Paul Levine - Illegal

The man shrugged. "I know two other men who call themselves 'El Leon.' The Lion. Around here, everyone wants to appear tough, even when they are full of shit."

"So who are the three tigers?"

"One lives near Bataques and runs cockfights. He is perhaps seventy years old."

"Not the man," Tino said.

"Another informs for the judicales. A little rodent of a man."

Tino shook his head.

"And there is an El Tigre who owes me money for driving a truck across the desert and getting arrested by La Migra. A pollero who wears a crucifix but will surely rot in hell."

"That's him!" Tino cried.

"His cousin owns a cantina on the other side of the city. If you tell him you have cash and need a pollero, he will set up a meeting."

"What cantina?" the boy asked.

"Five hundred dollars." Looking at Payne now.

"Don't pay him," the bartender advised. "He's hustling you."

The man shrugged. "Your decision."

Payne didn't know if he was being hustled. But they'd come this far, and this was their only lead. He opened his wallet and peeled off five hundred-dollar bills.

"Try a bar called 'El Disco,' " the man told him. "A block from the bullring that's shaped like a flying saucer."

"Let's go, Tino," Payne said.

"One more thing," the man called after them. "El Tigre carries a stiletto in his left boot."

With Tino navigating, Payne tried following directions to a bar called "El Disco" but was lost within minutes. They cruised around a residential neighborhood of bungalows painted in bright blues, greens, and yellows. Every block seemed to have several one-story houses with naked rebar sticking straight up through the outside walls, awaiting the money to complete a second floor. Sagging bags of cement and piles of sand looked as if they'd been there for years. Ancient cars were propped on cinder blocks in side yards, bright shirts hanging limp on clotheslines.

"What's with all the Virgin Mary statues in the front yards?" Payne asked.

"Only a gabacho from Beverly Hills would ask such a stupid question."

"I'm a gabacho from Van Nuys."

"A long time ago, some religious dude saw the Virgin Mary walking on a hill."

"The Virgin of Guadalupe?"

"Exactamente."

"So why paint her on the hubcaps of an '83 Plymouth?"

"Just drive, vato. Look for the bullring shaped like a flying saucer."

Music poured from open windows. Dogs roamed the streets and chickens squawked in fenced-in yards. Kids pranced under a spraying garden hose. The digital thermometer on the dashboard inched up a notch to 107.

They passed an elementary school, mothers walking home with their children in the protective shade of umbrellas, like ducks under their mother's wings.

They could not find the bullring or the bar called "El Disco." There were taco stands and dance clubs, a Ley supermarket, and a Cinepolis movie theater. It was beginning to look as if Payne had been conned out of five hundred bucks. But just past a complex of government buildings, there it was, a bullfighting arena shaped like a flying saucer.

"Over there," Tino said, pointing toward a lighted sign barely visible in the midday glare. El Disco.

They parked the car and walked into the dark, cool cantina, patrons on bar stools hunched over bottles of Tecate, turning in unison to appraise the newcomers. Shaved heads. Wife-beater tees. Tattoos from wrists to skulls. In L.A., they would be gangbangers. Here? Payne was fairly certain he hadn't stumbled into a meeting of the Rotarians or Elks.

"Tino, I don't like the feel of this place."

"Be cool, Himmy."

Tino bounced up to the bar, chattered in Spanish to the bartender, pointed at Payne, talked some more, then bounced back.

"What?" Payne asked.

"I told him you were an American with thirty thousand dollars in cash."

"Great. We're gonna get mugged."

"I said you wanted to get a bunch of whores across the border."

"So now I'm a rich pimp?"

"He said for two hundred dollars he would call a man named 'El Tigre' who can help us."

"Wow. Good work." He gave two hundred-dollar bills to Tino, who turned the money over to the bartender, then listened as the man gave directions in Spanish.

Returning to Payne's side, Tino said, "We're supposed to go to a bowling alley named 'Bola.' El Tigre will meet us there in two hours."

"Okay, let's go."

One of the wife-beatered, shaved heads slid off his bar stool and moved toward them. Thick-necked, with short, heavily muscled arms and steroid-pimpled shoulders, he walked on his toes, as if trying to look taller.

"Cuanto?" the man growled at Payne.

"How much for what?"

" El muchacho. How much for the boy?"

"He's not for sale, but I'm thinking about giving him away."

"He looks like a quebracho." Using one of the seemingly endless Spanish words for homosexual.

"Yeah, well you look like a side of beef that got all the wrong hormones."

The man took another step toward Payne. He was only five-eight or so, his nose just inches from Payne's chest. "Maybe I just take the quebracho from you."

The guy's breath smelled like pork rinds soaked in beer. He was waiting for Payne to push him or hit him so he could retaliate with some kung fu bullshit.

Buying time, Payne said, "You know the difference between a Mexican heterosexual and homosexual?"

"?Que?"

"Two beers."

The bodybuilder jammed a finger into Payne's chest. "That's stupid."

"Cesar Chavez loved that joke. He told it to Jerry Brown, and they had a good laugh."

"?No me jodas! Get the fuck out. The boy stays with me."

Payne swung his head down as fast as he could, butting Pork Breath on the bridge of his nose. The man's septum cracked, and blood spurted onto Payne's shirt. The guy's hands flew to his face, and he sputtered curses in Spanish. A volcano of chingalo s and baboso s plus some words Payne had never heard.

Tino raced out the door ahead of Payne, but only by a step.

Jimmy and Tino drove through a neighborhood of small shops with brightly painted murals on the stucco walls, depicting Mexico's long history. The Spanish killing Indians. American cavalry killing Mexican soldiers. Mexicans killing one another. It was not a happy history. One mural, labeled "La Frontera," portrayed U.S. Border Patrol agents machine-gunning migrants as they swam across the Rio Grande. Okay, so the artist took some liberties.

The print shop was on the way to Bola, so it made sense to stop there before the meeting with El Tigre. A printer of Chinese descent, a man in his sixties with a bemused smile, said it would cost Payne $1,500 for an Illinois driver's license. Easier to forge than a California license, and harder to check out by a highway patrolman or sheriff's deputy. He would throw in a matching passport for free.

Payne got to choose a new name. California cops would be looking for a James Payne of Van Nuys. Jimmy chose "Alexander Hamilton" of Evanston. He liked sharing the name of a man killed in a duel.

Papers for Tino weren't so simple. Border agents would examine them much more closely. A temporary work permit didn't suit a twelve-year-old. And a green card was out of the question because the border station had scanners that could pick up a phony. The printer had a selection of legitimate visas, some stolen, some lost. His equipment could alter names and photos. He suggested using a visa intended for a transfer student, a Mexican boy attending Temple Emanuel Academy Day School in Beverly Hills.

"Shalom," Payne said.

"Twenty-two hundred dollars," the printer announced happily.

Payne exhaled a whistle. He'd be nearly broke again.

"Guaranteed to work," the printer chuckled, eyes twinkling, "or your money back when you get out of prison."