Silver spots swam in front of Pescatore’s eyes. The baton, held high like an executioner’s axe, weighed a hundred pounds. He heard scratchy voices on his radio. Agents called his name. A search was in progress on the other side. In San Diego.
Pulpo’s narrow eyes were locked on Pescatore’s. The smuggler’s chest heaved. He remained in the armchair, cringing from the anticipated blow, a goofy incredulous expression smeared across his face. He looked younger up close; the facial hair was scraggly.
Pescatore lowered the baton. He had regained his breath somewhat.
His voice sounded pretty calm, given the circumstances. He enunciated carefully: “Ahora sé donde vives, hijo de la chingada.”
Now I know where you live, you son of a bitch.
Pulpo’s face rearranged into a mask of contempt.
“Bienvenido a tu casa,” he growled. The standard deferential greeting of a Mexican host: Welcome to your home.
Pescatore turned and ran.
As he sprinted with long chopping strides, wiping clumsily at the blood that was obscuring the vision in his left eye, Pescatore thought about the time when two PAs had tackled a belligerent drunk in the middle of the riverbed. During the struggle, the agents had rolled across the international boundary, a moment recorded, to their misfortune, by a Mexican news photographer. There were internal investigations, angry headlines in Tijuana, diplomatic protests. The agents got heavy suspensions; one resigned. And their invasion had gone a couple of yards. At most. If Pescatore got caught, nothing short of crucifixion would satisfy the Mexicans this time.
Dogs announced his flight back down the street, noisy escorts loping alongside. Horns blasted when he darted north through the traffic on Calle Internacional. The troop of migrants on the concrete median had not moved; a sun-darkened gnome in a straw hat shook his head at Pescatore. He heard a distant siren. Could the judiciales be coming for him already? The only way those bastards were getting his gun would be to pry it out of his cold dead hand.
The fence looked much taller from this angle. He could not find the hole through which he had gone south. There were no apparent handholds, no hint at how people scaled the barrier so fast every day. He spotted a junked refrigerator propped against the metal. He clambered onto it, tossing his baton and flashlight over the fence into the darkness. He heard hoots, insults and whistles behind him: The lynch mob was gathering. The top of the fence scraped skin off his hands, dug into his armpit. He heard a tearing sound as his uniform shirt ripped on the metal edge. A bottle hurled from behind shattered next to him, showering glass.
With a sob, he flopped over. He dangled one-handed for a few flesh-gouging seconds, then let go. He landed, sprawling face-first, in the United States of America.
Border Patrol vehicles converged on him in the darkness. A helicopter swooped, circling low, the wind and sound magnifying his headache. He rolled to his feet, started to his right, changed direction. A semicircle of flashlights, headlights and spotlights impaled him. An amplified, distorted voice barked at him.
Pescatore sagged back against the fence for a moment. Finally, he stepped forward, into the light. He raised his hands above his head.
2
AS THE RADIO PLAYED the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, Méndez gazed north across the border.
After the night’s fog and drizzle, the morning had brought a cold sun. The old maroon Crown Victoria crested the hill before Calle Internacional dipped east out of the canyons toward the Zona Norte and Zona Río. Leobardo Méndez, the commander of a Mexican law enforcement unit known as the Diogenes Group, sat in the backseat of the Crown Victoria. The butt of a pistol protruded from beneath a newspaper next to him. Méndez felt suspended over the panorama, everything clean and sharp and glistening below him.
The road sloped between clumps of migrants and vendors along the fence on the left and palm trees on the right. Farther ahead, the river levee slanted across the border, the remnants of the night’s crowds and a few vendors grouped around the ashes of bonfires. Past the levee, a northbound network of ramps, lanes and bridges wound like a knot of snakes into the two dozen lanes of the San Ysidro crossing. The traffic was backed up for a mile from the concrete hulk of the U.S. inspection station: mainly Tijuana commuters bound for jobs in San Diego. The hill of the Colonia Libertad neighborhood, with its terraced streets and rows of tumbledown houses, rose beyond the port of entry.
From his radio came the soundtrack: the wistful strings of the intermezzo.
As the Crown Victoria started down the incline, Méndez spotted Tiburcio the Ragpicker on the U.S. side. Tiburcio advanced-blue cap, duffel bag, Quasimodo gait-across flatland near a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle north of the fence. Tiburcio was a sociological category unto himself: a self-employed transborder scavenger with a green card. He lived in Tijuana. He crossed legally into San Diego at dawn and scoured the terrain for valuable items left behind by the night’s influx of illegal immigrants.
It was like an abandoned battlefield, like the desert after the Exodus, the gap-toothed Tiburcio had once told him, red-eyed from fatigue and alcohol. The things I find, Licenciado. Cash, coins, more than you would think. Luggage. Food. Shoes. Sometimes underwear, and that causes me great sadness, Licenciado, because it is often a lady’s underwear, and it is often torn, and that means the smugglers and bandits have struck again. I find identification cards, textbooks, letters. Strange things: a trumpet. A toolbox with a beautiful complete set of tools, what kind of poor naco thinks he can outrun the Migra hauling that thing, Licenciado?
Tiburcio was a feature article waiting to be written. But Méndez never got around to publishing anything about him in his days as a journalist. When Méndez became the head of the state human rights commission, Tiburcio had been full of tips about renegade police, smugglers and narcos. Now that Méndez was a kind of policeman himself, he still checked in occasionally with Tiburcio for news from no-man’s-land.
Tiburcio the Ragpicker disappeared below the top of the fence as Calle Internacional leveled off. The violins were building to the whispery finale of the intermezzo when Méndez caught sight of two vehicles of the Diogenes Group parked on a side street in the Zona Norte. He told his driver to pull over. Four of his officers stood around a burly, handcuffed youth seated on the curb, wearing overalls and a red bandanna. As Méndez’s window slid down, his deputy commander approached with a quick salute.
“Good morning, Athos,” Méndez said. “What are you up to at this uncivilized hour?”
Athos wore a goatee, a black fatigue jacket with the Diogenes Group emblem, and black pants tucked into jump boots. He was not particularly big, but his corded neck, steel-gray mustache and steady stare gave him an air of quiet menace.
“Good morning, Licenciado,” Athos said. “I was about to call you. We had an invasion.”
“An invasion?”
Athos allowed himself a grin, the web of wrinkles around his eyes creasing.
“A Border Patrol agent crossed into the Zona Norte near the PRI headquarters chasing an individual last night. It sounds like this monkey got all the way across Calle Internacional.”
Athos had a habit of calling suspects, witnesses and just about everyone else, except friends and co-workers, “this monkey.” It was not exactly an insult; his tone was dispassionate and weary, just acknowledging reality. He was a weathered street warrior who had dedicated thirty years to tactics and training: commanding SWAT teams, teaching at the police academy, guarding public officials. He lived a life of barracks solitude, haunting the headquarters of the Diogenes Group around the clock. His real name was Ramón Rojas. Méndez had a weakness for the works of Alexandre Dumas and considered the Diogenes Group to be his musketeers; he had nicknamed his deputy Athos because of his wisdom and solemnity.