THE FENCE SEPARATING MEXICO AND THE U.S. STANDS TEN FEET high in this section between Tecate and Campo and is constructed of rusty panels of corrugated steel laid end to end and supported by steel beams sunk deep into the hard-packed earth. It’s a symbol more than a barrier, however—a joke, really—because an industrious man with a sharp stick could carve out a passage beneath it in half an hour, a trench deep enough to squirm through. Then it’s just a five-minute walk down one of the trails cutting through the brush to the nearest paved road, where cousin Juanito waits in his car.
Lead Agent Mike Thacker of the U.S. Border Patrol long ago accepted the absurdity of the situation, twenty years of Navy bullshit having been excellent preparation for this second career executing orders issued by idiots and futilely attempting to hold back the tireless hordes determined to cross the line in the sand he’s been charged with defending. He rests his elbows on a boulder crowning a hill fifty yards from la linea and watches through a night-vision scope as a ghostly figure squeezes under the fence and crouches on the dirt access road to sniff for trouble.
“One,” he whispers into his radio, alerting Brown and Vasquez, who are waiting in their truck at a curve in the road that puts them out of sight of the crossing point. The three of them have been staking out this spot for hours now, after an air unit spied a group of fifteen bodies who looked like they might be thinking of going for broke.
Thacker used to get a kick out of sneaking around the desert in the dark and swooping down on wetbacks like an owl pouncing on a kangaroo rat. He knew he and his fellow agents weren’t making a bit of difference in the long run, that for every illegal they apprehended and shipped back to TJ, twenty more got across, but he liked wearing a uniform, and he liked carrying a gun, and, okay, he liked seeing the fear in the eyes of the wets when he pinned them down with his spotlight and ordered them to halt. He’ll admit that.
He even dug it when things got hairy, when they encountered armed smugglers or took fire from snipers working with the coyotes. Nothing clears your head like rounds flying past so close that they sound like the devil snapping his fingers in your ear.
Lately, though, with all the gambling and all the trouble with Marla and Lupita—he spits a stream of tobacco juice into the sand and feels his guts pulse—the job he once enjoyed has become just another block of hours to be endured, another load he used to bear effortlessly that now threatens to bring him to his knees. Truthfully, all the fun’s gone out of it.
A second ghost emerges from under the fence, then a third and fourth. Thacker whispers into his radio again—“On my ‘Go’”—and adjusts the focus on the scope. When the last of the pollos have crossed, so many bodies are massed in front of the fence that they meld together into a glowing green blob. The coyote huddles with everyone and reminds them to keep quiet and stay together.
Thacker gives the order to move and watches through the scope as the truck whips around the bend, lights blazing, and comes to a stop in a swirl of dust. Brown and Vasquez hop out with guns drawn and sprint toward the illegals. Their shouts of “Alto! Alto!” and “Sit down! Sit your ass down!” carry all the way up the hill.
Most of the group comply immediately, but two bodies break away and make a run for it. They plunge into the thick chaparral and pick up a trail that circles the hill where Thacker is stationed. He stows the scope, pulls his P2000, and sidesteps down the back of the hill to intercept them. The stars and a bit of moon give him enough light, and he reaches the trail in plenty of time to conceal himself in a thicket of manzanita.
Breaking branches and the thud of footsteps herald the approach of the runners. Pistol in hand, Thacker waits. He’ll be able to see them, but they won’t see him. When the first wet reaches his hiding place, Thacker launches himself, leading with his shoulder, and the pollo flies ass over tits off the trail. The second shadow tries to stop but can’t and runs right into a blow from Thacker’s flashlight. It’s a young girl. Thacker catches a glimpse of her before she goes down.
“Stay there,” he says, showing her his gun.
He drags the first pollo, a kid about the same age as the girl, out of the bushes and drops him next to her, shines his light in both their faces. The girl, near tears, is rubbing a bump on her forehead. The guy stares down at the ground. They’re scared, real scared, and that’s good.
“Money,” he says. “Dinero.” The words come out in labored gasps. He’s sucking wind after his trip down the hill and the ambush.
When he started with Customs and Border Patrol he heard rumors of agents shaking down illegals for cash and was disgusted. It wasn’t that he was above a good scam—in the Navy he made a killing selling merchandise lifted from the PX warehouse to stores near the base—but stealing from poor people didn’t sit right with him.
The ground gets slippery when it rains, however. Marla lost her job but kept spending like she had one, the boys were in private school, and he had a long run of bad luck at the tables. All of a sudden he wasn’t just not getting ahead, he was falling farther and farther behind every month, a fifty-year-old man about to hit the skids. And so.
The first time he forced some terrified wetback to hand over the $300 he had stashed in his shoe, he felt like shit. The second time was a little easier. Now, it barely causes a ripple in his soul. He thinks of it as an entry tax, something to teach the little fuckers how it works up here.
“Money,” he says again. “I know you got some.”
“No money,” the guy says. “No money.”
“No money?” Thacker says. “Okay.”
He steps back and unzips his pants.
“You,” he points at the girl. “Chúpame. Suck me.”
What was that old bumper sticker? Ass, cash, or gas, no one rides for free? The demand for sex usually frightens the pollos into coughing up their money, but if it doesn’t, Thacker will gladly take a blow job instead. He’s come across some real pros out here, chicas who definitely knew what they were doing. And this one’s cute. He shines his light into her face again. Cute enough.
“Wait,” the guy says. “Wait.” He gestures at his stomach. “She baby. Baby.”
Thacker moves the flashlight beam to the girl’s belly and sees that she’s pregnant. The hard-on he had going disappears, but he senses these kids are about to crack, so he keeps up the pressure.
“Come on, mamacita,” he says to the girl and reaches into his pants like he’s going to pull out his cock. “Chupa, chupa.”
“No,” the guy says. “Stop.”
He opens his jacket and claws at the lining, tearing a hole in it. Sticking his fingers inside, he pulls out a wad of cash and offers it to Thacker. Thacker flips through it. Five hundred dollars. He pockets the money and gestures at the trail with his pistol.
“Go on,” he says. “Ándale.”
The guy helps the girl to her feet, and they set off at a trot, disappearing into the night. If they’re caught farther down the line, no big deal. Thacker’s not worried about them talking. They’re terrified of uniforms, and all they’ll want to do is get back to Mexico as soon as possible so they can try to cross again.
He wipes the sweat off his face with his sleeve. His uniform shirt is soaked through. A breeze comes up and rattles leaves all around him, a nerve-racking sound out here. He keys his radio.
“I’m on the backside of the hill,” he says. “I thought I had the two that got away, but they were too fast.”
They’ll get a laugh out of that, the old man and his beer belly trying to chase down a couple of kids. “You better be careful,” someone’ll say, one of the young punks. “You’re gonna break a hip.” That’s okay. Let them have their fun. There’s nothing wrong with playing a part as long as you know what you’re really all about.
Thacker, Vasquez, and Brown do the field paperwork for the detainees, then call for a van to transport them to Campo for further processing. Ten Mexicans, two El Sals, and a Guatemalan. Not a bad haul.
Thacker leaves the station at three a.m., changes out of his uniform, and heads over to the Indian casino in Alpine. He waves at the agents manning the freeway checkpoint as he passes through. The road is almost deserted at this hour, and he drives for miles with no taillights in front of him, no headlights behind. It makes him lonely.
If he had somewhere decent to go besides the casino, he would. But all he’s got is the motel he’s living in, which is a dump. The bedspread depresses him, the carpet, the bars on the windows. And the animals who stay there, if they’re not fucking, they’re fighting, their threats and promises passing through the thin walls to dirty his dreams.
He’s been crashing there for three months now, ever since Marla decided he shouldn’t live in the house that his hard work paid for. It was a hell of a deal. Their marriage died years ago, but they kept it going for the boys. When Brady enlisted in the Army last year and Mike Jr. left for college, they finally agreed to live separate lives, sharing the house as roommates, the smart play financially. No sense giving money to a bunch of lawyers. Thacker moved downstairs into Brady’s old room, sleeping on a twin bed surrounded by dusty basketball trophies and posters of snowboarders.
The arrangement worked out great until Marla found some texts from Lupita, a Mexican chick Thacker had been banging, a twenty-year-old gas station cashier with a fantastic ass even after two kids. Marla hadn’t fucked Thacker in years, yet she still blew her top. All of a sudden she couldn’t live with him anymore. All of a sudden they were going to sell the house and split the money. All of a sudden she wanted a divorce.
Thacker did not hit her when she laid all this on him, only maybe bumped her on his way downstairs to pack. But the cop who responded was a woman, and the shrink was a woman, and the judge was a woman, so now he’s living in Motel Hell with an order of protection against him and neither of his boys even called to wish him a happy birthday last week.
The casino is empty except for a few meth heads and elderly insomniacs scattered among the slots and poker machines. A Chinese guy in sunglasses plays by himself at a $25 blackjack table. Thacker buys a USA Today and carries it into the coffee shop, where he sits at the counter. It’s one of those fifties-style places, burgers and shakes and Buddy Holly, the staff in white aprons and paper hats. Yoli is on this morning. She pours Thacker a cup of coffee without even asking and calls out his usual breakfast to the cook: scrambled, bacon crisp, sourdough.
“Hey, handsome,” she says.
“Hey, beautiful,” he replies.
But she’s not. She’s short and fat and all worn out. Her husband is disabled, tethered to an oxygen tank, her son is in prison, and the bank is trying to take her car. Thacker never asks about her life, she offers it up freely, like she’s proud of it. When nothing’s any good, he guesses, why hide the bad? She probably thinks it’s healthy to get it off her chest, and if he did the same, maybe he wouldn’t dream of choking on fish bones and wake up gasping for air all the time.
He skims the paper until she brings his food.
“You know anything about dogs?” she asks as she sets his plate down. She has a cross tattooed on the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger. “One of the dealers here wants me to take a pup, pit bull–Lab mix.”
“It’ll need training,” Thacker says. “It’s gonna have a lot of bad traits from both sides. Could be a sweetheart or could be a real monster.”
“It’s for my husband,” Yoli continues, not even hearing him. “He doesn’t do nothing but sit in front of the TV all day. I have to talk to the landlord first. They got rules against pets. And you got to feed them too. That’s expensive.”
Thacker pours ketchup onto his eggs and forces himself to take a bite. “Layla” is playing on the casino’s sound system. Seems to Thacker that it’s always “Layla” when he notices. He looks up from his plate to see Yoli still standing in front of him.
“Charlie Hutchinson was in earlier,” she says.
“He was?” Thacker says.
“Talking crazy.”
“Is that right?”
She leans in close to refill his coffee. “If I owed him money, I’d pay him,” she whispers. “He’s a scary guy.”
Hutchinson’s a loan shark who works the local casinos. Thacker got drunk one night, got desperate, and borrowed $2,500 from him. He’s missed a few payments, so now he’s into the scumbag for something like four grand. He doesn’t put much stock in the rumors that Hutchinson uses the Vagos motorcycle club to help him collect, but all the same, he’d like to get clear of him as soon as possible. That’s why he jumped at this thing Murph called him with last night.
“Say no if you want, but hear me out,” is how Murph began. He’s CBP too, works the Tecate crossing, and he and Thacker have been tight ever since Murph and his family moved into Thacker’s neighborhood five years ago. Shooting the shit at barbecues and soccer games, they discovered they had a lot in common. CBP for one, and the fact that both were gamblers, with a gambler’s problems. Also, they both took money from wherever they could get it.
Murph’s hustle is that for the right price he’ll wave a vehicle into the U.S., no questions asked. Last night one of his Southside partners contacted him to arrange safe passage for a client. Then this partner, a Mex named Freddy, mentioned that the client, a young woman, appeared to be carrying a large amount of cash with her. Freddy had a question: What if the car carrying this girl was to be pulled over once it crossed into the States and someone took the money off her? “A thing like that could happen, couldn’t it?” he asked Murph.
“Well, could it?” Murph asked Thacker when they talked.
“It could,” Thacker said, already working out how. The job would be a little more complicated than jacking wets but nothing he couldn’t pull off if it was truly worth his while.
“I’m guessing it will be,” Murph said. “Freddy says this girl paid him twenty-five grand, and it didn’t even make a dent in her pile. Whatever you get off her, we’ll split sixty-forty, me and Freddy on the big end.”
Thacker thought it over for all of ten seconds before saying yes.
It’s 4:30 when he finishes his breakfast. The girl is crossing around ten, and he wants to be at the Tecate crossing by eight to scope things out and be ready to intercept her. That gives him some time to kill, time for a couple of hands of blackjack. Just a couple.
The Chinese guy is still at the table, a pretty good stack of chips in front of him. Thacker sits down and tosses the money he took off the pollo onto the felt.
“Change five hundred,” the dealer calls to the pit boss, then starts counting out green chips. “How’s it going?” he says to Thacker. His name is Scott. Thacker has played with him before.
“We’ll soon see,” he says.
He loses five hands in a row right off the bat, the dealer never busting once. The Chinaman snaps his tongue against the back of his teeth and shakes his head like it’s Thacker’s fault the table’s gone cold. Two more losing hands, and the chink colors his chips and walks away. Fuck him.
It’s back and forth after that, Thacker winning one here and there, then losing two. After a shuffle he presses his bet to $50 for no good goddamn reason and is dealt a pair of aces. He splits these, and another ace falls on the first one. He splits again. The pit boss strolls over to watch. Thacker’s second cards are a three, a six, and a five. The dealer, showing a three, draws into a nineteen.
Thacker wants to break something but merely purses his lips and slides out his bet for the next hand. A woman is vacuuming the carpet behind him, and the noise makes him antsy.
“Can we do something about that?” he asks Scott.
The dealer talks to the pit boss, who talks to the woman, who grudgingly rolls up her cord and goes away. Doesn’t make any difference. A half hour later Thacker has lost all of the wet’s money and $200 of his own. Disgusted with himself, he tosses a five-buck chip to Scott, and, after a stop in the men’s room, heads out to the parking lot.
The sun is about to crest the mountains to the east and is chasing the last of the stars from the rapidly pinking sky. The cool morning air smells of dust and sage. Thacker is so pissed off he doesn’t notice any of it. He scuffs to his truck, bone tired, swearing for the thousandth time that he’ll never again throw away money like that.
“Excuse me, sir.” A skull-faced kid beckons from the open window of a filthy Toyota. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Thacker stops but doesn’t move any closer. He adjusts his windbreaker in order to have easy access to his P2000, holstered under his left arm.
“What about?” he says.
The kid steps out of his car and stands with his hands in the air like he knows Thacker’s carrying. His hair is cut short, revealing a quarter-sized sore on his scalp.
“I got my baby daughter here,” he says, “and we don’t have nothing to eat.”
Thacker looks past the kid into the Toyota. He sees a car seat on the passenger side, covered with a Winnie-the-Pooh blanket.
“I ain’t never begged in my life, sir, but she needs food,” the kid continues.
“Where’s her mom?” Thacker asks.
“Well, sir, she’s a crackhead and run off with a bunch of Mexicans. I’m trying to get some food and gas, and then we’ll go on to my mom’s place in Hemet.”
“You on dope too?”
“Me? Oh, hell no, sir. Hell no.”
He’s lying. His eyes are spinning in his head like carnival rides. Thacker pulls a twenty from his wallet and steps up to pass it to him.
“Thank you, sir. God bless you,” the kid says.
“Put it in your pocket before you lose it,” Thacker says.
“Right, right,” the kid says. As soon as his hand drops, Thacker hits him in the temple with a quick left, knocking him to the ground.
“Please, sir, please!” the kid yelps. He curls into a ball and protects his head. Thacker steps over him and reaches into the Toyota to yank the blanket off the car seat. The seat is empty.
“You used the same story on me last week, you fucking moron,” Thacker says.
The kid doesn’t reply, just lies there breathing hard. Thacker kicks him twice in the ribs.
“Give me back my money.”
The kid digs into his pocket and brings out the bill. Thacker snatches it from his hand and tells him to get the fuck out of there. The kid scrambles to his feet and jumps into his car. Thacker waits until he drives out of the lot and disappears down the frontage road before walking to his own truck.
The sun is up now, and a bright creep of light spreads across the asphalt. Thacker sits behind the wheel and watches a couple of stray dogs sniff around the casino’s dumpsters. He thinks about going to the motel for a few hours’ sleep but decides he can’t bear the place this morning. He thinks about calling Lupita, but she’s made it clear there’ll be no more honey without more money.
So he’ll crash here for a while. He unfolds a silver sunscreen and places it against the windshield. With his shades on, it’s dark enough that he might be able to doze off. Reclining his seat as far as it’ll go, he closes his eyes. A black tornado spins in his head, minutes and days and years, voices and faces, his whole life. It’s always there waiting for him, and he always hopes it’ll slow down enough for him to pinpoint exactly when everything went wrong. But it never does.