Illegal Page 15

  An explosion blew apart the man's forehead, and he sank to the ground as if his knees were made of butter.

  "Oh, shit!" the Nazi said. "Gonna be one wet short for Mr. Rutledge."

  Her stomach clenching, Marisol turned away.

  One more day, Tino, she promised herself.

  I will live one more day, and I will see you before I die.

  FORTY-ONE

  In Mexicali, heading north toward the border, the souped-up Mustang passed rows of whitewashed wooden crosses, printed with block-lettered names. Honoring the pollos who died trying to reach El Norte.

  Tino watched the crosses fly by, reading the names in the headlights.

  Serafin Rivera Lopez.

  Pedro Morranchel Quintero.

  Graciela Gonzalez.

  Several crosses simply said, No Identificado.

  Tino felt his gut tighten. He knew where his mother had been left. A stash house called "Sugarloaf Lodge." But was she still there? She could have been taken someplace. To another state, even. What if he searched the rest of his life and never found her? What if she was no identificado?

  It was nearly midnight, but the road north was crowded. Campesinos from the countryside pushed carts filled with fruits and vegetables. Along the berm, women sold travel gear. Backpacks, plastic jugs of water, cans of tuna and sardines. Pollos buying last-minute supplies before venturing north.

  They passed a small stucco building painted red. Grupo Beta. A government agency that tried to discourage border crossings. Letters two feet high were painted across the front of the building. La Busqueda de un Sueno Americano Puede Ser Tu Peor Pesadilla- The search for the American dream could be your worst nightmare.

  Too late for that warning, Tino thought.

  They traveled in silence a few moments before the boy blurted out, "Who's Adam?"

  "What?" The question seemed to stun Payne. "Why do you ask?"

  "This morning, on the highway, when the cop asked my name, you said 'Adam.' "

  Payne let out a long train whistle of a sigh. "My son. He was killed in a car accident. Fourteen months ago. Drunk driver."

  "Garcia? The Mexican?"

  Payne shot him a look. "How'd you know that?"

  "Back in the pretty lady's kitchen. You said you were going to Mexico to kill a man named Garcia."

  "Jesus. What else did you hear?"

  "Everything you said. Why do grown-ups think kids aren't listening? Where's Garcia now?"

  "The best I can figure, back in Oaxaca. Fled the scene of the accident. Left the country."

  "No papers, right?"

  "Right."

  Tino tried to process the information. "What about those Mexicans who got fried in the trailer truck?"

  "What about them?"

  "You helped them."

  "I helped the survivors stay in the country."

  "Before or after your accident?"

  "Before. Why?"

  Tino took a moment, not sure he should ask. "If it had been the other way around, if Garcia had killed Adam first, would you have still helped the mojados?"

  "I don't hold it against the entire country that one drunk Mexican ran a red light. But I haven't gone out of my way to help anyone-American, Mexican, or Martian-since Adam died."

  "You still would have helped the mojados."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "You're helping me, aren't you?"

  Payne shot him a glance. "Sharon made me, kiddo."

  "Sure, Himmy. Sure."

  Turning back to the road, Payne swerved to give room to three old Mexican men walking along the pavement. They wore long-sleeve shirts buttoned up to the neck and carried canvas sacks. Tino had seen men like this all his life. But now, for some unexplainable reason, now the Mexicanos looked foreign to him.

  "Himmy, I'm real sorry for you and the pretty lady."

  Payne took his hand off the wheel and tousled Tino's mop of hair. "Thanks, kiddo."

  "I saw his picture. Adam, I mean."

  "Where?"

  "In your office. He was wearing a uniform."

  "Little League. He liked to catch. Used to wear his shin guards around the house."

  "That baseball bat." Tino gestured toward the backseat. "Adam's, right?"

  "Right."

  "I bet you coached his team, too."

  "Yep. You keep this up, the L.A.P.D. will give you a detective's shield." Payne was quiet another moment before saying, "It wasn't all Garcia's fault."

  "What do you mean? You said he was drunk and ran a red light."

  "I was looking out the window at the ocean. Just before Garcia hit us, I was watching some terns feeding in the shore-break. One second, two seconds, maybe. If I'd been looking straight ahead, maybe I'd have seen Garcia's truck coming. Maybe I could have done something."

  The memory crashed over Payne, swept by an incoming tide of bone-chilling cold.

  If this, maybe that. A second here, a second there.

  If he'd seen the truck…

  He'd be playing catch with Adam today. He'd still be married to Sharon. He wouldn't have gone nuts and said: "Screw the rules; I don't care anymore." He wouldn't be the guy the cops set up to bribe a judge. At this very moment, he wouldn't be sneaking back into the United States with phony papers, in a stolen car.

  His entire adult life, what Payne wanted most was to be a good father. His own father had abandoned the family when Jimmy was eleven. Leonard Payne considered himself both a wheeler-dealer and an inventor. That sounded better than traveling salesman and tinkerer. The man simply could not hold a job. What he could hold was a grudge. Deluded and bitter, he filed dozens of lawsuits, claiming to have invented various sports drinks, protein bars, and muscle-building powders. With each invention came a "royal screwing," as he called it, "a corporate corn-holing by the big boys."

  Leonard Payne went through periods of manic highs, working on top-secret projects in the garage, followed by bouts of near-suicidal depression.

  Once he took off, the man never called, never wrote, never sent money. Payne pictured him selling gym equipment on commission somewhere, still railing against the big boys who won't let a man get ahead.

  Payne wondered which was worse for a boy-to know the father who abandoned him or, like Tino, to never have even met him. He tried to stir up a warm memory of Leonard Payne. Remembered his father taking him bowling.

  No, that's a lie. We never bowled together.

  Leonard bowled and dragged Jimmy along to watch. San Bernardino, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Banning. Anywhere his old man could find suckers to bet. First for beer, then a dollar a pin, then five dollars a pin. It was how Leonard made the rent money. A broad-shouldered man, he threw a sweeping, powerful hook with his custom-made "Black Beauty." The ball would scatter the pins with a thunderous clatter, probably because it weighed sixteen pounds, thirteen ounces, nearly a full pound over the legal limit.

  A hustler and a cheater.

  "Your head's playing tricks on you, Himmy," Tino said, dragging him back to the present.

  "What?"

  "The accident. No way it was your fault, man."

  "The week after it happened, I was supposed to take Adam on a trip. Just the two of us. Visit every Major League ballpark west of the Mississippi. Had it all planned, down to the last hot dog."

  "My mother always says, Si quieres que Dios se ria, dile tus planes. If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

  "Your mother's a smart woman."

  Payne heard Tino suck in a breath. "There, Himmy."

  Just ahead, sodium vapor lights turned the night air into a misty green fog. Traffic slowed as U.S. border agents guided cars into lanes approaching the station. Vendors in baseball caps hawked sodas, pastries, and souvenirs. A grim midnight carnival.

  "Mexico" was painted on the asphalt. If they could run this gauntlet, Payne thought, they would see "U.S." on the far side of the station. He sensed Tino stiffen as they approached the invisible line that separated the two c
ountries. The line that separated the boy from his mother, his past from his future.

  They were surrounded now. Cars, in front, on both sides, and behind them.

  "We're gonna make it, kiddo."

  Tino shot him a look. Wanting to believe but maybe not quite buying it. Which made two of them.

  FORTY-TWO

  Payne pulled the Mustang into a line of cars at the border station. Six lanes were open, each with twenty or so cars backed up.

  "Tino, no matter what happens, don't panic."

  "I won't."

  "Don't get out of the car unless you're ordered to. Don't run."

  "Okay. Okay."

  "And no mouthing off to the agents."

  "I'm not an idiota, Himmy."

  A husky agent in a blue uniform tugged the leash of a German shepherd that happily sniffed the fenders and trunks of the cars in front of them. Payne hoped the prior owner of the Mustang hadn't been hauling any loco weed. When they were the third car in line, a cute female agent, her dark hair pulled back in a bun, walked along the row with a clipboard. She checked each car's license plate and punched the numbers into a handheld computer.

  Payne gave her a "Good evening, ma'am" as she walked past the top-down Mustang. She returned a tight smile and an official nod. Her name tag read "Rodriguez," the patch on her sleeve, "U.S. Customs and Border Protection." Payne kept his eyes on her as she jiggled past. Her uniform pants were a size too small, accentuating her bubble butt. Not quite a Jennifer Lopez model, but still what the Greeks would call "callipygous." She examined the Mustang's Land of Lincoln plate, Payne murmuring a little prayer that the car hadn't been recently used in a bank robbery in Cicero.

  The cars inched forward, plumes of black exhaust hovering in the night air. When the Mustang reached the front of the line, a male agent in his fifties sidled up to the driver's door. His name tag read "Lopez," and he looked both tired and bored.

  "Evening, Agent Lopez," Payne boomed, with gusto. "Long day, huh?"

  "Pulled a double shift 'cause we're short tonight."

  Good sign, Payne thought. The guy wouldn't want any hassles.

  A helicopter droned overhead, its searchlight raking the ten-foot-high border fence.

  "We'll be out of your hair and on our way in no time," Payne promised, putting on what he thought was an open, Midwestern smile. "Just a midnight crossing to the Promised Land."

  "Nice wheels."

  "Indeed," Payne said, employing a word he never used. But then, this wasn't him. This was some educator from Northwestern University, a guy who restored old cars in his spare time. Payne had prepared an entire persona in the last few minutes.

  "V-8 under the hood?"

  "Four-twenty-eight," Payne bragged.

  "Love that pony on the grille. Never understood why they put it off center, though."

  Agent Lopez scrutinized Payne's Illinois driver's license and passport and didn't start screaming for reinforcements. He spent more time with Tino's visa, squinting a bit, then holding a flashlight to it.

  Shit.

  The agent slipped the visa into his shirt pocket and studied Tino. "You're a student at Temple Emanuel Academy Day School in Beverly Hills?" His tone would have worked for "You just landed here from Mars?"

  "Si, senor."

  "Exchange program," Payne added.

  "I'm talking to the boy now, Mr. Hamilton."

  Payne clammed up and Agent Lopez said, "How long you going to school there?"

  "I start next month, but they asked me to come early and get myself all orientated."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Then I'm gonna go to Beverly Hills High. Lil' Romeo went there."

  "So did Erik Menendez," the agent said, referring to one of the brothers who shotgunned his parents twenty years earlier. "Let's take a look at your luggage."

  "Except for a gym bag and baseball bat, we shipped everything," Payne contributed.

  Agent Lopez sighed, as if this was going to be too much trouble for this time of night. He leaned over the side of the convertible, a puzzled look on his face. "Are those bowling shoes you're wearing, Mr. Hamilton?"

  "There's a story behind that," Payne said.

  "Don't wanna hear it. But tell me, just what's your connection with the boy?"

  "I'm associate director of Worldwide Student Exchange."

  "Never heard of it."

  "We're an ecumenical rainbow coalition headquartered at Northwestern University. We encourage diversity in private schools, and this lucky little fellow was chosen, after vigorous competition, to go to Temple Emanuel for intensive study."

  "I love Americanos, " Tino said. "Especially Jews."

  "Let me get this straight," the agent said. "You're a religious do-gooder from Illinois. You drive all the way to Mexico and come back with this boy who you claim to be taking to some Jewish school in Beverly Hills."

  "In time for Rosh Hashanah," Payne added, helpfully.

  The agent took a moment to think things over. In an adjacent lane, under a sign reading Secondary Inspections, agents pulled a Lincoln apart, fender by fender, the border equivalent of a body cavity search.

  Agent Lopez snatched a radio from his belt. "I need a P-2 check on a Mr. Alexander Hamilton of Evanston, Illinois."

  "P-2 check?" Payne said, puzzled.

  "Predators and pedophiles."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Registered sex offenders. Ex-cons with records of assaulting children."

  Not again, Payne thought. Another guy in uniform who suspected him of being a freak. Through a window of the office kiosk, he saw Rodriguez, the cute female officer, now working at a computer. "I assure you that I'm not-"

  "You buy this boy in Mexicali?"

  "No! Of course not."

  "Tijuana, then."

  "Never been to Tijuana."

  Rodriguez sashayed out of the office, a feminine swing to her hips. She held a computer printout.

  Jesus, what did she find? What if a guy from Illinois named Alex Hamilton was a total perv?

  Despite his best efforts to appear relaxed, Payne was holding his breath. Looking guilty. Feeling guilty. He shot a look at Tino. The boy had one hand on the door handle. The kid was ready to run, Payne wondering if he'd go north or south.

  Rodriguez gave Payne a long look, then turned to Lopez. "Car's clean. Mr. Hamilton has no record in Illinois or in the federal database. Nothing in the P-2 file."

  Payne let out a long whistling breath, like a punctured bicycle tire.

  "And I know for a fact that Mr. Hamilton is heterosexual."

  "How?" the male agent said.

  "When I read his plate, he checked out my ass like he wanted to pet it."

  "Busted," Payne conceded.

  "I'm too tired and too old for this shit," Lopez grumbled. "Mr. Hamilton, take this kid to Beverly Hills. Or Tel Aviv, for all I care."

  Payne pushed the clutch to the floor, turned the ignition, and put the Mustang in gear. He tried not to burn rubber as they passed the sign welcoming them to the United States of America.

  FORTY-THREE

  Shortly after midnight, Sharon sat on a sofa in the Green Room of a Burbank television studio. On a TV monitor, Cullen's face took on the color of the setting sun from an overdose of bronze makeup. Her fiance was happily hosting his "Close the Border Marathon," but Sharon wasn't paying attention.

  Her thoughts were of Jimmy. So many emotions. Worry. Fear. Guilt. Blaming herself for the ton of crap that was about to fall on his head. He was like a dog that dug its way out of the yard. The longer he was gone, the more mischief he would get into.

  What was I thinking? Why did I send him where he could do so much harm?

  The boy. Tino.

  She'd done it because of the boy. She didn't need a shrink to tell her about the subconscious connection between a boy looking for his mother and a mother missing her dead son.

  But look what's happened in a mere twenty-four hours.

  Gossip had raced throug
h the Parker Center like an August brushfire. A dead judge, stolen sting money, a fleeing bag man. To the delight of the donut-munchers, Detective Rigney was rumored to be chasing J. Atticus Payne from Rancho Cucamonga to Mexicali.

  "Hey, didja hear? Royal Payne and some Mexican kid shot up a sheriff's car down in Calexico."

  "No shit."

  "Then they took off for Mexico."

  "And Rigney's in deep shit. Internal Affairs's really busting his chops."

  "When he catches up with Payne, there's gonna be one dead shyster."

  The rumor mill was churning overtime. Payne was into heroin trafficking. Or human trafficking. Or child slavery. The term "international fugitive" floated around. The F.B.I. and the D.E.A. had formed a task force to go after him. Homeland Security, too. Someone matching Payne's description was spotted in a Tijuana cantina drinking beer with a terror suspect. Another report had Payne catching a flight to Cali, Colombia. Sharon wouldn't be surprised if he turned up on a bin Laden videotape.

  Still, she was able to confirm part of the story. The shooting. The fleeing. And Mexico.

  Mexico!

  Did Jimmy abandon the search for Tino's mother and take off after Manuel Garcia in Oaxaca? Had he lied to her?

  Jimmy, what's happened to you? You had such promise.

  After Adam's death, Sharon had insisted they attend grief counseling. She remembered their last session. A gentle man in his fifties, the psychologist explained the five stages of coping with loss-denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance-and added one of his own, hope. The more the man talked, the more upset Jimmy became.

  "You left out one stage, Doc. Revenge. When a neighbor ran over John Gotti's kid, Gotti had the man killed."

  "Is that what you want to do? Emulate a mobster?"

  "I need to do what my gut tells me."

  "Do you think killing that man brought Gotti peace?"

  "No. Because he didn't do it himself. He didn't look into the guy's eyes and see the fear."

  "Mr. Payne, may I speak freely?"

  "Does that mean you're not charging two hundred bucks today?"