The publicity blitz by Dick Snider had not been lost on U.S. government law-enforcement officials. Two customs officers and two border patrolmen were being loaned by the government to Dick Snider to augment his task force. The city of San Diego was giving him ninety days to produce results in the bandit-plagued hills and canyons. That was a very short time to turn a squad of city policemen into … what? Canyon-crawling commandos?
They all wondered early on if they were destined to be bastard children. The amorphous experiment was being seriously questioned even before it began. Their budget was being trimmed before they spent any. Their training time was being cut to five days, giving them a weekend to rest before going out in the canyons at night to do whatever the hell it was they were going to do. And they had only a vague idea of what they were going to do out there. Oh, they were going to curtail the marauding bandits through some sort of commando ambush, but not in any way that remotely resembled tactics they’d used in street police work.
And they took a verbal beating from the rest of the cops who got wind of the training camp at the U.S. Marine Corps facility at Camp Matthews, some ten miles north of downtown San Diego. They were outfitted in black navy watch caps, goggles for brush crawling, camouflage fatigues, combat boots. A few tried blackening their faces like military raiders they’d seen in a hundred war movies, and directed obligatory cracks at those with darker skin, just as they’d seen in a hundred war movies.
Even Dick Snider, who finally had his dream realized, wasn’t sure how to train his new task force now that he was being given his chance.
“I remember the first briefing,” he said. “I told them it was gonna be very unpredictable out in those canyons. I told them chances are somebody was gonna get hurt. I wanted them to believe it from the beginning. If someone had to get hurt it should be the bad guys.”
And they looked at him and nodded respectfully, and he saw them roll their eyeballs and heard the puff of a dozen involuntary sighs and he thought, “They have heard this speech before.” In a hundred war movies.
Manny Lopez came to doubt it from the start. He looked at them in their camouflage and goggles. These weren’t marine raiders. These were city cops. And other cops howled when out of curiosity a few heard about Camp Matthews, or got a look at them when they made the mistake of wearing their John Wayne suits to the police station on the way home. But they were an eager band of young policemen and they just grinned and shrugged and ran it off all day in training.
Eddie Cervantes was, in addition to being a dedicated Marine reservist, a very fast runner who cheerfully punished the out-of-shape street cops by setting a fleet-footed pace all over the hills, yelling, “On, ter, thrp, frp!” like every leatherneck since the Boxer Rebellion, while the out-of-shape street cops dragged ass up and down the canyons.
There were two policemen in the group who had seen combat in Vietnam, both ex-Marine drill instructors: Ernie Salgado and Fred Gil. Since Manny Lopez admitted that he didn’t know diddly about guns and ammo, Ernie Salgado volunteered to help with the weapons training. It seemed likely that out in bandit country they might need more than their police service revolvers, but threading one’s way on treacherous trails in the night would make it pretty tough to lug around standard police shotguns. And SWAT rifles would probably be dangerous for everyone concerned.
The task force decided to use a High Standard, model ten, 12-gauge shotgun, which was equipped with a flashlight, a pistol grip, and a short barrel for concealment. It was essentially a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun that could be held in one hand and fired at very close range. The ammunition used in police department revolvers was 158 grain, roundnose lead. Most policemen, though they carry handguns as tools of their trade, are not technically versed in firearms. Ernie Salgado was, and wondered from the beginning how effective two-inch gun barrels would be, since ordinary police department ammo already had little punch. He wondered if, what with the shorter revolver barrels and the inevitable waste of gas, the 158-grain ammo might lose too much power. That they might be better off with four-inch or even six-inch revolvers out there. And that the sawed-off shotguns might expand the bird too soon; thus anyone hit with projectiles from their short-barreled shotgun-handguns might be able to pick the lead out of his navel like belly-button fuzz and throw it right back at them.
There were two things noteworthy about these opinions on the efficacy of sawed-off shotguns and snub-nosed revolvers: 1. No one even dreamed how close their confrontations would get. 2. No one completely believed there was going to be heavyweight gunplay out there in the first place.
The fact is, most policemen can go an entire career without firing a weapon outside of the pistol range. On any police department there are a few officers who seem to become involved in multiple shootings, but there were none of these on the task force.
So there was a great deal of running and firing during those five days at Camp Matthews. And everyone treated the whole exercise in the best of humor most of the time. Except during one of their night exercises when they simulated sneaking up on bandits who were sneaking up on aliens. It was good boyish fun until someone almost stepped on a rattlesnake. A live rattlesnake. Very few of these city boys had ever seen a rattlesnake, living or dead.
Dick Snider had seen his share, from the Grapes of Wrath days up to and including his stint as a border patrolman so many years ago. And even in the past few months while conducting his one-man creepy crawly campaigns in the canyons at night, he had seen and heard the reptiles.
Rattlesnakes? Real rattlesnakes. This got their attention all right. Bandits were one thing. They weren’t truly expecting much trouble from a bunch of raggedy thugs, all horsed-out on Mexican brown. They were just planning to kick ass and take names, as they say in the business. But real rattlesnakes? And how about tarantulas? Can they kill you? And what about those freaking scorpions they’d heard about? Were there really scorpions out there? When somebody started asking if rats carried plague, Dick Snider had to give his young city boys a few reassuring words about the other dangerous creatures of the canyons, who had been there far longer than the bandits.
The border patrolmen assigned to the task force taught the cops a few tricks that at the time seemed of doubtful value but, as the task force experiment took its radical turn, proved very valuable indeed. Things such as hunkering down: The illegal aliens ordinarily squat when approached by suspicious or threatening persons. So the cops had to learn to squat. And to try and feel the docility of pollos, to learn the gestures of submission and to talk shyly, with proper humility, the timbre and tone of voice modulated accordingly. About the exact opposite of a Japanese sushi chef, they were told.
Even the use of the hands was completely different south of the imaginary line. A real Mexican would call to an adult with the fingers pointed downward. “Ven aquí” would be softened by that waggling of down-turned fingers. A dog or a child would be called with the fingers up. They were starting to learn just how a Mexican differs from a Mexican-American.
And just in case they were called upon to do a little undercover work, they were taught a few short phrases using the vernacular of real Mexicans. Anglicized slang was nearly as much in evidence among law-enforcement officers and street people in Tijuana as it was on the American side of the border. But campesinos fresh from the interior would certainly not be asking for mechas to light their cigarettes. And if one was going to use the word frajo for cigarette, there would be subtleties involved. Why does this pollo from Durango know the slang of the border? Indeed the slang of the Mexican-American barrio? Has he made multiple crossings and come to talk the language of smugglers and guides, or is he some kind of law-enforcement informer or police agent?
And if any of them was ever asked to impersonate an alien from the interior, what kind of cigarettes should he carry? What brand of matches would likely be sold in a pueblo in Chihuahua?
And what of the language of guides and smugglers? ¡Trucha! (meaning “Be careful!”) was not a word
many of them had heard, yet it was caló or barrio slang in Los Angeles, referring to a sharp dude who kept his eyes open.
The living language of the border, a patois of Spanish and English and bilingual slang, leaped whole areas of the California southland, came in and out of vogue, traveled back south prowling the border, crisscrossing as effortlessly as the scabrous mongrel dogs of the frontier. They listened and thought it was sort of interesting, but what the hell did it have to do with a bunch of street cops who were going into those hills to kick ass and take names?
One old policeman at Southern substation, when he got his first glimpse of the cop commandos, put it this way: “Black Jack Pershing was the last asshole dumb enough to go chasing Mexican bandits around the hills. And it ended up with Pancho Villa being played by every movie star from Beery to Brynner. What’d Pershing get out of it? A statue of himself in a wino park up in L.A., with a million pigeons shitting on his hat.”
Nobody wanted to think about it, but the fact was General Pershing and the U.S. Cavalry never came close to catching Pancho Villa.
“We don’t really know what we’ll be doing,” Renee Camacho told his father as he was getting the last haircut he would have for a while. Renee had a boy-tenor voice, though at twenty-eight he was actually one of the older men on the squad.
Herbert Camacho was a barber whose shop was located near Thirteenth and Market Streets, only eighteen blocks from the central police station. Renee and other cops often stopped to have a beer with the barber.
Herbert Camacho thought that the task force would be a good thing. “They’re your people,” he told his son in reference to the alien victims. “Somebody has to protect them.”
Renee had been a natural choice for Dick Snider. He was an energetic cop and, like Dick Snider himself, had a softer side which appealed to the task force lieutenant. A side not often apparent in policemen, and often decimated when young men do police work on city streets.
There was more. Dick Snider had known Renee’s father some sixteen years, since Snider was a rookie himself, patrolling Thirteenth and Market Streets.
The older man had always liked the tall lieutenant and told Renee that Dick Snider was simpática with the Mexican culture. The barber liked it when Snider would unashamedly offer an embrace and even a kiss, Mexican style. But he had reservations.
“Do you think it might be very … dangerous out there?” he asked Renee, his only child.
And one night while the barber was working at his second job, clerking in a liquor store, Dick Snider happened by to get some beer on his way home. Herbert Camacho surprised Dick Snider by blurting, “You better take care of my boy out there!”
“I’ll take care a him,” Dick Snider promised the barber. “I’ll take care a them all.”
“None a the guys wear bulletproof vests, goddamnit!” Tony Puente repeated it a thousand times during the formative days of the task force.
“I’m buying the bulletproof vest,” his wife, Dene, insisted.
“I won’t wear it.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I won’t wear it.”
“Do you wanna die?”
“The other guys might laugh.”
“The other guys might … laugh?”
She was “white,” but understood machismo as far as the Mexican male was concerned. They may not be real Mexicans in the eyes of those living south of the border, but the concept of machismo is alive and well on both sides of the imaginary line.
She insisted. He refused. She bought the vest. He wouldn’t wear it. She called his mother—“a typical little Mexican spitfire mother,” as he described her—and then the yelling and screaming really started.
“You’ll wear the bulletproof vest!” his mother said.
“I won’t wear the goddamn vest!”
“I hope you get shot, then!”
“I’d rather get shot than wear it!”
And so forth. In the end of course his mother told him she didn’t mean it. Still, he would rather get shot than wear it, he said. This was in the early days of the experiment. He didn’t know so much about getting shot.
When all else failed, his wife wept. “You’re not gonna die and leave me with three kids. You have to wear it!”
And this did get to him. Grievously. He believed he had robbed her of her youth. Dene was fifteen years old when they married. He was an eighteen-year-old Marine.
It seemed to him that he had always been taking care of women and arguing with them. He was an eldest child with five younger sisters. It was never apparent that he was as bright as he was. He was shy and soft-spoken. He graduated from high school before his seventeenth birthday and joined the Marines with his mother’s written consent. He couldn’t wait to get away from home, away from an alcoholic father who embarrassed him. The embarrassment was the worst possible kind because it was laced with guilt and remorse. The old man used to humiliate him by coming to the Little League baseball games to watch him play for a team sponsored by the San Diego Police Department. The team was managed by police detectives, and young Tony Puente imagined that they had probably arrested the drunken man sitting in the stands cheering him on. Lots of policemen had booked him for being drunk. Tony Puente would forever be easily embarrassed and quick to feel guilt.
The Marine Corps was not an escape. He was beside himself when the Cuban crisis broke in 1962. The Marines were going to Guantánamo! He couldn’t wait. But he and his teenaged girl friend had already set the date. He went to his commanding officer to see what he should do.
“Should I bug out to Guantánamo or should I do the right thing?” the young Marine asked his officer.
The answer was of course implicit in the question. He did the right thing, as usual. He got married and served his three-year enlistment in Santa Ana, California, a short drive from home. They had three children, and would have a fourth before the border experiment was over. He had robbed her of her youth, he believed, so that when she warned that he was not going to be shot dead and leave her alone to raise the children, he almost agreed to wear the vest. He would later change his mind about machismo and bulletproof vests.
In some ways Tony Puente looked more Mexican than any of them. His face was rather flat with small Indian eyes peering out through rimless glasses. When his hair grew long and he sprouted a Zapata moustache, he looked like the classic renderings of Mexican revolutionaries. But he spoke Spanish very poorly when recruited for the task force by Dick Snider and Manny Lopez.
He had other things to offer, such as experience. At thirty-three, he was next to the oldest man recruited, and he had seven years of police work. He had never gotten to Guantánamo Bay. He had never gotten anywhere. But at least he was getting out of uniform duty, whether Dene liked the idea or not. And he wasn’t going to be wimpy and wear that bulletproof vest.
Yet there was something he did not, could not, deny her. And it was something that came to be more crucial to every aspect of life than a thousand bulletproof vests. Dene became immersed in a fundamentalist church. Her life, and his more than hers, would never be the same again.
“She was a young woman with kids,” he would say gravely, trying to describe the religious crisis that would soon consume him. “Here I was off at night doing police work and she was forced to raise the kids herself. It seemed to me at first that the new religion was a … phase. A growing experience. She needed something on those lonely nights. It seemed okay that she read the Bible two hours a night. Better than TV when I was off doing police work, I figured.”
At this time in his life the faith of Tony Puente was moribund. It had never been the same really since his father died a death hastened by alcohol abuse. The Puentes called the nearby rectory for the priest to come. A white priest told them he’d be glad to oblige—for seventy-five dollars.
Tony’s mother then called a Mexican priest, who came at once without mentioning money. Nevertheless, Tony Puente’s faith was severely shaken, and in fact was never restored. As he
tried to explain the profound, irrevocable change in his marriage and life, he put it this way: “I said okay to her new religion but nixed the bulletproof vest. If I had it to do over I’da wore the goddamn vest to bed if she woulda shined-on the God Squad. But how could I know what would happen?”
The oldest cop among them was Fred Gil. He was an ex-Marine drill instructor who had served in Vietnam and hence was expected to assist with the quasi-military training. Fred Gil was thirty-six years of age, even quieter and more soft-spoken than Tony Puente. Fred Gil was known for a shy smile with a sense of humor buried deep. And he was perhaps the only ex-drill instructor in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps who used epithets like “heck” and “goldang.” He was one of the poorest Spanish-speakers among the Mexican-American cops, and was so diffident with superior officers that he avoided eye contact and frequently put his hand in front of his mouth when talking to anyone above the rank of sergeant.
Fred Gil’s passiveness seemed at first rather astonishing, in that during his service days he had been All-Marine Judo Champion in the open class for heavyweights. And at two hundred pounds this was not easy, since he had to compete with monster Marines. Fred Gil was pleasant, likable, physically fit. Many cops were surprised that at his age he’d join this outfit to run around in the cactus and lizard shit, freezing in the night. But it was personal with Fred Gil. He was affected by the brutality of the bandit gangs in the canyons. Dick Snider’s pictures of pathetic alien victims made an impression on old Fred Gil. Perhaps he and Dick Snider had lived long enough to know something about unfulfilled dreams and to empathize with those who had none. Perhaps he was approaching mid-life crisis. At thirty-nine years his wife, Jan, was probably into hers. They fought most of the time. Their marriage was miserable.
Lines and Shadows Page 3