The BOYS

Episode FIFTY

Of course the whole plan was crazy, but there was a certain scattershot, vengeful intensity to it that convinced Walter Fales that... "hey, this might even work, you know, and if it doesn't, what the hell else can I lose?" Only his life, which was worth seventy-three cents, at present. First, they waited until it was fully dark. Lights off, TV off... even so, there was one dangerous moment when voices started up from the unit on the right, 220, and, after that, a knock on the door. Crouching by the bed, huddled together like teenaged girls in a slasher movie, Walt and Joe waited while someone outside knocked again, harder, and barked out: "American Values Legion. Can we talk to you about your vote, tomorrow? Is anybody home?"

"Home?" Joe whispered and Walt elbowed him.

"We know somebody's in there," the stentorian voice summoned them from their despair and apathy, "we're not selling anything, we are educators... so open up the goddam door!" and then there were many fists, not one banging and beating like the zombies in that teenage slasher flick and then, abruptly, they were gone.

A few seconds later, the commotion started up again, to the left, 224, this time. Walt waited until it had reached its menacing apex, crawled on hands and knees to the widow, and lifted the bottom of the curtain. He couldn't see the besiegers at 224, but there must've been a dozen men in suits, carrying flashlights and clipboards, attacking the AES units like ants, mobbing a picnic...

"Wish I had a weapon," Joe Sybco mused, as Walt scabbered back across the carpet. "We could jump out and take them, commando-style..."

"You're delusional," Walt muttered, setting his back to the side of the bed...

"Doin' somebody hand-to-hand, man, it's better than a triple shot... E, meth and heroin, or oxy. Better'n crack, sex, even. I mean... I killed a lot of fuckin' Ay-rabs in the desert puke one, a lot, but that was like shootin' rats at the dump... I'm sorry, I'm bein' uncool, I know, I'm just so fuckin' wired, now..."

"Probably inhaled one of those weird Saddam gases..."

Walt really wanted say to something to the effect that, if Joe didn't shut up, government agents would bust in and then they'd both would be wired up for real. But they'd grounded the electric chair, years ago, in fact they'd pretty much done away with capital punishment in the Terminator's California... as all the talking heads at all the celebrity trials on TV never tired of telling each other; there were six hundred something poor retards, maniacs, persons of passion and innocent men on death row, and they got around to injecting one per year, maybe two. So he put a finger over his lips.

By and by the invaders melted away, like dissolute, incompetent sons of a conqueror king, frittering away their captured provinces.

Then, Walt and Joe Sybco trotted casually down the steps, past the vending machine, and ducked into the Town Car. Joe's Ranger was parked in an alley about three blocks off, and the bald man leaped from the passenger side, opened it, removed a few papers from the glove compartment and bobbed and weaved under a sputtering streetlight, back to the Lincoln.

"Nine o'clock at the Mexican bus terminal down in East SD, that one with the five gold stars. I'll be walkin' around, so's people see me, but don't come up to me, just go back to the car and I'll follow you."

"And, if you decide to do the deed yourself, leave me hangin'..."

"Then you're out their processing fee... I think it's twenty-five bucks... you're pissed and you know what I look like, now. That sound fair?"

Walt figured it would have to do, so he drove down 265th to Gerson, then up to the check cashing place where he'd had to go Friday, courtesy of Barry... rot in hell... Cullery, and pay out the four ninety-five fee that would, otherwise, have gotten him a pizza. Same old Mexican lady was on duty, same security guard smiled: "Welcome back, sir."

"Yeah." He went to the window and waited while some other foreigner paid off her utility bill so the company wouldn't cut off her lights, then said... "look, I gotta get a head start on Christmas, and my commissions don't come through till the end of next month, the bastards. Can I get a thousand on a two-year old Lincoln Town Car, still worth eighteen, maybe twenty thou. Well maintained. It's outside, want to see it?"

"You got the title, registration, proof of insurance, ID? Premium on a thousand dollar loan is forty-nine twenty per week, twenty late fee, twenty processing, six hundred or ten percent repossession charge... doesn't look like you," she squinted at Walt's license.

"Look again," he said.

She looked down at the license, then up. "Okay."

He took his nine hundred eighty dollars, went to a Chevron and blew ten of it on three gallons of regular, then swung by the DP. Some instinct told him not to get out of the Lincoln, so he drove to the end of the line at the window... five cars ahead of him, and the parking lot was jammed. Sunday night. Rubberneckers. Nothing like a good, juicy murder to bring out geeks and, as Vampire Mickey swayed, waving, enjoying what was probably his last night before being deflated and folded away in some warehouse for the next eleven months, he thought he saw the rodent's lips curled upwards in a carnal, salutory grin.

The squawkbox. "Chili dog, rings... orange Slushie." Last of those he'd ever see... he didn't think he'd be too big on hotdogs, either, for at least a couple of years.

"Am I fired yet?" he asked Lula, at the window.

"Hey soldier...Louie wants to talk to you..."

"Walt," said the night man, out of breath. "Tell me you're comin' in to do your job..."

"Sorry," Walt shook his head. "Giving notice... I am so fuckin' depressed," he grinned. "I'd rather be giving notice to Barry, but, well..."

"Yeah," said Lou. "Oughta apply for disability... you'd have a decent shot at it. Take six months off, go to Hawaii... Mr. Z would probably back you if you promised not to sue him..."

"People doin' that already?" Walter frowned.

"Three, that I know of. Ain't decided, myself... I'm gonna talk to the Z-man about my future. It's been crazy... I've had to send Crake around with his tongs and various other culinary devices to tell the looky-loos to buy something or get out. Most buy something..."

"Crake has his uses," Walt acknowledged.

"Hadda bring over three temps from the other DPs, even a dancer from Fathom's at the register... you oughta come in..."

"She can't dance worth crap," Lula tossed her hair... a fat, angry guy in a Miata behind them began leaning on his horn.

"Ain't dancin' anymore," Louie winked. "Z-man hadda pay overtime and give 'em five bucks gas allowance besides..."

"So, am I still on the clock long enough to get my discount?"

Louie handed over the food. "Rot your guts out in peace, and on the house."

Miata-man honked again, and Lou bellowed, "Crake!"

"Hey, I gotta go," Walt told them. "Places to be, evil to do... best not mention I was even here. To anyone."

"Ten-four," Louie said.

"Call me," suggested Lula as the hatchet-faced man with the hot-dog tongs hurried past the Town Car to dialogue with the fat, angry guy. "I'm in the book."

When a van of curiosity seekers pulled out of a space facing the shut-down Halloween store, Walt parked and ate his supper, watching bodies stream into the Dog Pound, seeking... what? A connection to history, a vicarious slice of the principle and potency of spilt blood, a communion with the world beyond... if ever there was a disgruntled spirit, doomed to haunt some wretched patch of dirt for all eternity, Barry Cullery was he and this was it, and Walt felt an actual chill pass through him (of course it could've just been the usual Slushie-high, that notorious sublimate-rush enjoyed by law-abiding teens). Good-bye, finally, to all of that! And, if someone had, at that moment, asked Fales how he felt, he would have surprised them, and himself, by following the lead of ol' Bill Shatner on one of those Star Trek episodes, or movies, replying that he felt younger.

He even wondered what would become of the Britney poster on Mister C's wall.

Meal over, he cruised down Gerson to 238th, crossed over to Starvation Ridge Road and turned onto Highway Fifteen, Cabrillo and, lastly Interstate Five, the border-to-border highway that could take him on down to Mexico (or up to Canada, if he chose). He got off at the police station exit and turned east on Broadway until the buildings grew lower to the ground, the streets dirtier and English signage became infrequent. Among the bodegas and cantinas... their names reflecting the Mexican, Salvadoran or Peruvian provinces of their clientele... were a few small, crowded bus stations that did a thriving trade shuttling immigrants between the city and Tijuana or, sometimes, Mexicali. The Migra, the narks, several other categories of police, too, all swarmed over incoming Five Coins buses at the border and, sometimes, beyond... outbound transport was rarely, if ever, checked.

Not unless a manhunt was underway.

Joe Sybco had bought a Panama hat with a jaunty striped band, making him look exactly like what he was... a gringo on the run, and a foolish, pathetic one. Maybe an alimony-dodger. Much to Walt's discomfiture, he made the big man follow him out of the not-so-clean but well-lighted terminal, halfway down a darkening Mexican street into which the protests of caged, indignant chickens followed.

He pointed.

"There's the Explorer, opposite the church, so it oughta be OK. I put letters, xeroxes, in the mail, yours care of the DP, so find some reason to come by Tuesday. Here's another copy, in case the post office fucks up, anybody asks, you threw the envelope away. Over here, under the light... this part is what you want to read...

Somebody down the street whistled, but Joe only smiled. "We're OK. Here..."

There was reference to an attorney in LaJolla among the three pages of tightly printed rage... snatches of phrases like "world-butchers" and "anti-American conduct" shimmered, the yellow-highlighted paragraph in question was halfway down the middle of the second page.

To my former wife, Caren, I leave desolation and regrets.

To my colleagues at the Dog Pound, I leave you the moment of your liberation, I have done what you would not, or could not, do... hey, not all of us are made for heroism.

I leave the title and all property interest in my '99 Explorer to Walter Fales, in repayment for the money I've borrowed from him in the amount of two hundred dollars, give or take, over the past month, also the shit that he has undoubtedly gone through as a result of my actions. That car will be found parked in front of the church, next to the bus station... viva Mexico! He had nothing to do with killing Barry Cullery and does not deserved to be harassed by the police, he has, in fact, cause for a lawsuit for the cause of harassment of an innocent man.

I am not an innocent man, but I am not a murderer. I am a killer, but not a murderer... ask anyone who knew Mister C. and they will make the distinction crystal clear.

"Thanks, I guess," Walt said. There were a few more bequests of property to friends and neighbors... Louie Spicotti got Joe's radio and three remaining cans of beer in the fridge at his apartment, some guy name of Jules got a box of videos (probably porn)... Walt stopped reading.

"I mailed the keys and a copy of the title to the DP, but here's the real thing, and another set of keys, like I said... shit happens. Park your wheels in the space by the church and, when you get back, do a switch and drive back in your own car, no problem. Use these!" And he gave Walt a pair of brown, cotton gardener's gloves. "After that, all options are yours. Of course you'll have to go to the police... I'd wait until Tuesday afternoon, though, if that's alright with you. Talk to my lawyer, Luqire, first… he’s cool. And, then, you're like... guy left me his wheels?"

"Two hundred dollars?" Walt said.

"Man, nobody would believe you'd ever loan me, or any new guy on the job, a thousand bucks, no security. That would be like telling the cops: Hey, I'm an accessory. Look at me! Bust me! Got my money?"

Walt handed him a roll. "Eight hundred... I had 'em break two of that down into tens and twenties, get out of Tijuana money..."

"Eight?"

"Thousand, less two hundred." It made no sense, but at that time, that place, between those two, it sort of did. 'They charged me a premium and, besides, I gotta get by, too, wit'out a job..."

"You ain't goin' back?"

"Would you?"

Joe unlocked the Explorer and climbed in, let Walt in and they drove past the bus station and parked Town Car, and navigated two blocks south to Martin Luther King which, just beyond the city limits, became the main thoroughfare into and down the center of Pendejo Alley.

ä ä ä ä ä

"Same crossing?" Walt said, after they'd turned off the state road a ways south of Dulzura.

"Go with what you know." In fact, Walt hardly recognized the Rio Grande floodplain... where the Explorer crunched over crusted mud only a week ago, they churned through six inches of mud... a foot in some places... cursing the rain and the migra and the guy who invented the hot dog in the first place, Felix Frankfurter. They plowed through tiny puddles and some not-so-tiny lakes... some of these afloat with drowned rats and dead and alive snakes. The moon, a few days past full, flickered off and on as heavy clouds raced across a frieze of stars - in the dark intervals, they could see headlights glimmering, far off, on the road. La Migra... or maybe new, timid, agents of El Patron... waiting for something to come their way. Doing time, mentally spending their hundred bucks...

They laughed, and Walt couldn't stop... wouldn't stop laughing until Joe killed the engine, a couple of football fields from the ditch, and the fence that stood between the worlds, declaring that America ended here, depravity and poverty began on the far side of a dirty trickle of mud.

"There used to be this sumbitch agent, Roberto told me, hid out here in the dark and waited for crossings, then he'd jump out screaming... wore all black and camo, had leaves and branches dangling, you know, like vegetation, he was really into terror..."

"You said used to be..."

"He was so fuckin' unreal that they promoted him to a desk job in Arizona." And, then, Joe pointed. "Compania!"

On the other side of the fence, arcane flashlights scoured the mud in obtuse, repetitive patters, soft Spanish curses mingled with gasps of exultation at the nearness of the border arose.

"I think it's Geraldo," Joe surmised. "He's cool. Oye, Geraldo!" he called out.

"Quien es?" a voice replied, out there, in Mexico. "Jose?"

"Come on," Joe prompted Walt, who was staring at the mud that came up, now past his cuffs.

"You owe me for my cleaning bill," he said. "Geraldo?"

"Not who you think. And I gave you a fuckin' Explorer. Come on!"

Fuming, Walt sloshed through the mud to the border. It was a nice fence, shiny under the full moon when the clouds broke; the coyote had instinctively had all of his flock turn their flashlights off as he approached the frontier. No crime had been committed, yet. They apprised each other through the crosshatching and Walter looked down... someone had already dug a tunnel out of the mud, wide enough to easily accommodate any body willing to wriggle through the mud and across to the other side. Pagans, Elle had told him... Greeks and Romans, Celts and Saxons (probably some of Walt's own ancestors)... had a common military ritual. Boys squirmed through mud or blood... in the Romans' case, the steaming entrails of a freshly butchered bull... and emerged out the other end as men.

"Joo're a fuckin' loco," Geraldo said, in passable Spanglish. He placed his lips against the wire; Joe turned to listen, smiled. He slapped Walt on the back, whispering.

"Said he'd give us a couple of Chileans. One of ‘em says he’s a famous Professor. Gordos..." and Walt saw two figures hanging back from the mass of migrants, already apprehensive. "Wouldn't be any fight left in 'em after squeezin' through. Lucky Chileans, tonight."

Walt followed him to the fence. "Ain't in the market tonight, crossin' over, myself. Little business deal."

"Nothing to do with me?" Geraldo stepped back, frowning.

"Nothing." And then he seemed to freeze, an idea flitting in one ear and out the other like a bat. "You want to take a little risk," he told Walt, "make a little money?"

"Why not?" And then Joe spoke a few words of low, hurried Spanish through the fence to the coyote, and Geraldo spoke back.

"The Chileans and this pregnant chica are holding the group back... he'll give you a hundred to take 'em back to the bus station... deal is, some asshole INS ranger comes up you stop and they have to get off, run off or hide, if they can... you're just a guy on his way to San D. Might even hit 'em up for more, take 'em up to Nixonville... sometimes they stop the Greyhounds goin' up to LA, sometimes not, but nobody bothers with local routes north of San Clemente."

"That's a hundred dollars? Dollars, not pesos?" When the coyote nodded, Walt said that might be alright with him... Geraldo went off to break the news to the group and hit up the Chileans for a contribution. They didn't look particularly cheerful but, after all, there was the fence, there was America and its good jobs, good money... why risk messing up this close to the good life. Joe knew the G-Man, Geraldo, his rep, the names of his kids in the village of Tecate... like the beer... a couple of miles down any one of several muddy trails.

“Known a couple o’ G-men myself,” Walt said, absently…

"Cabron!" Geraldo said, at the fence, "some fockin' big maquilas movin' in, I might just give up the game, get a paying job. Not the fockin' sneakers, man, airline parts, computers and transistors, maybe those new televisions, you know, got blood inside .."

"Plasma?" Walt guessed.

“Say – what it is!” G-Man nodded. “Mira? Joo Norteamericanos get sick of paying other gringos ten pesos… dollars… the hour to make their clothes, their cars, their bloody television,,,” Joe flashed Walt a warning smile, as if – ten dollars? – but let the fellow roll on. “So they bring it all down to la frontera, the good jobs, dollar an hour for Mexicans, plus overtime. No benefit, an’ they dump all their basura into the canals, so the old folks get cancer ‘n the niños born wit’out arms and legs, just fleepers...” he waggled his elbow, “fleepers, like… like…”

“Dolphins,” Walt nodded.

“C’mon,” Joe winced. “Seals! Dolphins don’t have flippers, asshole, they have those other things. An’ walrus, walrushes… walrii…”

“Si, fleepers! But then they say, over in China, work for ten cents an hour, good bye NAFTA! Maquilas go, cancer stay. So we go America, or sell dope. Gotta make money, good money in dope an’ American prisons even better than village here… good food, dentista…”

He smiled, removed a partial upper denture – holding it out to Walt for admiration. Walt closed his fist around it, glaring at the coyote and Geraldo comprehended, digging a fistful of dirty bills from his jeans. Walter gave him back his teeth…

“Compliments – joo taxpayers of Arizona! Only bad thing no let women in, like Mexico jail, so make too many maricoños. Dancin’ all night! So America no want their drogas, now they pay companies to go down and open back maquilas, the High Tech? Intel… what means that, the intellect? Or the other companies full of Z and Q and X? Brebco? Dominame?…”

“Brebco’s in Tijuana?” Joe interrupted…

“In Tecate,” the coyote pointed east. “Like the beer.”

"How much they payin'?"

"Only two fifteen to start, if you got experience. But they say it'll go up... way up... to three, even four an hour for the supervisor...

"Pesos.." Joe shook his head.

"Fock, man, dollars... four dollars..."

"That so?" And the smiling killer turned to Walt, brow furrowed with concentration and, maybe, anticipation. "Man could live like a fuckin' king in Tecate on four bucks an hour... not to mention all that beer!"

“Is so!” Geraldo agreed. “They buildin’ colonias for the workers inside the gate, so the narcos can’t come in and kill their families, not like Tijuna where joo have to pretne, joo know? Poor G-man, no money – let him be. I tol’ these dudes from Culiacan know what I do that I invested all my pesos in American Dow Yonis… lose it, crash! Braxton brac! So they no mess wit’ me…”

“Maybe,” Walt suggested, “they’d hire Americans to work the gatehouse. Get you a gun and uniform – nice job protectin’ those rich Mexicanos.” He almost started laughing at his own joke, but Joe and the coyote were throwing him strange looks, so he shrugged… keeping his memories of Alta Vista to himself…

“Well, I’m there, bro’!” Joe decided, on the spot, and thrust out his hand. “Point me towards Tecate!” he implored the G-Man and, for good measure, seized Walter in an eerily strong, menacing abrazo. “Won’ forget you, amigo. Give shit a year or so to blow over, you come down an’ visit me in Tecate. Meet the new wife and familia, drink a case of beer a day… I mean, life is sweet!”

“Good as it gets,” Walt agreed, sort of regretting, now, that he hadn’t wielded the cleaver that had cleaved Mr. C’s head from his shoulders.

"It's been real, man," Joe said, kneeling in the mud. "Couldn't have made it without your help. Takes a real friend to help a friend, abetting homicide..."

"I wasn't abetting homicide," Walt demurred, "you were practicing fuckin' pest control."

Joe nodded. "Yeah, that sort of closes it out. They catch up with me down in Tecate, I'm going to blame parents who never taught me the right coping skills, and the Brebco's fuckin' outplacement counselors. They should've taken my condition into account, my ADD... attention deficit disorder," he explained. "I'm entitled to diagnosis, I'll say it wasn't murder, it was a reflex action... jeezus, this is tight…"

“Not so good for fot Americanos,” G-man needled.

“Speak for yourself, I ain’t quittin’ now,” Joe answered.

He kicked out, thrusting his legs under the fence as he looked upwards towards Walt. "Listen... the 'xplorer, she sometimes freezes up in the ignition. You know how they say to never force it... not true, there's this metal rod under the seat that you wedge into the keychain and it'll pop. It'll be fine... fuck you, man, fuckin' mary-con," he added, as Geraldo joined him in wriggling through the mud, from the other side their hips grinding together like a couple of berserk nematods...

"Fock you, man!"

The coyote stood up, wiping mud off his Levis as Joe gave a final, emphatic kick, sliding under the fence and wriggling his way into Mexico. He was in Mexico, that was all, and Geraldo was already reaching under the fence to tug the first of his paying clients into America.

His Mexicans slithered through with the liquidity of experience, but the Chileans snagged on the bottom of the fence, rearing their clothing as they backed up, pushed again. Walt grabbed the Profesor’s left arm, Geraldo his right and Joe, even, wriggled back and pushed at his soles until the Chilean popped through like an infant… out of the womb in into a strange, new universe. It went easier with the rest, so Walt finally stood up and watched them wriggle through, one by one… their fat, pale Eurobodies like worms risen to the surface of the mud after a hard rain. Suddenly chilled, he shook himself, sending the mud of two nations flying in every direction.

“Don’ bother,” Geraldo assured him. “Nobody stops dirty people on the way back.”

“You talkin’ to Joe… or to me?” Walt began, glancing across the border, only to find the murderer gone.

He looked back – the G-man was gone, too.

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