On The Grind

Chapter 52

"Mama brought me across the border about five miles east of here. The coyote was an old man with tangled white hair, who smelled of pigs. He had an empty five-hundred-gallon water truck, and six of us, all members of my family, were jammed inside. He drove us across the desert. It was over a hundred degrees — so hot I didn't think I could live for even a minute longer. Mama held my hand and whispered in my ear. She told me Jesus would protect me, and up till now He has."

Rocky and I were still sitting on the concrete floor of the windowless room waiting to see what our fate would be. It had been over an hour and nobody had opened the door.

"After the old pig farmer let us out, he led us across into the California desert," Rocky went on. "Two of my little cousins and Uncle Pepe died from heat exposure. I was only four years old, but I can still remember every moment of that trip. Sometimes, in the ring, I'd be getting hammered senseless, but in the back of my mind that little four-year-old kid would be saying, Hey, Juanito, you've been through worse"

Sitting here feeing death on the border, I realized for the first time what the Mexican immigrant experience must be like. Admittedly, I was going the wrong direction, being sneaked into, not out of, Mexico. But still, it gave me some perspective.

In L. A., emotions over undocumented immigrants are high and conflicted. Our schools and hospitals have become swamped with non-English-speaking illegals. Liberals want their votes, conservatives want their sweat, but nobody wants them. The situation had already triggered one riot.

Bratano was corrupt but he was born in L. A. Rocky was born in Mexico, but was the gold standard. It didn't change any of the state s social or economic problems, but if I survived this, it gave me something new to consider.

"Mama told me that from dark, dank places, beautiful flowers often grow," Rocky continued. "In America, she said we would be flowers. We would add to, not subtract from, the value of life there. She cleaned floors in other people's houses. I had a paper route, sold magazines door to door and worked after school in a market, but we survived. In '81, we both got amnesty. Two years later, I became a citizen. It was the proudest moment of my life."

An hour later, they came and got us. Manny Avila checked both of our cuffs, then spun each of us around and faced us.

He turned and spoke to Rocky. "You have given up everything and gained nothing."

"Despite all you've stolen, it is you who have nothing," Rocky told him.

We w ere inarched to the rear of the warehouse, where a young, tattooed vato on a forklift was moving a stack of heavy pallets piled high with cartons of canned goods. For some reason he was lifting one pallet at a time off the pile, then repositioning it only a few feet away.

A group of 18th Street Locos stood around watching. After the last one was moved, I finally saw the reason. The pallets had covered a framed, four-foot-square hole in the poured concrete floor. Inside the opening I could see a staircase that led down into a tunnel below the building. It was lit by fluorescent tubes that ran along the east side of the ceiling.

Manny Avila pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and spoke softly. "Or ale ahora, esse."

A few minutes later a heavy wooden box was handed up out of the tunnel and passed to the waiting 18th Street Locos. It was placed on a fresh wooden pallet. Seven more boxes followed. They were each about four feet long by three feet high and were made of reinforced pine nailed together with heavy two-by-four side braces. Russian writing covered the sides of each box. More of the AK-100 machine guns that Agent Love had been tracking.

Eight boxes came out of the tunnel and were loaded onto the pallet. I estimated from their size that they contained six submachine guns each. Then four men I hadn't seen before came up the stairs. I wondered how they had carried the heavy crates.

"Inside," Manny Avila said, and pulled Rocky up from the box he'd been leaning against.

I was pushed forward, with Rocky directly behind me. We were led down a short wooden staircase, which descended about twenty feet. Once we reached the bottom, we were standing on the floor of a long, well-lit tunnel. Sitting before us was a small trolley, which ran on half-gauge tracks. Question answered.

"Walk," Manny ordered.

With two gangsters in front of us and two in back, we started down the tunnel, leaving Manny Avila near the staircase, watching us.

The tunnel narrowed and descended on a ten-to fifteen-degree slant. After descending for about a quarter mile, I estimated we were another twenty feet down, leaving Calexico behind, heading toward Mexicali, where we were undoubtedly going to be murdered.