Joel picked one up expecting it to be a light shell bead meant to be strung for a necklace. Not expecting its weight, he didn’t grasp it hard enough and it slipped from his fingers to the countertop. It fell hard onto the counter with a loud clack. His brows drew together. Could it be solid gold? He looked up at her, “What kin’ of…” jewelry, he’d been about to say, but solid gold balls weren’t used in any jewelry he knew of. He changed tacks, “Are ‘dey pure?”
She nodded. “99.9%,” she said, rather than the more common, “24 carat.”
He narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin, “How you come to have little gold BBs?”
She shrugged, “An Uncle left them to me.”
He weighed one in his hand. It was surprisingly heavy but he simply doubted it could really be gold. “I test them?”
She nodded.
Joel pulled out a small digital scale and set a weighing dish on it. Pushing the tare button, he put the ball in his hand in the dish. He motioned to the dish and the girl put the other nineteen balls in the dish. To his surprise the scale registered almost exactly ten grams. 10.01 to be exact. Eyebrows up he said, “Each one, half a gram?”
She nodded.
Joel picked up the tare dish and stepped to a scale which had a weighing dish submerged in water. Zeroing it he carefully poured the small gold balls into the dish. Submerged in the water, they weighed 0.518 grams less than they had in air, indicating the total volume of the balls was 0.518 cubic centimeters. Joel’s AI told him that ten grams divided by 0.518 ccs equaled 19.3 grams per cc, the correct density for 24 carat gold.
He scratched his chin. The balls were more like bullion than jewelry. The little balls could be gold filled, and if they had tungsten centers their density would be 19.25 grams per cc, close enough to gold that he couldn’t tell it with the accuracy of his equipment. He could try to test for paramagnetism, but that was a pain. Unlike jewelry, the balls’ value didn’t depend on their shape. He looked up at the girl, “Can I crush one of them?”
She blinked, “Sure. Why?”
He shrugged, picking up a pliers. “See if filled wit’ tungsten.” He put a random ball in the jaws of the wire cutter part of the pliers and squeezed, easily cutting the soft gold ball in half. Both halves were gold all the way through. “Couldn’t do that with tungsten” he said. He gazed at the little balls again for a moment. “I gi’ you 45,000 Jamaican for ‘dem.”
She tilted her head, “Ten grams of gold should be worth five hundred thirty American, or 57,250 Jamaican.”
“You right, but I mus’ make a profit.”
She narrowed her eyes, “Twenty percent?”
Surprised at how quickly she’d done the calculations, Joel shrugged. She couldn’t cash in her gold anywhere else and these gamblers always gave in.
The girl shrugged in return, “OK, I need cash.”
Joel’s eyebrows went up again, “I don’ t’ink I got dat’ much cash.” He scratched his chin again, “One minute, I check.”
While he was gone, Ell put her hand under her shirt and had a cash chip delivered to her palm from her umbilical port.
Joel returned a few minutes later, “I only got 28,000 Jamaican.”
She tilted her head, “Twelve balls.”
Joel spoke to his AI and had it run the numbers, then grinned, “27,000 Jamaican.”
She rolled her eyes, but nodded.
He lifted his chin, “Why not take t’ res’ electronic?”
She shrugged, “OK, put it on this cash chip?”
“Why not your bank accoun’? You draw intres’ den.”
“I don’t have a bank account.”
“So? Set one up. The bank is just two doors down ‘der,” he waved vaguely down the street.
“I lost my papers, so I don’t have any ID.”
Joel looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, then said quietly, “I have a frien’… help you get you ID back.”
She looked at him as if considering it for a moment, then shook her head no. She took the bills Joel counted out to her. She watched as he put the rest of the money on the cash chip and made sure it confirmed the transfer. Then she left without looking back.
Having quit the last crappy job he’d had a couple of weeks ago Marcus slouched at the corner where he’d been selling dime bags of weed. Sales were weak in the morning and so when the pretty young woman had walked past he really had nothing better to do. Stepping out behind her, he followed her for a couple of blocks toward the downtown area of Montego Bay. At first he’d had some vague idea of trying to strike up a conversation. She was very attractive. She’d probably tell him to go to hell, but… if you didn’t even throw the dice you never won.
Then she’d turned into the pawnshop. Musing, he’d leaned against the building across the way and watched her dicker with Joel, the owner of the pawnshop. Joel was a hard man. Marcus had never made a satisfactory deal with the man. However, if the girl was getting some jewelry out of hock, the gold she’d be carrying would make her an excellent target. Marcus’ heart rose when the girl was done. Instead of her giving Joel money, Joel gave her some. Marcus saw her fold up a wad of bills and put them in her pocket.
Cash! The fact that everyone used e-money was making petty theft difficult because, even if you did make someone transfer you some money, they’d just have the bank cancel the transaction and take it back once you were out of sight. Taking jewelry could be lucrative, but fencing it could be difficult. But, cash, that was a different deal! He leaned away from the wall and followed the girl into town.
After a block or two Marcus felt dismay. The girl was heading for the casinos! Someone who’d pawned their jewelry to get cash and then went to a casino would soon be broke. Lackadaisically considering a number of options, Marcus had felt no urgency before, but now he realized that he needed to separate the girl from her cash before she wasted it. He began walking faster and palmed his switchblade.
The street she was on was a little wide open for his liking, but they got even wider as they approached the casinos. Realizing she was about to pass a narrow alley, he rose onto his toes and ran a few steps to close the distance. Before he could force her into the alley though, she ducked into it on her own. Because she’d done it quickly, Marcus had the impression she was about to start running. He turned the corner leaning into a full sprint.
The alley was empty! He skidded to a halt. A woman’s voice came from behind him, “You looking for me?”
Marcus turned and found, to his astonishment, the girl was just standing there, in a nook just around the corner, looking at him. She stepped fearlessly out toward him. Maybe she’s a whore and thinks I’m a trick? If so, she’s in for an ugly surprise. He pulled the switch and the blade popped out of his hand. Raising it casually in her direction he lifted his chin and said, “Gi’ me dat money.” His eyes dropped to her right front pocket to indicate that he knew where she had the bills.
Instead of the widening of the eyes he’d expected, they narrowed. Stepping back she said, “You should get a job instead, you really don’t want to do this. You’ll be very sorry.”
“Gi’ me dat money!” he growled starting to close the distance between them.
Instead of backing away, she stepped closer.
A sudden flicker of motion and Marcus felt a stunningly hard thump against his wrist.
With surprise he realized that his blade had just flown across the alley to his left.
Just as the pain from his wrist arrived, her foot shot up to strike hard in his crotch.
As Marcus crouched down in agony she leaned forward and patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. “You really should get an honest job,” she advised. Moaning, Marcus slowly sagged to his knees then put his left hand on the pavement for balance, cradling his injured right wrist against his stomach. Lifting his head, through his tears he watched the girl disappear blithely around the corner.
Glancing blearily over at his knife, Marcus saw that it had broken its blade when it
struck the wall. “Shit!” he said in disgust.
Ell walked through the casino. She watched a couple of the games and paused for a moment to watch people getting chips. A man brought a stack of chips to the window and turned them in. To her relief the lady in the cage counted him out some bills.
When the man had left, Ell approached and said, “Will you take a cash chip?”
The woman said, “Sure. Put it here.” She indicated a square on the counter where the nearfield electronics for cash chip transfers must be imbedded. “How much you want to take out?”
Ell said “One thousand, American.”
Picking up a small numpad, the woman keyed in the figure and turned the display so Ell could see that it had been correctly entered. Ell stroked her finger over the ID sensor on the cash chip and its display also lit, showing “$1,000.00.” Ell hit the little “approve” button on the chip.
The woman’s display lit green and she turned to pick up several stacks of chips. When she pushed them through to Ell, Ell had to ask her the relative value of the various types.
Ell had no desire to gamble so she used a chip to buy a drink at the bar and watched until the lady in the cash cage got her break. Ell returned to the cage. “I’d like to cash these chips. Can you give me pesos?”
The lady shrugged, “Mexican, yes. Colombian, no.”
“Mexican please.”
With a wad of dollars in one pocket and a wad of pesos in another, Ell headed for the beach.
Ell ate her third egg sandwich for a mid-morning snack. Lunch and dinner she bought on the beach while watching some energetic beach volleyball. One of the guys flirted with her and tried to get her to play on his team, but as a married, pregnant lady, she passed.
It was tempting though. It had been a lot of years since she’d played and looked like a lot of fun.
Later that night she had Allan bring the hoverbike down to the beach. Once Allan told her it was overhead, she checked both ways and had Allan bring it down to land on a deserted sidewalk. Taking out and putting on her Kevlar suit she climbed aboard. Once up in the air about twenty feet, she slid out over the sea and put on her helmet. She had Allan bring the older hoverbike out of its hiding place to follow a couple of miles behind her and set out on a four hundred mile flight to the Mexican coast north of Cancun.
Before morning Ell landed near Merida at the northern end of the Yucatan Peninsula, hiding her hoverbikes in the brush of some overgrown lots. She hiked in to have breakfast and spent the day exploring the city and practicing her Spanish with real Latin American speakers.
The next night she lifted off again for Matamoros on the Gulf coast of Mexico, across the border from the Texas city of Brownsville.
In Matamoros she parked the hoverbikes in an overgrown lot that actually was in the city a ways rather than out at the border. In the morning she found a restaurant in a poor neighborhood and set out to exercise her Spanish. “I want to cross the border to America,” she said in Spanish to the woman who brought her food.
The woman stared at her suspiciously then shrugged. “It is very difficult nowadays.” She turned to go back to the kitchen.
“Do you know someone who can help?” Ell said to her retreating back. “I can pay.”
The woman hesitated a moment, then continued to the kitchen.
As Ell ate she wondered about this plan of hers. I can fly across the border! Why not just cross the border; then try to solve the ID problem? The sticking point was that she had no idea how to find someone to help with an ID in America. She couldn’t just google it after all.
Ell could work up an ID chip. A chip that would provide her a name, birthdate, and provide pictures and fingerprints and DNA information as well as an address. The problem would be that computers that checked ID chips then looked in databases to confirm that an individual with those characteristics actually existed. Somehow, illegal aliens were connected to people able to enter such data into the system so that when a chip was read, and checked against a database the database would confirm the existence of the individual. Ell had no idea how they did that little bit of magic, so she needed help.
She somehow felt that it would be much easier to find people who arranged IDs by getting in touch with a “coyote.” Coyote was the Mexican term for someone who made a living helping migrants cross the border. They often had a significant organization that worked together to transport people and get them IDs. Ell thought she could find those people starting in Mexico just by asking around, but wasn’t sure how she’d go about finding just the ID piece starting in the States.
Besides, it was difficult to do anything in America without ID.
Ell ate her chorizo con huevos while pondering other ways to look for a coyote here in Mexico. She’d nearly finished when a burly Mexican seated himself in the other side of her booth.
He stared at her for a moment then said, “He oído que quiere ir a Estados Unidos (I hear you want to go to America).”
Ell nodded.
“And you’ll pay for information?”
Ell nodded again.
“A hundred pesos.”
It wasn’t much. Ell reached into her pocket and pulled out her fold of Mexican money. Holding it below the table top she thumbed through to peel out a hundred peso note and push it across the table to him.
He shook his head. “You don’t want to cross near Matamoros. The patrol, it’s very bad here. When I cross, I first take the bus to Ojinaga.” He lifted his chin, “It’s a long ride, but it is easier to cross there in the desert. There is a coyote there, ‘Tecate.’ Ask around for him, he’s the best. What’s your name?”
For a second Ell panicked, having a mental block on the Spanish name she’d chosen for herself, then it came to her. “Elsa Gardon.”
The man said, “Tell Tecate that Hector in Matamoros sent you; I’ll send him a message so he’ll be expecting you.” Hector flashed a smile, then got up and headed back into the kitchen area.
Since she didn’t want to fly until nightfall, Ell wandered around Matamoros. She asked several others and repeatedly received the advice that she shouldn’t try to cross the border in that region. Surprised that no one used small boats to bypass the border out in the Gulf, she asked about it. Apparently, small boats were found easily by the Border Patrol using radar. All of them were stopped and searched.
More importantly than the recommendation to go elsewhere, no one suggested a coyote or a way to get ID in Matamoros.
That evening she climbed on the hoverbike for a flight to Ojinaga.
***
Walking the streets of Ojinaga the next day, Ell saw a group of young Mexicans who looked like they might be trying to cross the border. They had backpacks, durable shoes and jackets tied around their waists, though the days were warm enough. Ell smiled at a young woman with the group, “I’m trying to cross the border. Do you know a coyote called Tecate?”
The girl’s eyes widened but she shook her head no.
The young man next to her said, “Ask at the Pemex.” He pointed with his chin.
The girl glanced at the man, then back at Ell. She shook her head again, using only a tiny motion, as if she didn’t want people to see.
Ell’s eyes narrowed as she tried to parse the meaning of this strange conversation. She had a feeling that the young woman was trying to warn her, or perhaps divert business away from Tecate? She looked back and forth at the two for a moment, then shrugged, turned and started toward the Pemex sign a few blocks away.
The Pemex proved to be a gas station, selling gasoline, diesel, natural gas, hydrogen and fast charges for automobiles. Even in Mexico, which hadn’t been converting to ports at anything like the rate it had been happening in the U.S., the station had the look of despair you might expect of an industry on its way out.
Ell found saw a group of people that looked like they might be waiting to cross the border sitting outside the Pemex. They also had backpacks, jackets and sturdy clothing. Deciding that she’d better get a
jacket, Ell entered the convenience store part of the station. Sure enough they had backpacks and jackets for sale inside. Already having a backpack, Ell got a jacket, a water bottle and three burritos to put in the backpack. Going back outside eating one of the burritos, she looked over the group. It had seven women and two men.
And a pretty little girl Ell realized… The child surprised Ell at first, but after a moment’s thought she realized that, of course, families must sometimes cross with their children. Even though the two men sat far from the child, she wondered if one of the men was the girl’s father.
The little girl had been staring at Ell so Ell smiled and said, “Hola.”
The girl’s eyes dropped, but she did mumble, “Hola,” in return.
Ell spoke to the group in general, “I’m looking for a coyote named Tecate. Are you waiting for him?”
Several of them nodded, though Ell got the impression they weren’t happy about it. She wondered about what was going on. Wasn’t Tecate a good coyote like Hector had told her? If he didn’t have a good reputation, why were these people going with him, rather than with a different coyote?
Ell glanced around, most of the little group were sitting on the ground leaning back against the Pemex building. The biggest space was next to the little girl so Ell sat down next to her. Smiling at her, she said “My name’s Elsa Gardon, what’s yours?”
The girl smiled shyly back at Ell, but hugged the arm of the woman she sat next to and said nothing. The woman smiled at Ell over her head, “Her name is Elsa too. Elsa Fuentes.”
As Ell took another bite of her burrito, the little girl turned her face up to her mother, “Mama, I’m hungry!” she said plaintively.
Her mother hugged her closer. “I know Elsa, but I don’t think I have enough money to pay Tecate. We’ve got to wait until he comes and I find out how much it’s going to cost to go to El Norte.”
Ell’s mouthful of burrito suddenly lost its taste as she realized the desperation that this mother and child must feel. She glanced at the other people in the group and wondered how many of them might also be hungry. Pulling her backpack around and placing it between her knees, she reached in and pulled out one of her other burritos. “I’ve got an extra burrito,” she said, holding it out to little Elsa.
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