Manny Lopez jerked the gun out of the auxiliary officer’s hand and decked him. Manny Lopez was pretty mad all right when he cinched the iron on the wrists of the protesting Mexican, and called him about a hundred kinds of thieving crooked bastard cop.
The man was twenty-three years old and was not a cop. In Tijuana, people pay the city treasury for special patrol by auxiliary officers. There are no privately hired rent-a-cops as there are north of the line. Yet auxiliary officers are to the municipal police what privately employed security officers are to the San Diego Police on the American side of the border—private citizens in uniform.
The Mexican auxiliary officer was carrying about $60 in U.S. currency and about 630 Mexican pesos. He may have been extorting aliens in the canyons. He said he thought Manny Lopez and his men, due to their strange behavior in walking along the border fence, were not aliens but robbers of aliens. He said he should not have crossed through the fence, but that he was not a bandit.
The auxiliary officer was arrested for robbery-related crimes, but all charges were dropped by the district attorney, since nothing could be proved. The Mexican had only crossed the border while armed. He had only said “Come here!” Nothing more.
“If I’da waited I might a got shot,” Manny Lopez protested to the investigating detectives.
“He may be a robber, but we’ll never know,” was the answer.
“I know,” Manny Lopez said, “that Mexican’s a crook.”
And when he thought about it, that was redundant. To Manny nearly all Mexican lawmen were crooks, auxiliary or regulars. They were thieves and worse. Manny Lopez was feeling more and more alone, and strangely enough there was something exhilarating about it.
One evening a lieutenant wrote a strange acronym on their chalkboard. It said: B.A.R.F.
When asked what it meant the lieutenant said, “Border Alien Robbery Force.”
Border Alien … BARF? Was he jiving them? How would that look in the papers? BARF? Bullshit! They called themselves something infinitely more romantic, The Task Force. Screw this BARF shit.
And then one night shortly after Eddie Cervantes met his first real Mexican bandit and flossed the robber’s teeth with a gun muzzle, the boys were doing a little walking in a San Ysidro gang neighborhood preparatory to going out into Smuggler’s Gulch and Deadman’s Canyon. If they couldn’t get righteous robbers there, they hoped for an easy wildcat bust, since like all public servants, they needed to pad the stats to justify their existence.
There were lots of wildcatters, real and bogus, offering rides to the multitudes of pollos passing through. In fact, many of the wildcatters were actually thieves and robbers and rapists, and the aliens never had a chance for a real ride at all.
On this particular wildcat outing, the varsity, with Joe Castillo as the fourth team member, walked from the train trestle to the streets of San Ysidro, where they were confronted by two men who had the look of Tijuana guides.
One of them stopped the four pollos by asking for a cigarette. Manny Lopez produced a proper pack of Fiesta Mexican cigarettes. Another asked for a match. Manny Lopez produced a proper Mexican matchbook.
“Where do you come from?” one of them asked, putting the Mexican cigarette in his pocket and lighting an American smoke from his own pack.
By now, Manny Lopez was enjoying his thespian talents and he switched from the familiar places, Tecate and Mexican, and said, “El Salvador. We came all the way north through Mexico from El Salvador. It’s very bad in our country.”
Then the guide said to Joe Castillo, who spoke Spanish about like Rosalynn Carter, “Got any pisto on you?” We’ll give you a ride to Los Angeles for fifty dollars each.”
Joe Castillo didn’t answer, but put his thumb up toward his mouth in the drinking gesture, laughed nervously and shook his head no, since pisto in barrio slang refers to an alcoholic drink or a drinker.
The guide said, “I don’t want something to drink. I want some money. In El Salvador, pisto means money. I don’t think you’re from El Salvador.”
Then the other guide said to Joe Castillo, “Say something, brother. Let’s hear you talk.”
And Manny Lopez, who had a temper like Idi Amin, said to the guides, “¿Sabes qué? ¿Sabes qué?”: You know what? You know what?
Then in English he said, “You know what? Fuck this!”
And the wildcatters were in short order flat on their bellies wearing iron on their wrists. After the two were booked and it was time to go out into the canyons, the entire squad was informed about the episode where Joe Castillo “fucked up.”
Still a rookie cop, Joe Castillo had not yet started calling his sergeant by his Christian name. He said, “But, Sarge, how was I supposed to know that pisto means something else in El Salvador?”
“Goddamn it!” Manny said, with his eyebrow squiggling into half a question mark. “I told ya to shut up and not talk. Let me do the talking.”
“But, Sarge, I didn’t talk!”
“This is kind a like in the old war movies,” it was observed. “Like where they ask ya who Betty Grable was married to and who’s Mickey Mouse’s girl friend, and like that.”
“Who’s Betty Grable?” he was asked, and Manny’s twenty-nine-year-old reptilian eyebrow settled down, and he started feeling old.
“We need a code word when we’re ready to take them down,” Manny decided. “How about ¿sabes qué? When I’m talking to these assholes and I got the elements for a righteous bust, I’ll say ¿sabes qué?”
“What’s that mean exactly?” Robbie Hurt wanted to know.
“You know what? That’s what it means. You know what? So listen for ¿sabes qué?” Manny Lopez told his men. “When I say ¿sabes qué? get ready, cause a bust is going down.”
“Then we need another signal to know when to pull our guns or grab them or whatever,” it was noted.
Robbie Hurt felt left out because the Spanish conversations in their hole-in-the-wall squadroom were getting as prevalent as the English, making him even more of an outsider. He said, “How about Barf?”
“Barf?”
“Yeah, Manny says ¿sabes qué? when it’s time to get ready, and Barf! when it’s time to jump on their heads or draw down on them.”
“Barf?”
“Barf.”
It was very unromantic but there it was. Barf! They decided to give it a try. And they could call themselves The Task Force for the rest of their natural lives, but it soon became abundantly clear that to the rest of their world they were Barf. So the Barfers loaded up and headed for the canyons and very soon one of them thought he might be spending Christmas of 1976 in the county jail. For manslaughter at least.
It was 9:00 P.M. when the varsity was walking just fifteen yards north of the imaginary line. They were approaching E-2 Canyon, so called by the Border Patrol. E-2 Canyon was about one-half mile east of the port of entry. There were lots of bandit gangs working E-2 and the other canyons, most of whom lived in nearby Colonia Libertad. On this particular night Manny Lopez, Tony Puente, Eddie Cervantes and Carlos Chacon were stumbling along a trail in the darkness when two men approached, and they figured to get their second wildcatting pinch of the night.
The two men stood while Manny and his Barfers squatted in submission. They were asked for a cigarette and a match, and Manny The Actor produced the proper cigarette and matches from his prop department. And then they were offered a ride to “Los,” as they refer to Los Angeles on the streets. The tariff was to be $100 a person.
And since the wildcatting violation was technically completed, Manny Lopez was about to say ¿sabes qué? Except that one of the men said there were some other pollos going in the same truck and he had to give them a whistle.
Tony Puente squinted through the darkness and saw that the other shadow figure seemed to have something in his hand. Eddie Cervantes offered him a cigarette. The man came forward, put something in his pocket and accepted the cigarette with the same hand.
The startling f
lare of a match. A canine smile. The face of a jackal. They started getting nervous.
Tony Puente was wishing he could wear his glasses, especially when the first guide returned with three more pollos to join their crossing group. Except that they didn’t walk like pollos. And they began chatting to the Barfers in a very friendly fashion. And there by the trail in the blackness, with a cold wind blowing up, they began, ever so slowly, to move into positions behind the cops, all the time talking about the easy trip they would have to Los.
And despite the chilly wind, the varsity started to sweat. Glasses or not, it looked to Tony Puente like they were all holding something in their hands. And though no one had made a demand for money or produced a weapon with a threat of force, thereby satisfying the requirements of the crime of robbery, Manny Lopez thought that this circling pincer movement had gone just about far enough, and he’d settle for a wildcatting bust because he was feeling very uncomfortable.
When the five men who were ringing them on the moon-swept trail began talking to each other in very low voices, Manny Lopez said, “¿sabes qué?”—not a moment too soon as far as his troops were concerned. Two of them saw clearly that one of the “pollos” who had joined them was wearing a ski mask. And they were two hours and two months from hard powder and chair lifts.
“Barf!” Manny screamed.
Four snub-nosed revolvers and one shotgun were already showing when Manny yelled “¡Policías!”
Each cop went for the nearest robber. The man who had accepted one of Eddie’s cigarettes began to run. Eddie Cervantes, the smallest and fastest Barfer, started after him. They were only a few yards from the border. The robber was twenty-two years old and could really move. Eddie Cervantes caught up with him at the line and the young man reached for his rear pocket, which contained a bone-handled knife. Eddie Cervantes yelped, “Barf! Barf! Barf!” and swung his revolver down on the robber’s skull and heard the loudest explosion of his life.
The robber screamed in the face of the shocked little Barfer. The bandit’s eyes slid back and he said, “Ayeeee! You killed me!” And he fell to the ground and was absolutely still.
When the junior varsity walking team came stumbling, cursing, falling, through the mesquite and rocks and cactus toward the sound of the gunshot, Renee Camacho found Eddie Cervantes gaping at the bandit corpse. Eddie Cervantes was saying, “Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! I didn’t mean to kill him! What am I gonna do now? What am I gonna do?”
Eddie Cervantes’ sad down-turned eyes had dropped to his lip. There were a lot of things going through the young cop’s head, of course. Technicalities, for one thing. The robbers had never actually demanded money. They had never made an overt attack. Was it only wildcatting, a misdemeanor? Then he didn’t even have the legal right to shoot him—never mind the moral right!
“What am I gonna do?” the littlest Barfer cried. “Am I gonna go to jail for manslaughter?”
The corpse’s name was José Gutierrez. The corpse moaned. The corpse started getting up.
“He’s not dead! You’re not dead!” Eddie Cervantes screamed to the bandit.
But the crook thought he’d been killed. He was more certain than Eddie Cervantes. He sure as hell had a big headache, and a lump on his skull about the size of a tequila glass.
After figuring out that he’d been knocked cold and had not died after all, he said to Eddie Cervantes, “I give. I give!”
They arrested the bandits for wildcatting, since they didn’t have the needed elements for a robbery charge. They made a police report to cover the accidental discharge of one department-issued Smith & Wesson two-inch revolver. They didn’t bother detailing some damage done to the revolver. It seems that when Eddie Cervantes, using the gun as a club, coldcocked the bandit, he bent the trigger guard into the trigger, causing the gun to fire.
No one had been hit by the round and the bandit was glad to be alive and wasn’t complaining, especially since they were charged with only the petty crime of wildcatting. A day or two in the city jail and then back to Mexico and taking more care next time he robbed some pollos.
The cops had another fine time after work and this time Eddie Cervantes got blitzed. They did lots of Marine reservist/midget jokes: “What do Eddie Cervantes and King Hussein have in common?” “They’re military lions?” “No, hydrocephalic dwarfs.”
Then Eddie, with lots of help from Manny Lopez, would turn on the tallest Barfer, of prominent jaw and crooked teeth, and do their Marfa, Texas, jokes: “Hey, Ernie, I hear a big night in Marfa is when the Coke machine’s working.” “Hey, Ernie, were you the champ bottle opener with those teeth?” “Hey, Ernie, what’s armadillo chili taste like?” And so forth.
They also made a lot of jokes about the guy in the red ski mask who had gotten away, and who was called “El Loco” by the ones they’d caught. They had found the mask in the brush by the international border. There were plenty of gags about how “Loco” would have to buy a new one when he went to Aspen for the season.
Except that a smile would freeze momentarily as a Barfer would think about this new job soberly. About the mean, lonely, godforsaken canyons, where a shadow might appear in the darkness and be right in your face before you even saw it. A shadow becoming a man smiling, who talked reassuringly. Behind a ski mask.
The drinking picked up considerably after that.
MILAGRO
THE CANYONS WERE QUIET TOWARD YEAR’S END. THE REASON was written by Manny Lopez in one of the activity reports: “It was too cold for the bandits to be out.”
But their experiment didn’t have much more time to run. The chief of police had promised Dick Snider only ninety days to clean out the bandit gangs. He complained that it wasn’t their fault if activity was slow and they hadn’t been able to arrest enough bandits to prove that their presence had caused the real drop in reported robberies.
They started walking in San Ysidro to build up the stats. Ernie Salgado, the tallest Barfer, and Manny Lopez, his car pool companion, got assaulted by a middle-aged Mexican-American who tried to extort some beer money from them and slugged Ernie with a flashlight. Which was at least good for a yuk since he was arrested for battery on a police officer. And Joe Castillo was struck on the foot by a rock thrown by someone in the darkness. And one seventeen-year-old San Ysidro street thug tried to muscle a few bucks out of the varsity one night and, after realizing that his pollos were cops, threw a fist at Eddie Cervantes and kicked him in the face before receiving his in return. Eddie Cervantes just seemed to be the natural choice of the real bandits in the canyons as well as the play bandits of San Ysidro. He’d suffered most of the minor injuries to date.
At month’s end, Manny Lopez wrote disgustedly in his log: “The most exciting part of the evening was when I ripped my pants jumping over a fence.”
Which made Manny decide to outfit his ragged band properly. After nearly two months in the hills they were getting ragged and grubby and wild looking. pollos all wore two or three pair of pants. Women often wore two dresses and long pants underneath, since they couldn’t depend on being able to carry clothes on their journeys north. When they arrived at their destinations they could peel off one layer of filthy clothes, leaving a layer of cleaner clothes for seeking employment.
The Barfers didn’t shop at Abercrombie & Fitch. They shopped at the Veterans’ Thrift Shop. They had fun fighting over coats and pants and shirts, and shoes with platform heels, the kind aliens liked, which would soon be reduced to ragged strips of imitation leather by the cactus and rocks in the hills.
Manny Lopez justified the expenditure of department funds by saying, “They’re getting so scroungy I’m afraid the bandits won’t wanna hit on us. These fuckers look too low-life to have any loot.”
The bill for all of their clothes was $26 and some change. The new old clothes helped their morale. But they were going to lose their Border Patrol and Customs officers very soon. Dick Snider was desperately hoping that before the ninety days were up his men could do something spec
tacular to convince the chief of police and the mayor that the city cops should keep BARF going even after the U.S. officers left. Ninety days just wasn’t enough.
The thing that might save his experiment, he believed, was media coverage. They weren’t accomplishing a hell of a lot, because it had simply quieted down out there in the hills. Still, whatever they did the newspapers loved. If they so much as took down a couple of wildcatters, or San Ysidro teenyboppers trying to hustle them for 35 cents, it would make the papers. There were fifteen newspaper stories written about them in a month wherein they did not make one significant bandit arrest. The media were trying to create something, it seemed. What, the Barfers didn’t know. And Dick Snider didn’t care. His experiment was born of publicity and politics, and it might not die if he could somehow manipulate publicity and politicians. He encouraged his sergeant to grant a few requests from service clubs that wanted to hear about this band of cops called BARF. But Manny Lopez didn’t need encouraging.
Chief of Police William Kolender was a departure from prior chiefs. He was up from the ranks, a large man with wavy brown hair styled just over his ears. He owned a good speaking voice and looked like the Hart Schaffner & Marx executive models. He was known as the first police chief in San Diego history with progressive ideas. He was skillful enough to be liked by his men, by City Hall, and by the media, no mean feat for a police administrator. It was not a secret that he might aspire to political office upon the completion of his police career.
Bill Kolender had in his office two flags, one of Ireland and one of Israel, a private joke made public at every first meeting. The chief invariably let a reporter, interviewer, community leader, know that he was at heart an Irish cop, but in reality a Jew, the first ever to attain such an office in this city. And he’d let you make of that what you would.
Lines and Shadows Page 7
