Triple Crossing (7 page)

“Obviously.”

“Leo,” Puente said, a boot heel starting a soft hammer on the floor. “Have you told your obnoxious leftist friends in the
Tijuana press about this incident with the Border Patrol agent yet?”

As sharp as she was, Méndez thought, her Cubanness and Americanness impeded her from absorbing the cultural lesson that it
was not polite form in Mexico to get right down to busi
ness. A few more ritualistic pleasantries were in order. One day he would explain gently that, around here, it was better
to circle in on your conversational target than to charge at it.

“Not yet, Isabel,” he said, making a defensive gesture. “I was waiting to talk to you.”

“Good. I hate to disappoint you, but it might work out better if we keep it quiet.”

“That goes against all my patriotic instincts. Who is this character?”

“We are pretty sure it was Agent Valentine Pescatore,” she said. “Ever hear anything about him? He’s on the fringe of Garrison’s
group.”

“I would remember a name like that. Another criminal?”

“I don’t know yet.” Isabel Puente gave an uncharacteristic sigh. “We did a preliminary interview today. He’s a street kid,
kind of wild, from what I can tell. But not necessarily a thug. I hope if we handle him right, it might be a real opportunity.
What did you get?”

Méndez picked up the phone. His secretary tracked down Athos, who had spent the afternoon canvassing the area in the Zona
Norte where the U.S. agent had crossed The Line. Athos was eating at Tacos El Gordo.

Méndez pulled his pistol from a drawer and stuck it in his belt. “Let’s go meet them. My treat, of course.”

Puente wrinkled her nose. She was squeamish about street food. “I’ll say this, Leo, you’ve got an honest operation here. No
fancy meals for the Diogenes Group.”

“In reality, I’m concerned how it would look to your government. The way things are in your country, inviting a lovely young
agent to a nice restaurant could get me accused of sexual harassment, no?”

She appeared to wince; he wondered if he had gone too far. But she grinned and responded: “Saying what you just said could
get you accused of sexual harassment.”

Tacos El Gordo was on Avenida Constitución in the nightlife district. A revolving police-style light on the sidewalk stand
threw whirls of red across the scene. Neon glowed, music pounded in the curtained doorways of nightclubs. Encircling the taco
stand were families with kids bundled against the evening chill,
cholos
in hooded sweatshirts, uniformed cops. All devouring food or watching the taco man work his magic, his dark artful hands
chopping and slicing with controlled violence. Méndez spotted Athos and two officers spreading their feast on the hood of
a car.

“Come on,” Méndez said, sweeping open the car door for Puente. “Let’s go hear about the adventures of your Agent Valentine.”

V
ALENTINE PESCATORE SAT
in the sun with his back to the wall, drowning his sorrows in a Woptown feast.

He occupied a table on the sidewalk outside his favorite joint on India Street. He had eaten an Italian beef sandwich with
hot peppers, a slice of Sicilian pizza and a cannolo, accompanied by three beers. Now he was having his second espresso to
counteract the effect of the beers. He needed to stay sharp.

Little Italy was his private refuge in San Diego, fifteen miles from the border and a world away from The Patrol. Compared
with his Taylor Street neighborhood in Chicago, it was tiny. The surviving Italians clung to a few blocks of India Street
and a church around the corner. Little Italy was a skeleton, a movie-set streetfront. But he liked the Sicilian bakery, the
barber- and butcher shops, the mix of old-school eateries and sleek new establishments for the lunch crowd from the downtown
office towers. He liked the fact that the owners were Italian but most of the workers behind the counters were Mexican. Despite
his Italian last name, he spoke only the language of the workers. He liked the graffiti of the local Mexican-American gang.
They called themselves Woptown. They sprayed the name on the white walls and cement stoops of three-story walk-ups that reminded
him of home.

One afternoon he had passed a faded storefront on India Street. Glancing through the open door, he had spotted half a dozen
old-time
ginzos
in folding chairs playing cards at a table in a carpeted, otherwise empty room. A handwritten sign taped in the window read
S.D. ITALIANAMERICAN CLUB.
The scene recalled the social club where his uncles hung out in Chicago.

The next time he went by the place, the shutters were down. The sign was gone. He never saw any of the old-timers again. He
began to think that it had been an urban mirage. Or a dream.

He wished the past two days had been a dream. But the bandages on his forehead and his left hand were real. He entertained
notions of getting in his car and hitting the interstate. He wondered how long his ten-year-old Impala, formerly property
of the Chicago Police Department and complete with spotlight and monster engine, would hold up. Probably not long. The FBI
and Office of Inspector General would track him down at some desert gas station and pile on additional charges for running
away.

The only bright spot was that he had attained renegade-hero status at Imperial Beach station. Until the Tuesday-night incident,
he had been considered a loner who talked funny—in English and Spanish—and hung out with Garrison’s outlaw clique, causing
most agents to keep their distance. That changed dramatically after the Pulpo incident. No one said anything out in the open.
But he got furtive handshakes and exultant comments from agents such as Galván, who was always trying to set up fellow PAs
with a visiting female cousin from Guadalajara.

“Chased that
pollero
halfway across TJ into his
house,
kicked his ass, and made it back again!” Galván had whispered within earshot when Pescatore had arrived painfully early Wednesday
morning, as ordered, his head and hand still bandaged. “What kind of
pantalones
does that take?”

Sipping hot espresso, Pescatore smiled weakly. Whatever the outcome of his troubles, it was hard to imagine going back to
work. He felt as if he had broken through a wall. He had worried for weeks that Garrison was pulling him into something demented
and dangerous. It had been inevitable.

After Pescatore had made it back across The Line on Tuesday night, Garrison was the first to reach him. Lying in a vehicle
waiting for an ambulance, Pescatore told him about his pursuit of Pulpo.

“OK, fine,” the supervisor hissed. “You’re bleeding all over the place, so play it up big. We’ll have ’em take you to the
hospital. Don’t you admit anything about anything, Valentine, you hear me, buddy?”

Pescatore was X-rayed, cleaned up and sent home to take a few days off. But early Wednesday, a supervisor called and told
him to come in to the station ASAP. Garrison called minutes later to tell him they all had to tell the same story and write
the same reports and not mention the Game or anything else, goddammit.

The Patrol Agent in Charge and his deputies received Pescatore with stern looks. He denied everything and exaggerated his
grogginess. Luckily, the cameras in the area where the incident had happened were either defective or had been shot up by
smugglers. He got the impression that the brass had no hard evidence to back their suspicions that he had crossed into Mexico,
just scuttlebutt. They told him to write a memo and report directly to the Federal Building to be interviewed by Special Agents
Roy Shepard and Isabel Puente of the Inspector General’s office.

“Isabel Puente? Oh man you are just totally fried,” Galván hooted when they crossed paths later at the Coke machine. “She’s
a menace. She’s on a crusade. Some little
malandrín
says a PA slapped him upside the head, she goes after it like the Kennedy assassination.”

“Don’t spook him, you stupid asshole,” Garrison said. He pulled Pescatore aside. “Don’t worry about a thing, buddy.”

Pescatore glanced around the small station lounge. He
whispered: “Nobody saw it, right? I don’t need a union rep, do I? Or a lawyer?”

Pescatore didn’t trust lawyers. And he knew the agents’ union representatives didn’t like or trust Garrison or anyone associated
with him.

“Nah. The bosses rode out this morning with this OIG guy, Shepard. They found some old
borracho
tonk by the fence claims he saw you in the middle of Calle Internacional. But he’s a wino. They just hope you’ll get scared
and start babbling.”

“Not gonna happen.”

At the Federal Building, Pescatore decided gloomily that he should have put on his uniform. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt
under a green bomber jacket. It occurred to him, with his bandaged hand and head, he looked more like a suspect than an agent.
A stern receptionist in the Office of Inspector General, the internal affairs arm of the Department of Homeland Security,
showed him into a conference room and told him to wait.

A good half hour later, they came in. Shepard was in his forties, sleepy-eyed, a bit overweight, with blond hair thin on top
but longer than usual. He seemed constricted in the beige suit too—more like DEA or an undercover man than OIG. He started
talking, but Pescatore was distracted by Isabel Puente.

Especially in the face, she reminded him of the spectacular, unattainable Puerto Rican girls he had yearned after as a teenager,
the ones who lounged in halter-topped glory in front of Roberto Clemente High School when he rode the bus through the Division
Street neighborhood. The face of a panther. Skin the color of cinnamon; he imagined he caught a scent of cinnamon across the
table. She wore a tight gold-colored outfit: a turtleneck, corduroys, high suede boots. She half turned, knees together, to
slide into the chair. He took in taut curves and an achingly small waist with a holstered gun on the belt. Damn, he said to
himself. My executioner is fine. But she doesn’t look happy to see me.

“Agent Puente is a supervisor in our office currently detailed to BAMCaT, the Border Area Multi-Agency Corruption Task Force,”
Shepard announced.

A supervisor? Corruption task force? That woke Pescatore up in a hurry.

Isabel Puente watched, her chin propped on her hand, her fingertips playing along a smooth cheekbone, as Shepard said: “We’ve
got your memorandum, but you just tell us your account again.”

Pescatore ran his injured hand through his short thick curls near the bandages. He said he had come down right away to get
things cleared up, even though he wasn’t feeling too hot. He repeated the version he and Garrison had concocted: It edited
out the Game, the escape of the aliens from the Wrangler, and the chase into Tijuana. He said he had surprised a smuggler
trying to spring an alien from a vehicle near the Gravel Pit and pursued him down a ravine to the fence. They struggled. The
smuggler struck him on the head and escaped.

“I musta lost consciousness,” he concluded, “ ’cause next thing I knew the helicopter was there, everybody was around me.
The fellas used a towel to stop the bleeding and took me to the hospital.”

They didn’t buy it. Shepard opened fire. Pescatore kept his answers short and polite.

“Mr. Pescatore, how did you injure your hand?” Puente asked without warning.

“I’m not sure. We were wrestling around and there was rocks and glass on the ground. That’s probably when I cut it.”

“Interesting. The medical report indicates it’s a gash or gouge consistent with the hand injuries the aliens get climbing
over the fence.”

She did not have an accent. But there was something about her consonants, a musical echo of Spanish in her crisp English.
The wide-spaced eyes locked in on him like searchlights.

“I didn’t go over the fence. He went under.”

“And you went after him across The Line,” Shepard said, shaking his head at such colossal folly. “Otherwise why did the agents
take so long to find you? There are eyewitness statements that you were seen in traffic on Calle Internacional.”

“If somebody said that, they musta been drunk,” Pescatore said. Puente’s eyes enlarged. Bingo, homes, Pescatore said to himself,
that’s the only witness they got. “Listen, no offense and everything, but are you guys saying I’m suspected of a crime, or
breaking the rules, or what? Is there a complaint or allegation here?”

“If you crossed that line, you know it’s a crime and a violation of the rules and about the worst thing a Border Patrol agent
could do except kill somebody,” Shepard said.

“Except I didn’t do it. Sir.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not crazy. If a PA even puts a toe on that line, he’s fried. Diplomatic protests, investigations, media gone apeshit.”

“Is it true you give out money to the aliens on a recurring basis? Especially the women?” Shepard asked.

Pescatore felt truly frightened for the first time. After a moment, he told himself: They’re not gonna indict you for that,
get a grip. He was about to deny it with every breath in his body when he registered the surprise on the woman’s face. Her
mask had slipped. Shepard had apparently developed this information on his own. It apparently had a positive impact on Puente.
Pescatore wanted very much to see that look on her face again.

He took a breath, aware that he was slouching. “How you figure that? It’s not especially the women. Kids too. Families.”

“So you admit it.”

“Hey man, it’s my money, right? I don’t got any mouths to feed except me.”

“You realize giving money to women you’ve apprehended creates a problem of appearances out there? Like you expect some
thing in return?” Shepard spoke with melodramatic disgust. “Don’t play stupid, son.”

Pescatore did not need to exaggerate his indignation for Puente’s benefit.

“Listen up, Jack.” He leaned forward, a finger leveled at Shepard. “Don’t you dare accuse me of messing with women prisoners.
I’m a gentleman out there. Ask anybody.”

As Shepard was about to escalate the confrontation with some finger-pointing of his own, Puente interrupted.