Triple Crossing (2 page)

Pescatore hadn’t slept well for months, even after the drinking sessions at Garrison’s house or the gloomy mini-mall bars
of San Ysidro, Imperial Beach and National City. After reading an article somewhere, he had decided that his affliction was
caused by all the chases. The article had said the experience of a hot pursuit produced a cocktail of fear, rage and adrenaline
that caused chemical changes in the physiology of a police officer. All Pescatore knew was that when he finally managed to
doze off, he drifted into a zone between wakefulness and oblivion. The border seethed on the edge of his sleep. Haunting him.
Disembodied faces surging up out of the riverbed at him. He would wake up, freaked out and exhausted, afternoon light streaming
through the window, to see the green uniform draped across a chair. Ready for work.

“So you oversleep,” Garrison said. “You roll in around six for the five-to-one shift. You got your radio problem. You’re back
at IB getting it replaced. Maybe hitting on that little Lupita works at the front desk. It’s eight-thirty and the shift is
going by quick. Good thing you got me looking out for you, Valentine.”

“Damn right.”

“At least you work hard once you’re here. Not like some of these slugs.”

Garrison had put in ten years in the trenches of Imperial Beach. During the previous ten years, he had served in the U.S.
Army Special Forces and worked as a security contractor in Latin America and as a self-described “white hunter” in Africa.
He was six feet three. His back and shoulders were slabs stretching the green uniform. He wore his baseball-style uniform
cap high over the rampart of a balding forehead.

Pescatore had once seen Garrison deliver a headbutt that dropped a prisoner to his knees. Talk about permanent chemical changes,
Pescatore thought, assessing the gray-eyed sniper stare. What had a decade of chases done to Garrison?

Garrison turned in his muscle-bound way and pulled binoculars off his dashboard.

“Guess what,” he said. “Your boy Pulpo is back.”

“No way, Jack.” Pescatore took the binoculars. “I referred him to Prosecutions, they were gonna do him for illegal entry.
He got lucky because he jumped in the back of the load van. The aliens wouldn’t give him up as the driver.”

“Well, he must’ve slipped through the system. Isn’t that a surprise.”

“
Pinche
Pulpo.”

“What’re you gonna do if you catch that turd?” Garrison asked. The bulging gray eyes fastened on Pescatore.

Pescatore hesitated, then said: “I’m gonna fuck him up.”

He took refuge behind the binoculars. He pointed them at the crowd on the south riverbank near the spot where man-sized letters
painted on the concrete declared in Spanish:
NOT ILLEGAL ALIENS: INTERNATIONAL WORKERS.
The migrants sat with hunched shoulders, a huddle of hoods, caps and backpacks. They were like spectators in an open-air
amphitheater between the two cities, waiting for the action to start. The smuggler known as Pulpo paced in front of a group
of migrants, holding court, gesticulating like an old-time Mexican politician, the flames of a bonfire dancing behind him.
Pulpo: buff and bowlegged in overalls, a wire cutter or pliers protruding from a low pocket, a red bandanna wrapped around
his head, Los Angeles County Jail–style.

“He’d cut your throat and laugh about it, then go home and tell his mother, so she could laugh about it too,” Garrison said,
close to Pescatore’s ear.

Pulpo enjoyed messing with PAs whenever and however he could. The smuggler moved back and forth between Tijuana and San Diego
with the ease of someone crossing a street. Pescatore had once seen Pulpo drop over the border fence in plain view of a Patrol
sedan in Memo Lane. Pulpo had jogged alongside
the fence, his jaunty stride taunting the agents. When the Patrol sedan screeched up to him, Pulpo turned, bounded onto the
hood and catapulted himself off it like a trapeze artist. He caught the top of the fence and clambered back over, making an
annoyed growling noise as two agents scrabbled at his ankles. From atop the fence he raised an arm in lazy triumph. And a
bunch of lowlifes popped up to unleash a cascade of rocks and bricks that shattered the windshield of the sedan and sent a
PA to the hospital.

Garrison’s cell phone rang. Pescatore kept looking through the binoculars while he listened to Garrison hold a monosyllabic
conversation, mostly in Spanish. Garrison’s Spanish was fluid, though he had a serious
gringo
accent. Pescatore lowered the binoculars as Garrison clipped the phone back on his belt.

“My guy says it’s on for tomorrow,” Garrison said to Dillard, who nodded.

Garrison turned to Pescatore. “How about you?”

“Tomorrow’s tough for me, man.”

“Hmm.” Garrison stooped to produce a pack of Camels tucked into the top of a sock. He swiveled away from the ocean breeze,
cupped and lit a cigarette. “So Valentine, ready to play the Game tonight? How much you betting? Dillard’s down for fifty
dollars.”

“Oh man, you know I don’t want none a that action.” Pescatore quickly handed back the binoculars. “Plus I’m short on cash
tonight.”

“Don’t worry, buddy, you can add it to what you owe me. Let’s get to it.”

During the next hour, Garrison led Pescatore, Dillard and another agent in a series of maneuvers intended to keep back the
crowd on the levee, four vehicles arrayed against the oncoming forces of history and economics. Garrison was a scientist of
The Line and an artist behind the wheel. He knew just how close to come to the fleeing aliens without hitting them, how fast
to run
at the fence before swerving. Lights flashing, the Wranglers sped back and forth and down into the riverbed, frantic figures
scattering at their approach. The Wranglers stopped short and spun doughnuts, kicking up dust, herding back groups of migrants
who whistled and jeered as they retreated.

Periodically the agents tumbled out to catch small groups—probes by Pulpo and his cronies to gauge the defenses. Pescatore
and Garrison chased down a trio of runners in tall grass. Pescatore nabbed a teenager who twisted out of his shoes in the
mud and stumbled a few yards barefoot. Nearby Garrison had the other two prone on the ground. He gave each of them a kick
in the ribs; Pescatore winced at the impacts. Garrison’s roar made him sound eight feet tall.

“
Pinche pollo mugroso hijo de la chingada no te muevas o te doy una madriza, joto!
Don’t you run when I tell you to stop. Understand,
pendejo?
”

Garrison had explained his philosophy to Pescatore. You have to scream and yell and cuss at them like you’re going to tear
their head off. That’s called command presence. That’s what they expect. That’s what the Mexican cops do. If you’re all quiet
and polite, they’ll take you for a wussy, Valentine. A PA demands respect. And if they keep running from you, they just signed
up for an ass-kicking. Thump ’em if they run.

Back behind the wheel of the Wrangler, Pescatore peeled away from the levee, pursuing a family into a maze of chain-link pens
filled with construction machinery. The family of three held hands as they fled among cranes and bulldozers. They looked like
the image on the yellow freeway signs that depicted a family of running migrants to alert drivers to the fact that the roads
around here swarmed with frightened, exhausted pedestrians who got run over in gory and spectacular ways.

Unlike the girl in the freeway sign, though, the little girl he chased did not wear pigtails, but rather ribbons in her hair
and a silver party dress with a jeans jacket over it. For Christ’s sake,
Pescatore thought, put a coat on her. It’s cold. He cut the lights and sat for a moment by a storage shed. The family emerged,
hurrying toward the blue neon of a supermarket in the distance.

He zoomed alongside them, lights flashing, and bellowed over his rooftop loudspeaker:
“Parense ahí, parense ahí! Migración!”

They froze. Pescatore patted down the father, dumping the contents of his pockets on the hood: cigarettes, a lighter, a plastic
Baggie holding weathered identification documents and wadded cash. The father grinned tentatively, lines crinkling a caramel-colored
face with long sideburns. A well-groomed dude dressed more for Saturday night than slogging through canyons: cowboy boots,
a purple Members Only jacket, gray slacks.

“Tired,” the man said in English.

His daughter whimpered in her mother’s arms. Pescatore felt bad about making so much noise. He could have whispered out of
the window and they would have climbed aboard without a fuss.

“That’s OK, baby, don’t worry, everything’s under control,” Pescatore told the girl.

In Spanish, he asked how old the girl was. The mother said she was four. The mother’s trim body contrasted with a chubby face.
She was decked out in designer jeans, a sweater, boots with some kind of embroidered design. She wore makeup, high corners
painted onto her eyes. Her hair, like her daughter’s, was arranged with multicolored ribbons. It had been important to this
family to dress up tonight. He wondered if it was an attempt at disguise or if they just wanted to look sharp for an expedition
to
El Otro Lado.

The mother whispered to the girl, who had the same round face and shiny black hair and eyes. The girl stared at Pescatore,
spilling tears. She clutched a little red backpack decorated with faded images of cartoon characters.

“I’m one of the good guys,” Pescatore told her. “Hey, those the Dalmatians? Pongo and Perdita? Cruella De Vil? Woof woof.”

He was rewarded with a brief snuffling smile. He escorted them to the back of the Wrangler. He hoisted in the girl first,
helped the mother with a carefully applied hand to her elbow.

Then came the moment Pescatore anticipated and dreaded. As the father got in, Pescatore intercepted him. He pulled a wad of
bills from his pocket without looking; he estimated it was about twelve dollars. He palmed it into the father’s hand down
low.

The man looked from the cash to Pescatore, startled. He began to say something and moved his hand as if to return the money.
Pescatore waved him off, tight-lipped.

“Take it,
ándale.
”

He drove them to a detention transport van. The couple exchanged brief words in the caged backseat. They sat stiffly. The
girl leaned forward behind Pescatore on the other side of the steel grillwork. In a chirpy little voice, she sang: “Cruella
De Vil, Cruella De Vil…”

He hummed along with her. He thought about his insomnia. And about the money. At first, like many other agents, he had occasionally
bought a meal or handed a couple of bucks to poignant cases who washed his way on the nightly torrent of misery. But after
his trainee status ended, he started giving away money regularly. Every afternoon, he gathered up small bills and change.
Although he told himself he wasn’t consciously setting it aside, he usually came up with about thirty dollars. He had tried
at first to select the most deserving prisoners: ragged Central American women with babies, lone teenagers. But the arcane
logic of selective charity wore him down. He stopped differentiating between hardship and despair. As long as they weren’t
smugglers or scumbags, as long as they didn’t resist or disrespect him, he was likely to give them money.

While the prisoners transferred to the detention van, the father said something about how he had studied at a university in
Puebla. There was a catch in his voice. In the shadows,
Pescatore couldn’t tell whether the man was insulted or trying to thank him.

“De dónde es usted?”
the man asked.

No matter how much he mimicked their intonation and expressions, they never pegged him for Mexican-American. They guessed
everything else: Puerto Rican?
Cubano? Argentino?

“I’m from Chicago,” Pescatore said, sliding the door shut.
“Suerte.”

The rhythm picked up. The radio dispatchers called off motion-sensor hits and tips from citizens in measured tones, as if
there were some logic or order to this business. “Group of nine crossing at Stewart’s Bridge… Group bushing up by the Gravel
Pit… Five to eight in the backyards on Wardlow Street.”

The count became a cacophony as the night wore on. Garrison directed the PAs’ movements from a plateau by the Gravel Pit,
where the infrared nightscope was operating. As reports of crossing groups intensified farther north, Garrison dispatched
Pescatore to a housing subdivision about half a mile from The Line.

“I’m doing good, buddy,” he exulted over the radio. “Got eight already. On my way to my world record. Go help the horse patrol
plug up that area by the Robin Hood Homes.”

At the main entrance to the subdivision, Pescatore met up with Vince Esparza, a horse patrol agent who had been his training
officer. Pescatore stood on the running board of his Wrangler to shake hands with the horseman.

“Valentine,” Esparza said. “My favorite loose cannon.”

Esparza’s L.A. lilt always had a calming effect on Pescatore, even when Esparza was chewing him out. Esparza had a furry mustache
and a solid gut beneath his bulky green jacket.

“How’s it going?” Esparza said. “You’re looking run-down and ragged tonight.”

“Yeah, well, you know. Garrison keeps us hopping.”

Esparza’s face got less jolly.

“That fucker. Hey, you hear about the sniper sightings at Brown Field? They’re sending out some guys from BORTAC with M-16s
to ride shotgun.”

“Must be dopers, huh?”

“Ever since the holidays. I never saw anything like it. Snipers. Dope all over the place.
Comandantes
and politicians getting smoked in Mexico, left and right. And all these OTMs: Chinese and Brazilians and Somalians, people
from places I never heard of.”

“We been breaking OTM records,” Pescatore said.

“I caught me a bunch of Bo-livians last night, for Christ’s sake. I was doing paperwork till three in the morning. Fuckin’
OTM Central.”

OTM meant “Other Than Mexican”: non-Mexican aliens who could not simply be sent back to Tijuana. The surge in OTMs had started
around Christmas, a few months after a crisis had hit Mexico hard and generated action border-wide. Numbers were up in every
category: apprehensions of Mexican and non-Mexican border-crossers; busts of coke, methamphetamine and marijuana loads; assaults,
rockings and shootings. The onslaught had put the San Diego sector on the brink of reclaiming the title from the Tucson sector
as the busiest in The Patrol.