Garrison was saying something about a bag and Tijuana. “Grab your Dopp kit and pack some clothes, buddy.”
Pescatore hunkered behind the back of the folding chair.
“Arleigh,” he said, the first name sounding peculiar in his ears. “There’s no way I’m running to Tijuana, man. I’ll take my chances here. What are they gonna charge us with?”
“Federal charges. Maybe homicide too.”
“Homicide?”
“Three guys got killed last night. They could say it was in the course of a criminal act. Like if a guy robs a bank and his partner gets killed by the guard.”
“Give me a break.”
“Listen, that’s how they squash you when your time comes.”
“I shot a Mexican cop last night. They’d eat me alive down there.”
“Don’t play stupid. My guys in TJ are gonna look out for us. If they tell the judiciales to carry our luggage, they’ll carry our fucking luggage. And you know it.”
“I don’t know. If I run, I’ll run to Chicago, Canada or somewhere.”
Garrison stood and stretched. The jacket came open so the shoulder holster was plainly visible.
“I’m not asking your opinion, Valentine,” he growled. “Police up your situation and get with the program. Enough jiving.”
Pescatore’s hands sweated as he changed in his bedroom, strapping on his shoulder holster over civilian clothes. He was barely aware of the items he stuffed into a duffel bag. Garrison stood in the bedroom doorway chattering lazily about how this was going to be easier for Pescatore than for him. How Garrison had a five-hundred-thousand-dollar house in Bonita to worry about. How it was a good thing he had money stashed, he had experience shipping out on short notice.
Garrison was keeping an eye on him, hurrying him along. His vigilance opened up an alternate scenario: What if Isabel had told the truth? What if Garrison were lying? Perhaps he knew Pescatore was an informant. Perhaps it was a ruse to lure him down south and whack him.
Hauling the duffel bag into the living room, Pescatore reached for the phone.
“Who ya calling?”
“Angelina, man. I promised to take her to the movies tonight.”
He intended to call Isabel Puente and fake a conversation with Angelina in order to sound the alarm. Garrison smothered his hand on top of the phone.
“Negative. Let’s go.”
Pescatore felt a flash of anger: This is my house you’re pushing me around in, you gray-eyed storm-trooping ape.
That’s OK, he thought, I still got my cell phone. But then his rage flared again, blending with despair. The cell phone battery was dead. He hadn’t charged it because he had spent the night at Isabel’s apartment. Now the phone sat in its sheath on his belt, useless. The price of pleasure: He had let down his guard.
They hauled their bags down the stairs. He followed Garrison around the corner to his Cherokee.
“You drive, Valentine.”
Pescatore reached to catch the tossed keys. “How come?”
“I got some phone calls to make, buddy.”
Yeah right, Pescatore thought, starting the Cherokee with a roar. He wants me under control. He wants my hands occupied. The gloomiest scenario occurred to him: What if his fears about both Puente and Garrison betraying him were correct? In that case, it was just a question of whether he got whacked or locked up. Right now, getting whacked looked like the favorite.
“I’m thirsty, man, lemme get a Big Gulp,” he suggested at the stoplight before the freeway ramp, eyeing a 7-Eleven.
“Drive.”
He’s on to me, dammit, Pescatore thought. I’m DOA.
His hands throbbed from clutching the wheel. Rolling south around the curve of the freeway past the steel ramparts of downtown, past the high slender span of the Coronado Bay Bridge, he remembered the speed trap near National City. On his way to work he often saw a California Highway Patrol car work the area around a viaduct, as busy as a shark at feeding time.
He nudged the accelerator. He turned on the radio as a diversionary tactic.
In a voice both pompous and folksy, a local talk-show host was complaining about Mexicans on weekends: Mexicans at the zoo, Mexicans in Horton Plaza. Can’t get away from them. Can’t kick them out either, because I guess these are the legal ones.
“Later with that noise,” Pescatore scoffed, twirling the radio dial, increasing speed.
Garrison grunted. He was fiddling with his cell phone.
Pescatore tuned to a cross-border bilingual freeway report, then a Tijuana program. An older Mexican woman’s amplified telephone voice, kitchen noise in the background, complained about graffiti, tattoos, drug use and other American influences. Decadence, she said. Bad manners. Imperialism.
One side of the border is always bitching about the other, Pescatore thought.
He was going over eighty miles per hour. The speed-trap overpass approached. He left the dial on a banda tune, oompah tuba and manic trumpets and rattling drums. It was one of the top Baja stations: X99, La Que Pega y Mueve. The One That Hits and Moves.
“Ah-hiiiiyy,” he whooped mariachi-style, cranking the volume, edging past eighty-five.
“Hey Valentine, slow the fuck down, what’re you doing?”
Too late. Pescatore almost cheered the lights erupting in the rearview mirror, the CHP cruiser swinging into the lane behind him, gathering velocity around a curve.
Your turn to sweat, Pescatore thought. Buddy.
“I do not believe this,” Garrison snarled. “A Chippie. You stupid asshole.”
“My fault,” Pescatore said. He maintained speed in order to irritate the CHP officer and make him suspicious.
“Pull it over right now,” Garrison said. “Goddammit. Just take it easy and let’s get this done with.”
Garrison told Pescatore to get his badge out; they were going to claim to be working plainclothes. Garrison’s hand went under his vest. Pescatore figured that Garrison was worried they would run his license and registration. If the feds were getting ready to scoop them up, one thing might lead to another. And if the indictment talk was just a setup to murder Pescatore, Garrison did not want to leave a record that he had been with him that morning.
Pescatore took his time pulling over. The CHP officer got out and approached in the rearview mirror: a black officer in his forties. The strong-legged stride of an aging sprinter, a crisp tan uniform, gold-framed glasses. As the officer came around to the window on the passenger side, keeping the Cherokee between him and the high-speed traffic, Pescatore saw him unsnap the flap of his holster.
Pescatore raised his voice over the drone of passing cars, reaching in front of Garrison to push his badge and license at the officer.
“How ya doin’, Officer, Border Patrol, we-”
Garrison blocked Pescatore with his back. He proffered his own badge and declared: “Hi there, U.S. Border Patrol antismuggling, sir. We’re conducting a surveillance here.”
“Wait a minute, one at a time,” the CHP officer commanded in a flat voice, examining Pescatore’s badge and license. “I don’t care who you are, son, you need to slow this vehicle down.”
“Yes sir, but we got this hot pursuit going,” Pescatore said. He winked, grimaced, bobbed back and forth behind Garrison, hoping to catch the guy’s attention. The officer’s glasses had a designer’s logo on the frame and were tinted, impeding eye contact.
“Pursuit? We weren’t notified. CHP is s’posed to get notified on a pursuit.”
The Chippie’s right hand snapped and unsnapped the holster flap. He stood in a textbook ready stance, knees slightly bent, shoulder pointed forward, front foot aligned with the shoulder.
“Not a pursuit, no sir,” Garrison said quickly, anger barely contained. “We’ve got a load vehicle in our sights. A smuggler. Problem is he’s halfway back to The Line by now.”