Lines and shadows (34 page)

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Indignation in the BARF report signed by Manny Lopez concerned the fact that the Mexican immigration cops were doing their thing on U.S. soil. The report said:
It is felt that an extremely dangerous situation was created by the actions of the plainclothes
immigration officers in that they entered the U.S. while armed with handguns and
indiscriminately fired their weapons. The illegal actions of these Mexican immigration officers
must be brought to the attention of their superiors in order to avoid an international
confrontation and to prevent the needless shooting of an unarmed illegal alien in the United
States.

If the frontal lobes of the human brain anticipate events, and if in the right hemisphere we find sensitivity and the left we find critical and analytical processes, Manny Lopez had one task before him if the BARF experiment was going to satisfy his conscious and unconscious needs: he had to puree their frontal lobes and right and left hemispheres into something like Reddi Wip. Manny Lopez had to dive on down to the area of the brain where
aggression
lives, where one finds the impulse to follow leaders blindly. This might be called the cellar of the brain. They were, during these fearsome times,
living
in Manny's cellar. Forty-year-old Chuey Hernandez was a jolly sort of fellow. His gold incisor gleamed when he smiled, as much a status symbol in Mexico as a dental prosthetic. There wasn't always a lot to smile about in that he had a whole bunch of people to support, one child of his own and seven belonging to his wife from her former marriage, as well as his aging mother. He had served in the Mexican Army before being accepted by the Tijuana Municipal Police, and most of his adult life had been spent wearing a uniform. He had the equivalent of a grade school education.

About the best thing that had happened to Chuey in a while was that President Lopez Portillo was coming to Tijuana for a visit and there would be a big ceremony at La Playa. Chuey Hernandez played cornet in the police band. He'd been playing the cornet for twenty-five years. He had loved
la banda de guerra
, the drum and bugle corps, all his life. This was quite an honor for Chuey Hernandez and he was up for it that afternoon of July 16 when he came on duty. First, he got the old horn shined by a guy with a polishing wheel. Then he started looking at his equipment. The uniform was brand-new, but Chuey Hernandez looked sadly at his hat.

The hat was all beat-up and crushed, like in old Army Air Corps movies. Chuey Hernandez had a talk with another cop who was much slimmer but had the same head size. Pedro Espindola told Chuey Hernandez that he had a brand-new hat at home, and since he wore a helmet on duty, he offered to sell it. A tiny moment in life Pedro Espindola would come to regret as long as he lived.

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Pedro Espindola left his patrol car at the police station and they both hopped into Chuey Hernandez' patrol car and headed off to the Espindola home in Zona Norte while Chuey Hernandez worried about his upper lip. He believed that the upper lip of a cornet player will fall asleep without daily practice. He worried that his upper lip might decide to fall asleep when he was playing for the President of Mexico.

Hard wind. Flitting shadow and iron sunlight. Blood-beaked birds of prey were driven down by hard wind. The omnipresent summer smoke at the borderline vanished. The varsity and junior varsity were mingled that evening, broken into two groups operating close enough to be seen by each other even after sunset. Manny Lopez, Tony Puente, Joe Vasquez and Joe Castillo were on one walking team. Ernie Salgado, Renee Camacho and Carlos Chacon were on the other. Manny's team was working by the heaps of rock and bottles and trash and debris where the drainage pipe empties north during the wet season. There was plenty of cover there behind mounds of earth and concrete, where they could watch the second team should some bandits cross from Mexican soil to rob them. The second team, the real decoy in this operation, was hanging around right beside the fence talking to some pollos who were getting ready to cross after dark. It was a pretty relaxed affair and the pollos were, like most, friendly and generous. They were getting up their courage with some tequila and they offered a drink to the Barters, who politely declined, conjuring images of Mexican contagion.

The men on the south side of the fence asked the Barfers curiously why they continued waiting even after darkness fell.

"
La migra's
pretty heavy tonight," Carlos Chacon told them, and a pollo said, "Well, maybe
we
better wait for a while, too."

So they just stood by the cyclone fence and drank tequila and chatted. At 9:50 P.M. Ernie Salgado saw a car coming down the highway. The car slowed and Ernie began watching it.

It had gotten dark suddenly. Chuey Hernandez saw some men loitering by the border fence. He stopped his patrol car and he and Pedro Espindola decided to have a look. Chuey Hernandez turned on the red and blue siren lights and stepped out of the car, saying, "What are you doing there? Get over to the patrol car!" Pollos almost always did what they were told and so did this pair. Chuey Hernandez took their bottle of tequila and broke it on the ground by the roadside. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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With the two drinkers in the back seat, Chuey Hernandez was about to turn off the blue and red siren lights and had actually started the car forward when Pedro Espindola said,

"Hold it. I see people in the gully."

Chuey Hernandez moved the car forward about twenty-five meters—it would later say in an official report. It was parked almost directly over the big drainage pipe where the cyclone fence is rolled and torn and stretched and rendered useless by the people of the night. The cyclone fence abruptly terminates at a point where tourists won't notice. It is a fence going nowhere.

Young Joe Castillo was crouched beside his mentor and idol, Manny Lopez. They were behind chunks of concrete which had been washed away by winter rains and replaced again and again. It was like a military bunker behind all that. Joe Castillo was whispering to his sergeant while Chuey Hernandez was arresting the drinkers. Joe Castillo later said, "We saw the Mexican cops shaking these guys down. We figured it for an extortion."

Regardless of whether or not it was an arrest for public drinking or drunkenness,

"extortion" was taking place on the south side of the fence, in the Republic of Mexico. And these Mexican cops were possibly the ones reported to be robbing and extorting pollos, sometimes on American soil. And if they weren't, they'd do it if they had the chance because all Mexican cops were crooks. To the last man. Such was the state of mind of the Barfers.

Chuey Hernandez held the flashlight in his left hand, keeping his gun hand free, and walked toward the fence shining his light down into the gully. He remembered seeing an old dead tree uprooted by floods and reaching toward the sky, roots-first, like huge arthritic hands clawing heavenward. Then he saw the figures down behind the uprooted trees and broken concrete. The chunks of concrete were pale as gravestones in the moonlight. Chuey Hernandez drew his revolver and stepped closer to the fence. He yelled at the two figures. He said, "What are you doing over there? Get back here!" Manny Lopez yelled back: "Give us a break, chief! We already made it! Leave us alone!" The die was cast. It was preordained from that moment. Every step in the little border drama was inevitable.

Chuey Hernandez walked right down to the fence and caught the two figures in his beam. They dodged his light. They ducked down. He would always remember the one wearing a bandanna around his head—a
cholo
bandanna, Chuey Hernandez called it. file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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Chuey Hernandez had never seen pollos behave like this. They could have easily run away in the darkness, but they didn't. Guides would not hang around the fence like that. In the experience of Chuey Hernandez, the only ones who would hang around the fence were smugglers of aliens, guns, or narcotics. Or perhaps they were alien robbers. Chuey Hernandez advanced toward the fence pointing his gun at the man in the Levi jacket with the
cholo
bandanna around his head.

It was then that Renee Camacho heard Chuey Hernandez yell, "Get back over here, you spiders!"

And then Manny Lopez, wearing a bandanna around his mosquito-bitten skull, stood up, exposing his body, and made a controversial statement. He yelled "Leave us alone! We don't have any money!"

But Chuey Hernandez had not asked for money. The statement said it all. It revealed exactly what was in the mind of Manny Lopez.

Chuey Hernandez was fungus. He began cocking and uncocking his revolver. It was so eerily quiet that they could hear the sound distinctly, the oily metallic click as the hammer fell and was cocked, and fell and was cocked. Chuey Hernandez crouched under the fence and stepped toward the United States of America.

The Barfers began moving from concealment as Chuey Hernandez walked down into the gully, his flashlight illuminating Manny Lopez, who was now standing at a higher elevation, above the head of Chuey Hernandez, looking down on him. Chuey Hernandez glanced back behind him as Pedro Espindola advanced cautiously toward the fence, a slender, bullet-shaped silhouette in his police helmet. By now Chuey Hernandez was well aware of other figures in the darkness. He was facing Manny Lopez and Joe Castillo above him. Off behind him and to his right were Renee Camacho, Joe Vasquez, Tony Puente, Carlos Chacon and Ernie Salgado. Chuey Hernandez was angry and he was
scared
. He said, "Come out of there, you bastards, or I'll
get
you out with a bullet!"

And he pointed the gun up at Manny Lopez, standing on the mound of concrete by the uprooted tree. Manny pushed Joe Castillo's head, whispering, "Stay down! Stay down!" Chuey Hernandez' bravado was wavering at this point and he turned to Pedro Espindola and said, "They don't want to come!"

His partner said, "Let see if they don't want to come!" file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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And he began scrambling down into the ravine with Chuey Hernandez, who yelled again:

"You son of a bitch! You bastards! Come
out!"

For the record, Chuey Hernandez was at this point probably standing six feet inside U.S. territory. Pedro Espindola was three feet closer to his homeland. For the record, Chuey Hernandez and Pedro Espindola were both in the state of California, U.S.A., exhibiting a deadly weapon in violation of Section 417 of the California penal code. For the benefit of lawyers, it was later noted that Section 467 of the California penal code was also violated. The Tijuana policemen were in possession of deadly weapons with intent to assault. Perhaps.

A criminal investigator for the district attorney's office of San Diego County would later make a notation in his narrative report. The notation made by the investigator was that at this moment, if Manny Lopez had identified himself as a police officer, the incident under investigation would probably never have occurred. The investigator of course did not understand about myth and legend and folklore.

Joe Castillo and Joe Vasquez separately said later: "When Manny braced the fat cop, it was
just
like
Gunsmoke. "

And that was probably as well put as could be. Manny Lopez stood looking down at the Tijuana cops with his badge down beside one leg and his gun down beside the other. The Tijuana cops at this moment could see neither. Then Manny Lopez leaped. It was a six-foot drop to the bottom of the gully. He slid slightly upon impact, staggering two or three steps in the direction of Chuey Hernandez, and they were suddenly at arm's length in the darkness.

A lot of things happened simultaneously, or nearly so. No one will ever know in precisely which order things happened, and really it's not relevant except to lawyers and judges and others who might deny that this was predestined and inevitable from the moment that Manny Lopez challenged the authority and
machismo
of the two Tijuana policemen. For everyone else, the inevitable fact was this: Manny Lopez leaped from the embankment to the feet of the wary Mexican cops. He brought up two things, one in each hand: a badge and a gun. He yelled, "
Policía! Policía
!"

As Pedro Espindola yelled, "He's got a gun!"

Chuey Hernandez reacted to the movement by jerking up
his
pistol, striking Manny Lopez in the chest with it.

Manny Lopez raised his left arm in defense and fell to his left.

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Simultaneously
all
Barfers were aiming their already drawn guns. Some aimed
two
guns. One Barfer saw a badge in Manny's hand. The others didn't see it. Four saw Chuey Hernandez fire a shot. Three did not see who fired first.

All of this occurred in a fraction of a second.

There were fireballs, and one huge endless explosion in the ears of Chuey Hernandez. He felt no pain whatsoever. He was cranking off rounds at shadows. One second he was firing and the next he felt his feet go right out from under him.

Tony Puente fired two shots at Chuey Hernandez.

Ernie Salgado fired five shots at Pedro Espindola.

Joe Castillo, firing two guns, shot nine rounds at both Pedro Espindola and Chuey Hernandez.

Joe Vasquez fired one shotgun round in the direction of both Tijuana cops, and when the shotgun jammed he got off three revolver shots at Pedro Espindola. Renee Camacho fired five rounds at both of them.