Triple Crossing (13 page)

At home, he hung the crucifix from a tack stuck in the cork message board on his refrigerator. And there it had remained.

Until this evening. Pescatore put on a blue denim shirt, black khaki slacks, black Timberland boots and his bomber jacket.
He loaded and shoulder-holstered his Glock. He gathered up his wallet and badge and cell phone, took a deep breath and turned
off a Los Lonely Boys disc as he headed for the door.

But he stopped at the refrigerator, caught up by the crucifix. He removed it from the tack. He went into the bathroom. He
faced the mirror. He lifted the necklace up over his head, positioned it around his neck, and squared the cross on his chest
inside his shirt. It was the closest he had come to a religious act in years. There was something about that TJ jailbird cross,
about that spectral old lady wreathed in exhaust fumes, that stirred his deepest superstitions. He was going to need all the
luck he could get.

Because now he was riding shotgun in the Cherokee. Garrison drove. Dillard sat in back chewing bubble gum. They were off duty,
rolling south on Interstate 5 behind a Ford van loaded with a shipment of guns that Garrison had arranged to smuggle into
Tijuana. M-16s, .45 automatics, Tek-9s: a smorgasbord of weaponry. A Mexican youth whom Pescatore had never met was driving
the van up ahead.

“You alright there, buddy?” Garrison asked. He slowed as the big
MEXICO
sign above the customs booths of the San Ysidro Port of Entry approached.

“Slow motion,” Pescatore said.

Isabel Puente was pleased with his work. His apparent success at invading the Zona Norte and getting away with it had boosted
his status with Garrison. They were partying together regularly. He was gathering information on how Garrison furnished intelligence
on border defenses to smugglers. He had also found out about a home in Imperial Beach that was a safe house for drugs and
stolen goods. And a clandestine first-aid station, as he learned one night when Garrison got carried away whacking a combative
migrant over the head with his baton near Stewart’s Bridge. Pescatore had accompanied Garrison and the prisoner to the house
on a semirural road. A robust cigarette-smoking blonde in a bathrobe answered the door. She was unfazed by the fact that it
was past midnight and one of her guests was bleeding profusely. She prepared coffee for the agents. Then she bathed, stitched
and bandaged the prisoner’s wounds, squinting over a cigarette as she worked.

“It was tripped out,” Pescatore told Isabel Puente later during a debriefing at the café in La Jolla. “She must be a nurse
or something. We drove this alien back to The Line with his head all stitched up. Garrison brings him to a gap in the fence,
tells him to keep his mouth shut. He gives him a little shove back into Mexico. And that was that.”

Nonetheless, Pescatore hoped Garrison knew what he was
doing when it came to smuggling a vanload of guns into Tijuana. Getting caught with your service firearm alone meant Mexican
federal charges and a go-directly-to-jail card.

The van in front of them was next in line at a Mexican inspection booth. Garrison had said that everything was under control.
He had told Pescatore to get with the program and not to worry. But now Garrison looked as if he were about to rip the steering
wheel out of the dashboard.

“Where’s my guy,” Garrison growled.

The blue-shirted Mexican customs inspector was apparently not the guy Garrison had in mind. Pescatore tensed. Entering Tijuana
was supposed to be easier than leaving. But Mexican authorities had stepped up their searches of southbound traffic looking
for guns, stolen vehicles and trunkloads of drug profits. The last went to money houses that the drug lords crammed floor
to ceiling with cash they couldn’t spend fast enough.

“Where’s my guy, where’s my guy,” Garrison said.

The van slid forward over the international line. The Mexican inspector stepped to the driver’s window, looking imperious.
Pescatore hooked his fingers into his door handle, though he knew his stock would drop in a hurry if he bailed and bolted.

Then a blue-shirted supervisor appeared, waving off the inspector. The van jumped forward with a lurch that made Pescatore
cringe. Garrison relaxed his strangler’s grip on the wheel. Out of the right side of his mouth, he said, “Way too close, Nacho,
you shitbrain.” Garrison nodded gravely as the Cherokee rolled alongside the supervisor. Pescatore recognized him from a party
at Garrison’s house.

“Pásale,”
the supervisor said, touching the brim of his cap in a two-fingered salute.

A series of ramps emptied into a tree-lined boulevard. They passed boxlike office buildings, a McDonald’s decorated by clumps
of balloons, a giant, ball-shaped, concrete construction that housed the Omnimax theater of the Tijuana Cultural
Center. The first intersection was a crowded traffic circle with a grass plaza in the center containing an abstract statue
of what looked like tall wooden spikes. Teenage street performers in clown makeup juggled red balls and stood on one another’s
shoulders in the traffic during the red light. Three dogs trotted in the crosswalk, single file, as if they had waited for
the light to change.

“Eight twenty-five,” Garrison said. “Right on time.”

He pulled ahead of the van and entered the half-deserted parking lot of a shopping center. Garrison cruised around to a side
of the mall near a row of apartment buildings. He drove to the center of the lot and pulled into a slot about twenty feet
from a red Suburban. He flashed his headlights. The Suburban responded in kind.

“Uh, ain’t we real out in the open?” Pescatore asked, thinking that it was appropriate to come off as nervous. Which he was.

“If you’re worried about the
judiciales,
don’t be,” Garrison said. “They got the perimeter for us.”

Garrison pointed out the plainclothes state cops in an Impala at one end of the parking lot and in a Crown Victoria at the
other. I guess downtown TJ is as good as anyplace to do an arms deal if you’ve got the police standing guard, Pescatore thought.

Dillard leaned over the seat between Garrison and Pescatore. His whitish-blond hair was wet-combed, accentuating his large
ears. He popped a bubble.

“Here come them old boys,” Dillard said.

A car parked alongside the Suburban. It was a vintage, navy-blue Buick Regal with a sunroof and a lot of chrome. Five men
got out.

“Buffalo,” Garrison said. “Let’s take care of business, gentlemen.”

“He a cop too?” Pescatore asked.

Garrison turned. “What’s going on with the questions, Valentine? He look like a cop to you?”

“It’s kinda hard to tell around here.”

“Listen: You’re on a need-to-know basis. All you need to know is, he’s not a cop. He’s Murder Incorporated.”

The man called Buffalo was shorter than the Border Patrol supervisor, but otherwise just as big. And while Garrison had a
stiff Frankenstein-monster quality, the newcomer seemed not only rock-muscled but agile, like a linebacker, like he could
chase you down and finish you off in a heartbeat. Buffalo looked as if he had done hard prison time and was ready to do more.
His steely “How you doin’ ” was pure Southern California
barrio.

Three of the men with Buffalo were not Mexican. The one he introduced as Mr. Abbas was bald on top, long nose, neat black
beard. His outfit was casual-sharp: a beige sport jacket, pleated slacks and loafers with no socks. His accent was British
mixed with something else. Pescatore pegged him for Iranian or Arab. Behind him were two muscle guys: light-skinned, foreign-looking
blacks with athletic builds, loose-armed in sleeveless black canvas vests, gold chains glittering on their chests. They were
cousins or brothers; they had the same blunt profiles, short curls and amused gray eyes. Buffalo introduced them as Moze and
Tchai.

The youthful driver stood back near the door of the Regal: a squat, long-haired Mexican in a T-shirt that was too tight for
him. He hunched his shoulders and seemed unsure of what to do with his hands. His narrow
mestizo
eyes settled suddenly on Pescatore, who looked away.

“All set?” Buffalo said. He and Garrison stood face-to-face with their respective partners arranged behind them; the two bruisers
were running the show. There were men in the Suburban, but they did not move.

“Affirmative,” Garrison said in a deferential voice that Pescatore had never heard out of his mouth before. “The gentlemen
wanna check the material before we go?”

“In a minute.”

Buffalo padded toward the brown van. Garrison opened the sliding door on the side for him. They climbed in among crates.

Pescatore looked up and met the intent stare of the driver by the Regal.

Buffalo climbed back out. He nodded at Abbas. The three foreigners joined Garrison inside the van. They poked at the crates—noises
of wood, metal, indistinct voices.

The thickset driver by the Regal kept eyeballing Pescatore, who didn’t know whether to ignore him or not.

Buffalo walked back from the van to the Regal, got in and emerged carrying a small Adidas bag. The driver put a hand on Buffalo’s
arm. They whispered for a long minute. Both Buffalo and the driver now stared at Pescatore.

Pescatore glanced at Dillard, a gum-chewing statue next to him on the asphalt. Dillard had noticed the surreptitious conversation
as well. Pescatore remembered Isabel Puente’s reference to a jailhouse weightlifter nicknamed Buffalo. He thought: What the
hell is going on with these guys?

Buffalo walked back to the Ford van and leaned in to pass the Adidas bag to Garrison. Buffalo assumed a spread-legged sentry
stance by the van a few feet from Pescatore, hands folded over his belt buckle. He was about forty. He had carefully groomed
hair with a bit of a wave to it, a punch-flattened nose, a coal-black mustache that turned down below the corners of his mouth.
A tattooed Aztec warrior image crept out of the collar of his leather jacket along his broad neck. Pescatore spotted another
tattoo, intermittently visible in the dim parking lot: a teardrop below the corner of the left eye.

Pescatore did not know where to look. It was a balmy night and a soft breeze was blowing, but he felt sweat collect on his
forehead.

“ ’Scuse me,” Buffalo said. And then: “Homes. I’m talkin’ to you.”

Pescatore reluctantly swiveled his head. “Huh?”

“You work the station over by Border State Park, right?”

The voice was low, thuggish, surprisingly mellow. Dillard hammered at his gum, perplexed. Pescatore wondered if there was
a reason he should not answer. Buffalo and the others certainly knew he was a Border Patrol agent. He grunted, “Uh-huh.”

“My cousin, Rufino, he recognized you.”

The young driver perked up at the mention of his name. From across the fifteen feet that separated them, the driver gave Pescatore
a nod and, of all things, a sheepish thumbs-up.

His grin made strange by the teardrop tattoo, Buffalo said: “Rufino thinks you’re this Border Patrol agent that saved his
ass last year when he came up from Guanajuato. He crossed during the floods. Fell in the water, damn near drowned. But you
fished him out. It was all he could talk about when he finally made it up to L.A. He’s from the
rancho,
you know, he was like:
‘Me salvó la vida, fue un milagro del cielo!’ ”
—Buffalo imitated a singsong border-brother accent—“this and that. Said you gave him ten bucks too. He wouldn’t stop carryin’
on about it.”

Rufino’s hair had been shorter then, but Pescatore recognized him. He remembered the incident in Border Field State Park:
While a trainee, he had chased the youth headlong into a pool of polluted black water formed by flood runoff from Tijuana.
Rufino had swallowed the toxic water and had a violent reaction, throwing up everything inside him, spewing vomit from his
mouth and nose. His thrashing put him in theoretical danger of drowning, though the water was only neck high. An agent warned
Pescatore to stay out of that pool of poisoned shit. But in he plunged, retching as the burnt-rubber-and-sewer smell slammed
his nostrils, and hauled out Rufino. Pescatore had slipped his prisoner the cash later, back at IB station, when both of them
were waiting to be tested for amoebic dysentery and other exotic ailments. The Mexican had kept thanking him the whole time.

“Oh yeah,” Pescatore said, weak-legged with relief, meeting Buffalo’s steady gaze at last. He saw the resemblance: Buffalo
and Rufino both had black eyes that seemed to have been chiseled over high cheekbones. “I remember. That water out there in
the park is nasty. You aspirate that, it can fuck you up. I’m just glad I was around.”

“Rufino is too,
ese,
” Buffalo chuckled. “Dumbass, I told him if he’d called me I woulda met him in Tijuana, brought him up first class, no problem.
But he couldn’t find me and got anxious, hadda do it his way.”

Buffalo extended a hand as if they had not been introduced and gave Pescatore a two-stage street handshake. “My name’s Omar.
They call me Buffalo.”

“I’m Valentín.”

“Nice to meet you. Appreciate what you did for my cousin.” Buffalo ducked his head discreetly and murmured, “He’s still a
youngster. And a
naco,
when you get right down to it. But hey: He’s family, right? Gotta take care of him. I got him a
jale,
he does some driving for me, this and that. Least he ain’t scared of workin’.”

Pescatore smiled enthusiastically, not wanting to blow it with any kind of comment. Garrison climbed out of the van. He looked
perplexed by the sudden chumminess between Pescatore and Buffalo.

“Omar, you keep an eye on my crazy welterweight buddy over there,” Garrison rumbled.

“Good with his hands, huh?” Buffalo said. “Yeah, me and Valentín was just shootin’ the shit a little.”

Garrison suggested they get going and check out the merchandise. His stare mixed annoyance and curiosity. Even Mr. Super-Mercenary
Garrison gets all frisky around this guy, Pescatore thought. You gotta figure Buffalo is bad as they come.