– We’re headed for Nogales, get work permits from the union, you know? He almost crackled as he talked, mesmerist eye contact, homely smile.-Gonna pick cantaloupes in Yuma. Used to be you had to go through recruiters, couple hundred a permit, goddamn shakedown. With the union, the growers pay. For real. Least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Not like the recruiters gonna cave without a fight. Fucking gangsters. Couple union dudes been shot, I heard.
The pimply soldier paid Pingo little mind, choosing instead to glance back and forth-Samir’s face, his ID picture, looking for something, lingering, then all of a sudden handing the voter reg card back. Moving on to Lupe he repeated the process, mimicking his own actions so unimaginatively Roque caught on finally it was all just mindless rote. The guy barely glanced at Pingo’s ID. Roque felt his shoulders unbind.
Then the lieutenant told Bergen to open the back of the van.
The whole reason the American was traveling north was to deliver a vanload of art to a dealer he knew in California. That was his story, anyway.
– You know how it is, Captain, he told the lieutenant, ever since the troublemakers caused all the problems here in Oaxaca, the tourist trade has dried up. No one comes to the galleries anymore. You have some of the most talented artists in the region on the verge of going broke. He removed a cardboard tube from the back, popped open one end, shook out the canvas that was rolled up inside.-Here, let me show you something.
The lieutenant nosed around the boxes of tin ornaments, copal wood carvings, hand-painted masks and figurines, ceramic bowls and pitchers, then called for the dog handler to bring the shepherd around. The animal hiked his forepaws onto the bumper, probed the nearest boxes with his snout.
Bergen, undeterred, unrolled the painting.-Look at that. The colors remind me of Chagall. But the artist is from here, just over the mountain in Zimatlán. Now here’s a question for you, Captain: How much do you think this painting is worth? He paused, as though to give the lieutenant time to think, playing the thing out, milking it.-Up north, it will fetch five thousand dollars. Five thousand. Imagine what that means to this artist and his family.
Roque had to grant the man his bullshit. What he was leaving unsaid was that the artists whose work he was carrying north had exclusive contracts with fiercely competitive local galleries. You could get blacklisted if any of the curators figured out they were getting backdoored. But nothing was moving here and the artists had mouths to feed, supplies to buy. So on the sly Bergen had offered to broker their work to a gallery in Santa Monica, for which he was getting three times the normal commission-calculated on the 500 percent markup on the other end-but what could they do? A smaller slice of something still beat a bigger slice of nothing.
The point, though, was Bergen had an angle. God only knew what else he was up to, Roque thought, half expecting the German shepherd to alert on the boxes piled in back-there’d be pot or scag or crank in there, courtesy of Bergen’s old paymasters, maybe Pingo the joker.
The dog dropped down onto the pavement. No alert. The lieutenant curtly gestured the American and his curious pack of fellow travelers back onto the road, then marched toward the next waiting vehicle, his retinue of baby-faced soldiers traipsing along behind.
Bergen rolled up his painting and suggested with a glance that everyone climb back into the Eurovan with as much oomph as they could muster. As they pulled onto the highway, he studied his rearview mirror and said, “My guess is that’s the worst we’ll have to handle.”
“That’s not what you said before.” Sitting in back on the passenger side, Roque leaned out his window, tenting his shirt to dry his skin. “You said they’d just wave us through.”
“I made no promises.”
“Yeah. I can see why.”
To the west, immaculate beaches melted away into emerald green water frothed with surf. Pelicans strafed the waves for food. The southern end of the Sierra Madres dropped into the sea. Roque wished he could enjoy it all but he could only think of who wasn’t there to enjoy it with him. He’d abandoned his uncle to a lonely grave, far from everyone he loved. It brought to mind his strained conversation with Happy. So much anger, so little grief, but that was hardly surprising. Things have taken an odd turn, he’d said, there might be a bug on Tía Lucha’s phone. What had they gone and done, why head for Agua Prieta? And whose side would they take when it came time to talk El Recio into letting Lupe go?
Tourists:
Oaxaca is Temporarily Closed.
It will Reopen as Soon as There is Justice.
“That reminds me,” Bergen said. “I did a little nosing around about what happened to you folks on the highway the other night. Appears you were mistaken for somebody else. The governor here is facing something that, in its own modest way, feels like full-fledged rebellion. He sure sees it that way, and he’s not been shy responding, which is why tourism’s in the toilet.
“Word apparently reached him or someone in his camp that members of the EZLN-the Zapatistas, the guerrillas from the next state down, Chiapas-were coming to powwow with the local opposition on tactics. There were rumors of a new general strike. The powers that be decided to nip that little fucker in the bud and they had their men waiting out there on the road.”
Roque glanced toward Lupe, who was staring out at the hypnotic surf. “Why chase us? What made us so suspicious?”
“It’s my understanding,” Bergen said, “that the folks who could answer your question best are unavailable.” A turn toward the sun sent a shock of white glare across the windshield. Bergen flipped down his visor. “I can tell you this much, if those phony IDs you guys picked up from your salvatrucho pals were from Chiapas instead of Veracruz? We’d still be back there at that checkpoint, most likely facedown on the pavement.”
Roque caught a whiff of himself, realizing only then just how scared he’d been. “How come we didn’t hear any of this from you before?”
Bergen glanced over his shoulder, his customary smile at half-mast. “You aren’t seriously complaining, are you?”
Roque blanched. “No. I’m not.”
“Good.” Bergen slowed for a tope and a pack of women swarmed the windows on each side, holding up bags of oranges, cold drinks, miscellaneous chácharas. The windows filled with eager hands, the voices almost accusing in their urgency.
Once the van picked up speed again, Bergen said, “I’ll tell you a story. About the way things are here. I have this friend, delightful lady, used to run a restaurant in Oaxaca de Juárez. Best pork with mancha manteles mole you’ll ever know. One morning she was walking to her bank to make the daily deposit when the Policía Federal Preventiva rolled in. This was November 2006, during the teachers’ strike. The PFP came to teach the teachers a lesson. Batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, the whole trick bag. Alix, my friend, she tried to help somebody who’d been tear-gassed, dabbing their eyes with a hankie dipped in Coca-Cola. Trust me, it works. Anyway, she got snatched up by the PFP along with everybody else, dragged to a van, thrown inside with ten other women. One cop said they were going to get taken out in a helicopter and dropped into the ocean. That’s not an idle threat down here. It’s not folklore, either. It gets done. Good news is, it didn’t get done that day.
“Cops took them to the women’s prison in Miahuatlán, not that things were swell there, either. Alix got questioned, to use the usual euphemism, and the man in charge used a blanket when he kicked her so he wouldn’t leave marks. She was charged with assaulting police, sedition, destruction of public property. Mind you, I’m talking a nice middle-aged lady here, maybe weighs 110 after a heavy breakfast, who was trying to help somebody who was hurt. She closed up her restaurant after that. No more pork with mancha manteles mole. Haven’t heard from her in over a year.”