Illegal

NINETY-ONE

The day baked with desert heat, the Santa Ana winds pushing the smog out to sea. The San Miguel Cementerio, leaves rustling on its spindly pear trees, was a patch of green in the parched foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains a few miles from Pasadena.

Next to the open grave, three people were squeezed so close together as to seem to have one body. His hair trimmed and brushed back, Tino stood rigidly, a stoic little man in a crisp new suit. He clutched a bouquet of white lilies so tightly that the stems might snap. On one side, Sharon gripped the boy's shoulder. On the other side, Payne, his left arm bandaged, wrapped his right arm around Tino's waist.

A somber altar boy from Saint Phillipe the Apostle swung a silver thurible over the grave, smoke wisping upward before disappearing into the breeze. The air smelled of incense, freshly cut grass, and moist earth. An elderly priest, a Mexican-American man in his sixties with a kindly face and a soft voice, prayed aloud. Payne tried to listen but heard only fragments.

"God's merciful love."

"Communion of saints."

"Consolation to the living."

Payne did not feel consoled. He felt guilty. Again.

He had moved as quickly as he could. When Tino grabbed the knife, Payne snatched the bat from the ground. Then everything happened at once. Rutledge wheeled the gun toward Tino just as Payne swung the bat, and Marisol moved into the line of fire. Rutledge pulled the trigger a split second before the bat crushed his temple with an explosion of bone and blood. The. 45 slug caught Marisol just above the sternum. The half-dozen gunshots Cardenas fired into Rutledge's body were unnecessary, except for the chief's own needs.

Now Payne looked down at Tino, whose lips trembled, but whose eyes remained dry.

"It's okay to cry," Payne whispered.

The little valiente shook his head.

"Don't hold it in like I did."

All the while knowing that tears could never wash away the anger or the pain. Thinking that Tino needed someone who understood, someone whose heart had been seared by the same branding iron, Payne squeezed the boy even harder.

The priest sprinkled holy water and asked the angels to carry Marisol to paradise. Tino stepped forward and fluttered the lilies into the grave, where they landed like white birds, fanning out across the mahogany coffin.

With a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder, the priest said, "Agustino, would you recite the Oraciones por las almas?"

"No," the boy replied.

The priest's eyes widened.

"In English. My mother would have wanted English."

The priest nodded, and Tino spoke in a clear voice, "Oh God, who hast commanded us to honor our father and our mother…"

"It's my fault," Payne whispered to Sharon.

She shook her head. "You climbed out of that hole and did something for someone else."

"In Thy mercy have pity on the soul of my mother, and forgive her her trespasses."

"I failed him."

"You saved him. And yourself."

"Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness."

Sharon leaned closer. "Forgive yourself, Jimmy. For everything."