Illegal Read Free Page B

Caborca to Mexicali.
    As for Fernando Rodriguez, he was a campesino with bad teeth who returned from El Norte driving a shiny blue Dodge Ram with spinning wheel covers. Rodriguez claimed he bought the truck, almost new, in Arizona, after working a year in a dog-food processing plant. Tino was sure the cabrón stole the Dodge, along with the ostrich-skin cowboy boots he liked to park on a table at the cantina.
    Rodriguez boasted of one other thing that happened to be true. He did not die when he was crammed into the back of a sixteen-wheeler with thirty-five other mojados who crossed the border two summers earlier.
    Tino could remember every detail, as Rodriguez told the story nearly every evening. The truck had stopped somewhere in the California desert, baking in the sun. The people tried to claw their way out of the locked metal doors, leaving patches of scorched skin and trails of blood. Rodriguez swore that he saw a woman's hair burst into flame. No one at the cantina believed that, but one thing was certain: Eleven Mexicans died inside that truck.
    Still, Tino could not understand why Rodriguez would be acquainted with one of the most important lawyers in Los Angeles, or why he'd returned to Mexico, passing out the business cards of such an abogado brillante .
    "When we get inside," his mother told him now, "if the coyote asks why we must cross over tonight, say nothing."
    "Ay, Mami . I know what to do."
    "I will do the talking. You will be quiet."
    He let out a long sigh, like air from a balloon. No use arguing with his mother. No way to make her understand that he was the man of the house. Now he wondered if his actions back home—criminal, yet honorable—were somehow intended to prove his manhood to his mother.
    Marisol turned toward the street. An army jeep snaked through traffic, a soldier manning a .50 caliber machine gun. The drug wars, which were only stories on television in Caborca, were very real here. Yesterday, a local police station had been attacked with grenades and rocket launchers. When they had arrived after midnight, the army was sealing off the bus station.
    Now Marisol placed an arm around her son's shoulders. "Let's go, Tino. Let's get out of this godforsaken country."
     

SEVEN
     
    Marisol had never met the coyote, but she recognized him immediately.
    Shiny, tight black pants, tucked into pointy boots. Wraparound reflecting sunglasses and black felt Tejano hat, he looked like a low-life gambler at a cockfight. His black shirt with pearl-colored buttons was open halfway to his waist, and a heavy gold crucifix dangled in front of his hairy chest. His face was pitted with acne scars shaped like tiny fishhooks.
    The man called himself "El Tigre," although this tiger had a paunch pouring over his turquoise belt buckle. At the moment, he was using his fingers to dig into a platter of deep-fried anchovies.
    When he saw Marisol and Tino approach, El Tigre wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. The other hand was wrapped around a bottle of Tecate. Nodding, he said, "Do you have the money?"
    "We have two thousand, three hundred dollars cash," she answered, taking a seat. "All my savings."
    He took a swig of the beer. "Not enough. It is three thousand dollars each. And no discount for the little one."
    Tino bristled and started to speak, but his mother kicked him under the table.
    "We will pay you the rest when we cross over and can borrow the money from my aunt," she said.
    El Tigre's mouth creased into a smile, displaying an array of gold-lined teeth that had taken on a greenish hue, as if covered with algae. "Your aunt? Why does everyone have an aunt in El Norte ? I bet she's a rich woman with a mansion in Phoenix."
    "A nice house in Torrance, California. My uncle owns a gasoline station there."
    Marisol was weaving her story out of threads plucked from the air. True, she had an aunt, a miserly woman who had married an American and refused to return to Mexico, even for her sister's funeral. The last