Crossing the Line (34 page)

I didn’t, though. Not at first, anyway. I bit her neck instead. Right where the trapezius meets the throat. And I tasted the sun on her skin even though the sun was buried somewhere beyond the dripping clouds.

She purred like a lynx. She wrapped her arms behind my back and pulled me to her, crushing me with her thin, sunburned arms. She bit my neck, too, before she pushed her face into mine. Then her tongue was in my mouth, and the tiny dumbbell that pierced it was clicking against my teeth.

“Let me show you that trick with my shorts,” she murmured, biting my neck again.

“No. This is fine right now.”

“For you, maybe.”

She started kissing me again. Meanwhile, both the rain and the wind fell off. At about the same time she finally stopped grinding her hips down on mine and seemed content just to touch and kiss.

It may not excuse things, but I didn’t feel like I was being unfaithful to Rebecca by snogging with this girl who was as free as a wild animal. And it wasn’t just that we’d hit that brick wall. Rebecca lived in another world. And right then I needed the contact and the reassurance. I needed to feel like a human being, not a killer. I needed to feel like my old self, long before I started carrying a badge or earned the epithet QuickDraw. I needed to be free, like I’d been in my guiding days. Being Roberto was a little scary.

“Hey. This is nice,” Lydia said. “I knew there was something to you older guys besides not being able to get it up all the time.”

We topped out in the late afternoon, an hour or two before dusk. The summit was empty. Just bare rock and a few twisted junipers. The sun had returned when the rain had stopped, and now it was drifting down toward the Pacific Ocean. The
chubasco
had swept the sky clear of all the atmospheric dust and pollution from Tijuana and Mexicali. I thought I could see the blue water on the horizon. On both horizons, actually. The peninsula is only a hundred miles wide, with the Pacific to the west and the Sea of Cortés to the east. We were standing on its highest point.

While Lydia crawled to the edge of the east wall to look down its sixteen-hundred-foot face and see if she could spot her friends, I scanned the other direction with the binoculars I’d brought in my pack.

“You see them?” I asked.

“No. I hope that the—what did you call it? A chubby Tabasco?—didn’t wash those guys off.”

“They probably just rapped. It looked like hard climbing. They probably only got up a couple of pitches before the rain started. Maybe they’ll try again tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Kevin was pretty determined to nail it today.”

She stayed at the edge, brown legs splayed on the rock and dreadlocked head hanging in space.

I found the hacienda easily enough. Surprisingly close, too. It was perched on a hill above some other buildings—barns, storage sheds, and a sort of crumbling dormitory for Hidalgo’s
sicarios
. There were cars down there, too, some that I recognized from Wyoming, and a sort of palm-frond–covered cabana where a bunch of the gunmen appeared to be drinking beer and getting stoned. I counted at least twenty men. I was sure Zafado was around somewhere, either drinking with the men or up at the fine house on the hill.

The house itself was a single-story structure with white walls and a red tile roof. It sprawled on the hilltop amid green lawns and, just like in Wyoming, a turquoise swimming pool. I could see only a corner of the pool, so I couldn’t tell if Hidalgo was sitting by it the way he liked to do in Wyoming. But I did see maids moving around in their starched black uniforms. They wouldn’t be wearing them if the
jefe
wasn’t home. I tried to see in the windows but couldn’t see much because of the gauzy white curtains that swayed in the breeze. But I could see that many of the windows were open, and that none of the windows had bars.

El Doctor was definitely home, I decided, and it wouldn’t be hard for me to invite myself inside.

“What are you looking at?”

Lydia had wrapped her arms around me from behind. She was pressing herself to me again.

“That house down there.”

“Nice place. Who lives there? Some Mexican movie star?”

“No one.”

“Hmm?” she asked, purring again, her cheek against my shoulder blade.

“I don’t know.”

The only road leading to the house came from the other side of the mountain range. That was good, although it meant that it would be a tough day’s hike from the campsite and the Pig. Tough because of all the canyons and manzanita. It would be deep into the night before I got there. But the night and the canyons and the dense vegetation would make me all but impossible to find after a shotgun blast woke everyone up.

I would spend the night with Lydia and the desert rats then leave early in the morning.

THIRTY-SIX

T
hat night, sitting around the campfire, there was no more cold beer. The ice was all gone. But there was warm wine. And there was pot.

Marijuana was something I’d never thought of as being any worse than lite beer. I’d never bought into those claims from the federal government that it was a “gateway” drug. I’d never seen a marijuana overdose. And I’d never seen anyone do anything really vicious while on it, unlike whiskey and crack and meth and all the rest. Stupid? Sure. Violent? No.

I drank my share from the fat green jug, and was even tempted to take a couple of hits off the bong. But eight years as primarily a narcotics agent, plus my recent insight into the illegal-drug industry beyond Wyoming’s borders, helped me overcome the urge. Besides, I knew I needed a relatively clear head for what was going to come. And I was feeling so different from my usual self that it was like I was kind of stoned already.

Kevin, Tony, and Barb had beat us back to the campsite. As I’d predicted, they made it only four pitches up the Giraffe before the
chubasco
—or “chubby Tabasco,” as Lydia said—forced them to rappel off the wall. According to them, the torrent of water washing down the east face had been so bad that they worried about drowning while still five hundred feet off the ground. They weren’t too dejected, though. They’d had fun. And they were happy that Lydia and I made it to the summit. They’d left their ropes behind on the east face, intending to head back early the next day. They planned to jumar up to their high point and finish off the route.

Lydia teased them, using variations of Roberto’s favorite climbing maxim, which I’d told them earlier: “You eat what you can kill.”

“You choked on what you couldn’t swallow,” she said.

“We bit off more than we could chew,” Barb agreed.

“We drank more than we could swim,” Tony ventured.

“We rapped what we couldn’t climb,” Kevin said.

It became a game as they passed the gallon bottle of bad wine and the bong. It continued, getting rowdier, through a dinner of rice and beans and tofu hot dogs. The meal may not sound like much, but it was the best I’d had in years. I tasted every exotic spice that the girls mixed in with the beans. I drooled over the charcoal-crunchy skin of the well-done dogs. I drank the wine like it was some spectacular California vintage instead of buck-and-a-half Gallo.

Lydia finished the game by shouting into the night, “The Giraffe killed and ate
you.
And the giraffe’s a friggin’ vegetarian, you wimps!”

My new friends were having a good time. It was a party even though the batteries for the boom box were dead and there was no dancing. One of those times where you feel so connected to each and every person present that they might as well be your brothers and sisters instead of pretty much total strangers.

So they thought I was out of my gourd when I told them they should pack up and head north at first light.

“No way, man. We aren’t going anywhere. We’ve got to eat that Giraffe. We can’t get our asses kicked by a vegetarian route,” Kevin said.

Tony added, “We’ve got four ropes plus gear still on it.”

“I’m staying here forever,” Lydia said, slouching low in a camp chair next to me, the bong held between her knees. “Gonna start a climbing camp like that one at Potrero Chico. Up by that coppery pool. Gonna call it Campo Robert. After my new guru here. The guy who’s gonna be my lover whether he wants to be or not. And our motto’s going to be ‘Eat What You Can Kill.
No Mas.
’ Right, Robert?”

“Listen to me for a minute. I’m serious. You need to pack up and split.”

Tony was the only one sober enough to suspect that I wasn’t kidding.

“Why?”

“Because there’s going to be serious heavy shit going on around here by tomorrow night.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You ever hear of the Mexicali Mafia?”

“That’s like a prison gang or something, right?”

I shook my head. I had all of their attention now.

“No, that’s La Eme, or the Mexican Mafia. The Mexicali Mafia is associated, but they work out of Baja. Right near here. And they’re some really bad people. Worse than La Eme, even, and that’s the major leagues as far as gangs go in the U.S.”

“What are you talking about?” Barb demanded. She wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Just listen. These guys, the Mexicali Mafia, they have their headquarters in a house on the other side of Trono Blanco. You can see it from up on top. It’s the only place around. White with a red tile roof.”

“That’s what you were looking at?” Lydia asked. “With your binoculars?”

“Yeah, we’ll see it if we ever make it up the Giraffe,” Kevin lamented.

“Listen to me. These guys—the Mexicali Mafia—they kill people. They have a signature way of doing it, too. They cut their throats and pull their tongues out through the wound, then they let the victims drown on their own blood. They’ve done it hundreds of times down here to people they don’t like, or to people who get in their way. And when they do it to someone, they don’t just stop there. They do it to every family member, from little kids to grandparents. In Ensenada a couple of years ago—just sixty or so miles from here—they slaughtered eighteen women and children in a single night.”

“Jesus,” Lydia said, now unsure whether or not I was kidding.

No, Jesús,
I wanted to correct her. Instead I said, “There’s a good chance that tomorrow night they’ll be running around in these mountains. There’s also a good chance they’ll be really pissed off.”

“Why?” Tony asked.

“You know what happens when you poke a stick in a wasp’s nest? I’m going to do something like that tomorrow night. You don’t want to be around here after that. You don’t want to be in Baja at all.”

There was a long silence except for the snap and crackle of the fire. A mesquite branch exploded, showering sparks, and they all nearly leapt out of their skins. Then Lydia leaned over and took the bottle from me.

She said, “No more wine for Señor Robert. And it’s a good thing you passed on the dope, dude.”

“Was that, like, a ghost story?” Barb asked.

Kevin, laughing, put a forearm across Barb’s throat and flapped his other hand beneath it. Like a wagging tongue. She beat at him with her elbows.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“You’re putting us on,” Tony insisted. But he didn’t look so sure.

“Stop it, man,” Lydia said, grinning and putting her hand on my knee.

“How do you know about these guys?” Barb demanded. She sounded sober now. And like she might get a little hysterical. “How would you know something like that?”

I smiled. It was Roberto’s smile. I could see it in their faces as they watched me.

“I used to work for these guys. They fucked me over. Now it’s their turn to get fucked.”

Nobody restoked the fire as I told them a story. By silent consent everyone was content to let the flames die rather than have them serve as a bright beacon marking our camp to whatever bugaboos were out in the night. The story I told them was low on details, middling on truth, but high on motivating them to get the hell out of this place before the next night.

I said that I used to work for this guy named Jesús Hidalgo, head of the Mexicali Mafia. That, when I wasn’t off climbing somewhere, I paid for the next trip by guiding men carrying packs of cocaine and heroin through the Sonora Desert. That I kept them alive when they otherwise would have died from heat or thirst or by being shot to death by Border Patrol or
bandidos.
That I had a brother who was a cop, and that this Hidalgo had really messed him up. Wasted him, actually. And finally, that I was going to do the same to Hidalgo. I punctuated it by getting up and fetching from the truck the ugly, short shotgun with its pistol grip.

Roberto was in my voice as I spoke. He was in my permanent grin and every gesture. He was in me so deeply that it felt like I might need to get an exorcism when the job was done.

They didn’t want to believe me, but I knew the story of the Mexicali Mafia and the things they did to people sounded so horrible that it had to be true. But more than not wanting to believe me, the desert rats didn’t want to believe that people could actually behave this way. My new friends were so innocent in spirit that they were like another species of
Homo sapiens.
A very different species from what I’d been living with for the last eight years.

They were true believers. Just like so many people I’ve admired and, at the same time, scoffed at over the years. The public defenders who were convinced I was railroading their clients with planted evidence. The climbing partner who believed that God would only take him when it was time, so he felt free to take huge risks. Mary Chang, who, before her agent was murdered, had believed absolutely in law and government.

I couldn’t help but be a little awed by the desert rats’ faith. They kept it in the face of all that was around them. Tony, with his skinny muscles and long, thin hair, surely had gotten the shit kicked out of him frequently as a teenager. In both Barb and Lydia I could detect a little of the victim—a sense I’d developed in eight years as a cop. As kids or juveniles I thought it probable that they’d both either been abused or molested by someone they trusted. Even sturdy Kevin—I could imagine a domineering father outraged that his son wanted to
climb rocks
instead of play football. Looking at him, I could hear the echoes of shouts, shoves, and then punches.

But they kept their faith. I envied it. They took their joy where they could find it, and they pursued it every minute of the day. Like Roberto said, they ate what they killed.

And here I was, one of them, and I was going to do something terrible. Something that should have been impossible for any human being to do, something that was forbidden by the concept of civilization, something that the rule of law outlawed. But empathy, civilization, and law had all failed to deal with a man like Jesús Hidalgo.

What I was doing to the desert rats made me feel a little sick. Like I was shaking them awake when they desperately needed their sleep.

“I’m too stoned to tell whether you’re messing with us or not. Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Kevin said. “We’ll decide if we’re going then. But, man, whether you’re messing or not, I don’t think I want to hang with you after this.”

Barb was crying quietly. Tony just looked into the dying embers, stunned. Lydia sat beside me with her dreadlocked head bowed low. I wasn’t one of them anymore.

Barb followed Kevin into the tent he shared with Tony. Tony stood outside it for a minute, watching them disappear inside then pull the zipper. He turned and headed down the slope to Lydia and Barb’s tent. I was surprised later when Lydia crawled into the back of the Pig with me.

“Man, you are a
trip,
” she whispered.

“Then how come you’re crawling into the back of my truck with me?”

She grinned. Then, on all fours, she bounced up and down on my sleeping bag. The shocks squealed in protest.

“This thing’s a piece of shit.”

I had to laugh. That’s what Mary Chang had said about the Pig the first time I met her. It was only a little over two weeks ago, but it felt like years. Lifetimes.

“Everyone would hear if we got up to something in here. You should go sleep in your tent.”

“I’ve seen you before,” she whispered. “I know who you are.”

“Oh, yeah? Who?”

“In the climbing magazines. You’re not ‘Robert’ but Roberto Burns, right? You’ve cut your hair, but I recognize you. You’re the guy who used to do all those insane solos.”

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“Yeah, I haven’t read about you doing much lately. I just wanted
you
to know that
I
know who you are.”

“Okay. You should go to your tent and sleep.”

“Nah,” she said, sitting down cross-legged on my sleeping bag, rubbing her eyes, then looking down at me. “I’m going to stay with you tonight. You don’t know it, Roberto, but you need me.”

Some coyotes began howling off in the night. I thought that maybe they were calling for me. Only it would turn out that they were coming for me.