Illegal

THIRTY-FIVE

Ninety minutes after leaving Sheriff Deputy Dixon handcuffed to his steering wheel, Jimmy and Tino drove into Mexico under a gray and sickly sky.

Nothing to it. Payne waved his passport under the nose of a border agent and Tino just waved. Easier getting into Mexico, Payne thought, than it would be returning to the States.

He had a simple plan. Trace Marisol's steps. To do that, he had to find El Tigre, the coyote who took her across. Then, to get back across, Payne needed new I.D. and a car that wasn't posted on the computer screens of every cop from San Diego to Yuma.

Yep. Simple.

The starting point was the cantina where Tino and Marisol met El Tigre. Tino seemed confident he could find the place. Payne wondered, but so far the little guy was proving capable. He seemed to be a skillful burglar, and he excelled at what the law called "resisting arrest with violence."

They drove past the New River, a filthy stream bubbling with foam and rank, brown water. Payne guided the Lexus down Imperial Avenue into the urban sprawl of Mexicali. The A/C was working overtime, but he

still sweated heavily. The thermometer on a bank building read 41 degrees. Centigrade. The digital readout on the Lexus dashboard was 106.

They entered a neighborhood where every business seemed to be a bar, a pharmacy, a strip club, or a shop selling purses and pottery to sunburned Yankees in shorts and sandals. Squat, dark women in long dresses strolled the sidewalks, arms outstretched, displaying fake gold chains, chanting "Bargain. Ten dollar."

Payne tuned the radio to a local station. A routine news day in the capital city of the state of Baja. A meth lab had blown up, killing some neighbors. Drug traffickers had assassinated a police chief. And a tunnel had collapsed, killing three people trying to sneak underground to Calexico.

Before long, Payne was lost. They were on a street of storefront dental clinics and doctors whose signs boasted of cheap cirugia plastica. They found their way back to a neighborhood of tourist-trap bars. After cruising the same block three times, Tino shouted, "There! That's where we met the cabron. "

Payne found a place to park, and they walked through swinging saloon doors and into a cantina that looked like a set of a 1950s Western with Randolph Scott and John Wayne. Paddle fans stirred the air but did little to cool it. Wooden wagon wheels were nailed to the walls. On the speakers, Gene Autry was singing, "Back in the Saddle Again."

Sitting at tables were a few sweating, shorts-andsneakered Americans. Looking for cheap thrills or cheap Xanax. Still too early and too hot for much of a crowd. Several men who appeared to be locals sat at the bar. Tino scanned the room, then shook his head. El Tigre was not here.

The bartender, a bilingual Tejano in a Texas A amp;M T-shirt, took their order. A Pacifico for Payne, Pepsi for Tino. The beer and soda both arrived in bottles, both lukewarm.

No, the bartender said. He'd never heard of El Tigre. Sure, plenty of coyotes stopped in there. Drug smugglers, too. They think it's easier to spot Mexican undercover cops in a place like this.

Tino described El Tigre. The bartender laughed. "A fat Mexican man with gold teeth and a crucifix. That narrows it down."

The boy's face showed disappointment.

"Sorry," the bartender said. "No way to keep track of all the hustlers around here. Even if you knew his real name, it wouldn't mean nothing." He looked around, leaned closer to Payne. "But anything else you need, just ask. I got connections."

"I need to sell a car."

"I got a guy for you. A mestizo called 'Stingray.' What do you have?"

"Lexus SUV. Leased. I don't have the title."

"Stingray don't care. He's just gonna sell it to some pachuco. What do you want for it?"

"Another car."

The bartender nodded as if the request was no more unusual than asking for lime with your Corona. He took down Payne's cell number on a paper napkin and said Stingray would call him within an hour. A few seats down the bar, two middle-aged Mexican men in Western shirts and cowboy boots seemed to take an interest in the conversation.

"What's with those guys?" Payne asked.

"Local vaquetons. Street guys. Petty thieves. Drivers for coyotes. Anything that pays." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "You need anything else?"

"Papers. Documents to get us back into the States."

The bartender gave them a no-problema shrug. "I got a Chino with a print shop. Green cards, driver's licenses, whatever you want. Excellent work." He rubbed a thumb against an index finger. " Pero mucho dinero. And this Chino don't take no American Express."

"Got it covered." Payne still had forty-eight hundred bucks and change.

The bartender wrote the address of the print shop on another napkin and slid it toward Payne.

One of the two vaquetons, a man about forty, smelling of tobacco and beer, came up behind Payne and said, "I know three pendejos who call themselves 'El Tigre.' "

"Three?" Payne asked. "How's that possible?"

The man shrugged. "I know two other men who call themselves 'El Leon.' The Lion. Around here, everyone wants to appear tough, even when they are full of shit."

"So who are the three tigers?"

"One lives near Bataques and runs cockfights. He is perhaps seventy years old."

"Not the man," Tino said.

"Another informs for the judicales. A little rodent of a man."

Tino shook his head.

"And there is an El Tigre who owes me money for driving a truck across the desert and getting arrested by La Migra. A pollero who wears a crucifix but will surely rot in hell."

"That's him!" Tino cried.

"His cousin owns a cantina on the other side of the city. If you tell him you have cash and need a pollero, he will set up a meeting."

"What cantina?" the boy asked.

"Five hundred dollars." Looking at Payne now.

"Don't pay him," the bartender advised. "He's hustling you."

The man shrugged. "Your decision."

Payne didn't know if he was being hustled. But they'd come this far, and this was their only lead. He opened his wallet and peeled off five hundred-dollar bills.

"Try a bar called 'El Disco,' " the man told him. "A block from the bullring that's shaped like a flying saucer."

"Let's go, Tino," Payne said.

"One more thing," the man called after them. "El Tigre carries a stiletto in his left boot."