Paul Levine - Illegal

Struggling to his feet, Carlos wrapped both arms around her legs, immobilizing her lower body. He whipped from side to side, cursing in Spanish, calling her the whore of all eternity, showering both of them with his blood, crushing her against the metal wall of the stall. Bolts of pain shot up her spine and into the base of her skull. She fought to stay conscious, knowing that if she passed out, she would never wake up.

Still in his grip, she wrapped one arm around his neck, squarely across his Adam's apple. Pulled back as hard as she could. Carlos gasped, choked, sprayed more blood. His eyes bulged like a toxic fish. He heaved forward and back, desperate to shake her off. She summoned the last of her strength to pull her arm even tighter around his neck. A gurgle bubbled from his throat like a breath exhaled under water.

His wishbone snapped with a cra-ack, and his slivered tongue shot out, a bloody dart between his lips.

She slid off him just as he pitched forward, his forehead banging into the tile wall. He sank to the floor, his skull bouncing off the toilet tank and into the water, which quickly turned a foamy pink.

Marisol stood there, panting and trembling. She could pull his head from the toilet, where he seemed to be drowning, or she could run.

She opened the stall door and ran.

She expected security guards to grab her. Hadn't the noise attracted attention? But the only people in the locker room were three women on their breaks. If they heard the commotion, they did not care to investigate or sound an alarm.

Marisol stripped out of the jumpsuit, now covered with human as well as bovine blood. She climbed into her jeans, tugged on her blouse, slipped into her sneakers, and ran. She passed through the front office, the woman at the desk looking up, saying something, but Marisol was out the door before the words reached her.

Her mind was a blur. A highway ran along the slaughterhouse property. But to where?

I have nowhere to go.

Horrified, she looked at her hands. Bloody and shaking uncontrollably. If La Migra caught her, she would be deported. Or worse, sent to prison. If she walked along the highway, the police would stop her.

A van was just pulling out of the parking lot. Six migrants in the back, the driver staring at her. The old Mexican from this morning, the man who brought her here from the stash house. He stopped and waved her to come closer.

Hesitantly, she moved toward the van. The driver opened the window. She could not decipher his look. Anger? Fear? Compassion? Or merely the acknowledgment that the expected had indeed occurred?

In the distance, she heard a police siren.

"Get in, child," the driver said. "There is no time to waste."

Ninety minutes after leaving Sheriff Deputy Dixon handcuffed to his steering wheel, Jimmy and Tino drove into Mexico under a gray and sickly sky.

Nothing to it. Payne waved his passport under the nose of a border agent and Tino just waved. Easier getting into Mexico, Payne thought, than it would be returning to the States.

He had a simple plan. Trace Marisol's steps. To do that, he had to find El Tigre, the coyote who took her across. Then, to get back across, Payne needed new I.D. and a car that wasn't posted on the computer screens of every cop from San Diego to Yuma.

Yep. Simple.

The starting point was the cantina where Tino and Marisol met El Tigre. Tino seemed confident he could find the place. Payne wondered, but so far the little guy was proving capable. He seemed to be a skillful burglar, and he excelled at what the law called "resisting arrest with violence."

They drove past the New River, a filthy stream bubbling with foam and rank, brown water. Payne guided the Lexus down Imperial Avenue into the urban sprawl of Mexicali. The A/C was working overtime, but he

still sweated heavily. The thermometer on a bank building read 41 degrees. Centigrade. The digital readout on the Lexus dashboard was 106.

They entered a neighborhood where every business seemed to be a bar, a pharmacy, a strip club, or a shop selling purses and pottery to sunburned Yankees in shorts and sandals. Squat, dark women in long dresses strolled the sidewalks, arms outstretched, displaying fake gold chains, chanting "Bargain. Ten dollar."

Payne tuned the radio to a local station. A routine news day in the capital city of the state of Baja. A meth lab had blown up, killing some neighbors. Drug traffickers had assassinated a police chief. And a tunnel had collapsed, killing three people trying to sneak underground to Calexico.

Before long, Payne was lost. They were on a street of storefront dental clinics and doctors whose signs boasted of cheap cirugia plastica. They found their way back to a neighborhood of tourist-trap bars. After cruising the same block three times, Tino shouted, "There! That's where we met the cabron. "

Payne found a place to park, and they walked through swinging saloon doors and into a cantina that looked like a set of a 1950s Western with Randolph Scott and John Wayne. Paddle fans stirred the air but did little to cool it. Wooden wagon wheels were nailed to the walls. On the speakers, Gene Autry was singing, "Back in the Saddle Again."

Sitting at tables were a few sweating, shorts-andsneakered Americans. Looking for cheap thrills or cheap Xanax. Still too early and too hot for much of a crowd. Several men who appeared to be locals sat at the bar. Tino scanned the room, then shook his head. El Tigre was not here.

The bartender, a bilingual Tejano in a Texas A amp;M T-shirt, took their order. A Pacifico for Payne, Pepsi for Tino. The beer and soda both arrived in bottles, both lukewarm.

No, the bartender said. He'd never heard of El Tigre. Sure, plenty of coyotes stopped in there. Drug smugglers, too. They think it's easier to spot Mexican undercover cops in a place like this.

Tino described El Tigre. The bartender laughed. "A fat Mexican man with gold teeth and a crucifix. That narrows it down."

The boy's face showed disappointment.

"Sorry," the bartender said. "No way to keep track of all the hustlers around here. Even if you knew his real name, it wouldn't mean nothing." He looked around, leaned closer to Payne. "But anything else you need, just ask. I got connections."

"I need to sell a car."

"I got a guy for you. A mestizo called 'Stingray.' What do you have?"

"Lexus SUV. Leased. I don't have the title."

"Stingray don't care. He's just gonna sell it to some pachuco. What do you want for it?"

"Another car."

The bartender nodded as if the request was no more unusual than asking for lime with your Corona. He took down Payne's cell number on a paper napkin and said Stingray would call him within an hour. A few seats down the bar, two middle-aged Mexican men in Western shirts and cowboy boots seemed to take an interest in the conversation.

"What's with those guys?" Payne asked.

"Local vaquetons. Street guys. Petty thieves. Drivers for coyotes. Anything that pays." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "You need anything else?"

"Papers. Documents to get us back into the States."

The bartender gave them a no-problema shrug. "I got a Chino with a print shop. Green cards, driver's licenses, whatever you want. Excellent work." He rubbed a thumb against an index finger. " Pero mucho dinero. And this Chino don't take no American Express."

"Got it covered." Payne still had forty-eight hundred bucks and change.

The bartender wrote the address of the print shop on another napkin and slid it toward Payne.

One of the two vaquetons, a man about forty, smelling of tobacco and beer, came up behind Payne and said, "I know three pendejos who call themselves 'El Tigre.' "

"Three?" Payne asked. "How's that possible?"