Then the software salesman will be totally amazed by his windshield exploding before his eyes and he’ll jump on the brakes with both feet because they’re shooting at him! And he may find himself in the headquarters of the judiciales and be staring at two handsome young dudes, one who looks just like Omar Sharif and the other who’s a ringer for Tyrone Power. And they tell him that it’s a serious crime to assault women in Tijuana, and he tells them he didn’t and he’s not talking. He’s demanding to call the American consulate.
The dude who looks like Tyrone Power then shrugs and begins to unbutton his purple art-deco shirt. When the software salesman asks him why, he says it’s so he doesn’t get it spotted by Coke.
“Coke?” the American says. “You aren’t setting me up on a phony drug bust! I demand to make a call.”
But the one who looks like Omar Sharif just smiles and fetches the Coke—Coca-Cola, a whole six-pack.
They’re gonna ply me with soft drinks to break down my resistance, the American thinks. And he couldn’t be more right.
Sometimes with ordinary recalcitrant prisoners, le dan agua. A drink of water. From a hose. Lots and lots of water. After some water interrogations, the cop in charge comes out looking like Mark Spitz. And the prisoner looks like a water bed, all shuddery and quivering, as he lies on the floor bloated by about five gallons of T.J.’s H2O, guaranteed to give him the drizzles.
As to the Coke, well, when there was the riot at La Mesa Prison in Tijuana, there were lots of gringo reporters on hand and they all wondered at the strange habits of the Mexican soldiers who were marched into that prison carrying ginger ale.
Ginger ale? These goddamn Mexicans must be crazy for ginger ale, they said. There were thirty cases of the stuff. The prisoners knew better and surrendered right now.
So the software salesman is getting ready to make some smartass remark, like “How about some Jamaican rum in my Coke?” when the Tyrone Power look-alike throws a wrist-lock on him and handcuffs his hands behind his back. Then, while he yells and screams for his rights as an American citizen, his arms are looped over the back of a swivel chair and he’s tilted back. Way back. And then he gets his Coke. Right up his nose.
His head is held by Omar Sharif, and Tyrone Power starts shaking up that Coke until it’s ready to explode, and then the cop shoots a jet right into his snoot. And he has to breathe through there because Omar Sharif has just shoved a little hand towel down his throat.
You don’t like our soda pop? Would you prefer some Bubble-Up? How about a Bubble-Up margarita, hold the tequila, hold the salt?
He is treated to various flavors of soda pop but he feels the same way about all of them.
The sensation has been described by prisoners. Some have said it’s like a volcano erupting in your brain. In any case he starts confessing, but of course they can’t hear him. And they don’t stop right away, because some guys have told them lies during confessions, so they give him a few more bottles.
And pretty soon he’s confessing like crazy but nobody can hear with his mouth full of towel. They’re just going about their business talking about jai alai or something and he’s kicking and screaming and thrashing and confessing and nobody’s listening! And Kilauea has erupted thirty-four times right behind his eyes, which are filling up with molten lava. And he’s crying and trying to scream and silently confessing. To anything.
When they let him up and dry him off and he finally stops sobbing long enough to be intelligible, another one of the judiciales walks in. He’s not as young and handsome as the guy who gave him the soda pop. In fact, this one looks like someone who would sidle up to you and try to sell you a lame horse, or a TV crate filled with bricks, or a Porsche with a VW engine. In short, he looks like Wayne Newton.
He has a pencil and note pad. He asks the software salesman if he would like to confess. And he starts. Still crying, he begins with the time he stole a yo-yo from a Sioux Falls five and dime. Then he confesses that when he was little he flogged his dummy maybe a thousand times and didn’t tell the priest in confession. Then he tells about all the cheating on his wife.
Wayne Newton’s used to it. He lights a cigarette and sits back staring at the ceiling and after listening to every single crime, every sin, every peccadillo the salesman can remember in his whole life, he asks a few perfunctory questions about the attempted rape of a Mexican citizen. And the salesman stops and stares beseechingly at Tyrone Power because he’s not a rapist!
All Tyrone Power does is smile encouragingly and cup his hand as though he’s holding a bottle with his thumb over the mouth of it. And he shakes the imaginary bottle a few times. That’s all. It’s something they do often when interrogating hardball Mexican criminals who are not cooperating. The little smile. The gentle shaking of the cupped hand with the thumb crooked over the mouth of an imaginary bottle.
And the software salesman’s on his knees saying, “Yes, yes, yes, I did it!” And he confesses to the Lindbergh kidnapping. And to the Boston stranglings. And then he remembers the time he let his hand slide across the ass of a redhead at that computer convention in Atlanta and he tries to tell them about that, but they don’t care about a bustle rubber in Dixie.
In fact, Wayne Newton’s looking bored and he glances at his watch and hands over the note pad all written in Spanish and the salesman signs it without being asked. And he begs to sign a check. And can he sign over his mortgage? And his car? Will they accept his Hertz car? As a fucking gift!
Finally, he ends up paying a modest fine, but while they’re “processing the paperwork” (which takes about a week because it’s true these folks are not intimidated by time) he learns a few new tricks. In that he shares a ten-by-ten-foot cell with fourteen other guys, the most aromatic of whom smells like the bubonic plague, he learns to sleep on his feet like a cockatoo.
And for the rest of his life, or maybe for ten or twenty years at least, a funny thing happens. Whenever he hears the Coca-Cola song he starts to confess. He might be back home in a Silicon Valley drugstore minding his own business and the girl at the cosmetic counter is playing a radio, and he hears: “It’s the reeeeel thing, Coke is …”
And he’s weeping and screaming and throwing himself on the floor. On his knees! Confessing to the pharmacist! To the cashier! To a goddamn notary public, who runs screaming out the door when he tries to confess to his Pekinese!
By the time the cops arrive he’s kneeling in front of the health-aids counter spilling his guts to a hot water bottle on sale for $5.98.
And should a real American rapist—like the ones who routinely prowl the Southern California streets and free-ways committing multiple murders—decide to cross the imaginary line looking for dark-eyed beauties and sexually harm a child, well, there is absolutely only one sensible course of action. He must quickly run and find the most dilapidated, sputtering, smoky Tijuana bus on the road and start giving the exhaust pipe a fast blowjob while it’s stopped at a red light. The way those things spew carbon monoxide he should be safely dead before the light changes, and that would be the only sensible place to be if he gets arrested for molesting a child: dead.
That’s one way that law enforcement differs south of the imaginary line, but Mexican cops had always extended great hospitality to their San Diego colleagues. Pretty soon the cops down there would come to hate some of their brethren north of the line, those who dressed up as pollos and walked at night in the canyons.
In the twilight hours of February 1st, the Barfers hit the canyons as usual. Dick Snider, technically not the BARF supervisor anymore, but still a Southern Division shift lieutenant, decided to come along to work the cover team with Robbie Hurt. The only varsity team member on duty that night was the BARF supervisor, Manny Lopez, and he decided to let Joe Castillo walk with him. Carlos Chacon was walking with Renee Camacho.
Fred Gil walked with a new member of the junior varsity, brought in to replace the cop who had quit during the BARF hiatus. His name was Joe Vasquez. He was twenty-six years old
, a burly fellow with a large shaggy head and small hands. Not a big man, but he seemed like a big man, with a face like a wanted poster. In fact, when they were asked to help with a stakeout on a robbery series in uptown San Diego, they were shown a composite drawing of a suspect who was robbing fast-food restaurants. The suspect was described as “big and ugly.” The composite drawing looked just like Joe Vasquez, who immediately became known as “Big Ugly.” Or, when his fellow Barfers were feeling more charitable, “Quasimodo.”
Joe Vasquez took it with good humor. He was by nature a loner, not one to sit and rap with the boys. Not one to booze it up after they got off duty, in a ritual getting manic. He once said that he had only one close friend, his wife. The others thought that was pretty weird kind of talk. Definitely not macho. A wife for a best friend? But he was reliable and brave. You had to like Big Ugly.
Wind tore the clouds to shreds. The canyons were a patchwork at dusk, silver light and shadow. Sound on the wind: loud radios playing sad Mexican music. Glasses breaking. Beer cans popping. The smell of beans cooking. The smell of city smoke. There were people playing and watching soccer games on the upper field, a hundred people. Colonia Libertad was jammed with cars. It was going to be a bad night for the Border Patrol, they said.
Joe Vasquez and Fred Gil climbed to the top of Airport Mesa to work their way toward Deadman’s Canyon. Dick Snider and Robbie Hurt established themselves and the Ford Bronco where they could watch most of Spring Canyon, the upper soccer field, and the mouth of Deadman’s Canyon, along with the hill leading north from Colonia Libertad. Manny Lopez and Joe Castillo walked past Washerwoman Flats and headed east toward Deadman’s Canyon.
There were children all over the hillside just above Spring Canyon and on the dirt road that parallels the international border. Canyon children as wild as hawks. Suddenly, Dick Snider and Robbie Hurt, concealed in the brush and mesquite, met a group of seven kids and four dogs sitting quietly behind them, watching them watch the aliens. After a time the kids and dogs got bored and ran off yelling or barking toward Spring Canyon, stopping only to warn a pair of pollos that they were being observed through binoculars by la migra on top of the hill.
The pollos who got the friendly warning were Manny Lopez and Joe Castillo, who was carrying his little pollo bag over his shoulder on this rather warm winter afternoon. The bag contained a Handie-Talkie, flares, first aid kit, and flashlights, all of which would be used on this memorable evening.
While Dick Snider and Robbie Hurt were watching the alien movement in the canyons they saw three men walking down the road from the top of Airport Mesa. Two of the men peeled off onto a trail overlooking Spring Canyon in the direction of Manny and Joe. One of the men was too well-dressed to be either a pollo or a bandit. He was wearing a creamy leather jacket, slightly belled mocha slacks, and cowboy boots with stitching to match the jacket.
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. 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 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!” M
anny 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.”
“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.
Lines and Shadows Page 12
