His entire adult life, what Payne wanted most was to be a good father. His own father had abandoned the family when Jimmy was eleven. Leonard Payne considered himself both a wheeler-dealer and an inventor. That sounded better than traveling salesman and tinkerer. The man simply could not hold a job. What he could hold was a grudge. Deluded and bitter, he filed dozens of lawsuits, claiming to have invented various sports drinks, protein bars, and muscle-building powders. With each invention came a "royal screwing," as he called it, "a corporate corn-holing by the big boys."
Leonard Payne went through periods of manic highs, working on top-secret projects in the garage, followed by bouts of near-suicidal depression.
Once he took off, the man never called, never wrote, never sent money. Payne pictured him selling gym equipment on commission somewhere, still railing against the big boys who won't let a man get ahead.
Payne wondered which was worse for a boy-to know the father who abandoned him or, like Tino, to never have even met him. He tried to stir up a warm memory of Leonard Payne. Remembered his father taking him bowling.
No, that's a lie. We never bowled together.
Leonard bowled and dragged Jimmy along to watch. San Bernardino, Riverside, Moreno Valley, Banning. Anywhere his old man could find suckers to bet. First for beer, then a dollar a pin, then five dollars a pin. It was how Leonard made the rent money. A broad-shouldered man, he threw a sweeping, powerful hook with his custom-made "Black Beauty." The ball would scatter the pins with a thunderous clatter, probably because it weighed sixteen pounds, thirteen ounces, nearly a full pound over the legal limit.
A hustler and a cheater.
"Your head's playing tricks on you, Himmy," Tino said, dragging him back to the present.
"What?"
"The accident. No way it was your fault, man."
"The week after it happened, I was supposed to take Adam on a trip. Just the two of us. Visit every Major League ballpark west of the Mississippi. Had it all planned, down to the last hot dog."
"My mother always says, Si quieres que Dios se ria, dile tus planes. If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."
"Your mother's a smart woman."
Payne heard Tino suck in a breath. "There, Himmy."
Just ahead, sodium vapor lights turned the night air into a misty green fog. Traffic slowed as U.S. border agents guided cars into lanes approaching the station. Vendors in baseball caps hawked sodas, pastries, and souvenirs. A grim midnight carnival.
"Mexico" was painted on the asphalt. If they could run this gauntlet, Payne thought, they would see "U.S." on the far side of the station. He sensed Tino stiffen as they approached the invisible line that separated the two countries. The line that separated the boy from his mother, his past from his future.
They were surrounded now. Cars, in front, on both sides, and behind them.
"We're gonna make it, kiddo."
Tino shot him a look. Wanting to believe but maybe not quite buying it. Which made two of them.
FORTY-TWO
Payne pulled the Mustang into a line of cars at the border station. Six lanes were open, each with twenty or so cars backed up.
"Tino, no matter what happens, don't panic."
"I won't."
"Don't get out of the car unless you're ordered to. Don't run."
"Okay. Okay."
"And no mouthing off to the agents."
"I'm not an idiota, Himmy."
A husky agent in a blue uniform tugged the leash of a German shepherd that happily sniffed the fenders and trunks of the cars in front of them. Payne hoped the prior owner of the Mustang hadn't been hauling any loco weed. When they were the third car in line, a cute female agent, her dark hair pulled back in a bun, walked along the row with a clipboard. She checked each car's license plate and punched the numbers into a handheld computer.
Payne gave her a "Good evening, ma'am" as she walked past the top-down Mustang. She returned a tight smile and an official nod. Her name tag read "Rodriguez," the patch on her sleeve, "U.S. Customs and Border Protection." Payne kept his eyes on her as she jiggled past. Her uniform pants were a size too small, accentuating her bubble butt. Not quite a Jennifer Lopez model, but still what the Greeks would call "callipygous." She examined the Mustang's Land of Lincoln plate, Payne murmuring a little prayer that the car hadn't been recently used in a bank robbery in Cicero.
The cars inched forward, plumes of black exhaust hovering in the night air. When the Mustang reached the front of the line, a male agent in his fifties sidled up to the driver's door. His name tag read "Lopez," and he looked both tired and bored.
"Evening, Agent Lopez," Payne boomed, with gusto. "Long day, huh?"
"Pulled a double shift 'cause we're short tonight."
Good sign, Payne thought. The guy wouldn't want any hassles.
A helicopter droned overhead, its searchlight raking the ten-foot-high border fence.
"We'll be out of your hair and on our way in no time," Payne promised, putting on what he thought was an open, Midwestern smile. "Just a midnight crossing to the Promised Land."
"Nice wheels."
"Indeed," Payne said, employing a word he never used. But then, this wasn't him. This was some educator from Northwestern University, a guy who restored old cars in his spare time. Payne had prepared an entire persona in the last few minutes.
"V-8 under the hood?"
"Four-twenty-eight," Payne bragged.
"Love that pony on the grille. Never understood why they put it off center, though."
Agent Lopez scrutinized Payne's Illinois driver's license and passport and didn't start screaming for reinforcements. He spent more time with Tino's visa, squinting a bit, then holding a flashlight to it.
Shit.
The agent slipped the visa into his shirt pocket and studied Tino. "You're a student at Temple Emanuel Academy Day School in Beverly Hills?" His tone would have worked for "You just landed here from Mars?"
"Si, senor."
"Exchange program," Payne added.
"I'm talking to the boy now, Mr. Hamilton."
Payne clammed up and Agent Lopez said, "How long you going to school there?"
"I start next month, but they asked me to come early and get myself all orientated."
"Uh-huh."
"Then I'm gonna go to Beverly Hills High. Lil' Romeo went there."
"So did Erik Menendez," the agent said, referring to one of the brothers who shotgunned his parents twenty years earlier. "Let's take a look at your luggage."
"Except for a gym bag and baseball bat, we shipped everything," Payne contributed.
Agent Lopez sighed, as if this was going to be too much trouble for this time of night. He leaned over the side of the convertible, a puzzled look on his face. "Are those bowling shoes you're wearing, Mr. Hamilton?"
"There's a story behind that," Payne said.
"Don't wanna hear it. But tell me, just what's your connection with the boy?"
"I'm associate director of Worldwide Student Exchange."
"Never heard of it."
"We're an ecumenical rainbow coalition headquartered at Northwestern University. We encourage diversity in private schools, and this lucky little fellow was chosen, after vigorous competition, to go to Temple Emanuel for intensive study."
"I love Americanos, " Tino said. "Especially Jews."
"Let me get this straight," the agent said. "You're a religious do-gooder from Illinois. You drive all the way to Mexico and come back with this boy who you claim to be taking to some Jewish school in Beverly Hills."
"In time for Rosh Hashanah," Payne added, helpfully.
The agent took a moment to think things over. In an adjacent lane, under a sign reading Secondary Inspections, agents pulled a Lincoln apart, fender by fender, the border equivalent of a body cavity search.