Illegal

FIFTY-ONE

Jimmy pushed Tino flat against the ground, his own chest covering the boy's head.

Save the boy.

The third shot plunked into the pole.

Tino squirmed beneath him. "Stay down!" Payne ordered.

He could feel his own heart beating, unless it was coming from Tino, squashed beneath him.

Two more gunshots splintered wood from the pole, each a bit lower, a bit closer. The shooter seemed to be enjoying target practice.

The shooting stopped. Dust filled the shadowy air. Chickens squawked. From somewhere in the canyon, an owl hooted.

"Who the fuck are you!"

Hands raised, Jimmy got to his knees. "My name's Payne. This is Tino. We don't mean any harm."

"Everybody means harm." The man held a Mini-14 carbine with a curved magazine. "Give me your wallet."

Payne reached in his back pocket and tossed over his wallet. The man thumbed through the currency and took out Payne's business card.

"J. Atticus Payne, Esquire. Whoopty-do." He pocketed the card and tossed back the wallet. "Why you here?"

"I'm looking for the boy's mother. Marisol Perez."

"If she's a beaner, she's gone. This ain't no resort."

The man's eyes danced in different directions. Payne had expected a massive ex-con with a shaved head, arms pumped into tree trunks from hoisting iron. But this was a jumpy little guy with long, greasy hair and bloodshot eyes with enlarged pupils. He wore paint-stained jeans and cowboy boots and no shirt. A long, jagged scar ran across his bony chest. A tattoo, a swastika, was crudely etched on his forehead.

"Are you Chitwood?" Payne asked.

"Fucking-A."

"Wanda told us to come see you."

"The Whale? Fuck her with a fire hose. She got no right sending you up here."

"Wanda said you were a kind soul with a good heart, and you might help us." Payne hadn't told three lies in one sentence since his last trial.

Thoughts trudged across Chitwood's face like a caravan of elephants. "The fuck you talking about?"

"I have Mami 's picture." Tino reached inside his shirt and took the photo from the plastic case hanging from his neck. Fearlessly, he walked toward the gun-toting tweaker, who squinted at the photo.

"The little pistola from the slaughterhouse." Chit-wood cackled a wet laugh and focused on Tino for the first time. "You favor your mama, boy. Coulda used a teddy bear like you at Perryville."

Tino looked confused. Payne chose not to tell him that Perryville was a prison, and from his scrawny looks, Chitwood might have been passed between inmates like a teddy bear himself.

"So you remember her?" Payne said.

"The Whale sent her over after she messed up some foreman at the plant. I shipped her out today."

"Today!" Tino's green eyes went wide.

"You just missed her, chico. Hell, you probably passed each other on the highway."

"Where?" Payne asked. "Where'd you send her?"

"Same place I sent everybody the last two months."

"Tell us!" Tino shouted.

"What's in it for me, you little pecker?"

"The way I see it," Payne said, "you're an important player in the ever-changing tapestry of our nation."

Chitwood snorted. "The fuck's that mean?"

"The warp and woof of the twenty-first century. You're running the new Ellis Island, and doing it with great humanity. So, of course you'll help a boy find his mother."

Chitwood cocked his head and studied Payne as if trying to figure if someone had just tried to sell him a Nigerian gold mine. Then he showed a gap-toothed grin.

"Okay, Payne. I'm warping and woofing. Leave the little beaner here, and I'll ship him out on the next van tomorrow, right to his mama."

"Just tell us where she is, and I'll take him there myself."

Without warning, Chitwood wheeled to his left and fired the carbine, blowing off the head of a chicken scratching the ground fifty feet away. Wanda had been right. For a twitchy guy with jumping eyes and a buzz on, Chitwood was a damn good shot.

"Dinner," Chitwood explained as the headless chicken hopped in a circle, spurting blood, before keeling over. Motioning toward the barn with the muzzle, he said, "Let's the three of us talk a bit. Maybe we can work something out."

Once inside the barn, Chitwood ordered Payne and Tino to sit on a bale of straw while he leaned against a wooden staircase that led to a hayloft. Payne waited to hear how they could "work something out," keeping his eyes on the carbine.

"Nice tat." Payne stared at the man's forehead. "Nazi Low Riders?"

"San Berdoo chapter," Chitwood replied, proudly.

Maybe it was the drugs. Or the loneliness of the place. Whatever the reason, Chitwood started talking about himself and didn't want to stop. He droned on about stealing cattle, selling guns, and smuggling drugs from Mexico, all before he was twenty-one. Then prison, parole, and living off the land in the Patagonia Mountains north of Nogales. For a while, some legitimate work on isolated ranches, where the best-looking females were sheep.

Chitwood boasted that he knew the deserts and mountains better than the vultures and bobcats. That's why the D.E.A. hired him-he hawked up some spit at the thought-as a tracker.

He could "cut signs," as the trackers say, following illegals through rocky country that showed no footprints. A tiny stone turned the wrong side up. A snapped branch. A broken spiderweb or a shred of clothing on the thorns of a cholla cactus. If a man pays attention, it's amazing what his senses can tell him. "If the wind's right, I can smell their shit half a mile away."

"Now, about the boy's mother," Payne said, "where did you-"

"And I can tell Mexican shit from white man's shit. It's all those beans and peppers and gristle."

"My mother!" Tino blurted, unable to take it any longer. "You said you knew where she is."

"Relax, chico. You stay here tonight, help with chores while your lawyer friend goes back home. Like I said, I'll send you off to your mama tomorrow."

Chitwood was looking at Tino the way a dieter looks at a chocolate eclair.

"Won't work that way," Payne said. Trying not to show his fear.

"Shut up! I need you gone. Zaga's gonna be pissed enough. I ain't gonna start explaining what some lawyer's doing poking around."

"That your boss? Zaga? Why not let me talk to him?" Payne thinking that someone sane and sober- anyone-would be preferable to dealing with this nut job.

"You ain't got a vote on this."

"I just want to tell him that the boy and I are a team. Where I go, he goes."

Chitwood pointed the carbine at Payne's chest. "Keep talking and my chickens will be pecking out your eyes by suppertime. You're gonna git, and the boy's gonna stay."

Payne took inventory. Wire cutters on a Peg-Board. A hammer, a saw, a coil of rope, assorted tools. All too far away. Chitwood would drop him with a single shot just like one of his chickens. On the floor was the can of black paint and the open jar of turpentine. Out of the corner of his eye, Payne saw Tino following his gaze.

"I gotta pee," Tino said.

His cue, Payne thought. The Tino Perez distraction, just like in Quinn's house and with the deputy on the highway.

"Piss over there, chico." Chitwood gestured to a pile of straw thick with horse dung. Nearby, leaning against a post, a long-handled pitchfork.

Tino shot Payne a quick sideways glance before walking toward the straw pile. The two of them were beginning to communicate wordlessly.

As he neared the closest cargo van, Tino stumbled and fell. One foot kicked the paint can, which overturned, splattering black paint onto the driver's door.

"Shit!" Chitwood grabbed a rag and hustled toward the van. "Stupid little fuck!"

Payne sprang to his feet.

Sensing movement, Chitwood wheeled around and swung the carbine toward Payne.

Tino grabbed the glass jar, yelled, "Pinche puto," and splashed turpentine into Chitwood's eyes.

Chitwood's scream was high-pitched and shrill. Payne barreled into him, knocking him into the cargo van. They bounced off a side panel, and Payne got both hands on the carbine, wrestling it free. The gun flew across the barn. Howling, Chitwood grabbed the wire cutters and slashed at Payne, who took a step backward and slipped in the wet paint. As he fell, Chitwood came at Payne, wheeling the blade left and right.

Payne was on his rump as Chitwood advanced, changing his grip on the wire cutters, prepared to plunge downward. Then the Nazi Low Rider grunted and looked down in disbelief. Stuck into the top of his dusty cowboy boot and pinning his foot to the paint-slicked wood floor was a pitchfork. Hanging on to the handle, his feet airborne like a pole vaulter, was Tino, who shouted, "I'm nobody's teddy bear, cabron!"