Into the Beautiful North(44)

He laughed out loud.

Just then, Smith came along.

“Hey, Arnie,” he called to the black agent. “That’s Nayeli. She rules.”

“Nayeli, huh,” said Arnie. He opened the gate. “Let’s get you processed, Nayeli. You can get back to invading the United States in an expeditious manner. Get to you in a minute.”

“?Qué?” she said.





Chapter Seventeen



Agent Arnold Davis had seen it all. After twenty-seven years in government service, he was close enough to retirement that he was bulletproof as far as the bureaucracy went. He had so much retirement built up that if they were to fire him tomorrow, he’d get close to a full salary anyway. It was what he called “f-you money.”

He had sore feet and a bad back. He’d been in counseling twice. He had hemorrhoids. Insomnia. His prostate was probably the size of a Krispy Kreme doughnut—he peed five times a night, and it ruined what little sleep he got. And his left knee was shot. Join the Border Patrol—taste the glamorous life.

His wife had left him in 1992, and she’d taken his kids. They didn’t talk to him, but they did accept his monthly checks. He drove a Ford pickup, but the gas bill was getting crazy, and he was actually thinking of trading it in. But… a USBP senior supervisory agent just didn’t belong in a Hyundai. Maybe they’d come up with a hybrid Mustang.

He looked around the station and tried to block his sense of smell so he didn’t have to breathe in all the sweat, panic, despair, piss. He tried to ignore the ugly lighting that, the older he got, felt more and more like a personal insult to his eyes. As he walked around the floor, holding his limp to the barest minimum so nobody could see it, he was secretly looking into the back of his brain, at retirement and escape and Colorado mountains and trout streams. Elk. He wasn’t going to shoot them—just watch them walk on by.

Even now, there were not a lot of black agents in the Border Patrol. Hell, there were barely any agents at all. Oh, there were bodies, all right. There were more people in uniform than ever before. Homeland Security had flooded the Border Patrol with gung-ho new Terminators. But they didn’t know squat about the border, not really. How could they? It took a guy ten years to really get it.

Arnie had served at Wellton Station in Arizona. It had been a tight little unit of almost thirty guys. Then DHS had started pumping in the fresh bods, and the station swelled to three hundred people jammed into the crumbling building. They had to tear it down and build a bigger station, not to hold more wets but to hold the overflow of agents.

Arnie had relocated to Calexico, and now he was on loan to San Diego. He put on his reading glasses to study the papers on his clipboard. He glanced into the cage.

The little smiley Mexican girl was looking at him.

My black skin, he said to himself, is beautiful.

He laughed out loud and moved on.

The government knew a secret that the American public didn’t: the numbers of border crossers were down, across the board. Maybe the fence, maybe the harsh new atmosphere in the US, maybe everybody had already fled Mex, like the old guys occasionally joked. But all these new agents were here, pumped, eager for action. The DHS paranoia and training had them searching for terrorists under every desk. Arnie shook his head. They actually believed an atomic bomb would be discovered in one of these backpacks, tucked under the underpants.

So they had to do something, now that talk radio and cable TV were so fascinated with every bit of border enforcement—until the next election season, anyway. The suits and the big dogs came up with a great assignment for the new Terminators—they were being sent out to arrest wets who were leaving the United States for Mexico. Hey, if you can’t catch ’em coming in anymore, bust ’em when they’re doing you a favor and trying to get back out.

Arnie thought a lot about that “f-you money.”

Elk, man, elk.



He came back for Nayeli. Crooked a finger at her. Opened the gate for her.

“Gracias,” she said, shyly grinning.

“We’re not going on a date,” he replied.

Photographs. Fingerprints. They sat at a table surrounded by other tables with worried paisanos and bored immigration agents. Arnie made some notes on a form. He wanted to know why she was carrying American money. Drugs? She shook her head. Hooker? No! When Nayeli started to tell him her story, he stopped writing. His mouth hung halfway open.

“Hey,” he said to the guy at the next table, “you gotta hear this.”

Nayeli told her story again. The agents shook their heads. It was the dumbest thing they’d heard all night. But they handed her all due respect: Nayeli had the most original wet story they’d heard in a week.

“You’re taking them back,” Arnie said.

She nodded. “I am here as a service to both our countries.”

He laughed. He looked around. He dropped his hands on the table.

“Well, well, well,” he said.

He laughed again, wiped his eyes.

“Do you not believe me?” she asked.

“Not really. But it’s a great story, I’ll give you that. Extra points for originality.”

She crossed her arms and frowned.

“I am not a liar,” she said.

“No. Just an illegal immigrant. That makes you so reliable!”