Lines and shadows (4 page)

Eddie Cervantes was, in addition to being a dedicated Marine reservist, a very fast runner who cheerfully punished the out-of-shape street cops by setting a fleet-footed pace all over the hills, yelling, "On, ter, thrp, frp!" like every leatherneck since the Boxer Rebellion, while the out-of-shape street cops dragged ass up and down the canyons. There were two policemen in the group who had seen combat in Vietnam, both ex-Marine drill instructors: Ernie Salgado and Fred Gil. Since Manny Lopez admitted that he didn't know diddly about guns and ammo, Ernie Salgado volunteered to help with the weapons training. It seemed likely that out in bandit country they might need more than their police service revolvers, but threading one's way on treacherous trails in the night would make it pretty tough to lug around standard police shotguns. And SWAT rifles would probably be dangerous for everyone concerned.

The task force decided to use a High Standard, model ten, 12-gauge shotgun, which was equipped with a flashlight, a pistol grip, and a short barrel for concealment. It was essentially a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun that could be held in one hand and fired at very close range. The ammunition used in police department revolvers was 158 grain, roundnose lead. Most policemen, though they carry handguns as tools of their trade, are not technically versed in firearms. Ernie Salgado was, and wondered from the beginning how effective two-inch gun barrels would be, since ordinary police department ammo already had little punch. He wondered if, what with the shorter revolver barrels and the inevitable waste of gas, the .158-grain ammo might lose
too
much power. That they might be better off with four-inch or even six-inch revolvers out there. And that the sawed-off shotguns might expand the bird too soon; thus anyone hit with projectiles from their shortbarreled shotgun-handguns might be able to pick the lead out of his navel like belly-button fuzz and throw it right back at them.

There were two things noteworthy about these opinions on the efficacy of sawed-off shotguns and snub-nosed revolvers: 1. No one even dreamed
how
close their confrontations would get. 2. No one
completely
believed there was going to be heavyweight gunplay out there in the first place. The fact is, most policemen can go an entire career without firing a weapon outside of the pistol range. On any police department there are a file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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few officers who seem to become involved in multiple shootings, but there were none of these on the task force.

So there was a great deal of running and firing during those five days at Camp Matthews. And everyone treated the whole exercise in the best of humor most of the time. Except during one of their fight exercises when they simulated sneaking up on bandits who were sneaking up on aliens. It was good boyish fun until someone almost stepped on a rattlesnake. A
live
rattlesnake. Very few of these city boys had ever seen a rattlesnake, living or dead.

Dick Snider had seen his share, from the
Grapes of Wrath
days up to and including his stint as a border patrolman so many years ago. And even in the past few months while conducting his one-man creepy crawly campaigns in the canyons at night, he had seen and heard the reptiles. Rattlesnakes?
Real
rattlesnakes. This got their attention all right. Bandits were one thing. They weren't truly expecting much trouble from a bunch of raggedy thugs, all horsed-out on Mexican brown. They were just planning to kick ass and take names, as they say in the business. But
real
rattlesnakes? And how about tarantulas? Can they kill you? And what about those freaking scorpions they'd heard about? Were there really scorpions out there? When somebody started asking if rats carried plague, Dick Snider had to give his young city boys a few reassuring words about the
other
dangerous creatures of the canyons, who had been there far longer than the bandits.

The border patrolmen assigned to the task force taught the cops a few tricks that at the time seemed of doubtful value but, as the task force experiment took its radical turn, proved very valuable indeed. Things such as hunkering down: The illegal aliens ordinarily squat when approached by suspicious or threatening persons. So the cops had to learn to squat. And to try and feel the docility of pollos, to learn the gestures of submission and to talk shyly, with proper humility, the timbre and tone of voice modulated accordingly. About the exact opposite of a Japanese sushi chef, they were told. Even the use of the hands was completely different south of the imaginary line. A real Mexican would call to an adult with the fingers pointed downward. "
Ven aqui"
would be softened by that waggling of down-turned fingers. A dog or a child would be called with the fingers up. They were starting to learn just
how
a Mexican differs from a MexicanAmerican. And just in case they were called upon to do a little undercover work, they were taught a few short phrases using the vernacular of real Mexicans. Anglicized slang was nearly as much in evidence among law-enforcement officers and street people in Tijuana as it was on the American side of the border. But
campesinos
fresh from the interior would certainly not be asking for
mechas
to light their cigarettes. And if one was going to use the word
frajo
for cigarette, there would be subtleties involved. Why does this pollo from Durango know the slang of the border? Indeed the slang of the Mexican-American barrio? Has he made file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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multiple crossings and come to talk the language of smugglers and guides, or is he some kind of law-enforcement informer or police agent?

And if any of them was ever asked to impersonate an alien from the interior, what kind of cigarettes should he carry? What brand of matches would likely be sold in a
pueblo
in Chihuahua?

And what of the language of guides and smugglers?
Trucha
! (meaning "Be careful!") was not a word many of them had heard, yet it was
caló
or barrio slang in Los Angeles, referring to a sharp dude who kept his eyes open.

The living language of the border, a patois of Spanish and English and bilingual slang, leaped whole areas of the California southland, came in and out of vogue, traveled back south prowling the border, crisscrossing as effortlessly as the scabrous mongrel dogs of the frontier. They listened and thought it was sort of interesting, but what the hell did it have to do with a bunch of street cops who were going into those hills to kick ass and take names?

One old policeman at Southern substation, when he got his first glimpse of the cop commandos, put it this way. "Blackjack Pershing was the fast asshole
dumb
enough to go chasing Mexican bandits around the hills. And it ended up with Pancho Villa being played by every movie star from Beery to Brynner. What'd Pershing get out of it? A statue of himself in a wino park up in L.A., with a million pigeons shitting on his hat." Nobody wanted to think about it, but the fact was General Pershing and the U.S. Cavalry never came
close
to catching Pancho Villa.

"We don't really know what we'll be doing," Renee Camacho told his father as he was getting the last haircut he would have for a while. Renee had a boy-tenor voice, though at twenty-eight he was actually one of the older men on the squad.

Herbert Camacho was a barber whose shop was located near Thirteenth and Market Streets, only eighteen blocks from the central police station. Renee and other cops often stopped to have a beer with the barber.

Herbert Camacho thought that the task force would be a good thing. "They're your people," he told his son in reference to the alien victims. "Somebody has to protect them." Renee had been a natural choice for Dick Snider. He was an energetic cop and, like Dick Snider himself, had a ofter side which appealed to the task force lieutenant. Aside not often apparent in policemen, and often decimated when young men do police work on city streets.

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There was more. Dick Snider had known Renee's father some sixteen years, since Snider was a rookie himself, patrolling Thirteenth and Market Streets.

The older man had always liked the tall lieutenant and told Renee that Dick Snider was
simpatico
with the Mexican culture. The barber liked it when Snider would unashamedly offer an embrace and even a kiss, Mexican style. But he had reservations.

"Do you think it might be very… dangerous out there?" he asked Renee, his only child. And one night while the barber was working at his second job, clerking in a liquor store, Dick Snider happened by to get some beer on his way home. Herbert Camacho surprised Dick Snider by blurting, "You better take care of my boy out there!"

"I'll take care a him," Dick Snider promised the barber. "I'll take care a them all."

"None a the guys wear bulletproof vests, goddamnit!" Tony Puente repeated it a thousand times during the formative days of the task force.

"I'm buying the bulletproof vest," his wife, Dene, insisted.

"I won't wear it."

"Are you crazy?"

"I won't wear it."

"Do you wanna die?"

"The other guys might laugh."

"The
other
guys might…
laugh
?"

She was "white," but understood
machismo
as far as the Mexican male was concerned. They may not be
real
Mexicans in the eyes of those living south of the border, but the concept of
machismo
is alive and well on both sides of the imaginary line. She insisted. He refused. She bought the vest. He wouldn't wear it. She called his mother—

"a typical little Mexican spitfire mother," as he described her—and then the yelling and screaming
really
started.

"You'll wear the bulletproof vest!" his mother said.

"I
won't
wear the goddamn vest!"

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"I hope you get shot, then!"

"I'd rather get shot than hear it!"

And so forth. In the end of course his mother told him she didn't mean it. Still, he
would
rather get shot than wear it, he said. This was in the early days of the experiment. He didn't know so much about getting shot.

When all else failed, his wife wept. "You're not gonna die and leave me with three kids. You
have
to wear it!"

And this did get to him. Grievously. He believed he had robbed her of her youth. Dene was fifteen years old when they married. He was an eighteen-year-old Marine. It seemed to him that he had always been taking care of women and arguing with them. He was an eldest child with five younger sisters. It was never apparent that he was as bright as he was. He was shy and soft-spoken. He graduated from high school before his seventeenth birthday and joined the Marines with his mother's written consent. He couldn't
wait
to get away from home, away from an alcoholic father who embarrassed him. The embarrassment was the worst possible kind because it was laced with guilt and remorse. The old man used to humiliate him by coming to the Little League baseball games to watch him play for a team sponsored by the San Diego Police Department. The team was managed by police detectives, and young Tony Puente imagined that they had probably arrested the drunken man sitting in the stands cheering him on. Lots of policemen had booked him for being drunk. Tony Puente would forever be easily embarrassed and quick to feel guilt.

The Marine Corps was not an escape. He was beside himself when the Cuban crisis broke in 1962. The Marines were going to Guantanamo! He couldn't wait. But he and his teenaged girl friend had already set the date. He went to his commanding officer to see what he should do.

"Should I bug out to Guantanamo or should I do the
right thing
?" the young Marine asked his officer.

The answer was of course implicit in the question. He did the right thing, as usual. He got married and served his three-year enlistment in Santa Ana, California, a short drive from home. They had three children, and would have a fourth before the border experiment was over. He had robbed her of her youth, he believed, so that when she warned that he was not going to be shot dead and leave her alone to raise the children, he
almost
agreed to wear the vest. He would later change his mind about
machismo
and bulletproof vests. In some ways Tony Puente looked more Mexican than any of them. His face was rather flat with small Indian eyes peering out through rimless glasses. When his hair grew long and file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009

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he sprouted a Zapata moustache, he looked like the classic renderings of Mexican revolutionaries. But he spoke Spanish very poorly when recruited for the task force by Dick Snider and Manny Lopez.

He had other things to offer, such as experience. At thirty-three, he was next to the oldest man recruited, and he had seven years of police work. He had never gotten to Guantanamo Bay. He had never gotten anywhere. But at least he was getting out of uniform duty, whether Dene liked the idea or not. And he wasn't going to be wimpy and wear that bulletproof vest.

Yet there
was
something he did not, could not, deny her. And it was something that came to be more crucial to every aspect of life than a thousand bulletproof vests. Dene became immersed in a fundamentalist church. Her life, and his more than hers, would never be the same again.

"She was a young woman with kids," he would say gravely, trying to describe the religious crisis that would soon consume him. "Here I was off at night doing police work and she was forced to raise the kids herself. It seemed to me at first that the new religion was a…