Pipeline

by Brenda Adcock

  "Before I moved to San Antonio and met Kyle, I taught school not far from here, in Mountain View, for a couple of years. It was a nice little town until ABP moved in."

  "ABP?"

  "American Beef and Pork. They bought the old meatpacking plant in Mountain View and expanded it. Almost as soon as they bought the plant, ABP started bringing in workers from someplace else and laying off the local workers who were in the union. The new workers are earning half what the union workers were."

  I looked at her and shrugged again.

  "Anyway," she continued, "the whole town changed almost overnight. Most of the workers hired by ABP were Hispanic and spoke virtually no English. In fact, the Hispanic population of Mountain View grew by nearly four hundred percent in the time I was there. Hispanic children flooded the schools, and the school district couldn't afford to fund a bigger bilingual program. They asked ABP for more tax money, but the company only made a one-time payment and refused to pay more."

  "Is that why you left?"

  "The workload became intolerable. I was the only Hispanic teacher in the school. Over time, in addition to my teaching duties, I was spending more and more time acting as a translator for administration as well as other teachers. It wasn't the money, and I don't mind hard work, but the town was becoming unsafe. There were a lot of assaults and burglaries. So eventually I decided to apply to one of the San Antonio school districts."

  "Do you think these new employees are illegals?"

  "They had to be, but most of the ones I spoke to about their children were eager to show me their papers. If they were fakes, there's no way I would have known."

  "Did anyone report any of this to INS?"

  "Of course, but when they finally came, they didn't find more than two or three illegals. Another teacher told me she had heard that most of the ABP employees didn't go to work that day. They may have been warned."

  "Did the children stay in school all year?"

  "No, there was a very large turnover of students."

  "Do you know who does the hiring for ABP?"

  "I think they use employment agencies. At least that's what I heard."

  "I'd bet twenty bucks all the employment agencies are located in Eagle Pass or Del Rio with convenient branch offices in San Antonio." I smiled.

  "I don't know anything about that."

  "And this is what you told Kyle?"

  "Yes."

  "So where's the story? Just illegals is nothing, Sarita."

  "They be buyin' them employees," Lena jumped in.

  I hadn't noticed her standing at the door until she spoke.

  "Eavesdropping again, Lena?" I asked with a smile.

  "Some of my people worked for ABP two, three years ago. They the ones what got laid off to make room for them fuckin' illegals."

  "If they've got papers, guess what, ladies, they're not illegals," I said.

  "Shit, Jo, they ain't got no real papers. I can buy you papers today. How many you want?"

  "And where would you get them?"

  "San Antone. Cost you 'bout five hundred. There a woman who buys Social Security numbers from real people this side of the border. When you got that, you good to go."

  "If these illegals are so damn poor, where are they going to get five hundred dollars?"

  "Need eight to get to Mountain View. Costs another three for transportation. The company takes it outta their pay off the top."

  "Hell, I can buy a bus ticket for eighty," I said.

  "Not unless you got papers. Don't get no papers 'til San Antone."

  "So I'm an illegal. I come across the border where I pay some coyote three hundred to drive me to San Antonio. Once I get there, I shell out another five for fake papers that get me on with no questions asked at ABP."

  "You got the whole enchilada right there," Lena said with a smile.

  "I wonder how many illegals make it to Mountain View through this pipeline," I said to myself.

  "A bunch," Lena said. "Maybe fifty a month. Maybe more."

  "They need that many workers?"

  "The old plant only open five days a week with two shifts. ABP open six days a week, three shifts. Dangerous work so lots of 'em only last a coupla months. They ain't union, so the company lays 'em off at about six months anyway."

  "Why?" Sarita asked.

  "Saves a fortune on health benefits and pension plans," I said.

  Lena smiled and nodded. "You got that right. My cousin who worked there pulled in fifteen or sixteen an hour. They bring in these illegals and pay them five max. A third the pay and no extras to worry 'bout."

  "Jesus," I said as I grabbed a calculator from a desk drawer and punched in a few numbers. "If we figure that just one illegal making it to Mountain View earns around eight hundred a month, before taxes, the company is saving sixteen hundred on each non-union worker." Entering more numbers and watching the total grow, I exhaled a low whistle. "On fifty illegals, ABP could be saving eighty thousand per month for an annual savings of nearly a million dollars and that doesn't count what they save on benefits and pensions."

  "It might be more than that," Sarita interjected. "I heard Kyle say that the company was paying someone to find more employees."

  "How much are they paying per employee?" I asked.

  "I don't know," she answered.

  Lena poked Sarita on the shoulder and smiled. "You need to work on that pillow talk, baby girl. Don't let no fool man fall asleep 'fore he tell you everthin' he know."

  Sarita blushed again and looked back at me. "Do you think there's really a story here, Ms. Carlisle?"

  "Maybe. I don't know much about this ABP. We used to sell our beef over at Mountain View, but that was when the old plant was open. I could look into a few things and see what turns up, Sarita. It could still be a zero story. But if I was raking in that kind of money, I might not want it getting out either."

  Sarita picked up a piece of paper and took a pen from her purse. "This is my phone number at school," she said as she wrote. "I don't want Kyle to know I talked to you."

  I took the paper from her and put it in my shirt pocket. "You be careful, too. If someone is watching him, they have to have seen you as well. Okay?"

  She nodded and stood up. I walked around the desk and escorted her out of the house. As she drove away, I went back up the steps. Lena was leaning against the porch railing, smoking what was probably her fiftieth cigarette of the day.

  "You gonna help you kid?" she asked.

  "I said I'd look into it. Maybe I'll drive over to Mountain View tomorrow and poke around a little."

  "Shit!" she exclaimed through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. "Ain't nobody there gonna talk to you. You the wrong cultural persuasion."

  "Then I'll just have to find someone of the right persuasion to help me out. I have a couple of friends in San Antonio who might do it."

  "I do it. But it gonna cost you plenty extra." She smiled.

  "You don't know anything about gathering evidence for an investigation, Lena."

  "What the fuck you gotta know? How to ask some dumbass question? Shit, I got more questions than you got answers."

  "Well, you're not going to do it. I won't allow it."

  "What you mean you won't allow it? I do whatever I damn please. Lena don't need no stinkin' permission from you."

  "Then I won't pay you."

  "I do it for nothin'. What you think 'bout that?"

  "I wish you wouldn't, Lena," I said, changing tactics. "You could get hurt, and I sure as hell wouldn't want that on my conscience."

  She slapped me on the back and laughed. "You like me, Jo. You ain't got no conscience. 'Sides, them fuckers put some a my people outta work. Make me real happy to bring 'em a little grief."

  "Do you have a plan, or are you thinking about barging in with both arms swinging?"

  "I figure I can get me a job where a buncha wetbacks might hang out. Give a man a few drinks and a nice smile, he tell you anythin'."

  "If I go along with thi
s, I want a report every day, and if I tell you to get out, you get your ass out, no questions asked. Deal?" I said, sticking out my hand.

  She grabbed my hand so hard I thought she would break my fingers and pumped it up and down a couple of times before releasing it. "Deal. You know, that a real nice girl you kid got. He a dummy like you?"

  "God, I hope not, Lena. I sure hope not," I answered as I flexed circulation back into my fingers.

  Chapter Twelve

  I DIDN'T KNOW how she did it, but by the following weekend Lena Rubio was employed as a bar waitress and part-time cook at a Mountain View cantina six blocks from the ABP plant. You'd never be able to convince me that work was hard to find when a woman like Lena could just waltz into a place and get hired on the spot. Perhaps the cantina owner thought he could use her as a bouncer if he needed to. She was certainly large enough to take down most men I knew. She began a regular routine of going to work at the cantina in time for the lunch crowd and leaving around ten at night. The distance between Kerrville and Mountain View was about forty miles, and I provided Lena with gas money on a regular basis. She would drop by the ranch on her way to Mountain View and give me an amazingly detailed, if grammatically flawed, report of what she heard and saw each day, even arranging to take Wednesdays off from the cantina to clean my house.

  Two weeks into her new job, Lena came by my house with her usual report. We shared a cup of coffee, and she somehow managed to chain smoke three or four cigarettes with it, looking preoccupied as she fidgeted around in her chair.

  "Something wrong, Lena?" I asked.

  "Naw. Think you can come to Mountain View t'night?"

  "Sure. What time?"

  "'Bout ten-thirty. Got somebody for you to talk to."

  "You want to give me a little more to go on, or is it a national secret?"

  "There this man I met. He says he knows plenty 'bout the ABP illegals."

  "Do you trust him?"

  "Hell, he so drunk most times, he might think ABP is how the fuckin' alphabet starts for all I know. You talk to him and see if he full of shit."

  "Okay, I'll be there. Anything else on your mind? You seem a little jumpy."

  "It's nothin'. Sometimes I get the feelin' somebody watchin' me, but ain't never nobody around."

  "Maybe it's time for you to find another job and leave town."

  "Ain't found nothin' yet. One more week. Gettin' tired of gettin' pawed by them stupid wetbacks anyhow."

  She finished her coffee and lit another cigarette as she pushed herself up from the table. I followed her out of the house and watched her waddle toward her car.

  "You be careful, Lena. Understand?"

  "Yeah, yeah," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  All day I couldn't shake a nagging feeling that something was wrong. It wasn't like Lena to worry about anything. Maybe her feeling that someone was watching her was just the product of an overactive imagination. But then again, maybe it wasn't. I finally decided not to wait until ten-thirty to arrive in Mountain View. I needed to get the lay of the land anyway, and if experience served me right, most little Mexican cantinas usually had pretty good food as long as you didn't go in the back to personally inspect the kitchen. After checking my camera and loading it with highspeed ASA 800 film, I elected to forego the comfort of my Blazer in favor of my father's old ranch truck. No air conditioning or state-of-the-art stereo system, but it was old and faded enough that I hoped no one would be tempted to steal it. I hadn't driven it in a couple of months, but after a little coaxing, the engine finally turned over.

  It had been years since I'd been to Mountain View, and I was surprised at the visible changes in the town. The city limits sign listed its population at 2,500, but even before I reached the downtown business district I knew they had undercounted. It was nearly six, and if what Lena had told me was true, one shift of workers would be leaving ABP in less than ten minutes. It didn't take a mental giant to find the meatpacking plant. All I had to do was follow my nose. There wasn't enough money in the world to entice me to inhale that odor day after day. As a teenager, I had helped my father take cattle to the Mountain View meatpacking plant, but the smell was stronger now than I remembered, probably due to the increased numbers of animals going through the plant.

  As I drove around the perimeter of the plant, I saw that it had been enlarged considerably. Four large tractor-trailers were backed into a loading dock at the rear of the building, and as the pathetic bleating of animals going to slaughter penetrated the late afternoon air a shiver ran up my spine. Circling the block, I noticed a second loading dock with more trucks, many emblazoned with the names of large grocery chains on the side. One door in and one door out. Some of the workers had bragged to Lena about the volume of meat they were able to turn out on a single shift. Parking a block away from the main entrance to the plant, I waited for the shift to end. Nearly a hundred men and women were gathered outside the main gate waiting for the night shift to begin. Snapping a zoom lens onto my Minolta, I took a few quick shots of the workers. If the workers were illegals, they wouldn't be happy to know a stranger was taking their picture.

  At precisely six, an armed guard opened the electric gate at the main entrance. A mass of men and woman began pouring out of the plant and headed eagerly for the gate, mingling briefly with the workers waiting to enter. From where I was sitting, it appeared that well over three-fourths of the workers were Hispanic and predominantly men. Their clothes looked filthy and were covered with reminders of their work. Groups of them passed by my car, carrying on animated conversations in Spanish. Once upon a time I had had a passable knowledge of street Spanish, but now I could only recall enough to catch an occasional phrase.

  While I was struggling to pick up what I could, I noticed a white Lincoln Town Car, with the maximum window tinting allowed by law, pull up to the front gate. The vehicle nosed through a few workers and stopped, so the driver could speak to the guard before proceeding to a parking area near the front door of the building. A large, well-dressed man, who appeared to be Hispanic, got out of the car and looked around. He yelled something at some of the workers, and they moved a little more quickly into the plant. The man, still wearing sunglasses even though the sun had nearly dropped behind the building, proceeded into the building as I managed to take shots of his car. I would get Pauli to trace it through DMV for me later after I enlarged the license plate number.

  Deciding to go to the cantina and play stupid white woman for a while, I started my truck and looked around to make sure there was no one coming before I pulled away from the curb, waiting as another tractor-trailer rumbled by. I hadn't seen it at first, but a metallic blue-gray Mercedes 380 SL was following the truck. Shit, I thought. If I had hit that sucker, my insurance premiums would have doubled overnight. The Mercedes stopped briefly at the plant gate, and the guard waved it through. As I watched, it pulled in next to the Lincoln. Refocusing my camera, I snapped off a couple of shots of the Mercedes. The driver of the Lincoln came out of the plant entrance and walked to the driver's side of the Mercedes, leaning down and speaking to whoever was driving. Finally, the car door opened, and the second driver got out, but my view was blocked by the Hispanic man as they walked back into the plant.

  After waiting for a second tractor-trailer to pass, I made a quick U-turn and drove toward Rafael's Cantina. The cantina was a stand-alone building squeezed in between two larger buildings, and all three looked run down. No pride of ownership here. Fiesta lights hung under a faded striped awning, which was held up by dented aluminum poles. I had no trouble finding a parking space near the cantina and guessed that most of the workers who frequented the businesses along the street couldn't afford vehicles. In fact, the only things on wheels that I had seen worth owning were the two that had pulled into the ABP parking lot. Throwing my jacket over my camera case, I looked around inside the truck to make sure there wasn't anything in sight that might entice someone to break in.

  As I got out, a small group
of four or five men walked past my truck, speaking in subdued voices and glancing at me out of the corners of their eyes. Illegals almost never looked directly at you, thinking perhaps that someone could tell they were illegal by simply looking into their eyes. Two of the men turned into the cantina while the others kept walking.

  Rafael's Cantina was pretty much what I had expected. I'd been in a hundred places like it before, and whether they called it Rafael's Cantina, Omar's Casbah, or Hans' Biergarten, they were basically all the same —poorly lit, smoky places where men and whores hung out trying to get a cheap drink, or a cheap trick, or both. Although there were bare light bulbs scattered around the room, they couldn't have been more than twenty or thirty watts each. Approximately twenty men were gathered around the bar working on brown and green bottles of beer. A hand-lettered sign over the bar advertised the finest Old Mexico had to offer in the way of beer and announced a special on tequila. I was adjusting to the dim lighting and looking for a place to sit when I heard a familiar voice.

  "Lookin' for a seat, sugar?" Lena said.

  I nodded, and Lena lumbered off, motioning for me to follow her. I was amazed at the ease with which she negotiated her way around the cramped tables and loose hands. She stopped on the far side of the room next to a vacant booth and waited for me to reach her. I slid into the booth and waited for a menu.

  "What can I getcha?" she asked without producing a menu.

  "What do you recommend?" I asked with a smile.

  "I don't recommend nothin' in this dump, 'cept maybe the beer, and it's only lukewarm."

  "Got any enchiladas?"

  "Yeah, but Rafael did the cookin' today."

  "Then bring me that and a Corona Light with a twist of lime."

  "What you doin' here so early?" she asked in a low voice as she wrote down my order.

  "Didn't have anything else to do so I thought I'd check out the town while it was still light."

  "How you figurin' to kill four hours? Ain't like we got no floor show or nothin'."

  "I'll just observe and see what turns up."

  "Only thing likely to turn up in here is more cockroaches."