Paul Levine: Illegal

Chingas, Payne thought. A new one on him.

The big mug seemed to have put on weight. His neck bulged out of his shirt collar. His crooked nose, product of a Golden Gloves fight, actually looked good on him. Made him less of a Ken doll. The son of a Philadelphia butcher, Quinn was a lifelong pal of Sharon's oldest brother, Rory. Both boys had hung out at the Police Athletic League gym, where they would beat each other senseless in the ring. Quinn went on to Villanova and claimed to have fought classmate Howie Long to a draw in club boxing. Long became a collegiate heavyweight champion and, later, a member of the pro football Hall of Fame. Quinn became the mouth that roared on Los Angeles radio and television.

Payne watched as Quinn gestured with a meaty hand.

"And still the wetbacks pour in, thousands every day. Millions on the way. The barbarians are inside our gates, my friends, and our walls are tumbling down. And who's benefiting from this invasion? The big growers like Simeon Rutledge, owner of Rutledge Ranch and Farms. When will Washington crack down on-"

Payne hit the "Mute" button and studied Quinn. With his face tinted orange by makeup, he looked like a scowling pumpkin. He wore a gray Italian suit so finely tailored it disguised the fact that he was beginning to resemble a whale. His designer shirt seemed to be silk, in that trendy off-purple all the rage for the next fifteen minutes or so.

Every night, the same rant. Like being stuck at a dinner party next to a guy complaining about his hemorrhoids.

Just what does Sharon see in this bozo, anyway?

But then, what did she see in me?

Earlier today, Payne told Judge Rollins he was going to change. Of course, a man will say a lot of crazy stuff when he's staring into the barrel of a gun. Had he meant it?

Sure, but just how do I do it?

Payne's eyes grew heavy. With the fog settling in, his mind sorted through a variety of possible weekend plans.

Take the hydrofoil to Catalina.

Bring along Heidi Klum.

Reread the Travis McGee paperback that began: "There are no one hundred percent heroes."

The ringing telephone jarred Payne. He fumbled for the handset.

"Yeah?"

"You stupid shit. You asshole. You total fuck-up."

Payne was fairly certain it wasn't a wrong number. "Judge?"

"I knew you were a sleaze," Walter Rollins said. "But I didn't know you were a rat."

"Judge, I'm sorry, but-"

"Shut up!"

"C'mon, Judge. You're the one who took the bribe."

"I said, shut up! I don't have much time."

Over the phone, Payne heard the judge's doorbell ringing.

"I felt sorry for you, Payne. Everybody did, after that lousy luck you had. But stuff happens. People deal with it."

"I don't want to talk about-"

"Just 'cause your life's shit doesn't mean you have to drag everyone else down the sewer."

Again, the doorbell, the chimes as insistent as machine-gun fire. In the background, Payne heard a man shout, "Police! We have a warrant!"

"Judge, calm down. The state's gonna offer you a deal. You're the first one busted. That puts you in a great position. I'll bet if you resign the bench and cooperate, you could avoid prison-"

"Bullshit. It's over for me."

"The state doesn't want to try the case. They want to work something out."

Payne waited but there was no reply.

"Judge…?"

A thunderclap. The unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Then the soft thud of a body hitting the floor.

Where is that sack of greasy onions, that sorry excuse for a man who calls himself the Tiger?

Marisol looked out through the broken window, one hand on Tino's shoulder. She would not let the boy out of her sight until they were in the United States. Her worst fear was separation, some horrific event that would pry them apart.

It was after midnight. Of course, El Tigre was late. She supposed it was too much to ask that he display a solid work ethic. Punctuality. Attention to detail. Basic competence. Like Americans.

The thought made her smile. She was beginning to think like her father.

She sat, cross-legged, in an adobe mud house that smelled of raw sewage. The stash house was located in a grim neighborhood of shacks with corrugated metal roofs. Outside, naked children played tag deep into the night. Undernourished dogs rooted in garbage cans, and chickens pecked at the dry ground.

The street was unpaved. The people were unwashed. The cars were skeletons sinking into front yards. The shade trees had long since been chopped into firewood.

Marisol could not wait to say adios, Mejico.

Not that she thought the streets of California were lined with rosebushes or paved with bricks of gold. She believed Father Castillo, back home, who warned that the route to the U.S.A. was a trail of thorns through a cemetery without crosses.

But just listen to the others, clucking like roosters. Campesinos in straw hats, a Guatemalan family with their woven sacks, a teenage love-struck couple from Ensenada, the girl pregnant. Hopelessly naive in their dreams of the promised land. One woman claimed that everyone in San Diego was a millionaire with a swimming pool, a German car, and a Mexican maid. A middle-aged man smelling of tobacco and sweat boasted that a job waited for him in a fish cannery and that he would own an almost new Chevy Silverado by the end of the summer. A Guatemalan man, his dusty feet in torn huaraches, said that he was headed to the San Joaquin Valley to pick crops. He called it a "Garden of Eden."

Marisol knew that the American Eden can be a garden of bones, that peasants like these often never reach those fertile fields. And those who do? She had heard stories that some growers were kind and decent to the migrants. Others treated them like oxen without the yokes.

She had heard talk of construction jobs in Phoenix, where thousands of homes were being built by rich Americans. But then later, others said the jobs had run as dry as the wells of her village. Who knew for certain?

A cousin from Jaripo had crossed last year. His mother told Marisol he picked grapes for twenty cents a tray. How many grapes in a tray? How long to pick them? She could not even guess.

So yes, there is work. Farms and factories. Restaurants and hotels. Drywall and roofing. Logging and demolition. Fisheries and meat-packing plants. But first, they must arrive safely.

They are the pollos. The cooked chickens. Men like El Tigre are the polleros, the chicken wranglers.

Marisol again thought of her father and wondered what he would say to her now. He was one of those Mexicans who loved the idea of America, insisting that Marisol learn English. Some of her earliest memories were watching Sesame Street on American television, after her father salvaged a satellite dish from a trash pile. Edgardo Perez even required her to read the English translations of Mexican authors.

"Papi, doesn't it make more sense to read Carlos Fuentes in Spanish?"

"In Atlanta, they read him in English."

Atlanta being the home of his favorite baseball team, the Braves. He watched on the satellite, cheering for Vinny Castilla, born in Oaxaca. Surely, Edgardo Perez would approve of her going north with Tino. But not like this. Not rushed and unplanned.

When her father worked at the Ford plant in Hermosillo, the company provided a house. Her mother gardened and knitted and cooked. Marisol remembered a childhood filled with fresh flowers, birthday parties, and heart-shaped ensaimadas, topped with whipped cream. For a while, at least, it was a life dipped in honey.

After her father was fired, he promised to take the family to El Norte, but the closest they got was a village outside Caborca in the state of Sonora. They arrived by bus, for even though Edgardo Perez had built Fords, he did not own one. Just outside the village, in the high desert, a dust devil whirled across the road and blasted the bus windows with a funnel of blinding sand. Welcome to your new life, parched and cruel, the spirits of the desert seemed to say.