Illegal

FORTY-ONE

In Mexicali, heading north toward the border, the souped-up Mustang passed rows of whitewashed wooden crosses, printed with block-lettered names. Honoring the pollos who died trying to reach El Norte.

Tino watched the crosses fly by, reading the names in the headlights.

Serafin Rivera Lopez.

Pedro Morranchel Quintero.

Graciela Gonzalez.

Several crosses simply said, No Identificado.

Tino felt his gut tighten. He knew where his mother had been left. A stash house called "Sugarloaf Lodge." But was she still there? She could have been taken someplace. To another state, even. What if he searched the rest of his life and never found her? What if she was no identificado?

It was nearly midnight, but the road north was crowded. Campesinos from the countryside pushed carts filled with fruits and vegetables. Along the berm, women sold travel gear. Backpacks, plastic jugs of water, cans of tuna and sardines. Pollos buying last-minute supplies before venturing north.

They passed a small stucco building painted red. Grupo Beta. A government agency that tried to discourage border crossings. Letters two feet high were painted across the front of the building. La Busqueda de un Sueno Americano Puede Ser Tu Peor Pesadilla- The search for the American dream could be your worst nightmare.

Too late for that warning, Tino thought.

They traveled in silence a few moments before the boy blurted out, "Who's Adam?"

"What?" The question seemed to stun Payne. "Why do you ask?"

"This morning, on the highway, when the cop asked my name, you said 'Adam.' "

Payne let out a long train whistle of a sigh. "My son. He was killed in a car accident. Fourteen months ago. Drunk driver."

"Garcia? The Mexican?"

Payne shot him a look. "How'd you know that?"

"Back in the pretty lady's kitchen. You said you were going to Mexico to kill a man named Garcia."

"Jesus. What else did you hear?"

"Everything you said. Why do grown-ups think kids aren't listening? Where's Garcia now?"

"The best I can figure, back in Oaxaca. Fled the scene of the accident. Left the country."

"No papers, right?"

"Right."

Tino tried to process the information. "What about those Mexicans who got fried in the trailer truck?"

"What about them?"

"You helped them."

"I helped the survivors stay in the country."

"Before or after your accident?"

"Before. Why?"

Tino took a moment, not sure he should ask. "If it had been the other way around, if Garcia had killed Adam first, would you have still helped the mojados?"

"I don't hold it against the entire country that one drunk Mexican ran a red light. But I haven't gone out of my way to help anyone-American, Mexican, or Martian-since Adam died."

"You still would have helped the mojados."

"What makes you think so?"

"You're helping me, aren't you?"

Payne shot him a glance. "Sharon made me, kiddo."

"Sure, Himmy. Sure."

Turning back to the road, Payne swerved to give room to three old Mexican men walking along the pavement. They wore long-sleeve shirts buttoned up to the neck and carried canvas sacks. Tino had seen men like this all his life. But now, for some unexplainable reason, now the Mexicanos looked foreign to him.

"Himmy, I'm real sorry for you and the pretty lady."

Payne took his hand off the wheel and tousled Tino's mop of hair. "Thanks, kiddo."

"I saw his picture. Adam, I mean."

"Where?"

"In your office. He was wearing a uniform."

"Little League. He liked to catch. Used to wear his shin guards around the house."

"That baseball bat." Tino gestured toward the backseat. "Adam's, right?"

"Right."

"I bet you coached his team, too."

"Yep. You keep this up, the L.A.P.D. will give you a detective's shield." Payne was quiet another moment before saying, "It wasn't all Garcia's fault."

"What do you mean? You said he was drunk and ran a red light."

"I was looking out the window at the ocean. Just before Garcia hit us, I was watching some terns feeding in the shore-break. One second, two seconds, maybe. If I'd been looking straight ahead, maybe I'd have seen Garcia's truck coming. Maybe I could have done something."

The memory crashed over Payne, swept by an incoming tide of bone-chilling cold.

If this, maybe that. A second here, a second there.

If he'd seen the truck…

He'd be playing catch with Adam today. He'd still be married to Sharon. He wouldn't have gone nuts and said: "Screw the rules; I don't care anymore." He wouldn't be the guy the cops set up to bribe a judge. At this very moment, he wouldn't be sneaking back into the United States with phony papers, in a stolen car.

His entire adult life, what Payne wanted most was to be a good father. His own father had abandoned the family when Jimmy was eleven. Leonard Payne considered himself both a wheeler-dealer and an inventor. That sounded better than traveling salesman and tinkerer. The man simply could not hold a job. What he could hold was a grudge. Deluded and bitter, he filed dozens of lawsuits, claiming to have invented various sports drinks, protein bars, and muscle-building powders. With each invention came a "royal screwing," as he called it, "a corporate corn-holing by the big boys."

Leonard Payne went through periods of manic highs, working on top-secret projects in the garage, followed by bouts of near-suicidal depression.

Once he took off, the man never called, never wrote, never sent money. Payne pictured him selling gym equipment on commission somewhere, still railing against the big boys who won't let a man get ahead.

Payne wondered which was worse for a boy-to know the father who abandoned him or, like Tino, to never have even met him. He tried to stir up a warm memory of Leonard Payne. Remembered his father taking him bowling.

No, that's a lie. We never bowled together.

Leonard bowled and dragged Jimmy along to watch. San Bernardino, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Banning. Anywhere his old man could find suckers to bet. First for beer, then a dollar a pin, then five dollars a pin. It was how Leonard made the rent money. A broad-shouldered man, he threw a sweeping, powerful hook with his custom-made "Black Beauty." The ball would scatter the pins with a thunderous clatter, probably because it weighed sixteen pounds, thirteen ounces, nearly a full pound over the legal limit.

A hustler and a cheater.

"Your head's playing tricks on you, Himmy," Tino said, dragging him back to the present.

"What?"

"The accident. No way it was your fault, man."

"The week after it happened, I was supposed to take Adam on a trip. Just the two of us. Visit every Major League ballpark west of the Mississippi. Had it all planned, down to the last hot dog."

"My mother always says, Si quieres que Dios se ria, dile tus planes. If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

"Your mother's a smart woman."

Payne heard Tino suck in a breath. "There, Himmy."

Just ahead, sodium vapor lights turned the night air into a misty green fog. Traffic slowed as U.S. border agents guided cars into lanes approaching the station. Vendors in baseball caps hawked sodas, pastries, and souvenirs. A grim midnight carnival.

"Mexico" was painted on the asphalt. If they could run this gauntlet, Payne thought, they would see "U.S." on the far side of the station. He sensed Tino stiffen as they approached the invisible line that separated the two countries. The line that separated the boy from his mother, his past from his future.

They were surrounded now. Cars, in front, on both sides, and behind them.

"We're gonna make it, kiddo."

Tino shot him a look. Wanting to believe but maybe not quite buying it. Which made two of them.