by Bruce Kading
* * *
The small studio apartment where Hayden had been living for the past year was on the North Side of the city in a vibrant area of businesses—restaurants, bars, and small shops—intermixed with apartment buildings and three-flats. After work he sometimes played basketball at a nearby field house—pickup games with anyone who showed up. It was a good way to blow off steam and got him away from the habit of stopping at McGinty’s to trade war stories with his colleagues, which always left him feeling empty.
There were many attractive single women in his neighborhood, and it wasn’t difficult to meet them. Some were obviously turned off by his gritty line of work, while others found it intriguing. Either way, he was so consumed with the job that he hadn’t the time or energy to be drawn into anything beyond brief liaisons.
His most meaningful personal encounters took place at the Veterans Hospital in Maywood, just west of the city. He’d noticed an article in the paper that mentioned a need for volunteers to visit bedridden veterans, particularly those without families, who would often fall into intense boredom and depression. Most were older men, many of them World War II or Korean War veterans, who enjoyed talking about their war experiences and were fascinated with Hayden’s INS work. Hayden tried to get there once a week, usually on the weekends. Though the men were appreciative of his visits, he often thought he was getting more from the experience than the patients.
The shooting of Frank Kelso and its aftermath had deeply affected Hayden, as he had lost the most important and supportive relationship in his life. From the beginning, the circumstances surrounding that terrible event had been vague, and he’d formulated countless theories to fill in the blurry picture; but without solid evidence they would remain nothing more than speculation. Though Willis had provided only a general description of the incident, Buck Tatum’s extreme reaction suggested that the situation might not have been as straightforward as Willis seemed to believe. Hayden had hoped more facts would emerge after talking to agents who had worked with Kelso, Landau, and Tatum, but none of them had direct personal knowledge, and they seemed to accept the results of the investigation conducted at the time. His unusual curiosity could raise suspicion, potentially costing him his job.
He’d passed the first professional hurdle by making it through probation. Now he was determined to sharpen his investigative skills and try to earn a position in one of the units that worked the more challenging criminal cases. He would have to be patient and wait for the right moment to make further inquiries about the shooting.
* * *
Hayden usually didn’t remember his dreams and made little effort to do so. To him they were mere flights of the imagination, not to be taken seriously. But there was one dream he’d begun to have almost every week, and it disturbed him. It would always begin in a desert, the sun blazing through a cloudless sky—the peaks of dry, craggy mountains looming hazily in the distance. Several figures dressed in brown hooded robes, like those of Franciscan monks, shuffled slowly along a sandy path. The hoods hung loosely over their heads so that he couldn’t make out their faces. It was a peaceful scene, the figures blending with the washed-out earth tones of the desert. They plodded along, a methodical purpose to their gait, as if they had traveled this path before and knew exactly where they were going. Nick, from a distance, would call out to get their attention, but they couldn’t hear him. His voice had no strength behind it and always vanished into the air.
4
It was a windless day in the city of Guadalajara, the air thick and humid. A vast cloud of exhaust fumes filled the sky, diffusing the sunlight. On the Calle de Leon there were no trees or landscaping—nothing but concrete pavement and a long line of buildings with little or no space between them. A pack of bony dogs sniffed through garbage that lay next to a toppled metal container. The dogs scattered when a pickup truck pulled in front of the decaying six-story apartment building.
Miguel Chavez stepped out of the passenger side and looked up at a third-floor window where his son, Paco, was leaning over the windowsill.
“Papa!” the boy shouted happily, his voice echoing down the street.
Miguel, dressed in loose-fitting jeans, work boots, and a tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up, waved and walked toward the building, carrying his metal lunchbox. He had straight black hair combed cleanly back from his forehead. Broad-shouldered and thick at the waist, he moved with the unhurried ease of a man older than his thirty-six years. Miguel went inside and climbed the sagging stairs.
He had barely closed the apartment door behind him when Paco, ten years old and small for his age, began excitedly searching his father’s pockets. “Where is it, Papa?” he cried in Spanish.
Carmen was watching from the kitchen. “Let your father breathe, Paco. He didn’t promise. He only said he might have something.” She looked at Miguel’s face for some sign but could tell nothing from his placid expression.
Finding nothing, Paco stepped back and looked sadly at the floor.
“Here, son, take this to your mother,” said Miguel, handing over his lunchbox.
Paco cradled it in his arms and marched slowly toward the kitchen.
“You might want to open it,” Miguel murmured softly.
Paco’s face lit up as he placed the box on the kitchen table, fumbled with the metal latch, and flung it open. He pulled out a bright blue Chicago Cubs cap, the red letter C on the front. Beaming with delight, he ran to his father and hugged him around his waist.
“The Cubs are my favorite team, Papa!”
“Yes, why do you think I got that one?” Miguel laughed and stroked the boy’s hair. “Go show Luis your new cap. I saw him out on the landing.” Paco smiled and raced out the front door.
Carmen, with a restrained smile, looked at the basket on the kitchen counter where their two-month-old daughter, Maria, slept peacefully, undisturbed by the commotion. “This one will sleep through anything,” Carmen said.
Miguel kissed his wife’s forehead and looked down at Maria, his expression now solemn.
“What’s wrong?” Carmen asked.
“They won’t need me for at least a week, probably more. Before long we’ll have to find an apartment where the rent is lower, and it will probably make this place look like a palace.”
Carmen looked away, afraid of what was coming.
“We’re moving backwards,” Miguel said pleadingly. “Something has to change. We have to consider the jobs in Chicago my cousin has written about. I’ve been praying . . . waiting for an answer.”
Carmen, with worry in her large, brown eyes, looked out the kitchen window and then back at Miguel. “But they don’t want us there.”
“Then why do they let so many without papers live and work there? What they do is more important than what they say, and they don’t seem to do much to stop anybody from getting jobs. They must want us.”
She could feel her resistance beginning to crumble.
“I can go first,” said Miguel. “You can stay with my parents until I send for you.”
Carmen let out a deep sigh and rested her head gently against Miguel’s chest. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps they were wanted north of the border. Thinking of it that way made it seem more reasonable.
* * *
Miguel crouched next to a shack on a rock-strewn hilltop in Juárez. He carried no clothing or other possessions except a wallet with the eighty dollars he had scraped together. It was hot—the late afternoon sun shining brightly. He peered down at the river, all that separated Mexico from the United States, yet here the Rio Grande was no more than a ribbon of brown water that cut through the valley. Women from the Mexican side went down to the river with buckets to capture the water and then returned to a cluster of small huts made of scrap metal, plywood, and tar paper. On the other side of the river, a steep, rocky hillside crested to a busy highway. Miguel watched as two men waded across the river, climbed the hill, and hopped into a waiting truck. To his surprise, there was no sign of the Border Patrol
on the Texas side of the river. Mostly it was quiet, with an occasional gust of wind rappelling through the canyon.
When the sun disappeared and dusk set in, Miguel made his move—still fearing that sirens and spotlights would greet him. He descended the slope, sloshed across the knee-high river, and scrambled up the steep embankment, his feet crunching through dried branches and mesquite. He was sweating heavily and his heart was pounding when he reached the top. He walked briskly along the shoulder of the highway toward the tall buildings in the center of El Paso, less than a mile away, as cars and trucks roared past him. Where were the border agents? Don’t think about them, he told himself. Just keep moving and follow the instructions. As it grew steadily darker, he relaxed a little, figuring he was less likely to be noticed.
He made his way to the bus depot in the downtown area and boarded a bus for Las Cruces, New Mexico, about fifty miles to the north. There were several others on the bus who looked around nervously and appeared to be in the same situation, but he didn’t speak to them. As they waited for the bus to depart, he looked out the window and for the first time saw a green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle parked at the curb just twenty-five feet away, but the agents inside were looking down, apparently doing paperwork. He could make out the heads of two prisoners in the backseat of the vehicle.
The bus left without incident, and he got off an hour later in Las Cruces. Following the directions he’d been given, Miguel made his way to a large park, which had thick bushes and a small grove of trees at one corner. He lay down beneath the canopy of trees, but his mind was racing and he couldn’t sleep. At the first light of dawn, he got up and walked straight to the restaurant parking lot where he’d been told a man named Carlos would be waiting.
* * *
They had been driving for nineteen hours when they arrived at the outskirts of Chicago. It was Saturday morning, so the traffic was relatively light as the pickup truck traveled at just below the speed limit, heading east toward the heart of the city. Carlos, a stoic, expressionless man of sixty, had insisted on driving the entire distance, turning away offers from Miguel and the other passenger, a seventeen-year-old Mexican boy who sat between them, his head propped sleepily against Miguel’s shoulder. Carlos explained that he had driven this distance many times, and since they didn’t have valid driver’s licenses, it was safer this way.
They passed swiftly through the outlying neighborhoods—endless rows of apartments and businesses separated by faded green lawns and trees filled with colorful autumn leaves. Miguel peered at the distant skyscrapers, backlit by the emerging sun. The buildings had a surreal, bluish quality, lacking dimension, as though painted onto the horizon.
Carlos grunted tiredly and nodded toward the skyline. “Chicago,” he said, with a faint smile.
“Qué bonita,” said the boy, his eyes now shining with hope and fascination.
Suddenly there was a loud, wailing siren behind them. They all stiffened as two police cars, their blue lights rotating, sailed past them and quickly disappeared.
Carlos turned off the highway into the shadows of a seedy, neglected neighborhood. They passed an assortment of abandoned commercial buildings, dilapidated apartments, refuse-strewn alleys, and shabbily clad men—many of them standing in doorways, grasping bottles covered by paper bags. A pungent, rotting odor hung in the air—the smell of something burning.
Within minutes, they’d entered another neighborhood, this one not so impoverished and, judging by the people and the signs on the shops, populated mainly by Hispanics. They turned off busy Eighteenth Street onto a quiet, tree-lined street with small houses and two-flats on one side and a brick elementary school on the other. Carlos pulled in front of a narrow, brick two-flat covered with faded maroon paint. It was very close to the sidewalk, so there was no front yard.
“Here it is,” Carlos said.
Miguel had armed himself with such limited expectations that this simple dwelling looked surprisingly attractive. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“I have been here before. The owner uses the first floor for storage. You are on the second floor. The key is under the mat.”
“Do I owe you anything more?”
“No, your cousin has taken care of it. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you,” said Miguel, shaking both their hands. He stood on the street as they pulled away, his legs heavy from lack of movement. Carlos waved his large hand in a kind of salute and Miguel waved back. He watched as the pickup turned off the street and disappeared. Suddenly alone, he looked up at the building and then down the block, getting his bearings. The sky was gloriously blue, and a velvety breeze moved softly through the elm trees along the narrow parkway.
Miguel whispered a prayer of thanks as he shuffled slowly up the short walk to the front steps. The bottoms of his jeans, dried stiff from the muddy waters of the Rio Grande, rubbed together at his ankles as he walked.
* * *
Miguel stepped inside the dimly lit tavern. It was a gloomy little place—faded wood floors, a few small tables in the shadows, circular bar stools bolted to the floor—a place where people came to drink, not socialize. The aroma of stale beer and cigarettes hung in the air. A large overhead fan cut through cigarette smoke that drifted up from a scruffily dressed old woman sitting alone at the bar. The voice of Frank Sinatra singing “Summer Wind” filled the air, the tune’s polished orchestration and upbeat rhythm contrasting sharply with the bleak mood of the tavern.
Chacon, a middle-aged man with a black goatee, sat at the end of the bar reading a newspaper as Miguel stepped up. Chacon looked at him with tired eyes and addressed him in Spanish. “What can I get for you?”
“I look for the man called Rico.”
Chacon nodded toward a man sitting in the dark shadows opposite the bar. He was leaning back with his head against the wall and his eyes closed.
Miguel sat down in front of Salvador Rico and waited quietly, not wanting to startle him from his sleep. Something in the man’s facial features made Miguel think he was not a Mexican, and a lip wound gave him a look of quiet menace. Miguel would tread lightly. For the moment, he needed this man.
The Sinatra tape ended and the silence stirred Rico, who opened his eyes and looked into the passive face of Miguel Chavez. “What do you want?” asked Rico gruffly in Spanish, pulling himself erect.
“The documents.”
“Who sent you?”
“A man. I don’t know his name.”
Drowsy and hungover from a night of much tequila, Rico considered him for a moment through blurry eyes. “Come back tomorrow,” he said finally. “This is not a good time.”
“I can’t wait that long,” said Miguel evenly. “I need them to get work, for tomorrow morning.”
“Eager to work, eh? You Mexicans. Well, it will cost you more on a Sunday,” said Rico grumpily.
“How much?”
“Three hundred dollars for the green card and social security card.”
“I don’t have that much.”
“How much do you have?”
Miguel smiled as if it wasn’t a serious question.
“I will do you a favor,” said Rico. “Two fifty.”
They studied each other for several moments. Miguel knew he had no leverage, especially if he wanted them today. He’d heard that Monday was the big hiring day at the local factories, and he needed a job now. There was no way around it—it was just how things worked here, like paying off a cop in Mexico, even when you’d done nothing wrong. Fortunately, his cousin had left some money for him at the flat.
“All right,” Miguel said.
“Give me the money.”
“I will pay when you give me the documents.” There was no edge to Miguel’s voice; he spoke calmly, looking straight into Rico’s eyes.
Rico glared silently at Miguel, getting the measure of him, and then he smiled. He was impressed. This Mexican was not docile and unsure like many others. “You’ll get your documents,” said Rico indignantly.
He pulled a small notebook from the inside of his black nylon jacket, took a pen from his front shirt pocket, and began writing. “Do you have a social security number you want to use?”
“No.”
“OK, we’ll make one up. It takes years for them to figure it out, and by then you can get a good number.” Rico tore a page from the notepad and handed it to Miguel. “Here, take this over to the photo shop around the corner. Knock on the back door and give the man this note. He will take your picture and give you the documents.”
“I pay him?” asked Miguel.
“No, you pay me. That note will tell him I’ve been paid.”
When Miguel looked at him suspiciously, Rico grinned and called out toward the bar, “Am I good for it?”
Chacon didn’t look up from his newspaper. “He’s good for it.”
Miguel counted the bills and placed them in a neat stack on the table. He now had only thirty dollars left in his wallet and a few dollars in coins back at the apartment.
“You are sure he is there now?” Miguel asked.
“Of course. I pay him to be there,” said Rico, stuffing the bills into his shirt pocket.
“Very well. You are Rico, no?”
“No more questions. Just go where I told you.”
After Miguel left, Rico leaned back against the wall, swung his legs up on a chair, and looked lazily around the bar.
“Draw me a short one, would you?” he called out.