Crossing the Line (8 page)

The waitress finally came back. She was still acting sullen although I could see that she had laugh lines on the sides of her mouth. I ordered steak tamales. She again walked away without a word.

Even though it took less than ten minutes for my order to arrive, half the dining room emptied out in that time and the other half was getting up to leave. It was eight o’clock, and it appeared to be some kind of witching hour.

The girl brought my food and said as she put it before me, “Those men at the bar. They want to buy you a drink.”

“I wish only to eat.”

She looked at me directly for the first time, cocking her head to one side the way Mungo does when I try to give her a command she doesn’t understand. Her expression softened a little.

“What are you doing here, mister?”

“I’m just traveling through. On my way north for a job.”

“You would be wise to join them. Or leave and keep driving—there will be no charge for the food if you go now. Please understand.”

She turned and hurried away without waiting for me to answer.

I looked at the two men in the bar. One of them grinned at me and showed some broken teeth. He gestured me forward. The other one, who was larger and had a long Pancho Villa mustache and a goatee, just continued staring. I nodded at them without smiling and held up my thumb and forefinger indicating the need for a few moments.

I ate fast while thinking even faster.

These were undoubtedly a couple of Hidalgo’s
sicarios
. And they wanted to know about a strange young man in the neighborhood who looked like he might have something to do with the drug world. Mary Chang had ordered me to have no contact with Hidalgo’s men—an order I would normally have felt free to ignore or follow depending on my mood—but now I realized the good reasoning behind the order. These were dangerous men. It was palpable in the air, in the way everyone had reacted when I walked in the door, thinking I was one of them. I shouldn’t have dressed so flashy. That’s what you get for showing off for the Feds.

There was nothing I could do about it now. If I bolted, it might make them suspicious. And I wouldn’t be able to show my face in town for the rest of the operation.

I shoveled in the last bite without really having tasted the food. I wiped my mouth, drank some water, and put ten dollars on the table before standing. The grinning man nodded encouragingly to me as I headed toward the bar area. He slid over one stool, making a space between him and the other man. Pancho Villa just watched me walk over. His face was oddly swollen and his forehead seemed creased into a permanent scowl. I noticed that both men wore fancy dress boots with riding heels, not the work kind. Both had gold around their fingers, wrists, and necks. Broken Teeth had a silver automatic in his waistband, only partly concealed by his leather jacket. I was sure the larger man was armed as well, even though he was big and menacing enough not to need a gun.

“How goes it?” Broken Teeth asked.

Without waiting for me to answer, he patted the empty stool between them and called out over the bar for a drink.

I sat down facing the bar and both men turned with me. An old man came out of a side door. He was small and wizened, with scowling eyes beneath bristling eyebrows. There was a lot of Indian blood in him. Like the girl, he stood silent instead of asking to take an order.

Broken Teeth demanded a tequila and a beer for each of us and told the old man to hurry up. There were a lot of glasses in front of the two men, both mugs and shot glasses. It looked like they’d been here awhile and that the old man wasn’t inclined to do much picking up after them.

“I’m called Zafado,” Broken Teeth told me in a friendly manner. It was a nickname, meaning a crazy person. I could believe it, looking into his black eyes.

Then he flipped his hand past me to Pancho Villa. “This is Bruto. Tell me, my friend, what are you called?”

Bruto was another nickname. It meant someone who was coarse or uncouth. I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my head. As much as I disliked my own nickname, on its face, at least, it was better than either of theirs.

“Juan.”

“Juan, huh? I haven’t seen you around here before. You work here? In this town?”

The old man poured three shots of tequila and set about drawing three beers.

“No. In the north.”

“Yeah? Where at in the north?”

While the old man put the beers before us, I named a ranch near Pinedale, a hundred or so miles toward Montana. I knew the guy who owned it, and I would call him later to make sure that if anyone asked, he would admit to hiring a Mexican hand named Juan.

“Yeah? You a real cowboy, my friend? Go on, drink up.”

He picked up his shot. In the periphery of my vision I saw the silent, brooding Bruto lift, too. I picked up my own and poured it into my mouth.

It was very bad tequila. It scorched my throat and burned its way into my stomach. I tried to be cool in the way I reached for my beer but Zafado laughed all the same. Neither he nor Bruto touched their beers. I guessed it was a macho thing.

“So, you a real cowboy?” Zafado asked again.

I told him I was and he laughed, although I didn’t know why. I didn’t ask any questions. As usual in these kinds of situations, I played the near-mute. I wanted to let things ride and see what I could learn.

“What are you doing all the way down here, Juan?”

I explained that I’d delivered some horses to Green River. He asked if my trailer was parked outside, saying that he’d like to take a look at it, that he might like to buy it. I said no, it had been sold along with the horses.

I began to wonder whether these two were just stationed here to gather intelligence on strangers or whether they intended to roll me. Maybe both. Most illegal aliens can’t open bank accounts in the United States, so they’re stuck carrying large sums of money on their persons. And I’d just pretty much claimed that I was carrying cash from the sale of two horses and a trailer.

But Zafado seemed to have other things on his mind.

“You don’t talk much, my friend. You’re quiet, like Bruto there. That’s good. Very good. Maybe you like to work for me sometime. I pay real good—better than what the gringos would pay you.”

Before I had to answer, there was some raucous noise coming from the now empty restaurant’s entrance. Shouts, whoops, and laughter. Seven or eight men were coming in. More of the Mexicali Mafia. Zafado stood and took a few steps, yelling out a welcome. Bruto stayed close by my side.

The pretty waitress hurried past us and into the kitchen. I thought the look on her face was one of both fear and distaste. She didn’t return.

The majority of these men were dressed much the same as my friends at the bar. Lots of gold, designer jeans, and leather jackets. Slicked-back hair and the kinds of mustaches that are favored by cops and
narcotraficantes
alike on both sides of the border. A couple of the younger ones had shaved heads, tattoos, and wore expensive tracksuits. Like Zafado, few of them had bothered trying very hard to hide the pistols in their waistbands.

Carrying a concealed weapon is a crime—even in Wyoming—but I wasn’t in any position to complain. I wasn’t even armed.

With a bit of relief, I saw that at least none of them was Hidalgo. I wasn’t quite ready to meet my brother’s former friend, the man whose head, in Tom’s words, we’d be cutting off. His eyes had been too penetrating in the photo I’d seen. And I looked just enough like my brother that meeting him would make me a lot more nervous than I already was.

The better-dressed
sicarios
and the street bangers rolled toward the bar at the rear of Garcia’s like a summer storm that crackles with lightning and booms with menacing thunder. I sat on my stool, watching them come on in the mirror, with the immobile Bruto seeming to lean over me.

Zafado greeted them all by shaking hands, tapping fists, and clapping shoulders. The new men, every one of them, nodded respectfully at my silent companion. They ignored me except for a few questioning looks.

I drank my beer and listened to them talk about another boring day. They laughed at some others who were left behind tonight to guard the compound. They talked about the stink eye they were getting from the local gringos. And they talked about the lack of women in this part of Wyoming.

“Shorty wants to steal a sheep,” someone said.

“Shorty’s not tall enough to fuck a sheep.”

Everyone laughed. Shorty, too, a little nastily.

He was one of the
sicarios
—I could tell because he was one of the ones dressed in jeans and leather and he didn’t need to strut and posture like the bangers. Shorty’s nickname was not the mocking insult mine was meant to be. He really was short. And grossly fat. The gold chains around his neck—he had as many of them as a rap star—were half buried by the fleshy rolls there. Lots of wavy dark hair framed his head. It was as perfectly groomed as Tom’s.

“Shorty’s going to rape some stringy gringo bitch if the boss doesn’t bring in more women soon.”

It was Shorty who said this, referring to himself in the third person.

The old man served them all without speaking or smiling. They drank down the tequila, whiskey, and beer faster than the old man could pour. It didn’t look like he was keeping track of the tab. When one of them asked where his granddaughter was in terms that were far too familiar, the old man, to everyone’s amusement, remained absolutely stone-faced. I assumed the granddaughter was the waitress who’d warned me off. Some more—even ruder—things were said.

I got up and slid through them toward the bathroom. Although they were still ignoring me, they were watching me, too. After checking it out, it would definitely be time to go. I already had a possible drop picked out, a place where it would be convenient and inconspicuous to make either a delivery or a pickup. It was a narrow ledge I’d felt underneath the bar.

I latched the door behind me in the bathroom and found a second possibility—a battered old trash can with flaking paint and a hinged lid. Then I washed my hands and face with cold water from the tap while I looked at my face in the mirror. It looked almost unfamiliar—cold and hard like the men I was among.

Bruto was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom. He was leaning next to the pay phone in the dark hallway but not bothering to pretend to use it. I nodded at him and walked past. He followed. I intended to thank Zafado for the tequila and beer and then leave.

My looming shadow and I stepped back into the bar area just as the restaurant’s front door opened again. Two young women, college-aged and very Caucasian, came inside.

They were obviously backpackers or climbers fresh from a camping trip in the Winds. Noticing the crowd of men in the back, they looked like they might be considering looking elsewhere down the road for their meal. Hidalgo’s men looked back at them like they were the meal.

I tapped Zafado on the back as he talked and laughed about the two women with three men. When he turned I thanked him for the drinks.

“Stay and have another,” he told me. “It’s on me.”

The men laughed at this. I didn’t think they were paying for them in any currency but intimidation.

Then he introduced me. There were three more nicknames to remember, three more faces imprinted in my mind.

“I got to go,” I said, but I was ignored.

Two men walked over to where the backpackers had seated themselves at a table. One of the men was Shorty, the other was a skinny banger. The table was in the far corner of the restaurant, all the way at the front and as far from us as they could get. The young women looked around self-consciously. They watched the approaching men with nervous smiles. The waitress came out of the kitchen, saw what was happening, and froze.

“I must go,” I said again.

But I let someone put a beer in my hand.

Everyone was watching the two men who were approaching the two women.

“You hungry?” Shorty asked in English loud enough to be heard all the way in the back of the bar.

“He’s asking if she’s hungry,” the man next to me translated into Spanish, apparently for my benefit.

One of the girls nodded uncertainly.

Shorty unzipped his pants and laid his penis on their table.

I was moving before I knew it. Beer still in my hand, passing men, then empty tables and chairs.

The women looked shocked and disgusted. But more than anything, they looked scared. They both stood up simultaneously.

“Where you going?” the skinny man asked, moving to block their exit.

Shorty pointed to his engorged member. “Try it. You’ll like it.”

He said this just as I grabbed the collar of his leather jacket. I yanked him backward and threw him on the floor. He took down a table and two chairs as he fell.

I said in broken English to the women, “Bar is closed.
Vamonos
. We go.”

They didn’t need any further encouragement. They scurried around us and half-ran for the door. Shorty was cursing on the floor, kicking away chairs and picking himself up. The other men were surging forward from the bar area. Shorty’s buddy was staring at me with narrowed eyes and reaching under his jacket. I moved quickly after the women, herding them in real cowboy fashion.

I wasn’t quick enough, though. They made it out, but I didn’t. Bruto got to the door just behind them, intercepting me and slamming the door shut with his meaty shoulder. He locked it just as I was reaching for the knob.

I could hear more bootfalls on the tile floor coming up behind me as I looked up at Bruto. God, he was ugly. Beyond him, out the window, I saw the women get into a Subaru and tear out of the lot, heading for the highway. I didn’t think I could win a stare fight with Bruto, so I turned and faced the room.

“Oh yeah, I’m going to gut you, Cowboy,” Shorty said, coming at me slowly while the others stopped. He pushed a button on a switchblade knife, sending a thin blade out with a low
snick
. His partner in harassment stood grinning with a hand on the pistol in his waistband.

I took a cue from my brother’s disreputable past and smashed the rim of my beer mug on the edge of a table. It splashed all over me but the glass base was comfortable in my palm, the jagged edge pointing up and out. There was something else I took from my brother—a sense of recklessness, of almost exhilaration. I let the feeling grow and spread over me because I knew that even if I evaded or outfought Shorty, there would be eight or ten more just like him who would be coming at me. Recklessness was all I had.