Paul Levine - Illegal

"In a second, vato."

Two more gunshots sounded.

When they slid around a bend in the road and Zaga was no longer in sight, Tino dropped into his seat.

"Jesus! What the hell's wrong with you, kid? You could have been killed."

"I memorized the pistolero 's license plate."

"Oh."

Tino rattled off the numbers and letters.

"Okay," Payne said. "Good. Very good. How'd you think of that?"

"It's what Rockford would have done," Tino said.

Marisol's lips were crusted together, and her mouth felt as if it were filled with sand.

The sheets were cool and clean but sweat poured from her. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids were heavy as church doors.

Her head throbbed.

Somewhere, a man's voice echoed, the words overlapping.

"You'll get used to it. It's better than picking melons."

She was naked under the sheet. She tried to remember where she was and how she got here.

A drink. She remembered being given a cold Pepsi. Then growing sleepy.

A patchwork of images. A man carrying her over his shoulder. Women's voices. Carpeted rooms. Soft music. Twinkling chandeliers.

The bed felt like a raft in a stormy sea. Her fingernails dug into the mattress to steady herself. In her mind, an eagle's claw gripped a tree limb. But if she were an eagle, she would fly away.

The man was talking again. The voice seemed familiar, but it bounced off the walls. Her eyes clouded over, and she could not put a face to the voice.

"You'll learn to like the club. No field hands. Gentlemen only." He laughed, a throaty growl. "Like me, panocha."

Panocha! Now, she remembered those first few moments after the van dumped out the migrants like a truckload of melons.

" I'm sixty-six and still filled with piss and vinegar, panocha."

El Patron. Mr. Rutledge.

Marisol felt his callused hand under the sheet, moving up her thigh.

Her eyes opened just enough to let in a slit of light. She saw his lips tighten, then crease into a smile sharp as a razor. A smile devoid of joy, but born of power and wickedness.

She closed her eyes and thought of the priest blessing her back home.

"Vaya con Dios, mija."

Wherever I am, Marisol thought, it is not with God.

Sharon loathed restaurants where the waiter's haircut cost more than hers, but she made an exception for the California Club. It was a century old, a quiet place of quiet money. Travertine archways, dark woods, and wall tapestries. A decorative, thirty-foot-high carved ceiling with a vaguely baroque look, as if you were dining in a sixteenth-century castle. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling by chains heavy enough to moor a cruise ship.

The young waiter in this staid old establishment had soap opera good looks and Superman's black hair, right down to the spit curl. An aspiring actor, no doubt. At the moment, he was politely whispering in her ear that she had a phone call.

Who even knew she was here?

Sharon left Cullen Quinn slurping his gazpacho and headed to a private booth of polished mahogany.

"Didn't want to call you on your cell," Payne said, when she answered. "I tried Philippe's and Langer's Deli. Then I figured Cullen asked you to his club. You were always a slut for sliced tenderloin."

"Jesus, Jimmy. Where are you?"

"I've picked up Marisol's trail."

"Have you lost your mind? There's a manhunt after you."

"At first, I was afraid it was hopeless. The hardest part was figuring out where to start. Turned out, it was Mexicali. Now we're getting close."

"Are you listening? You're wanted from here to the border, you idiot. Is this what you meant about changing your life?"

"Hey, you're the one who told me to help the kid."

"I didn't tell you to shoot at a sheriff's deputy."

"At his car, not at him. And Tino did the shooting, not me."

"If Rigney finds you-"

"He won't."

"Look, I was wrong. I never should have let you leave my house. Now you've got to come in and straighten it out. You've got to surrender."

"I will. After I find Tino's mother. I promise."

"The longer you're out there, the worse it's gonna get."

"C'mon, Sharon. I'm doing something for someone else. And you know what? It feels good. Tino's a terrific kid who's never gotten a break. No father, his mother doing the best she can. Did you know he's a natural athlete? The way he runs, he looks a little like Adam, only faster."

"Oh, Jimmy. Don't." Hearing him say their son's name-so unexpected-knocked the breath out of her.

"We have to be able to talk about Adam," Payne said.

"Now? Why couldn't you talk a year ago? Why'd you go into your cave and shut me out?" Her shock turned to anger.

"I felt the pain more than you did."

"Screw you, Jimmy. You showed the pain more. You swam in it. You drank it until you were intoxicated by it. But you didn't feel any more than I did. Any more than I do!"

"Sorry. That came out wrong."

"Damn right it did."

They each stayed silent, and it occurred to her that Jimmy never said why he was calling. But knowing him, it could only be one thing. "What's the favor you want?"

"I need you to run a license plate for me. A Cadillac Escalade. And get me the corporate info on three businesses."

"Forget it. Turn yourself in, Jimmy."

"You won't be doing it for me. It's for Tino and his mother."

"I know what you're doing, even if you don't."

"I'm helping a kid find his mother. Simple as that."

"You're paying penance. You blame yourself for what happened to Adam."

"Got nothing to do with it."

"Even if you find Tino's mother, then what? You'll wake up the next morning, and Adam will still be gone. Tino will be out of your life, too."

Payne stayed quiet, and she listened to the static on the line.

"Okay, so maybe it has something to do with Adam," Payne confessed. "Maybe every day I remember watching some damn birds flying over the ocean. Maybe if I'd kept my eyes on the road, I could have braked or swerved. Maybe Adam would be alive."

Another moment of silence.

"Let me finish the job," Payne pleaded. "You know it's the right thing to do. You knew it the minute I walked into your kitchen the other night."

Somewhere across the dining room, a man laughed so heartily it sounded obscene.

"Precision Glass Company," Payne continued, giving her the name painted on one of the vans in Chitwood's barn. "Supposedly in Palm Desert, but I doubt it exists."

"I can't do it!"

"Two more. Valley Plumbing and Sand Dunes Electrical. Probably fictitious, too. Are you writing this down?"

"No, Jimmy."

Payne rattled off the license plate number of Zaga's Escalade, then repeated it a second time.

"No. No. No."

"Don't call my cell," Payne said. "I'm sure Rigney's triangulating my calls." He gave her the number of the pay phone of the Joshua Tree Park 'n Eat, and she slammed the receiver down so hard it sounded like a gunshot.

Jimmy hung up and joined Tino in a red vinyl booth at the breakfast joint near the desert town of Thermal, just north of the Imperial County line. On a fluttering TV set, shelved above the counter, the news came on with stock footage of mountains and cactus. The anchor was a coppery-skinned, wizened old coot with a string tie. A local cable station, Payne figured, since big-city television seemed to recruit their anchors from America's Next Top Model.

"She won't help, will she?" Tino said.

"Sure she will, kid." Not letting the boy see his concern.

Sharon at the California Club, Payne thought, unhappily. Dining with that prick fiance of hers. Quinn's kind of place. Dark woods, old money, and raw power. Since the nineteenth century, the movers and shakers had been moving and shaking there. It's where William Mulholland hatched his plans to steal water from the Owens Valley. A ruthless scheme that bankrupted farmers and ranchers and turned a pristine lake into a parched and poisonous bed of alkali. On the plus side, it inspired the movie Chinatown.