The Coyote's Bicycle

by Kimball Taylor

  Stepping into el Gato Bronco felt like entering a dark closet. The eyes needed time to adjust. There was a musty stillness. A few small tables came into focus. Artificial light emanated from weak lamps behind the bar. There were just two people in the room, a waitress poised against a barstool and a bartender who was, at that moment, stocking ice. After appraising the men, the woman stood and withdrew a couple of chairs from one of the central tables. “Please come in,” she said. “It’s bright out there.”

  The men took the seats.

  “Something to drink?” she asked.

  “A bucket of Tecates,” Roberto said. He winked at Indio. “My brother’s brand.”

  Indio smiled. “Eventually, even the blind dog gets a bone.”

  The woman merely nodded at the bartender, who rose with a wince and stepped to the cooler. He was old, past seventy, and fat—which suggested to Roberto a kind of health. He knew many old men, all of them bone-skinny, even if they’d once been plump. The waitress eased back onto her stool to wait, and this time positioned herself to observe the men.

  The bartender raised his head from the bottles. “You look familiar,” he said, pointing the opener at Roberto.

  “I haven’t been back in a long time,” Roberto answered. “But I always liked the place.”

  “I’m glad that you paid the visit,” the bartender said. The woman placed the tin bucket on the bar before him and the bartender filled it with the bottles and ice. “We won’t be here for much longer,” he said.

  “True?” Roberto asked.

  “The new highway, it will pave right over us.”

  “This very spot,” the waitress added.

  “That’s too bad,” Indio said.

  “Yes,” said the bartender. He slid the bucket of beers to the waitress and then plunged his trowel back into the ice. The woman stepped across linoleum the color of burnt sugar. As their eyes adjusted, detail emerged. Vinyl seats frayed and splitting, a cracked mirror. Roberto remembered the jukebox and the plunking sound of its plastic keys.

  “Amigo, I once gave you a hundred bucks. A week later, you still had that note in your pocket,” Roberto said.

  Indio nodded.

  Roberto regarded the young man’s wide features, his eyes shaped like a pharaoh’s, his quiet yet intensely alert demeanor. “How many pollos have you crossed this month?” he asked.

  “A few hundred,” Indio said, but then corrected himself. “Two hundred twenty-six.”

  “You’re joking me.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Pace yourself. A lot of polleros don’t cross a thousand people in their careers.”

  Indio shrugged.

  Roberto waved his finger. “No one is giving out gold medals to smugglers.”

  Indio finally cracked a wide, straight smile. He said, “We’re thinking of naming him Roberto.”

  “The little one?” Roberto’s gaze narrowed. “You can’t give an angel the name of a malandro.”

  When Indio laughed, Roberto thought he looked like a boy.

  “You’re not a malandro,” El Indio said. “I owe you everything.”

  Roberto didn’t know where to begin. He certainly didn’t want to take Indio to the cave of thorns where his own heart suffered. Yet it was el coyote’s business to ferry seekers from one reality to another. And it was his duty to deliver Indio to the truth—facts that he himself did not want to hear spoken out loud.

  Roberto began by talking about what had happened in Mexico City—not to Marta, exactly, but to him.

  “You know my friend Julian,” he offered. “Julian has been in this business since 1960, a first-generation coyote. Seen it all. He has a complete infrastructure down there—for the international clients. He gets them visas meant for visiting artists and performers, almost as good as a diplomatic visa. Julian’s driver, Alejandro, is the same one who meets my clients at the airport there. So I made the call and Alejandro picked us up. Absolutely no stress in that regard; he took us right there to the clinic, and afterward, to Julian’s house. Nice place.”

  The men sipped their beers. The lengthy description, the far-flung el Gato Bronco bar, the speed with which Roberto was drinking, and the speaker’s unhealthy pallor may have caused Indio’s brow to rise.

  “The specialist was older—a good man I think—and smart,” Roberto said. He relayed the fact that Marta’s symptoms—the headaches, nausea, vomiting—were often the same for difficult pregnancies as for this other thing that the doctor had been thinking. So the doctor’s people worked really hard to get the right results. “She had, I don’t know, many different tests. And all the way through she was as strong and courageous as you would expect Marta to be. The sonogram made her really happy.”

  While his sister was with the sonographer, the old doctor had called Roberto aside to present a preliminary diagnosis. The results of some tests took time, the oncologist admitted, but he’d seen enough. “The tumor is malignant,” he said. And unfortunately, it was not a solid mass but a web enmeshed with critical areas of brain function. Hormones associated with the pregnancy might have fueled the aggressive cell division, but they couldn’t know for sure. “In either event,” the doctor said. “I am afraid that there is no cure.”

  In the dark bar, the two men locked eyes.

  “I pleaded with him, amigo, I did. I said, ‘What can we do? I would trade my life for Marta’s. Money is not a problem.’ The doctor said only, ‘Make her happy for the time God grants her. It won’t be long.’”

  The ridges of Indio’s forehead bunched up. His welling brown eyes shimmered, a look of disbelief at first. He didn’t breathe. “And the baby?” he asked.

  Roberto shook his head.

  Indio stood. “Let’s go. I need to see her.”

  “No, compa.” Roberto raised his hands, fingers spread wide—a gesture of surrender. “As her brother, I cannot allow her to see you like this. Marta will know then. She will know and her last days will fill with mourning for the boy. I can’t have that.”

  Indio lunged across the table, snatching up Roberto’s shirt. “Give me the keys.”

  “No, brother.”

  Indio shook Roberto, his energy feverish, fitful, incoherent.

  Thin tears brimmed at the corners of Roberto’s wide, still eyes and spilled over. Indio released his grip, and slumped back into his chair. His head dropped. He began to sob.

  Roberto raised a finger to the waitress. “A bottle,” he said, “the big one.” The bartender tipped it down like a book off a shelf. He blew the dust from the label and handed it to the waitress. She set the golden bottle on the table, placing two shot glasses beside it. A question rose to her lips. Roberto waved it off. He looked at El Indio. “We are not leaving until it’s finished.”

  Indio grabbed the bottle’s neck and broke the seal. He sent the shot glasses to the floor with a forearm and turned the tequila up, drinking the burning liquid down.

  “Another bucket of beer,” Roberto called. He stood and pulled the bottle from Indio. He poured it into his own throat. The new bucket arrived. The bottle passed like a pistol between men contesting a round of Russian roulette. Slivers of daylight weakened around the windows and doorway. After-work patrons entered, drank, and left without notice. The bottle drained down to a stubborn little hue of vapor and the pain was still there and there wasn’t enough alcohol in the doomed little bar to kill it. The men climbed to their feet. Indio withdrew a roll of dollars as thick as an ax handle. He peeled a limp sheaf of hundreds off onto the table. The bartender and the waitress wished them luck from the other side of their blurry oblivion. The men found the door, and then that the world beyond had become cold and dark.

  Indio slid behind the wheel. Roberto crawled in on the passenger side. Indio pulled the keys from his hand. The engine ignited, the lights flared, and they roared into the desert valley. The tawny roadside flicked past, twigs and brambles flaring in the headlights. Fewer than five miles on, a rampart of tumbleweeds reflected the light an
d signaled a curve in the road that Indio failed to account for. At the sight of the berm he yanked at the wheel. The bed of the truck traveled around and the bumper forged their way, spinning and bucking into the brush. A trench pitched the Ford onto its two driver-side wheels. It slid like this, on the verge of tipping, of rolling, but then slowed just short of a deep arroyo. When the truck came crashing onto all four tires again, the engine died.

  Indio opened his door and fell out. He crawled on his knees, retching, vomiting, and then sobbing. He pounded the desert floor with his fists. He screamed at the stars.

  Roberto exited the cab, stumbled down the arroyo bank, fell onto his side, and remained there. The dirt was cool and granular. He could smell the wild sage, the earth churned from the crash, and spilled antifreeze and exhaust. He eventually came around and made his way out. He found his compadre, picked him up, and pushed him back into the cab. Roberto got the engine started and eased the truck back onto the road, which carried them along a tributary and then the river and eventually back into the heart of Tijuana and the red neon lights of the Zona Norte, where the brothers really lost control.

  32

  In 2010, after Solo came up in casual conversation in the Zona Norte, El Negro uncovered a cadre of lower-level workers in the bicycle coyote operation. There was El Ruso, El Cholo, El Sombra, and Juan and Javy and Angel. Through them, Negro learned of the operation’s general, Marta, and her connection to Roberto. It was the first time El Negro had linked the high-level pollero to the bicycles. As the brother of the woman in charge, Negro reasoned, Roberto must know something the others did not. But El Negro realized that in order to get the story straight, he’d have to play a card he’d never considered. To obtain an interview with el coyote concerning this illicit business that somehow touched the baby sister, Negro might have to allude to a certain situation that concerned an armed and aggressive malandro and Negro’s assistance in that serious event.

  Surprisingly, when Negro reached out to his acquaintance in the white pickup, no reference to the past proved necessary. Roberto revealed himself to be gracious and amenable, almost as if he’d been waiting some time for this very request from his old compa at the bathrooms. El Negro was invited into el coyote’s home, where he spent long afternoons with the family, in the kitchen and outside by the garden. He saw the hallway of rooms, and the hustle and bustle of internationals being escorted in and out.

  Though I had faith in El Negro’s growing body of research, even as the details turned fantastic and bizarre, I was never dead certain as to his own personal motivations. Negro was sticking his neck out. He banged on the doors of shacks where he was unwanted. He was threatened, and pleaded with, to ask no more questions. And while the work was going well, I suppose, I buried the question as to why he persevered. I vaguely aligned his dedication in uncovering El Indio’s story with his desire to help migrants and deportees. El Negro had little power and no money, but he could do this—he could tell their stories. What I didn’t understand was why any of the smugglers would openly describe their activities to Negro. The bathroom worker wielded an undeniable charisma, but I didn’t believe that was enough. There was a reason they trusted him; I just couldn’t be sure what that reason was.

  The question of motivation swung both ways. After our first visit, Negro chastised Dan Watman for presuming to bring around a strange gringo asking dangerous questions. Over time, his doubts seemed to mellow: he said he saw a passion in my eyes. But once he’d conducted his first interviews with Roberto, El Negro’s willingness to suspend his disbelief about my background and motivations evaporated like water flicked across a sizzling-hot taco-cart grill.

  The trust and protection of Roberto was not worth spilling on a wild goose chase.

  So Negro made a point of catching Watman near the native garden on the following Sunday. He asked him pointedly if I could be working with Homeland Security, or the CIA, or the FBI, or any number of interested parties. “How do you know him?” El Negro asked.

  “He just called me one day,” Watman admitted. “I guess I don’t really know him.”

  “Could Kimball be an agent?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe.”

  And Watman, unable to stay silent when it would keep people from connecting over contentious boundaries, called me and spilled his guts as to Negro’s reservations. This far into our research, they were hard doubts to hear.

  I’d once given El Negro a copy of a story collection I’d written. I mentioned this fact to Watman then, suggesting that it might be evidence—the physical volume might prove that I was a writer. While talking to Watman on the phone, I picked up another copy in my office and turned its smooth surface over in my hands. The back cover carried a small author photo, a younger version of me. Considering the situation from Negro’s point of view, I was compelled to ask myself: Could a government agency one-off such a volume in short order to bolster a cover story? Of course it could. Neither the book nor my credentials were proof of anything—that I was not an undercover agent, a garbage collector, or a candlestick maker.

  In truth, I had realized that there are many ways to prove what one is, but very few to prove what one isn’t. Further, I knew that to be suspected as an informant was the most dangerous position I could find myself in. A real informant, at least, would likely have the support of his or her real agency. All I had was a story. My disappearance could cost as little as fifty dollars. I would not see the threat coming until it stood in front of me. I’d not know the cost until it was paid. That drive into Tijuana to meet El Negro and convince him of my authorship, regain his trust, and learn the tale fresh from the lips of malandro royalty was the scariest drive I’ve ever made.

  After Ben McCue’s wife showed a lack of interest in the Free Spirit, the ladies’ ten-speed he’d purchased from Terry Tynan on our first meeting, I borrowed it—replaced its slashed tire, fixed the brakes, and added a new seat—and I coveted the little burgundy machine. I would sometimes ride it around Playas de Tijuana, the boardwalk’s planks making a ticky-tack sound under the wheels, while I looked for El Negro. He didn’t have a cell phone or a tendency to stay in any one place for long, so the search for him took on the guessing, traveling aspect of a scavenger hunt. This time, however, I rode the Free Spirit because I didn’t want to be recognized, which I suspected I might be in my usual pickup. I couldn’t know what or whom I was afraid of, and I suffered a case of paranoia that I found very difficult to peel away from the truth.

  Finally, I discovered El Negro sitting outside the bathrooms on the south end of Playas de Tijuana—next to the only lifeguard tower on the beach and kitty-corner to an open dirt lot where the city’s surfers congregated and appraised ocean conditions. These bathrooms were white and airy and to sit on benches in the plaza outside of them conjured sensations of the Mediterranean.

  On greeting me Negro did not appear suspicious or inimical or hard. He said, “Kimball, I’ve been waiting for you. Did Daniel tell you about the interview?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I wondered if maybe Watman had misunderstood Negro’s questions about my occupation.

  “Hold on,” he said, “let me get my folder.” El Negro stood, but then a bathroom customer arrived. He made the transaction with this customer and then some acquaintances waved from across the street and Negro went to meet them. I continued to sit and enjoy the warm sunlight and crisp sea breeze. I watched the surfers in the dirt lot, so much like surfers anywhere on the coast.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to anything until a man stood before me. His hair was dark, greased, and combed back. His face was acne-scarred and seemingly hemmed in by the tattoos crawling out of his hairline and up his neck. Several teardrops were inked and dripping from the corner of his right eye, which, along with its mate, was just a fully dilated black pupil. He stood about six foot, but hunched. A prison gym physique bulged from his neatly pressed white T-shirt. He wore tan chino slacks with a crease down each leg and a mesh belt that hun
g alongside. I thought he was yet another gangland soldier scooped up from Los Angeles and dumped here. I might have shrugged him off as a mental case, or a drunk, if not for his intense focus on me.

  “That’s a nice pen,” he said in Spanish, nodding down at my hand. I looked too. It was just a clear plastic ballpoint with blue ink. “I like that pen better than my pen,” he said. A silence passed between us. He withdrew a skinny Bic from his pocket. “Why don’t you trade pens with me?”

  Gambling that this trade would end the encounter, I handed over the clear pen. He took it and put his own back in his pants pocket. Then he clasped the clear pen in his fist as if it were a knife or a shiv.

  “Dios o Diablo?” he asked. What was he really asking? I was confused. “Dios o Diablo?” he repeated. A riddle? Or was he demanding that I choose a side? God or the devil. God or the devil. I saw the pen in his hand like a dagger. “Dios o Diablo?” I knew that God was the answer, in this Catholic country especially. But this man looked like he worked for the devil. Directly. The repetition of the question acted on me with the fury of a carnival tornado. I sat in a shiver of sensory confusion, unable to reply. If not a test, it was the torture of the victim before the first puncture. I believed I had been set up. “Dios o Diablo?” This is it, I thought I am going to be the writer stabbed with his own pen for asking too many questions.

  “Dios,” I said.

  The gangster’s senseless repetition eased into a quiet stare. He raised the pen to eye level and appeared to appraise its point. Then he clipped the pen to his T-shirt collar. “Dios,” he said, and he walked away.

  Negro returned from his chat with friends. He held his black plastic folder and sat down next to me, oblivious or resolved. He’d received the all clear, maybe. There wouldn’t be a murder.