10 Tahoe Trap

by Todd Borg

  “Congressmen have a lot of reasons why they pass laws,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to hear my take on legislators. I should also point out, however, that most deportations are administrative and aren’t attached to any criminal prosecution. They simply pick up people, make a decision, and deport them. They call these cases removals.”

  I could hear more breathing on the line. It sounded like Bolen’s cigarette wasn’t going to last long.

  “I think,” Bolen said, “that the root of the worry over illegal immigration is that they will take our jobs, overload our social services and suck the taxpayer dry. And there’s no doubt that some illegals absorb costly healthcare services, and send their children to public schools, paid for by our taxes.

  “But the studies don’t support the job question, and a good portion of illegals have their taxes deducted from their paychecks just like the rest of us.”

  It sounded like Bolen was getting lathered up.

  He said, “If you ask hotel managers and farmers and restaurant owners and landscape companies if they could find American citizens to clean the rooms, pick the produce, fry the eggs, run the lawn mowers, and build rock gardens should illegals all be deported, they almost universally tell you no. Most Americans who were born here won’t do that work. Even if you find an uneducated American looking for a job and you offer him work cutting up chicken meat or cleaning the bathrooms in your factory, many if not most will say they’re going to keep looking.

  “Does that make coming here illegally right? Of course not.” He paused to breathe and no doubt suck down more smoke.

  “Is there a way to plead this boy’s case that ups his odds of staying?” I asked.

  “If you were to hire a good immigration lawyer like me, and if you’re willing to spend some money, we may find a way through the thicket of fine print that is stacked against him. But I make no promises.”

  “It sounds like you’re saying that if this kid wants to stay in the country, he should stay undercover.”

  “Hard to say,” Bolen said. “Undercover, he could get picked up. He breaks any law, jaywalks, rides his bicycle through a red light, could be a cop stops him. Next thing you know the kid might be taken away to a detention center. A lawyer can sometimes intervene. And while the system is full of exceptions –and this kid’s situation may fit one of those holes – the system is also inflexible. You’ve got some bureaucrat filling in the form boxes on a computer screen. She’s been doing it all day, and she’s got to do a hundred more before she can go home. Your kid’s form gets filled in the wrong way for him, next thing you know, he’s on a plane to Mexico and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

  “Let me tell you one more thing about this kid,” I said. “He’s been in trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “He got in a scuffle, and when the teachers checked his pack, they found his harvest tools, including his tomato knife. He was hauled in for bringing a weapon to school.”

  I heard an exhalation.

  “Christ, McKenna, if you’d told me that up front, you could’ve saved us both several minutes worth of my hot air. No way is any agency gonna let him stay. He’s toast. You better start teaching him Español.”

  I thanked him and walked back over to Street’s. She and Paco and Spot were still sitting outside enjoying the November sun.

  I sat down and looked up as a small plane whined above on a path from Squaw Valley. It headed toward the mountain behind us, roughly near where my cabin perches. The plane continued on, heading toward Carson Valley down below the back side of the mountain. It gave me an idea.

  “You ever been in a plane?” I said to Paco.

  Judging by Paco’s look, I might as well have asked if he’d ever flown to Paris for dinner at Maxim’s.

  “No.”

  I looked up at the clearing sky. “Good day for flying,” I said. “Want to come?”

  He compressed his lips. “Where would we go?”

  “I want to look for your van.”

  Paco looked doubtful. “I don’t think you could.”

  “Why?”

  “My friend Rafael went on a plane when his father died. He said it went real high. He couldn’t see anything on the ground.”

  “I’m not talking about a jet airliner. I’m talking about a little plane.” I pointed at the one that had gone above us. “See that little plane flying over the mountain?”

  Paco squinted against the bright sky. He put his hand up to shade his eyes against the morning sun but never touched his sunglasses on the top of his head.

  “That kind of plane,” I said. “Small. Flies at low altitude.”

  Paco shrugged, the indeterminate version.

  “Is that a yes?”

  He shrugged again.

  The absence of any emotional response from Paco was difficult to deal with.

  I turned to Street. “You want to come?”

  “And ride in a plane with you driving?” She was no doubt remembering my crash landing the last time I flew in a rush to save Jennifer Salazar from a killer who had her out on a boat in the middle of Lake Tahoe.

  “The last time was in a blizzard,” I said, avoiding further explanation in front of Paco. I looked up at the cloudy sky. “It looks like it will be calm for several hours at least.”

  Street gave me one of her beautiful, enigmatic smiles. “Thanks, but I have bugs to identify, bugs to count, bugs to put through my pheromone merry-go-round.”

  So Paco and Spot and I got in the Jeep. As usual, Spot was overjoyed to go for a ride, and he held his head out the open rear window, an endless appetite for the sights and smells and sounds. Paco stared through the glass, zero appetite for the sights and smells and sounds. I wondered if it had diminished since the shooting.

  We headed south down the East Shore. I kept my attention on the rear view mirror as much as in front of us. I saw no pickups.

  At a few minutes before 10:30 a.m., we pulled into the South Lake Tahoe airport and parked in the lot. I left the windows open enough that Spot could see his view of choice. I told him to be good, grabbed his head, and shook it fast enough to make his jowls flap. He wagged.

  Paco and I headed over to a small hanger building between the tarmac and the parking lot.

  Across the top of the door was a painted plywood sign that said Tahoe Valley Wings. I tried the door. Locked. There was a little piece of paper taped to the window pane.

  In red ballpoint pen it said, “Giving a lesson. Back at 11:00.” There was a rough, crude, line drawing of an airplane and an arrow that pointed up.

  I stepped away from the building, looked up, and scanned the sky. Nothing but cobalt blue.

  Fifteen minutes later, Paco pointed at the sky. A white Cessna 152 came into view out of the north, taking a straight-in approach to runway 18. It dropped down on final, lowering to just eight or ten feet above the landing strip. Then it slowed to the speed of a car going through town before it flared and made a soft landing in front of us. It taxied across the tarmac and stopped twenty yards away.

  After the prop stopped, a skinny young man got out of the right seat, stepped to the ground, trotted around to the left door and opened it for a trim woman, younger than he. Been a long time since I’d seen a young guy open a door for a girl. He nodded at me. “Be with you in a few minutes,” he said as they went into the hanger office.

  They emerged five minutes later.

  “You’re ready for your first solo next week,” he said to her.

  “No way,” she said, beaming.

  “You greased that last touchdown. Next week solo, next month your license, eventually your instrument rating.”

  “No way,” she said again.

  “You got the chops, girl. Go for it.”

  They said goodbye, and the instructor turned toward me and introduced himself.

  “Hi, I’m Ben Rashid.”

  We shook. I told him my name.

  Ben Rashid looked Pakistani
and talked Brooklyn, New York. “You want to rent a plane?”

  “Please. I’d like to go up for an hour or two. Maybe more. But I’m not current. Can you take me up for a check ride?”

  “Sure, man.” He waved his arm toward the Cessna. “We’ve got this One-Fifty-Two, or, if you want some speed, we have a newer One-Seventy-Two Skyhawk.”

  “I’m doing an aerial search,” I said. “Slow is good.” I looked at the smaller plane. “But we’d probably have a weight issue on the One Fifty-Two.”

  Ben looked at the plane, then smiled. “You obviously know your stuff.” He pointed at the plane. “Gross payload on this sweetheart is five hundred pounds. Subtract off full fuel tanks and we’re down to three forty-four. What do you weigh?”

  “Two fifteen.”

  “I’m only one-forty, but just the two of us puts us over her limit. So we need to trade up. Our Skyhawk has a payload after fuel of a bit over four forty. What’s your boy weigh?”

  I turned to Paco.

  “Sixty-four and a half when they weighed me at school,” Paco said.

  Ben wrote on his clipboard, added the numbers. “So we three are about four nineteen. And after I get out of the plane, you’ll have lots of room to spare. What are you searching for? Do you need to bring along any equipment?”

  “No. We’re looking for signs of a missing woman,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. So sorry to hear that. I’m certainly happy to help.”

  Paco wanted to wait outside while I made arrangements. I considered the risks and decided he could stay outside only if he remained in front of the big window where I could see him.

  “Keep your eye on the parking lot. You see Salt and Pepper, you come inside fast, right?”

  He nodded.

  Ben and I went into the hanger office, filled out several pieces of paper.

  I kept turning around to check that Paco was still standing in front of the window.

  Ben asked me the basics and made notes while I gave him my particulars from my hours in the cockpit to showing him my last medical paperwork, a copy of which I keep in the Jeep. Then he gave me the oral exam, smiling at my answers.

  He stood up and handed me the ignition key.

  Outside, doing the preflight inspection, I made a show of being extra thorough while I checked everything, engine components to propeller to wheels to aircraft surfaces, wings and tail, to sampling the wing tank fuel sumps.

  When we were done, I showed Paco the rear seat. He climbed in and immediately reached for the seat belts.

  “I thought you didn’t like seat belts because they trap you inside. If something happened, you wanted to be thrown free.”

  “Not in a plane,” he said.

  I checked Paco’s belts, then we climbed inside, me in the left seat, Ben in the right.

  I continued the preflight routine, going step-by-step through the long list. Then I started the engine and checked the instruments, oil pressure, fuel pump, fuel mixture. I turned on the radio, the transponder, checked the flaps. I taxied to runway 18 and did my engine run-up, checking magnetos, suction gauge, engine instruments, and ammeter.

  When the radio chatter made it clear that there was no nearby traffic, I announced our takeoff, pushed the throttle all the way and released the brakes. The prop turned into a blur, and the plane gained speed like an ungainly little insect with its wings extended. The buzz-saw whine rose in pitch as the Cessna gathered speed. At 60 knots, I eased the yoke back, and we lifted off. By turning the yoke to the right just a touch, I crabbed into the west wind as we rose above the tarmac, knowing that Ben would notice that, despite the cross wind, our position stayed directly above the runway as we climbed into the sky.

  Ben put me through some basic maneuvers, then had me do two touch-and-goes before he asked me to land and drop him off.

  “It’s like you fly every day,” he said as he got out of the plane.

  “In my dreams,” I said.

  “Good luck with your search.” He made a little wave.

  We helped Paco move from the rear seat to the right front. Then I taxied back out to the runway, and took off once again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I kept the plane at the best angle of climb for our altitude, which held the airspeed to 66 knots despite full throttle. As I approached the south end of the Tahoe Basin, I was up to 7000 feet of altitude, 700 feet above the ground. I turned the yoke, pulled it back, and put the plane into a climbing turn to the left.

  The Cessna creaked over the wind noise as the ailerons grabbed at the air and banked the plane, but the plane dutifully executed my commands. I came around in a big sweeping turn in front of Trimmer Peak 3000 feet above. Behind it, another thousand feet up, was Freel Peak.

  Paco was curiously indifferent. He looked out, but he had no reaction. No exclamations about his first plane ride, no remarks about how things looked from up in the air, no comments about the tiny cars. The kid was shut down. I didn’t think that his emotions were stunted and undeveloped. They just seemed locked in a vault.

  I kept up a running commentary in an effort to get him to loosen up. I pointed out the lake, the mountains, and other landmarks. I showed him the cliff road coming down from Echo Summit, a road he’d traveled on many times.

  When he still expressed no interest, I turned my attention to my search task.

  It made sense that on the morning that Paco’s foster mother was assaulted, she had driven at least some distance past the farmers’ market, enough that Paco had fallen back asleep. Although Paco had said that she’d parked near a cliff, no particular cliff came to mind. I thought I’d head out from the center of town and see if I noticed any remote areas that were accessible by car and had a cliff or two nearby.

  I leveled off 1000 feet up, what’s officially called Above Ground Level, and I brought the Cessna toward the center of town. The landing approach to the airport comes out of the north, over the lake and across the center of town. At 1000 feet AGL, I would possibly be in the way of aircraft approaching from the north, so I stayed to the east side of town.

  The weather was clear, with visibility in the high mountain air nearly unlimited. The lake stretched out 22 miles to the north, an improbable blue, an improbable size, and, for a giant lake, an improbable elevation.

  I pointed down. “See that main road? That’s Lake Tahoe Boulevard. And see the lumber yard with the big piles of lumber? Across the road and down a bit is the parking lot where you used to sell your produce at the farmers’ market.”

  Paco looked, but he didn’t react.

  I didn’t have a flight plan other than to check out areas northeast from the farmers’ market in the center of South Lake Tahoe. Paco had said he’d fallen asleep after seeing the farmers’ market. A kid can fall dead asleep in a minute and wake up five minutes later, not having a clue about how long he’d been asleep. So it could be that the location I was looking for was as close as five minutes from the center of town.

  I could estimate the other end of the time range. Paco had said that they’d driven up from the Central Valley and that they’d left at 3 a.m. A little arithmetic could give me a time range.

  The drive from Stockton up the west slope of the Sierra takes roughly three hours, getting them to the South Shore at approximately 6 a.m. So Paco had seen the farmers’ market area at about that time. Then he called me at 6:30. Which left approximately 30 minutes during which Cassie drove someplace while Paco fell back asleep. Paco woke up and witnessed her assault, and the men drove off in their pickup with Paco hiding in the back.

  If the assault took ten minutes, the place where Paco’s foster mother was assaulted was somewhere within a 20-minute drive from the center of South Lake Tahoe. Because they were going northeast past the farmers’ market when Paco saw it, the likelihood was that Cassie drove someplace up off Kingsbury Grade, or possibly up the East Shore, maybe as far as Cave Rock.

  When Paco escaped the pickup, he came running down the gondola lift line. So the
pickup had probably been in the nearby neighborhood. But it could have driven from anywhere. When Paco called, he said the pickup was going fast. There were only a few places in Tahoe where you can drive over 40, but it indicated that Cassie could have been shot in a wide range of places. The only hope was to look for cliffs and/or the van.

  I wanted to fly low above the ground. But Tahoe has many tall rocky outcroppings that can be dangerous in a low-altitude search, so I decided to come down from the slope above. It is easier to suddenly pull up above an obstruction when you’re gliding down slope than when you’re angling up and already using most of your engine power.

  I put the Cessna into a climb. When I got up to 8500 feet, I began my search in the area surrounding Daggett Pass at the top of Kingsbury.

  The Cessna was about 30 years old, with a sun-bleached instrument panel and cracked, ripped fabric seat covers. The cockpit glazing was abraded and slightly fogged. It was hard to see clearly as I reached altitude and once again approached the mountains. But the low stall speed allowed me to glide down at a comfortable 65 knots.

  I did a zig-zag search pattern, always heading down at a gentle angle like a skier traversing back and forth to descend a mountain. I watched for cliff faces and a dark-colored van as well as for a dark pickup with a light topper. I stayed within a perimeter that seemed the maximum distance from the center of town that someone could drive in twenty minutes.

  Paco kept his face turned to the window. He said nothing.

  After an hour, we’d covered all of the areas adjacent to Kingsbury Grade. I even followed some dirt trails that looked like they’d be accessible by a van. But there were only a few cliff areas that fit what Paco described, and none of them had a van nearby. I also saw four different pickups with toppers over the beds, but in each case, the toppers were dark in color.

  I wanted to begin a new search above the East Shore, taking the same approach, gliding down from above. I pushed the throttle all the way forward and pulled back on the yoke. The engine roared like an old VW Beetle with the accelerator floored. Although the plane’s rate of climb was not fast, it ran smoothly. I stayed away from the mountains as I gained altitude.