Crossers

by Philip Caputo

  Nacho, hands folded on his paunch, listened attentively. “And with them on her side, she’d be strong enough to challenge Carrasco.”

  “Another valid supposition,” said The Professor. “You know, if she doesn’t behave herself, it could cause you guys as much trouble as it could us.”

  “Who’s ‘us’? The federales or Carrasco?” Nacho questioned, a wink in his voice.

  The Professor answered with a fugitive smile.

  Nacho leaned over and squeezed his knee. “I love these get-togethers. I’ve never run into anybody like you. I can’t figure out if you’re in this for yourself, if you’re a double agent, a triple agent, a quadruple agent, or what.”

  “I’m an agent of history.”

  Nacho gave him a baffled scowl.

  “What’s happening right here, right now, is history in the making,” said The Professor. “Forget the drugs for the moment. All these wets crossing the border—half a million, a million every year—is the biggest migration in the world today. Did you know that?”

  “Guess I do now.”

  “We can’t escape history, but we’re not helpless. We can guide it, we can manage it.”

  Nacho threw him a little bow. “Gracias, Profesor. Gracias por la lección.”

  “You’re not listening. We have a common interest. So let’s bring in the drugs. Carrasco doesn’t like conflict. He doesn’t want a war on this part of the border. Look at what’s going on in Nuevo Laredo. Half a dozen gangs fighting each other. Machine-gun fire every night, cars blowing up on the street, rocket-propelled grenades. The last police chief was in office for exactly one day before he got capped. Baghdad on the Rio Grande. Do we want that in Agua Prieta? In Naco? In Nogales? We damn well fucking don’t.”

  “¡Oye, amigo! I get it. Organized crime is preferable to disorganized crime. What do you expect us to do?”

  “To give us a hand, in case we have to ask for it. Cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of our two friendly countries—a beautiful thing, no? All right, you convened the meeting. What else is on your agenda?”

  Pausing, Nacho pulled a document from his file folder and handed it to The Professor. It was a photocopy of a homicide report from the Santa Cruz County sheriff’s office.

  “You’re familiar with this little incident?” asked Nacho.

  “Heard about it. What do you want to talk about it for? Who gives a shit?”

  “No one,” said Nacho. “I wouldn’t give a shit, except that over there”—hooking a thumb out the back window, which faced south—“we’ve got seven dead migrants, and over here, we’ve got two dead burreros. Two out of three, who happened to be following the wets, who were supposed to act as decoys—”

  “You and me, we exchange strategic information,” The Professor interrupted, irritated. “Three mules would have been carrying sixty or seventy kilos max. What’s that worth? A little north of a hundred grand? This is small-unit stuff.”

  “Still, I’m thinking, you tell me Yvonne ordered the massacre. You tell me she’s maybe muscling in on Carrasco’s routes. I’m thinking, Are there dots here that need connecting? If there are, does it mean anything?”

  “You’re thinking that a load of dope was mixed up in it all. Whose dope? Did it belong to Joaquín, and did Yvonne rip him off and cap the mules just to show she can?”

  “You were the one talking about a war, so sure, I’m wondering if this might’ve been the first shot,” Nacho said. “Whose dope was it?”

  “No idea. Joaquín would never hire pollos to haul a load, not even a small one. Chickens don’t make good mules. My guess would be that they were working for some freelancer and that they bumped into some bajadores. Two dots is all you’ve got, and nada in between.”

  “Well, if you hear anything more about this, let me know.”

  “When did the Border Patrol get into investigating homicide?”

  “Information I could pass on to the sheriff. Cooperation between law enforcement agencies—a beautiful thing, no? I need to stretch my legs.”

  They got out and slouched against the front of the Cherokee. It was getting on to midday, but a pronounced chill remained in the air.

  “I’m thinking,” The Professor said in mimic of Nacho’s idiom, “that in the quid pro quo, today it’s been more quid than quo.”

  Nacho looked down at his shoes with a small private smile. He was an honest agent, as honest as someone in undercover work could be. Like The Professor, he also had to make compromises, giving in order to get; but there were certain lines he could not cross. That was fine with The Professor. He would rather deal with an honest agent than with a crooked one. The latter inevitably got greedy, got sloppy, and got caught, and there would go another source, off to jail.

  “For example, we’ve heard whispers that you boys, having reduced the traffic in the San Pedro, are now going to shift resources to the west,” The Professor prompted. “But that covers a lot of territory.”

  Nacho, still gazing at his shoes, weighed his options. He had to consider not only what to say but how to say it.

  “The road that runs up from Altar to Sásabe?” he answered. “It’s become a wetback interstate. Thirty vehicles per hour, twenty-four-seven. Trucks, vans, schoolbuses. Four to five thousand people a day.”

  That told The Professor some of what he needed to know—Border Patrol would be moving men and equipment like ground sensors and surveillance cameras to curtail immigrant trafficking in the Altar Valley. Drug loads moving through would be at greater risk of capture; Carrasco would be well advised to avoid the area for the time being. It would help to know how many men were to be deployed, which roads and trails they would concentrate on, where they were going to plant the sensors; but there was no point in trying to wheedle those sorts of specifics out of Nacho, assuming he even knew them. That was one of the lines he could not cross.

  “So the scales are a bit more balanced,” The Professor said, holding his two hands out, one slightly above the other. “Anything to make them like this?” He raised the lower hand alongside the upper.

  Nacho nodded. “I saved the best for last. Vicente Cruz is on this side. Nogales. He showed up there about two weeks ago.”

  “Ah,” said The Professor, making sure not to betray his excitement. “Bold move. Reckless, I’d say.”

  “Not so bold. He figured he’s safer here than there. Knew we had nothing on him. No evidence, no witnesses that haven’t suffered severe memory loss.”

  “Nobody hauled him in for a conversation?”

  “Oh, sure. Soon as we got a fix on him, we asked ICE to pop him on immigration charges. The idea was we’d send him to Florence as an illegal and then sweat a confession out of him That didn’t work, because it turns out the son of a bitch is a U.S. citizen. ICE had to let him go.”

  “Didn’t know he was an American.”

  “Neither did we. He’s laying low,” Nacho continued. “His profile got any lower, he could walk under an ant without knocking his hat off. Could be he’s retired.”

  “He’s the right age, and he’s got the money now.”

  “He’s living with his older brother out on the south River Road. The brother’s straight, but you know, he had to take his brother in. Can’t turn your back on blood. A nephew is living out there, too.”

  “Who is?”

  “Billy Cruz. He runs one of those shuttle services in Nogales, you know, for legal border crossers going to Tucson or Phoenix. Don’t have much else on him.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Two Rottweilers that belong to Vicente. Also a pistolero to go with the dogs.”

  Four men, a pair of attack dogs, The Professor thought. The house would be problematic. “Does he ever leave the place?”

  “He likes to eat at a seafood restaurant in Nogales. He kind of holds court there a couple, three nights a week, with the pistolero along. Tehuantepec, it’s called. It’s in that shopping mall on Grand, just past Mariposa.”

  “Food any good?
”

  “They do shrimp in a brandy and cream sauce that’s terrific. Shrimp is flown in fresh every day from Guaymas.”

  “I’ll have to try it. Muchas gracias.”

  “De nada,” replied Nacho. “So now I’ve done you a good deed.”

  “And I’ll be doing you one. A wash, I’d say.”

  “Besa mi culo. I’m doing the bigger favor. I’ve gone out way out on a limb, giving you this. Time comes to return the favor, I’ll expect you to be there.” Nacho pushed himself away from the Cherokee’s grill. “No mess, okay?”

  “You didn’t need to ask that,” The Professor said.

  6

  IT WAS THE LAST DAY of the season, and Castle was to go quail hunting with Blaine and a neighboring rancher. On the road to the main house, the Suburban’s tires spewed chunks of mud—a winter storm had passed through last night, dropping snow that had melted with first light. He parked and saw his aunt lugging feed bags into the “senior citizens’ center,” as Blaine had dubbed the corral where she kept two geriatric Hereford cows, one aged Texas longhorn, and a bay horse that was nearly a hundred in human years. Spotting him, Sally shuffled to the fence in her high rubber boots and called, “You shoot a mess of ’em, Gil! I just love them little things!” With her pewter-colored ponytail drooping back from under a greasy cowboy hat, wearing a sheepskin coat over her bathrobe, she looked like a cross between a bag lady and a septuagenarian hippie.

  “I’ll try,” Castle said, walking toward her. “But seven each is the limit.”

  “Makes twenny-one with the three of you.” Blaine had got his height from his father. Sally was about five four, and her small face, an oval of crow’s feet and fissures, looked up at him from between the two top rails. “Blaine’s a good deer hunter, but when it comes to birds, he couldn’t hit his scrawny ass with both hands, so you shoot his limit for him, y’hear? A mess of ’em is what we want.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Elena’s got a Messikin way of cookin’ ’em,” she said, dragging feed bags into the center of the corral. “Breakfast, Nick!” Castle heard her yell to the horse as he went to the door. “I ain’t a-bringin’ it to you, you come and get it or forget it!”

  Inside, Blaine, with his Luger belted on, was drinking coffee at the kitchen table with Monica and another woman, whom Monica introduced as Tessa McBride.

  “Hi, there,” she said. She looked fortyish, and when she reached up to shake Castle’s hand, he felt calluses and a strong grip.

  “I’ve just been filling Tessa in on what happened here,” Monica said. She must have color-rinsed her hair this morning; Castle had never seen it quite so blond.

  “I’ve been away,” Tessa explained in a low voice that, on the phone, could be mistaken for a man’s. “Missed out on the excitement.”

  “Tessa’s been showing her work all over, Scottsdale, Santa Fe, Las Cruces,” Monica exclaimed. “She’s a painter. Western landscapes.”

  “The most sentimental genre there is,” said Tessa. “You know, cactus in the sunset, mounted Indians with bowed heads. I try to avoid that. I like to paint subdivisions, crappy subdivisions, and strip malls against beautiful mountains. To show what an ugly mess we’re making of the landscape.”

  This struck Castle as more information than was warranted upon first meeting someone. She sounded as if she were promoting her style to a potential buyer.

  “Anyway, art is only my sideline,” she added.

  “What’s the line?” asked Castle.

  “Cattle. I own the Crown A up the road.”

  He turned to Blaine. “Is the other guy coming here, or are we picking him up?”

  Tessa smiled. Incomplete or incompetent orthodontics had left her with prominent eyeteeth that gave her a vaguely lupine look. “I’m the other guy.”

  It was only then that Castle noticed a hunting vest with blaze orange recoil pads draped over her chair.

  “Forgot to mention that our hunting partner is female,” Blaine said. “I don’t think of Tess that way, as a woman I mean … Well, I guess that don’t sound exactly right—”

  “Oh, no.” Monica, fingers to her temples, squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s just the right thing, as usual.”

  “One of the boys is what I meant to say.”

  “Dig that hole any deeper, and you’ll hit oil,” Tessa chided amiably. “Ready if you are.”

  When she stood to put on the hunting vest draped over her chair, Castle saw a moderately tall woman with breasts disproportionately large for the rest of her—they formed a sloping shelf over a flat stomach, slim hips, and stalky legs. It was as if the bosom of a German soprano had been grafted onto the waist and limbs of a ballerina.

  “And since I’m one of the boys, I’ll drive,” she said.

  Outside, he let Sam out of the Suburban and put her in the back of Tessa’s mud-spackled pickup, occupied by a German shorthair that growled at Sam’s intrusion on his space.

  “Knock it off, Klaus,” Tessa commanded, then, like a mother excusing a surly child, explained to Castle that her dog was used to working alone.

  Klaus, after giving Sam a few sniffs, which she reciprocated, flopped down onto the straw scattered over the truck bed. Blaine had meanwhile gone to the corral to talk to his mother. Or rather, to argue with her.

  He had a complicated relationship with Sally. Although he ran the Ignacio’s day-to-day operations, she remained president of the family corporation that owned the ranch and tended to treat her son like a hired hand.

  “Now you stay put, Mama, while we’re gone,” Castle and Tessa overheard him say. “I don’t want to come back and find you’ve gone out again. Don’t make me worry about you.”

  “Worrying is your problem, not mine. I’ve been running this place since Uncle Jeff died, and that’s getting to be on to forty years. How the hell do you think I got to be this old? By not knowing what I was doing?”

  Blaine flung his long arms out wide. “Dammit! It’s gotten to be dangerous around here.”

  “I’ve got that pistol you bought me,” she said, her voice rising to a near shriek. There she stood, nearly a foot shorter, and she seemed in her defiance bigger than he, her presence filling the space all around her.

  “You couldn’t hit nothin’ if it was standin’ right in front of you. You stick around here. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  “You got that right. That’s all you’re gonna say. I give the orders around here. Don’t you go giving me any, Blaine Erskine.”

  “That Sally,” Tessa remarked, shaking her head. She was leaning against the side of the truck, arms folded under her breasts. Castle couldn’t keep his eyes off them, an attraction more curious than lecherous. He wondered if he was looking at a silicone job, though he couldn’t imagine a ranch woman indulging herself in such cosmetic surgery. “Hope the hell I’m not like that twenty, thirty years down the road. A cantankerous old lady running cows.”

  “How many have you got?” he asked, to make conversation.

  An awkward silence followed, then Tessa said: “You’re not supposed to ask that, Gil. How big someone’s ranch is, or how many head they run. It’s like asking how much somebody earns.”

  It was a civil admonishment given to someone ignorant of western etiquette. He apologized, and she replied, “No problem.”

  Blaine strode toward them, his head down, and wrenched the pickup’s door open as if he meant to tear it off its hinges. “Goddamn old woman, I’d smack her over the head with a fence post, but all that’d do is bust a perfectly good post.”

  They got in the truck, Castle in the middle, drawing his legs together to avoid touching Tessa’s. She switched on the ignition, pulled out of the yard, and asked Blaine, “What exactly was all that about?”

  He scowled. “Yesterday she drove on out to our allotment with a load of supplement. Does that all the time, drives way out there all by herself. She’s got them beefs trained to come to the horn. Blows it, and they come trottin’ over. I’ve told he
r to stop doin’ that. We got us a killer runnin’ around loose. And even if that wasn’t the case, what if some drug mules see an old lady with a truck? They’re gone to get some idea in their heads that maybe would not of been there otherwise. Besides, she’s blind as a bat, can hardly see past the hood. But she don’t listen. You heard her. ‘I give the orders around here. Don’t you be givin’ me any, Blaine Erskine.’ Like I’m eighteen goddamn years old.”

  “But you love her all the same, right?” Tessa said.

  “She sure don’t make it easy.”

  They rode in silence until they came to a T junction marked by carved wooden road signs tacked to a post. Beside it, a metal sign erected by the U.S. Border Patrol warned: CAUTION. SMUGGLING AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY BE ENCOUNTERED IN THIS AREA. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS. Castle wondered aloud what difference awareness of one’s surroundings would make.

  “It means that if you see some marijuanistas, you either pretend you don’t see them, or you tip your hat and say ‘Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos and have a nice day,” Tessa said, offering further instructions in the ways of the West, the modern West.

  They drove north down the main road through the San Rafael Valley. The rangelands loped away toward the mountains in the east and west, the grass the color of champagne in the afternoon light and the cottonwoods marking the course of Santa Cruz River bare of leaves. A coyote trotted across the road ahead, pausing briefly to glance at the oncoming truck before vanishing into the tall grass. Nearing the spot where the road hooked westward, Tessa pointed at a rose-colored adobe ranch house tucked away in a hollow amid a grove of cottonwoods.

  “That’s the Crown A. And since you asked, it’s twenty-five hundred acres deeded, three thousand more under Forest Service grazing allotment, and a hundred and ten head of purebred Angus, grass-fed cradle to grave. Small potatoes compared to the cattle baron sitting on your right.”

  Blaine snorted. “You think the San Ignacio is a big outfit, you ain’t never seen one. I worked for one out past the Santa Catalinas before I went into the army. A lot of it’s housing developments now, but back then? Four hundred seventy-five thousand acres and maybe three, four thousand head. We’d spend half the year gatherin’ from one end of the ranch, and then start all over at the other end.”