Lopez. The assistant district attorney wrote a letter to the San Diego chief of police which made Manny Lopez crazy. It said:

We have been advised that you and members of your Department have met with officials of the
Mexican Immigration Service who have acknowledged the error of allowing their officers (and
specifically, Mr. Tamez on this occasion) to operate in United States territory. You have
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advised us that you believe the interest of important law enforcement cooperation between the
Republic of Mexico and your Department would be adversely affected by a prosecution of Mr.
Tamez. We must consider that interest as well as maintenance of harmonious relationships
between the United States and Mexico.

In view of these considerations and the technical nature of possible criminal acts for which
Mr. Tamez probably has a legitimate defense, we believe the interests of justice dictate that no
criminal complaint or prosecution should be instituted.

The story even received a big play in out-of-town newspapers.
Stern
magazine sent German reporters to do a story on these lawmen who were shooting down other lawmen on the border. Pete Wilson, the mayor of San Diego, asked President Jimmy Carter for federal assistance with border crime which had directly led to a tense international situation.

There was no getting around it; these Barfers were getting ink; They were hot. They were turning into something like media darlings. Maybe they were…
useful
?

When Manny Lopez heard about the district attorney's refusal to issue charges, he immediately resigned from the Barf squad. He put it in writing to Dick Snider. Manny received an urgent telephone call from the chief of police.

Chief Kolender said, "What do you think about us not issuing charges against the guy?"

"Chief, I think it's
fucked
, "Manny answered. "It makes it look like I screwed up! I hear his father's a big government official in Mexico City. So what? He's a
thief
with a badge. The
worst
kind a thief anyone can be."

"You can't quit this squad," Chief Kolender told him.

"Yes I can, Chief. I quit," Manny said.

"What do you want me to do?" the chief of police asked.

"I don't know," Manny Lopez answered. "You're the chief."