Part 1: The Border
The bullets tumbled heavy, bright spinning gold, as Lobo Valdez dropped them one by one into the slick brown river.
"They probably think I'm tossing coins into the water", he thought. He hoped. Stupid to get this close and risk doing time over some extra bullets forgotten in his pocket. He had never done time on the Mexican side before.
Lobo watched the ripples slide under him as he leaned against the metal bars of the International Bridge. Laredo, Texas to the right of him, with short intent people walking his way clutching plastic bags of goods or else wheeling them along in little carts. Nuevo Laredo to his left, with customs, and the biggest Mexican flag he'd ever seen overhead. A sweet untreated sewage smell—no, nobody over there would give him grief about littering in the Rio Grande.
The bullets were out of sight forever. Lobo straightened up, and walked left along the bridge, past the plaque at the halfway mark, into Mexico.
"Lobo" hadn't always been his name. His mother had named him "Jason", as if to pick something that no one on his father's side could pronounce properly: "Yay-son, Yay-son, you talk Spanish like you got a potato in your mouth, Yay-son."
Her name for him didn't stick—by grade school everyone knew him as "Lobo", "Wolf"—people thought it was because of his slanted blue eyes. But there were kids all up and down the border with blue eyes. He was the only Lobo.
Even Marisol called him Lobo, not Jason. Always had. He remembered how she said it, months ago: "Lobo, I'm late, I'm in trouble."
Lobo used his eyes and his height as he walked through the pedestrian tunnel at the Mexican end of the bridge and went past the first of the border guards, deliberately turning his face towards the man. Lobo made the officer remember him as a tall curious Gringo, another white boy looking for fun and trouble. He knew that back on the U.S. side they were going nuts looking for a Hispanic male, age mid-twenties, fleeing on foot.
"Fleeing", that implied scared. Lobo was sauntering now, walking easy. Looking for a phone to call Marisol.
He had been bugging out earlier today, though. Anybody would have. There he had been, awake after a bad night, sitting in his Toyota pick-up. Too amped to sleep. Thinking about smoking a cigarette, and he didn't need that habit again. The truck smelled like shit, literally. Like some dog took a dump inside the cab. There was nothing on his shoes either. He had checked. Nothing to do but roll down the window and let the cool morning air come in.
And just when he'd been on the edge of relaxing, Lawson had to show up.
Lobo guessed the dude's name was Lawson. That's what it said on the name-tag of his dark blue cop uniform. Big buzz-cut red-head recruiting-poster dude bending in the window all smug, like some clever big brother, saying "Hey, amigo, this isn't the place for that", and then before Lobo had a chance to process how he felt about being Lawson's "amigo", this guy's eyes got all big and his mouth was popping open and closed like a big cop goldfish, and Lobo didn't even remember lifting the Beretta 9mm Army-issue pistol, didn't know what he was going to do with it, frankly, didn't even remember he'd been holding it in his hand.
("Don't ever let anybody get too close to you when you're using this Beretta", Yankee had said behind the pawnshop, "If they mash back on the barrel like this... it won't fire".)
Maybe Lawson knew about Berettas—maybe he was a dumb-ass rookie—Lobo had never seen him before. Whatever the reason, he started reaching in, snatching, grabbing at the pistol, getting a sweaty grip on Lobo's hand. Lobo jerked back and that's when thunder blasted in both his ears and one of the cop's severed fingers thumped him across the upper lip.
Lawson fell back out of the truck window screaming. Lobo dropped the Beretta on the floor-board and twisted the ignition key until it broke off in his hand and cut the knuckle of his thumb on the jagged brass sticking out of the steering column.
The little truck's engine had fired up though, and Lobo rammed it into reverse and took his left foot off the clutch and gassed it with his right. The Toyota flew backwards, and then Lobo got smacked in the back of the head.
He shook off his daze and heard silence—the truck was stalled dead—the tailgate was bent where it had mashed into the cop car parked right behind it. The dead-end alley left him no other way out.
Lobo rolled on the oil-smelling gravel as he tripped on his way out of the cab. Lawson the cop was huddled against the cinderblock wall holding his left hand, face pale, eyes wide staring at Lobo, snarling, "I'll kill you, you bastard, I'll fucking kill you!"
Lobo whipped up his hand to shoot Lawson again before the cop could draw, but Lobo's hand was empty, the Beretta was gone, and blood was all over his fingers.
The cop stopped yelling for a second and let go of his mangled left hand, reaching for his belt.
Lobo ran. He ran out of the alley past the cop car, skin crawling, waiting for the bullet to hit his back. The screaming feeling jerked him left, then left again. He sprinted through a parking lot, then came onto Santa Maria Avenue.
A kid on a porch saw him and laughed. "Don't run. Walk. Walk." Of course. Lobo walked, wiping his right hand clean on his black t-shirt. On the shirt, not the jeans. Think. Think.
Lobo slid into the bathroom at the Greyhound station under the big municipal parking garage and splashed cold clean water over his face and hands. Think. The Toyota's plates, insurance card, fingerprints all over that Beretta. A cop. You just shot a cop. A cop who is already calling it in on the radio. You're dead meat.
And only six blocks from Mexico.
All the way up to the turnstile at the bridge Lobo had stared at the back of the head of the woman in front of him. She had a red hair-clamp. He chewed gum. He didn't actually have any gum, but it was an old ritual, the chewing, it calmed him and made him look very bored and boring.
It was while reaching in his pocket for the 50 cents change to walk across the bridge that he had felt the extra bullets. The American border cop was looking at a stalled car out in the traffic lanes as Lobo walked past, trembling.
But that was all 20 minutes ago on the other side now. In Texas, they were hunting for Jason Valdez the presumed-armed-and-dangerous. Here, he was John Doe Gringo, tourist.
"Prescription? Prescription? You need prescription? Fun? You want a girl?"
Lobo wanted a phone. He stepped into an alcove and checked his wallet—a ten and two ones—a few coins. The store took his American money for a phone card. He imagined the conversation he would have, Marisol would be somewhere in Monterrey trying to do three different things as she picked up her ringing cell phone, then when she heard his voice she'd look to the side and switch to English to show off and mess with her grandmother's head, as if the old woman couldn't decipher Marisol's come-and-get-it teasing tones. He'd get her to work it out with her brother Juan: A place to lay low, new ID, maybe put him on the Belize end of things for a while until they figured out what to do. Think.
Lobo dialed Marisol's number. The recorded voice in Spanish said the phone was out of its service area at the moment.
Lobo walked a bit and decided to use the credit card. At a teller machine two blocks west of Guerrero Avenue, he punched in the pin number written on the back of the plastic card, and a Mr. Leonard Wilkins of Plantersville, Alabama was recorded as withdrawing the maximum, a 2,000 peso cash advance. Not much, about 200 bucks American, but still plenty to get to Monterrey and Marisol, to eat, hole up, and think.
Home
Next
"They probably think I'm tossing coins into the water", he thought. He hoped. Stupid to get this close and risk doing time over some extra bullets forgotten in his pocket. He had never done time on the Mexican side before.
Lobo watched the ripples slide under him as he leaned against the metal bars of the International Bridge. Laredo, Texas to the right of him, with short intent people walking his way clutching plastic bags of goods or else wheeling them along in little carts. Nuevo Laredo to his left, with customs, and the biggest Mexican flag he'd ever seen overhead. A sweet untreated sewage smell—no, nobody over there would give him grief about littering in the Rio Grande.
The bullets were out of sight forever. Lobo straightened up, and walked left along the bridge, past the plaque at the halfway mark, into Mexico.
"Lobo" hadn't always been his name. His mother had named him "Jason", as if to pick something that no one on his father's side could pronounce properly: "Yay-son, Yay-son, you talk Spanish like you got a potato in your mouth, Yay-son."
Her name for him didn't stick—by grade school everyone knew him as "Lobo", "Wolf"—people thought it was because of his slanted blue eyes. But there were kids all up and down the border with blue eyes. He was the only Lobo.
Even Marisol called him Lobo, not Jason. Always had. He remembered how she said it, months ago: "Lobo, I'm late, I'm in trouble."
Lobo used his eyes and his height as he walked through the pedestrian tunnel at the Mexican end of the bridge and went past the first of the border guards, deliberately turning his face towards the man. Lobo made the officer remember him as a tall curious Gringo, another white boy looking for fun and trouble. He knew that back on the U.S. side they were going nuts looking for a Hispanic male, age mid-twenties, fleeing on foot.
"Fleeing", that implied scared. Lobo was sauntering now, walking easy. Looking for a phone to call Marisol.
He had been bugging out earlier today, though. Anybody would have. There he had been, awake after a bad night, sitting in his Toyota pick-up. Too amped to sleep. Thinking about smoking a cigarette, and he didn't need that habit again. The truck smelled like shit, literally. Like some dog took a dump inside the cab. There was nothing on his shoes either. He had checked. Nothing to do but roll down the window and let the cool morning air come in.
And just when he'd been on the edge of relaxing, Lawson had to show up.
Lobo guessed the dude's name was Lawson. That's what it said on the name-tag of his dark blue cop uniform. Big buzz-cut red-head recruiting-poster dude bending in the window all smug, like some clever big brother, saying "Hey, amigo, this isn't the place for that", and then before Lobo had a chance to process how he felt about being Lawson's "amigo", this guy's eyes got all big and his mouth was popping open and closed like a big cop goldfish, and Lobo didn't even remember lifting the Beretta 9mm Army-issue pistol, didn't know what he was going to do with it, frankly, didn't even remember he'd been holding it in his hand.
("Don't ever let anybody get too close to you when you're using this Beretta", Yankee had said behind the pawnshop, "If they mash back on the barrel like this... it won't fire".)
Maybe Lawson knew about Berettas—maybe he was a dumb-ass rookie—Lobo had never seen him before. Whatever the reason, he started reaching in, snatching, grabbing at the pistol, getting a sweaty grip on Lobo's hand. Lobo jerked back and that's when thunder blasted in both his ears and one of the cop's severed fingers thumped him across the upper lip.
Lawson fell back out of the truck window screaming. Lobo dropped the Beretta on the floor-board and twisted the ignition key until it broke off in his hand and cut the knuckle of his thumb on the jagged brass sticking out of the steering column.
The little truck's engine had fired up though, and Lobo rammed it into reverse and took his left foot off the clutch and gassed it with his right. The Toyota flew backwards, and then Lobo got smacked in the back of the head.
He shook off his daze and heard silence—the truck was stalled dead—the tailgate was bent where it had mashed into the cop car parked right behind it. The dead-end alley left him no other way out.
Lobo rolled on the oil-smelling gravel as he tripped on his way out of the cab. Lawson the cop was huddled against the cinderblock wall holding his left hand, face pale, eyes wide staring at Lobo, snarling, "I'll kill you, you bastard, I'll fucking kill you!"
Lobo whipped up his hand to shoot Lawson again before the cop could draw, but Lobo's hand was empty, the Beretta was gone, and blood was all over his fingers.
The cop stopped yelling for a second and let go of his mangled left hand, reaching for his belt.
Lobo ran. He ran out of the alley past the cop car, skin crawling, waiting for the bullet to hit his back. The screaming feeling jerked him left, then left again. He sprinted through a parking lot, then came onto Santa Maria Avenue.
A kid on a porch saw him and laughed. "Don't run. Walk. Walk." Of course. Lobo walked, wiping his right hand clean on his black t-shirt. On the shirt, not the jeans. Think. Think.
Lobo slid into the bathroom at the Greyhound station under the big municipal parking garage and splashed cold clean water over his face and hands. Think. The Toyota's plates, insurance card, fingerprints all over that Beretta. A cop. You just shot a cop. A cop who is already calling it in on the radio. You're dead meat.
And only six blocks from Mexico.
All the way up to the turnstile at the bridge Lobo had stared at the back of the head of the woman in front of him. She had a red hair-clamp. He chewed gum. He didn't actually have any gum, but it was an old ritual, the chewing, it calmed him and made him look very bored and boring.
It was while reaching in his pocket for the 50 cents change to walk across the bridge that he had felt the extra bullets. The American border cop was looking at a stalled car out in the traffic lanes as Lobo walked past, trembling.
But that was all 20 minutes ago on the other side now. In Texas, they were hunting for Jason Valdez the presumed-armed-and-dangerous. Here, he was John Doe Gringo, tourist.
"Prescription? Prescription? You need prescription? Fun? You want a girl?"
Lobo wanted a phone. He stepped into an alcove and checked his wallet—a ten and two ones—a few coins. The store took his American money for a phone card. He imagined the conversation he would have, Marisol would be somewhere in Monterrey trying to do three different things as she picked up her ringing cell phone, then when she heard his voice she'd look to the side and switch to English to show off and mess with her grandmother's head, as if the old woman couldn't decipher Marisol's come-and-get-it teasing tones. He'd get her to work it out with her brother Juan: A place to lay low, new ID, maybe put him on the Belize end of things for a while until they figured out what to do. Think.
Lobo dialed Marisol's number. The recorded voice in Spanish said the phone was out of its service area at the moment.
Lobo walked a bit and decided to use the credit card. At a teller machine two blocks west of Guerrero Avenue, he punched in the pin number written on the back of the plastic card, and a Mr. Leonard Wilkins of Plantersville, Alabama was recorded as withdrawing the maximum, a 2,000 peso cash advance. Not much, about 200 bucks American, but still plenty to get to Monterrey and Marisol, to eat, hole up, and think.
Home
Next
posted by Walter Moore at 10:41 AM
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