It was as if someone were playing a record at the wrong rpm. Things were speeding up. It was happening in the canyons faster than they could arrange for the media to cover it. Their luck was limitless, it seemed. For example, the judiciales contacted them about that long-haired bandit with the .22 rifle. It seemed that the judiciales had him figured to be a dude who had shot and raped a woman in the canyons two years earlier. He had left her for dead and by the time her brother found her and dragged her body back to Mexican soil, she was dead. There was no report of the crime on the U.S. side although it was covered in the Tijuana newspapers.
Manny Lopez said, “Okay, we’ll see if we can spot this cat and bust him for you.”
And since the kid had hair to his ass and a headband like an American “hee-pee,” and a .22 rifle, they started calling him “Twenty-two Long.”
Just for fun Manny wrote on the chalkboard, TARGET: .22 LONG. And within three days, while they were lollygagging on a hillside in the late afternoon, waiting for sunset and checking out the mobs on the upper soccer field with binoculars, somebody said, “Hey, there’s a broad up there squatted down smoking grass.”
Then someone else looked through binoculars and said, “Hey, that broad’s sure got long hair. She’s wearing a blue bandanna around her …”
Fifteen minutes later, Tony Puente, Eddie Cervantes, Joe Vasquez and Carlos Chacon were huffing and puffing over Airport Mesa toward Twenty-two Long, who was working on his third joint and was flying higher than any plane leaving the Tijuana airport that day.
It was just that easy. Twenty-two Long turned and saw these panting sweaty pollos standing behind him showing about a hundred teeth under their moustaches, and the pollos said, “¿Sabes qué? ¿Sabes qué, asshole?”
And Twenty-two Long was busted. Lifted clear off the ground by his waist-length hair. Hoist with his own petard, as it were. And turned over to the judiciales. Of course he confessed, probably after a few bottles of Coke or Bubble-Up or ginger ale. And he led the Mexican authorities to the murder weapon. And because Mexican justice is swift, he was getting ready for prison before Manny Lopez could even figure out how to get the most P.R. mileage out of this one.
Nevertheless, it was impressive. You want a guy on a two-year-old homicide? You got it. Give us about three days. What else can we do for international relations?
It was, the Barfers believed, the incredible luck of Manny Lopez. How many times could he be so lucky? Other than breaking a finger or two when punching out bandits, or falling on his face once in a while as they all did, Manny couldn’t be hurt, they were convinced. And they could accomplish anything he asked of them. They were feeling elite. Special. They were outside of ordinary police experience. And getting wild.
Joe Vasquez was so outrageous-looking that one day when Big Ugly was uptown he was drawn on by a startled patrolman who thought that some kind of Banana Republic terrorist had gotten into central headquarters.
Meanwhile, old Fred Gil was getting rehabilitated in record time. Perhaps he owed it to his wife, Jan. Anything was better than being home with the relentless squabbling. It ended one night with him saying that the only thing she really felt bad about was that he didn’t get killed.
And her saying, “Well maybe that’s right.”
And then both regretting it because their little girl was being affected by the bitterness and endless bickering.
They were utterly incompatible, Jan liking to drink and go out raising hell, and Fred wanting peace and quiet. At first he couldn’t sit in a chair with that bullet in his hip. When he walked he dragged a leg behind him like Lon Chaney’s mummy. But he exercised nearly every waking moment.
He asked to go back to duty and they put him to work filing juvenile reports. He hated it. His lower extremities would go to sleep because of scar tissue touching nerves. After two weeks of this, and evenings fighting with Jan, he faked full recovery and said, “I guess I’m ready to go back in the canyons.” There were things worse than getting shot.
Jan Gil was the life of any party, and was only too happy to go one-on-one with Manny Lopez when BARF threw their frequent little bashes. No one else could joust verbally with Manny, but she could, and just as profanely. Jan Gil said she couldn’t stand him, and told the other wives he had an ego like Fidel Castro. Manny just figured, what the hell, she was probably in love with him. Of course Fred Gil was mortified, but Jan Gil’s balls clanged as loud as Manny’s any old day.
And since policemen are about as prone to gossip as soap opera heroines, there were lots of unsubstantiated rumors flying around that Jan Gil was doing more than going out nights with girl friends, and that also mortified him.
The talk of divorce was constant, and then Fred Gil met a woman during the course of his police duty and fell in love, but good. She was utterly different, this one. She didn’t drink or smoke and she kept a spotless house for herself. Like Fred she didn’t even swear. And Fred Gil, who felt bad about most everything in life, felt very bad about sneaking around. He told Jan that he wasn’t so innocent either. That he’d met a woman. And it really hit the fan: threats, accusations, usually in front of the children, and finally a scene in the living room of his new lady, with Jan kicking on the door and calling the “other woman” gamy names. So old Fred Gil packed up and left home. For one day.
He moved in with a detective, and Fred, who couldn’t bear a dirty house or disorder of any kind, strolled into the detective’s bachelor apartment and almost gagged. He practically had to scrape the crud off the refrigerator just to get it opened. Inside was the detective’s supply of groceries—one six-pack of Coors. There were dirty clothes on the floor, in the bathtub, in both sinks, in the flower pots. There were roaches riding the backs of other roaches. Fred Gil went home to his wife. Jan talked him into not filing for divorce until they paid off the bills for the rest of the year. He agreed. It made sense. They were pretty broke. Then a week later, when Fred was at the gym doing a few bench presses, he got a phone call.
It was a lawyer who said, “Fred? I can either serve papers on you there or you can come down to my office.”
She had filed, and to add insult to injury the lawyer was a friend of his family.
And then, Fred Gil recalled in anguish: “I’ll never forget it as long as I live! She showed up in divorce court with a Bible! The woman had never been in a church! We weren’t even married in a goldang church! And she was dressed like Mary goldanged Poppins!”
She got child support. She got the car. And the house. All Fred got was the mo-ped. And a shock when her daughter, really his favorite child, took sides with her mother in the divorce. A natural thing of course, but Fred could only think about how it might never be the same with his adopted daughter and it was the bitterest blow of all.
Well, the nights get pretty cold and uncomfortable out there on a mo-ped, so Fred’s sister gave him the use of an old beat-up camper about the size of a bathtub. Fred dragged the thing to the police department parking lot and lived there for a month. It was cold in that camper but at least it could accommodate everything he owned. Yet so could a good-sized backpack. Finally Fred Gil got together enough money to rent an apartment. It was a bachelor apartment. There was a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. There were no pictures on the walls. There wasn’t even one little scrawny plant. At least he’d had one little scrawny plant in the camper. Fred Gil was by now popping big red tranquilizers which a physician friend gave to him to diminish the anxiety attacks. He’d done a lot of lonely weeping.
Fred Gil took a look around that lowlife little apartment and remembers saying one word: “Dang!”
Then he took out his service revolver. He thought about it so hard that his hands began to tremble. He thought about smoking it. Then he started shaking all over. Fred Gil had to run from that apartment. He had to run for his life.
The other cops got a big kick out of it when poor old Fred Gil was living in the little camper on the police station parking lot. They had a million jokes they�
��d lay on old Fred, and they never failed to blow their horns or maybe blast a siren when he was asleep and all jangled from the big red pills the friendly croaker had given him. The siren would drive him straight up, crashing his skull against the ceiling, which was low as a coffin lid. The other cops would just scream when old Fred Gil would come flip-flapping across the station parking lot in his raggedy cotton robe and rubber thongs, heading to the station to take a crap or a shower.
But everyone said that the funniest sight of all was old Fred Gil riding that freaking mo-ped. The other cops had these hot bikes and sports cars they couldn’t really afford, and pickups with back tires that could power a jumbo jet, and here was burly old Fred Gil put-putting down the street on his teeny mo-ped. They practically convulsed when one cop yelled an observation that old Fred looked like the simian prodding the pigskin!
Cops just began keeling over—cackling, hooting, snuffling, screaming—because it was true! Poor old Fred Gil looked just like an ape fucking a football.
April was a terrific month for scrapbooks. They managed to get fourteen stories written about them in April. The border was written up large in U.S. News and World Report.
April was not a terrific month for a Colonia Libertad bandit named Esquivel, who had seen one spaghetti western too many. He had seen the one where Clint Eastwood runs around in a sarape, and when that sarape goes whipping back there’s nothing but hot lead and cold bodies flying around for about five movie minutes, all in slow motion. Esquivel didn’t have access to a real gun at the moment but he got hold of an air rifle that looked exactly like an M-l carbine, and best of all, he got himself an ominous black poncho that looked even more sinister than Clint Eastwood’s. And he got another bandit pal and they did a little dope and decided to prowl E-2 Canyon and see how much money they could make. Whatever they made, it wasn’t nearly enough.
The varsity and junior varsity hadn’t had time to split up that afternoon before they stumbled upon a whole mob of illegal aliens nesting in the brush of E-2 Canyon about a hundred yards north of the border line. There were Manny Lopez, Eddie Cervantes, and Tony Puente of the varsity. And Ernie Salgado, Carlos Chacon and Renee Camacho of the junior varsity. Only Joe Vasquez wasn’t present, since he had to provide cover that night because both Robbie Hurt and Ken Kelly were off duty.
Manny asked the startled covey of aliens what they were waiting for and got the answer when a man stood up far across the canyon and began waving his arms. There was just enough daylight left to see him, and the sixteen aliens jumped to their feet and began hustling down the trails toward the guide who was signaling.
The guide was an enterprising young fellow who was delighted to see that six new pollos had joined his party of sixteen, and he wasted no time wheeling and dealing with the newcomers. He said he was sorry he couldn’t get them all the way to Los Angeles, but he could transport them to Main Street in Chula Vista for forty bucks a head.
So Manny Lopez whispered to the other Barfers that they might as well take down this dude for wildcatting. They waited until the aliens started moving off as directed and then they put the badge on him and told him he wasn’t going to Chula Vista that night.
So he shrugged, because what the hell, it’s no big deal to spend a day or two in a U.S. jail, which was actually about the most comfortable place around. But there was an alien couple sticking to the guy, and Manny Lopez figured now that they knew the Barfers were cops, he’d have to do something with them.
They walked back to Joe Vasquez, who was waiting in the four-wheel-drive Chevy Suburban, mightily bummed because now he had to provide cover and wait in consummate frustration and listen to weird noises and gunshots in the canyons and not know anything. After he took charge of the wildcatting guide, the others walked their alien couple toward the port of entry to turn them over to the Border Patrol.
While the Barfers were trucking along the trails with the couple, Manny Lopez started talking to them. They had left four children behind in central Mexico. The husband had a nice sincere face and he was looking from one cop to the other, trying to figure out this strange business of American cops dressing up like pollos. His wife was a very shy woman who was probably only thinking of the kids left behind and wondering how long it would take to make enough money to return to them with some kind of nest egg.
While they were walking, the man told Manny Lopez that his working day was from sunup to sunset, seven days a week. He was a campesino and had the hands to prove it. Then he couldn’t contain his curiosity and he said to Manny Lopez: “Please, can you tell me how often does an American policeman buy groceries?”
“My wife does it.” Manny shrugged. “She makes the big buy every two weeks when I get paid.”
“How much does it cost her to buy food?” the man asked.
Manny shrugged again and said, “I don’t know. Maybe two hundred? Maybe a lot more. I don’t really know.”
“Dollars?” the man gasped. “U.S. dollars?”
“Yeah, dollars,” Manny said. “You think I mean pesos?”
Then the alien couple could only walk in silence. It was too much. Policemen getting paid money like that. What a country!
The man said to Manny Lopez: “For working every day as long as there is sunlight I get paid enough money to buy tortillas, beans, sometimes rice, and sometimes a little sugar and a little coffee. I can’t buy beef. I try to buy a chicken once a week because the children need meat, but that chicken costs one day’s wages so I can’t always buy it.”
And of course by now all the other Barfers were listening and moaning and groaning, saying, “Let’s not turn em over to the Border Patrol. Let em go! Shit!”
“I got to turn you over to the Border Patrol,” Manny Lopez told the man. “You might tell somebody who we are and it might be a bandit. It’s risky.”
And all the other Barfers, the least sentimental of whom was about eighty-five times more sentimental than Manny Lopez, were yelling, “Cut em loose! Fuck this! Let em go.”
And Manny was saying, “What’s the big deal about spending a day with the Border Patrol? They’ll be back here by Tuesday night, goddamnit!”
Everyone was bitching and moaning except the man, who, speaking for himself and his wife, was defending Manny and saying he understood Manny’s dilemma perfectly and he shouldn’t make exceptions. And all this was interrupted suddenly by two bandits from Colonia Libertad who’d seen one spaghetti western too many.
It was dark now, really dark. As black as Manny’s heart, someone mumbled, and Manny said to shut up, fucker. And they were several yards apart on the trail and doing their best to see five feet in front of them when Manny saw two shapes just above the trail in front of him. One of them was wearing a big old black sarape or poncho, just like Clint Eastwood, and he was satisfied when he saw these pollos, especially since one of them was a woman.
When Manny, who was in the lead with the alien couple right behind him, got within a few feet of the silent bandits, the one with the poncho said, “What smuggler do you belong to?”
And Manny made up a name. “We belong to Morro.”
The two bandits looked them over, especially the woman hiding behind Manny Lopez, and were more than assured that these couldn’t be part of that group of San Diego cops who prowled these canyons screwing up their business. The one with the poncho then did his Clint Eastwood impersonation and swept back the poncho and threw down on Manny Lopez with his M-1 carbine air rifle, and said, “Give us your money!”
And Manny looked around and saw that his Barfers were straggling along far behind and he had to let them catch up, so he said, “Don’t hurt us. Don’t hurt us.”
And he started cowering and whimpering and generally going into character, but of course there was nothing funny about an M-1 carbine which he thought was real. And when the others came stumbling and bumping along and crashing into the ones who’d been stopped by the bandits and saw that goddamn rifle pointed at them, everyone froze waiting for “¿Sabes qu
é?”
The last one up the trail was Tony Puente. And he wasn’t wearing his glasses and it was dark and he hadn’t heard any conversation as yet except that he knew there was a holdup going on. Tony Puente squinted up ahead and could clearly see a man. And he saw that the man was holding something and he squinted a little more. And it looked to Tony Puente just like a stick in the robber’s hands. A skinny old stick. And this was pretty funny. On a night when the varsity and junior varsity were teamed up, two bandits jumped them with a skinny little old stick! This was really funny. Were those bandits ever going to get their asses kicked.
Then Tony Puente heard one bandit say more forcefully “Give us your money!”
And he was practically giggling when he yelled out from the rear of the queue: “Don’t give them shit, the pricks!”
The others couldn’t believe it! They were all starting to sweat buckets looking down the barrel of an M-1 carbine and Tony Puente was back there yelling don’t give them shit? Calling them pricks?
Manny Lopez said, “Shut up,” to Tony Puente, and he started snapping his fingers, hoping that Tony might pick up on it.
Snap, snap, snap, but it was lost on Tony, who couldn’t figure out why Manny hadn’t said something like “¿Sabes qué, motherfucker? I’m gonna stick that stick right up your ass!”
Another problem was that Manny was trying to push the woman down to the ground, because something real bad was going to happen and he wasn’t ready to make his move just yet.
And all of a sudden Tony Puente, who was having a hell of a good time, yelled out, “I’m not giving you anything. In fact, I think you’re nothing but putos. Hey, thief! Fuck your mother!”
And now all the Barfers were groaning and sighing, and fidgeting and wanting to shoot Tony Puente because everyone but he could see that goddamn M-1 carbine pointed down their throats!
Lines and Shadows Page 19
