Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  Luz hadn’t slept since he left—didn’t sleep all night, in fact. She lay in bed seething as he staggered into the bathroom to piss and then stood unsteadily in front of the window, hands pressed to the glass, head lowered.

  “If you fuck this up for me, I’ll kill you,” she said to him.

  “Go ahead,” he replied, and it didn’t sound like he was joking.

  The line of cars moves forward. The BMW is next up at the booth. Luz tries to figure out the best way to sit so she doesn’t look nervous. She puts her hands under her thighs, then rests them in her lap. The inspector examines the documents of the driver ahead of them and keys something into a computer. Malone is whistling softly. He turns to Luz and says, “Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one,” as the BMW rolls up to the booth. Luz tenses the muscles in her legs to stop them from shaking. She reminds herself to breathe.

  “How long have you been in Mexico?” the inspector, a big man with a gray flattop and mustache, asks.

  Malone hands over his passport and Luz’s expired California ID.

  “Just for the night,” he says. “Visiting Freddy.”

  The inspector nods slightly.

  “Bringing anything back with you?” he says.

  “Nope, nothing,” Malone says.

  The inspector glances at the passport and ID, then hands them back.

  “Have a nice day.”

  “You too,” Malone says.

  Luz tries to tamp down her happiness, not wanting to jinx the successful crossing by celebrating too soon, but relief gets the best of her as they begin climbing the narrow, winding road leading away from the border, and she laughs and claps her hands.

  “Thank God,” she says.

  “God?” Malone says, giving her a stupid look. “You should be thanking me.”

  Luz ignores him. She’s already thinking ahead to her next move. She’ll have Malone drop her at the Greyhound station in San Diego, where she’ll catch a bus to L.A. Her aunt Carmen will be surprised when she shows up, and probably angry. Luz hasn’t sent money like she promised, hasn’t even called in the three years she’s been with Rolando. Partly it was because she worried that Rolando would find out about Isabel, but she was also ashamed of how badly she’d screwed up her life. But what’s Carmen going to say when Luz opens the backpack and hands her a big pile of money? No?

  And then she’ll grab Isabel and hug her for a solid hour. She’s imagined the moment many times, run through it in her head again and again. The past will be the past, and they’ll begin anew as mother and daughter somewhere Rolando will never find them. They’ll be happy like nobody else has ever been happy, just the two of them. She smiles thinking about it, beams at the dirty sky and the desert and the road cutting through it.

  “Oh shit,” Malone says, staring into the rearview mirror.

  “What?” she says. “What?” But he waves her quiet.

  Thacker’s truck is backed onto a dirt turnout that’s shielded from the road leading up from the border by a thick stand of scrub oak. He changed into his uniform, covered the truck’s plates with duct tape, and now he waits, crouched behind the trees, watching the crossing through a pair of binoculars. Murph won’t be able to call from his booth when he passes the BMW through, so this is the only way Thacker will know the car is headed in his direction.

  A big green fly keeps trying to crawl into his ear. He can see over the fence into downtown Tecate, and the breeze brings him bits of music. Some Saturdays when the boys were young, he and Marla would take them over there for lunch at a restaurant they all liked. He remembers the time Mike Jr. played a trick on Brady, pretending to eat a jalapeño from a dish on the table but actually palming the pepper and dropping it into his napkin. Determined not to be outdone by his big brother, Brady bit into a pepper himself and ended up spitting it out and crying furious tears when he realized he’d been duped. The whole family used to laugh at that story whenever anybody brought it up, back in the days when they used to laugh.

  The sun glints off a silver car leaving the inspection area. Thacker messes with the focus on the binoculars until the image sharpens. Older-model BMW, white man driving, Mexican female passenger, just like Murph said. He hurries to his truck and slides into the front seat.

  Pulling to the edge of the road, he idles there and waits for the Beamer. The radio is playing country music. He snaps it off and turns on the loudspeaker he added a few years ago, clicks the mike to check the volume. He notices his shirt is missing a button over his gut. It must have popped off somewhere between the casino parking lot and here. This irks him. He hates looking like a slob. Using his thumb and forefinger, he pinches shut the gap to hide his sweaty undershirt.

  The BMW clatters past, struggling up the hill. Thacker bumps onto the road behind it but keeps his distance. Where he wants to do this is in a canyon about half a mile up. Railroad property, nice and secluded. The pair in the car won’t know what hit them. “Huh? What?” and he’ll be gone. If the girl is carrying as much money as Murph says she is, it’ll be as close as Thacker’s come to winning in a long time. He’ll pay off fucking Hutchinson, fucking Marla, and start making plans.

  He hits the gas as the car nears the top of the hill, crawls up the Beamer’s ass, and presses the switch of the mini–light bar suction-cupped to the inside of his windshield. The red and blue strobes catch the driver’s attention right away, and the guy slows and drifts to the shoulder. Thacker gets on the mike and orders him to keep moving.

  “Take the dirt road ahead and then proceed until I tell you to stop,” he says.

  The driver makes the turn, bumps down off the pavement, and continues on the road, which winds along the floor of a steep, rocky canyon the color of old bones. Thacker follows, leaning forward to peer through the billows of dust that come and go between them. When both vehicles are out of sight of the highway, he says “Halt right here” into the mike, and they ease to a stop, his truck twenty feet behind the car.

  The canyon funnels the breeze into a larcenous wind that snatches up anything not rooted and drags it away. A tumbleweed glances off the truck’s fender and spins in place for a second before regaining its momentum and rolling on toward Mexico. The way Thacker looks at it, this thing is already three-quarters done and going off with no problems. All that’s left is to take the money. He steps out of the truck and removes his P2000 from its holster. Murph warned him the girl is carrying a gun, so he stands behind his door and shouts, “Hands where I can see them, both of you!”

  The guy and girl comply immediately, thrusting their arms out their respective windows, and Thacker pulls a black balaclava over his head and charges the BMW. Moving quickly up the driver’s side, he points his pistol at the guy’s face.

  “Yo, yo, yo,” the guy says. “Wrong car, man, wrong car.” He’s some kind of surfer. Blond hair, suntan.

  “Hand over the money,” Thacker says. “The backpack.”

  “There’s no money. We’re tourists, coming from Ensenada.”

  Thacker fires a shot across the hood of the Beamer, low enough that Surfer Joe can see the flash and feel the heat on his cheek. Then he lines up on the guy’s head again.

  “That’s the last round I’m gonna waste,” he says.

  “Please,” the girl says. She’s cute. Real cute.

  “In the trunk,” the driver says.

  Jerónimo passes through the same booth the BMW did. The inspector checks his passport and waves him on, not even glancing at the broken window. When he’s a safe distance away, Jerónimo takes the Smith & Wesson from under his thigh, where he had it ready in case he needed it, and places it on the passenger seat.

  There are no other vehicles between him and the BMW now. The big rig was routed to the truck inspection area before they crossed, and the car, the Honda, pulled into the first gas station on the U.S. side. The BMW is making its way slowly up the hill, and Jerónimo gives it plenty of line. He’ll make his move when they’re farther from the border and all its c
ops. But not too far. He’s decided he has to kill the white boy in order to keep things simple. That means stopping them before they reach a populated area, somewhere out here in no-man’s-land.

  A white Dodge Ram swings into the road in front of him, blocking his view of the Beamer. He finds that if he moves into the other lane a little bit, he can still see it just fine. It’s noisy inside the Explorer with the broken window. The air coming in whirls around in back and makes a kind of roar. There’s also a new rattle. The kids’ rocks must have knocked something loose. Jerónimo takes a drink of water, steering with his knees while opening the jug. It’s warm as piss.

  The truck speeds up and pulls away. Jerónimo jukes into the other lane and sees that it’s right on the BMW’s rear bumper, and, if his eyes aren’t fooling him, it’s flashing police lights. Garbled words from a loudspeaker fly past, and both vehicles slow down. Jerónimo eases up on the gas, too, maintaining his distance. He needs to let what’s going to happen happen so he can figure out what to do next.

  The car veers off the pavement and onto a dirt road, followed by the truck. Jerónimo quickly loses both vehicles in a fog of dust. This hide-and-seek stuff doesn’t add up. Cops aren’t usually so cagey. He turns onto the road himself and creeps forward. It leads into a narrow canyon, one wall of which is deep in shadow, the other too bright. The BMW and the truck are already out of sight around a bend. He rolls down his window and inches along, watching and listening for any sign of them.

  Another blown-out loudspeaker command and a plume of dust let him know he’s close. He comes to a stop, gets out of the truck, and proceeds on foot, keeping to the shadowy side of the canyon. His gun hand is sweaty, the Smith & Wesson seemingly giving off its own heat. The BMW and the Dodge soon come into view parked about seventy-five feet ahead. Spotting a boulder that overlooks the vehicles, Jerónimo climbs the wall to take cover behind it. He presses his shoulder into the rock and cranes his neck to see what’s going on down below.

  A fat man in a Border Patrol uniform and ski mask is pointing a pistol at the driver of the car. The driver, the white boy, gets out and walks to the rear of the Beamer, hands on his head. When he gets there, he unlocks and opens the trunk. The fat man gestures with his gun, and the white boy reaches in and removes a backpack.

  Jerónimo feels a sting on his arm, a spreading chemical burn. He pulls away from the boulder and slaps at the pain. A big red ant is smeared across his fingers, and a hundred more scurry over his shirt. They bite him on the neck, on the chest. Swatting wildly, he loses his footing in the dry, crumbly soil, falls on his ass, and rides a small landslide down the hill and out into the open. Every time he tries to stand he triggers another slide. The fat man and the driver turn toward the clatter of shifting stones and see him flailing.

  “Stay down,” the fat man shouts at him, then fires a shot that ricochets off the boulder with a metallic whine. Jerónimo sends two rounds downslope before rolling sideways toward a shallow wash. The fat man runs back to his truck and crouches behind it while the BMW driver, carrying the backpack, dashes to the open door of the car and dives inside.

  By the time Jerónimo is on his belly in the creek bed, forearm propped on the bank, pistol ready, the BMW is pulling away. He and the fat man loose a volley of shots at it, breaking windows and popping a tire. The Beamer swerves and slows and drifts toward the brighter wall of the canyon, but then someone inside starts returning fire, and the car picks up speed and disappears in a taunting swirl of wind-whipped dust.

  Malone isn’t thinking about the possibility of escape when he runs back to the car, he’s merely seeking cover, but then Luz yells at him to drive, and that seems like a good idea. He starts the BMW and hits the gas, and for a second it looks like they might actually get away, until the thief in the Border Patrol uniform and the Mexican who came out of nowhere open up on them. The windshield spider-webs, the car gets squirrelly, and bullets and broken glass are everywhere.

  Fucking Freddy, Malone thinks, certain this is his doing. He was a fool to fall in with the guy, and now his foolishness is going to get him killed. Luz, however, isn’t ready to give up. She pulls the .45 from the pack, gets on her knees facing backward in the passenger seat, and starts blasting away through the shattered rear window. The sound is deafening, and Malone cringes as ejected casings bounce off his bare arms and legs.

  “Drive! Drive! Drive!” Luz says. Her shouts shock him into action, get his body working instead of his mind. He yanks on the steering wheel and stomps the accelerator. The engine screams like a dying rabbit, and the power steering is almost gone, but he manages to straighten out the car and head off down the road.

  They limp around a curve, putting them out of range of the shooters. The car shudders and jerks, and it’s all Malone can do to keep it on course.

  “This thing isn’t gonna take us much farther,” he says.

  “So we run then,” Luz says. She’s still kneeling on the seat, watching out the back window.

  “You don’t want to try to talk to them?”

  “Is that what you think?” Luz says. “They’re here to talk?”

  The oil light on the dash flashes red, and the car loses power. The canyon walls are only thirty feet high here, and not as steep as they were near the entrance. If they can make it to the top and out into the scrub, who knows? It’ll be dicey with no water, but at least they’ll have a chance.

  “All right,” Malone says, hitting the brakes. “End of the line.”

  He bolts from the car and starts up the east wall of the canyon. Panic supercharges him, and he’s halfway to the top before Luz even gets her door open. She climbs up after him, but, carrying the pack, has trouble making progress and keeps sliding back down.

  “Wait,” she calls to Malone. “Please.”

  The desperation in her voice hangs him up. He pauses on an outcropping and watches her struggle, the sun beating down on him like a judgment. Any minute now those motherfuckers are going to come around the bend, intent on finishing what they started.

  Luz is on her knees now. “Please,” she says. “You can have the money. I just want to see my daughter.”

  Malone considers leaving her to her fate and getting himself to safety but then imagines hearing a shot ring out behind him and knowing he might’ve saved her. He already has one soul on his conscience; he doesn’t need another.

  He sidesteps down the hill, setting off cascades of rock and sand. Reaching Luz, he takes the backpack from her and pulls her to her feet.

  “Hang on to my shirt,” he says, “and go as fast as you fucking can.”

  She grabs the hem of his T-shirt, and they climb together. Malone takes his time, planting each foot carefully. It’s slow going, hot and dusty. He keeps thinking he hears the sound of an approaching vehicle, but when he turns to look, nothing. Luz does a good job of keeping up, rarely relying on him to pull her forward. When they near the top, she hustles past him to get there first, then offers him her hand.

  “Come on,” she says.

  He pauses to catch his breath after letting her haul him up the last few feet, doubles over so the sweat dripping off his face pocks the dirt like a rare rain. But there’s no time to rest. Those guys, those guns, they’re still coming, so he and Luz set off at a dog trot across a rocky plain dotted with manzanita and sage and scrub oak, headed north, he hopes.

  13

  TRAILING OILY BLACK SMOKE, THE GUT-SHOT BMW DISAPPEARS up the canyon, and a windy silence replaces the gunfire and the howl of the dying engine. Like an animal peeking out of its den, Thacker slowly raises his head above the hood of his truck. He’s pretty sure the guy who blew the holdup as he was about to put his hands on the money is still hunkered down in the shallow, brush-choked wash across the road.

  “U.S. Border Patrol,” he yells in that direction. “Toss your weapon and show me your hands.”

  “Who you trying to kid?” the guy shouts back, staying under cover.

  “You’re interfering with an off
icial CBP operation,” Thacker says.

  “Come over here and get me then.”

  So the fucker’s going to be like that, huh? Thacker ducks behind the truck again, even though it’s murder on his knees. He pulls off the balaclava he wore during the robbery attempt and tosses it aside. There are only a couple more rounds in his gun, so he drops the nearly empty magazine and slides in a full one.

  This thing has gone to hell, and he needs to make a decision: Either muck his cards and walk away or commit to seeing it through to the end, which means catching up to the BMW and doing whatever it takes to get the money. It sure would help if he knew what the joker in the bushes was up to.

  He rocks back and forth a few times to get some feeling into his feet, then stands and peers over the hood.

  “Let’s talk,” he shouts.

  “Just get in your truck and go,” the guy in the bushes says.

  “If anyone’s going, I think it’s you,” Thacker says.

  “You know what I think?” the guy says. “I think you’re a thief. I think you were out to rob those people.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Thacker says, feeling the guy out.

  “Because you heard something,” the guy says. “From Freddy, right?”

  So he knows this Freddy character too. Thacker chuckles softly to himself. That bastard must be cutting deals left and right. A shrub clinging to the edge of the wash quivers unnaturally, and there’s a flash of color against the dull tan of the landscape, the guy’s shirt maybe. Thacker contemplates sending a few rounds that way, but if he misses, where will they be then? The sun is scorching his bald spot and the back of his neck. He wishes he had his hat.

  “I’m not after the money,” the guy in the bushes says.