Nine o’clock. Nothing happened at 806, except that the light in the front window went out. But there was still a light on at the rear; I could see the faint glow of it against the wet dark.
If he was out somewhere and coming back, I thought, wouldn’t she put the front porch light on for him? No, hell, not necessarily … not if he was going to park under the carport too and go in through the rear door. For all I knew, that glow over there was theback porch light.
Nine thirty. And that was all I could take-of the cold, of the waiting, of the boredom. Besides, the later it got and the longer I sat here, the shorter the odds that somebody would notice me and call the cops. I wasn’t even sure why I’d sat here this long, put myself through the discomfort. If Vega was shacking up with Teresa Melendez, what did it matter if I braced him tomorrow instead of tonight? I’d put almost a month into this investigation; another few hours hardly mattered much.
I wondered if I was becoming an obsessive-compulsive where my work was concerned. I’d always had that tendency, always been able to control it before it got out of hand. But now? The earthquake had something to do with intensifying it, but mostly the cause was those three desperate months in the mountain cabin. Another little legacy of change. And something else for me to worry about in my spare time.
* * * *
I made myself go home, instead of out to Taraval and the Hideaway. It would have been after ten by the time I got there, and some of the regulars would already have left. If I was ever going to find out anything from them, which at this point seemed unlikely, it wouldn’t be tonight.
There was one message waiting for me. From Eileen Lujack. She said she’d decided to call me because she was going to spend the evening with a friend. She said my home number was on the business card I’d given her, as if she were telling me something I didn’t know. She said, “I thought about what you said today and I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to keep investigating. I really don’t. I think the best thing for everybody is if we just let the dead alone and the living go on living.”
Coleman Lujack’s phrase, word for word.
* * * *
Chapter 13
The San Francisco branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is downtown on Sansome, in the U.S. Customs complex. I got there at nine thirty on Friday morning, found the office open for business, and talked my way into an audience with a deputy district director named Clement Orloff.
Orloff was young, officious, conservative in attitude and appearance, and a hard-line INS loyalist. He didn’t want to tell me anything until I told him exactly what I was working on, complete with names and addresses. I said I wasn’t there to turn anybody in; I said I needed more time and information before I could make any direct accusations; I said I wasn’t trying to hide anything or I wouldn’t have come to see him in the first place, would I? We argued a little, and I stonewalled him, and finally his zealousness got the better of him and he agreed to answer my questions. But I’ll be damned if he didn’t insist on taping the conversation.
“Tell me about the coyotes,” I said.
“Smugglers,” Orloff said promptly. “Also known as ‘travel agents.’ Scum, as far as we’re concerned. They prey on their own kind.”
“Smuggle illegals across the border, is that it?”
“No. To U.S. points after the illegals have found their way across.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“For a fee, the coyotes arrange and provide transportation from border areas to cities up north-areas where other illegals congregate and where they can find work.”
“The coyotes operate down around San Diego, then?”
“Thick as flies,” Orloff said. “The illegals need them to get past the San Onofre checkpoint.”
“What’s that?”
“The last Border Patrol checkpoint, on Highway Five sixty-seven miles from the border-our last defense against illegal immigration into Southern California. If an illegal gets safely past San Onofre, there’s not much to stop him from reaching the L.A. area and then migrating elsewhere.”
“Are the coyotes organized?”
“Some are, some aren’t.”
“But there are large rings?”
“Certainly.”
“Big money in that type of smuggling, right?”
“Lord, yes. Illegals come over the border in droves. We caught well over a million last year, and that is no more than twenty-five percent of the estimated total influx. Most of the ones that are caught and sent back try again until they make it.”
“Looking for the promised land,” I said.
“Mmm. Of course, IRCA has been a major deterrent. Otherwise the situation would be much worse.”
“IRCA. That’s the immigration reform law passed a few years ago?”
“Yes. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of ‘Eighty-Six. It provides amnesty for qualified families, and penalizes employers for hiring illegals and requires them to file documents verifying that their foreign workers are authorized to be in this country. An excellent program.”
“Seems to me I’ve heard rumblings that it isn’t working as well as expected.”
“Of course it’s working,” Orloff said defensively. “More than four million illegals have achieved amnesty so far. But that’s not enough for La Raza Centra Legal and the other liberal groups.”
“What’s their position?”
“Oh, that IRCA hasn’t eliminated the basic economic incentive for immigrants to come here, and that it hasn’t really slowed the influx of illegals because a lot of the amnesty people are providing an established network to bring in impoverished friends and relatives. They want all sorts of additional reforms.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Doesn’t it, though.”
I was not about to argue the point with him; trying to argue with a loyal bureaucrat is a job for other zealots and masochists. I said, “Let’s get back to the coyotes. How do they operate?”
“Well, the organized rings have brokers who work both sides of the border. Mexicans with valid U.S. visas that allow them to travel back and forth undisturbed. On U.S. soil they congregate where the illegals do after crossing. In San Ysidro, for instance, there’s a supermarket ten blocks from the border that is a coyote hotbed.”
“If you know about these places, why can’t you shut them down?”
“We try, God knows. Agents from Brown Field-that’s the main Border Patrol station down there-raid them periodically. And undercover agents from our antismuggling unit do what they can to infiltrate the gangs. But there are too many illegals, too many coyotes, and too few of our people., .” He made a frustrated gesture.
I asked, “What happens once the deals are set and money changes hands?”
“The illegals are loaded into cabs and driven to safe areas,” Orloff said. “Then they’re transferred to private vehicles-trucks of different sizes, passenger cars. The coyotes pack them in like sardines for the runs north. Illegals have been found under the hood and crammed into the trunk, sucking on hoses for air. More than a few have died en route.”
Christ. “What’s the going rate per person?”
“Depends on the final destination. Seventy-five dollars to Santa Ana, one hundred dollars to L.A. Some of the freelance coyotes charge more. They’re even worse scum; they’ve been known to abandon passengers after being paid.”