“Easy. No seas pendejo.” His voice muffled, Buffalo spoke Spanish into the radio.
By now the CHP had spread the alert to police on both sides of the border, Pescatore thought. Surely someone had seen the gunfight on the freeway. Pescatore had been terrified that a quick-thinking commuter with a cell phone would be their undoing. But Garrison had called his buddy Nacho, the Mexican customs supervisor, who had waved Valentine safely across The Line into Tijuana, bloody passenger and all.
The squad car trailed Pescatore at a distance, no lights or siren. After a few minutes listening to Buffalo alternate between the radio and a second phone, Pescatore asked: “Now what, Buffalo?”
“Nothing. The municipales are on the home team. You just listen and I’m gonna talk you in, cabrón.”
The boulevard curved along the base of hills. He reported landmarks: a twin-towered hotel, a racetrack, a golf course. Buffalo told him to take a right. The street rose into a neighborhood with less dust and more shade. The houses were bigger and nicer. A grass median divided the street. The Cherokee bumped over cobblestones past well-scrubbed children carrying backpacks and wearing blue private-school uniforms.
He heard the roar of a motorcycle. It zipped downhill toward him on the other side of the median, a high-powered beast. The driver crouched in a black ninja helmet that obscured his face. When he came even with Pescatore, the motorcyclist braked into a controlled hotdog skid. He maneuvered up and over the grass median, the bike roaring and jouncing, and turned onto Pescatore’s side of the street.
The officers in the municipal police car behind Pescatore did not react to the flagrant traffic violation. In fact, the squad car reduced speed.
The motorcycle overtook the Cherokee on the passenger side. The motorcyclist rose nimbly off the seat to peer at the inert Garrison. Sunlight glinted off the helmet.
“Guy on a motorcycle buzzing around,” Pescatore said.
“I know,” Buffalo said. “You got a Suburban behind you too. In a minute it’s gonna pass you. Follow the Suburban.”
Pescatore saw the red Suburban in his rearview mirror. Two men were inside, the passenger talking into a walkie-talkie. At a circular intersection with a fountain in the middle, the Suburban sped up and led the way. The police car had disappeared.
The street got steeper, winding among full-fledged mansions. The high walls were topped with spikes, sentry turrets, encrusted broken glass. The sidewalks had emptied to San Diego-style barrenness save for the occasional security guard, pushcart vendor or uniformed maid. Tijuana seemed a long way below.
“You’re almost here,” Buffalo told him. “I’m hanging up. No fast moves, you’ll make the vatos nervous.”
The motorcycle whined around like a bumblebee. The motorcyclist appeared to be making sure they had not been followed. He hung back, zoomed in and out of side streets, reappeared right behind Pescatore.
Pescatore saw with grim satisfaction that Garrison had stopped moving. He scooped the supervisor’s pistol off the floor and stuck it in his belt. Steering one-handed, he reached roughly into the pockets of Garrison’s vest and liberated an ammunition clip, a wad of bills, a cell phone and a USB flash drive.
Garrison had done his best to get him killed, but it hadn’t been good enough, Pescatore thought. His voice shaking, he hissed: “That’s right, asshole. Hurry up and die. Hurry up and die.”
That was real cold, and so was his methodical looting of the wounded man. But he remembered something Garrison had once told him about gunfights. When the shooting starts, you stop thinking, Garrison had said: It’s all instinct and reflex. Well, Garrison was dying. And Pescatore was obeying his instincts and reflexes. He was doing everything he could to stay alive.
The Suburban stopped at a violet-colored wall at the crest of a hill. Someone looked down at them over a rampart. The passenger of the Suburban got out: a young man with short hair holding a Tek-9. He was met by a man who came out of a sentry box. A gate slid open.
Pescatore entered a wide driveway between two sprawling houses. Two lots had been combined, forming a compound around the mansions. Buffalo’s Buick Regal was one of the half-dozen vehicles in the driveway.
Pescatore got out slowly. The young man with the close-cropped hair stalked up to him. He pointed the Tek-9 at Pescatore’s shoes.
“Hey, how you doin’?” Pescatore said, affecting earnest relief. “My man here ain’t doing good, I’ll tell you that. Where’s Buffalo at?”
The gunman answered by scratching his stubbled chin and appraising Pescatore at an angle. He was Pescatore’s age. His oversized white T-shirt, “Pacas” tattoo on his bicep and cholo scowl behind Ray-Bans recalled the gangbangers Pescatore had arrested at The Line.
The biker joined them, pulling off his helmet. Pescatore saw a small microphone for a two-way radio rigged inside the face shield. The biker had a shaved head, a rugged, narrow-waisted build and a Zorro mustache. His eyebrows arched high, giving him a diabolical aspect.
The biker grunted and got to work frisking Pescatore, who spread his hands wide. He felt desperation as the biker yanked his Glock out of his shoulder holster and Garrison’s Beretta out of his belt. The biker relieved him of his phone and Garrison’s phone as well.
Pescatore’s hosts turned their attention to the Cherokee. When they opened the passenger door, Garrison flopped heavily sideways; the seat belt prevented him from falling into the driveway.
“Damn,” the shaven-headed biker said. “Puro fiambre.”
Pescatore heard Buffalo’s voice approaching from a backyard where a swing set and pool deck were visible. Buffalo wore jeans and a sleeveless black undershirt on his massive torso. His hair and down-turned mustache were spattered with droplets of water. He held hands with a sturdy little boy of about seven who wore swim trunks and carried an inflatable green sea horse. The boy was deep in an animated monologue that had Buffalo enthralled. He held the boy’s hand with great gentleness and ceremony.
Buffalo’s contentment evaporated when he saw Garrison. With the linebacker quickness that Pescatore had noted before, Buffalo moved between the boy and the Cherokee. He crouched, tousled the boy’s wet hair and spoke in his ear. Then he sent him trotting toward a side door of one of the houses. A woman in a maid’s uniform stood behind the screen door.
“Yolanda, take Ivan inside,” Buffalo ordered in Spanish, his eyebrows low and dark. “Now.”
The maid yanked the boy through the doorway.
Buffalo squatted next to the Cherokee, his girth supported easily on his haunches. He studied Garrison with the air of a mechanic looking under a car hood.
“You want me to call Dr. Guardiola?” the gunman muttered.
“Nope,” Buffalo said, intent on the corpse. “Este cabrón ya se fue a la chingada. Sniper, have Lucho deal with it when he comes back.”
The tall homeboy who had driven the Suburban nodded. His stiffly combed hair flared out at the back of his neck. His half-closed left eyelid had probably inspired his nickname.
Buffalo straightened with a finality that suggested that the late Supervisory Agent Arleigh Garrison of the U.S. Border Patrol was no longer an issue.
“Va-len-tín,” Buffalo said, drawing out the syllables.
“How you been, man? We made it, huh? Thanks for talking me in.” Pescatore offered his hand to Buffalo, who gripped it mechanically.
“What went down, Valentín? La placa pulled you over and then what?”
Pescatore told the story largely as it had happened. The sun beat down, the four cholos listened. To his alarm he found himself improvising his way into another risk: He implied that both he and Garrison had shot the highway patrolman.