Illegal

FORTY-SIX

At just past ten the next morning, Jimmy and Tino sat in the Mustang at a railroad crossing on Shell Canyon Road outside Ocotillo. A freight train rumbled past, a seemingly endless procession of cattle cars, stuffed with Herefords and Angus and all manner of bovines. Thousands of animals, millions of dollars on the hoof.

Payne glimpsed the Sugarloaf Lodge blinking through the rushing cars. Once the train had passed, he crossed the tracks and parked in the shade of a billboard for Truly Nolen Pest Control. Dead ahead was a rocky range called the Coyote Mountains. Given the circumstances, Payne thought, an apt name.

A dry wind pelted the windshield with sand. The Sugarloaf was Wanda the Whale's stash house, the place El Tigre dropped off Marisol. There could be armed guards and pit bulls and who knows what. Payne was reasonably certain there would be no doorman and concierge.

"What are we waiting for?" Tino asked.

"I need to plan our assault."

"Why don't we just find the Whale and ask her about Mami?"

"Not how it's done." As if he knew.

He scanned the property. Six squat cabins with cedar siding and drooping porches, spread out across a few scrubby acres. No swimming pool, no restaurant, and damn little shade from the desert sun. A cow fence of unpainted logs ran along the perimeter. A few feet inside the row of logs was another fence, this one of barbed wire. A scarlet eucalyptus tree bloomed in the yard of the nearest cabin. A sign read: Office and No Vacancy. Parked under the tree was an Eldorado convertible, vintage late-sixties. The car had once been red, and now was the rusty orange of a Tequila Sunrise.

"Only one car out front," Payne said. "No one around, but the sign says the place is full."

"So?"

"You ever see Rockford Files?"

Tino shook his head.

"Classic show. We'll watch it sometime."

Tino scowled. "Don't say stuff you don't mean, Himmy."

"I mean it. Channel 56 still shows reruns. Once we find your mom, if she says it's okay, we can hang out."

"?Verdad?"

"You bet. For a career criminal, you're not a bad kid." Payne tousled the boy's dark hair.

The boy flashed a smile. "So, what's Rocket Files have to do with anything?"

" Rockford Files. Jim Rockford's a private eye. This is where he'd walk up to the office and tell the woman behind the counter he's looking for someone named Marisol Perez. The woman says, 'Never heard of her.' But Rockford won't let up. Then a big goon with prison tats comes out of a back room and growls, 'This guy giving you trouble, Agnes?' Rockford makes some smart-ass remark, and the guy picks him up by the neck and throws him halfway to L.A."

"But this Rockford doesn't give up, right?"

" Exactamente, kiddo. He gets his nose bloodied but never quits."

"Just like you, Himmy. So what do we do now?"

"We avoid the office. We circle around, check the cabins in back, away from the road."

The boy grinned. "Great plan, Rockford."

They got out of the car, both wearing brand-new Nike Zooms, black high-tops, the Kobe model. Payne didn't like Kobe Bryant, and he didn't like the sneakers they'd just bought in Ocotillo. Still, they beat the bowling shoes he'd worn on the way out of Mexico.

With Payne leading, they hopped over the log fence at the side of the property, then paused at the barbed wire. Three strands, rusty and dangerous. While Payne considered how to avoid leaving a trail of blood, Tino jammed a sneaker on the middle strand and pushed it down. He grabbed a smooth spot on the top wire and pulled it up, gesturing to Payne to duck under. Payne got through, then he did the same for Tino, giving him an admiring look.

"Ay, Himmy. All Mexicanos know how to get through barbed wire."

They jogged along the edge of the property, hunched over like commandos, staying as far as possible from the front cabin with the Office sign. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. It sounded like a big, unhappy dog.

The closest cabins appeared empty. They circled the perimeter. Still nothing, until they reached the cabin at the rear of the property. From inside, a scratchy Spanish-language radio station played a ballad.

" 'Cielito Lindo,' " Tino said. "Ranchero music."

As they drew closer, they heard overlapping voices, speaking in Spanish. The morning was already hot, and Payne wondered why no one was on the porch or in the yard. Then he saw the slab of wood, a two-by-four, in a slot, sealing the front door. The windows were covered with perforated metal screens. The residents were locked in.

Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos.

They climbed the steps to the cabin. Payne lifted the board from its slot and opened the door. Stifling inside. Bare floors and walls. No beds, no chairs, no sofas. An open toilet and a sink toward the rear. But the place was not empty. Maybe three dozen men, women, and children, with backpacks, plastic bags stuffed with clothes, and water jugs. The talking stopped dead, everyone staring at them.

No Marisol Perez.

"?Hola, amigos!" Payne called out, with as much cheer as he could muster.

A man clicked off the radio. The only sound was a horsefly buzzing and banging against one of the screened windows. Then, a girl of about ten started to cry. The migrants exchanged glances and raised their hands in surrender.

"They think you're La Migra, " Tino told Payne.

"Tell them I'm a friend. Ask where they're going from here. It might be the same place your mom was sent."

Tino began chattering, and the hands eased down. As several men replied in staccato Spanish, Payne looked toward the migrants. Most avoided his gaze. Men with work-hardened hands and wary eyes. Exhausted women clutching their children.

Dark, broad Indian faces, their ancestry tracing back centuries, to the Aztecs. A man and woman with Asian features. Others seemed to be mestizos, the mixed-blood descendants of Europeans and indigenous peoples.

Tino nodded toward two men in wife-beater tees with bandannas low on their foreheads. "Those two cholos say they're going to L.A. to get rich selling drugs and robbing gabachos."

"Great. That'll make Cullen Quinn happy."

"The Guatemalans over by the shitter say they're going to some vegetable farms upstate, but they don't know where. Those two guys by the window were promised jobs in a gypsum quarry right down the road."

Payne remembered the signs for Plaster City, which wasn't a city or even a town. Just a quarry and a factory turning gypsum into plaster for drywall.

"So why are they still here? They could practically walk there."

"Jobs never happened. There've been immigration raids. Everything's on hold."

One of the men, thin and wiry in a long-sleeve plaid shirt, dusty jeans, and work boots, said, "Sin papeles no hay trabajo."

Without papers, no work.

"Different now. Very bad," the man said, trying out his English.

Tino gestured toward a man in the rear of the cabin. "That guero says he's a fisherman. The coyotes promised him a job on a sardine boat. A couple of others, landscaping work; and two of the women, janitors in office buildings in San Diego. But they've been here three days, and no one's shown up to get them."

"Who the fuck are you? The employment agency?"

Payne wheeled at the sound of the gravelly voice. Filling the doorway was a humongous woman in purple L.A. Lakers shorts. "Are you Wanda?" "No, dipshit. Ah'm Paris Fucking Hilton." The woman's thighs ballooned out of her shorts like sausages bursting through their casing. Massive breasts, pale as uncooked biscuits, oozed from the sides of her pink sleeveless cropped tee, the word "Princess" spelled out in sequins. Her stringy, bleached hair was fastened to spongy curlers, though it was doubtful a formal evening was in the works. Her jelly-roll belly, the color of Crisco, spilled over the top of her shorts. She raised her right arm, the flesh quivering like flan on a slippery plate. Her meaty hand gripped a three-foot-long machete.

"Ya'all here to poach my beaners?" A voice like spoons banging tin pots. Hillbillies and hayrides and banjos.

"No, ma'am," he said.

"Last time a low-life poacher came around, Ah fed his pecker to my bull mastiff."

"I'm not a trafficker. I swear."

Waving the machete in Payne's face, she said, "You're not a cop. Ah pay enough of 'em to know." She looked Payne up and down, exhaling a little piggy snort. "You look like a city boy." She pushed the flat end of the machete against his hip and turned him a full 360. "Kind of cute, but you got a skinny butt. So what the fuck you doing on my property?"

"I'm looking for a woman."

"Well, you found one, cutie pie." She jabbed the tip of the machete into Payne's midsection, just south of his navel. "But Ah doubt you got enough sweet meat on your bones to do the job."

"The job?"

"Ah ride cowgirl style."

Payne had no answer, other than a lip-trembling, openmouthed gape.

Wanda the Whale let out a laugh that shook her shoulders and rippled her stomach rolls. "Jesus, Ah haven't seen a look like that since Ah strangled a man between my thighs."