The car was old enough that it had manual locks, and some-one had left one of the back doors unlocked. Scott reached in and unlocked the driver's door and slid behind the steering wheel. He let Benny in on the passenger side, and she sat down beside him. They closed the doors and scrunched down in the front seat.
It was a Pontiac Bonneville, late 80s or early 90s, parked on a quiet side street about ten blocks from the Gateway to the Americas Bridge. The vinyl upholstery was as brittle as an eggshell after decades of oven-like tempera-tures, and in the several places where the upholstery had split, mildewed foam stuffing poked out through the cracks.
"Are you sure you know how to do this?" Benny asked.
"Pretty sure," Scott said. Then he bent way over on the right side of the steering column and found a seam in the plastic covering. Using a rusted screwdriver with a broken handle that Benny had found in a garbage can, Scott pried open the steering column and broke the steering wheel lock. Then he jammed the flat tip of the screwdriver into the igni-tion and twisted what was left of the handle. The engine churned and eventually started.
Scott looked at Benny and smiled. "Told you."
They drove away.
"Who taught you how to steal a car?" Benny asked.
"When I was a patrolman in Dallas, I stopped a thirteen-year-old girl racing a stolen Cadillac Eldorado convertible down the Stemmons Freeway. I asked her how she got it started, and she showed me."
"Did you arrest her?"
"When I tracked down the owner of the car, he turned out to be a parolee who decided not to press charges once I told him about the pound of weed and the gun I found in the trunk."
"So you let him go to save her?"
"Something like that."
"Why?"
"She had a clean record, and I thought maybe if I gave her a break she would keep it that way."
"Did she?"
"No," Scott said as he steered around a slow-moving garbage truck. "I ran her name a year later and she'd been popped twice more."
"That's too bad."
He shrugged. "I gave her a chance."
Benny pointed to the next right, a one-way street com-ing up on them fast. "Turn here."
The steering was loose and the shocks were like marsh-mallows, so when Scott jerked the wheel over, the Bonne-ville floated through the turn so softly that it almost smacked the far curb. Once he got the big land yacht straightened out and stepped on the gas, the engine sounded more like a vacuum cleaner than an automobile.
"And all these years later," Benny said, "you still re-member how to crack a steering column and jimmy an igni-tion?"
He nodded. "I thought it might come in handy."
"Turn here," Benny said and pointed to the next left.
Scott wobbled through the turn. "Where are we going?"
"Straight," Benny said.
He gave her a look but didn't say anything.
"Did you always want to be a policeman?" she asked.
"No," Scott said. "I thought I was going to law school."
"What happened?"
"My senior year of college I went to what's called Ca-reer Day, just to see what my options were, and I stopped at a table and talked to a couple of Dallas cops. What they did seemed a lot more exciting than law school."
"Do you ever regret it?"
"Not going to law school?"
She nodded.
"No," he said. "But my wife does. And my father."
"Is he a lawyer?"
"He's a partner at a big firm in Dallas. He always thought I would join the firm. I guess I did too. Even after I became a cop I thought about it. It wasn't too late. Then I got on with DEA and that was pretty much it."
Benny directed him through another turn. Scott was hopelessly lost. "Where are you taking me?" he said.
"You'll see."
"I'm not crazy about surprises."
"You want to get across the river, don't you?"
He was about to respond when he spotted a payphone at a corner store. When he hit the brakes the pedal went almost to the floor, but he was able to bang the car to a stop at the curb.
"What are you doing?" Benny asked.
"I need to let Glenn know I'm going to be late." He threw the gearshift into park and opened the door. Then he turned back to Benny. "You have any change?"
She didn't, but they searched the car and found several coins in the ashtray. A moment later, Scott dropped ten pe-sos into the telephone's coin slot and dialed the ASAC's cell number. After four rings, Peterson's voicemail picked up. "This is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Glenn Peterson. I can't answer my phone now. Please leave a message." The line beeped.
"Glenn, it's me," Scott said. "I ran into some trouble getting across. A couple of Americans, spook types, maybe contractors, had the Convent Street Bridge staked out. I have to assume they're watching all the bridges, so I'm working on an alternate method of crossing right now. I'll definitely be there. I'm just not sure when. I'm on a payphone. I had to ditch my cell. So I'll be off the grid for a while, but I'll be there as soon as I can."
As he hung up the phone Scott happened to glance in the store window and saw his own face looking back at him from a television behind the counter. He stared through the glass. The TV station must be on the American side because the words MISSING AGENT were plastered just beneath his picture. Then his face was replaced by a photo of Benny.
Scott turned around and walked back to the car, keep-ing his face angled down, sure that someone on the street was going to recognize him.
"What's wrong?" Benny asked as soon as he slid behind the wheel and shut the door. He had kept the motor running. The screwdriver trick had started it once. There was no need to tempt fate.
"We were on television," Scott said as he stepped on the brake and yanked the gearshift down into drive.
"What do you mean?"
Scott pointed at the store. Through the window he could see the light from the TV screen, but he could no longer make out what was on it. "On the TV inside the store. I could see it from the payphone. Some kind of news broad-cast. There were photos of both of us."
"Oh, my God," Benny said. "I've got to get Rosalita."
Scott pulled the Pontiac away from the curb. "We need to stick to the plan. It's even more important now that you get out of Mexico and don't come back."
"I can't leave her here."
"We'll get her out," he said. "I promise."