Finnegan's Week (1993)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Shelby Pate, whom the Mexican workers called Buey -- the ox -- was comfortable to be with, and not threatening to the Mexicans even though he was enormous and biker-ugly. Shelby called him Flaco, because the young Mexican was so thin.

  "Wake up, Buey!" Abel said.

  His companion's head bobbed and he sat upright. "Huh?"

  "Time to work."

  The ox rooted in his nose, then wiped his finger on his filthy black jeans. He was thirty-one, two years older than Abel, and he talked so fast that the Mexican understood him about half the time. The ox had four tattoos on his arms, which were supposed to represent a pack of killer cats: tiger, panther, lion, puma. To Abel they looked like mongrel dogs, maybe coyotes. Abel always wondered where the ox got such bad tattoos, guessing it was in jail.

  "When we gettin somethin to eat, dude?" Shelby wanted to know, picking up his Motley Criie cap from the seat of the cab and of course putting it on backwards, pulling his dead-straw hair down the back of his neck. He used to have a dental bridge, but lost it during a methamphetamine orgy that turned into a barroom brawl. Abel thought the missing front tooth actually improved the ox's looks, making him appear more comical.

  "Always eat," Abel said. "Eat drink eat. Joo too fat, Buey."

  Shelby had only been working at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal for six months. He was big as a forklift, blubbery fat, but very strong and willing. And he'd take orders from anybody in the yard, Mexican, black or gringo. Abel didn't think the ox would ever be promoted to driver, but he didn't seem to care. Shelby came to work on time, did what he was told, then took his paycheck and spent it on methamphetamine and tequila in the biker bars in Imperial Beach and National City. The other workers underestimated the ox, but Abel did not. The Mexican sensed Shelby's cunning and street intelligence.

  Once, Abel had stopped for a drink with the ox at his favorite biker hangout, Hogs Wild, but a redneck biker in the saloon said he didn't like drinking with a Mexican, so Abel turned and left. The ox left with him, but first he found out which Harley the redneck owned and slashed the leather seat with his buck knife.

  "How long you figure it's gonna take us today?" Shelby asked, yawning.

  "We finish by seex o'clock." Then Abel added, "Maybe later."

  "How 'bout lendin me twenny bucks?"

  "No way," Abel said. "I broke, Buey."

  "Me, I'm always broke," Shelby said. "The boss is a cheap prick, ain't he? I'll be glad to see the last a that dude."

  By seeing the last of the boss, Shelby Pate was referring to the fact that Green Earth Hauling and Disposal had recently been sold, and was about to close escrow. The new owner was cost-conscious, and had already said he'd have to lay off eight workers including Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate. Their boss, Jules Temple, had suggested that Abel and Shelby start looking for new jobs right away. Jules did not offer his assistance in relocation, or severance pay, or bonuses of any kind.

  Abel Durazo was absolutely convinced that Jules Temple wouldn't know him if they passed on the street, he being just another Mexican who worked for a lot less money than a union driver.

  "Boss all the same" was all the Mexican said.

  "He pays you chump change. Know what a real driver gets for haulin poison waste?"

  Abel knew that a real driver would be a gringo, not a former "Rodino" like himself, who felt lucky to have such a job. He'd been called a Rodino because of Congressman Rodino, who'd sponsored the legislation by which Abel had applied for and got permanent resident status. Under the plan, Mexican nationals had been allowed to avoid deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service if they could prove they'd been in the U. S. prior to January 1, 1981, and through May 1987. The "proof' often consisted of rent receipts, school records, work records, payroll stubs, utility receipts, birth or marriage records. Cynics said that it could also work if the Mexicans showed up with "Made in the U. S." clothing labels, ticket stubs from a Springsteen concert, whatever.

  During the Rodino boom, American farmers and other employers often "sold names" to Mexicans, names of former employees who'd been in the U. S. for years, but who'd gone back south, or died, or disappeared. The future Rodinos could then apply under those names, and Mexican lawyers could supply bogus Social Security cards to match them. Lucky and smart Mexican nationals ended up with their resident "green cards" (which were no longer green, but blue) and were entitled to remain legally in the United States.

  When the Green Earth van got to the quay there were other trucks already there, mostly eighteen-wheelers unloading at the mammoth warehouses on what was a very busy day.

  Shelby said, "Look at all them lazy deck apes, smokin 'n jokin. Can't tell me anybody works in the navy. I shoulda been a swab."

  "Een the navy?"

  "Yeah, but they don't want guys that been in jail."

  "Why een jail?" Abel asked.

  "For GTA once," Shelby said. "Drove a hot Porsche for six months 'fore they nailed me. Wouldn'ta got me 'cept I was usin too much meth then. My brain got fried from snortin all that crank. Used to do a teener every night."

  "Teener?"

  "Teener means one sixteenth of an ounce. One eighth is called a eightball. You ever do cringe? That's what we called meth, cringe."

  "No," Abel said. "Leetle marijuana sometime."

  "Second time I got busted, I was workin for a guy had a big tanker rig. He figured a way to tap in to this oil line that went from California to Utah. When the line started operatin he installed a spigot and hose. The stupid oil company thought the atmospheric conditions caused the oil drop and never did figure it out. I got in on it toward the end. I use to sell the oil to guys at truck stops. A helicopter finally spotted a big spill in the desert and got suspicious and that's how it got shut down."

  "Joo was caught?" Abel asked.

  "Not for that. Only for stealin a goddamn Harley hog. Shoulda stayed in the oil business, but no, I had to steal that bike. Hard for the cops to get serial numbers off crude oil, right, Flaco?"

  The ox snorted like a horse at that one, pausing to hawk up a lunger and spit it out the window. The Mexican didn't understand what he meant.

  "Green Earth!" Abel shouted to a manifester in blue coveralls who was sitting on a pile of pallets beside the huge oiler at the quay wall.

  "Okay," the manifester said. "Guess your paperwork's in the office."

  Shelby followed Abel Durazo and the manifester, trying to check the time on a stain-less-steel wristwatch that wasn't there anymore. On Saturday night in National City he'd traded it for some good crystal meth and bad black pussy. When he'd sobered up he began to worry about AIDS. She was a burned-out junkie, uglier than west Texas. Every time he looked at his wrist he thought about that junkie hose-bag and wondered if maybe he should get a blood test.

  When he'd got to work on Monday and described his evening to a few of the guys, his foreman said, "Shelby, your cock takes you places I wouldn't go with a gun!"

  Inside the monster warehouse was a little office off to the right. In it was a metal desk, a chair, a phone. The manifester entered, made a notation or two, and handed Abel the paperwork, saying, "We put the two pallets inside. We never know if you guys're gonna show this month or next."

  "Not our company," Abel said. "We come on time."

  There were pallets, boxes and crates stacked twenty feet high from one wall to the other. Abel saw the ox read the stenciled content markings on the nearest mountain of boxes.

  "Man, jist imagine what they gotta store for those aircraft carriers," Shelby said. "Like, you gotta stash enough stuff for an army, right? I mean a navy. What's in all them boxes?"

  Shelby looked at Abel when he said it, and Abel wondered if the ox could read his mind.

  "We're loaded to the gunnels," the manifester said. "Got some big ships coming into port and they're taking on enough supplies to go out on the high seas for a ninety-day exercise. You got thousands of guys got to live a long time on all this, so we're prestaging."

  "Uncl
e Sam takes care of his navy," Shelby said to Abel.

  Then the manifester said, "Damn, I'm late for a lunch date with a lady. You guys can use a forklift, can't ya?"

  "Use 'em all day long in our job," Shelby said.

  The manifester pointed to a pair of yellow forklifts and said, "Don't take the one with the busted lift lever. The other one's better."

  "Enjoy yourself," Shelby said, baring his gap-toothed grin. "And remember what the chaplain says: Don't take your most treasured possession and stick it in somethin that'd scare you to death if you was sober."

  The manifester gave a thumbs-up, turned, and strode off along the quay, leaving the waste haulers alone. Lunch break lasted from 11:30 to 1:00. The warehouse was theirs.

  Neither trucker spoke for a minute. Then Abel said, "Buey, our job gone een two, three week. We got nada then."

  "And our boss is a cheap prick," the ox said, working himself into it, sensing what was going to happen here. "And I ain't paid in enough to be drawin much unemployment. I'm fucked!"

  "I get the truck. You drive forkleeft down to the nex' loading bay. We don' take nothing from this bay."

  "Excellent!" the ox said. "That manifester logged us in at this one, but there's dozens a truckers in and out a the rest a the bays all day long. The navy won't even miss whatever it is we take. Matter a fact, we're taxpayers, ain't we? We bought em all this shit in the first place, right? We got it comin to us, right, dude?"

  It took them less than ten minutes to load the four fifty-five-gallon drums full of the U. S. Navy's contaminated fuel mixture that had been shipped from Guam. They dollied the drums into the back of the van next to the drum they'd picked up from Burl Ralston at Southbay Agricultural Supply. By the time Abel got the rig backed up to the next open bay, yet another tractor-trailer was already parking alongside the oiler.

  More suspects, Shelby thought. There was no way the navy would ever know which truckers to blame. That is, if anybody noticed there'd been a theft in the first place. Shelby had the forks hooked into a pallet of boxes when Abel ran inside the second warehouse bay.

  The ox was so excited he looked like he was wired on methamphetamine. "Flaco!" he said. "There's some kinda computers and shit in these big boxes!"

  "No," Abel said. "No computer. Too hard to sell."

  Abel began running along the pallet stacks reading the military specifications on the boxes. Suddenly he stopped, took a knife from his pocket and cut open a box. He struggled for a moment, and pulled out a black, steel-toe, high-top, nonskid U. S. Navy flight-deck shoe. Then he grinned at Shelby.

  "Leave that!" Shelby said. "There's TVs in them other boxes!"

  "No TV," Abel said. "Serial number. Remember how you get caught before? These." He held up the navy shoes.

  "Shoes? Who the fuck wants shoes?"

  "Buey!" Abel said, grabbing the big man by his tattooed biceps. "I promise to you two thousand dollar! Today!"

  "Today? How?"

  "Get on forkleeft! Work, Buey!"

  In less than twenty minutes the truckers had forklifted every pallet containing boxes marked "shoes" into the bobtail van. "They don't mees them. They got so much they don't mees the shoe," Abel said, pronouncing it choo.

  Nobody inspected their load when they wheeled back through the gate. No one had ever bothered to inspect a load, not in the thirteen months that Abel Durazo had been hauling toxic waste.

  When they were driving beside the Silver Strand State Beach, away from Coronado, the ox exploded. "I must be a fuckin moron! Shoes! I let you talk me into takin a million pair a useless fuckin shoes!"

  "Two thousand," Abel said. He'd counted while Shelby had stacked. "We got two thousand. Mas o menos."

  "Two thousand fuckin pair a shoes! Now what?"

  "Joo going to see, Buey," Abel said, confidently.

  The ocean along the Silver Strand reflected coral and turquoise in the sparkling light. Abel drove carefully, knowing that Coronado P. D. motor cops patrolled the boulevard because of sailors who piled up their cars on that dog tooth of a highway, returning drunk from Tijuana.

  When the bobtail van left the strand and turned toward 1-5, south toward Mexico, a flock of screaming gulls flew directly over them heading toward the Tijuana slough wildlife refuge that borders Imperial Beach on that southwestern tip of the United States. One of the reasons that geese, gulls, and other waterfowl frequented the estuary was because of the raw sewage that seeped into it from the Tijuana River that wound along the international border. Many a bird had plucked a morsel from the slough and died from it.

  After driving silently for a while, Abel Durazo looked at his worried partner and said, "Do not worry, 'mano. Sometimes I borrow truck all night. But only when Mary say okay. See, I haul for guy een Tijuana. I haul for him vegetables and fruits back to San Diego. I make few dollar. Boss, he don't know, nobody know. The guy got paperwork for all produce. I go down, I come back through Otay Mesa crossing. No problem. Never."

  "Don't nobody ever wonder why a waste disposal van's haulin produce?"

  "Long as you got paperwork, nobody care what truck say on door. U. S. Customs peek eenside sometime. Sometime no. See fruits, vegetables, paperwork. Truck ain't stole. No problem."

  Shelby studied the handsome young Mexican and said, "Fuckin her, ain'tcha? You're slippin Mary the ol' muscle missile, you little dickhead!"

  Abel giggled and said, "I geev her nice present when I take truck to Tijuana. Perfume, sometime."

  "I bet she'd like my pink projectile," Shelby said, showing his tooth-gap. "That bitch must be at least seven months pregnant, but I always did like little baby hands helpin me. Hey, that reminds me, you know how to paralyze a woman from the waist down? Marry her!"

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind. You Mexicans don't understand jokes. I guess if Mary's old man ever comes home early you can run outside and start mowin the lawn. Tell him you're the new gardener, right?"

  "Huh?"

  "Fergit it, dude. I'm wastin my fuckin humor."

  The ox turned his cap bill forward to signify he meant business, and he said, "So how're you gettin me two grand today?"

  "We go to Tijuana. My friend, he buy our shoe for three dollar a pair."

  "What? These shoes must cost sixty!"

  "Eeen Mexico, three dollar. Right now. Cash."

  Shelby said, "Two thousand pairs times three bucks is six thousand. How come I only get two?"

  Abel watched the big trucker nervously chew at a callus on his fat thumb. Filthy. The calluses were filthy like the rest of him, but Abel liked the ox, filthy or not.

  "U. S. Customs, they don' worry about trucks that go south, but we got to pay Mexican customs. Mordida."

  "What's that?"

  "Bite. Mordida." Abel made the motion of a fist clamping shut.

  "Graft?"

  "Yes," Abel said. "We go through San Ysidro gate. I know customs man. We borrow boss money from last job. We put boss money back when we collect for navy shoes."

  The job to which Abel referred was the pickup at Southbay Agricultural Supply where Shelby had received an envelope containing $500. Shelby mulled it over for a moment.

  "Okay, how we gonna get back to the U. S. with our drums full a who-knows-what kinda poison?"

  "We don' come back weeth truck."

  "What the fuck?"

  "Our truck get stole. We go to San Diego police to make report."

  "Wait a minute! You're movin too fast."

  "Look, Buey," Abel said. "I know how to do! We sell shoe, we leave truck een Tijuana. We walk back through border gate."

  "We gonna tell the cops our truck got hijacked? At gunpoint, or what?"

  "No. We say we stop for burrito een Chula Vista. Lunchtime. We eat, we come out, truck gone. We don' care. Our job gone anyways."

  "I got a bad feelin about this, dude," Shelby said, "I got a bad feelin."

  But he didn't object when the Mexican turned south on Interstate 5 and headed toward the San Ysidro crossing.
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br />   There were four lanes handling the southbound traffic at the international border. Unlike yellow caution signs at deer crossings that show antlered stags in black silhouette, the caution signs in these parts showed the silhouettes of a man, woman and child running. Every year, caution signs or not, many illegals were killed dashing across the freeway. Dying as they ran north to survive.

  Abel pulled off the freeway at the Virginia Street truck gate, the gate used by commercial vehicles going into Mexico. As the van rumbled along the dusty hardpan road, Shelby saw several mobile homes, permanently on foundations, that served as offices for insurance and customs brokers. Before Abel wheeled the truck into the customs yard, the ox looked off to his right and saw two green and white U. S. Border Patrol Ford Broncos parked on top of the levee over the Tijuana River.

  What made it an astonishing sight was that the uniformed Border Patrol officers were smoking and chatting and drinking soda pop, not thirty yards from a dozen Mexicans just on the other side of the broken-down border fence, who were preparing for their dash to el norte as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The Border Patrol knew they were coming. The Mexicans knew they knew. No hard feelings on either side.

  Shelby Pate didn't want any part of this place. In his entire life, four years of it in the San Diego area, he hadn't been to Tijuana more than twice, once to buy meth and once to buy a hooker. One had been as bad as the other, so now he bought his cringe and pussy in San Diego.

  When speaking of drugs or hookers, Shelby Pate always said, "Be a patriot. Buy American."

  After they were inside the customs yard, Abel got out and approached a Mexican customs officer he knew well. Shelby watched Flaco jabber in Spanish to the guy, who wore a light-blue uniform shirt with epaulets, and a rakish cap with a sixty-mission crush.

  At first, the customs officer turned away and shook his head, but finally he shrugged and nodded. Then the two Mexicans walked to the far side of the truck, away from traffic, and Shelby watched in the side-view mirror as Abel peeled off several twenty-dollar bills from the money they'd been given at Southbay Agricultural Supply.

  When Abel came back to the truck he said, "I pay five hundred. Two-feefty my money, two-feefty from joo."