

## Border Tales Too

## Book III

### The Borderland (Mis)Adventures of CBP Officers

### Elvis T. Mahoney & Co-Conspirators

Book III

by

James Whitesell

Copyright © 2015 by James Whitesell

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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### Border Tales Too

Book III

Table of Contents, (not as certain malajusts might say, Table of Crap)

Prelude Luane Androgen

Chapter 1 Juan's Shrimp Shack

Chapter 2 Embarazada?

Chapter 3 Into The Frying Pan

Chapter 4 Just Another Day?

Chapter 5 El Cientifico

Chapter 6 Alberto

Chapter 7 It's Just Business

Chapter 8 Elvis Takes A History Class

Chapter 9 Mr. Fleshmound

Chapter 10 A Quartet of Crotches (Sample Chapter From Border Tales)

### Border Tales Too

### The Borderland (Mis)Adventures of CBP Senior Inspector

### Elvis T. Mahoney & Co-Conspirators

Book III

### Prelude

### Luane Androgen

A resident of Cincinnati, Luanne Androgen, was in Tucson on business. Court business. Luanne was an attorney. She formerly was the legal consultant for an adult diaper manufacturer, but a few years earlier did a nifty lawerly 180 and now was in private practice pursuing legal action against adult diaper manufacturers and other similar targets of opportunity. Her personal speciality was litigation against toilet seat makers. And she was good. A genuine legal hotshot with a well honed sense of the dramatic. "Her graphic courtroom visual presentations of the injuries sustained by toilet seats," one former adversary said, "would have scared the crap out of anyone. I went to the bathroom standing up for almost two weeks until I was got a guy to install one of those nextgen Japanese seatless toilets."

Luanne, who was also a regular on the gourmet circuit in Cincinatti and had a special interest in authentic ethnic foods, made the hour drive down to the border town on Nogales on a free day, a no court Sunday, to try out some genuine Mexican food on the Sonora side of Nogales. As she arrived in the Arizona half of Nogales and drove by the local McDonald's she noticed all the Mexican plated cars in the McDonald's parking lot. Luanne got curious. She parked her rental car nearby and cut through the McDonald's lot and was about to head into Mexico for some authentic Mexican food. But all the Sonora plated cars held her attention. She stopped a thirtyish woman with two small kids who'd just climbed out of one of those Sonora plated cars, a Ford Fiesta, and was headed for the McDonald's front door.

"Excuse me," the hotshot Cincinnati attorney, Luanne Androgen, said. "Do you speak English." The Mexican woman nodded.

"Sure do. Went to school here on the Arizona side. Even got a tattoo in Tucson." She held up her sleeveless left arm for Luanne to see. Luanne looked. And looked again. All she saw was what looked like the thin opaque film on a blackboard just after it's been erased.

"There's nothing there." Luanne said, both puzzled and a touch miffed that maybe this woman was messing with her in that popular Mexican game, Fuck With The Gringos. Messing with people's minds was lawyer Luane's speciality and she sure as hell didn't appreciate some frickin' amateur stepping on her mind-messing toes. She started to edge into pre-huff mode.

"It was the name of my first boyfriend." The woman said with a giggle, dehuffing Luane's huff before it got rolling. "My husband was none too happy with it so I had it removed." A serious expression. "Tattoo removal is a big business around here. What with all the gangs and all. My brother Hernando makes a good living at it. Which is doubly good for him. Hernando specializes in doing tattoos as well as removing them. Big bucks. Good enough for him to drive a new Prism and buy season tickets to Cardinals games up in Phoenix." Luanne blinked. She was losing focus. Fast. So she regrouped and got back to her original point.

"I was about to go into Mexico for some authentic Mexican food, being none too fond of fast food places like this one, and was wondering why all these Mexicans are eating here. Don't you like the food from your own country? Don't you like Mexican food." The Mexican woman laughed.

"Take a look inside the McDonald's. All the cooks are Mexicans. They come across the border every day to work here." Another laugh, plus a gentle pat on Luanne's shoulder.

"If the cooks are Mexican, how can it not be Mexican food?" Then the Mexican lady took her two little kids and trundled them through the door into McDonalds. Luanne stood in the parking lot, watching them go in no little befuddlement. When she got back to Cincinnati a few days later she went to her favorite restaurant, Sefanit's Authentic Ethiopian Cuisine, and opened the kitchen door to see who the cook was.

"Que busca, señora?" The cook, a man with salmon colored skin, green eyes and a light brown pony tail, said. "Los baños?"

Luanne quietly shut the door, went home and made herself a baloney sandwich.

### Chapter 1

### Juan's Shrimp Shack

Elvis was working at the U.S. government's port of entry at Nogales. As soon as his 8-4 shift was over he hit the freeway north for the tantalizingly odiferous premises of Juan's Shrimp Shack in Tucson. Elvis' stomach juices were roaring for some juicy crustacean action. The shrimp season was going full blast and Juan had fresh Gulf of California shrimp, caught that very morning off the coast near Guaymas by his fisherman cousin, Marco, for the supper special. Marco express shipped the shrimp daily to Juan, who in turn sold most of it to other restaurants. Making sure however to have enough to offer fresh Gulf shrimp specials every evening at his place as long as each day's supply lasted. Which wasn't very long. So if you wanted fresh Gulf shrimp you'd darn well best get to Juan's place early in the evening.

Elvis, being a self professed shrimp afficianado, was on digestive fire to dig into one of Juan's fresh Gulf shrimp specials. He stomped on the accelerator and made the usual hour long drive up to his home in Tucson in forty-five minutes. He paused only long enough to make a quick change out of his uniform, and lather his somewhat malodorous work-sweated armpits with a generous amount of X-Tra Strong Nice Pits deodorant, and gargle some Wal-Mart, also extra strength, generic mouthwash. Then he jumped back into his old Chevy, clunked it in gear and hit the gas pedal for the potholed parking lot outside Juan's Shrimp Shack on the south side of Tucson.

The regular waitress, Juan's daughter-in-law Celsiusina Mae Moskowitz de Calzone, had a tray with two shrimp specials and two bottles of Tecate balanced on her right arm when she glanced over at the opening door and saw Elvis' red headed lanky form clumping his way in. In the time it takes for an atomic clock to tick from one second to the next her pupils dilated to maximum and her eyebrows valiantly tried to meet up with her hairline. Mickie LaSwat, her former neighbor who was a Tucson Electric Company lineman, at his moment of truth looked no more shocked that Celsiusina at that moment, Mickie having inadvertently leaned against a high voltage line and immediately qualified his wife for a nice chunk of insurance money. In Celsiusina's mind she tossed the tray of shrimp specials in the air, started screaming hysterically and lit out running for the back door. In actuality she did no such thing. It was mind stuff only. But it was close.

She took one look at Elvis and in few more atomic clock seconds detoured back into the kitchen and out of Elvis sight. She'd already had more than one Elvis encounter. One too many. Celsiusina suffered from nearly constant stress. Her fragile mental equilibrium couldn't handle another evening of Elvis. In the last one, Elvis and Juan having had a few too many brews that evening, Elvis began singing Irish revolutionary songs in what he claimed was Gaelic, with Juan attempting to harmonize in Spanish, which sounded to Celsiusina like elephants gargling in a shower--though she never stopped to wonder exactly how elephants got into a shower in the first place. Or, for that matter, how she would know what gargling elephants sounded like, Celsiusina not being one of your more reflective types going back to when she discovered the Easter bunny was actually her uncle Hector in a bunny costume. After that she just didn't want to know what other unpleasant discoveries life was waiting to dump on her.

She vanished into the kitchen, convinced that she had just saved, if not her very life, at least her sanity. Theta Hematoma Bojorquez, a new waitress who had no clue who Elvis was, took up the hostess slack as Elvis came in the door and unwarily escorted him to what he demonstrably indicated with a thrusting index finger to be his very favorite and definitely only choice for a booth. Stuck on the wall next to the booth was a three foot square velvet painting of a matador and a bull hot eying each other with less than friendly intentions. Elvis was certain the figure in the painting was Che Guevarra. Che was wearing a matador's costume and was steely-eyed intent on driving a skinny sword into the thick neck muscles of a huge white bull with flaming red eyes. It was one of Elvis' favorite paintings. Elvis was a big fan of fine art. Especially fine art with a message. Elvis was dead certain that the white bull symbolized runaway capitalism and the rapacious white bread gringos of America's Wall Street. Either that, or Che had a big time dislike for large white bulls. Either way, the bull was on his way to being the main attraction at the local taco stand.

Served the critter right. No bull sympathy likely in Elvis' universe. Elvis hadn't much cared for bulls since Thelonius McQuirk's hulking one-eyed Holstein bull chased him across an alfalfa pasture back home in Slippery Sister County. Elvis in those days was a smart-assed overconfident seventeen year old who admittedly was a fast runner. Good enough to lead the sprinters on the track team at Slippery Sister Unconsolidated High and to be the school football team's occasionally star halfback. He thought he could take a short cut across McQuirk's alfalfa pasture and outrun the bull. That was the thought. Thoughts always don't always work out in reality. Elvis had his own local Slippery Sister County version of the Running of the Bulls at Pamplona in Spain when One Eye Burt, McQuirk's huge Holstein bull, ran Elvis down before he got to the fence. The bull caught him, too, and put a hole in Elvis' buttocks that was still visible to this day in good light. A few years later, Elvis having revealed the story of One Eye Burt to his Army buddies after a few too many bottles of beer, the dimpled scar was the butt of many a joke when he was in the barracks' communal shower room. But just about everything has a positive side. Elvis learned how to fight--and also to appreciate the value of the well-timed sucker punch.

"Would you like something to drink, sir?" Theta Hematoma Bojorquez asked Elvis as he plunked himself down beneath the Che Guevarra painting into what he called his lucky spot. But, before he gave her a drink order, he pointed at Che Gueverra skewering the white bull of Wall Street in the velvet painting.

"Pretty cool painting," he said. "Don't you think?" Theta didn't at first say anything. "How would you interpret the painting?" Elvis continued. "The deeper intent, I mean. Like philosophical or allegorical meaning." Big words for Elvis. But he did have a grasping fingernail hold on the edge of their meaning. Slipping, but still holding on. Theta stared at the painting, cleared her throat and looked back at Elvis.

"I think the painter was hard up for money and was willing to do anything to make a buck." Theta was a student at Pima Community College and took an art appreciation class the previous semester. She was now able to pronounce more or less accurately French sounding names like Renoir and Gauguin and considered herself an appreciator of fine art. Which, Theta was damn well certain, this cheesy velvet monstrosity sure as hell was not. Then Theta drove another nail into the coffin of her as yet unplumbed relationship with this new customer, the red headed Elvis guy. "Either the painter was hard up for bucks or he was mentally ill. This painting is pure crap. It should be burned at the stake of art appreciation," Theta also having taken a class on medieval Europe and getting downright irate that the dumb French bastards barbequed Joan of Arc.

Elvis's mind, however, was a very long way from a Joan of Arc barbecue. He wanted to jump up, grab Theta by the throat and compress her throat to the width of a pencil. Elvis was sure Che Guevarra was at that minute rolling over in his grave. This was blasphemous. Che Guevarra and the White Bull blasphemous. Theta forthwith took a tumble to the very bottom of Elvis' all purpose FAEE (Friends, Acquaintances and Especially Enemies) list, in a three way tie with Osama bin Laden and One Eye Burt the Holstein Bull.

"You asked about a drink order," he began. "Ready for it?" Theta nodded.

"Yes, sir. What would you like?"

"Well," Elvis replied. "How about a Diet Gatorade?" Theta's coffee brown eyes blinked and she cleared her throat again. Twice.

"A Diet Gatorade?" She said uncertainly, thinking somehow she must have misunderstood him. Who would come into a seafood place and order a Diet Gatorade? Theta had never encountered Elvis before. Nor, and this was what had her teapot starting to heat up, had anyone warned her about him. She looked puzzled. And a touch pissed.

"I don't think we carry Diet Gatorade, sir," Theta said in a thin voice. "Have you had it before?" The simple omission of the word 'here' was Theta's second mistake. The first one being badmouthing Che and the Bull. Elvis looked innocently up at her from his lucky spot and all that registered in Theta's mind was a mess of fire alarm red hair, blue eyes the color of the ice in her noisy old refrigerator and a protruding nose that would have passed muster in the heyday of the Roman forum. For some reason she fixated on the nose. From there her mind jumped to an image of a ski jump.

And stayed there.

"Had it before?" The mouth that was a constant companion with the ski jump replied, looking a bit put off. "I had it several times while visiting the tasting room at the stockyards in South Sioux City and also while watching humpback whales humping off the coast of Baja California. And I even had it once when the Diamondbacks whipped the Padres, though I will admit I snuck it into the stadium in my baggy shorts. Which, I have to confess, did impart something of a peculiar odor to the Diet Gatorade."  
Theta's lower lip trembled. She suddenly remembered how the other waitress, Juan's daughter-in-law Celsiusina, had done a vanishing act when Elvis came in the door. Now she understood. Celsiusina! Sneaky Bitch!

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ski....er, ah....," she blushed deeply, "ah...ah...sir," Theta finally said, as her frazzling equilibrium continued to frazzle. "We don't carry Diet Caterglade."

"Gatorade," Elvis replied a bit peevishly. Theta's eyes blinked again. "That's Gatorade," Elvis said, his face and voice vaguely accusatory. "Not Caterglade." Before Theta could answer Elvis spoke again. "Never mind. I'll have something different. Do you have any European virgin spring water? Preferably Magyar or perhaps even Carpathian?" Theta's mouth dropped open. She tried to force out some words but nothing came. But then, like a ringside attendant at a boxing match hitting the end-of-round bell just when the referee's count was nearing ten, Elvis put up his hand and patted Theta reassuringly on the shoulder.

"Just bring me a Bud Light," he said. Theta wheeled on her heels and made the trip from Elvis' booth to the kitchen so fast the bottoms of her shoes heated up.

Elvis was studying the special board on the wall when a commotion exploded in Juan's Shrimp Shack's cramped kitchen. Theta Hematoma Bojorquez and Celsiusina Mae Moskowitz de Calzone were snarling at each other with hot eyes and hissing some very unladylike but remarkably colorful creative remarks. Elvis kicked himself for not bringing along one of his gray market distant audio enhancing devices. That kitchen caterwaul had to be titillating. Maybe even soap opera level titillating.

"Drat!" Elvis exclaimed, miffed that he couldn't hear what was going on. Elvis might have been offended had he known that the argument was about who was--or more to the point, who wasn't\--going to wait on him. Elvis might have been offended. But probably not, Elvis being after all, well....Elvis.

After a few more moments a middle-sized, middle-aged man with a bald dome trailing a salt and pepper pony tail came out of the kitchen and thumped towards Elvis. The kitchen dilemma was solved. Theta and Celsiusina stayed put in the kitchen. Juan, still in his stained apron and with a hair net over his pony-tailed bald dome, stomped up to Elvis where he sat in his lucky spot under the painting of the matador who was really Che Guevara trying to skewer the white Wall Street bull.

"OK, Elvis," Juan said in a veiled tone of voice, though it didn't take much of an imagination stretch to figure out the veil was a thin one and barely covered his irritation with Elvis.

"I got pandemonium in the kitchen." Juan continued in that same thinly veiled tone of voice. "My daughter-in-law is the back room crying over the phone to her New Age therapist and life coach." Juan paused briefly. "Whatever the fuck that means. And my waitress is threatening to quit and narc me out to the Food Nazis of the Tucson Department of Health for some of my so called questionable kitchen procedures." Another short pause. "Can't you just come in and act normal for once in your life? Just come in, order a meal, eat it and leave without leaving a trail of destruction behind you?"

"She started it," Elvis said defensively.He pointed at the painting.

She bad mouthed Che Guevarra." This comment would have sailed over the heads of the entire billionshood of humanity and fuddled them all had not Juan and Elvis been poker playing buddies for a good while. There was therefore a single exception to the otherwise total global fuddle. Juan actually knew what the hell Elvis was talking about. Juan looked at the velvet painting of the matador and the bull. A stunned expression was on his face.

"She didn't like the painting?"

"More than that," Elvis said, still riled by the impudent young woman's blasphemy. "She called it crap!" Juan started into a slow burn. Not only had he bought the goddamn painting in the first place at a tourist shop on the Sonora side of Nogales, he actually was really fond of it.

"He looks like me as young man," he confided in Elvis one evening when they were drinking beer and talking about the matador in the painting. "I was good looking back then. The girls all gave me a second look. Sometimes a third."

At that friend moment, the cool thing for a friend to say would be something like "you're still good looking, man." But not Elvis. His mind didn't usually register concepts like cool things to say. Not that he was snide or mean spirited. He was, well, again, just....Elvis.

"The aging process sucks, man. Especially when you're breathing shrimp fumes every night back in the kitchen." Fortunately, Juan's mind was wandering off on another subject, his recent run of bad luck with his shrimp soufflés, and didn't react. And he had another subject on his mind this time, too. Theta's parenthood.

"I'll talk to her," Juan said as he started to head back into the kitchen.

"Not too harshly," Elvis said. "She's just a kid." Which Juan knew all too well. She was a kid, all right. His kid. Which Juan's wife Hysteria knew zilch about. And Juan sure wanted to keep it that way.

"Don't worry," Juan said, again in a veiled tone, thinking of what would happen if Theta blew and ratted him out to Hysteria. "I'll go easy."

And he did.

A little later Theta came back to Elvis' table with a Bud Light and a--very--provisional smile.

"Here is your Bud Light, sir," she said in a provisional voice to match the provisional smile.

"Now what would you like to order?" As Elvis answered the provisional smile slid off her face like a formerly promising sunset suddenly vanishing behind a bunch of impudent horizon hugging dark clouds with the strong possibility of a big storm behind them. Kinda like what Noah saw just before he burst into frenzied action finishing up his Ark.

"I'll have the Venezuelan Sea Bass in white wine sauce with the Alsatian grappa alla ruta."

Theta stared at Elvis with a face grown as pale as her name brand white running socks. At least before she started the half marathons that invariably turned them to a smelly dingy gray. But then Theta stopped and her expression registered what looked to be something approximating a genuine Eureka moment. The clouds on the horizon tattered away. She remembered what Juan had told her before she embarked on her Elvis waitressy revisitation.

She nodded and a grin slowly spread over her face as she turned to face the kitchen, yelling at the unseen staff inside.

"One Shrimp Special, heavy on the hot sauce."

Elvis nodded happily. Juan had done good and clued the girl in. From then on Elvis and Theta got along OK, though Theta prudently kept her distance. Which Juan had also clued her in on.

Elvis ate his fill of the spicy Shrimp Special and went home with superheated taste buds to a night of vividly entertaining dreams. Neptune, God of the Sea, and Theta Hematoma Bojorquez were the leading characters, Snoop Dog, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga and One Eye Burt the Holstein Bull all making guest appearances. He woke up early the next morning refreshed and ready for another day on the border. He steeled himself to the daunting task that lay ahead.......

The task? He was a Customs and Border Protection officer. A member of the supposedly elite mobile Enforcement Team. The ET. Working on the Arizona/Mexican border. Elvis and the others were tasked with protecting America's border from unwanted foreign intrusion and, as his ET buddy Pancho put it, "all kinds of other stuff." He thought that over a moment, pondering their--CBP, the ET and Elvis himself--august mission to protect the borders of these great United States of America. He looked in the mirror, was silent another moment, frowned, then muttered in a low voice.

"We're fucked."

### Chapter 2

### Embarazada?

The city of Phoenix is in wide open desert country with miles upon miles of empty space all around it. A whole lot of it, especially far from the limited water sources, that is plain butt ugly. The young son of one of the early 19th Century immigrant families looked out at the flat barren expanse of the Valley of the Sun, blanched and grabbed his father's leg.

"Daddy," the little kid said. "Is this hell?"

So why the heck did a city plumb in the middle of the searing Sonora desert suddenly explode with teeming humanity? Location. Location. Location. Looming to the north of Phoenix, so close that its northern exurbs are already steadily climbing in elevation, are a bunch of mountain ranges and the towering Mogollon Rim. All of which are nicely adept at draining clouds of their rain and, in the winter, snow. Snow melts. Water runs downhill. So what's downhill?

Phoenix.

As the newcomers piled in the city grew by leaps and bounds and bounds and leaps and spread all over creation until it eventually covered more ground than entire counties in the older eastern states and required an advanced state of the art GPS in your car or on your mobile, or for the very earliest of the early adopters, hard wired into your high tech pair of computerized eye glasses, to find your way around. Since there was so much open space surrounding the original center of Phoenix the skyscraper builders had no way of keeping up in the old downtown and the city leaked out in all directions. If you were gonna drive from one end of Phoenix to the other, best take your lunch with you. And also something to read or your state of the art mobile, considering there was always a good chance of a humongous traffic backup after some blockhead went and piled into a bridge abutment and the cops closed off the road while a team of the world's slowest accident investigators arrived to finally figure out that some blockhead had piled into a bridge abutment.

Phoenix is an absolutely modern late 20th/early 21st Century American city. Concrete and asphalt, shopping centers and strip malls and cookie cutter subdivisions, endless blocks of apartments and chain restaurants and gas station convenience stores, massage parlors and dojos and tattoo parlors and dollar stores, that stretch off seemingly to infinity. Phoenix is urban sprawl on automobilic steroids. No doubt of it. In the Valley of the Sun the automobile is undisputed King.

Ancient Egypt had the Valley of the Sun Kings.

Not so ancient Phoenix' Valley of the Sun has King Auto.

Elvis thought a better name for the place would be Valley of the Smog. Or Carbon Monoxide City. Or, in the sizzling sun blasted summer, Melanoma Metropolis. He was never in any big hurry to go to Phoenix. Why bother? He could stay at home, shut the garage door, fire up his old Chevy, turn the heater on, sit inside the car in the garage and get the same effect as being in Phoenix and save himself the long drive. But some evil-minded malevolent malefactor of a miscreant in far off Washington D.C. had long ago, possibly as an act of pure spite, ordained that the federal courthouse be plunked down in downtown Phoenix and that was where the case that involved Elvis was about to be tried. The federal subpoena pulled no punches. Cutting through the obfuscating legalese, what it basically said was get your ass up to the courthouse to testify, Elvis, or you are gonna be in big trouble. None of Elvis' coworkers screwed around with subpoenas be they local, state or federal. When they summoned you, you'd damn well better show. They summoned. You went.

So Elvis went.

Judge Matushita Nakasumi was the presiding judge. Nakasumi's wealthy Hawaiian relatives were big contributors to Bill Clinton's second presidential campaign and that sure as hell didn't hurt Nakasumi's chances on getting appointed to the federal bench. Not that he was a incompetent. He wasn't. He was more or less an average lawyer, but just happened to be one whose insider clout won him a federal judgeship and a lifetime sinecure that enabled him to plunk his kids in pricey private schools and away from much contact with the perfidious plebeian masses.

The federal courthouse was in the pre-human-Tsunami downtown of old Phoenix. Elvis maneuvered his way through the spaghetti tangle of freeways in central Phoenix, took an off ramp to downtown, left his old Chevy at a nearby multi-storied parking garage and was crossing the street in old downtown Phoenix when a distracted teenaged driver texting on a cell phone came barreling down the road and damn near ran him over. Elvis leaped straight up in the air and took off like a running back with a pair of hulking linebackers hot on his tail, jumped onto the sidewalk and managed to make it safely to the federal building where he was confronted by the scowling faces of security guards hovering behind metal detectors looking for some hapless person to do a doofus move and make their day. He got past them with his badge and a forced smile and took the elevator to the third floor, where the trial was to be held. Elvis sauntered into the courtroom past a pair of bailiffs with shaved heads and sour faces who looked like bad tempered bald Sumo wrestlers. Elvis stopped for a moment and looked at one of them. "Bet you guys look real cute in spandex in the ring," then walked on before the human behemoth could react. As Elvis sat down in the courtroom, the behemoth's eyes were blinking faster than the REM sleep of a meth tweaker.

Already sitting in the courtroom was Hermoine J. Lapslinder, the seizing officer in the case, and dog handler Tirso Garibaldi, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Italy's national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi's son, Tirso, who the modern day Tirso maintained was abducted as a child and raised by Spanish Gypsies. Garibaldi's dog had alerted to the narcotics that Officer Lapslinder forthwith seized. Elvis was the initial contact officer who intercepted the suspect and sent her to secondary for further inspection. Or at least that was the way the official seizure narrative read. Official seizure narratives can be as circumspect as officials themselves, which means that the same guys who dreamed up the shotgun wedding language of the subpoena also put a verbal chastity belt on the seizure narrative. And maybe with good reason. The less that is said in a seizure narrative the less some histrionic hotshot of a defense lawyer has to nitpick, twist, distort and pontificate on and then have a good laugh about over single malt Scotch at the country club that evening with his chortling lawyerly cronies. Elvis didn't know it for a fact, but he suspected he knew what one of the classes in law school had to be--

How to Bullshit a Jury.

What really happened in Elvis' case was that the suspect, Gia Maria Guzman Slipowitz de Contreras, had passed unchallenged through the pedestrian entry at Nogales' Grand Avenue. She entered through the gate manned by Poldo Alarcon, an officer locally famous for his ability to slam down Herculean quantities of chorizo enchiladas but not much else. Elvis often hunkered behind Poldo's lane, knowing that the man was not the sharpest knife in the inspectional drawer and that smugglers were fond of dull knives. Elvis' tactic only worked if Poldo didn't see him. When he did, Poldo's paranoia set in and he became as slow as the spring ice breakup off the frigid coast of Spitzbergen, an island that is even north of northern Norway. Which is so far north that the spring ice breakup hasn't finished breaking before winter sets in and it begins to freeze again. Like a typical Congressional session in the early 21st Century.

This was one time Poldo didn't see him. The Arizona Lottery had built up again to several million bucks and Alarcon was preoccupied with coming up with just the right numbers he'd rattle off when he bought his Lotto tickets after work at Pepe's Deli and Immigration Service just down the road from the DeConcini Port of Entry on Grand Avenue. Pepe's place right next door to Lady Belladonna's Exquisite Massage Parlor, which was one of Poldo's very favorite places to hang out. Especially on Monday nights when Lady Belladona's had its massage special where scantily glad young women performed acrobatics on the clientele's prone and sometimes supine (the view was better) bodies. Since he started going to the Monday night specials Poldo's chronic back pain had almost completely vanished. The fact that he'd started taking OxyContin at about the same time had to be just coincidence. At least in Poldo's mind. Which was, by general acclimation, a mostly mysterious place.

An 'obviously' pregnant Gia Maria Guzman Slipowitz de Contreras held up her border crossing card with shaking hands. Shaking hands that grabbed Elvis' attention. Whoa! That was way too much like his last hangover. But this was no hangover. Her body language was as rigid as the towering statue of Padre Eusebio Kino in Tucson at the intersection of North Campbell and 15th that was just around the corner from the home of Elvis' former Army sergeant major (retired), Jack 'Roll Your Own' LaRue--who was a recognized expert in the state of Arizona on both venomous reptiles and the political history of the state. Alarcon hardly even looked up at Gia Maria as he waved her through after the merest of glances. Elvis was standing ten feet away and plainly saw the shock and surprise on the young woman's face when Alarcon waved her through, followed by an expression of relief about to bust out into exultation as she stepped past Alarcon's turnstile and into the United States. She'd made it! Oooieeee! Mama gone get new shoes.

Not quite. The only new shoes she was going to have would be jailhouse slippers. Elvis stepped in front of her. Her distended belly came to a hesitant halt a bare three feet from a scrawny and tall red headed uniformed officer who reminded her of an out of work circus clown slowly starving to death. Elvis said he wanted to ask her a few questions. He pointed at her stomach.

"Esta embarazada?" He said in his idea of Spanish. Are you pregnant? Elvis repeated it in English, phrasing it somewhat differently. "One in the hangar, 'ey?" Which would have completely befuddled her even if she spoke any English. Gia Maria was frazzled. Embarazada? Pregnant? The young woman's eyes darted down and to the side as her unconscious nervous responses contradicted her words and she struggled to remain calm.

"No....oh....si, si. Embarazada. Si. Mucho."

"Quando?" When are you expecting? Elvis asked in Spanish.

"Mayo," she blurted back with the first month that popped into her mind, which was the birthday month of her toy Poodle, Chingame. Elvis nodded his head as though that made perfect sense. May, she said. Since this was August and she looked like she was at least seven or eight months pregnant, May didn't seem like a likely due date. Maybe for an elephant. But not for a human. He was now convinced that the hump over her belly contained something a whole lot different than Gia Maria's gestating infant.

"May?" Elvis repeated in a non-committal tone. "That's a ways off yet."

"I can wait," Gia Maria answered, segueing into the friendly easy chatter she thought she was entering with this nice border officer. She shrugged. "What choice do I have?" This girl, Elvis thought, was sure no Rhodes Scholar candidate. At that point Elvis arrived at a mental crossroads. He detested those goddamn mental crossroads almost as much as he disliked French fries without catsup. They popped up all the time. Some of those times his head actually heated up as he pondered the crossroads choices. This particular crossroads boiled down to a yes or no question. Should be just tell the feckless girl to turn around and go back to Mexico? This was not a subject he shared with others. Actually, make that no one. Nadie. Not a soul. Elvis' border experience was like all the other border officers. Most of the smugglers they caught were mules, more or less ordinary people who for their various reasons were vulnerable and desperate enough for money to take the risk of smuggling. The real smugglers rarely got caught on the border. They were caught, too. But by other law enforcement agencies mostly away from the actual border.

Lots of marijuana smugglers didn't get in whole lot of trouble, even after being caught. But this girl, with her phony pregnant belly, was very likely carrying hard drugs. Cocaine, probably. Maybe meth. Or, on the outside, Mexican brown heroin. Elvis stood at his mental crossroads and made his choice. He couldn't let hard drugs get by him. And if he had turned the girl around she would have just tried it again when Elvis wasn't around and probably made it through. The decision was made. Elvis picked the road and headed down it.

"Come with me, miss," he said in Spanish, reaching towards her. Gia Maria's eyes launched into a nervous flutter that, with her extra long lashes, looked oddly like beating butterfly wings, when Elvis took her firmly by the arm and told her they were going to the secondary office. A line of Mexicans grouchily backed up at the entry turnstile while Poldo Alarcon chatted up an old buddy suddenly stopped their chatter and looked aghast at Elvis as he took Gia Maria's arm and started to lead her away.

"Do you think that gringo bastard is the father?" Said an older woman who was suspicious of the motives of the entire spectrum of male humanity. "And he's going to force her to have an abortion?"

"I wish it were so simple. I believe they're going to take her baby and sell it," said another woman who was in second term as the elected head of the Nogales Conspiracy Theorists League. Adding, "we have long suspected there was a baby selling ring in the area."

"You might be right," said a paunchy middle aged man in the line behind Ms Conspiracy Theorist who was the owner of Friendly Osvaldo's Payday Loan Company. "Those gringos will do anything for money." Even the terminally oblivious Poldo Alarcon stopped in mid-chat when he heard the commotion in the border queue and looked over with no little irritation at Elvis departing with Gia Maria in tow.

"Since when do we provide escorts to the hospital," blurted out the, as usual, terminally oblivious Poldo as Elvis and Gia Maria left the building. Both of them reluctantly, for their own very, very different reasons.

As they went out the door onto Grand Avenue dog handler Tirso Garibaldi was just coming up from secondary with his dog, Marco Polo, which Tirso was wont to say, was just like the dog's namesake, Marco Polo, "and real great at discovering stuff." Tirso was a member of that segment of humanity that Elvis' buddy Pancho referred to as being "....one of those guys who are a ounce short of a pound. Though, in Tirso's case, I'd take away an extra ounce." Tirso was out to give the dog some exercise, and not so coincidentally to placate his grumbling bosses about his less than enthusiastic enforcement attitude, by running Marco Polo past the cars coming off the primary lanes from Mexico.

Suddenly Marco Polo's doggie antennae sprang to life quicker than a teenager's erection at a nude beach. His eyes bugged out and he did a right turn as abrupt and crisp as the Presidential honor guard in drill practice and dragged a surprised, cursing Tirso Garibaldi towards Elvis and Gia Maria Guzman Slipowitz de Contreras. Much to the dismay of Tirso, Elvis, and especially Gia Maria, Marco Polo caromed up to her, slid to a halt and sniffed at her midriff with a building agitation. The canine light of recognition snapped on in Marco Polo's eyes. His long canine tongue drooped out of his open mouth. Then the dog craned his neck forward and commenced to licking the protruding bulge of Gia Maria's supposedly pregnant stomach. And then, to Tirso Garibaldi's everlasting horror, Poco Loco began to nibble at Gia Maria's stomach.

"Nice doggie." Gia Maria said in Spanish in a voice just a thin whisker shy of panicking. "Now go away!"

At least a dozen people nearby pulled out their cell phones faster than the fastest fast gun ever jerked out their Peacemakers in the old Wild West, several of the more recent models having supercharged enhanced features, including startlingly clear videos, and within a few minutes a video of Marco Polo biting at Gia Maria's stomach was on You Tube. Which, promptly, with the speed of the Swiss Cyclotron shooting for the God Particle, went viral. Within 24 hours MSNBC was headlining it as a Tragic Border Incident, Hispanic members of Congress were demanding a federal investigation, the Right to Life Movement was irately overloading the incoming lines of call radio programs, the SPCA was decrying the government's entire K-9 program as neo-barbaric and a shadowy Brown Power revanchist group in Los Angeles put a one thousand dollar bounty on Marco Polo's head--the group's dyslexic publicist having mistakenly transposed Marco Polo and Tirso's names .

Three days later the media frenzy turned inside out when some superannuated out of touch old fashioned journalist actually looking for facts finally stumbled on a little publicized report that Gia Maria's shockingly assaulted pregnant belly had given birth to 9.2 pounds of pure uncut Columbian cocaine. It hardly created a blip on the media's radar. By then the discovery of the clandestine presence of a possible illegitimate son of Barack Obama's half brother's Kenyan grandfather's second cousin, in the country illegally and hauling in big bunches of welfare money, was dominating all the news channels. That story, in turn, receded as the news broke that NASA allegedly had discriminated against recovering mental patients, and possibly also Santeria practitioners, in its hiring practices.

After Tirso managed to drag Marco Polo away from Gia Maria's belly, Elvis took her arm and hustled her across the car lane coming from Mexico towards the secondary office. The occupants of a bunch of cars waiting in line saw Elvis tugging on the arm of a Mexican woman with a bulging belly. It was obvious police brutality. Blatant police brutality. And, for those who'd seen Marco Poco in action, it was even worse. The goddamn gringos were using dogs to attack pregnant women! Several people jumped out of their cars and pointed their fingers at Elvis.

"Bully!" One hollered. "Police bully!"

"Goddamn gringos!" Yelled another, a white guy in a Lexus from Phoenix just out of a high dollar cat house in Nogales who got caught up in the excitement of the moment.

"Jackbooted fascist right wing pigs!" Bellowed out another, a freshman college student at the University of Arizona majoring in political science and applied cryogenics who ten years later would run for the local Arizona state senate seat as a Neo-Tea Party candidate.

Bombarded by boos, catcalls, death threats and the shoe of a Muslim tourist from Oman, Elvis hustled Gia Maria through the door into the secondary office and towards Officer Hermoine J. Lapslinder. Who was at first none too pleased about being interrupted from the game of solitaire she was playing on a computer terminal.

"Now what the hell are you up to, peckerwood?" She snapped. "Picking on pregnant women? That get you off, buckwheat?" None of this, of course, went into the seizure narrative written by Officer Lapslinder. Which was to be a painstakingly cobbled dramatic creation in which she was the main character and Elvis a mere walk on cameo, little more than a flyspeck, on her report. An official report in which Officer Lapslinder had unveiled the disgusting charade of a smuggler pretending to be pregnant. And, by implication, saved untold young lives--be they future scholars, research scientists, astrophysicists or accident free transcontinental Greyhound bus drivers--from being corrupted by the 9.2 pounds of pure uncut Columbian cocaine the smuggler attempted to sneak into the United States that the stalwart officer Hermoine J. Lapslinder had heroically intercepted.

That was then. This was now. The apogee of the whole border drug smuggling law enforcement trajectory. Elvis sat in the courtroom, ready for the august majesty of the awesome legal machinery of the United States of America to begin. The empanelled jury, the highly trained attorneys, Cornelius 'No Quarter' Maginess for the prosecution and Santiago 'Antonio' Banderas for the defense. Paunchy and balding but still reasonably dignified Judge Nakasumi. The hulking bailiffs and nimble fingered court reporters. The vast accumulated wisdom of American case law and jurisprudence. And on top of that it was nicely air conditioned, which was the only thing everyone in the courtroom could agree on. The wheels of justice were about to turn. All in all, Elvis had just one thought in mind when he plunked himself down in the courtroom. The distilled final essence of this iteration of the magnificent and painstaking cobbled over the long centuries American legal system was likely to come to this. A classic clash of legal tradition with the immediacy of the modern.

Would Judge Naskasumi find the evidence admissible?

Was that smart ass of a jerk off defense attorney Banderas gonna be able to pull if off? Would he be able to introduce the YouTube video as evidence? And then Banderas caught them all with their legal pants down. Way, way down.

Banderas had practiced for hours before the big living room mirror at home. A semi-obsessive habit of his which his family had long ago adjusted to, his wife invariably heading off for the spa and his kids retreating to the family rec room where they shut the doors and cranked up the volume on their home theater so loud that the dishes shook and the wine glasses vibrated in a solid A 440 in Mama Banderas' antique hutch in the dining room. Attorney Banderas had his argument--and the really important part, the carefully calibrated histrionics distilled to perfection in front of the living room mirror--down pat, complete with one very big embarrassing fact.

Hermoine Lapslinder, though very creative in her seizure narrative and a whiz at computer solitaire, was at best an indifferent officer and the subtleties of border seizures sailed way over her head. Attention to detail went no farther with her than a biweekly microscopic inspection of her paycheck stubs. Officer Hermoine Lapslinder had put in her narrative that the seizure was a result of a K-9 Alert. However, Banderas' snooping investigator, Sturgis Necromans, had discovered that handler Tirso Valencia's dog, Marco Polo, was trained to search for narcotics in conveyances. Conveyances. Not people. Banderas' knockout punch line was, after first explaining the details of legally certifying a K-9 for personal searches that would stand up to judicial review, theatrically accompanied by one of his signature dramatic flourishes.....

"Marco Polo is not and never was a certified people sniffer!" Another flourish, even flourisher than the first flourish. "It was an illegal search and all so called evidence pursuant to the illegal search is therefore inadmissible!" Judge Matushita Nakasumi closed his eyes and let his mind briefly wander into the happy land of his retirement back home in Hawaii where he would cultivate orchids and never, never, never watch Court TV.

Prosecutor Maginess lasered Hermoine a Vulcan Death Ray of a look and then grabbed his face in both hands and began to waggle his head back and forth. Some said he was actually weeping, though that was never firmly established.

"Case dismissed." Judge Nakasumi's softly enunciated verdict nevertheless reverberated through the courtroom like a twenty-one gun salute at the Port of New York. A twenty-one gun salute that promptly sank prosecuting attorney Maginess' otherwise promising case.

When Elvis left the courtroom he searched out Hermoine Lapslinder's Toyota Corolla, having earlier seen her pull into a spot in the same parking garage his old Chevy was in. Making sure no one was watching, with particular emphasis on checking out where the surveillance cameras were, he opened the hood on the Corolla and jerked loose the fusible link between the battery and the ignition switch, then put it back together so that it looked normal but without the two ends actually making a functional contact.

"The least I can do for you, Hermoine," he muttered to himself as he closed the hood.

And then he went home.

### Chapter 3

### Into The Frying Pan

The Customs and Border Protection Arizona Department's Mobile Enforcement Team was headquartered at the largest port of entry in Arizona, Nogales, but regularly traveled to the other ports of entry in Arizona strung out along the Sonora border. From relatively temperate (by Arizona standards) Douglas in the east, through Nogales in the center of the state and far to the west on the California border at San Luis, a frying pay of a town teetering on the Mexican and California borders where the words 'heat sink' really sink in.

Elvis and one of his ET partners, Francisco 'Pancho' Soltero, were about to hit the road for that very place--the heat sink euphemistically known as the Port of San Luis. Everyone called Francisco Pancho, though Elvis thought a better nickname would be Wild Hair or Gonad Boy, Pancho a fiery sort who could blast off into Wild Hair Land in an instant, and who also had his Babe Watch antennae perpetually on search mode. Pancho, Elvis joked, rolled out of the womb with a hard on and was still rolling. He was, however, one hell of a good dope man. Which was why he was on the district's Enforcement Team. As was Elvis. A good dope man. But of a much different personality that Wild Hair Pancho. Some called him a gadfly. Others called him a wise ass. Still others called him weird. A few called him a great big pain in the ass. Or, as another of Elvis' Enforcement Team buddies, the scholarly but always defiantly revanchist Native American activist Cletus 'WW' Magellan put it.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Elvis' brain is really made up of dark matter." To which Elvis and Pancho and the other ET members replied.....

"What?" WW--WW standing for War Whoop, a nickname that Elvis gave Cletus because of his fervent Native American revanchist attitudes and which WW found not only unobjectionable but a nice fit for his inner man who considered the Indian wars to be not over but in temporary remission.

"What? You ask. What does it mean?" WW said with a wisp of a sardonic smile. "It means no one knows where it is, or what it is, only that it somehow exists." A pause. "In theory, anyhow." Said comment received with a total, if somewhat surly, silence.

Yuma and San Luis

Elvis and Pancho jumped into a G ride and headed out to the far western border of Arizona to the sand blown Port of San Luis. In the town of the same name, where the past and the present collided with the dramatic impact of a truckload of Twinkies hitting a highway abutment at 75 miles an hour. San Luis sprouted up like an overnight mushroom in a sandy waste where there had been zilch. Even zilchier than before, thanks to the Hoover dam and its concrete progeny on the Colorado River.

"Hey!" President Herbert Hoover is reportedly (according to the resident historian at a strident environmental group that prefers to remain anonymous) to have said. "Let's build a big dam out there in Arizona on the Colorado River and name it after me. That'll be my immortality." A pause, during which the Hoover cabinet members studied the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the water glasses on the table, or anything else they could look at without catching Hoover's eye and letting on what a lamebrain idea they thought it was. 'Good God, he's at it again,' being the primary resident thought in most of their minds. Followed closely by 'what's for lunch?' and 'I'm never gonna believe she's just his secretary.'

"Kind of like the pyramids in Egypt." President Hoover (allegedly) continued. "Or even the Splinx." Despite a few somewhat dramatic eye rolls, silence continued to prevail among the cabinet dwellers. No one thinking it such a hot idea to correct the President. Who then said--"OK, boys (at this point in American history it was boys only in the cabinet), let's get 'er done."

And, much to everyone's amazement, and to the utter horror of the residents of the Colorado River delta, they did. Get it done. Build the dam. Hoover dam.

The Splinx of the Southwest.

So. The immense fecund historic wetlands abutting the Colorado River where it emptied into the Gulf of California were gone, along with the entire ecosystem, except for the occasional dazed and thoroughly confused homeless waterbird. Whose plaintive call wadawadawada Elvis maintained translated more or less from waterbird speak as what the fuck happened? What happened was that the channeled and damned and diverted and diminished Colorado was a mere fraction of the wide bodied, flood prone Colorado of pre-gringo days. The Gila River, a river that early travelers relied on to survive on their trek west, and which emptied into the Colorado just above Yuma, was reduced by the same processes to a bone dry sand pit in most of its length, doing in another entire ecosystem. Causing more than one modern day traveler a moment of consternation when they drove over a Gila River bridge that spanned nothing but a bunch of sand. The Gila River? Where they heck was it?

"Did you see that?" The passenger says.

"See what?" The driver, who also happened to be the husband of the lady passenger, replies. "You're always telling me to watch the road and not gawk when I'm supposed to be driving." After an indignant shrug the lady passenger who was his wife shoots back at him.

"That road sign back at the bridge," she answers. "It said the Gila River." She reaches over to jab her husband in the side. And not too gently. "I might not be the quickest study in the world," she begins, her husband struggling mightily with not blurting out "that's for goddamn sure!" and thereby opening the door to every means of retaliation his wife could dream up in her diabolically (his word) creative revenge scenarios. The first act of which would be a complete lack of sexual contact for a full fiscal year. Including holidays.

"There was no river there," she snaps. "I'm sure of it. No river." Another poke at her husband's ribs. This one even harder. "Why is there a bridge with no river." Her husband, despite himself, can't resist.

"Maybe they put it there just in case a river should show up." His wife, who some considered to be a half pint short of a mental gallon, thinks about that for a moment, not quite sure what he meant.

"I don't think that's it," she eventually replies. "I think it is some kind of government doonboggle. You know. Like those congressmen and senators always try to sneak into other legal stuff they do to make the folks back home happy and get them reelected. You know, dear. What they call bacon. That's it. Bacon for the folks back home. Build a bridge to nowhere to give the locals some work."

"I think you mean pork, my sweet," the driver says. "Pork. As in pork barrel."

"So what the hell has a barrel got to do with a bridge?" His wife snipes back at him. "Be it pork or otherwise." The husband shrugs his shoulders. His weary shoulders. He looked forward to long driving trips with his wife about as much as having a root canal without the beneficial assistance of a handful of painkillers or at the very least a minimum of six ounces of Jim Beam.

"I think I'd best just keep my eyes on the road, dear," he says in an attempt at a neutral tone of voice. "You can keep an eye out for more bridges and rivers that don't exist." She nods and settles back into her seat. Her eyes fixed on watching for more riverless bridges and whatever else might show up in this really goddamn peculiar desert landscape.

That same day, an hour ahead of the couple in the car crossing the riverless bridge.

"I give it twenty, maybe thirty years," Elvis said as they drove along Interstate 8 through the town of Gila Bend where the end of the earth was just over the horizon but where, thanks to the Gila River formerly bending there, irrigated agriculture improbably flourished smack in the rain starved Sonora Desert. Elvis glanced over at Pancho from behind the wheel.

"Give what twenty or thirty years?" Pancho said, somewhat suspiciously, knowing that Elvis could spin out some really crazy assed ideas.

"The war," Elvis replied. Pancho stared at him with even more suspicion.

"You think we'll be back in Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Or maybe Israel? Or....."

"No. No. No. Closer to home. The Colorado River."

"The Colorado River?" Pancho said, mildly irritated. Now what the hell was Elvis up to?

"Haven't you noticed how the states and Mexico are always squabbling over Colorado River water?" Elvis continued. "They all want a share of it and when there is a drought they can get real nasty about getting their share."

"Well, yeah," Pancho said. "That's been going on a long time. So what is your point?"

"Global warming," Elvis said without elaborating. Pancho shot him an impatient look.

"So how the hell do we get from a war to the Colorado River to global warning?"

"Simple logic, dude," Elvis shot back. "Global warming causes droughts in the Southwest. The flow of the Colorado River drops way down. There isn't enough water to go around. Things get real heated. In more was that one. California and Arizona send their national guards to the border between the two states. And maybe Utah and Nevada and Old Mexico get involved, too. Make the mess in the Middle East look like a children's puzzle by comparison. Be even more confusing than Israel and the Palestinians or one of my ex-wife's family reunions. Next thing you know somebody pulls a trigger and the war is on." Pancho said nothing. Not in words. But his face was glowering. He'd been suckered one too many times by Elvis' ex-wife comments. He knew Elvis had never been married. Besides which, was there a woman on God's green Earth willing to marry a guy like Elvis with his crazy assed short circuited brain?

"My money is on a dark horse winning the war," Elvis continued.

"A dark horse?" Pancho echoed reflexively.

"Yep. A dark horse." Elvis answered. "Nevada. They'll be better funded what with the tax receipts from gambling and prostitution and be able to afford the latest in modern weaponry."

"You, Elvis T. Mahoney," Pancho said through semi-gritted teeth, "are fucking weird."

Which not many would disagree with. Not even Elvis' grandmother Rattler Sue.

The town of Yuma is about twenty miles north of the Port of Entry at San Luis. Yuma is a town where the trailer park ratio to site built homes approaches the national maximum. The phrase snow bird carbon monoxides into reality every winter season with the arrival of a non-stop stream of RV phalanxes driven by gray headed snowbirds fleeing the perceived glacial advance of the northern winters and filling up trailer parks as far as the eye could see. Which makes it a regional de facto geriatric center and a favorite of physicians practicing geriatric medicine looking to make enough bucks to hasten their own retirements. Plus there are plenty of bustling pharmacies and long lines at all the buffet restaurants in town and enough senior citizen calls to keep the local EMT's busy around the clock. Every winter business boomed. The economic health of the greater Yuma area took a humungous upswing in the winter months with the dual arrivals of the snow birds and the itinerant farm workers coming in to work in the Colorado River irrigated fields. The canals feeding the fields stretching out in all directions from the river appearing to the government satellites orbiting above--whose cameras had some interesting additional uses beyond the offically published ones--like the Nasca lines on geometrical steroids.

But not everyone in town was happy. The 911 operators looked with horror upon the annual arrival of the flocks of gray headed snow birds. Every year at least one operator quit or had to take a lengthy convalescent leave over way too many frivolous--most frequently referred to by the operators as dumb ass--calls. What the regular 911ers called DACOS--Dumb Ass Call Overload Syndrome.

"911. What is your emergency?"

"These goddamn childproof caps! I can't get the cap off. I need help."

"What kind of medicine are you taking sir? Is it vital to your immediate health?"

"Damn right it is," snaps the elderly gentleman from Snowed Inn, Idaho. "How can I drink my morning Irish Coffee without whiskey?"

"The cap you can't get off is on a whiskey bottle, sir?" The 911 operator says through clenched teeth. This is your emergency?"

"Damn straight," says the elderly gentleman from Idaho. "Send someone to help. And make it quick. My coffee's getting cold."

"911. What is your emergency?"

"Help! Help! Help!" An octogenarian woman from Skunk Cabbage, Saskatchewan, screams into the phone. "Someone is pounding on my door and trying to break in. I think he is going to attack me. Possibly even ravish my poor aging eighty year old body."

"Calm down, Ethyl," the 911 operator replies calmly. A moment's silence on the other end of the line. Then a timid voice.

"How did you know my name?" The octogenarian woman said with no little suspicion.  
"Because, Ethyl, you called earlier about a lurking suspicious stranger with a leashed wolf outside your door. We sent a police officer to check. The suspicious stranger was your next door neighbor, Herbie Yonk, a retired North Dakota police detective wintering here in toasty warm Yuma, walking his toy poodle. That person knocking on your door?"

"Yes. Yes. He's there now. Knocking. And.....oh, no. He's yelling. And, oh God, he's yelling my name. The stranger knows my name. Oh, send the police. Quick!"

"That knock on your door, Ethyl? The 911 operator said with as much patience as she could still muster. "That's the police officer we sent to check on you." A pause while Ethyl breathed heavily into the phone. The 911 operator continued.

"The guy knocking on your door is Officer Wilbur Grotflock of the Yuma Police Department."

"Oh," Ethyl replied in a veiled tone. "OK. OK, then. Never mind. Talk to you later. "

After several more calls like that in less than a day the 911 operator took an emergency leave of absence and went to lie on the beach at Cancun where she copiously imbibed of the healing and memory erasing properties of substantial quantities of Mezcal.

Elvis and Pancho arrived at the motel in Yuma where the ET team's secretary, Florida 'Bubble Gum' Nazcowitz, made them a reservation. The motel, Burt's Traveler's Rest, was a well deserved bottom dweller in the town's list of habitable motels. Locals called it Burt's Bed Bugs Nest. Florida was a parsimonious type who figured every buck she could save out of the ET team's budget was another buck available for her Christmas bonus. Something which she rarely failed to hint at with her boss, Manfred Kuribachi. Or at least her idea of a hint, which was about as subtle as a 325 pound defensive tackle sacking an opposing team's quarterback before 75,000 stunned home field fans. She'd hum Christmas Time's A-Comin, when passing Manfred in the hallway. The season for hints in Florida's opinion generally starting sometime in August and certainly no later than early September.

One look at Bert's Traveler's Rest and Elvis and Pancho cancelled their reservations and went to a nearby motel, Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn. Allison was a retired Marine and former CBP officer who always gave government officers a break on the room rates. Though she never mentioned she raised the rates first and then dropped them back down to their original price for the advertised price breaks for government employees. The government, Allison figured, had screwed her so many times over pay and benefits and assignments that it was only fair and just she do a little screwing of her own. Which, Allison being 64 years old, built like that 325 pound defensive tackle and as ugly as the south end of an elk going north, was the only screwing of any kind going on in her life for longer than she cared to remember. Though the fact was that Allison always had thought that screwing was overrated and wasn't nearly as much fun as mud wrestling and far prefered the latter.

Especially when she was wrestling that fat bitch Leticia Maddlewickle and could hold the bitch's face in the mud until she begged for mercy. That was damn near as much fun as offing an insurgent at six hundred yards with a sniper rifle in the good old days in the Corps--even though women back then weren't officially supposed to be doing stuff like whacking guys at six hundred yards with a sniper rifle. Or any kind of rifle.

"Hey, Allie!" Pancho said as he and Elvis walked in the front door of retired Gunnery Sergeant and former CBP Senior Inspector Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn. "What's shakin'?" Pancho and Allison exchanged a complicated border officer handshake, a ritualized acrobatic handshake long relegated to the well populated dusty land of superannuated former border handshakes. Pancho having to pause a moment to remember the moves, several versions of the Border Handshake having succeeded it. They ended the comvoluted hand jive procedure with a mutual slap of the hands so loud it woke up Spooky Cedric, a white winged dove dozing in a palm tree just outside the opened door, and scared the hell out of the bird.

Who, being Spooky Cedric, spooked easily. Cedric, thinking the hunting season had started again, flew in a panic out of the palm tree, colliding in his blind panic with a Bert's Plumbing and Locksmith panel truck in the motel parking lot. In turn startling Bert awake, Bert smack in the middle of grabbing a quick snooze between the constant calls from senior citizens who couldn't get their keys to work in their RV (a sizable percentage of which were because the panicing senior was in the wrong RV) or had dropped their false teeth into the garbage disposal.

The latter usually were a hopeless case, but Bert, an entrepeneurial sort of guy, carried business cards from his dentist neighbor, Dr. Faque 'Hero' Heronimous and directed the newly falseteethless seniors to his buddy, Dr. Hero. For each such new customer Dr. Hero gave neighbor Bert what he called an honorarium. Usually over a couple of cervezas and a game of eight ball in Dr. Hero's basement rec room. Which, this being heat blasted Yuma, was always confortably air conditioned. And also the nature of another of Bert's businesses, Bert's Air Conditioning and Appliance Repair, which he alternated working with his wife of nearly seven years, Gretalinda Hibiscus, a former illegal immigrant from Grenada who was one of the local founders of the Secure Borders Initiative.

"So what brings you ET hotshots to lil' ol' Yuma," retired Gunnery Sergeant and former CBP Senior Inspector Allison Mankiwiec said, "though you sure do show uncommon good taste in pickin' my Snuggle Inn for your stay." A curious look. "Another TDY?"

"Yep," Pancho answered. Then, looking over at Elvis. "Do you know Elvis here? You'd already retired when he transferred in." Elvis offered Allie a knuckle dust, which was a hell of a lot quicker and less complicated that Pancho's convoluted hand jive, but still got the job done OK.

"Never met you, Elvis." A strange look. To Elvis, it seemed a peculiarly strange look. "But I sure have heard about you." She bounced another knuckle dust off Elvis' hand before he could even get it into the knuckle dust ready position. "Elvis Mahoney."

"You been talking to my ex-wife," Elvis said in a suspicous voice.

"You don't have an ex-wife, Elvis," Pancho interjected peevishly. "Though you might have an ex-girfriend or two. Or three. Or more." Adding, totally unnecessarily in Elvis' view, "and I can sure figure our why they're ex-girlfriends."

"You been talking to my ex-girlfriend?" Elvis, niftily changing gears after sending Pancho an ocularly delivered mental dagger with a razor sharp point, continued, looking at Allie. He was answered by silence. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Not a word. Just a grin. A very, very wide grin showing every single one of retired Gunnery Sergeant and retired CBP Senior Inspector Allison Mankiwiec's teeth. Without a single filling! Imagine. 64 years old and not a single filling. Allie was darn proud of that and flashed her filling free teeth every chance she got. Allie had a friend in Tucson, someone she met in the Arizona mud wrestling circuit, a relatively small group where everyone knew each other personally along with their respective mud wrestling skills and dirty tricks. The Tucson friend was an attorney named Lavonda Heraklion. And, knowing that Allie was a retired CBP officer, she told her about her own encounter with another CBP officer.

"A real smart ass by the name of Elvis Mahoney." .

Lavonda Heraklion

Three weeks earlier. Tucson. Midtown Legal Center. Initial consultation free. Not exactly a snappy eye catcher of a sign, but it told Elvis what he wanted to know. Somebody inside had to be a lawyer. Nobody else would put a sign saying Midtown Legal Center in huge bold black letters next to a bail bondman's office. And just down the street was the Tucson Midtown Police Precinct. All that was missing to make the place a vertical monopoly was a judge's office. Elvis looked around. No judge. But there was a billboard across the street put up for the November elections. Reelect Juvenile Court Judge Cisco Manriquez, it said. Good enough for Elvis. Gave a nice balance to the place. Though he had no need for a lawyer at that moment, he decided to go inside. There were a couple of things he wanted to grab a legal take on. One was, could he, as a federal law enforcement officer, legally invest in a medical marijuana clinic? Which as sure as warts on a warthog had to be a money maker. The second subject was whether or not he could repossess all the cool guy and other stuff he left in his ex-girlfriend's apartment when she kicked him out and changed the locks? What the heck, he thought. You never know what ideas a lawyer might give him. So he pulled open the break-in resistant metal re-enforced metal door and trudged inside.

A curvaceous Latina secretary sat behind a clunky Army surplus desk in a tiny no-frills office devoid of even a hint of understandable decoration. A photo of Ronald Reagan in his WWII Army uniform hung on one wall. Adjacent to it was a cartoon drawing of Wily Coyote eating a banana split. A People's Choice Flood Insurance Company advertisement showing an aerial photo of the Mississippi River flooding several million acres in the Midwest was on another wall. Next to it was a photoshopped image of Geronimo scalping George W. Bush. Next to that was another photoshopped image of Hillary Clinton sucker punching Barack Obama. A glass enclosed collection of arrowheads was fastened below the photo. Elvis took a close look at the arrowheads. He was pretty sure at least one was stamped 'Made in Viet Nam.' The Latina secretary cleared her throat to get Elvis' attention.

"Can vie holp ju, shur?" She said. Elvis whirled around as though he'd just stumbled into a bunch of Africanized bees like he had a week earlier at Margarita Hidalgo's Quinceanera in her grandfather Laslo's gazebo outside his welding shop. Not a pleasant experience for Elvis, but it did liven things up a good deal at the Quinceanera.

Anyhow, this girl was no Latina.

"I'd like to see the attorney," Elvis said, adding. "I noticed your accent. Are you from Alabama or maybe the Bronx?" The not-Latina girl smiled broadly, revealing a gold tooth and a mild, but noticeable, case of gingivitis. She handed him a client visit form to fill out. Name, address, occupation, phone number. Elvis quickly filled it out as the girl answered him.

"Niet. Ruusha. I'm vrom Ruusha." Elvis was silent. He was still staring at her gold tooth. "Und ju can shee da attonyay now. She ain't beezy." She closed her mouth and Elvis lost sight of the gold tooth but not of the curvaceous qualities of the tooth's owner.

"I figured you for a Latina," he said. "You sure look Latina-like." The smile returned to her face and Elvis' gaze riveted again on the gold tooth just as it caught a ray of sunlight sneaking through a window and reminded him of a stoplight jumping to yellow.

"Niet. Niet. Not Lateena. Ruushan. Budt I eat plenty Meexican foods. Good shtuf. Maybe das vhy I luuk Lateena." She pounded the Army surplus desk, snorting at her own joke, reminding Elvis of his great uncle Fesnicle's pet mule, Sophie. The gold tooth in the girl's mouth was still flashing stoplight amber and Elvis knew right then that there was more than one reason why a good looking woman should keep her mouth shut. The girl picked up a phone and punched the office intercom.

"Hey, bosh. Vie got a live vun. Vanna see heem nhow?" She nodded at the phone, put it down and jerked her thumb at a nondescript brown door with a nameplate emblazoned on it proclaiming Lavonda Heraklion, Attorney at Law. Elvis politely knocked, then went inside.

Whoa! Lavonda Heraklion was built like a linebacker and had thick black eyebrows that shook hands over the bridge of her nose. She had a good start on a mustache, too. Elvis guessed she probably didn't shave her armpits, either. Not that he really wanted to find out, but he knew from personal experience back home in Slippery Sister County that girls with thick eyebrows and mustaches didn't shave their armpits. Elvis always took along some extra underarm deodorant whenever he dated one of them. He didn't really mind the extra body hair, so long as the girl had all the requisite female parts in all the right places. When the lights were out you couldn't see the hair and the underarm deodorant took care of the rest. Really wasn't much choice. Just about everybody back in Slippery Sister was related and some kind of sneaky dominant gene had delivered beetling brows and hairy upper lips to a sizeable percentage of the female population.

Anyhow, after Elvis grew his own mustache he couldn't feel the girls' mustaches when they were messin' around and he grabbed a kiss or two. And after the messin' around started to heat up nobody gave a blue damn about mustaches or beetle brows or even shaggy armpits any more. The horses were racing for the barn and making a lot of noise doing it. Elvis smiled. Those were some good ol' times back in Slippery Sister in the hills of home. Yep. Some darned good times. Elvis was startled out of his revelry by a voice that sounded like a Las Vegas fight announcer belting out an introduction of the defending champion in a light heavyweight bout. His eyes snapped wide open.

"Have a seat," Ms Heraklion said. "And tell me how you screwed up enough to need a lawyer." Elvis blinked. Then he noticed a plaque on the wall that said the Straight Talk Society of Arizona had given her the Straight Talker of the Year Award three years in a row. Ms Heraklion noticed Elvis looking at the plaque.

"That's right, partner," she said proudly. "Three years in a row." She pointed a thick and somehow dangerous looking finger at Elvis. "And that's my motto. Lavonda Heraklion, straight talk. No bullshit from this lawyer, buster." She dropped the menacing finger and sat back in her chair. "So what's your problem, shotgun? You knock up your wife's sister, or somethin' like that?"

"Something like that," Elvis replied somewhat hesitantly, the idea having just burst into his head like a blazing midsummer sunrise in heat blasted southern Arizona that he might have to fork over some bucks for a consultation fee. The sign outside hadn't said just how long the free initial consultation was. "But....first. I forgot to ask your receptionist about your hourly rates and how long your free initial consultation is?" He unconsciously patted his pocket to make sure his wallet was still there. Though Elvis wasn't sure he believed it, his ET buddy Pancho maintained that there were so many lawyers floating around in over-lawyered America that some were desperate enough to hire professional pickpockets as secretaries. The frequently dramatic and occasionally borderline paranoid but occasionally clairvoyant Pancho going on to say "they're gonna get your money, one way or another." Elvis eyes narrowed to semi-slits.

"What did your receptionist do before you hired her?" He said semi-slittedly. This comment did not knock attorney Lavonda Heraklion off balance one single Heraklion bit. It came as a pleasant diversion. Lavonda was bored shitless with the dipshits and dimwits among her clientele, most of whom would be at least semi-finalists on an America's Dumbest Criminals TV show, were there such a show. And there might be. Lavonda, having plenty of first hand experience in the dumb criminal world, was seriously thinking about trying to find a media company interested in the idea.

"Olga Terestrialova, my receptionist," Lavonda answered with a wry look on her face. "Is a recent immigrant."

"From where?" Elvis couldn't resist answering. "This planet?"

"Olga is a one of a kind, that's for sure," Lavonda replied. The wry expression having taken up residence on her face. The expression set off by her determined square chin and overarching beetling brows reminding Elvis of Malovia Heck. Malovia was the martial arts instructor at the Customs and Border Patrol Academy who rearranged Elvis' cervical vertebrae one rainy Georgia morning in Self Defense class after Elvis made the very unwise comment to a classmate that Malovia "looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger with tits." Unfortunately for Elvis, Malovia overheard the remark.

Elvis edged his chair back a few inches out of immediate reach of the possibility of Lavonda's suddenly swinging a Hillary Clinton style sucker punch. Such as the photoshopped image on the wall of Hillary laying Barack Obama flatter than a shuffleboard court.

"Yep," Lavonda continued. "Olga is a character. She was a standup comedienne on the Russia Laughs circuit. Until she made a couple of jokes about Putin's past in the KGB." Lavonda shot a mysterious look at Elvis. "Saying that some of the boss of all of Mother Russia's dinner guests when he was with the KGB ended up instead as dinner for the fish in the Baltic didn't fly any too well with Putin." The mysterious look became intense.  
"She had to leave Russia disguised as a dish washer on a fishing trawler."

Elvis shook his head in amazement. But not the kind you'd think. He was liking this attorney. Which surprised him, Elvis having been warned since childhood by every single one of his extended Mahoney clan to avoid attorneys at all costs. He never did learn why, but he nevertheless got the message loud and clear. Avoid attorneys. Yet here he was actually liking one. Go figure.

"So what really happened?" Elvis said with a grin.

"She refused to drink vodka and the government kicked her out."

"Come on, Lavonda," Elvis insisted. "What really happened?"

"She told her hairdresser, a veteran of the Afghanistan war named Ivan Smiklets, that she thought Russia would have been better off if Germany won WWII. Within a day she was being hunted by the secret police and had to sneak out of Russia on a Finnish tour bus by telling the Finnish border guard that she had slipped on a greasy McDonald's Big Mac wrapper, hit her head and now had amnesia. Which had the peculiar side effect of her forgetting how to speak Finnish. The guard didn't believe her for a minute, but she promised him a blow job later that evening and he jerked her bodily into the border town of Peat Bog, Finland."

"Lavonda." Elvis said, trying hard not to sound peevish. "Come on. What really happened?"

"She was a mail order bride in St. Petersburg who advertised her availability on a singles internet site. An handsome and rich young American guy with a big house in Oro Valley responded and eventually offered to marry her. But when she got here she found out the guy was fat, bald, old and, what was far worse, broke and living in a government subsidized miniscule ratty apartment near downtown Tucson. She bugged out quicker than a fly on chicken soup. I helped her get a new visa. She couldn't pay me, so she's working it off as my receptionist. Which is cool for both of us, since I can't afford a receptionist." Elvis' first thought was what the hell did quicker than a fly on chicken soup mean? His second thought was whether or not she was putting him on. Elvis, who after all was a border officer who daily witnessed a mind numbing steady stream of faces that were as often as not often trying to deceive him, looked intently at Lavonda. Yep. He decided. This one was true.

"Got it," Elvis said. And meant it. "A question." Lavonda's beetling brows lowered into pre-menacing mode, Lavonda anticipating what he was going to say. "Do you think I could ask her out? You know, talk about the good old days in Russia. Stuff like that."

Typhoon Lavonda immediately started brewing just out of sucker punch reach and Elvis was glad he'd moved his chair back a few inches.

"That would NOT be OK, sir!" She snapped and threw an undeniably proprietary she's mine look at Elvis. Oh-oh, Elvis thought. Time to move on to a different subject. And quick. Then the dark side of Elvis, the Puck side, the Mr. Hyde side, the evil twin side, grabbed hold of Elvis' train of thought and jammed the throttle. He almost felt as though he were having an out of body experience as this other Elvis side carefully enunciated the next words. Anyhow, it was time to get the heck out of here before he ended up saddled with a whopping attorney's consultation fee.

"Back to business. To the point, Madame Barrister." He said in a solemn and serious tone of voice. Which was definitely out of character, but seemed to fit the situation. "I want to know if there is a legal way to have my girlfriend's mother--who has the goofy name of Malilika, by the way--vocal cords disconnected. You know, kind of like a vasectomy for the voice box. Isn't there some kind of ordinance about habitually exceeding the legal decibel level or being a continual public nuisance?" His eyebrows suddenly arched. "And can you make sure the operation is irreversible?" This was one of Elvis' more egregious tactical errors. Besides being the winner three years running of the Straight Talkers Award, Lavonda was also president of the Pima County Feminist League. Plus her mother's name was Malilika.

It was not the first time that Elvis had been thrown bodily out of an attorney's office. But it was the first time a woman with hairy armpits did the throwing. That was bad enough. It got worse. Gold Tooth Olga the Babe helped pitch him out.

And with it any last hope for a hot date with Gold Tooth Olga the Babe Secretary.

Return to Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn

"I have a friend in Tucson," Allison Mankiwiec said to Elvis through her sprarkling no cavities grin that nearly split her face in half and gleamed so much Elvis could swear it lit up her tonsils. A friend in Tucson? And her suspicious tone of voice? Elvis started to get a feeling as though he was on a sinking ship. "Her name is Lavonda Heraklion." Elvis' sinking ship sank a little farther. "Attorney Lavonda Heraklion." It didn't seem possible to Elvis, but Allison's grin got even broader. "You happen to remember her, shotgun?" Elvis remembered her, all right. His ship went straight to the bottom.

Allison was still grinning. Elvis saw her grin clearly from the bottom dwelling perspective of his figuratively sunken ship. Then she reached over and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Her version of lightly, that is. Lightly having an atypical tactile meaning to Allison, who was a retired Marine and federal officer and state champion mud wrestler. Her not so light tap resounded in the neural pathways of Elvis' shoulder blade and triggered a lightning quick neural chain reaction that instantly blitzed to the pain center in his brain. Resulting in Elvis' eyes snapping wide open, his urethra constricting to the width of a toothpick and at least a half dozen of the curly red hairs on the back of his neck going into shock and promptly going as rigid and straight as a twelve inch ruler. Elvis was rubbing his sore shoulder and looking with a mixture of apprehension and suspicion at her when Allison put her hand back on his shoulder. This time without the former not so light tap.

"Elvis," Allison said through her grin. "After you left Lavonda's office she got to thinking about you and decided she liked you after all." A not so gentle squeeze of Elvis's shoulder. "A lot."

Another squeeze. "She knew from your client form that you were a CBP officer and that I had been one, too, and asked me--after a pretty entertaining mud wrestling match last week in Sun City by the way, followed by a night of tipping brews celebrating at Bruno Kazinski's Hometown Bistro--if I could put you two in contact." Yet another squeeze, followed by another clap on the shoulder that straightened out another dozen of the curly hairs on the back of Elvis' neck. "She wants you, man! She says you are two of a kind!"

While Elvis was digesting that remark, and Allison was still grinning, Pancho's mind was wandering down a dark alley he didn't much like. A woman who was like Elvis? That, Pancho concluded, might be more than he could handle. Pancho, that is. One Elvis was enough. More than enough. More than more than enough. Good God! What if they hooked up and wanted to hang out with Pancho and his LFM--Lady Friend of the Moment? Two Elvis's in one. No..no..no...no!

"That," Pancho muttered to himself, "is where I draw the line."

"What line?" Elvis said, hearing Pancho's mumble.

"Never mind," Pancho replied. "Just meditating on certain er, ah, permutations in the future."  
"Perma what?" Elvis shot back. Pancho did an eye roll so noticeable a near sighted guy across the street could have seen it.

"Just never mind, Elvis. OK. Let it go." Which Elvis did. His attention was rambling on an entirely different field of possibilities, anyhow.

Elvis' mind, aside from paying close attention to the slowly diminishing needles of pain in his shoulder blade, was pondering a possible liaison with attorney Lavonda Heraklion. He had to admit he liked her combination of no nonsense gettin' down to business straight talk leavened with sparks of admirably creative flights of fancy. But, personality aside, she reminded Elvis of a female version of the old Disney cartoon character Yosemite Sam. And sex with a female Yosemite Sam didn't exactly ignite the fires of passion in Elvis' occasionally excitable gonads. And then Allison interjected her not inconsiderable person into his thoughts, pulled a verbal wheelie, changed gears and sent the conversation off into a different direction.

"You boys got to try my continental breakfast in the morning. There's no cutting of breakfast corners at Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn's continental breakfast. Be straight on that." Elvis noticed her arm flexing as though she was about to deliver one of her so- called light taps on his shoulder and prudently steeled himself to receive another not so light tap. It didn't happen. "And healthy food, too," she continued. "None of that fried food or high fat or donut stuff for the patrons of Allison's Snuggle Inn. No way. Say NO to fats! Say NO to cholesterol! That's Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn's continental breakfast motto."

She moved a little closer with nothing more than the idea in mind of reinforcing her words, though it did send a red alert to Elvis' Fight or Flight internal control panel. But she kept her light touch hands to herself. For which Elvis was grateful to God, or whatever secondary superior being was in charge of regulating Allison's not so light taps.

"Fresh tofu every morning," she said with no little enthusiasm. "Organic veggies and non-allergenic organically grown oatmeal. Naturally pasteurized goat milk. And no coffee, which we all know is not good for you. But lots of teas. Healthy cleansing teas." A pause. "My favorite being the imported Sumatra Saltwater Croc Island Blend. I'll tell ya, that is one tea with a hell of a bite." As she chortled at her own joke her arm flexed a little again and Elvis resteeled himself to receive another friendly unlight tap from Allison. Nope. Not this time, either. "And for a touch of dessert we have a half dozen flavors of genuine camel yogurt imported from Libyra via Northern Ireland where it is organically purified before moving on to the good ol' USA." Then, changing gears again, Allison plunked down a pair of room keys just as the Inn's phone rang and she reached over to pick it up.

"Here's your keys. 110 and 112. Adjoining rooms." A mischievous wink. "Just in case." She picked up the ringing phone. And shot them a stern look.

"See you at the continental breakfast in the morning."

At 6:30 the next morning a pair of figures furtively tiptoed out the back door of the Snuggle Inn. Elvis and Pancho. They crept out to their Ford G ride and started it up as quietly as they could. Which wasn't all that quiet, the Ford badly in need of a tuneup, because a portion of the district's vehicle maintenance budget had to be diverted to pay for the regional director's trip to "an extremely important" (her words) CBP conference in Hawaii. Elvis and Pancho kept looking at the door to the Snuggle Inn and the possibility of Allison Mankiwiec thundering out the door to grab them and haul them bodily into her continental breakfast room. But the Snuggle Inn's doors stayed closed and they hit the gas, darted out of the parking lot and made a Ford beeline for Alejandro's Breakfast Nook on 4th Avenue. Where, possibly out of some kind of subconscious reaction to Allison's Say NO to Cholesterol! continental breakfast menu, they ordered double sides of juicy fat bacon, pancakes with plenty of real butter and syrup and genuine Rhode Island Red hens' eggs with another side of sawmill milk gravy. All washed down with a big pot of coffee.

"A man has to have a sense of perspective," Elvis said solemnly to Pancho. Pancho nodded just as solemnly back at him.

"Right on, El. You sure as hell can't start out a day working on the border with a breakfast of tofu and camel yogurt."

"For sure," Elvis solemned back. "No matter how many flavors."

Then they finished their breakfast, gave the bleary eyed waitress a hefty tip--knowing from a previous visit to the restaurant that she was a single mom working two jobs to try to make ends meet after her deadbeat husband, who was a lot better at making kids than supporting them, skipped to Mexico to avoid paying child support. On the way out they stopped off in the men's room at Alejandro's Breakfast Nook to relieve themselves of the first installment of Alejandro's tasty breakfast coffee. Just before 8:00 they pulled into the employee parking lot at the San Luis Port of Entry twenty miles south of Yuma. Another day on the border was about to begin.

Yet another uneventful day?

Ah.....well.....not quite.

### Chapter 4

### Just Another Day?

The Port of San Luis was in Arizona. And still is, for that matter, Arizona remaining in the same place as then. And San Luis, then, as now, plunked just barely in Arizona. It was closer to San Diego than to Phoenix. California, Arizona, Sonora and Baja California all collided in the vicinity of the Port of San Luis. Said collision, in the form of a seemingly endless stream of smugglers, illegal entrants and various other miscreants, making the seemingly dull and prosaic location of San Luis more like the scene of Alexander the Greek's army trying to sneak into Mesopotamia than a quiet heat-smothered Sonora Desert town.

The Port of San Luis itself at the turn of the 21st Century was a series of uninspiring buildings set just back from the border with Sonora. It didn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to figure that the low bidder got the contract to build the place. The low bid making it impossible for the contractor couple to pay their workers above minimum wage, though they were able to scrape together enough cash from the contract to buy a recent model Mercedes and take a cruise on the Volga with enough cash left over to refurbish their their ocean front home on the Gulf of Calfiornia at Guaymas. They did, however, throw a nice Christmas party for the workers with only a minimal service charge.

On the western edge of the port were the car lanes that passed on either side of a squat building universally referred to as 'secondary'. Behind this squat secondary building was a metal roofed lot where cars were inspected, plus an area where those with various business at the port, some of it actually legitimate, could park. At the northern end of the roofed inspection area was a compound screened off from public view, including a hydraulic lift and a tire break down unit, where more intensive car searches took place. Plunked down adjacent to the compound was a shed filled with various handy tools the inspectors used when doing exactly the opposite of what the automobile manufacturers did. Taking apart a car rather than putting it together.

Done, however, often with considerably less skill and care than the workers on the automobile manufacturers' assembly lines. Which could build a localized tempest when a car owner got back his or her vehicle after a negative search and found certainly anomalies in the car that were not there pre-search. Like the radio inside the glove box and the rear view mirror on the outside of the windshield. Not to mention leaking gas lines and cars that refused to acknowledge the ignition switch's electronic messages to start.

Which occasioned many an impasioned letter of complaint that, in turn, engendered many an inspired creative (and mostly negative) response. Inspired Creative Complaint Response Specialists--ICCRS's--one of CBP's more important, even critical, employee positions.

On the eastern side of the port was a bigger building that held offices of various kinds, including the pedestrian entry gates, and to the east of that was the larger facility where trucks entered from Mexico and were inspected. A facility known officially as the Truck Dock but that Elvis and Pancho and a good chunk of the rest of the CBP officers referred to unlovingly as the Fuck Dock.

But for Elvis and Pancho, the only part of the San Luis Port of Entry they were interested in was the secondary inspection area. Their job this day, as members of the ET--Enforcement Team--was to rove the secondary lot and pull in passing cars they deemed worth a second look as possible load cars. Or, rarely, some other border infraction.

Pulling in cars that other officers had already released from the primary lanes didn't make them a lot of friends. Especially when they pulled a car in and found it was a load car. Meaning it had some kind of contraband, usually marijuana, hidden in it.

"You pulled in a car that I had already released!" Snarled Hondo Murkle, a long time border inspector. "Why the fuck would you do that? Trying to make me look bad, assholes!"

It was an often repeated scenario in their working life. There wasn't much Elvis or Pancho could say to something like that. They had pulled in a car the guy had already released. And found it loaded. Which made the officer who released the car look bad. Which also did not do much to raise Elvis and Pancho and the other ET folk higher on the Popularity Scale.

A paroled serial killer moving into the neighborhood wouldn't draw much more local ire than an ET team showing up at a port. And it wasn't just the line officers who looked with jaundiced eyes at the arrival of a roving ET unit. So did the port's bosses. An ET team coming in on a TDY--temporary duty--assignment and pulling down loads the regular port officers missed didn't just make the line officers look bad. It also made the port management look bad.

So, for the most part, the arrival of Elvis and Pancho at a port of entry was greeted with a about as much enthusiasm as an outbreak of the bird flu.

And do it was when the ET boys schlepped into San Luis.

There were so many smugglers, and in what seemed to the CBP officers like an endless stream, that Elvis remarked on it to Pancho as they walked from the employee parking lot to the inspection area behind the secondary office. Something that had occurred to him the last time they came over to San Luis on a TDY from their base in Tucson and the Port of Nogales south of Tucson.

"You know, Pancho," Elvis said in what might have actually been a thoughtful voice. "There are so many smugglers here in San Luis that I have to wonder if somewhere on the other side of the border there isn't some kind of smugglers' academy. The final exam could well be when they try to run a load through the port." Pancho nodded in agreement, dropping in an acerbic aside.

"Yep. Plus there are those who flunked out of the academy." A dark chuckle. "Which I am firmly convinced are the ones we catch." Elvis nodded and thought that one over.

"Makes sense to me." He shot a look at Pancho. "Especially when you stop and consider how the price of drugs in the big cities rarely spikes up because of a scarcity of supply. They be gettin' through, man. For sure. Gotta be a thriving business. You suppose a fella could buy some stock in the smugglers' academy? You know. Publicly traded corporation with a smokescreen name. Something like that." Pancho would have launched into a caustic denunciation of that stupid assed idea had he not known that the drug smuggling world was so goddamned pervasive that it could well not be a stupid assed idea at all. Such thoughts, for both Pancho and Elvis, usually continuing down a well worn path leading to nostalgic yearnings for a comfortable retirement a long, long way from the Mexican border and any further pondering on 'the meaning of it all.'

Borderwise, anyhow.

Even in retirement, however, Elvis would continue to wonder about things like did God really make Eve from Adam's rib? Or was his ex-girlfriend Diedre Litsnik right when she said that God made Adam out Eve's asshole. Which, Diedre pointedly observed, "sure did explain a lot." Elvis and Diedre didn't agree on much, but he had to admit she could cook one heck of a lip smacking Western Omelet. Western Omelets were Elvis' favorite meal. Day or night. However, as is generally very well known, a relationship based solely on Western Omelets is likely doomed to failure. And so it was with Diedre. Though Elvis still did sometimes daydream about her omelets.

Siobhan McKenna was standing in the San Luis secondary lot when Elvis and Pancho sauntered in. Siobhan was a stand up dudette who scored in the absolute top percentile in both Elvis' and Pancho's inspector rating books. Was Siobhan an eye-popping voluptuous russet-maned Celtic beauty like that babe from the classic movie era, Maureen O'Hara, or one of the pale skinned, bright blue eyed babes from Irish TV? Or a statuesque presence like the famous fiery flame-haired Celtic warrior queen of Roman Britain, **Boudicca?**

Not quite. Not by a whole field full of quites. Siobhan was as black as a chunk of lignite in the Appalachian coal fields. Nor was she an eye-popper. She was a little on the chunky side, almost dumpy, and had frizzy hair that always looked marginally unkempt. She was the kind of woman who didn't get many second looks from the perennially horny male half of the population. When walking down a sidewalk, that is. She could rock out a dance floor with fluid, double joined moves and grab plenty of admiring oogles there, even if her date book was mostly still empty. She was however, one hell of a inspector who was about to be picked up as a CBP special agent. And she was also a good friend of both Elvis and Pancho, despite the fact she could easily drink both of them under the table and still be able to walk a mostly straight line. And never mind going into explanations about how a woman a black as the Queen of Spades had a name like Siobhan McKenna. The last guy, in a series of flip mouths that reached into the dozens, who remarked on the "Black Irish" to Siobhan forthwith got a black of his own.

All around his startled left eye.

"Siobhan!" Elvis said, playing on the Irish name thing. "How was Ireland?"

"OK, Elvis," she shot back. "How was the mental institution?"

"Unfortunately, Siobhan," Pancho chimed in. "They let him out."

They chatted away for a while in the easy and glib old friends way, then Siobhan glanced at her watch and said she had to go up to the primary lanes. She left Pancho and Elvis standing in secondary.

"You ready?" Pancho said.

"Let 'er rip." Elvis replied. So they let 'er rip. Which did not mean they were going to stand by and watch a woman ripped to pieces by a pack of pit bulls. What they meant by 'let 'er rip' was that they started studying the cars moving through from the primary lanes with an eye to stopping ones they thought might be smugglers or some other form of transient malefactor. Transient malefactors a regular ingredient in the San Luis Port of Entry automotive diet. After a dozen or so cars went by them down the road into Arizona a gray Chevy Suburban drove slowly past. The guy in the Suburban had his hands tightly clamped on the steering wheel and his eyes riveted straight ahead. Both Pancho and Elvis noticed how the driver was taking obvious pains to avoid eye contact with them. By itself that didn't mean squat. Lots of folks avoided eye contact--and the possibility of arousing unwanted interest--with uniformed officers. But then both officers noticed that the driver's hands, which were welded tightly on the steering wheel, were shaking so badly they could see his arms moving. The arms, as one would expect, attached to the hands and therefore participating in the hand shaking movement. That was enough to check the guy out. Pancho stepped out and waved at the man behind the wheel in the Suburban.

"Pull over here into secondary, sir," Pancho said in a voice that was noticeably less polite than his words, pointing at an empty slot in the secondary lot. The man stared straight ahead, regripped his already superglued grip on the wheel, and appeared not to hear Pancho. Then Pancho, who was not known for being a paragon of the art of patience, jumped forward and thumped on the side of the car.

"Pull over here!" He said in a loud and definitely impolite voice, jerking his pointed finger at the parking space. "Now!" The man's head slowly turned to stare at Pancho. A strange look came on his face. Strange, but not one Elvis and Pancho had never seen before. The recognition was immediate. The synapses went off like a string of Chinese firecrackers. Before either officer could take another step the dude in the Suburban slammed down on the accelerator and took off with screeching tires down the road into the Arizona side of San Luis sending a spray of road gravel flying behind his spinning tires. Adrenalin came pouring out of the adrenalin fire house in Elvis and Pancho's endocrinal systems. The chase was on.

So began yet another day in the heat blasted border town of San Luis.

A day that would waste no time in leaping into the not-so-ordinary.

The first inkling came when Siobhan McKenna came running back towards them from the primary lanes. Siobhan's ears had perked way up when she heard Elvis and Pancho yelling and the sounds of a car roaring away, the racing car caroming off a sidewalk recycling bin by the side of the road and causing no little tangled confusion to the two stray dogs that were at that moment shamelessly coupling outside Bernadette Mantilitopo's Border Beauty Salon across the street. Bernadette and her three customers, living as they did in the not so somnolent Sonora Desert smuggling nexus town of San Luis, dove for the ground inside the beauty shop and tried to melt into the recently washed and waxed imitation wood floor.

"What just happened?" Siobhan said, puffing slightly with the exertion of her run and looking like there was plenty on her mind besides what was for lunch.

"The guy took off," Elvis replied. "But it's OK. I already put out a lookout on the Suburban over the police radio net. Someone will catch him within a couple of minutes." Siobhan's black face bleached, if not white, at least to medium coffee latte.

"You guys tried to stop the Chevy?" She blurted out excitedly. "Didn't anyone tell you?"

Silence.

Didn't anyone tell you? The ET boys both mulled those words with a building dark cloud of dread forming over their collective skulls. The Hammer of Thor, or whoever the hell held the Celestial Hammer nowadays, was cocked and ready to lay one on their largely defenseless border heads. Or the Spirit of Retribution was about to ambush them when they went to take a leak in the men's room. Or Yin would hurl Yang at them armed with a pitchfork. This was bad. Elvis and Pancho had just caught on that they may been the unwitting authors of a major fuck up.

"Tell us what?" Elvis said, already dreading the answer.

"Yeah," Pancho joined in. "What what?" Siobhan was not looking like a friendly lady with the local neighborhood Welcome Wagon Committee. Not hardly. Her face was closer to that of an officer who was about to give the command to a firing squad to give their triggers a hefty yank. Elvis and Pancho the occupants of the space beyond the far end of the pointed rifles' sights.

"Goddamnit, guys. That Suburban was a follow out. The agents knew it was a load car and were just outside the port in unmarked units waiting to follow it to wherever it was to be unloaded. They were sure they'd grab an entire smuggling operation and put it out of business."

"Oh," Pancho said.

"Oh-oh," Elvis said.

"Try a whole bunch of oh-ohs!" Siobhan snapped. "You're screwed."

"How we were supposed to know, Siobhan?" Elvis said in a subdued tone. "No one said a word about it to us." Siobhan started to cool down. They were right. How would they know? She didn't know herself until one of the agents, Paresh Patel, told her. Paresh preferred to be referred to by his initials, PP. Which absolutely guaranteed with the inevitability of the daily high tide in the Bay of Fundy that the irreverent inspectors would morph 'PP' into Pee Pee.

Patel was a swaggering arrogant jerk, who Siobhan detested but who nevertheless persisted in hitting on her, wanting to add a black woman to his list of self-described conquests, walked out to where she was working a primary lane and told her what was going on. Let the Suburban through without much of an inspection, he said. And for sure not let the driver know that something was going on.

"We're having you do this," Pee Pee said in a voice, whatever the actual intent, that came out sounding unctuous. "Because we know you are the best." A pause while Patel shot a sour look at the other inspectors working the car lanes. "Not like the rest of these blunderbuckets." Blunderbuckets? Siohan was thinking, though she had no trouble in discerning his contempt for the line officers.

"We are looking forward to you being one of us," Pee Pee said, trying to find some little niche in her feminine armor he might weasel through, as he motioned contemptuously again at the nearby line officers. "Not one of them." Siobhan merely nodded and left unsaid the very long list of not so friendly things she would liked to have said to jerkoff Perush 'Pee Pee' Patel.

"OK." She said tersely. "Consider it done." With that Patel patted her on the shoulder, which almost brought out that long list of unfriendly words teetering on the tip of her tongue, and then wheeled and walked into the secondary office. Jerk. She muttered. Goddamn self absorbed jerk. An assessment by no means confined to just Siobhan's acute eye.

The approaching load car got her full undivided attention and she hadn't even thought of warning Elvis and Pancho. Nor had the agents who were hovering nearby. Nor the supervisor and shift senior working the secondary office. Which added up to one big fuck up. And the inevitable result of one big fuck up. The Blame Game, which was one of the favorite games throughout the federal service and was at the very top of the game list in the national media. Loose the hounds! Find someone to blame! The hunt would be on. For a scapegoat. In this case, two of them. Elvis and Pancho had just managed to plunk themselves smack in the middle of Blame Game Central. They were like a pair of hapless foxes about to be pursued by a horde of howling hounds.

"This is not good, Pancho." Elvis said. "Not good at a......" He didn't get a chance to finish the sentence.

"What the fuck did you dickheads do now!" Thundered a voice coming out of a huge mound of mobile blue uniformed flesh that had just burst through the secondary office door. It was Supervisor Antonio Rivera. Otherwise known as Fat Tony. And for sure no friend of Elvis or Pancho. Or, for that matter, Siobhan. Especially Siobhan.

Siobhan whirled on her heels as Tony huffed up to them. A totally out of breath huff, Tony not one for much running, being well over 300 pounds with only a minor fraction of it muscle of any description, including the involuntary muscle groups. Siobhan was ready to defend her ET buddies. Siobhan was on the protective side and always backed her friends 110 percent. Which was a big part of why the ET boys considered her a Top Gun. And she was none too fond of Fat Tony, either. Though she had managed--just-- to not permanently separate his huevos from the rest of his corpulent body a while back when he referred to President Obama as a "white milkshake with chocolate flavoring."

She was already talking when Tony lumbered up to them.

"They pulled over the Suburban and the driver panicked," Siobhan said, trying to soften the impact on Elvis and Pancho. "They didn't know it was a follow out. You can't blame them for that. And, I must say, it was pretty astute of them to pick out that load vehicle in the first place. Especially with zero prior knowledge."

Fat Tony's reaction was not what you would call a congenial understanding. Not unless you considered the reaction of a guy grabbed by a giant boa constrictor in the Florida Everglades and about to be consumed to be any species of congenial understanding. Tony did not believe women should be in law enforcement. Not as line officers, anyhow. Secretaries? OK. Some other kind of office wienie? OK. But not as line officers. He, however, was very much aware of the giant club the CPB women carried that was known as EEO and/or sexual harassment. So he tread carefully. Which wasn't always easy for a guy who weighed on the dark side of three hundred pounds. Besides, if they had to have women, he thought they should be Hispanic women. What the hell, wasn't this the border with Hispanic Mexico? Though, when he dropped that remark one day to Siobhan, he got as red as the bulls on a Red Bull can when she asked him if that meant German-American CBP women should process the passengers on an airplane coming in from Hamburg or Berlin. Or Chinese-American CBP officers check cargo ships coming from Shanghai.

More to the point. The real point. Siobhan was one hell of a crackerjack inspector, way better than Tony had ever been, and it still pissed Tony off. Big time. Three different times she had pulled load cars over in secondary after Tony had already released them from his primary lane when he was still a line inspector. Not once. Not twice. But three times. How could a guy forget something like that? But fortunately his brother-in-law Marco Abramowitz was a big shot in Washington and Tony got the promotion to supervisor anyhow. Not that he didn't deserve it. At least in his eyes. Which was about as far from being a majority opinion among the San Luis inspectors as Earth was to the distant Crab Nebula. And that included Ubaldo 'Itchy' Chang, despite his having picked up the crabs on a recent vacation to Las Vegas.

"I'll tell you what I think," Tony said in a hissing voice. "I think these two dickwads knew this was a load vehicle and were trying to grab credit for themselves." A pretty good take on an indignant look. "Although they compromised a major anti-smuggling operation by doing it." The indignant look became menacing. And it wasn't fake. "Not only is that unprofessional and unethical, I am certain it violates at least one criminal statute." That damn sure got the undivided attention of Elvis and Pancho as well as Siobhan. Tony was taking this whole adversarial bit to a new and very unpleasant level and, in the sizzling minds of three out of the four present, one of mean spirited and totally uncalled for vindictiveness.

Pancho, whose name might as well have been a cognate of incendiary, did his own red-faced bit and morphed a burnt sienna much like the sunburnt forehead of his Yaqui outdoorsman great grandfather, Dead Shot Joe.

"You just try and prove that bullshit, Fat Boy. It's your ass that will be hung out to dry, not ours."

"Though they might have to use a reinforced block and tackle to do it," Elvis added.

If a human being could be so heated up from anger that they could actually melt, Tony would have melted into a (rather large) puddle on the spot. As it was his eyeballs bulged out, his fists balled up, his face took on the color of an overheated stove top burner and he was unable to say anything beyond a hissing sputter. "Ahhhhggggghhhhhgggg."

"Look out!" Elvis yelled. "Run for your lives! Tony is about to explode! We'll all be smothered in Tony lard!"

Just then a nondescript gray Dodge Dart came screeching into the secondary lot, turning so sharply the Dodge almost went over onto the two driver side wheels. The driver slammed on the brakes so hard the brakes screeched and squealed as the car thudded to an abrupt stop. It had hardly stopped rocking on its abruptly braked wheels when a body came hurtling out of the driver's seat. A very familiar face was attached to the hurling body. And a definitely unwelcome one, at that. It was him. Paresh Patel.  
Pee Pee himself.

Elvis had a platoon sergeant in the Army named DeShawn Washington who had a towering ego and a mean streak and got off on harassing and belittling the soldiers under him. The soldiers had no choice but to bite the soldierly bullet and endure it. Ever since then Elvis had little tolerance for big ego types. Such as Paresh Patel. Paresh was born and raised in Pomona, but his immigrant parents never let him forget that the Patels were Brahmins. The Indian version of birthright aristocrats. And that was the way he viewed himself. Most everyone else, especially the border inspectors, he dismissed as being an American version of the lowly Indian Untouchables. Besides which Pee Pee had a deep seated antipathy to Elvis ever since a verbal exchange at San Luis a few weeks earlier after Big Ego Patel excoriated a hapless inspector--i.e. Untouchable---for what was really just a minor and mostly inadvertent mistake. But Patel, who also was a 3M specialist--Making Mountains out of Molehills--wouldn't let it slide.

"You know, Paresh," Elvis said to Patel after he had just finished publicly humiliating the hapless officer. "It sure is good that that egos are not palpable material objects." Patel stared uncomprehendingly--Elvis would have termed the look as 'stupidly' rather than uncomprehendingly--at Elvis.

"What? What does that mean?" Elvis leaned towards him and put his face right on the very edge of Patel's personal space boundary.

"It means you'd never be able to get through a door." Elvis said, then wheeled and stomped off. He was already out of sight when Pee Pee finally caught on and did his own take on looking like an overheated stove top burner.

So it was not with a great deal of brotherly compassion that Pee Pee greeted Elvis--and, by guilt through association, also Pancho. Not, however, Siobhan, who Paresh smiled at in what he thought of as a sweet and gentle look but was in reality more like a Ganges gharial eying fishy prey. Patel's underlying intent being desirous of doing the baloney pony routine with her when she finally succumbed to his irresistible charms.

"What the fuck is going on here!" Patel screamed out. "Who the fuck put out a radio lookout on the load car! The whole goddamn motherfucking follow-out is now fucked. Fucked! Big time! Fucked!"

"Nice vocabulary, Pee Pee," Elvis said with just a slight glimmering of a grin. "Do you know any other words or is that it?"

"These dipshits did it!" Tony blurted out, having calmed down enough to recover his ability to speak. "Stupid bastards tried to jump the load and the driver took off on them."

"What!" Paresh hollered. "They tried to grab the load! Fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"You seem somewhat obsessed here, Paresh buddy boy," Elvis said. "Would you like the number of a cathouse on the Mexican side where you can, you know, relax. And take your mind off things."

"You motherfucking dumbshit," Pee Pee continued in the same eloquent fashion. "Don't you know what kind of fucking trouble you are in? This will cost you dumb motherfuckers your jobs. Why...." At that moment Siobhan stepped up. And she didn't stop at the outer boundary of Pee Pee's personal space.

"Use that word one more time, dickhead, and I'll rip your nuts off and serve them up to you in a mountain oyster soufflé!" Paresh Patel, AKA Pee Pee, immediately had a vocabulary epiphany, realizing as he did that the baloney pony would inevitably go unridden if he didn't backtrack. And quick.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Siobhan,", he said, And, baloney pony wise, really meaning it. "I apologize for being so uncluth my language."

"Do you possibly mean uncouth?" Pancho himed in.

"That, too," Pee Pee replied.

Before anyone could say anything else all conversation was cut off as abruptly as the scattering of the Mahoney clan one sunny May Saturday when a tornado suddenly appeared just across the highway from a family picnic at the local park. One of Granny Rattler Sue's gourmet ham and cheese sandwiches blown clear across the state line and thudding down on the hood of a Roto-Rooter truck in downtown Louisville. And which, once driver Nostrademus 'Nostie' Kowanchuck got over the shock of the mysteriously appearing ham and cheese sandwich, proved to still be pretty tasty. Especially considering Nostie had skipped breakfast that morning.

And then. There it was. The absconded Chevy Suburban came rolling back into secondary. Right behind it was a single nondescript Ford Fairlane. Cliff Henderson, one of the CPB agents, had intercepted the Suburban and redirected the petrified driver back to the Port of Entry. The guy behind the wheel in the Chevy Suburban looking like he would have far preferred total anonymity in an undisclosed remote location just about anywhere compared to his present circumstances. With the exception of the time he was hiking in the Sierra Madres and came around a bend in the winding trail and found himself face to face with what looked to him like at least a 10 foot high black bear. Which was when he learned the full meaning of the concept of wind sprint.

Just about then was when Paresh Patel had his bright idea. He grabbed Tony Rivera by his bulbous fleshy arm and pulled him aside, whispering to him as Tony intently listened. As Patel finished what he was saying and leaned back, Tony had a dubious look on his face.

"Well, Paresh," he said doubtfully. "It might work." Then, noticing the hopeful look on Patel's face, adding. "We'll give it a try?" So they did.

"What?" Elvis said in utter incredulity when Tony spelled it out to him. "You sure can't think this will work." Tony looked levelly at him.

"You want to dig yourself out of this hole or not?" Tony, were it up to him, would just as soon Elvis stayed in the hole. In fact he'd be happy to pile some dirt in on top of him. And throw in some nice heavy stones to boot. With a topping of quick setting concrete. But Patel was a special agent and agents usually got their way. Besides which it would look a whole lot better for Tony if this fucked up mess was somehow put right. Then Pancho joined them and heard what Tony was saying, his face immediately registering the same incredulity that was plastered on Elvis' face.

"Jesus, Tony. This is a hair brained idea. Nobody is that dumb." All three of them had the thought at the same moment. Present company excluded.

It had finally dawned, wan though the dawn might be, on the not always so luminous brains of both Paresh and Tony that one or the other of them should have made certain the officers in secondary knew not to stop the Suburban. Damn! And that fact would eventually come out. The after action report! Any after action report, at least one not done inhouse, of the incident would have to uncover the fact that Elvis and Pancho, as well as the other officers working in secondary, were unaware of the Suburban being a follow out and not to stop it. Which meant that, as certain as the annual Perseid meteor shower in August would trigger a bunch of panicked 911 calls about UFO's, the federal Blame Game would jump start in one big-assed Blame Game hurry. With Paresh and Tony smack in the middle of it along with Elvis and Pancho. So they extemporized a Hail Mary play to hopefully save the day. And this was what had both Pancho and Elvis', and Siobhan's when she heard about it, eyebrows soaring in incredulity.

The plan? Make the driver believe that it had all been a case of mistaken Suburban identity. They were looking for another gray Suburban that had just been stolen. That was the plan. The problem with the plan? Which zipped into both Elvis and Pancho's brains with the speed of utter doubt. Was there anybody on Planet Earth dumb enough to fall for this? Meaning the driver of the Suburban, whose hands were still superglued to the Suburban's steering wheel, the pupils in the dude's eyes at the very outer limits of their abilities to expand, dramatically demonstrating for all within viewing distance the concept of being wide-eyed. This freaked out character was going to swallow the whole mistaken identity ploy? Elvis was thinking that Madonna and Lady Gaga would both retire into a Benedictine Convent in lower Tuscany before that would happen. Though he had to admit that would sure bring some excitement to the otherwise daily humdrum of convent life. Look! There's Lady Gaga at Vespers! And also certain to liven up the convent music scene.

"Not gonna happen, Elvis." Pancho said. "Nobody is that freakin' clueless."

"You never met my first wife." Elvis shot back.

"You didn't have a first wife." Pancho reshot, in what was not an infrequent exchange between them. "Or any wife."

"Would you settle for an old girfriend?" Elvis rereshot.

"Any old girlfriend of yours would have my most profound sympathy."

"Some friend you are," Elvis said snappishly. "Maligning my masculine charms."

"Man! That is an oxymoron if I ever heard one!" Pancho said, starting to chuckle.

"I know where you sleep," Elvis replied with a snarl.

"Would you two fuckheads get your heads out of your asses and pay attention to what the fuck we're trying to do here!" Paresh Patel said with his own take on a snarl. Even Tony was taken aback at his language, much as Tony detested Elvis and Pancho.

"Now, wait a minute, Paresh. You shouldn't talk like...." He got no further. The mental equivalent of a phosphorous grenade exploded in Pancho's mind. His swarthy complextion grew even darker and his eyes were red hot coals of volcanic Pancho flavored rage.

"Talk to me like that again, Pee Pee," Pancho growled. "And you'll end up a stack of fleshy kindling stacked neatly in a corner." Patel was about to lash back at Pancho when Elvis stepped between them, hands palms out towards Patel in an obvious 'whoa!' gesture.

"You don't get it, buddy. Those aren't just words. Pancho really means it. The guy can bench press a Harley Hog. Don't be stupid. Back off." Patel started to say something, paused, started to say something again, then thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. His face was contorted in a livid glower. But his mouth stayed shut. His mother did raise one dumb kid. And it was him. But even Paresh had moments of insight. Like not doing anything more to agitate the Harley Hog bench pressing Pancho Monster that was on the verge of rearranging Paresh's person into several distinct pieces.

"You guys take the driver in and explain to him that this was all a mistake. We were looking for a different Suburban." Tony said to Elvis. For once doing the right thing and trying to defuse the incendiary situation. Pancho, however, was still seething and the anger reflex had him oblivious to anything besides chopping Paresh Patel into tiny little pieces and feeding them to the stray cats that hung around the port's garbage cans.

"What?" Elvis said. "Why us?" Tony's reply came whistling back like a lion tamer's whip at a particularly obstinate lion.

"Why you? Because you dripweeds got us in this mess in the first place! That's why!"

"I beg to differ with you, Supervisor Rivera," Elvis replied in a suspiciously even voice. Adding. "Extra sensory perception is not part of my skill set." Then he leaned forward and kept going right into Tony Rivera's personal space, which caused Rivera to jerk back involuntarily. "As the supervisor on duty," Elvis said in a somewhat ominous tone. "It was your responsibility to inform us about the Suburban being a follow out." Elvis leaned forward again to slip inside Rivera's personal space. "And you, Supervisor Rivera, didn't do it!"

"He was probably busy day dreaming about the Food Channel again," said a new voice. That of Siobhan McKenna, who up to then was standing nearby quietly listening. Tony whirled on her and was about to let Siobhan have it with both Tony barrels. Which were considerable barrels indeed. But he didn't. One, Siobhan would soon be an agent and out of the supervisory purview of a line supervisor and might soon have enough juice to cause him some grief. And, secondly, he actually had been day dreaming about a really cool fettuccine alfredo recipe on the Food Channel and was taken aback at Siobhan somehow knowing it.

"OK. OK." Tony said, trying to stay calm. "We're all in this together. Can't we for once actually cooperate?" Both Elvis and Pancho stared dumbly at Tony. Tony, who rarely missed an opportunity to screw with them, was preaching cooperation? That was like the entire U.S. Congress drinking lemonade laced with ecstacy and trading their usual vitriolic adversarial attitudes for group hugs.

"OK, Tony," Elvis replied in a mildly suspicious voice. "We'll try it. What do you want us to do?" Tony calmed a little more. He would cooperate with these ET dickheads. For now. After all, they really were in it together. But, he thought with a mental smirk to himself, there'll soon be another opportunity to mess with them. And, with the exception of a late supper, Tony was a guy who could wait for the right moment to act.

"You two take Siobhan and lead the driver inside the office. Give him a soda or something. Calm him down. Make him believe it was all a mistake. OK?" Three sets of eyes stared back at Tony as though he had just asked them to climb Mount Everest backwards and blindfolded.

"All right, Tony," Elvis said without even the tiniest hint of enthusiasm. "We'll give it a try." While this was going on Paresh Patel had walked over to where the agent who had escorted the Suburban back into the secondary lot was quietly standing. Unlike Paresh, Special Agent Cliff Henderson was what the line officers called a stand up dude and was widely both liked and admired. He, along with most of the agents, was quietly competent. Though, like all members of the hominim tribe, he did have his flaws. His was a near maniacal hatred of aedes mosquitoes, having been raised in what he somewhat puzzlingly referred to as "the fetid mosquito infested bayous of interior Alaska." Which comment caused no little confusion among those who were not aware of the seemingly counterintuitive fact that Alaska's summers are chock full of giant mosquitos

Tall and lean, with an ironic wit, Cliff heard Elvis' lookout over the law enforcement net, recognized what it was about, and quickly got on the net and told all who were listening in to back off and let him handle it. That at least would minimize the Suburban driver's fear and what was made it even possible that the mistaken identity ploy would work. Not that he thought it would. He knew from his years of border experience that the smugglers had spotters who watched the port and they damn well already were aware of what was going on. Patel's plan was, in Cliff's words, "just a freakin' pointless circle jerk." Which fit pretty well with Cliff's opinion of Paresh Patel. Cliff privately grumbling that Patel was one of those ethnically correct hires that the Bureau of Cultural Diversity, or whatever the hell they called it, shoved down their throats by bypassing the usual hiring requirements. Some of them worked out OK. There was another ethnic East Indian in the Douglas office who was a slam dunk hotshot agent and a second one in the Phoenix office who was a rising starr. But not Paresh Patel. The only slam dunks Paresh Patel did were when he ate breakfast on the run or hired a hooker for a quickie on the Miracle Mile strip in Tucson.

Elvis, Pancho and Siobhan walked over to the Suburban and motioned for the driver to get out. The driver, however, remained cemented in place. His only visible movements were the shaking of his hands and his rapidly blinking eyes. His interior, however, was roiling in agitation like a cement mixer with a full belly of redimix looking for a home. Elvis, who had unusually acute hearing, thought he could hear the guy's innards rumbling.

"Come with us," Pancho said to the guy in Spanish. The man, whose name was Berto Gomez, remained as immobile as the Washington Monument. "It's OK, man," Pancho continued. "You're not in any trouble." The man's hands stopped shaking. His head tilted quizzically towards Pancho.

"No trouble?" He said in a weak, frightened voice.

"No trouble," Pancho repeated. "You are not being arrested." Berto blinked, blinked again, gulped three times and then twisted his head around to look at Pancho with a wan smile.

"Not arrested?" He said softly, hardly believing what he was hearing.

"Not arrested," Pancho repeated. "Now come with us inside while we explain to you what happened." As Elvis watched Berto's reactions he started to think that maybe this guy would swallow the mistaken identity ploy. Berto relaxed his grip on the steering wheel--Henderson had pulled the keys out of the ignition when they first drove into secondary--and uncemented the rest of his body. He inched his way off the seat and climbed out onto the secondary tarmac. He was an average sized guy, maybe 5'8 and 150 pounds. Thirtyish. His thick black hair was cut short and he had a wiry black mustache neatly trimmed at the upper lip line.

He was a harmless looking kind of person. Like a Starbucks barista or a hot dog vendor at a Diamondbacks game. Which, Elvis was thinking, was probably why the smugglers picked him as a load driver. The last thing they wanted to do was have a load driver whose appearance or behavior attracted attention. The more nondescript the better. Boring is good was one of their mottos. And this guy, Berto Gomez, had such a nondescript appearance that even if he did commit some crime the victims probably wouldn't recognize him in a police line up.

"No," the victim might say, looking directly at Berto in the police line up. "I don't see the guy here."

Berto, however, only looked harmless. He was a convicted felon who did prison time in the U.S. and then was deported. And not just once. Twice. He was using a phony ID with the false name of Raul Grijalva. If the gringos busted him and checked his fingerprints and found out his real identity he would be in double trouble. For smuggling the load of dope in the Suburban. And for being a deported felon with at least another five years in the slammer hanging over his deported felon head. That is what he was so nervous about. Part of the deal he made with the smugglers was that, once through the port and with the load car delivered, he would be free to keep the phony IDs and melt into the general population in the U.S. as he had done several times before. Berto enthusiastically jumped at the deal. A ticket back into the Great Cornocupia! An arrangement, however, that at this they-got-me-in-secondary moment wasn't looking like such a hot deal after all.

Elvis, Pancho and Siobhan sat the guy down in the secondary office squad room.

"How about a soda?" Elvis said. Berto looked blankly at him. A soda? This gringo cop was offering him a soda when the Suburban was sitting outside with over a hundred pounds of methamphetamine in the gas tank and the dash? He silently shook his head. Can this be happening? Is this real? He looked up at the expectant face of the gringo CBP officer.

"Sure," he said in nearly unaccented English, Berto having lived over ten years in the United States. Including prison time. "A Coke?" He added, still stunned by this really strange turn of events.

"You got it, partner," Elvis said, then went to the break room to get a Coke from the vending machine. As he left Pancho sat on one side of him and Siobhan on the other, both of them looking solicitously at Berto. Siobhan so close she was actually touching him. And not unintentionally. If anything would disarm Berto, a woman with kind eyes hovering nearby was sure to do it. At least in Siobhan's mind. And not without cause. It had worked before.

"We are so sorry, sir," Pancho began. "We had a lookout for a gray Suburban just like yours. The owner was a big shot who made a huge fuss when it was stolen this morning in Yuma. We thought yours was the stolen Chevy."

"The port management apologizes for this misunderstanding, and for whatever inconvenience and embarrassment this has caused you." Siobhan added, her knee lightly touching Berto's. "And we hope that you will accept the apology and not make an issue out of our mistake." The light bulb clicked on in Berto's confused brain. Law suit! These gringo assholes were afraid he was going to sue the government and that they'd be blamed for it. He actually grinned.

"It's OK." He said. And damn well meant it. He'd just had his ticket to ride validated.

"And if you don't mind," he continued. "I'd like to leave now. I'm late for an appointment." At that moment Elvis came back into the squad room with a Coke in his hand and an attempt at a positive expression on his face.

"Here's your Coke, partner," Elvis said, handing the Coke to Berto.

"You drink it, officer," Berto replied, standing up. "I have to be going." And with that Berto got up, walked out the door, climbed into the Suburban and drove out of the secondary lot.

"Man," he chuckled to himself as he drove away. "Those dickheads are dumb as a box of rocks, even for gringos." Even so, he kept a careful eye out for anyone following him. No one was. They didn't need to. Cliff Henderson put a magnetic GPS locator on the Suburban's undercarriage while Berto was in the squad room. Berto drove the twenty miles to Yuma, parked the Suburban in the Super Walmart parking lot, put the keys under the floor mat and walked off to the freedom of taking up where he left off in the good ol' United States before prison and deportation. Which was stealing cars for chop shops and picking pockets in busy malls in places like Tucson and Phoenix. He headed over to the Greyhound station to catch a bus for Phoenix. Someone was waiting for him at the station. Special Agent Cliff Henderson. Cliff grinned when he saw Berto and beckoned at him. At that precise moment Berto realized that the gringos weren't as dumb as a box of rocks after all. The box of rocks was instead about to fall on Berto's head in the shape of a set of Cliff Henderson's handcuffs. Berto wheeled and launched into a dash for freedom. Unfortunately for Berto, who was definitely not having a good day, a Greyhound bus had pulled in behind him and he ran smack into the side of it, bounced off and tumbled to the ground. By which time Cliff Henderson already had one of Berto's arms in the handcuffing position and the other not far behind.

So. The follow out worked OK. Paresh Patel and another agent, his crony and fellow agent who was also much impressed by his own reflection in a mirror, Corey Nathan, watched the Suburban from an unmarked car parked close by in the Super Walmart parking lot. It was only a matter of time before the smugglers picked up the Suburban and led the agents to their destination and the unraveling of the entire smuggling organization.

Or so went the scenario that Patel and Nathan had in their special agent minds.

It was to be an all around bad day for Paresh Patel, as it was at that handcuffed moment for Berto Gomez at the Greyhound station. A local teenage car thief, Billy Valdez, who was prowling the Walmart lot, saw Berto stuff the keys under the Suburban's floor mat and waited nearby for his opportunity. When no one seemed to be looking, Billy went over to the Suburban, opened the door and picked up the floor mat. When he saw the keys he picked them up, climbed inside the Chevy and started it up. And then promptly drove the Suburban out of the Super Walmart lot onto the streets of Yuma.

"There!" Paresh Patel said in barely contained excitement. "They've picked it up and are heading to the drop off point." He turned to look at his buddy, Corey. "Stay out of his sight. We have the GPS." He grinned. "We've got 'em now, Corey! For sure."

Billy Valdez, however, had something else in mind. He had no clue he was sitting on several hundred thousand dollars worth of methamphetamine and decided he'd take the Suburban into Mexico and try to sell it there. So he pointed the Suburban south and retraced the path the Chevy had so recently taken from the border. Paresh at first didn't understand what was going on and launched into his signature patter when he was flustered.

"What the fuck?" He said. "Why the fuck is heading back to fucking Mexico?" Then he had an idea. "Oh! I get it. This is really fucking clever. They go right by the fucking drop house to throw off any pursuers, then double back to their actual destination. They must be going to one of the fucking little towns between here and the border. The fucking places are full of fucking smugglers, anyhow." A confident look. "Yes." He said to Corey. "That's it!" But as the Suburban passed through the little towns between Yuma and the border and didn't stop Paresh revisited his initial confusion. He was so confused he forgot to curse.

"What is going on here? This doesn't make any sense? Why is he heading back to the border?" Then it dawned on him like a whole bunch of boxes of rocks dropping on his head. "The border! We can't let the Chevy go back across the border!" He was about to order another unmarked unit to intercept the Suburban when Billy Valdez got a sudden urge for a Slushie and made a brief stop at the Quickie Mart on the outskirts of San Luis. Paresh had the units back off while they waited to see if this was going to be yet another drop off point. Billy Valdez got his Slushie, climbed back into the Suburban and accidentally backed into a post. The Suburban was jolted enough for the GPS tracking device to come loose and fall onto the Quickie Mart blacktop. Billy headed for the border and the GPS stayed put on the Quickie Mart blacktop. But not for long. Little Joey Martinez saw the GPS sitting there defenselessly on the Quickie Mart blacktop, thought it was real cool even if he had no clue what it was, and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he jumped on his beach cruiser bicycle and pumped the pedals on his way back home a couple of blocks north of the Quickie Mart.

"He's moving!" Paresh said with no little relief, looking at the GPS. "The fucker is on the move again. And he's going kind of slow. He must be about to pull into the drop off spot."

Elvis, Pancho and Siobhan were standing in the secondary lot at the San Luis Port of Entry. It was long past an hour since the Chevy Suburban had headed north to Yuma and Siobhan had rotated off the car lanes and was back in secondary talking to the two ET men. Neither Elvis nor Pancho had a whole lot of enthusiasm for pulling in any more cars after the cluster fuck of before. So they were hanging back. Pancho happened to look over at the southbound lane. He reached over and whacked Elvis on the shoulder, pointing at what he had just seen in the southbound lane going into Mexico.

"Look!" Pancho hollered in exploding fricatives that cracked in the enclosed spaces of secondary like a small canon.

Elvis looked. His eyeballs instantly threatening to explode along with Pancho's frictives.

"Is that what I think it is?" Pancho said in agitated astonishment. Siobhan was also now looking. She groaned.

"It sure as hell is. I caught a glimpse of the plate. Different driver. Same Suburban."

"This is one weird goddamn day," Elvis moaned. He got no argument from either Pancho or Siobhan. Tony Rivera was just coming out of the secondary office, saw them pointing and looking at the southbound lane. Tony looked, too. And immediately took on the color of a fresh unsoiled dinner napkin.

"Oh, no.....No.......NO!...." He wailed as his stomach did a somersault and Tony's lunch did an about face and marched relentlessly back towards his mouth.

At almost the same moment the GPS locator stopped at a residence on the north side of San Luis. A half dozen CBP agents in three cars came tearing up and stopped outside the house. They leaped out of their various unmarked units and descended on the house with drawn guns. Joey Martinez' mother, Hilda, was just climbing out of the shower and drying herself when the CBP agents burst through her front door yelling. "CPB! Get down! On the ground! Now!" Hilda Martinez was a good mom and a frequent visitor at the quarter slots at the nearby Indian casino but didn't know word one of English. She threw her bath towel straight into the air, began to scream and ran howling out the back door into her yard.

"Help! Help!" She yelled in a panicked Spanish. "I'm about to be gang raped by a bunch of crazed criminals!" Her elderly neighbor Jesus Villapanda looked out his back window at what was going on and promptly pulled his blinds tightly shut. Muttering as he did so.

"That is one woman who should never be seen unclothed in public or, for that matter, any other place." And in fact Hilda Martinez was no specimen of feminine pulchritude.

Paresh Patel came running after her into the back yard, thinking she was trying to escape, and literally ran smack into her when she stopped cold. Hilda had just stepped in a recently deposited pile of dog excreta her pet Labrador, Bad Boy, had thoughtlessly left in her path.

"Oh, shit!" She said in Spanish, in both a literal and figurative sense, and stopped in her tracks. Paresh Patel was barreling after her and couldn't stop in time. He piled into her and both when down. Then Bad Boy the Labrador, thinking his mistress Hilda was being attacked, came charging in and jumped on top of Paresh, who was on top of Hilda.

That was too much for Jesus Villapanda. He opened up his blinds again, popped the tab on a cold Tecate and sat down to watch the unexpected entertainment in the neighbor's back yard.

"Get 'em, Bad Boy!" He hollered, not caring for gringos any more than he cared for the perpetually complaining Hilda and indifferent to just who Bad Boy tore into. This was almost as much fun as when Hurricane Fidel tore into San Luis a few years back and washed away the police station and that jerk Luis Derdinian's cut rate taco stand that was always undercutting Jesus' own taco stand prices. "There is justice in the world after all!" Hollered Jesus when he saw Luis Derdinian's taco stand floating away, though his joy was mitigated somewhat when he later learned that the goddamn jerk Derdinian had somehow survived with only a few minor scrathes and the loss of his recently purchased false teeth.

It goes without saying that the events of that day became legendary within Customs and Border Protection and far beyond in a wide variety of law enforcement circles. Paresh Patel got his fifteen minutes of fame, but not in a way he would have wanted. The only winner of the day was Tommy Martinez, who drove the Chevy into Mexico and saved the smugglers several hundred thousand dollars worth of dope that otherwise would have been lost. They made Tommy an apprentice in the smuggling business and even arranged to send him to the smugglers' academy in the next session.

Elvis and Pancho trudged into Allison Mankiwiec's Snuggle Inn late that afternoon with grim expressions and tired eyes.

"This has been one hell of a miserable day." Pancho said dejectedly.

"Yeah." Elvis replied in a lackluster tone. "How could it be any worse?"

Just then Allison saw the two coming in and rushed over to them. She looked excited.

"Great news, Elvis," she said with an excited voice that matched her expression. "This morning I talked to my buddy, the attorney Lavonda Heraklion. I told her you were here, Elvis," she continued. "Lavonda has a couple of free days and she said she would come over to Yuma to see you." As Elvis was trying to digest that statement through the tired fog of the day, Allison added. "She should be here about now." Then she pointed out at the parking lot at a car just pulling in. Inside it was what looked like a female version of Yosemite Sam. Elvis' heart plummeted to the bottom of his government issue boots. There was no need for Allison to say it, but she did.

"There she is now!"

### Chapter 5

### El Cientifico

Three year old Pedro Morales came tearing into the family adobe from the front yard.

"Mama," he blurted out excitedly in his high voiced little boy Spanish, "does God drink beer? Like papa and uncle Carlo and grandpa when they're always going to go wee wee?" Maria Consuela, Pedro's mother, looked at her son and instantly felt guilty about dropping the kid on his head back when he was an infant. Consuela had slipped on a gob of lard she'd spilled on the floor and the kid squirted right out of her well larded hands and plunked headfirst onto the floor. Maria revisited that moment and silently cursed herself for homemaker multitasking--trying to make tortillas while balancing Pedro on her hip and watching Telmundo. She'd always been afraid it would affect the boy. And now, God forgive, it looked like it had.

"What do you mean, little one?" She said, softly, now worried about her son's mental plunbing. Pedro, however, had no such worries. He just had three year old kid logic.

"God is pissing all over outside," Pedro said. "It's coming straight from him up in heaven." At which point the lamp of recognition snapped brightly on in Maria Consuela's considerably relieved brain. It hadn't rained for nearly three years. The last time there was any appreciable rainfall was when Pedro was a tiny infant whose entire world still centered on Maria Consuela's engorged breasts. Which, Maria thought with no little disgust, seemed to be the way her husband Mario still saw his world.

So how was the kid to know? This was the desert. The arid epicenter of the Sonora Desert. Where the town of San Luis split its identity between Sonora and Arizona. And the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonora confronted the American states of Arizona and California. The Mexicans and American tended to make a big deal out of this with all their bluster about national boundaries, but the local Native Americans had long viewed it from their own, non-political, viewpoint: It was one fucking hot place no sane person wanted to live in during the summer. But then some troublemaking gringo went and invented air conditioning and the arid epicenter of the Sonora Desert became habitable in the summer.

And it sure didn't hurt that the Colorado River came wandering through on its way to Pacific oblivion.

Thanks to air conditioning and a massive sprawling spider web of Colorado River irrigation canals, there were now lots of people living in San Luis. Mostly on the Mexican side. Nobody told the Mexicans in San Luis that the Wild West was long gone. That was because in San Luis, and all long the Mexican border, it hadn't gone anywhere. San Luis was wide open. To all kinds of things. Very often involving smuggling and the use and/or threatened use of firearms and other nasty stuff. But....what the heck. Nothing special about that. San Luis was just a more or less typical Mexican border town where ordinary folk made sure their life insurance was paid up before venturing out onto the street to buy groceries.

And in San Luis. On the Mexican side. A nondescript garage in a grungy part of the Mexican side of San Luis, a barrio even grungier than the municipal normal--which was itself already overly grungy by generally acknowledged international grungy standards.

"Cuidado, Flaco Man," a chunky red faced guy in dirty overalls and a faded Say No To Drugs T-Shirt said in border Spanglish. "Espera indoors, dude. La wind. She be rising again. Mucho viento." The thin man's eyes narrowed and he threw the other guy a scathing look that however bounced without effect off the chunky red faced guy, leaking off the thin man even more. Still, he had to admit that it was true. Thin. Ergo his nickname, Flaco. Skinny. Not quite skeletal. But darned thin. So thin his wise ass co-workers joked he didn't dare go outside when the wind was blowing more than forty kilometers an hour. The same co-workers earnestly proclaiming that the prevailing winds would scoop him up and send him in the northeasterly direction of the land gobbling megapolis of Phoenix. And without the benefit of a reasonably serviceable aircraft of some type or even a mostly intact hang glider.

Mr. Thin's grease spotted pants defied the laws of pants gravity by hanging precariously on his bony hips. He was also balding, his stringy pony tail no longer able to cover up the patch of bare skin at the back of his head. Which he'd been doing his damnedest to hide ever since Bennie Saguaro, the acerbic Yaqui Native American who was his next door neighbor when he lived a couple hundred miles to the east in Tucson, joked that he looked like he'd been scalped. Bennie Saguaro was one Yaqui who not so privately wished scalping--a scaled down non-lethal scalping, of course, for the more delicate modern sensitivities--was still accepted behavior and legal for genuine card carrying Native Americans. Marty McFinkel, his smart ass boss at Leonardo Davinci's Original Pizza Emporium, being his first candidate. Followed closely by William 'Slimy Bill' Dudpress III, the dickwad principal at Tucson High School who booted out Bennie's son for the harmless prank of taking peyote in gym class, climbing to the roof of the school and cementing his fate by pulling out his teenage dong and proceeding to piss on the crowd of gawkers gathered below. Slimy Bill the Principal being the main target, the well aimed result bringing a round of applause from the watching crowd of students, teachers and the heavily armed onsite detail of officers of the Tucson Police Force School Protection Unit.

Bennie, who damn sure didn't have fond memories of his own school days, along with 96.2 percent of his kid's high school class, considered his rebellious son to be a local hero who should have been voted class president instead of being expelled. But, Bennie thought with more than a modicum of resentment, life is never fair. No. Never. Well, almost never. His arch nemesis and former next door neighbor Hydo 'Yogurt' Wanker, who regularly stole his lunch money during their school days and always beat him out with the best looking chicks by privately warning them that Bennie had communicable tuberculosis and incurable gonorrhea, was one of the exceptions where justice made a rare appearance. That jerkwater Hydo Wanker getting run over by the 4:00 downtown express bus on Broadway Avenue as he crossed the street in mid-block headed for Yanush's Yogurt Yurt. Hydo fancying himself a yogurt aficionado and Yanush's Yogurt Yurt having by general consensus the best yogurt in the greater Tucson area. Bennie paused to linger wistfully over the thought of that dickhead Hydro Wanker rolled flat as a chunk of flesh-colored cardboard smack in the middle of busy Broadway Avenue. Ah! Now that was justice. And also a nice helping of sweet revenge. Bennie further wistfulling the entertaining thought that Hydo's death certificate rightfully ought to give 'Yogurt Addiction' as the cause of death. Which could very well have the salutary effect on the bean counters at Hydo's life insurance provider to move them to promptly tick off the 'declined' block on Hydo's wicked witch of a widow's death benefits claim form.

Back to San Luis. The thin man was kneeling, his spare frame bent next to a rear wheel on a pickup truck. He was looking closely at the truck's tire. Very closely. As closely as he did when examining the fine print on one of Montezuma Capone's 100 Percent Honest Payday Loan contracts over in Yuma. So closely his long nose was almost touching the tire's surface. Something had to be there for the guy to stare at a tire so intensely close, since he had been warned by his (somewhat hypochondriacal) Aunt Vibrata that prolonged close exposure to a tire's surface could result in toxic fumes burning the hairy linings of the nostrils. Possibly permanently derailing the sense of smell with the unpleasant effect of even the better restaurants having a perceived odor like Tucson's Speedway Avenue when a bunch of teenagers took the name literally and burned rubber as they drag raced down the road.

The tire looked normal enough. At least so far as a tire is able to look normal. Abnormal tires tend to stick out. Being flat is usually a dead giveaway. A six inch spike sticking out the side wall is another good indication something is wrong. And a tire blown apart into tattered metal and rubber shreds is a dandy reminder against over inflating a tire, which Flaco's deceased former buddy and co-worker Menno 'Balls to the Wall' Anasazi learned the hard way. He would never forget the obituary headline. He'd heard that originally the local newspaper was gonna headline Menno's obit with Menno Anasazi: Recklessly killed by an exploding Banzai Super Radial 360 truck tire. At the last minute the editor removed the first word, recklessly. On the advice, no surprise, of the newspaper's lawyer, Misty Septa.

Attorney Septa was convinced that all lawyers, with the singular exception of herself, were not to be trusted where there was even a slight chance of a successful--meaning profitable--lawsuit. Lawyer Septa meanwhile biding her time until the newspaper fucked up somehow and gave her enough grounds to sue the frickin' paper on her own behalf. She had several avenues of possibility. Sex discrimination number one. Followed by racial/ethnic discrimination, Misty Septa a second generation Asian-American. And she could also throw in being a lesbian as another cause for a discrimination lawsuit. She wasn't actually a lesbian, in fact didn't much care for any kind of sex, but was willing to try 'that lesbian thing' at least temporarily if it helped her lawsuit.

Not that the editor didn't think it was a totally dumb shit move for a mechanic to over inflate a tire until it exploded and instantly relocated substantial portions of his corporal presence to the various grease bedecked corners of Hector Beminski's One Stop Auto Repair and Donut Shop. Where Menno 'Balls to the Wall' Anasazi had worked as a mechanic and occasional donut delivery driver. The nickname Balls to the Wall taking on an additional, directly literal, meaning. Which, despite the gravity of the situation, set the editor into a barely concealed snicker that was in no danger of abating anytime soon.

"Balls to the Wall?" Editor LeVondel Franklin said in astonishment when the obituary writer, Verna Asblich, told him the dead guy's nickname. "You're kidding." Verna nodded a definite negative with her full head of shiny chestnut hair, not a single strand of which actually originated on her scalp.

"Nope. Not kidding. That really is his nickname."

"Was," LeVondel replied. Verna blinked? Was? Oh...yes..was. But whatever she was thinking was shoved aside into wherever shoved aside thoughts go as LeVondel could no longer contain himself and started to snort and gurgle and chortle under he almost choked himself.

"Balls to the Wall....," he managed to get out between chortles. "The guy's nickname was....." At which point Levondel was no longer capable of speech as he collapsed into spasms of LeVondel hilarity.

"That's not very respectful of the dead," Verna said to her boss. "Why....." Any further words were lost in the general chaos of Levondel's cacophonous jocularity.

Balls to the Wall was of course never going to be in the obituary, but  
recklessly was a maybe. Then when Lavondel thought about it a little more he had to admit that the newspaper's attorney was probably right and some trolling lawyer might find the wording a convenient pretext for a lawsuit. Lawyers one of his pet peeves, going back to when his drinking buddy and first cousin once removed Jefferson 'Midnight' Franklin was prosecuted by some jerk county attorney just because Jefferson didn't stop and check whether the guy he ran over was badly injured. "What the hell," Jefferson recalled with no little indignity. "The guy obviously was still alive, rolling around on the ground and all. Anyhow," Jefferson said. "He was just some old white guy, probably homeless or at least for sure clueless, limping along with a cane. And not", he pointed out with vehemence, "in the cross walk," adding. "At least not totally. Anyhow, the staggery old dude didn't look like he was long for this world. He probably would just as soon have been put out of his old white guy misery. Better a quick end than a slow one freezing to death in some filthy alley filled with cat and dog bones behind a seedy allegedly Chinese restaurant."

The editor, being as black as a typical native born Nigerian in downtown Lagos on a cloudy winter afternoon, sure couldn't argue with that--though he had learned when to keep his mouth shut about touchy subjects. Like secretly wishing all white people would be magically teleported to the distant planet Honky in the faraway constellation Peckerwood where the only entertainment would be reruns of Hee Haw and mud wrestling bouts between fat old white women wearing orange bikinis. Though he did exempt good looking young blond babes from the one way relocation. At least until they hit middle age or had a kid and had stretch marks that made their stomachs look like wrinkled parchment.

Back to Mr. Thin. Flaco. And the tire. But this tire wasn't flat. No foreign object was sticking out of it. The tire appeared to meet the general visual expectations for inflated tires securely skewered on a rear axle. So what the heck was he looking at? Whatever it was, he must have found it. Or possibly been satisfied at not finding something. He grunted approvingly and began to straighten up, his bad knees cracking "pop, pop, pop" as he uncoiled, which was the source of another nickname he absolutely detested. Popcorn. Flaco/Popcorn redirected his attention to another man standing close to his side.

"Listo, Jeffe," he said. Ready, boss.

Flaco's rheumy eyes, bad teeth and sallow complexion mirrored a weak voice that cracked right along with his knees. He was a meth tweaker, and the boss knew it, but Flaco was still the best damn mechanic in San Luis Rio Colorado and was a working fanatic who would spend days getting a car finished to Flaco's high standard of workmanship. And a high standard of workmanship it in fact was. The man was an artist at what he did. Which was what? Building race cars? Fine tuning BMW's and Mercedes and other luxury vehicles? Restoring classic cars? Armor plating the personal vehicles of various politicians, celebrities, corrido singers, reality TV personalities completely devoid of talent but wallowing in bucks, or the numerous businessmen on both sides of the border with murky connections? Not bloody likely. Not in hardscrabble San Luis Rio Colorado. Flaco's artistic palette was each and every drug load car he prepared to send across the border into the United States. Was the boss gonna criticize Flaco for meth use when Flaco was such a shit hot mechanic? Hell, no. He even was half tempted to tell his other, not so hot mechanics, to meth it up, too. But only tempted. The boss knew it was a slippery slope and best not to mess with. Which he thought was a dandy slogan.

Don't Mess with Meth.

He liked it so much he passed it on to his kids' school administrator and the local police chief along with his weekly donation to the chief's personal retirement fund. He, himself, the boss, the Jeffe, never touched hard drugs and rarely used alcohol beyond a glass of wine with dinner and his infrequent but wonderfully refreshing bacchanals on his R&R trips to Elmira's Palace of Delights in Acapulco with his whacky cousin Alberto. Cousin Alberto a guy frankly leaning heavily towards the offbeat side but a great dude to party with. In his more frequent sedate businessman moments the boss limited himself to popping an occasional prescription pill of one kind or another to smooth out the rough edges of the day. All obtained, strange as it might sound, legally through his buddy Dr. Hilario Zenk's barely legible but nonetheless still legal prescriptions.

"She's ready to go," Flaco added. The boss was a solidly built 5'10" muscular and darkly handsome man, though he had one crooked incisor and a sleepy eye that were visually distracting. Only the unwise or those with a death wish dared to comment on it. It was never a good idea to stare at a drug boss' physical abnormalities, except for those not so uncommon times when the staring dude had an AK pointed at the drug boss who was about to become a deceased ex-drug boss. Many was the person who tried with all the inner resources they could muster to not stare at the boss' sleepy eye and noticeably canted incisor. The ratty ceiling, the oil stained floor, the fly specked walls and every piece of equipment in the shop getting a lots of fervent attention from those trying their damnedest to avoid eyeballing the boss' sleepy eye and/or wandering incisor. Which made for some entertaining viewing on the security cameras the boss had installed in the shop, surveillance videos he watched most evenings as he sipped a Diet Cherry Coke, munched on Korean take out and checked the latest stock prices.

The boss nodded at Flaco without saying anything. They called him El Cientifico and you didn't need to know Spanish to understand that among the group of grimy workmen clustered around the pickup truck in the enclosed garage who was the boss--the Jeffe–in this crew. El Cientifico. Known to most, at least those on his good side, by his nickname. Fico.

Fico walked slowly around the pickup, careful eyes probing every visible inch of it and his olfactory sense whiffing for any hint of the hidden. It was a Chevy Silverado he'd picked out himself from his loopy cousin Alberto's clandestine lot of cars stolen across the line in the U.S.--mostly from malls in Phoenix and Tucson. It was such a common story in the Arizona big cities that it no longer even made the back pages of the struggling newspapers or even the online editions scraping the news barrel. A shopper would come out of the mall loaded down with shopping bags, and probably also an overstuffed stomach from an unhealthy but tasty lunch in the food court, the sound of the blood rushing through their veins and arteries somewhat muted by cholesterol sound proofing, and find their vehicle gone.

At first they'd think they'd come out the wrong door and had their vehicle's location misidentified in the sprawling lot, then start wandering through the labyrinth of parked cars looking for their vehicle. Most pressed the electronic button on their key chains and listened for the tell tale warble or whistle or bleep or, in at least one case, the whine of an incoming ballistic missile, to locate their mischievous hiding vehicle. But by far the most memorable door opener was a recording of a porn star faking an orgasm. That one got a lot of attention, plus it was an ice breaker at what had formerly been a yawner of a tail gate party.

The car hunt was like a metallic game of hide and seek in the mall parking lot. After a while they'd finally figure out some goddamn rotten SOB sneak thief had stolen their vehicle. Either that or the bank had sent in a tow truck and repossessed it. Repossessing stuff a nicely profitable business during the recent economic downturn. To paraphrase what a well known and extremely rich national figure once said. One man's catastrophe is another man's opportunity. In fact more than one former car thief used their prior 'car removal' experience to start up repossessing businesses and even join the Greater Tucson Area Chamber of Commerce. One of them lately entertaining a run for president of the Chamber in the next biennial election.

"You know, Fernie," Lentick Limblister, owner of LL Repossessions & Metal Recyclers, said to his old friend and one time fellow car thief, Fernando 'Hot Wire' Gonzalez, who himself now owned a successful repossession business, Gonzalez' Grab 'Em Repossessions. "I think I'd make a pretty good president of the Chamber of Commerce." He winked and tapped his elbow on Fernie's muscular right arm, which was covered with tattoos of his most memorable car relocating moments. "After all, I do have vast local experience in dealing with a considerable variety of situations. And I could offer a lot of useful information on how not to get your car stolen or repossessed. That could be very helpful in today's struggling economic conditions." A pause. "After all, in a purely practical sense, give this a thought. How can a guy go look for work if his car has been ripped off?"

"Well, buddy, you've got my vote," Fernie replied, thankful that both of them had escaped the uncertain economic world of the car thief for the reliable and respectable ownership of a repossession business. Though Fernie had to wonder about what went on with LL's other business venture in metal recycling. What with copper mysteriously disappearing all over town and no one knowing where it went. Well, almost no one.

"But you might need to back off on the metal recycling business some, LL," Fernie said. Lentick nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes. There's that." He agreed. The metal recycling business was darned profitable. But, out of community spiritedness, he'd be willing to give it up. Which meant he'd sign it over to his wife's name.

Either way, stolen or repossessed, most car owners would launch into panic mode and start screaming, some among them promptly starting to hyper ventilate and others keeling over in a dead faint. A panic mode often accompanied by dropping their bags of recently purchased mall merchandise or even throwing them in the air out of frustration. A frustration which was often exacerbated by the various legally and/or illegally obtained mood altering substances ricocheting against the walls in the blood vessels of at least a simple majority of the newly carless shoppers. Which certainly got the attention of other passing shoppers, the whopping majority of whom averted their eyes and hotfooted it for their own vehicles.

One man even became suicidal when his old RAV 4 was stolen with his entire collection of classic Marvel comic books stored in a sealed box in the back, which was about all he had left of his memorabilia collection after his snitch biscuit of a roommate cleaned him out and skipped town. A second stolen car guy bitterly cursed his bad luck for not bringing his mother-in-law along this time and leaving her to wait in his car as he usually did. And another guy went ballistic when the Ford pickup he'd himself just stolen less than an hour earlier was ripped off when he went in the Tucson Mall to get a Sonoran hot dog with all the fixins' served with Mother Magda's Hellacious Salsa and Hernando's Old Fashioned Tortilla Chips. All on special at the mall food court for only $1.98. A meal which stuck like a lump in his stomach when he came out of the mall and saw the Ford Pickup he'd stolen had been stolen. He clenched his hands so tight his knuckles hurt and his face turned the color of an overripe orange.

"Goddamn car thieves!" He yelled out in the parking lot. "Goddamn them all to hell! You're not safe anywhere!" A 73 year old, 120 pound mall security officer, officially armed with a mobile radio and a can of pepper spray, supplemented by his own personal protections of prayer beads and a very loud air horn with a panic button, stopped the four wheeler he used to make his rounds and asked if he wanted him to call the Tucson police department. The police? Good God, no! Especially since the combination car thief/car theft victim had neglected to officially make his presence known to the United States government when he jumped the fence from Mexico six years earlier just ahead of the Federales chasing him after his thirteen year old girlfriend's father swore out a sexual assault complaint against him. The goddamn jerk father, who happened to be a relative on his mother's side, and who obviously was a narrow minded pendejo without a reasonable sense of perspective, refusing to accept his persuasive argument that consensual sex applied to thirteen year olds. His own mother, knowing the facts surrounding the case, quietly informed him to lay low in the US for a while. "Maybe for ten or twenty years," she said. "Or until everyone concerned is dead or otherwise incapacitated."

The man shook his head and held his shaking hands firmly to his side as he looked at the mall security man.

"I already called the police," he lied, moving his hand enough to pat his pocket as though he had a cell phone, which he didn't. "But thanks for asking." As soon as the security guard disappeared the guy sprinted out of the mall parking lot and grabbed a bus for South Tucson, all the while cursing the goddamn sneak thief who'd ripped off his stolen pickup. By the time he got to South Tucson he'd calmed down. He went into Dino Schultz' Mexican Cantina, where no one gave a rat's ass whether you were a legal resident or not so long as you had some bucks to buy booze. He sat down and ordered a cold Tecate. Ne modo, he thought. So he lost this one. There's always tomorrow.

But he'd still like to get his hands on the goddamn lowlife thief who'd stolen his stolen pickup.

By the time the owners realized their vehicles were missing–which might have been missing to them but weren't missing to the car thieves--the vehicles were already long gone on a beeline for the Mexican border with a regularity and punctuality as good as any commercial bus service then in service anywhere in southern Arizona or the better part of northern Sonora and maybe even rivaling upper Bavaria. Though he had a crew of car thieves working for him, Fico's cousin Alberto personally stole at least one car or truck a week, partly to keep himself, as he said "....grounded in the realities of the car stealing world." But mostly he just liked the kick of stealing a car and making it to Mexico uncaught.

Alberto was a loose cannon of a guy who would stand out in a roomful of loose cannon guys. He spent his free time in Army surplus camos sneaking around in the desert boondocks of Sonora hunting wild game with a crossbow and sometimes with a blow gun loaded with poison darts. Alberto had yet to bag anything, though he had put more than one crossbow bolt into a potentially aggressive nasty thorned velvet mesquite and once just missed a crippled three legged ground squirrel with a dart. And he wasn't just after four (or three) footed game. At least one of his drug smuggling enemies mysteriously perished from suspected poisoned darts but, there being no current forensic method for matching recovered poison darts with the barrel of Alberto's blow gun, he skated from prosecution. And it didn't hurt that the prosecutor was agreeable to certain cash gratuities, as well as being yet another cousin of both Alberto and Fico, the countryside generously populated with plenty of cousins in their prolific family. Which came in handy in all kinds of situations. Like potential criminal prosecutions.

And having yet another cousin who was the local coroner.

Despite his quirky personal habits, Alberto still managed to always have suitable vehicles available for his cousin, Fico. Alberto's favorite cousin. Which was saying something. Alberto had upwards of two dozen first cousins born in wedlock, plus more than a few born without the formality of a marriage ceremony. But, why quibble over the fine print? Like a marriage certificate. Wasn't it just a piece of paper? Family was family. And theirs was a family that believed in democratically contributing to the general gene pool wherever possible. "It is the least we can do," one cousin, a professor of bioethics at Sonora State University and a silent partner in a marijuana plantation in an isolated canyon in the Sierra Madres, remarked during a discussion on the family's procreative proclivities.

"The vibrant health of the human genome is far too important to allow mundane matters of ethics, morals or personal responsibility to interfere." Then, pausing to take a deep breath and another hit off the family bong, adding "there is a higher responsibility. To Homo sapiens itself and the future of the species." Then he took another hit from the bong to the nodded mumbled agreement of his red-eyed and somewhat woozy circle of relatives who waggled their heads in agreement, though most had no clue what the hell he'd just said. The guy was an OK dude, but his head was stuck somewhere on Pointy Head Mountain and they'd long ago learned the best way to deal with his mostly undecipherable pronouncements was just to waggle their heads in agreement and mumble something positive like a Spanish version of 'Yo, man. Right on, bro." Sometimes they'd try a half hearted high five, too, but often missed because of their somewhat blitzed condition. At least three separate times causing knockdown fights when a missed high five slapped someone else and that person took it the wrong way and replied with a high five congealed into a low five balled fist. Which was why all weapons were left at the door whenever there was a family gathering, the cache of pistols, knives, brass knuckles and blackjacks presided over by one of the no nonsense family matriarchs. One of whom armed herself with a riot shotgun loaded with shells filled with rock salt and capsicum pellets. A blast from one of which would even stop Big Sierra, the family's own resident incredible hulk, in his rather large tracks.

Cousin Fico's mechanics replaced the VIN plates on the load cars Alberto supplied with plates taken from junked vehicles of the same model and also bolted on license plates that wouldn't come up as stolen in the gringos' border computers. There were secret VINs hidden on most if not all vehicles, but usually just those gringos working for the NICB, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, working on the border and looking for stolen cars would know where to look for the secret vins. El Cientifico always chose, at least for marijuana loads, vehicles--cars, pickups, vans--that were old enough to not have a great deal of value and wouldn't grab the interest of the insurance industry's NICB stolen car specialists. Humorless spoilsport dudes that were known to sometimes hang out at the gringo ports of entry in Arizona. He figured anyone sharp enough to find a hidden VIN in one of Fico's load cars was also gonna find the dope secreted in the same car and chose his vehicles accordingly.

Not that sharpness was a common gringo border inspector characteristic. Not to Fico.

"You know how they choose their officers?" Fico said in Spanish to several of his smuggling world brethren over a working lunch at their local hangout, Maricella's Cantina y Mas. "They give the applicants a battery of personality and IQ tests. Only those," Fico continued with a slap ass sardonic grin, "who flunk and plummet to the bottom of the score list are considered suitable for employment." He paused to snicker, then added. "The flunkier the better." Fico's comments were received with snorting and chortling agreement by the seated smuggling brotherhood at Maricella's Cantina y Mas. A cantina that, though not publicly identified as such, had private rooms upstairs where some wonderfully entertaining desserts were dished out by Maricella's multi-purpose waitresses. Who, despite threats to whack off portions of their bodies, including heads, had recently voted by secret ballot to unionize. Said hostess solidarity, everyone agreed, a definite first in both Sonora and Baja California, although not in Mexico City itself, which had a more enlightened urbane social consciousness and allowed the hostesses to unionize--so long as the government got a percentage of the gross profits.

The CBP officers were a bunch of clueless klutzes in Fico's mind. Man or woman or both or neither. Bisexual, transsexual, asexual or unisexual or multisexual or extraterrestrial sexual. Gringo, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, African or None of the Above or Some of the Above or All of the Above. Ne modo. They were all stumblebutts who couldn't change a light bulb without step by step written directions or a how to video.

Or so Fico believed. This of course was a wildly prejudicial and biased viewpoint only somewhat based on actual experience. The fact was that most of the border inspectors were burned out from a combination of days full of repetitive tedium, long hours, dumb ass management practices and constant exposure to heat, car exhaust and a hostile and a paranoid expletive spewing traveling public. They worked such long hours and were away from home so much sometimes their own kids didn't recognize them. More than once a CBP officer's kid broke into a panic when the tired parent came in the door, the kid thinking it was a home invasion and screaming so loud it woke the neighbors and had them punching 911. After one especially harrowing close call by a shotgun wielding ten year old, all the CBP officers kept their private weapons securely locked away.

And that wasn't all. Besides being worn down from the long hours and tedium, the officers had diets heavy with fast foods that clogged the mind as well as the arteries. Yet, be they burn outs or hopeless dripweeds, the result was the same. The fact was that much of the time sizeable chunks of the border officers were not firing on all their inspectional cylinders and could have stood in line for a casting call for a Zombie movie and easily made the first cut.

But, as Fico's saintly mother Carmen so often said with her solemn big brown eyes and an expression as serious as one of the niche statues in the venerable Catholic church in his native Magdalena, "....miracles do happen, son. They really do." Though she neglected to mention the specific miracle she had in mind was when a bolt of lightning blitzed out of what everyone thought was a clear blue sky on the golf course one day and crisped her asshole husband into a carbonized human fritter and made her a rich widow. Since her departed husband was holding the flag on the cup of the seventh hole when he was frazzled, Carmen very privately referred to it "....as God making a hole in one. And an asshole, at that."

Like it or not, Fico had to begrudgingly admit it. So there were a few among the gringos who were damn near as good as Flaco, though Fico was of the opinion they probably were of Mexican ancestry and thus both smarter and more creative than the typical blockheaded gringo working the Mexican border. Fico knew there were usually none of the rare gringo hotshots at the Port of San Luis, so it was often his choice for the location to run a load car through the border. Another factor, of the directly salacious variety, was that his ex-wife, Xenia Ansemio, lived there with her new husband, a Mexican Federal Judicial policeman whose energies were devoted almost entirely to building his investment portfolio from various bribes, kickbacks and flat out extortions. Xenia, feeling bored and largely ignored, was more than willing to slip off to Magda's Second Home Motel and Travel Agency to grab a quick roll in the bed sheets with her muscular and sexually potent ex-husband. Her current husband being a nice enough guy but a total dud in the bedroom and whose nickname from his Army days translated from the Spanish roughly as 'short round' and, who, in Xenia's somewhat jaundiced opinion, deserved his very own chapter in a textbook on sexual dysfunction. With particular emphasis on foreplay, which in her clueless husband's mind was shooting a good golf game with his buddies before coming home to unceremoniously jump on her bones for a maximum of thirty-five seconds.

But the main factor in selecting San Luis to run load cars was that San Luis was snuggled close to the California border and not far from the densely packed humanity of the sprawling urban areas of southern California. A place where start up entrepreneurial capitalism flourished on many a street corner. A small percentage of it at least somewhat legal, but a much larger percentage of it directly of business interest to Fico. A place that Fico privately referred to as Sardine Land, the people packed into the Los Angeles basin as thickly as sardines in a can. Which was good, since overcrowding breeds stress which in turn breeds a desire to relieve the stress. Which was where Fico fit into the overall cosmic game plan. He fulfilled a valuable community service. Which is what he called his business. Stress Relief. Fico's Stress Relief. He liked the sound of that just as much as Don't Mess With Meth.

Besides which the goddamn perverted greedy bastard meth dealers were his main competitors and for sure deserved the express lane to Hell what with them biting into his consumer base--and in the process really messing up the lives of at least a hundred new poor souls a week in Greater Los Angles alone. In contrast Fico's dope smoking customers were pretty laid back and just hung out admiring whatever was conveniently nearby to admire and therefore didn't constitute much of an immediate threat to civil order. The meth bastards' wild assed customers however were more likely to hang with AK 47's and bad attitudes and were said to sometimes be seen just outside the fences at Los Angeles International Airport taking turns trying to shoot out the tires of landing 767's. Another confirmation, in Fico's mind, of his favorite slogan. Don't Mess With Meth.

Did the meth heads really shoot at the jets' tires landing on the runway? Or was it just another of Alberto's urban legends? Fico didn't know. But he did fastidiously avoid booking any flights landing at Los Angeles International Airport during his frequent business and pleasure trips. Dollywood his number one favorite place to recreate. Well, actually number two. Elmira's Palace of Delights in Acapulco took first place. And, from a variety of viewpoints, by a considerable margin.

The huge, densely packed and nicely stressed folk in the urban areas were huge markets for his marijuana, the intrepid hordes of dope smokers in southern California consuming almost the entire output of the state of Sonora in a single summer. Fico's whacky cousin Alberto claimed that he'd seen on the internet that people in the open gondolas of low flying hot air balloons on calm days got stoned just from breathing the marijuana smoke smog that hung over Los Angeles. Causing more than one harrowing accident when a balloon collided with a church steeple or a cell phone tower while the balloon pilot's gaze was riveted on the fascinating iridescent colors of the gas bag overhead or the intricate weave pattern on his cargo shorts. Or, somewhat less frequently, on the absolutely goddamn delicious gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich on day old white bread he'd brought along as a snack.

"That sounds far fetched to me," Fico said in Spanish to his cousin, Alberto. Fico ever the skeptic with an analytical mind. "I don't think it is physically possible in such a large volume of air for marijuana smoke to reach that kind of density." Then, pausing to remember when as a teenager he'd watched, hidden, as the Customs incinerator in Nogales burned a ton of marijuana. He was downwind from the burn and only got a slight buzz and one hell of a headache. "No, Alberto," Fico said. "I just don't think it is possible."

### Chapter 6

### Alberto

Alberto, being a curious type, decided he'd find out for himself. Yep. That was it. He'd find out whether or not this was another of those specious urban rumors that popped up in his emails on his smart phone and his tablet and on his home laptop all the time. Phony email rumors were one of Alberto's pet peeves. Had been ever since he'd bought an online ticket to a nude concert by Angelina Jolie only to find out it was a naked Basset Hound named Angelina Jolie who howled whenever her owner imitated a hissing cat sound.

Alberto, who like his cousin Fico held dual citizenship in Mexico and the United States and spoke fluent colloquial English as well as Spanish, called up his lady friend of the moment, a recent vintage Chinese immigrant named Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang.

"Hey, Ellie," he said. "You up for an adventure? Wanna go to LA?" Did she? An adventure? Whoeeiiee, buddy! Yes. Yes. Yes! Eloise's grandparents and parents were backup acrobats with the Chinese National Circus, as well as being certified emergency medics for the circus' sword swallowers, fire eaters and resident bunch of lunatic 'who, me, use a net?' aerialists. In addition holding down the absolutely critical role as the Circus' animal dung disposal specialists. Coming from such an adventurous circus family, Eloise was always up for an adventure of just about any kind. As a tween she was already bungee jumping off the brand new and hopefully reasonably well engineered bridge railings over the Yangtze--the Chang Jiang--and had once bounced on a pogo stick a full two miles on top of the Great Wall of China. Her goal was to do at least ten miles and thereby break the all-China Great Wall pogo sticking record.

But the authorities in China were not known for having a riotous sense of humor or to wink and smile and look the other way at a youthful prank. An overworked dyspeptic funeral director with a bad case of hemorrhoids and a pregnant mistress threatening a law suit was a barrelful of fun next to these guys. They looked with a dim eye indeed on the parade of youthful pogo stickers constantly trying to beat the national Great Wall pogo stick record of 8.5 miles. The Venerable Mao himself might have rolled over in his grave over that one. You're gonna do what on the sacred Great Wall? The current record holder disappeared immediately after reaching his goal and not been heard from since. Though it was rumored that he fled to Bangladesh where he lived in self imposed seclusion in disgrace over his shameful act.

A rumor started, some Chinese skeptics sourly noted, by the Chinese government itself after a formal note of protest was served on the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations by the WPSS--World Pogo Sticking Society--over the record holder's mysterious and very suspicious disappearance. A suspicion given some weight considering over the years enough Chinese to populate Denver, Salt Lake City, Des Moines and most of lower Manhattan disappeared after displeasing the Communist government in one way or another. Including the Chairman's head chef when he got wrapped up watching a Chinese soap opera and burned the Chairman's favorite evening meal of caramelized pork cutlets. Which came out looking like shriveled pork cutlet cinders. The chef forthwith was relocated to a slammer in an undisclosed location for a duration of two lifetimes. To be served consecutively.

This stick in the mud anti-pogosticking attitude extended to the Great Wall's security guards, the job qualifications for which included a total lack of a sense of whimsy and, some said, whose IQ's could be tallied solely one time through on your fingers and toes, with the occasional addition of a nose or ear. A gang of those same heavily muscled and heavily under IQ-ed scowling security guards swarmed over Eloise and forthwith unpogosticked her. Had not the local Communist party secretary been a fan of her family's Chinese National Circus--he especially liked the skimpy outfits on the aerialists and openly admired Eloise's comely athletic figure and "finely sculptured posterior"--she might have been in big trouble. As it was they confiscated her pogo stick, broke it into several pogo stick pieces before her startled eyes, and banned her from the Great Wall for the next five years and all contact with the World Pogo Sticking Society.

Not long after that Eloise's family got an offer from the Greenberg Brothers Traveling All Asian American circus and relocated to the fabled land where every single Chinese manufacturer down to the guy making 'absolutely genuine' Navajo pottery in his back yard kiln in Shanghai knew the world phenomenon known as Walmart was born. Their first stop in America of course Bentonville, Arkansas, the fabled birth place of Walmart, where they went on a company tour and look lots of pictures, then stopped for lunch at another fabled American icon, McDonald's. Which, however, somewhat to their disappointment, had no noodles or rice or even a sandwich and egg flower soup combo on the lunch menu. Derush Patel, the manager, apologized profusely for the cultural oversight and promised to rectify it. A promise that vanished as soon as the Chang family exited the McDonald's parking lot in their rented Dodge mini-van.

"Damn foreigners," Derush muttered to his coworker LaShawna Mukuk, as they left. "This is America, not Japan."

"They're from China, D-man. Not Japan." Derush shrugged.

"Still foreigners," he said in sour voice. "Damn foreign immigrants." LaShawna gave him a sharp look, knowing that Derush was himself from the fetid steam bath city formerly known to outsiders under the delusive seemingly harmless name of Calcutta.

"So what about you then, D-man? You're an immigrant, too." Derush shot her a contemptuous look.

"That's different," he snapped at her. "India was part of the British Empire and China wasn't." Another sharp glance from him. LaShawna was confused.

"What? What does that mean?" She said. Derush threw a look at LaShawna as though she'd just taken a header off the dumb truck. At least once. Maybe twice.

"What did you do in school, girl? Didn't you listen in history class? Too busy dreaming about all the cool MTV adventures to pay attention? America was once part of the British Empire. A pause. "And so was India." Then, triumphantly, and with finality.

"That makes us family."

LaSwawna shrugged her shoulders in hopeless exasperation and went back to making hamburger patties, giving serious thought to transferring to the afternoon shift where her ex-boyfriend Burgwell 'Flip Dat Burger' Schwanz was the manager.

In Los Angeles, wanting to fit in her adopted homeland, Eloise eventually changed her name from Chai Le Chang to Eloise Chang. Her first choice of Michaela Jackson Chang reluctantly discarded after not meeting with much approval. Especially with the family of her new African-American circus elephant handler friend, Sh'lay Zulu Mombasa Smith, who thought she was being a tasteless Chinese smart ass and threatened to barbeque her in the back yard.

So. Off to Los Angeles went Alberto and Eloise in the stolen Ford sedan with phony plates Pablo 'Flaco' Bernal fixed up for them. A good job, too, even if it was on short notice, Pablo after all a seasoned pro at fixing up stolen cars for various smuggling and non-smuggling uses. After hitting the outskirts of Los Angeles in their fixed up stolen Ford with the phony plates Alberto and Eloise drove through bumper to bumper traffic for three solid hours at 85 miles an hour before they got close to downtown and stopped for the night at the Corte de la Reya Muerta Traveler's Motel. Where they had free internet, hot tubs, eleven pay for view porn channels on the motel's room TV's and a 24 hour wi-fi cafe', convenience store and bowling alley. After a good night's sleep following a long soak in a hot tub topped off by a short burst of sexual gymnastics--which would have been totally unnoticed had it not begun in the public hot tub and caused no little commotion among a vacationing Mormon family from Utah, they awoke the next morning, took one look at the free continental breakfast and went across the street to Tia Berta's Veggan Pancake House. They then came back to their room and looked up balloon rentals in the two foot thick Greater Los Angeles phone book.

"Hey," Alberto said, pointing at one of the listings under the balloon rentals heading. "Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures. Oh-ho! I like that! Let's give 'em a try." Meanwhile, as Alberto was leafing through the phone book, techie Eloise pulled out her mobile and pulled up the link to Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures, showing it to Alberto. He pulled out his own mobile, connected with Eloise's link and started to punch the balloon business' phone number up and in milliseconds an app he'd never heard of was downloading onto his phone. Having experienced lightning quick unwanted apps and even lightning quicker charges for them on the credit card he'd used to buy the mobile, Alberto shut the phone off in a hurry. Quickly but also carefully, having already trashed two earlier phones in his frustration at the mobiles' cantankerous independent ways. After three more app ambushed tries he eventually got the entire phone number in and then began the distinct ring Alberto had selected from several thousand possible choices. After some rumination he'd decided on a ring that sounded close to what he called the throaty twang his crossbow made when he let loose a bolt. Never mind that it invariably missed whatever he was crossbow bolting at, which was, in Alberto's own indignant words, "....totally freakin' irrelevant to the great sound of the ring."

A voice with some kind of thick eastern European accent answered the throaty twang ring.

"Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures and Serbian American Benevolent Society," the voice with the thick eastern European accent, which apparently was Serbian, said.

"Got a balloon available today?" Alberto said, adding. "Be it piloted by a benevolent Serbian or not."

"You betcha," the voice answered after a short pause considering the Serbian pilot remark, and no longer sounding quite as eastern European. "Come on down."

So they did. Went on down. Alberto and Eloise hopped in their stolen Ford and headed over to the address in the phone book. The GPS app on Alberto's mobile actually worked this time and they found the place with just one wrong turn. Even if it did cause some momentary excitement when they realized they were going west on an one way east bound street filled with trucks driven by foul tempered guys with bad hangovers who let loose obscene oaths in at least half a dozen different languages at them as they careened by. Narrowly missing being quashed by a close encounter with a furniture truck carrying a full load of bedroom sets for the grand opening of Candi Milosvic's Deep Discount Sleep Center and Mattress Recyclers business.

The address turned out to be in a seedy area of run down warehouses and other buildings. A junk yard that, true to its name, was crammed full of junk. Two auto body shops where cars entered intact but left in pieces. Three boarded up homeless missions. And a bunch of beverage distributorships with a variety of signs on the buildings and along the street. Eloise stared at them uneasily.

"Did you see that sign?" Eloise said. Do Not Enter After Dark. What do that means?" Then she saw another sign. Danger. 24 Hour Attack Dog. And another. Our Surveillance Cameras Are Watching YOU. Yet another. Premises Booby Trapped After Business Hours. Eloise's grasp of the meandering colloquialisms of the English language wasn't so hot, but she got the gist of it soon enough.

"Hey! Turn around, Let's go to Chinatown," she said, grabbing Alberto's arm. "You know. Kick it back. Eat shrimp. Egg flower soup. Which I know for fact is not on the menu at that McDonald's place in Bentonville, Arkansas. We could watch a Chinese language flick. Or mebbe even smoke a lil' opium. Which is flying, too"--an elbow in his side and a knowing wink at Albert--"if not the hot air ballooning flying kind."

"It's not dark," Alberto answered, mildly taken aback. "It's not even 10:00 in the morning yet. The day is just beginning. Plenty of time." He sounded positive, but inside he wasn't so sure. Since they'd driven into the warehouse district the distinctive colorful and sometimes even artistic tagging of rundown areas had almost disappeared. If even the streetwise gang taggers were afraid to come into this place, he was thinking, maybe it really wasn't such a great neighborhood to be wandering around in. And if there was one thing Alberto knew about, it was bad neighborhoods. His family was one of the biggest slum landlords--they preferred to call it affordable housing for the disadvantaged--in the entire state of Sonora, owning several run down and stay-indoors-at-night neighborhoods in the state capitol of Hermosillo where eviction notices were best delivered by guys with bullet proof vests driving armor plated vehicles. He was about to take up Eloise's offer to go to Chinatown when he caught sight of the address they were looking for. A lumpish metal building of no particular distinction with a red, white and blue sign over a big cargo door.

Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures and Serbian-American Benevolent Association, it announced. So. That was it.

They had arrived.

There was an entrance next to the hulking cargo door. Alberto tried the handle. It was open. As the door opened a guy dressed all in black and with long black hair braided on both sides of his head stood behind a counter a few feet away. He was tall, maybe six two, with Mediterranean olive skin and a Roman nose. He looked more like Fico than Alberto did, Fico also having the Mediterranean olive skin and a (non)Roman nose that Fico declaimed "came straight from Aztec royalty." Alberto, though also tall and thin, had the light complexion of the wandering Swede in their recent family genome. He towered over Eloise who, albeit compactly (and pleasingly) built, was nearly a foot shorter and had considerably more than the usual complement of the Chinese epicanthic fold. When she squinted she damn near blinded herself, which had caused her to panic when, as a three year old, she took her first squint and thought she'd gone blind. Which occasioned considerable chaos in the family home at the time.

Anyhow, as Alberto opened the door into the Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures and Serbian-American Benevolent Association building, the guy dressed all in black reached under the counter and grabbed a Remington pump action short barreled--but still, he claimed, just within the legal minimum--shotgun and was about to pull it out. But he relaxed his grip on the Remington when he saw Alberto and Eloise come through the door.

"This Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures?" Alberto asked. The guy froze, then looked from one side to the other, even turning to look behind him and up at the ceiling and down at the floor before returning his gaze to Alberto and Eloise.

"Sure looks like it to me," he said in a tone that Alberto suspected might be a touch on the smart ass side. "So what can I do for you folks, this fine Los Angeles morning where you can actually see three miles in any direction through the smog and haze and marijuana smoke." Alberto's eyes lit up like the display on a Phoenix freeway digital billboard. Marijuana smoke. This must be the place! The words tumbled out of Alberto's mouth. The urban rumor. Marijuana smoke. The haze. Stoned. Put it to the test.

"You got it," the dressed in black guy, whose name, at least for Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventure purposes, was Art Smudge, said. "You be in the right place, all right, boy-o." A short pause. "And girl-o, too."

"What's a girl-o," Eloise snapped suspiciously, thinking girl-o sounded way too much like girl-ho, which really would have got her Chinese American recent immigrant blood boiling. If she'd had a pogo stick handy she might have relocated it right then and there into a convenient posterior opening on Art Smudge's dressed in black person.

"Just a Serbian way of saying girl," Alberto chimed in, noticing the figurative steam rising off his girlfriend's forehead. That's all."

"What's with Serbian?" Art Smudge shot back. "I'm an American. One hundred percent red blooded native born American. And sure as hell no Serbian. I was born in Thornbush, Oklahoma, the site of eighty-seven historically verified tornados going back to the late 19th Century. Which, now that I think about it, has a lot to do with why I'm in Los Angeles instead of there. Though I could have stayed in Thornbush, what with there being lots of economic opportunities in the roofing replacement and debris removal business. At least during tornado season." He paused, remembering.

"Which did seem to linger on for a good part of the year, now that I think about that, too. Made it difficult to plan picnics and outdoor barbecues. On the positive side, Thornbush holds the world record for the farthest softball ever batted when a tornado hit just when Derwood McNulty, the clean up batter on the Thornbush Twisters, whacked a softball and sent it all the way to neighboring Locoweed County. 17.4 miles, it was. Unfortunately for Derwood, the tornado also picked him up and sent him on the way to Locoweed County, too. But, fortunately--more or less--for Derwood, he didn't follow the softball all the 17.4 miles to Locoweed County. A cottonwood tree on the edge of the ball field intercepted him and detoured him to the Thornbush Regional Hospital Emergency Room instead. Even that wasn't all bad. Derwood hit it off with Linda Sue Menoplast, the EMT who took him to the hospital, and they eventually walked the aisle to matrimony." Art Smudge tapped his chest proudly. "I was best man." Adding. "It was one hell of a wedding party." A frown. "Until another tornado hit and the bridal couple's car was jerked out of the parking lot and plunked top down into Spotted Skunk Creek." A shrug. "About that time I started to seriously consider moving to somewhere less tornado prone." About this time both Alberto and Eloise had absolutely no doubt that this Art Smudge guy liked to talk.

"So where," Alberto retorted in a miffed and obviously impatient tone, "does the Serbian American Benevolent Society come in that you mentioned on the phone?" Art Smudge shrugged.

"Oh, that's just so we can keep our tax exempt charity status with the IRS. "Worked good so far," he said.

"And how long be that?" Said the suspicious and borderline paranoid minded Eloise, who after all was raised in a Communist police state where saying the wrong thing about the local party boss to your hair stylist could land you in a hard labor prison somewhere in the boondocks of the Tibetan Plateau earning two cents an hour making Nike knockoffs for the lucrative export market managed by somewhat flexible Chinese Communist officials with bulging bank accounts.

"Just under three months," Art Smudge replied without so much as a blink of an eye.

This train of conversation seemed to Alberto to be going down a dead end track, so he got back on the right track. Alberto track, that is.

"You up for the balloon ride this morning, Art," he said. "We pay cash and no questions asked."

"Do you have balloon insurance?" Art said.

"Balloon insurance?" Alberto and Eloise said in unison. Art broke out into a strange chuckle, sounding something like a motorbike with a piston about to go to dead piston land.

"Just funnin' you folks," Art replied through his strange cracked piston chuckle. "If this balloon goes down like the others then insurance won't be doing any of us any good." Eloise's Chinese immigrant facial color, which she liked to refer as Beijing Peach, and Alberto's already somewhat atypically pale Mexican American face both turned as white as an Inuit's abdomen in mid-winter. But before they could say anything, Art Smudge's dying motorbike chuckle started up again. This time he slapped his sides in mid-chuckle.

"Just more funnin', folks," he said. "I'm a funnin' kind of guy. Makes the day go quicker." Then a sudden serious look. "It can get kind of lonely here. We don't get many customers. The neighborhood kinda scares them off." A pause. "That, and my pet Siberian Tiger, Putin." He wheeled about and opened a door behind him, leaning inside.

"Here Putin! Come on, girl. We got company. It's lunch time."

"You're not gonna get us this time," Alberto spit out, more than a touch riled at being the butt of Art Smudge's strange sense of humor. "You sure as hell don't have a pet tiger!"

Just then the roar of a tiger bellowed out from the back room and both Eloise and Alberto were teetering on the knife edge of all their bodily fluids making emergency exits through their various corporeal orifices. Eloise was thinking China wasn't such a bad place after all and trying to will herself back to Tommy Wang's Noodle Inn in Hong Kong, where she met a guy who looked just like Bruce Lee and had the moves to prove it. Ooohee, now that was a time.

But then Art Smudge's gurgling dying piston chuckle morphed into a guffawing cackle that would have won first place hands down in an all Kenya hyena howling contest. As Alberto and Eloise's faces flushed into a not so friendly crimson, Art finally calmed down enough to point to where he had a button underneath the store counter.

"My idea of an emergency response button. In case we get robbed or some other flupperwitch miscreant pops in with mayhem in mind. Like that bunch of wannabe taggers who snuck into the neighborhood and were gonna tag my building. I hit the Putin the Tiger button and you shoulda seen them run. They coulda qualified for the Olympic trials. And without the use of performance enhancing drugs. Poof! They were gone." While Alberto and Eloise were still on the purplish-faced verge of imploding, Art deftly segued away from Putin the Tiger.

"And," he said. "Speaking of gone. How about getting down to our Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures business?"

About this time Alberto was wondering how difficult it was to pilot a balloon. The rest of the thought having to do with throwing smart ass Art Smudge head first out of the airborne balloon and having to land the damn thing without Smudge. Who by then would be splattered into Smudge smudges on a concrete street, or, even better, impaled on an iron-tipped picket fence as a richly deserved Smudge shish kabob. Then Alberto's fantasy was interrupted when into his mind popped the memory of his own most tasteless prank. Alberto's memory having an irritating habit of pulling stuff out of his mental storage lockers that had about as much relevance to whatever the current occasion was as a pepperoni pizza had to a dead carp.

The prank.

When he was a mischievous and rebellious and admittedly jerky teenager he once pulled what he thought was a really clever prank on his deeply conservative staunch mass-every-single-day Catholic mother. Alberto walked dejectedly into the kitchen alcove where his mother was reading her horoscope in the morning paper and sipping on her Morning Tonic--a mixture of coffee, mescal and a drop or two of Tabasco sauce, with a touch of cream and a teaspoon of grainy unrefined sugar.

"Mom," Alberto said as he shuffled hangdog into the room. "There's something I need to tell you." Alberto's mother, Guadalupe Maria Gonsalves y Garcia Heredia de Saint Joan 'd Arc, looked with no little pique up from the newspaper. But also with curiosity, since it was well understood in her household that she did not like being interrupted when she was reading her horoscope, knowing as she did that it was very bad luck to be interrupted when reading one's horoscope. A fact she had learned from reading a previous horoscope. Something had surely motivated the boy to move him to such an intrepid interruption of her horoscope, which she always read every morning after coming home from the 8:00 early mass at the nearby Our Lady of Perpetual Contrition Catholic Church. Officiated, as usual, by Padre Eusebio Bonjovi, a man, Guadalupe was convinced, who could put an entire congregation to sleep in less than ten minutes. And who was also responsible, at least in Guadalupe's mind, for the recent surge in converts to the upstart Pentecostal Church just down the road, which, no surprise to Guadalupe, was on the edge of the town's red light district.

Pagans, all of them. She muttered to anyone who would listen. Pagans and whores.

"Mom," Alberto said, "you remember that party you had for Mayor Albedes a few weeks ago? Guadalupe nodded, still curious at what Alberto was up to. "Well, Mom," my sister Alejandra and I got our hands on a bottle of tequila from the party." Guadalupe now took her eyes off both her horoscope and, with somewhat more difficulty, put down her cup of Morning Tonic to stare with growing concern at Alberto.

"Mom," Alberto continued. "Alejandra and I took the tequila down to the basement and drank almost the entire bottle." He paused and threw a look of near desperation at his now bolt upright mother. "Mom, we got drunk. Real drunk."

"Alberto!" Guadalupe spit out. "How could you? We are not low class drudges. Like those borachos and whores in the Pentacostal Church down the street. Why....." Alberto held out his hands in a supplicating gesture and did what usually was just about unthinkable and could instantly bring the Wrath of Mom upon him. He interrupted her.

"Mom. Please. Listen." Guadalupe held her tongue. But her eyes were like brown coals. Glowing brown coals. "That wasn't all. Alejandra and I....well....we were drunk.....and, Mom, we had sex." The glowing brown coals grew in enough intensity to set the lower slopes of the Sierra Madres on fire.

"You.....you....you....wha..." Alberto patted the air before his mother, as though that would calm her. He might as well have tried to wrestle a mountain gorilla or keep a campaigning politician quiet.

"Mom!" Alberto interjected. "Not only that. Alejandra got pregnant." Guadalupe's face took on the burnt orange glow of the lower slopes of the Sierra Madres she had set on fire. Alberto actually thought her head was going to explode and splatter him with chunks of Mom. He almost didn't complete his prank. Almost.

"So we got her an abortion."

A full fledged drama worthy of a popular Mexican cable TV soap opera immediately followed with the inevitability of Asteroid X heading dead center for the Caribbean basin in a Hollywood disaster epic. The first act being his mother promptly relocating to the emergency room at Our Sisters Of Armageddon Catholic Hospital, where the word abortion was banned from the lips of all staff members on pain of ex-communication and possibly something considerably worse up to and including the permanent removal of one's errant naughty bits. The end result of which was that Alberto got a painful lesson in a healthy sense of perspective and was thinking maybe he should cut Art Smudge some slack. He might not be such a bad guy after all. Look at him. Alberto. After the bruises and broken bones all healed and he came out of hiding and left his rebellious teenage years behind, he hadn't turned out so bad. Despite what his mother might say. He put the thought of booting Art Smudge out of the balloon to the edge of his mind. But still on the sidelines. Just in case.

Kind of like a back up quarterback.

A few minutes later they were all loaded up into Art's four wheel drive Land Rover. A strange lumpy guy named Fred, who looked like his nose had been a target of opportunity in more than a few barroom fights, showed up out of somewhere in the bowels of Art Smudge's Gone With the Wind Balloon Adventures back rooms and climbed behind the driver's wheel in the Land Rover. Art's hot air balloon was already loaded on a sturdy trailer the Rover pulled as they drove off. Fred drove them to an open area in Los Hambrientos State Park not too far from the ocean. They all clambered out of the Land Rover and Art and Fred set to inflating the balloon with the equipment they carried in the trailer. In a few minutes the balloon started to take shape. It was silky black, close to the color of Art Smudge's hair and clothing. And as it filled out they were gradually able to make out the name painted on the balloon. Lady Satan.

"Like the name?" Art said. "Made it up myself." Alberto was thinking this was no great surprise but kept his mouth shut. A few more minutes and the balloon was inflated and ready to go. Before they lifted off Art whispered something to Smashnose Fred about picking them up later. Fred was already driving away with the Land Rover and trailer as Lady Satan ascended into the not so clear Greater Los Angeles air.

Alberto gave Art Smudge a bunch of bucks to bend the air traffic rules that Art insisted were very strict and could jeopardize his provisional balloon pilot license. Art already was on balloon license probation for flying over the Los Angeles Coliseum during a University of Southern California game against the visiting Oklahoma State football team. Art was a native of Oklahoma and a long time fan of the Oklahoma State Cowboys football team. Where his cousin Thetus LeRoy Smudge once quarterbacked Oklahoma State to the only winless season in its entire history, but nevertheless remained a Smudge family hero, Thetus LeRoy being the only Smudge ever to go to college, much less graduate. Which he did, mostly because the University wanted to get rid of his winless ass once and for all.

Balloon mooning the Coliseum might not have been such a big deal had Art not brought along a bunch of bags of very fresh cow manure, surreptitiously obtained that very morning from Dwight and Daisy DeWit's Organic Dairy, which he forthwith dropped on the University of Southern California offensive line during a promising progression of downs towards the Oklahoma State goal line. This did tend to disrupt Southern Cal's momentum, as well as shattering the psychological equilibrium of at least twenty of the Southern Cal team's fans, members of the Brotherly Love street gang, who pulled out their hidden handguns and started blasting away at Art's balloon.

Art's body was thankfully free of any extra holes but the balloon's gas bag wasn't. Lady Satan was punctured by a bunch of bullet holes. Art just managed to clear the Coliseum's walls and guide the balloon into a crash landing in the Coliseum's parking lot. The balloon's gondola thunked into Guido Bango's Real Deal Foot Long Hot Dog stand, scaring the hell out of him and his wife, Timeria, and their teenaged son, Gruelsip. The Bango family at first thought their bitter hot dog stand rivals, Junipero Silva's Foot And A Half Long Hot Dogs, had gotten so vicious that the jerk Silva was trying to blow up Bango's Real Deal Hot Dog stand. Guido Bango grabbed a pair of heavy duty hot dog tongs and, blood in his eyes, went looking for that bastard Silva. Silva, meanwhile, having seen the balloon gondola blast into Bango's hot dog stand, was doubled over in laughter. Which abruptly ended when Bango leaped into view wildly waving his industrial size set of hot dog tongs. Hot dog rivalries among the most bitter in the entire football vending world, Silva blanched, then steeled himself as he grabbed his own pair of heavy duty hot dog tong and braced to do hot dog battle.

The gas bag itself collapsed over Tommy JimBob's Kettle Korn stand. The lead vendor on duty at that moment, Vanilla Mae Septum, a person as unflappable as the marble folds of Abraham Lincoln's coat on his seated statue on the Capitol Mall, not failing to notice that everything had turned completely pitch black, and not knowing it was from the enshrouding gas bag, turned to her coworker Belinda Mohammed, and said.

"Must be an unscheduled eclipse of the sun, Bellie. Not to worry. Trust me. The sun will return." Belinda, however, was at that moment on her knees earnestly declaring she was far too young to make the Transition and that she truly believed a blow job was not really sex and asked the God of her understanding for forgiveness as well as another fifty or sixty or maybe seventy more years on Earth.

The police didn't take long to show up and Art had some explaining to do. Plenty of explaining. Oh-oh. He knew he was in trouble when he saw one of the cops had what looked like fresh manure on his hat and shoulders. Oops, Art thought. Must have missed the linebacker and hit this cop instead. Bad move, Art. He looked at the scowling face of the cop. Real bad, Art. Real, real bad move. Art tried to claim that the bags of fresh cow manure were really just ballast for his balloon and a peculiar temperature inversion had settled over the Coliseum just as he was descending and he had to toss our his ballast bags to keep from crashing into the stands and possibly seriously injuring dozens of innocent Southern Cal fans. Actually, Art told the policeman with the cow shit on his hat and the scowl on his face, that what he did was a heroic act.

Fortunately for Art the presiding judge where his case was tried was a graduate of Oklahoma State. He got off with a fine, a stern warning and a provisional sticker pasted on his balloon pilot license. And it was of no little direct relevance that Southern Cal lost its momentum after the ballast barrage and Oklahoma State went on to win the game, earning the judge a cool five hundred bucks on a bet with his handball partner, an arrogant juvenile court judge who was a Southern Cal grad with an irritating chauvinistic Southern Cal grad attitude. Art's judge was so charged with winning the bet that he sent Art a Christmas card that year. Though, just to play it safe and not his jeopardize his lifetime sinecure judgeship, he did it anonymously, signing it as "Oklahoma State Rules!"

That was then. This was now. And once in the air, Alberto directed Art to take the hot air balloon over the thickly packed residential areas of Los Angeles and fly directly through the grayish pall that hung over the town and that supposedly was heavily laced with marijuana smoke. Hot air balloons however do not respond to commands from their pilots any more than the average spoiled rotten pet cat does to its frustrated owner. Hot air balloons float merrily along according to the prevailing winds. And the prevailing winds this day were countervailing. Lady Satan got nowhere near the sprawling residential areas of Los Angeles and forthwith rode the prevailing winds in the direction of the setting sun. Which Alberto knew for a fact was to the west, though he wasn't paying much attention to direction and was busy keeping a careful eye out for low flying planes and flocks of birds. Not to mention the ultra lights which his brother-in-law Meninges Scolio-Sosa used to sneak hundred kilo loads of marijuana over the border from Tijuana into southern California. Too close encounters with any of which might seriously interfere with the air worthiness of Lady Satan, which in turn could also seriously interfere with Alberto's air worthiness and therefore his general health. Alberto being of the firm opinion that falls from a considerable height were not likely to have a positive impact on one's well being.

"Look, Berto," Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang said, pointing down. "Isn't that be a whale?" Alberto, sometimes known to both his friends and enemies as Berto, at first didn't fathom what Eloise said, the combination of her accent and peculiar sentences obfuscating her meaning. Besides, while searching the skies for menacing flocks of birds and airplanes and cousin Meninges' ultra lights his mind had floated off into one of his frequent day dream fantasies. In this one he was running for the governorship of the state of Sonora in a neck and neck race with his long time personal nemesis and former bridge partner, a Mexican charismatic and extremely wealthy televangelist named Carlos Smidtler, who promised to rid Sonora of the predatory social plague of casino gambling and also of non-organically grown tomatoes and other dangerously unhealthy winter vegetables.

Berto was just about to vigorously defend the Sonora tomato growing industry, his family not so coincidentally one of the major growers, and give a historic eloquent rebuttal to Smidtler at a rally in the swank country club, casino and red light district of Hermosillo where most of the politicians and other influential people were usually to be found. Then he heard Eloise. He blinked. "What? You saw what?" Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang held her arm over the edge of the gondola and pointed down. "It be a whale." She waggled her downward pointing arm. "Down there." Still not quite registering what she was saying, Berto looked over the edge of the gondola. He nodded.

"Yes, Chinga, that does appear to be a whale, all right."

"That's Chang, burphead. Not Chinga!" A hot eyed Eloise snapped back. But by then Berto's mind had moved elsewhere. Elsewhere in this case being straight down. His eyes bugged wide and he wildly pointed his arm down, too.

"A whale! Whales live in the ocean. Not in LA. Not even Hollywood. Good God! We're over the ocean!" He turned to Art Smudge, who was humming a heavy metal tune from the good ol' days and dreamily looking at the fascinating cloud formations which reminded him of the Sistine Chapel, which was kind of strange since Art had never seen the Sistine chapel either in photographs or in person. No matter. Art had added a certain favorite chemical additive to his Diet Pepsi to enhance the ballooning experience. Which it was in the process of doing, Sistine Chapel wise.

"Not to worry, Burpo," he said. "Lady Satan and Art Smudge can handle anything that comes along." Berto didn't even take offense at being called Burpo. It was probably unintentional, Art Smudge a laid back guy who seemed to be off in some alternative reality at the moment. Anyhow, Berto was much more stuck on the fact that there were whales and other fishy creatures under Lady Satan and not freeways or an endless horizon of subdivisions and dollar stores. Bad enough. Worse. They were floating west. Towards the open ocean. Ay Dios mio! The open ocean! Berto saw a small ship in the ocean below. He leaned over the edge of the gondola, as far as he dared, and began to yell.

Help! Help! We're being abducted by Lady Satan! Call 911!

A couple of crewmen on the deck of the ship heard Berto yelling, Lady Satan only a hundred feet or so above the ocean. One of them looked up and slowly shook his head.

"Abducted by Lady Satan? Wow! Bad drugs, man," he said. "Bad drugs." The other crewman nodded thoughtfully, staring at Lady Satan above.

"Yeah. Or bath salts. Or salvia. Or he licked too many spade foot toads. Or maybe he was chomping on some deadly nightshade. Which is rarely a good idea. Deadly nightshade is highly unpredictable in its potency even if it is free for the picking. Personally, I'm staying with alcohol and an occasional Oxy. I'm done with all that other stuff. Done. Over. Finito. 100%. I'll never rob another pharmacy again. Except maybe in the direst of emergencies." The other crewman nodded thoughtfully.

"Good choice, man. Stay clean. Darn good choice." He pointed up at Lady Satan where they could both see Berto leaning over the gondola's edge yelling. "There's an example of what can happen." He turned to look at the other crewman. "I'm trying to lead a heart healthy life, you know. I'm sticking with free range chicken, grilled wild salmon, a glass of red wine a day and my medical marijuana prescription." A pause, then he added.

"Though Big Macs and Whoppers are OK on special occasions–like when I pick up my medical marijuana prescription."

As Lady Satan floated away from the ship below, Berto fell to his knees in the gondola and began to moan. "We're going to end up in China. I'm sure of it. And no passport! No passport! The goddamn commies will throw me in jail along with a bunch of pickpockets and malcontents, Falun Gong troublemakers and tattooed punks and international businessmen who refused to pay bribes. We might never come out." Eloise Chang was grinning. Berto saw her grin. "What the hell are you grinning at? We're in big trouble."

"Maybe you are Mexican boy guy. Not me. Didn't you notice the last name? Chang? Sound like Mexican name to you? I tell the Chinese I am patriot who catches Mexican spy and am turning him under to the proper authorities." Eloise, who, besides being an accomplished pogo sticker, had a well honed mischievous side, as well as an imperfect grasp of American English, especially slang, stopped and gave Berto a veiled look that came close to puckering his anus. "They do some real nasties to spies." Berto was about to say something when the gondola smacked into something hard and stopped cold, rocking gently back and forth.

"My God!" Berto yelled out. "We've crashed into the ocean. And I can't swim. I'm going to drown. Oh, how I wish I'd paid more attention at catechism. Or at least taken swimming lessons. I......" Then he stopped. Something strange was going on. Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang and Art Smudge were laughing so hard they almost fell out of the gondola. The gas bag overhead was slowly deflating. Berto stood up and looked around. Either the ocean had started growing trees and brushy hilltops or else they weren't on the ocean. A freckle faced kid passing by on a bicycle confirmed it. They weren't in the ocean. They were on land. Land surrounded by water. An island. Art Smudge reached over and slapped Berto on the shoulder.

"Welcome to Santa Maria Island," he said jovially. "I get blown off course here at least once a month." Just then the freckle faced kid on the bicycle got off his bike and walked up to the edge of the gondola.

"Hey, Art," the kid said. "See you're back again. Whasup, man?" Then the kid turned and looked hopefully at Art's passengers. First at Alberto, then settling his gaze on Eloise.

"You wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies," the kid said. "I have some peanut butter chocolate marshmallow creme double decker cookies in my bicycle basket right now. Low cal, too." He paused, still looking hopefully at Eloise. "How many packages you want? One? Two? Three? If that ain't enough I have more at home."

"Isn't, Buster," Art interrupted. "Isn't. Not ain't. Ain't is bad grammar."

"Go take a flying leap in a wood chipper, Art," the kid answered. "I got better things to do than study grammar." A derisive look at Art. "Did Mick Jagger study grammar? John Lennon? Ice T? Ice Cube? Jay Z? George W. Bush?" Then the kid turned to look at Eloise again, his expression reverting from a reasonable facsimile of Genghis Khan in the process of massacring Hungarians at the battle of Laputa Kona, which roughly translates from the Magyar as 'We're Fucked,' to that of a harmless little kid selling Girl Scout cookies. But this little kid, all of the gondola folk were now starting to think, was about as harmless as a Great White Shark zoning in on a seal colony leisurely bobbing along off the Southern California coast.

"Why is this boy selling girl cookies?" A puzzled Eloise said, thinking that in China it would be a girl selling girl cookies and not a boy. But this was America, a new and mysterious land, the home of WalMart and McDonald's, foot long hot dogs and stuffed crust pizzas, and strange customs she had yet to fathom. Bluegrass banjos being right up at the top of the not fathoming list. That and chop suey. Where the hell did they get the idea that chop suey was Chinese? "And what," Eloise added, "is a Girl Scout, anyhow? A kind of cookie?" Alberto, who up to this point kept his tongue while scowling at the obstreperous kid, stepped forward.

"Yeah, kid. What's with you selling Girl Scout Cookies? You sure ain't no Girl Scout. And I should know. I tried to join up once myself when I was your age." A glance at Art, whose mouth had dropped open in disbelief. "I know. I know. But I thought I'd give it a try back then. At least until we made it to the shower room. You know how little boys are. Curious about.....well, about...well.....stuff." Art shot Alberto a censorious look.

"Da...da....darn it, Alberto. Isn't. Not ain't. Bad grammar, Alberto. You're setting a bad example for Buster here." Bad Example Buster could give a rat's ass. He ignored Art and looked at Eloise, struggling with keeping the very unlike Buster innocent little kid look on his face.

"How about it, lady? You wanna buy some Girl Scout cookies? Just five buckaroos a box or two for ten smackers. Heck of a deal. OK?" Art shot the kid a hooded look.

"Buster," Art said. "Enough is enough. Leave the lady alone already." Before he could say any more Eloise abruptly cut in.

"Wait a minutes there, Art Buddha boy. I love cookies. A whole lot of love cookies bunch. I'll take twenty boxes. At five Yuan a box that comes out to a hundred Yuan even." Art thought it would be a good idea to skip correcting her on using Buddha instead of buddy and kept his mouth shut as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a hundred Yuan note and handed it to Buster. "Here you go, small American person. Now where's my cookies?" Art noticed the hard set expression on Eloise's face and decided it would also be a good idea not to correct 'where's' to 'where are'. And also not to say anything about the conversion rate of the Yuan to the Dollar, which he suspected was definitely not in the smart ass kid's favor. Art was well aware that as a man matures he learns certain things about women. Like when to keep his mouth shut if he wants to survive much longer on Planet Earth. This, Art realized, was one of those times. He leaned back in the gondola and began to carefully inspect the bottom for any signs of damage from it smacking into the ground just a smidgeon harder than he had intended. Buster took the 100 Yuan note without so much as a second look and stuffed it in his pocket.

"You gonna stop at mom and dad's restaurant, Uncle Art?" Buster said. Art nodded affirmatively, avoiding looking at either Alberto or Eloise when Buster called him Uncle Art. "Meet you there with the cookies," Buster added. Then he turned around, went back to his fat tired beach cruiser bike, leaped on it with kid nimbleness and peddled away with more of his kid loose-joined nimbleness. Which Art found particularly disgusting, Art having limited mobility from his bad ankles going back to when he was a kid jumping off the garage roof pretending he was a paratrooper jumping into Normandy or maybe East LA. Art thought all ex-paratroopers had bad ankles, too, but that wasn't of much consolation to him. Why hadn't he listened to his mother back then?

"Don't jump off the garage roof, Artie," she'd yell. "You'll hurt yourself. Maybe permanently damage your kidneys." Well, Art thought, like most things mom was partially right. And also partially wrong. So far as he knew his kidneys were doing just fine. Meanwhile, Alberto was staring hard at him.

"Uncle Art?" Alberto said as Buster peddled into the distance. Art looked sheepishly at Alberto and Eloise.

"OK. OK. So he's my sister Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken's kid." He started to climb out of the gondola. "There's a great seafood restaurant in town. My sister and brother-in-law Bobby Joe Perslacken's place. Bobby Joe's See Food Eats, they call it. Let's pack up the balloon, grab a bite at Bobby Joe's See Food Eats and then take a boat back to the mainland. Smashnose Fred will meet us with the Land Rover and trailer. Later today or tomorrow we'll go to Zapatos Perdidos Park in central Los Angeles, set up the balloon and take it up a hundred feet or so, but keep it tethered to the ground below. That work for you?" Alberto and Eloise, being somewhat disoriented by ending up on an island off the California coast instead of hovering over urban Los Angeles, nodded a confused looking provisional agreement. Alberto thinking to himself. What else were they going to say? No, we'll just jump in the ocean and swim back instead?

Art neglected to mention that he was blown off course a suspiciously whole lot or that he got a few bucks for every customer he brought into the seriously overpriced Bobby Joe's See Food Eats. Art saw nothing wrong with it. As his daddy, Sam 'Dark' Smudge used to say. "A man's gotta make a living some way." Art did however have the good sense to figure out that robbing banks like his daddy wasn't the best way to make a living. The good news was that the last time daddy Sam got out of the slammer he vowed to change his ways. And he did. He moved to liberally minded California and now he made a very nice living running a shelter, Smudge's Safe House, for the down and out that was generously funded by the city and county of Los Angeles, the state of California and half a dozen church denominations. None of which had yet to decipher the obfuscating Smudge's Safe House annual statement that managed to hide the fact that over 60% of Smudge's Safe House's budget was used for administrative purposes. Administrative purposes having a conveniently broad definition in Papa Smudge's eyes, including an administrative assistant who couldn't type, take dictation, use a computer or compose a compound sentence in under ten minutes. She did however have--in Sam's own words, "one hellacious bod"--and a sensuous walk that more than once caused a passing male motorist to nearly rear end the car ahead of him. Plus, purely to cut those very same administrative expenses, she shared an apartment with Papa Smudge. Though, they were quick to point out, with two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and plenty of closet space.

At that moment a Land Rover with a trailer drove slowly up a nearby paved road. A vehicle that looked suspiciously to Alberto like the one at Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures at Art's place in Los Angeles. Then things got even more suspicious when the Land Rover slowed and pulled off the road heading directly for the trio of ballooners and Lady Satan. When Alberto spotted the profile of the guy driving the Land Rover things got flat out downright suspicious. It was Smashnose Fred. He turned with narrowed eyes and lowered brow to look with that flat out downright deep suspicion at Art Smudge. Who, seemingly oblivious to the approaching Land Rover and Alberto's heated glare, was intently staring at a pair of seagulls taking turns dive bombing a local cat and wondering if the seagulls kept score. Art's own eyes narrowed and he bent to pick up a stone and pitched it at one of the gulls. Art was a talented right hander back in the day with the Thornbush Consolidated High School baseball team.

He might have had a shot at the majors had he not run into some fairly serious problems concerning pipe bombs that Art swore were really just a childhood prank but the cops' narrow minded negative response strongly suggesting to Art a quick change of location. But he still had that fast ball pitching arm and came within a seagull whisker of blasting the fluttering critter, actually grazing its modestly sized cranium. The dazed bird fluttered to the ground and flopped clumsily around, the other gull landing next to it to perform whatever commiseration seagulls do to each other. And also, with beady glowing eyes, staring with no little avian displeasure directly at Art Smudge. Art, who had a long standing quarrel with seagulls ever since a flock of them decided to take a communal dump just as they were flying over Art when he was taking his new girlfriend for a ride in his just-off-the-lot Chevy convertible with the top down, stared back and lifted up both hands to give the gulls not one but both middle fingers. A double Art whammy middle finger. Or, in unique Art lingo, Wham Your Mammy double middle finger.

But Alberto wasn't looking at Art and the seagulls. He was looking at the approaching vehicle.

"Either we've ballooned into a parallel universe or else that's your buddy with the Land Rover," Alberto said in a voice in the direct vicinity of an unfriendly hiss. Art nonchalantly turned to look innocently at Alberto.

"Well, yeah. Of course. It's Fred and the Rover. I called Fred and told him to get on the ferry with the Rover and trailer when I saw we were going to end up landing on the island." Alberto's expression changed to a glower.

"I never saw you using a phone," Alberto said with the same surly suspicious tone. Art shrugged. Something approaching a smirk was flickering around the edges of his lips. Kind of like a flesh colored light bulb in an intermittent power outage.

"No goddamn wonder! You were too busy hanging over the side of the gondola and yelling your lungs out for help to notice anything." Art paused and the smirk got smirkier. "You were so intent on hollering at the boats down below on the ocean that I could have had sex with your girlfriend and you wouldn't even have noticed." Alberto's face lit up like San Francisco during the Great Fire. And his fiery mood wasn't far behind.

"You had sex with Chinga? While I was in distress fearing for my life? Why...." Alberto was interrupted by a solid right to the jaw that dimmed his lights and almost dropped him to his knees. Unfortunately for Alberto, Eloise had picked up enough Spanish to know Chinga was not a cool name to call her.

"That's Chang, you Mexican American dicktop," Eloise said with Vesuvius glowing in her eyes and sweet revenge tingling her clubbed fist. "Not Chinga!" Art stepped forward.

"I think you mean dickhead, not dicktop," Art chimed in, him being ever the stickler for proper grammar. His maternal grandmother Linda Sue 'Magpie' Betelgeuse back home in Thornbush, Oklahoma, had drilled proper grammar into his head from toddler time on. Art's father, Sam 'Dark' Smudge, had no such interest in grammar and copped an attitude towards what he considered to be Linda Sue's high toned ways and her constant preaching about religion. Sam didn't care much for religion ever since he'd begged God to open up Verna 'Babe' Tindermiller's heart to Art's courtly and barely concealed randy blandishments. Verna 'Babe' Tindermiller however ran off with a door to door vacuum salesman and Sam held God personally responsible for it. That was it for religion in Sam's mind. From then on Linda Sue's constant talk about religion really grated on Sam. Big time. Art could understand his daddy Sam's irreligious attitude, but he could never accept Sam's last words to Linda Sue. She was just outside the storm cellar door when the twister grabbed her and held her motionless for a few moments before sweeping her away. Sam cupped his hands over his mouth just inside the storm cellar door and hollered out at the airborne figure of Linda Sue Magpie Bettlegeuse with no little emotive vigor.

"Say hello to God!" Sam Dark Smudge yelled.

And then Linda Sue Magpie Betelgeuse was gone.

Art and Smashnose Fred had Lady Satan folded up and loaded on the trailer in twenty minutes. Actually, nineteen minutes and thirty three seconds, Art and Fred invariably timing themselves as they constantly worked to improve their take down time for the annual Hollywood Hills Balloon Festival Competition and Regional Blueberry Pie Bakeoff. Which was a definite upbeat experience since all the competitors, win or lose, got all the blueberry pie they could eat. At almost exactly the twenty minute mark they motioned at the others to climb into the Land Rover to head to Bobby Joe's See Food Eats down on the hillside above the harbor.

"Keep your arms inside the Land Rover," Art Smudge cautioned the others. "Those goddamn gulls are at it again." The seagulls had stopped dive bombing the hapless cat to zone in on a brand new target. The jerk human who'd beaned Nosferatu the seagull in mid-flight. And not only the pair of gulls from before. The atmosphere hovering innocently over the island was crammed full with gull speak (unintelligible to humans but not to gulls) as they called in all their friends and relatives available in the immediate seagull vicinity. All of which turned their airborne attention to the Land Rover. For the rest of the trip to Bobby Joe's See Food Eats small thuds and thunks could be heard hitting the Land Rover's hood and roof. As well as occasional blobs of a whitish sticky substance splattering on the windshield. Smashnose Fred turned, with what must have been his version of a wide grin but which was somewhat camouflaged by his intruding spread out nose, and said with no little humor to the others.

"Never piss off a seagull," he said, looking at Art Smudge and chuckling. Adding....

"They never forget." Just then one of the seagulls, Nosferatu himself, the one with a good sized lump on the side of his skull, made a low level run, expertly calibrated his trajectory and let fly a chunk of seagull excreta that sailed right through the open window and whacked Art Smudge smack on his right cheek. The airborne cackling that immediately followed was recognized by everyone in the Rover, despite their general lack of knowledge about the particulars of seagull behavior, to be the seagull version of derisive laughter. Art's angry face looked like a smoked oyster in the process of being smoked and Smashnose Fred was bravely trying not to join in the seagull cackling. He was about to drop an addendum to his "They never forget," but a simmering laser of a look from Art Smudge stopped him in his verbal tracks.

"Don't even go there!" Art Smudge hissed. One look at Art and the others decided not going there was the excellent idea of the moment. Not a word was spoken for the rest of the short trip to Bobby Joe's See Food Eats, though Smashnose Fred did pick up on an engine rattle he'd never noticed before. Possibly a sticky valve. Could be a problem. But not a word to Art, who owned the Land Rover. Not now. Not with Art so fired up after being assaulted by a seagull. A story that Smashnose Fred already knew would grow organically through its future retelling. Fred more than willing to become the initial spinner of the seagull assault story. Boss or not, some things were just too good to pass up.

Anyhow, Smashnose Fred's probation would be over in two more months and then he would be free to move anywhere. Drawn by the twin notions of fresh fish and bare tits--which Fred thought would make a great line in a folk rock song--Tahiti was at the top of his list, followed closely by Little Rock, Arkansas. Fred had never been to Little Rock but always wondered if there actually was a Little Rock there. And, by implication, also a Big Rock. Fred had always had a sort of intellectual curiosity about things. Which, in the form of being too curious about other people's identities, is what got him in hot water with the law. When he used a stolen credit card number to buy a riding lawn mower, which he immediately resold online, he made the mistake of using the credit card of an elderly gentleman who was confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home and in no obvious immediate need of a riding lawn mower. And then some smart ass kid who gave up the hacker world to become a police computer forensics hot shot tracked him down. Goddamn kid. Why didn't he stick with snacking and hacking like all the other lazeabouts of his generation? Where the hell was the lack of a work ethic when you really needed it? Damn! Bad luck, Fred. Frickin' bad luck. Besides which, with jerkoff kids like this one being the next generation, America was for sure headed straight down the tubes. Gen X? Gen Y? Generation Z? Millenials? Bullshit. This was Gen Zero. And their kids would be Gen Absolute Zero. Fred was glad his own deeply patriotic dad, Fred Senior, who, unlike his son, had a more or less--if somewhat aquiline--normal nose, hadn't lived to see America in decline. But Smashnose did wish his father had waited a few more years to kick the mortal bucket. He missed the old guy. Though Fred Senior dropping acid and forthwith convincing himself he was Super Fred, a superhero from the comic book Avengers, was a real dumb ass move, dad or no dad. The commuter train to San Diego was not in reality the nuclear armed destructive instrument of the International Doctor Evil Conspiracy. And it sure didn't slow down when Fred Senior jumped in front of the hurtling train to stop it, comic super hero wise.

On the upside, they didn't need a coffin for the funeral. Just a small shoe box did the trick.

Bobby Joe's See Food Eats was on a winding hilly back road overlooking Santa Maria's harbor. Not right on the harbor where the trendy tourist restaurants barely held sway under the burden of the huge rents they paid to absentee landlords in Hong Kong and Winnipeg, but close enough to catch the fragrant odors of the sea. Dead fish and rotting seaweed, as well as the perpetual industrial smell from the rafts of floating diesel oil and gasoline. An olfactory presence accompanied by the muted ancient sounds of the Beach Boys and other less well known surfer groups, which Bobby Joe's See Food Eats played day and night during business hours. At least when they had customers. The owners being long overdosed on the music after years of listening to it and immediately slamming down the off button on the background music system as soon as the last customer departed. Merci Mia, who was something of a sorehead like her brother, Art, would have flat out refused to serve the Beach Boys cum Beach Geezers if any of them happened into her restaurant.

Even up to and including booting the grayhead surfer dudes out the door of Bobby Joe's See Food Eats and right under its big Welcome sign in patriotic red, white and blue. And, now, also black. The black having been added after Barack Obama was elected President, supposedly out of deference to the Pres, but in reality a hopeful tactic to lure tourists of the black persuasion into the overpriced culinary confines of Bobby Joe's See Food Eats. Bobby Joe's place, Bobby Joe himself insisted, was color blind. Which wasn't quite true. Bobby Joe could discern one color. Green. The green of good ol' American currency. Though he would accept the colorful orange-tinged Euros--at a favorable exchange rate.

Art's sister, Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken, was a big fan of classical music, especially Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as Wolfie's almost unknown contemporary descendant, Heinrich 'Mosh Pit' Mozart, along with classic country legends like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, Patsy Klein and former President Jimmy Carter. Her husband Bobby Joe was partial to both grunge rock and authentic Gregorian chants recorded live by Christian Brothers groups in the brotherly chapels of Rome. Which musical differences did sometimes lead to family spats, occasionally punctuated by moans and groans, screams and shrieks, but only very rarely by inaudibly muttered death threats. The availability of reasonable cheap portable players and headphones having by mutual agreement salvaged their marriage and thereby also kept Bobby Joe's See Food Eats open for business.

In fact the only really serious fracas there ever was over music, and which involved the rare participation of the usually very laid back--balanced precariously on the verge of comatose laid back--Santa Maria Island police, came when Bobby Joe Perslacken was playing poker with some of his buddies from his bocce ball team, the Santa Maria Rolling Balls. One of the guys, who had a little too much of that good old d island brew, whether intentionally or not, referred to music coming from the brotherly chapels of Rome as coming from the brothels of Rome. They said you could hear Bobby Joe holler all the way on the other side of town in Mingo Aleppo's Bowling Alley--and even through the rattling cacophony of tumbling bowling pins on Aleppo's four recently refurbished alleys. Bobby Joe managed to get off with a five hundred dollar fine and three months of community service--which meant he got to clean up the trash from his own take-out business. And which seemed like an eloquent form of justice to local environmentalist Hermoine Jesus y Maria de Schlotzsky, who would stand by the side of the road and yell negative carbon footprint! at Bobby Joe while he was doing his community service picking up trash. Bobby Joe had no clue what the hell negative carbon footprint meant, and Hermoine probably knew that, but it made her feel better to yell at Bobby Joe. Her husband had recently absconded, the bastard even taking their perversely obstinate pet Chihuahua Caligula, leaving her with no one to yell at. Bobby Joe's community service couldn't have come at a better time, Hermione Jesus y Maria de Schlotsky yelling wise.

The Land Rover pulled into a parking lot next to Bobby Joe's See Food Eats, taking up a good half of the lot between the Rover and the trailer. No matter. The lot was empty. Bobby Joe's place was in its between peak times slump. Which meant there were plenty of empty tables. In fact, that was all there were. Empty tables. Merci Mia heard the Land Rover drive up and was standing, hands planted on her generous hips, in the front door of Bobby Joe's See Food Eats, right under the big red, white, blue and black Welcome sign.

"Hey, Bro," she said to Art. "Wasup?" Eloise looked with some confusion at Art. Wasn't that the same name the girl cookie boy on the beach cruiser bike had called him?

"Who's Wasup?" She said. "I thought your name be Art. Is that what you American people call a knockname?" Art wiggled his finger at Eloise. Not threateningly. Not with even a hint of intimidation or even censure. Art prided himself on his perceptive abilities and was well aware of how Eloise had blindsided Alberto and damn near cold cocked him.

"Excuse me, Ms Chang," Art said in an uncharacteristically polite voice. "I think the correct word is nickname. Not knockname."

"Oh," Eloise responded, mirroring Art's polite tone. "So Wasup is your nickname?" Art, seeing that he was about to head down a verbal dead end road, took the bypass.

"Yep," he said. "You could sure say that." Before Mercia Mia could blurt out a what the fuck comment, Art shot her a brotherly not just no but hell no look. Which certainly wasn't the first time such looks had been exchanged between them, beginning way back in little kidhood when their mother wanted to know who the villain was who smeared a mixture of honey and superglue on the toilet seat on April Fool's Day. Merci Mia caught on by the tips of her fricatives and held her tongue. Art proceeded to introduce everyone to his sister, with the exception of Fred, whom she already knew. Too well, as far as she was concerned. Merci Mia suspected Fred of being a closet polygamist, something which Merci Mia, thanks to the teachings of her fervently charismatic religious minded grandmother Linda Sue Magpie Betelgeuse, knew went against the laws of both God and man and whatever other mysterious powers lurked out there in the Great Unknown beyond the Milky Way. It was unclean. Inhuman. Even Satanic. Possibly even Communist. How could a man sink so low as to have more than one woman? For that matter, and somewhat inside out and upside down, she often wondered, especially when looking at her dripweed husband, Bobby Joe, how a woman could stomach even one man.

That line of thinking led Merci Mia to become an advocate of feminine parthenogenesis, a physical process found in some species in the natural world where asexual reproduction successfully bred the next generation. One heck of a great idea, Merci Mia thought, get rid of the men once and for all. Though she had only limited local success in spreading the word and interesting the scientific and political communities into funding parthenogenesis research. She did however find plenty of willing ears at various women's shelters, as well as from the Lesbian Bikers Association of San Francisco, the Marin County Libertarian Council and a handful of disgruntled excommunicated Coptic Christians who had first joined the church under the misapprehension that Coptic was a shortened form of copulate, which they had all been looking forward to with a fervent anticipation. And which was soon to cause big turmoil in the little church.

Merci Mia gave a stern look to her brother. "Did the gulls follow you?" She said in a voice to match her expression. "Washing that picture window is a frickin' big chore when the gulls see you inside and set to do their business." Art waggled his head negatively.

"Nope. They left off us and beat wings for the harbor and the promise of fresh fish for lunch." Smashnose Fred nodded in agreement.

"No gulls, Merci gal," he said. "Not a one." Merci gal? Gal? She hated to be called that and that goddamn polygamist pervert Fred knew it. She was sorely tempted to excuse herself while she put on her re-enforced spike heels she only wore on special occasions, some of which she sure wasn't going to discuss with absolutely anyone, and then proceeded to stomp at least one of them into Smashnose Fred's foot. Hopefully going all the way through to their genuine imitation wood flooring. But, there being strangers present, she held back.

"OK," she finally said in a veiled voice. "Follow me.....please." Merci Mia escorted her brother and companions to a big table by their six foot wide and four foot high picture window. A window with a clear view of the scenery outside. Which consisted of the storefronts of Mancini's Bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store on the other side of the street. The harbor just visible over the top of Chun Lee's Stop and Go sign, erected, the sign said, courtesy of the Santa Maria Island Micro Brewers Association. Bottles and six packs and cases of which micro breweries' products were prominently displayed in the front windows and all over the interior of Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store. Mancini's bakery, on the other hand, had only an excruciatingly delicious looking giant sized jelly donut in its window. A window cleaned at least six times a day because of all the little and not so little fingers palpitating the glass as the finger owners imagined the giant sized jelly donut dissolving in their various hungry mouths.

No surprise that Mancini's Bakery sold lots of jelly donuts. Plus plenty of other really tasty bakery goodies that Mancini's Bakery always had in seemingly endless abundance. Merci Mia herself was a regular customer. A fact that had a direct alimentary connection to the extra pounds on her hips and inner thighs, though Merci Mia claimed that the extra pounds were an uncontrollable genetic cellulite condition. Which absolutely no one believed, Merci Mia included. Anyhow, no one, at least no one among the 94.5 percent of the local population who frequented Mancini's Bakery, was about to debunk any weight gaining rationale, cellulite or otherwise. VWT, "the terminally hip Vegan World of Tofu," the Santa Maria islanders were wont to say, stopped cold at the California mainland coastline.

And that despite the fact that Lars Erik Svensbrudergudsson, owner of the largest estate on the island, also owned upwards of 45,000 acres of rich farmland in the Red River Valley of the North in Minnesota and North Dakota. Acreage planted almost solely in soybeans, most of it eventually headed for Lars Erik's tofu factory in Flat, Minnesota. Where the largest hailstone ever recorded in America came thudding down one April morning directly onto the unprotected noggin of immigrant German farmer Pieter Wolfschmeck Dinglemeier when he was plowing what up to that point had been a exceptionally straight furrow (Dinglemeier prided himself on his precise plowing) in his corn field--bringing the town a temporary regional fame and giving the Dingelmeier family plenty to talk about at family reunions for years go come.

Although he was the reigning King of Tofu, Lars Erik however was a cool guy and always left a nice tip on his regular visits to Bobby Joe's See Food Eats. Lars Erik besides being a cool rich guy also was a stalwart and frequent high point man on the Santa Maria Rolling Balls bocce ball team. It couldn't compare to his boyhood passion of ice hockey, where he was a hot shot wing on the Fargo Moorhead Hurtling Pucks. But, in frost free Santa Maria Island, he had to make do with the Santa Maria Rolling Balls. It did have its positive side, though. Unlike life on the hockey rink as a wing man on the Fargo Moorhead Hurtling Pucks, he never had any teeth knocked out by a flying bocce ball or had arms, legs, feet and hands lacerated and/or broken in the heat of a bocce ball match. Still, cool nice rich guy that he was, Lars Erik Svensbrudergudsson did sometimes miss the deeply satisfying crunch of putting one hell of a body check on an opposing player and watching him sprawl insensate onto the ice. Boy, those were sure some good times. Ah, the sweet bird of youth. The good old days of expertly delivered body checks.

Agribusiness had taken him far from those body checking days. Now here he was in frost free Santa Maria Island, living in a downright cozy two million dollar Mission style ranch house, and playing bocce ball with the locals. Who'd a figured it? Not him. Nor his mother, who always suspected he was gay because he so obviously enjoyed the vigorous masculine body contact of hockey and often confronted him about it, his mother being vague about just how gay interactions worked. His mom frequently lamenting that he hadn't taken up curling instead of hockey, curling being a sport where "...the players kept a respectful distance from each other." Nor his father, who never would forgive him for switching his farms from sugar beets to soybeans, his father well known as the sugar beet pioneer of the Red River Valley of the North and who took Lars Erik's switch from sugar beets to soybeans as a profound and unforgivable personal insult. Nor his high school class, who voted him most likely to go to prison for manslaughter. Not even his first serious girlfriend, high school cheerleader and wannabe valedictorian (she gave up the idea when she found out it involved studying every night and ended up 45th in a class of 62) Mandy Tew 'Swede' Stensrud, who one snowy summer evening broke off her relationship with him with the comment that he "treated her like the goalie on the Lac Qui Parle Ice Picks," a team that was the perennial rival of the Fargo Moorhead Hurtling Pucks and was universally referred derisively in the greater Fargo Moorhead area as the Lac Qui Parle Ice Pricks.

It was some time before Lars Erik figured out she was referring to his single-minded fervor when things got seriously sexual and his teenaged endocrinal system kicked into hyper drive. By then it was too late. Mandy Tew Swede Stensrud hooked up with a 230 pound nose tackle on the Fargo Moorhead football team and Lars Erik figured it was a wise choice to just let her go. Which turned out to be a good thing for him, since within a few months Mandy Tew 'Swede' Stensrud was pregnant. She had twin boys, courtesy of the 230 pound nose tackle, and one of the maternity operating room nurses privately confided that the twins, who weighed nearly 20 pounds between them, damn near split the poor girl in half. But, things have a way of balancing out, and a generation later the twins, who were near spitting images of their father, led the Fargo Moorhead football team to the state championship playoffs three years in a row, winning two of them. Plus there were another three younger Mandy Tew sons climbing the local Fargo Moorhead football ladder. Lars Erik felt a certain pride in that, by letting Mandy Tew go, he was in a way responsible for his old home town's current football dominance in the rough and tumble MinnDak Division I Frostbite Football Conference.

Just when Art and Alberto and Eloise and Smashnose Fred were sitting down to the big table by the 4 by 6 foot picture window with the clear view of Mancini's bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store, in walks none other than the soybean king himself, Lars Erik Svensbrudergudsson. He spotted Art right away.

"Hey, Art!" He called out. "And Fred. Wasup?" Eloise's antennae went up. Exactly who was Wasup? Art? Fred? Both? Then Lars Erik sauntered over to the table. "Mind if I join you?"

"Heck, no," Art answered, knowing full well that Lars Erik was a terrific tipper and he might get an extra cut from his sister Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken. He pointed at a chair. "Put it down, buddy." Eloise craned her neck to see what Art was talking about. There was sure nothing there she could see.

"Put what down, Wasup?" She said, genuinely perplexed. Lars Erik meanwhile was equally befuddled by her comment. Put what down, Wasup? Was this young woman possibly somewhat mentally challenged? Blitzed on a designer drug? Or maybe another of those wise ass punk kids who were always fucking with adult's minds and continually getting still more jewelry to skewer on their faces? This woman, however, had a metal free visage. That didn't mean the covered parts of her body weren't loaded up with metal so-called jewelry. But then Art quickly introduced them and Lars Erik figured that it was a communication problem. The girl's English was good. But still not fluent. Something he could relate to from when he went back to the ancestral turf in Iceland and tried out his Fargo Moorhead Icelandic. Local Icelandic slang laid him low. His own great uncle, former professional wrestler Thorwald 'Berseker' Einarsson, accused him of being a Norwegian imposter who'd stolen his great nephew's identity.

It was only when he described his grandfather Gusthof's peculiarly bent big toe on his right foot that great uncle Thorwald believed him and forthwith delivered a vigorous welcome slap on the back that perceptively moved two of the lumbar vertebrae in Lars Erik's back. Vertebrae already weakened when that that son of bitch Lothar Leinkuegel of the Lac Qui Parle Ice Pricks blindsided him with a body check in the middle of the second period. And on home ice before a capacity crowd! Lars Erik however did have a nasty surprise for Lothar Leinkuegel when the Fargo Moorhead Hurtling Pucks next met the Lac Qui Parle Ice Pricks. Lars Erik blasted Lothar Leinkuegel with a body check that put him out of the game and Lars Erik in the penalty box for most of the rest of the game. But it was well worth it. All the hockey players, almost all of the coaches and the majority of the fans knew it. The One Basic Rule of Hockey. Get Even! And he did. Plus, it happily turned out for Lars Erik's eventual net worth, the sense of ruthlessness learned in hockey dovetailed nicely with the world of agribusiness.

"Knew you were here," Lars Erik said. "Saw Lady Satan resting outside." Which further befuddled the already fuddled Eloise. Lady Satan? Resting? But she gave a polite cough and kept her tongue. These Americans, she was starting to firmly believe, were even weirder than the Chinese. And that, Eloise knew first hand, was already freaking weird. Could she ever forget her parents' descriptions of an entire nation of a billion people walking around in those stupid Chairman Mao tunics and reverently holding that silly little Red Book? An opinion her parents, not desirous of being the direct subjects of beheadings on the village square, kept to themselves with lips as tight as the seal on grandma's home made plum preserves. Seals that even Bungo Ting, the Chinese National Circus resident strong man, had a hard time cracking. After the third unsuccessful try he threw it on the floor out of utter exasperation. The hurled sealed jar, to everyone's surprise but grandma's, promptly popping neatly open. And, being a practical sort, even if he was strong enough to lift a full grown water buffalo several feet into the air, Bungo made himself a nice, if somewhat bizarre, lunch of plum preserves and unhulled brown rice, washed down with green tea and a glass of his own homemade apple blossom wine. The bush telegraph instantly let everyone in the circus world and well beyond know that the strong man, the guy who could lift a full grown water buffalo several feet in the air, couldn't open a jar of grandma's plum preserves. But no one, absolutely 100 percent for sure no one, ever, ever, ever said it to his face. Like almost everyone else, circus strong men have a sense of personal dignity and resent implications to the contrary. He did however from that day on avoid opening any kind of sealed jar. At least when he wasn't alone.

"What's on the menu today, sis?" Art said to his sister, Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken, who was waiting with order pad in hand next to the big table by the 4 by 6 picture window with a view of Mancini's Bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience center. She hardly heard him. Merci Mia's eyes were fixed on the huge jelly donut in Mancini's Bakery front window and she was dreaming of the yummy chocolate éclair she'd bought there yesterday.

"What?" She said, slowly sliding out of her reverie. "What did you say, Artie?"

"The menu," Art replied. "What's good today."

"Choc.....er......ah......sea....bass. Yeah. Sea bass. That's today's special. Slow grilled over a mesquite wood fire. Absolutely delicious." Then, completely back into the present and looking with half closed eyes at her brother. "But you'd probably rather have a cheeseburger or a corn dog." Eloise 'Ching' Chang timidly raised her hand.

"Do you have the waffles," Eloise said. "I love the waffles. We didn't have the waffles in China." This comment had the effect of stopping all conversation around the table dead in its verbal tracks. All eyebrows raised in unison. Waffles? In a See Food sea food restaurant? The next comment served to further cement the astonishment already stuck on everyone's faces.

"Sure, honey," Mercia Mia said. "I can whip up some waffles for you. No problemo. Not at all." Then, with a quick glance across the street at Mancini's bakery and the thought in mind of the two for one sale going until closing for all the fresh baked goodies. "I'll even throw in a chocolate éclair for desert."

Before anyone else could say anything, Lars Erik Swensgudbrudersson chimed in. "Sea bass special for everyone else at the table. On me!" And, he added with a gentile flourish. "Bring us a bottle of tequila, some slices of lemon and a shaker of sea salt and three orders of cheese Jalapeño poppers appetizers." This offer did not meet with much resistance, coming as it did from a guy who called a multi-million dollar mansion cozy, and Merci Mia was soon on her way to the kitchen with the order. She was quickly back with the tequila, lemon and salt. A few minutes later she brought the cheese Jalapeño poppers. While her chef husband, Bobby Joe Perslacken, who, even if she privately considered him a dripweed, was nevertheless a hulking former Marine as well as a hotshot bocce ball hurler on the Santa Maria Rolling Balls, got the sea bass orders ready, Merci Mia slipped across the street where she had a sudden impulse to splurge and got a dozen chocolate éclairs at the two for one price. One for each of the diners.

Plus she would be forced to eat the rest, Merci Mia aware that chocolate éclairs were far better eaten fresh off the Mancini Bakery's shelf and that day old éclairs tasted like chocolate covered cardboard. It was, both she and the Mancini family agreed, a culinary sacrilege to let chocolate éclairs go stale. A sacrilege the fastidious Mercia Mia Smudge Perslacken wasn't about to commit. Especially considering she'd inherited the chocolate éclair gene from her now deceased grandmother, Linda Sue Magpie Betelgeuse, a gritty determined woman from rural Oklahoma fully capable of returning from her grave to scold Merci Mia for desecrating a chocolate éclair by letting it go stale.

The bottle of tequila soon emptied with agreeable congeniality. Soon to be replaced by tequila bottle number two. In a lot of cases Bobby Joe and Merci Mia would have switched to a cheap band of tequila for a sloshed band of revelers and charged them for a bottle of the more expensive good stuff. But not with Lars Erik Svensbrudergudsson footing the bill. He was far too good a customer to screw with. And he had a sharp eye and taste buds to match for good and not so good alcoholic beverages, tequila included.

Just at the start of Bottle Number Two Buster Perslacken showed up with six boxes of Girl Scout cookies. He sauntered over with little kid nimbleness, said nimbleness grating his somewhat inebriated Uncle Art even more in his sloshed condition, and plunked the cookies down in front of Eloise Ching-Ching Chang.

"Here you are, lady," Buster said. "Your six boxes of genuine peanut butter chocolate marshmallow creme double decker low cal cookies." Eloise, who was not at all used to drinking tequila, woozily put down her glass and looked with eyes glazed with both spiritous alcohol and genuine Chinese girl pique.

"Six? I thought you say twenty?" Buster was ready for her. Especially considering he was still a kid and not much of drinker yet and therefore had a clear mind.

"You said twenty, lady." Buster snapped back. "Not me." Then he pulled his mobile out of his pocket. "I told you five bucks apiece." He held up his mobile. "I downloaded a currency exchange app onto my mobile. At the current exchange rate of the Yuan to the Dollar five bucks a box works out to six boxes for your hundred Yuan note." He paused and patted the mobile as fondly as he did his pet frog, Belarus. "I even cut you some slack." Art blanched, looking at the steamed look on Eloise's face and remembering the haymaker she landed on Alberto, nearly sending him to the emergency chair at the local dentist clinic. Good God! Was she going to blast a kid and then get them all in trouble with child abuse allegations? If the Santa Maria cops showed up and happened to be having a good day and remember to check their data base for bench warrants they might come up with the string of unpaid balloon parking tickets Art had built up over the last few months. This was not good. Not good at all. But then, like a thundercloud breaking up before a bright sun, Eloise's mood abruptly changed. She began to laugh. A laugh which, to put it bluntly, sounded way too much like a horse who'd had too many sweetened oats for breakfast and was simultaneously venting through both ends of its horsy corpus to ease the excess equine stomach pressure. A sound unlike any other on God's green and often downright weird earth. And a laugh unique enough to have Bobby Joe come charging out of the kitchen.

"What hell was that?" The hulking allegedly dripweed former Marine blurted out. "Did one of those TV helicopters fly into the cell phone tower again?" Without waiting for an answer he continued. "I told them not to disguise the damn cell phone tower like a pine tree. But they went ahead and did it and now look what happened." Then, smelling the cheeseburger his brother-in-law Art Smudge had quietly asked be substituted for mesquite grilled sea bass burning in the griddle, Bobby Joe did a very sharp, even graceful, Marine Corps about face and hot footed it into the kitchen to salvage Art Smudge's burger. Alberto watched Bobby Joe disappear back into the kitchen.

"Kind of on the dramatic side, ain't he?" Alberto said. Art waggled his finger at Alberto.

"Isn't, not ain't." Art said.

"Damnit, Uncle Art," Buster said. "Will you cut the grammar crap? Enough is enough." Which it definitely was, but from an altogether different viewpoint. Merci Mia's eyes flaring as wide as a Pittsburgh blast furnace's doors in the old days at her son's use of language. She grabbed him by his protruding ear and dragged him out of sight into a back room where, for the next minute, they could hear Mercia Mia's voice approaching the decibel limit for permanent damage to the human middle ear. Then Buster came walking with the granddaddy of all hangdog looks out of the back room and schlepped up to his Uncle Art's side.

"Sorry, Uncle Art," Buster said, looking like he really meant it, his mother hovering nearby like a lioness over a fresh kill. "I sincerely apologize for my use of language." He paused, glanced at his mother, who threw him a hot look. He turned back to look at Art. "It won't happen again." Which Art believed just about as much as he did that the moon was made out of green Roquefort cheese or that the Pacific ocean actually was one billion years' accumulation of fish piss--though he might have accepted between ten and twenty percent as reasonably accurate.

Eloise, meanwhile, had decelerated from a unmuffled Harley Hog to a broken spoke snicker in her hilarity. She reached over to Buster, causing Art to cringe and think she really was going to blast the kid. But she didn't. Eloise lightly tapped on Buster's shoulder.

"Six boxes of cookies is OK, small American person," she said with a voice--and a mind--heavily accented with several glasses of tequila. "I love this country." Another tap on his shoulder. "Capitalism in traction!" Art couldn't let that one go.

"I think you mean action," Ms Chang," he said. "Not traction. Capitalism in action."

"Whenever," she answered--Art not daring to interject another correction from whenever to whatever--"this small American person shows real indicative." Again, Art wasn't about to say anything, though Alberto was about to until he remembered the recent lights out encounter with Eloise's clubbed fist. Then she abruptly changed the subject and again left everyone at the table with mouths flapped open in mute astonishment.

"Do you have a pogo stick?" She said to Buster. Buster was looking for a way to extricate himself from this somewhat delicate situation.. Including a pogo stick exit.

"Sure do," he said so quickly the words almost tripped themselves rushing out of his mouth, knowing with his nimble kid's mind--which also pissed off his Uncle Art--that the way out of the Mad Mother maze was opening before him. "Want me to get it?" Eloise nodded yes and Buster was gone quicker than an income tax refund to retrieve his pogo stick.

By now, well into bottle number two, there was not a single soul at the big table by the 4x6 picture window facing Mancini's Bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go feeling any pain. Smashnose Fred's mind had wandered back to his younger days when he made a decent living as an enforcer for a fast food chain that took a very dim view of past due debts. Many was the shrimp taco and double cheese hamburger Smashnose Fred had mashed to bits on a restaurant floor while waving a cut off baseball bat in the face of the restaurant owner and/or manager. They invariably got the point and paid up. Fred was sailing along nicely in his new line of work when he had the bad luck to pick on a manager whose brother was a cop. A cop brother who at that exact moment was sitting at a table in the fast food restaurant munching his way through a chicken and bacon sandwich with ranch dressing on a sourdough bun. Wasn't that just my luck, Smashnose thought as he remembered back to that day and the .40 caliber Glock semi-auto bored into his jugular. Just when things were going good....

At that moment Fred was startled out of his reverie by a small 'thunk' and the sudden appearance of a whitish sticky substance on the 4x6 picture window. This was followed in quick succession by another dozen thunks and whitish sticky spots until the Stop in Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store sign across the street was completely obscured from view. The Go, however, remained in plain view. And the thunks and white sticky spots continued to go, too. Right onto the 4x6 picture window at Bobby Joe's See Food Eats.

"Looks like our seagull friends are back from lunch," Smashnose said. "I think they recognized the Land Rover and trailer in the parking lot. Seagulls are very perceptive. In fact," he continued, "they.....

"Never forget," Alberto jumped in, watching the 4x6 window gradually get covered by white sticky stuff and thinking Smashnose hadn't been exaggerating seagull perseverance. Art Smudge, however, knowing his sister Merci Mia would go sibling ballistic when she saw what was happening to her window, decided this would be a good time to leave. He stood up, trying to seem casual but looking more like a guy in an amateur community play giving his best shot at innocent nonchalance. A shot which failed miserably in hitting the thespian mark. Reminding Smashnose of his mother, Mabel 'Leadfoot' Moriarity, back in his kid days when she told the highway patrol officer she had no idea she was going 75 in a school zone.

"Let's go," he said, starting for the door. "Time's a wasting." All the others, with the exception of Smashnose Fred who knew full well what was going on and was trying without much success not to show his amusement, stared at Art with shocked expressions.

"Go?" Lars Erik Svengudbrudersson said in surprise. "We haven't even had our sea bass."

"Pffush," Art replied. "If you've seen one sea bass you seen them all. Same with eating them." He moved closer to the door. No one else moved. Including Smashnose Fred, though his stomach was noticeably rolling in a somewhat suppressed belly laugh that came out sounding like someone gargling with a mouth wash, albeit a tasty one with plenty of alcohol in it.

Just then Buster ducked hurriedly through the door, pogo stick in hand and glancing nervously back over his shoulder.  
"Man," Buster began, "those fu..fu...fu....funky gulls are at it again." Then he saw the 4x6 picture window. "Crap! Mom is really gonna be pissed."

"I was thinking the same thing," Art replied as he edged towards the door and opened it, ready to make his getaway.

Splat. Thunk. Splat. Splash. A squadron of gulls were waiting. Art, his clothing now liberally decorated with seagull excreta, slammed the door shut.

"Shit!" He blurted out.

"I'd say so," Lars Erik Svensgudbrudersson said with a snicker as Smashnose Fred's rolling bellied hilarity made the jump over to Lars Erik's own waiting abdomen. The entire table of revelers, well lubricated by two bottles of tequila as they were, burst out into a hooting hilarity that once again brought Bobby Joe Perslacken, the allegedly dripweed hulking former marine, thundering out of the kitchen.

"Now what the hell is going on?" He bellowed out. "Don't you know you're interrupting an artist at work? Have you no savoir faire? No sense of decorum?" He shot them an indignant look. "Do you want me to scorch the sea bass and tarnish its delicate palette of aromatic flavors?" This, despite his current dilemma, caught Art Smudge completely by surprise. He'd never ever heard his brother-in-law talk like that. He was mostly a monosyllable man, though he could get verbally creative when his favorite NFL team screwed up in a big way on the football field. His wife, Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken, also came out of the kitchen and was equally taken aback by her husband's outburst. Artist at work? Savoir faire? Decorum? Palette of aromatic flavors? Maybe Bobby Joe wasn't such a dripweed after all. She was thinking she might slip a couple of Viagra into his Coors Light that evening, chomp down a couple of chocolate éclairs to get her sensuous gears in motion, put on her spike heels and then have a real good time with her reborn renaissance man.

But then she noticed the 4x6 picture window that only recently had had an unobstructed view of Mancini's bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store.

Once again, they could hear the scream clearly in Mingo Aleppo's Bowling Alley, even over the crashing of pins on the four recently refurbished alleys. Mingo was sure someone was being murdered, either that or else that awesomely gravid Klingenfelter girl next door was finally having her triplets. Either way, he figured 911 was a good choice. As did fifteen other people within reasonable hearing range of Bobby Joe's See Food Eats. The entire police force of Santa Maria Island immediately--allowing for time to get off the couch, put on a uniform and hop in a ride--showed up at Bobby Joe's See Food Eats with their hands resting on the butts of their service 9 mm semi autos or, for those who in their haste forgot their 9 mils, just on their butts.

By the time the police got there, however, the tense situation in Bobby Joe's See Food Eats had done a 180. Everyone was laughing and joking and knocking down shots of tequila. Plates of fresh steaming sea bass before all of them and Bobby Joe Perslacken standing nearby grinning like a newborn father, though he vehemently denied that he was in an any way involved with the pregnancy of the Klingenfelter girl. Lars Erik Svensgudbrudersson, always the bon vivant--with the exception of his days with the Fargo Moorhead Hurtling Pucks on the hockey rink--wasn't about to have a congenial social gathering disturbed. He immediately offered to have the 4x6 picture cleaned to a pristine state and the view of Mancini's Bakery and Chun Lee's Stop and Go convenience store restored to its full splendor.

That quieted Merci Mia and both she and Bobby Joe grabbed glasses and poured themselves shots of tequila as the latest additions to the party. The highlight of which was when Eloise Chang, long gone into a tequila dimension, borrowed Buster Perslacken's pogo stick, took it outside, shook her fist at the seagulls overhead and dared them to bombard her. She then set an absolute first for Santa Maria Island by pogo sticking around the harbor and back. In the process of so doing totally baffling a group of Belgian tourists lunching at a waterfront cafe.

"I warned you America was a goddamn strange place," said one man among the tourists who had a few years earlier been an exchange student in the San Fernando Valley. Then, looking at Eloise pogo sticking away, adding "and it's getting stranger all the time." He leaned towards the others. "Just how the hell do these people think they can control the whole goddamn world when half of them are nutballs like that one who just by us on that ridiculous pogo stick."

"I had a pogo stick," fumed a curvaceous Belgian Babe that Mr. Former Exchange Student had the hots for, "And I was pretty good at it." Which had the dual effect of shutting off any further conversation on the subject and also deep sixing Mr. Former Exchange Student's chances with the formerly pogo sticking Belgian Babe.

Eloise didn't quite make it. The gulls caught her just as she passed Mingo Aleppo's Bowling Alley and made her look like she'd been paint balled by some malicious prankster or maybe had herself a really, really funky Halloween costume. Which Mingo Aleppo saw with his own stunned eyes when she pogosticked by his bowling alley and was suddenly bombarded from the sky with seagull dung. A story which, although Mingo knew to be absolutely true, was greeted by derision and catcalls when he tried to tell it from the speaker's lectern at the next Santa Maria Island Rotary Club meeting. Prompting him to indignantly resign his position as the official scorekeeper for the Rotary Club Bowling League and discontinue the free peanuts from the Club's bowling night.

Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken took Eloise Chang into the ladies room and helped her clean off the seagull residue from her body. Eloise, however, was by no means angered by the seagull incident. She thought it was hilarious, no doubt considerably enhanced by the tequila molecules bouncing around in her recent Chinese immigrant brain. Unused as it was to the tequila effect otherwise widely known and appreciated in the great parter of the United States, Mexico and lots of other places. She returned to the table of tequila swillers, where they had all finished their sea bass dinners--and Art with his cheeseburger with onions and mushrooms--and were now desserting on chocolate éclairs, with a grin on her recently washed face.

"Lookin' good, gal," Smashnose Fred said through a numbing tequila haze. And then proceeded to put both feet firmly in his mouth. Fred not the type of person for whom alcohol opened up the tap to the flow of congenial discourse. Not by a long shot. One hell of a very long shot. "Can't even tell that the gulls shit all over you. Though," he unfortunately added--demon tequila shortcutting whatever social discourse censors Fred might have, few that they already were--"I can't say the same about the stink. You smell like the seagull rookery on Little Timchuk Island. Which, lemme tell you, gal, ain't none too good. Which is why the locals call it Little Stinky Island." Then Fred, being after all essentially socially clueless, stoked the fire even further. He looked over at Art Smudge and grinned maliciously at him.

"But not nearly as bad as nearby Big Stinky Island."

Before Art Smudge could further smash Smashnose Fred's nose. Or Merci Mia Smudge Perslacken could take virulent feminine exception to the demeaning 'gal'. Or Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang could mentally translate Fred's words into understandable Chinese and immediately respond with a Fred pogo stick rectal implant. Or Bobby Joe could squeeze Fred's neck into the thickness of a soda straw, Bobby Joe being mightily miffed that Fred had turned up his nose at Bobby Joe's exquisite dinner creation, mesquite smoked sea bass, and instead chomped down two chocolate éclairs. Before all of that the laid back and sedate Lars Erik Svensgudbrudersson acted first. Lars Erik who, albeit a man who could hold his booze well, had moved beyond the hold and was now well looped and on the downslope of the tequila effect. Smashword Fred's words somehow triggered the memory of that son of a bitch Lothar Leinkuegel of the Lac Qui Parle Ice Pricks laying him flat with a blindside body check in front of a full capacity home crowd. It was no longer Smashnose Fred's besotted face Lars Erik was seeing. It was the leering gap-toothed visage of that SOB Lothar Leinkuegel. Lars Erik went blank, or as his great uncle Thorwald 'Berseker' Einarsson would say, berserk, and the next thing he remembered was Smashnose Fred sprawled on the floor in Bobby Joe's See Food Eats, Smashnose Fred making a whole bunch of moaning and groaning noises. This, however, was not all bad for Fred. Within a week Smashnose Fred was driving a brand new Toyota Prius--Fred considering himself an environmentally minded man who always asked for paper and not plastic at the local grocery--and had an equally brand new job as Lars Erik's personal representative at the Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures and Serbian-American Benevolent Association main office in LA. Complete with a comfy apartment bigger than a modestly sized American privately owned home in an east coast inner suburb. And with a state of the art shower head with fifteen different settings.

The impromptu body check to Smashnose Fred did however effectively put an end to the tequila fueled revelries at Bobby Joe's See Food Eats. A chastened and rapidly sobering Lars Erik urged everyone to come back to his place to rest and sober up. Which they did. The next morning the revelers boarded the ferry for the trip back to the mainland and Lars Erik repaired to his office to study the commodities market and nurse a bitch of a tequila hangover headache. At his side the notarized non-disclosure agreement about the incident at Perslacken's See Food Eats the night before that his brand new employee, Smashnose Fred, had signed prior to departing the island on the noon ferry. Millionaire Lars Erik of the rock solid belief that at least some law schools had classes in How to Sue the Rich Guy and that it was only prudent that Lars Erik take effective counter measures.

For the recovering revelers, the trip back to the mainland was thankfully unremarkable. The ocean was not in one of its cantankerous moods and the trip was agreeably Pacific smooth. Which was much appreciated by the hungover bunch heading back to LA. At least for the first uneventful half of the trip. Art Smudge was feeling the twin effects of a hangover and seasickness. Which is why he was hanging over the railing of the ferry and making a personal, if infinitesimal, addition to the Pacific Ocean's volume. Art happened to look up and saw a seagull flying overhead. The sighting was mutual. The seagull instantly hit the seagull aerial brakes, did an amazing reversal of direction in mid-flight and promptly zoomed down to buzz the ship. As the gull soared by Fred noticed a small lump on the side of the gull's head. Receding, but still there. Art gulped. It was Nosferatu. The seagull who never forgets.

And Nosferatu was still pissed.

However the hell seagulls manage to communicate, and do it so fast, Nosferatu pulled it off. He summoned every squadron of seagulls within ten miles and pointed them all at the island ferry. It was the seagull equivalent of D Day.

Art was still hanging over the side donating the contents of his stomach to the Pacific, but even in his misery feeling a deep gratitude that back in their teenage years his sister Merci Mia had talked him out of joining up for a four year hitch in the Navy. Good God! Think of it. Four years of puking all around the Pacific basin. He could almost forgive her for mixing honey and superglue together and smearing it on the toilet seat at their parental home on April Fool's Day and then eventually blaming him when their mother had a very unpleasant bathroom experience and had a Mom Smudge meltdown.

Art looked up in time to see the first of Nosferatu's Kamikaze seagull squadrons zeroing in on the ferry. In time to see them. But not in time to escape the bombardment. Nosferatu Squadron One bombed Art as he raced for cover and scored direct hits on his forehead, both cheeks and shoulders and the upper portions of his chest and back.

"We're under attack!" Art screamed as he ducked into the ferry cabin. "Take cover!" Terrorists, thought the cabin steward, a former boy soldier in God's Army in Africa who traded his AK for a green card in one of the State Department and CIA's secret joint ops. He dropped to the cabin floor, instinctively grabbing at his shoulder for the carrying strap of the long gone AK. No carrying strap. No AK. He grabbed a table and smashed it on the ground, intending to use the broken leg as a weapon. No goddamn terrorist was gonna take down a former boy soldier in God's Army in Africa. Unfortunately, the table was built to withstand hurricanes and Tsunamis and refused to break. Not so the former boy soldier's right hand that developed a pair of immediate hairline cracks in his metacarpals from the rebounding force of the unbroken chair. His loud cursing in his native African language joined in with Art's yelling to thoroughly panic the other formerly somnolent passengers in the ferry's cabin.

A thirtyish woman who had recently been taking fertility drugs, and Art had to admit even in his distress wasn't at all bad looking, ran out the ferry door on the deck.

"I'll trade sex for my life!" She hollered out at the as yet unseen terrorists. That had the effect of immediately calming Art down, it sinking into his frequently thick skull that his blurted out warning was being badly misinterpreted. Art stepped out to the cabin door and waved at the woman.

"Hey!" He said loudly. "I don't think that will work with seagulls. They are known to be snobs about being species specific when it comes to stuff like sex." The woman turned and looked uncomprehendingly at Art.

"Sea.....," she started to say just as Nosferatu's Kamikaze Squadron Number Two came sailing in.

The woman's wide open mouth the site of a direct hit by one of Nosferatu's cousins on his mother's side. And the rest of her body wasn't far behind in being seagull dung spattered. Art quickly ducked back inside the cabin, thinking it prudent to hide somewhere and avoid any contact with the woman. At least until she cleaned up and calmed down.

Jesse James Eastwood, the ferry boat cabin, hearing the commotion in the cabin below, stepped out onto the open deck outside the pilot house just as Squadron Number Three, arrived from harassing the tourists on the Santa Maria Island pier, made their approach. Captain Jesse James Eastwood looked up to see what looked like a bunch of big snowflakes coming straight at him. Snow? When it was in the 70's? Maybe it was some kind of weird temperature inversion. Like the time the thermometer dropped 65 degrees in five minutes back home in his kid days in Rapid City, South Dakota, and instantly froze the Dairy Queen in his hand into the hardness of a lump of white granite. Which promptly also froze his tongue to the newly granitized Dairy Queen when he tried an experimental lick. But this wasn't some kind of weird temperature inversion. And it wasn't snow. Which Captain Jesse James Eastwood found out exactly 1.5 seconds later. His verbal reaction to which was a reasonably accurate approximation of the Alcatraz Island fog horn back in the pre-radar and sonar days up the coast in San Francisco's perennially foggy harbor.

A couple of hundred yards from the ferry was a small charter fishing boat, the Last Gasp, captained by retired British Navy Chief Petty Officer Paddy O'Reilly. Paddy was none too popular with the folks back home in County Derry in Ireland for joining the British Navy and was not exactly welcomed with open arms when he retired and returned to Derry. "Feckin' Brit Sot," was the usual greeting he received when out on the street. Worse. He had to drive nearly to Cork before he could find a pub that would sell him a pint. And even then he got a lot of suspicious borderline hostile looks from his accent, tinged as it was from the long years in close association with English sailors. A couple of years of being shunned, not to mention the crummy Irish weather, convinced Paddy to look for warmer, if not greener, pastures.

He ended up in Southern California as a charter boat captain. Which he liked just fine, even if most Americans mistook him for English when they heard him speak. At least until they heard his name. Paddy O'Reilly? From County Derry in Ireland? Sounding like a cross between a Scot and Cockney? After a while Paddy gave up trying to explain. Though he did eventually grow a fairly good sized chip on his shoulder. Which led him to tip the bottle more often than even in his hard drinking British Navy days.

Paddy had a charter of visiting Germans who wanted to see some whales. No bloody problem there, mate. Paddy liked seeing whales as much as the next guy. Maybe even more, having read Moby Dick in his seafaring days when he had an asshole British snob for a captain and ending up rooting for the whale. Paddy and the Germans were off the coast, looking for whales, when the Santa Maria Island ferry came close. And with a bunch of seagulls hovering near it. Not unusual. Gulls often followed ships looking for edible scraps thrown overboard, it well known among the gull population that humans were notoriously wasteful and consequently great food sources. A chunk of dried out pizza maybe not so tasty as a fresh sardine, but good in a hungry seagull pinch. Then Paddy noticed something strange. The gulls weren't scattered like the usually were. They were in serried ranks. Almost like a formation. No. By God. It was a formation. The bleedin' gulls were flying in formation!

And they were attacking the ferry! Was he really seeing this? Or had he tipped the bottle a bit too much that morning and was hallucinating? Such as had plagued his hard drinking grandfather Reilly R. O'Reilly, who regularly saw unicorns in the vegetable garden and gave chase, carrying a saw with which he intended to remove the unicorn's horn and thereby win for himself everlasting life. Unicorns being immortal thanks to their horns. He however fell on the saw one day and the complications from his injury landed him in an early grave at the age of 82--the O'Reillys usually making it to at least 90, which most of them attributed to a healthy outdoor life and the "presarvin effects of alcohol."

"Dat is da vay it luk at da Siege huf Malta," said an eighty-five year old German in broken English to Paddy. "Almos exhact!" Then, to the intense interest of the other Germans, who were all members of his extended family, he began to explain in a colorful German, complete with plenty of swooping and booming gestures, the historic Siege of Malta when the Luftwaffe bombed the hell out of the Island. Kind of like the seagulls were at that moment doing to the hapless Santa Maria Island ferry and its equally hapless passengers.

"Boom!" The old Luftwaffe airman said loudly as he described in loopy Schwabian German a bomb impact directly on a donkey carrying a load of caged live chickens to market in Malta's ancient capital, Valetta. A town where the Knights of Malta stopped the invading Muslim Turks and thereby, according to Maltese folklore, saving Christianity and western civilization, though a minority of unknown size in the western world was looking forward to the arrival of Islam and its matrimonial component, polygamy.

"Poof! Rip! Poof! Thud!" The German continued, his arms flying up in the air and then his hands fluttering slowly down to his sides, as he described the chicken feathers, as well as other chicken and donkey parts, fly up into the air and then variously plummet or float back to Maltese Earth. Then he reenacted with more Booms! and Poofs! the moment when a sharp eyed British gunner winged his Stuka and he had to bail out right over Valetta's harbor. He held his arms over his head and moved them slowly back and forth, emulating a descending parachute. Then, suddenly, "Bang! Bang! Bang!" His face alive with anger. Some goddamn Englishman was shooting at him in his parachute! Where the hell was the traditional English sense of fair play? Fortunately the spoilsport Englishman was also a poor shot and the German splashed into the harbor when a British boat quickly scooped him up as an uninvited and unwilling guest of the British government until the end of the war. Sending him way the hell across the Atlantic to a prison camp in Ontario, Canada. "Verdamntes Kalt!" He blurted out in undimmed memory. Goddamn cold!

Paddy O'Reilly watched the old airman with amused interest, a granddaughter of the old German, whose name was Benno Wunderlich von Ficker, translating for Paddy what was being said in German. He temporarily lost track of the current airborne attack underway on the Santa Maria Island ferry. Then he turned to catch up on the seagull ferry attack at almost the same moment Seagull Kamikaze Squadron Four came swooping like torpedo planes just above the water. It took a moment for Paddy to realize it. Squadron Four wasn't heading towards the ferry. It was coming straight for his charter boat, the Last Gasp and Paddy O'Reilly and his extended von Ficker clan bunch of passengers.

Shortly thereafter Paddy and his boatload of Germans had an experience they would not soon forget and give the von Ficker's plenty to talk about at the next family outing at the Oktoberfest in, go figure, September.

That was the last day Paddy O'Reilly took a drink of any kind of alcohol on work days. A sight like squadrons of seagulls attacking an island ferry and a charter boat was enough to make any man put the plug in the jug. A charter boat captain had to have all his wits about him in an oceanic world where even the goddamn seagulls were hostile. From then on Paddy O'Reilly was as abstemious as the Sisters of Voluntary(?) Chastity back in Derry. With the exception of every New Year's, when he securely anchored his boat, the Last Gasp, and went on a three day bender that more than made up for a year's solemn sobriety. "A man," Paddy said to all who would listen, "has to have a sense of balance." A literal sense of balance it took him nearly a week to recover after his heroic benders.

Like the Island of Malta, and the Last Gasp, the Santa Maria Island ferry survived the bombardment. But by the time the ferry docked on the mainland Art, his Land Rover, Lady Satan, Fred and anyone or anything connected to Gone With The Wind Balloon Adventures and Serbian-American Benevolent Association were banned from the ferry. "For the lifetime of the ferry," hissed the white hot seagull dung spattered ferry captain, Jesse James Eastwood, "plus ten years".

No one was in any mood to go up in Lady Satan again that day, especially after the two hour long stint in the carwash getting the Land Rover, Lady Satan and the trailer reasonably free of seagull crap. So they settled in at Art Smudge's place, took lots of ibuprofen and Vitamin C, drank glasses of tomato juice and watched reruns of America's Most Wanted on Art's cable TV, some of the reruns so old that the most wanted were mostly dead or in nursing homes. Then Alberto and Eloise left to rent a motel room where they watched some more ancient America's Most Wanted on the motel's cable TV, the same cable company that Art had, and went to bed early. After the last day's adventures and misadventures the idea of sex had about as much appeal as another encounter with Nosferatu, the seagull who never forgets.

However, back at his place Art dreamed about Nosferatu. In the dream Art cleverly trapped Nosferatu in a mosquito net, plucked off every single one of his feathers, covered him with fish oil and dropped him in the shark tank at the Los Angeles Aquarium. Following which Art pulled out a package of buffalo jerky, cracked open a Diet Pepsi and settled in to watch the dream show.

Art woke up with a smile on his face, ready for another day's adventures.

Over in the motel, Eloise woke up at the same time and looked over at Alberto with a puzzled expression.

"That guy with the big ears we saw on America's Lost Wanted last night?" She said. Alberto sure wasn't going to begin his day by correcting her. He looked quizzically at her.

"What about him?" Alberto said, somewhat suspiciously.

"I think I saw him in Hong Kong," Eloise said. "He was riding in a pedicab with a woman who looked like Thumbelina Jolie." That was more than Alberto could take. Blaspheming Angelina Jolie? No way. No freaking way! You mean Angelina Jolie," he said in a wisely delivered purely informational non-threatening tone.

"Yes!" Eloise said. "That's the name. Angelina. Angelina Jolly." To which Alberto had nothing further to say. But his mind was racing. Eloise's mention of Angelina Jolie brought back the memory of that phony online Angelina Jolie Concert that turned out to be a howling Basset Hound named Angelina Jolie who didn't like cats. Which was got him started on his crusade against online scams of all kinds. Which was brought them to LA in the first place. To check out the LA marijuana haze urban legend. He reached over and patted Eloise on the shoulder.

"Let's get dressed," he said. "We have a mission to complete today." Eloise had no idea what that meant, but she did know she could use another shower after being seagulled the previous afternoon. She jumped out of bed and hotfooted it for the shower before Alberto could say another word or beat her to the shower. Within an hour they showed up at Art's place again. Ready. For the mission.

The Urban Legend Mission.

Art Smudge, however, wasn't in such an all fired hurry, despite his entertaining, and, to Art, uplifting dream about Nosferatu. He needed two cups of espresso before he was ready to move. And Art was lightning quick compared to Smashnose Fred, who was a bundle of conflicting and enervating emotions that morning. One. He had a hellacious hangover. Which he always had after a bender. Which was also why he didn't do many benders. Two. He was humiliated by being laid flat by a middle-aged multi-millionaire Icelandic soybean king in front of a bunch of people. Three. He was assaulted by an airborne phalanx of shit spewing seagulls. Four. He, thanks to his non-disclosure agreement with the soybean king over dropping the felony assault charge, was now financially in better shape than he had ever hoped to be and therefore in no way obligated to jump through Art Smudge's employment hoops. Fred took his own sweet time in getting ready to drive the trio of would be urban legend checkers to where they could launch Lady Satan. Instead of his usual blue jeans and T-shirt, he was dressed in chinos, a lightweight Navy Blue sport coat, turtleneck sweater and Italian loafers, clothing he thought more suitable for his recently elevated position in life. He did however finally show, though with some disdain, and by noon Lady Satan was inflated and ready to go. And go she did, with a hopeful Alberto, an ambivalent Eloise and a somewhat hungover Art on board and a totally disinterested Fred climbing back into the Land Rover to take a snooze while the others were floating above in the LA haze.

The trio of ballooners took Lady Satan up, this time firmly tethered to the ground, and, after a few deep breaths, promptly verified that this was one urban legend that was damn well no phony email forward. A fact Art Smudge must have already known, since he stocked up Lady Satan with donuts and eggnog before they went up and the three of them downed a baker's dozen of donuts and a quart of eggnog while peering through the smog at what they were pretty sure was a city.

"So that be Los Angeles?" Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang said, the marijuana haze over the city having set her head to buzzing and her eyes rheumy. Being from China, where illegal marijuana use could result in something like the government permanently removing your fingernails from your hands, plus chopping off a toe or two for good measure, she had no experience with it and floated off into an unfamiliar world. She looked down at the city haze again. "It kind of look like Beijing to me." Alberto stared at her.

"Beijing?" He said skeptically. So you were up in a balloon over Beijing?" Eloise shot Alberto a perturbed look.

"Did I say I was up in balloon over Beijing? No. I didn't say I was up in balloon over Beijing. I don't know if they have the balloons in Beijing. But they do have the airplanes."

"Oh," Alberto answered, now understanding. "That's what you meant. You saw Beijing from an airplane." Another irritated look from Eloise.

"I didn't say that. I didn't say I was up in airplane over Beijing. I only say they have the airplanes in Beijing."

"Then how do you know Los Angeles looks like Beijing?" Alberto said in a peeved voice.

"Post card," Eloise said. Alberto's skeptical attitude changed. That made sense. A post card.

"So you saw Beijing from the air on a post card," Art said. "That's cool."

"I didn't say I saw Beijing from the air on post card," Eloise replied. "All I say was post card. Nothing more. Just the post card." At which point Alberto decided that he would never ever get stoned with Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang again. He already had his fill of chicks getting weird when they were stoned. Like his old girl friend Sophia 'Fangs' Belladonna who thought she was a reincarnated piranha when she was blitzed and twice tried to bite his finger off. Good thing Alberto had turned down her offer of a blow job. He reached down to protectively pat his privates. Now that he thought about it. One hell of a darned good thing. He took another look at Eloise and then moved over to the other side of the gondola. It never hurt to be cautious, he was thinking. That was for sure. Women could be strange sometimes. Strange. And unpredictable.

But a minute later he forget all about it and was trying to harmonize with Eloise as she sang a Chinese folk song about downtrodden peasants slow roasting greedy landlords.

Eloise, who was fed up with all cops for getting a bunch of parking tickets for double parking outside Tucson's Wholistic Foods Co-Op when she was looking for freshly picked Celtuce--Chinese lettuce--twice tried to urinate on a Los Angeles city police car passing below. Both Alberto and Art chuckling merrily and holding her as she draped her business end over the edge of the gondola. She missed the police car but did manage to spray an old lady, Alice 'Hairy Knuckles' Schadenfreude, on her way to the Wednesday bingo at the Catholic church just down the street. A few preliminary drops of Eloise urine splattered on Alice Schadenfreude's genuine Panama--actually made in, where else, China--straw sun hat. Alice stopped and sniffed the air. She looked puzzled. Then horror came galloping onto her Panama sun hat shaded face as the Eloise urine drips turned into a trickle.

Alice Schadenfreude, upon smelling the urine scented water falling from above, was convinced that the sweet rain had turned to sour urine, as her charismatic great grandfather Blonkovic 'Crazy Blonk' Schadenfreude had long predicted, and the end of the world had to be close at hand. She turned on her heels and hurried home, grabbed a crucifix and rosary beads that had seen so little recent use that she had to blow the dust off them, silently offering apologies to God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary and whatever saints might be listening, for her spiritual laxness. Then she amazed her next door neighbor, Woody Balthazar, who was outside sitting on his front porch reading the astounding story in a supermarket tabloid about a Nigerian woman who gave birth to a duck, when she set out at a lope for Our Lady Of Perpetual Miracles--which the agnostic Balthazar sourly referred to as Our Lady of Perpetual Perplexity--just down the street.

Most people assumed that Woody was a nickname for Woodrow. Like Woodrow Wilson. Not so. Woody's mother's was an oboe player in the West Terre Haute, Indiana, occasional community orchestra before getting married, starting a family and eventually settling into a career as a relief tow truck driver in the crazily booming years in Los Angeles. She named her son Woodwind Balthazar out of her fond memories of tooting on the oboe in her carefree unattached younger days in the West Terre Haute occasional community orchestra. The result of which was her son Woodwind Balthazar learning how to fight at an early age and forthwith glommed on to the nickname of Woody. When Woody was going through the teenage years, a time that most parents remember as the Time we had a Monster in our House, he confronted his mother about naming him Woodwind.

"Oh, come off it, kid," his mother said. "Would you rather have been named Oboe?"

Woody never brought up the subject again. Not that he didn't think about it and resent the bloody hell out of it. But at about the same time Woody discovered the spirit of the 60's. Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Which definitely consumed his interest for some time afterward in the direct physical realities of his new girl friend, Easy Sally Dunckliter, his marijuana patch in the back yard and the electric bass in a garage band they called the Grateful Dead until they found the name was already taken and renamed themselves as the LA Smog. Which they figured was kinda close to the Grateful Dead at least in meaning.

Woody had never seen his neighbor do more than schlepp along at turtle speed. And now she was running with prayer beads held tightly to her chest? Well, almost running. Kind of a senior citizen tilting lope with about a fifty/fifty chance of ending face down on the sidewalk. What the heck was going on? This has to be something really big, Woody was thinking, for old lady Shadenfreude to move so much faster than her usual lazy turtle pace. Her plodding waddle having long ago made Woody extremely dubious of Alice's claim that in her youth she was a ballet dancer with, as she said, "the Borscht Ballet Company" somewhere in central Europe. Woody, who teetered heavily towards the skeptical side, doubted Alice would know a pirouette from a proctoscope.

Suspicions aroused by her newfound loping mobility, Woody put down the tabloid, went inside and pulled his Colt .45 out of a drawer, checked the magazine to make sure it was loaded, grabbed an extra magazine and stuck it in his pocket. Then he opened up the fridge, grabbed an imported Heineken's he saved for special occasions and went back outside. Woody popped the cap on the Heineken's, picked up the tabloid, cradled the Colt in his lap, and commenced to finish reading the article, a genuine first hand account of the Nigerian lady who gave birth to a duck, which caused considerable commotion in her home village of N'Gai Sluckee. Woody's behavior was kind of strange, perhaps, for lots of places. But not here. After all....

This was LA.

On the third try Eloise scored a bulls eye. She corrected for windage and landed a fair amount of faintly eggnog scented Eloise urine on a Los Angeles police cruiser passing below. Which occasioned a hearty round of high fives with Alberto and Art, Alberto being careful to hold on to the side of the gondola with one hand while he exchanged hand whacks with Art and Eloise. Alberto not failing to note that that it would be an unwelcome irony if he was the one to tumble out of the gondola after earlier having fantasized about tossing Art out.

"Do you smell that?" Officer Ludmilla 'Kandy' Kane said to her partner, Sergeant Washington Jefferson Lincoln III, in the Los Angeles police cruiser below. The sergeant sniffed the air. His perplexed brows lowered.

"Yes. Odd kind of smell. Perfume-y." Candy gave him a disgusted look.

'Perfume? You call that perfume? It smells more like a stockyard." Sergeant Lincoln looked offended.

"I was raised on a farm and feed lot," he said, a touch defensively. "And my first....er....ah....well, my first romantic experience was in a place that smelled similar to whatever it is we're smelling. So to me it's like perfume." Kandy groaned, shot him a disgusted look and was that much more confirmed in her conviction to stick with women. Men were just flat out bird brained hopeless.

"I'll bet it was a real good time," she said sarcastically. "Right up there with castrating the hogs and beheading the Thanksgiving turkey." Sergeant Lincoln waggled his head in happy agreement.

"Exactly," he said, temporarily lost in fond memories of his youthful days on the feed lot. At which point Kandy was wondering how difficult it would to be fake Lincoln's unfortunate death in the line of duty.

The L.A. cruiser drove on, oblivious to the sneak attack from above. But Woodwind 'Woody' Balthazar spotted Eloise's bare butt hanging over the edge of the hot air balloon gondola overhead. Woody, whose age had not diminished his extra sharp eyesight, picked out the thin stream of liquid trickling from the exposed rear hanging over the gondola's edge. Woody, who was nobody's fool despite what his former boss, Benchek Menchek at Menchek's BB Gun Outlet and Window Glass Replacement shop, had to say. Menchek a notorious dickhead even his own kids couldn't stand being around. Unless they needed money, in which case he was ''...a great dad." At least until he forked over the bucks.

"Attaway to go, girl!" Woody said with a grin, Woody's sharp eyes having picked out that it was a female rear end hanging over the edge of the gondola. Female rear ends, at the age of 73, no longer having the numinous significance in his mind they once had. But he did have his memories, though not nearly as many as he would have liked. Unless you counted bar girls, a bunch of whom Woody encountered during his Army days stationed in the Philippines. Which was also when Woody first picked up his dislike for cops, rousted by the MP's and Shore Patrol out of more than one combination bar and bordello at some very awkward moments. Not to mention plenty of unpleasant encounters with the local LA cops when he came home after midnight from the swing shift at the window glass plant and started up his Harley to fine tune its touchy carburetion. Goddamn narrow minded cops with no sense of perspective. Not a Harley rider among them. So Woody cheered and grinned at the bare rear end hanging over the gondola's edge that sprinkled the LA cops. He even stood up and applauded. And was almost instantly recognized as a kindred soul when a bag of donuts came sailing out of the gondola and landed in Woody's front yard. His neighbor Jesse Montoya saw the bag drop onto Woody's front yard, Woody walk over to it and pluck a donut out of the bag.

"I've heard of manna from heaven," neighbor Jesse muttered. "Even pennies from heaven." Another look as Woody took a bite out of a somewhat squashed chocolate covered donut. "But donuts from heaven? That's a genuine first." Then Jesse jumped the fence between the two houses and joined Woody for an impromptu feast of heavenly donuts washed down by imported Heinikens Woody fetched from his frig.

"Life is good," Woody said. Jesse nodded agreement.

"Sure is, Woody. Sure is." And then he bit into another somewhat squashed donut.

When the trio of intrepid ballooners came back down they all went to Art's place in the balloon shop and immediately plunked themselves down and took a long nap. They woke up, cooked two Uncle Zio's Flamethrower sausage and Jalapeño pizzas from Art's freezer, ate them right down to the crusts, even a bite or two out of the cardboard platter, and drank a half case of Art's Diet Pepsi, then took another long nap. They woke up, went to the bathroom, recycled the Diet Pepsi, then took another nap. When they woke up again Alberto made a deal with Art. He'd give Art the stolen Ford with the fake plates in exchange for their trips on Lady Satan. Art, whose ancient Plymouth with its nearly 300,000 miles was about to give up the worn out Plymouth ghost, thought it was a great idea.

"But how are you going to get back to Arizona? Take a bus? A train? Fly? Hitchhike?" Alberto gave Art one of those long, lingering looks the knowledgeable give to the uninitiated. Like a drill sergeant levels at a recruit who tripped and fell flat on his face climbing off the new arrivals bus. "Just drop us off at WalMart and I'll take it from there." Alberto said. He gave Art Smudge a hefty tip and had him give them a ride to the nearest Wal-Mart in their stolen car with the phony plates. In less than a minute Alberto hotwired a Honda Odyssey van in the Walmart parking lot, stopped on a nearby quiet street and deftly replaced the van's plates with a set of plates he--being after all a seasoned professional--prudently kept for emergencies. Then he drove himself and Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang back home, listening much of the way to a talk radio show about the recent wave of car thefts in parking lots all over Los Angeles.

It had been a good trip, they agreed. Not as good as Disneyland or the 3D Armageddon Now! flick, with its dynamite special effects, at the multiplex. But still an agreeable and satifsying trip. Plus they had performed a community service by intrepidly investigating an urban legend and verifying that, for once, the urban legend was actually the real deal.

The only big downside, at least from Alberto's viewpoint, was when Lars Erik Svensgudbrudersson somehow got Eloise's cell phone number, called her up and invited her to go for a leisurely cruise on his yacht, Soy Valhalla, conveniently docked in Santa Maria's harbor. He'd pick her up at the Yuma International Airport in his private plane, which he kept at a small airport outside of Los Angeles. Would Eloise like to join him? Would she? Want to join him? A millionaire soybean king who owned a hefty chunk of the Red River Valley of the North and who had a mansion, a private plane and his own yacht. Would Eloise like to go? She was an Eloise blur of motion and had her travel bag packed before Alberto could finish blurting out a shaken "...hey, Eloise, wait a min...."

She was gone. Alberto was crestfallen. For possibly one, perhaps two minutes. Then he took out his mobile, scanned the numbers of available women, picked one and punched the dial. After all, a man had to move on in this life. You couldn't let the occasional glitch set you back. Not for long, anyhow. A voice answered on the mobile. Alberto checked the listing on his mobile to make sure he had the name right.

''Hola," another quick look at the name on the mobile. "Conchita?" Alberto began in a bright voice. "Es tu amigo. Alberto....."

Pepe's Vision

The markets for Fico's dope weren't just in southern California. In the other direction was the sprawling urban octopus of Phoenix with another whopping potential market for his dope, where the equally intrepid dope smokers of the greater Phoenix area puffed away most of the marijuana crop of the state of Chihuahua during the NFL season. "Up in smoke, East and West," was the way Fico's detail man, Pepe Dimentia, who was a fan of old Cheech and Chong movies as well as a dedicated dope smoker himself, put it. Pepe, who was a man of some vision, thought that marijuana ought to be legalized--a thought he, wishing to keep both his job and his head still securely fastened to his neck, kept to himself around his boss, who made big bucks by keeping it illegal. Pepe's whimsical fantasy was for there to be a smoke off between East and West. The Cal-AZ Smoke Off, he'd call it. L.A. would pick its half dozen best dope smokers and Phoenix would weed out all but its half dozen best ones.

They'd have the contest in--where else?--Las Vegas. The team that smoked the most blunts in a half hour and still stayed on their feet without significant assistance or lapsing into obvious hallucinations would win. The prizes ranging from a weekend pass to Scalopini's Bunny Ranch, a hefty stack of Good as Cash casino chips, prepaid gift cards to Romney's Get Stuffed all you can eat restaurants or a lifetime's supply of Cloud Nine rolling papers. But the real prize would be the trophy. The Golden Blunt. A Golden Blunt mounted on an outstretched arm. Pepe was undecided on whose arm should be the model, though his personal favorite was Pancho Villa, whose revolutionary troops sang the la Cucaracha song as they marched jauntily through the countryside, only pausing now and then for a spell of good natured plundering, during which all sex was consensual. At least according to Pancho's men. Not a soul took issue with that. Which might have had something to do with Pancho's muchachos threatening to shoot anyone who said otherwise.

Lookin' North

El Cientifico (Fico) had his mechanics take all four tires off the Silverado, break them down and then carefully pack each one with kilo sized bricks of marijuana, identical clones punched out by an adobe brick press whose inventor may or may not have been surprised by its current use and whose descendants knew it was a very bad idea to try to grab some royalties by pushing patent infringement rights on the current users. The four loaded tires added up to nearly 250 pounds. Powerful high quality stuff, too. Headed for Fresno. Probably enough MJ to keep most of the Great Central Valley in California stoned for at least a week. This load was timed to hit the Central Valley just when a new comedy hit the multiplexes. Local dealers made a nice profit surreptitiously hawking marijuana laced candies and baked goods outside the theaters, then gobbled a cookie or two themselves and joined the crowds in the theaters for what turned out to be one hell of a riotous good ol' time. No matter how dumb assed the movie was. Of which there were a great plenty of candidates.

"Do you hear that?" Nino 'No Way' Saleri, the night manager at the Kapeski Brothers Multiplex in the Valley Mall just outside Fresno, said to his ticket taker, popcorn popper and all around work force of one that evening, Israel Ben-Swenson, who had just come out of Theater 2, where the new comedy was playing and it sounded like a riot was building inside. "Have you ever heard so much laughter coming out of a theater?" Israel, however, was unable to answer, grabbing his sides and bending over was waves of mirth rolled over his somewhat chunky body. Big X, the local marijuana cookie dealer, looking to keep things cool, had earlier slipped Israel a bag of freebie cookies.

"Hear what?" Israel finally was able to say. Nino glared at Israel with his best take on a Boss Glare, something that he practiced in the theater restroom's mirror during down times when no one was around to watch.

"I'm thinking something really strange is going on," Nino said through his Boss Glare. Maybe I should call the police." Israel's eyes bugged and he actually violated the First Commandment of the Employee: Don't Ever Grab the Boss. But he did. And before Nino could react, Israel pulled out his bag of freebie spiked cookies and stuffed them in Nino's hand.

"Here. Take this. Eat a couple. Give it a couple of minutes. After that go into the movie and take a look. Then make your decision. OK?" Ordinarily such a ploy would have bombed with Dino, but he was a sucker for cookies. Just about any kind of cookie.

"I never met a cookie I didn't like," was one of his favorite sayings, and he damn well meant it. Nino therefore promptly gobbled down a cookie. And a second cookie. Man. Those were some tasty cookies. He gobbled down two more. He waited two minutes, though it seemed like ten. And then he went inside to take a look at the hilarity in the theatre and ended up watching the entire flick and laughing so hard he almost herniated his abdomen and actually, albeit only for only a split of a split second, did lose control of his bladder.

He also had a genuine Eureka moment. Two years later he opened Nino's Meds, a medical marijuana dispensary within easy walking distance of the Valley Mall multiplex. Which really pissed off local dealer Big X. Until Nino hired him to run the dispensary at a comfortable salary, with benefits and a 401K, which Big X was more than happy to do, him now being a family man and getting weary of continually looking over his shoulder for those goddamn puritanical meddling narcs looking to bust his Big X ass. Both Big X and Nino from that point on tending to vote Republican and vocally support the concept of governmental non-interference in the free enterprise marketplace.

### Chapter 7

It's Just Business

Fico was a border businessman. Of a type as common along the Arizona/Sonora order as the state tree of Texas was in Texas. The state tree, of course, the telephone pole. In West Texas, anyhow. Which, after a short hop over the New Mexico Bootheel, fit Arizona to a treeless T. It was a border which the businessmen violated with regularity. Borders were one thing. Making big bucks quite another. Another border businessman, Fico's not so friendly rival and competitor, Ungulado Winces, was having a somewhat heated discussion with his wife.

"What? You'd let something like a border stop us making some bucks?" Said the incredulous border businessman when challenged on his illegal activities by his wife. "Stopping us from smuggling would be like stopping corruption in Mexico City or insider trading on Wall Street." A pause, then a snicker. "And ain't either one gonna happen anytime soon."

"Besides, smuggling is an honorable tradition," local smuggler Ungulado Winces continued. "Going way back to Biblical times when the struggling Jews and Greeks were avoiding the burdensome and unfair Roman taxes. It's in the Bible." A short pause and a somewhat puzzled expression. "I think." Another somewhat puzzled expression. "Anyhow, he continued, "this is not such a big deal."

Winces' wife, Consuela Ding de Winces, who had resumed her studies at the University of Sonora and was working towards a law degree, had just challenged Ungulado on his cross border smuggling activities.

"You are violating the sovereign rights of a nation," she said. "That is not something to take lightly. What would happen if no one respected national frontiers? It would be international chaos and maybe the end of modern civilization." She stopped, blasted Ungulado with one of her best pissed off wife glares, then added. "And you wouldn't know a Bible from an Auto Repair for Dummies book."

Ungulado often wished he had married a woman who was beautiful, talented, wise and also totally unable to speak a single word in any language. Instead he had married Consuela. Who was all of those. With the exception--the very big exception--of the inability to speak in any language. Who could talk. Boy, could she talk. But, when he thought about it some, he figured she'd make a hot shot lawyer. Which could come in handy it he got busted on one of his smuggling ventures.

"You are not looking at the big picture, Consuela," he said. "Step back and think beyond the blinders of today." That got Consuela. Since when did Ungulado talk like that? He could get loquacious about things like soccer and good beer and cool cars. But...the blinders of today?

"Did you munch a mushroom or chew some peyote or something like that?" She said, rebroadcasting her pissed off wife glare.

"I joined the book of the month club," Ungulado snapped back. "On my Kindle."

"I would believe that the Gulf of Mexico was made of Cool Whip before I would believe that," she spit out at him.

"OK. OK. So I heard some guy on the history channel say it and thought it sounded neat." A pause, with an indignant look. "And may I continue, Madam Not Yet A Lawyer?" Consuela shrugged an indifferent yes.

"The bigger view. Beyond today. Look at all the plants and the animals. Do the coyotes care whether they grab a rabbit in Sonora or in Arizona? Does a saguaro cactus take care to make sure it's seeds drop only in Mexico or Gringolandia? Does the white winged dove trouble itself over whether it drops its load of bird shit on Mexico or the U.S." A pause, one in which Ungulado was looking self satisfied, even smug. "The Big Picture, Consuela. Beyond the blinders of today and of the merely human."

"Well, I sure hope that the white winged doves of your Big Picture spring your ass out of jail if you get busted because I sure as hell won't!" Then she wheeled on her spike heels and stomped out of the room.

About then Ungulado figured that having a mistress might be a good idea.

Meanwhile, in Nogales at Fico's multi-purpose garage, the Chevy Silverado was ready to go. The driver was a guy both Fico and Alberto used often. Fico, to drive load cars. Alberto, to steal the cars that would become load cars. The guy's name was Rigoberto 'El Rapido' Arzola. Rigoberto had a couple of characteristics that in Fico and Berto's world were at the top of the smuggler's preferred employee list. He was willing to take risks. And he could think on his feet, and fast, in tight situations. When just a skinny teenager in a tiny ejido in the Sierra Madres of Sinaloa he was walking a narrow mountain path with his new girlfriend, diminutive Carmelita 'No Hips' Benavides, looking for a place to lie down and practice their recently discovered teenage pastime of messing around.

"This looks good," Rigoberto said to Carmelita when they happened upon a grassy meadow under some towering Apache pines. Carmelita, who was just as enthusiastic as Rigoberto in exploring the newly discovered messing around territory, squeezed his hand as they detoured from the forest path into the pleasingly mellow sun-flecked meadow.

Bad choice, kids. A tigre--a jaguar--lurking in the thick woods decided the two skinny kids would make a modest lunch, or at least an appetizer, and forthwith bounded out of the bush on all tigre fours and jumped the young couple in preliminary messing around mode. Tigres are huge and very dangerous cats that even cougars, when they encounter a tigre, make a real hasty--make that lightning quick--mountain lion exit. So it was big trouble for Rigoberto and little Carmelita. Rigoberto then showed the characteristic that would serve him well in the years to come. The ability to think on his feet in crisis situations. Rigoberto reacted instantly. He rolled over, with all his teenaged might shoved skinny little Carmelita towards the jaguar and took off beating feet the hell out of there, setting what still stands as a local speed record for descending from the mountainside to the village.

You can bet Rigoberto wasn't about to tell anyone what had really happened up on the mountainside when Carmelita 'No Hips' Benevides had a way too close encounter with a jaguar. Poor girl, there was nothing he could do to save her. He barely escaped with his own life. Just before he got to the village Rigoberto stepped off the trail and intentionally walked into the thorn filled lower branches of a big honey mesquite tree. There was enough blood and scratches on his body when he walked into the village to make his story ring true.

But Sister Fate, contrarian that she is, has a way of dropping a sledge hammer on the unsuspecting. And so it was with Rigoberto. Up to this point everything was cool in his world. But there would soon be a problem. A problem that would explode in Rigoberto's mountain valley ejido world with all the emotional, psychological and physical fallout of that unknown Protestant prankster's stink bomb under the pulpit of the recently built Our Lady of the Cloudy Mountains Catholic Church.

Carmelita escaped the jaguar.

A bloody Carmelita 'No Hips' Benevides came staggering into the ejido with eyes hot with rage and a finger--ending in a very sharp pointed nail that had managed to temporarily blind the tigre and allow her escape--pointing directly at none other than Rigoberto 'El Rapido' Arzola. Which was when he earned his nickname of 'El Rapido' when he blitzed out of town just ahead of the ejido's extemporaneous version of a lynch mob. He eventually found a new home in Fico and Alberto's smuggling world where he never told a single soul, not even when hitting the cervezas hard at the local cantina, about the details of his leaving home. For Rigoberto the old adage about not being able to go home again was more than a tepid old bromide. The ejido folk had long memories. And short fuses. Plus his sister Gretalinda, who was the ejido librarian, with whom he had stayed in secret contact, wrote him that one of the local hotheads asked if there was a how to book on "Drawing and Quartering Rigo...er.....ah.....People."

Rigoberto would drive the Chevy Silverado with the loaded tires through the San Luis Port of Entry just before midnight. At San Luis, as at most places, midnight came at the same time every evening. The shifts changed at midnight and as the shift change from swings to midnights drew near the officers on duty were bone tired, their eyes glued on the clock and their minds on going home. Any ideas about enforcement were a distant second to climbing in their rides and heading for the house and the distant possibility that their spouse would still be up and ready for a ride on the baloney pony or at least there'd be a piece or two of leftover pizza they could warm up in the microwave while they watched occasionally successful but mostly flat out dumb assed attempts at humor on late night TV.

Fico studied the CBP personnel assigned to the swing shift and focused on a single officer. Thanks to a snooping employee of the port maintenace staff who was also on Fico's payroll, Fico had a good idea of the way the shift schedules were assigned. When he saw that this same officer would be on the lane just before midnight, Fico was ready to make his move. First he sent through a scout car, driven by his crazy cousin Alberto, with his new girlfriend Conchita as a passenger, to see if there was a K-9 hidden behind the CBP building. Soon a call came back from Alberto's scout car.

No perros, Fico. Just a couple of dopey looking dudes who wouldn't know a load car from the space ship Enterprise." An analogy which didn't phase Fico. His loopy cousin Alberto was a hard core sci-fi fan who had attended several of the Star Trek conventions, at least once in a Mr. Spock outfit, though he really raised some eyebrows the time he attended the convention dressed as the Star Trek female officer, Lieutenant Uhuru. That Alberto, Fico thought, what a character!

So, Fico calculated after hearing from Alberto. Good. No K-9. Just a couple of bored looking officers lounging in secondary. He shot a look at Rigoberto in the Chevy Silverado.

"Andale, pues!" Fico said. Which did not mean he was calling some guy named Andale a pussy. It actually more or less translated as 'Let 'er rip'. Which Rigoberto AKA El Rapido proceeded to do.....but it was a prudently slow rip. Rigoberto threw the Chevy pickup into gear and started off. Carefully, for the loaded tires could give themselves away with shuddering and odd noises and unusual tire movements if he drove too fast. El Rapido was a pro. He didn't drive too fast. He was dressed like a farm worker. Hardly a stretch, considering he'd put in many an hour chopping lettuce and boxing melons in the farm fields of Arizona and California. And hated every goddamned minute of it, which had a lot to do with both why he now was a car thief and a load driver. At least it was clean work and he didn't have to change clothes every day and his girlfriend didn't complain he smelled like a cantaloupe. Moving neither too fast nor too slow, he approached the lane manned by CBP officer Wade Baron, a nice enough guy who was however bordering on the terminally clueless when it came to doing the job of a border CBP officer.

Wade was an Iraq war vet with a purple heart. Not what the public would usually envision of an Iraqi war veteran with a purple heart. Wade was a farm boy who was a reservist in a supply unit headquartered near Omaha when the unit was called to active duty. He was driving a truck loaded with MREs--military rations called Meals Ready to Eat--near the Baghdad airport when an IED went off and several chunks of shrapnel and MREs forthwith relocated to a variety of locations in his body. He was the only soldier in the Iraq War documented to have been wounded in the scrotum by a chunk of ham. No permanent damage, but he did get free transportation back to the U.S. and a medical discharge.

Wade came out OK in the Divine genetic lottery with the book smarts genes but missed out on the street smarts. He scored at the very top of the list when he took the CPB test, and with his wounded veteran's preference, was soon in the express lane on his way to the border in his brand new CBP uniform. After two years on the border he was still not quite sure what the hell was going on. But he did dwell more and more on his very own personal dream, which, much to his coworkers' annoyance, he was quick to bring up in any pause in conversation, was to start a methane business using the manure from his uncle Grotius' southeastern Nebraska pig farm. With plenty of way too much detail about the fascinating world of pig manure.

"Now, where should I put the methane tanks?" Baron mumbled to himself as El Rapido approached his lane in the Chevy Silverado. Wade having just about decided his future lay in the methane business in Nebraska and not as a CBP officer and his consciousness continually gravitating away from border work to the fascinating possibilities of methane production. "Whoo!" He muttered to himself. "Sure can't put the manure piles upwind from the house. No way. Uncle Grotius and especially Aunt Gudrun would really be pissed. Have to put them downwind, maybe by the........" Just then Rigoberto 'El Rapido' Arzola pulled up next to him and rudely interrupted Wade in mid-methane reverie.

It was a pushover, just like Fico had planned. Baron fully lived up to his reputation. He was still preoccupied with trying to figure out exactly where he would locate the methane tanks and other pig manure facilities on Uncle Grotius' farm, taking care to make sure the smellier parts were all downwind from the farmhouse, and hardly noticed the Silverado. He waved Rigoberto through with barely a look and Rigoberto angled the pickup towards the west exit lane. Suddenly a skinny red-headed CBP officer stepped out of the shadows in the secondary lot and waved at him to stop. Rigoberto had studied photos of all the gringo officers at the Port of San Luis that Fico had collected. This guy wasn't any of them. The interior alarm bells started clanging. Rigoberto was famous among his smuggling brethren for having a sixth sense that had saved his smuggler's butt more than once. He privately called it his Carmelita and the Jaguar sixth sense. That sixth sense kicked his gut--fortunately staying safely above his privates--so strong it almost knocked the breath out of him and he knew deep down in his smugglers' bones that this red headed gringo beanpole dickhead was about to bust him.

Faster than a lot of people can think and even quicker than the hands of Fast Eddie, the blackjack dealer at the nearby Indian casino where several of the CBP officers regularly dropped a sizeable chunk of their paychecks, true to his nickname, Rigoberto 'El Rapido' Arzola hurtled out of the driver's door of the pickup. He hit the ground running, burning boot leather racing for the fence that separated the north bound lanes at San Luis from the south bound ones going into Mexico. His boots hit the pavement with such driving force that he sent tiny chunks of gravel on the pavement's surface spraying behind him. Two chunks of the gravel hitting the windshield of Manuel 'Tortilla Chip' Del Santo's newly purchased Nissan Sentra, putting a couple of borderline microscopic pits in the windshield.

The next week Del Santo filed a tort claim against Customs and Border Protection for $635.26, which included the costs of replacing the windshield and compensation for the time he lost waiting at the windshield replacement shop for the "slow glass asses" at Manny's Glass and Go to get the job done. Del Santo however omitting a few facts. 1. He worked at Manny's Glass and Go. 2. He was the guy who replaced windshields. 3. He was the guy who wrote up the bills for replacing windshields. 4. He actually was the Manny of Manny's Glass and Go. 5. He never so much as touched the windshield on his newly purchased Nissan Sentra, much less replaced it.

The pickup kept on rolling as El Rapido vaulted over the fence and streaked for Mexico. Elvis figured there was little hope of catching him. He jumped into the rolling pickup and steered it into the secondary lot just as Rigoberto hit the Mexican border going full stride with the verve of a lightning quick Jamaican sprinter either going for the gold or running from the child support enforcement officer. No one on the Mexican side stopped him. Not far away Fico was waiting.

And Fico was not a happy man.

Elvis' ET partner, Pancho, saw what happened and exploded into a foot chase after El Rapido, but also soon saw the guy was far ahead sprinting for the border at smuggler's warp speed and knew it was pointless. He hauled up, turned and went back to where Elvis had stopped the pickup in a parking slot in the secondary lot. They were not alone for long.

Elvis and Pancho were standing in the lot next to the Chevy Silverado when a mountain of human flesh lumbered up to them. The relief supervisor on the midnight shift, three hundred pounds and counting Tony Rivera, walked into the secondary lot, saw the two ET men by the Chevy and headed over to poke his nose into their business and see what they were doing and maybe get a chance to screw with them. Which was one of his very favorite activities, right up there with eating, TV wrestling shows and eating some more. Tony Rivera considered himself absolutely the best supervisor at San Luis and probably the entire Arizona border. Maybe even the whole southwestern border, though there might be one or two others nearly as good as him. This perception was shared by only one other face. That of Tony himself when he looked in the mirror at home. Added to the twin facts of his monumentally inflated body and ego, he was at once both more than a touch arrogant and often clueless. To say he was not popular with the troops was a whopping understatement on the order of a 767 pilot running out of jet fuel in midair and announcing over the intercom that "there might be a small problem." Which meant that Pancho and Elvis, who as members of the semi-independent Enforcement Team did not answer directly to Rivera, rarely missed a chance to screw with Rivera. Just as he rarely missed a chance to do the same. A big grin jumped onto Pancho's face when Rivera walked up and shot them a sarcastic look.

"Think it might be loaded, El?" He said through his wide grin to Elvis.

"The tires," Elvis replied. "They went over that speed bump behind Baron's lane like they were solid rubber." Pancho reached down and gave a sharp whack to the side of the tire nearest him with the butt of his flashlight, holding his other hand on the face of the tire. It didn't have the hollow ring of a normal tire. Just a muted whump. He nodded knowingly.

"Yep," he said. "This puppy looks to be loaded, all right, El." Pancho plucked his Buster density meter out of the holder on his utility belt and bent over to run it slowly over the tire's surface. By then Rivera was standing directly at his side, eyeing the ET boys suspiciously.

"Reading in the 70's," Pancho said. "Way above a normal reading." He straightened up. "Something solid inside." Another grin creased Pancho's swarthy mustached face. "Maybe they're smuggling packages of bootleg refries," Pancho said with a determined attempt at a serious face. "You know. Avoid paying duty on imported refried beans or bypassing USDA inspection for possible contamination by mice droppings or bubonic plague or ticks carrying the dreaded refry virus. Stuff like that." A cloud began to form over Rivera's face.

"My guess its more likely a controlled substance of some kind," Elvis replied with a similarly constructed serious expression. "Possibly DDT, which has been banned in most countries, but which is still to be had in Russia, Afghanistan and possibly the Maldives Islands as well as secretly in some Chinese owned corporate farms in the Midwest. Or Fen-Phen diet pills, which are banned in the US but widely available in many other countries. For sure there's a potential domestic market for them here in the good ol' U.S. of Bloated America." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Think of it, Pancho. We might well just have dealt a serious blow to the diet pill black market." The diet pills and bloated America remarks roiled Rivera's clouded face into thunderheads. These goddamn ET pricks were jerking his chain again.

"On the other hand," Pancho replied. "It might be some kind of narcotic. Possibly marijuana."

"That, too," Elvis responded. "That could well be the case. It has been known to occur here on occasion." He put a hand on Pancho's shoulder. "One way to find out," he said with a serious expression. Pancho almost laughed out loud when Elvis continued. "Telepathy. Tune into the tire's inner vibrations to find out what's inside." Elvis' face got even more serious. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of even more serious. Next to him stood the mountainous presence of Tony Rivera, whose face looked to Elvis like an over the hill Halloween pumpkin. Pancho continued.

"Or we could break the tire down on the tire tool out back where the hydraulic lift is and see what's inside with our own eyes." Elvis lightly tapped the side of his red haired head.

"Good idea, Pancho! Why the heck didn't I think of that?" That did it. Tony'd had enough.

"Are you two clowns done with your routine?" Rivera hissed. Just then another man came thumping into the secondary lot, making Elvis think of a wandering mental patient who'd somehow gotten his hands on a CBP uniform and was tentatively approaching them, possibly searching for his misplaced daily meds. It was Wade Baron, who had cleared the Chevy to enter the US. The midnight shift had arrived and Inspector Kate 'Thermite' O'Garcia had wandered out to relieve Baron from the primary lane.

"Hey! Baron said. "Is this pickup loaded? Darn, I knew I should have referred it." A hopeful puppy dog look. "Do I get any credit for almost referring it? Kind of like honorable mention? Something like that? That got Elvis and Pancho's attention but good. The pickup he'd almost referred? Honorable mention? You could have heard a pin drop–had not a teenager with a souped up old Ford slammed on the accelerator when he cleared the primary lane and went thundering by them drowning out all other sounds, including that of a dropping pin or even an entire dump truck load of dropping pins.

"I should have put a referral slip on the windshield. And wrote on it to check the tires." Baron said after the roaring Ford's decibel level dropped to the marginally bearable. Baron had seen Elvis try to stop the pickup after it had cleared his secondary lane and figured out that the red headed ET guy might find it be loaded. Not good for Baron. Not good at all. Made him look bad. Then when he saw the driver bail out of the pickup and hotfoot it for Mexico even the less than spectacularly talented Baron figured out what was going to happen. He saw Elvis and Pancho thumping on the tires as he walked up and immediately added 'check tires' to his almost referred wish list.

Tony Rivera was no great fan of Wade Baron. Baron had twice beaten Rivera in the annual San Luis Hot Dog Eating Contest, breaking Rivera's string of six straight victories. Rivera might have forgiven one defeat. But when the peckerhead Baron beat him the second time? Too much. Way too much. Especially when the frickin' jerk never seemed to gain any weight. The only thing they had in common was their appetite for hot dogs. Which ended right there. Rivera sticking with horseradish mustard and Baron being a strictly spicy ketchup man. But, much as he detested Baron, he disliked the ET team even more. Especially these two. Elvis and Pancho. A couple of smart asses who liked to screw with him. Rivera saw his chance. He'd do a little screwing of his own. Which, because of his immense bulk, was the only screwing he usually was capable of, his pecker being hopelessly swallowed up somewhere below several cascading layers of belly fat. Which was another thing that left him no little disgruntled and looking for some way, any way, to strike back at the blatant unfairness of life.

"Why don't you guys cut Baron here some slack? He hasn't been doing too well lately, you know. He could use some positive reinforcement. Why not give him credit for the referral? You guys will still get the seizure. What about it?" Baron, standing next to Tony, waggled his head hopefully.

"Yeah," he interjected. "What's it gonna hurt? Throw this old dog a bone."

"Well?" Rivera said in a marginally threatening voice. "What about it?" Pancho had a hooded look that neither Rivera nor Baron could read.

"One small problem." Everyone looked at him with no little curiosity and, in at least one case, apprehension. "It didn't happen. It's not true. What do you think would happen if a defense attorney found out we'd lied on the seizure? What do you think the big bosses with their squads of pit bull lawyers would do if they found out we falsified a seizure report?" Elvis nodded, squinting as his mind jumped on an idea.

"I can see it now," Elvis said. "Pancho is on the witness stand at the federal courthouse in Phoenix. He's facing the defense attorney, some slick hotshot hired by the drug cartel. A thousand dollar suit guy who's never done a single day of real work his whole life but is from a rich family that put him through pricey Ivy League schools. A guy whose very genes despise the working class and to whom blue collar is an expletive. He looks at Pancho with snide condescension." Pancho, who always appreciated a good story and had no trouble joining right in, moved closer to Elvis.

"And, even though this guy hires Mexicans to mow his lawn, clean his swimming pool, blow dry his standard poodle's hair and nursemaid his snotnosed brat kids, he secretly dislikes Mexicans," Pancho said. "And all the while enjoying his Mexican chef's tasty Mexican cooking."

"Especially Huevos Rancheros," Elvis added. "With plenty of hot sauce."

"Right," Pancho replied in his typical colorfully profane fashion. "The rich gringo son of a bitch mother fucking bastard." Elvis knew Pancho well enough to get the mock trial back on track before it really got derailed when Pancho's ire heated up and caught fire.

"So Pancho is on the witness stand. The thousand dollar suit Ivy League slick approaches with a sneer. So, the legal suit says, Officer, you say that your partner, Officer Mahoney, actually found the alleged marijuana that was allegedly in the tires of the Chevrolet Silverado previously identified by Officer Mahoney. On his own. With no help or assistance from anyone else."

"How do you define help or assistance," Pancho shot back, according to Elvis in his narrative. "You have to be more specific." The suit was laying in wait, Elvis said, as he went on.

"Specifically, did Officer Wade Baron refer the Chevrolet Silverado in question for further inspection?" Elvis stopped and looked at Pancho, Wade Baron, and finally, at Supervisor Tony Rivera. "Pancho is screwed. What is he gonna say? No, and have to try to explain how the seizure narrative said otherwise. Or say yes, knowing that was a lie."

"I hope to hell you're pleased with yourself, Rivera," Pancho jumped in, now dead serious, Pancho a dramatic kind of guy and caught up a little too much in an ongoing narrative. "Here I am in danger of losing my job and maybe even going to federal prison. And all because of you."

"I can live with it," Tony Rivera replied without batting an eye. "Especially if Elvis goes with you."

Which neatly summed up the relationship between Elvis and Pancho and Tony Rivera.

"Pancho's right about the seizure," Elvis interjected before his hothead buddy Pancho got even more wound up and really did blast off. "We can't do it. Not after the fact. But maybe we can help him out by putting in the seizure narrative that he assisted us. That sound OK?" Baron nodded agreeably, though Tony only scowled, having already mentally drawn up the report he was going to write ratting out the ET team for falsifying a seizure and hopefully getting them in deep Customs and Border Protection trouble. If not to Tony, the idea was OK with Wade Baron.

Though Wade, who wasn't much into exercising and was out of shape, wasn't so sure of it later on when they had to break down all four tires on the pickup and remove the 250 pounds of marijuana crammed in them. And in the San Luis heat, which hardly backed off even in the middle of the night. A place which Elvis thought would be better named Hell Town or Frying Pan City than something as misleading as the name of some far off European saint who has absolutely frickin' zero to do with the deep fried place. By the end of their Chevy Silverado marijuana San Luis steam bath adventure Wade Baron agreed 1000 percent with that attitude. And he would be giving some downright serious consideration to going on some kind of exercise program. Either that or a transfer to Montana or North Dakota where steam baths were located indoors. Or better yet, make a career change to the potentially lucrative methane production business on Uncle Grotius' Nebraska pig farm.

Elvis climbed into the Silverado and started it up while Pancho walked back to the enclosed search compound where the tire breakdown tool and the hydraulic lift were, hidden from public scrutiny by plastic screening over the metal framework of the compound. Management's idea being that the smugglers wouldn't be able to see what the officers were doing with their load car. Never mind that the very fact the officers took the car into the search compound in the first place was like putting a huge You're Busted sign over the search compound gates. Pancho pulled open those gates and guided Elvis as he drove the Silverado onto the ramps of the hydraulic lift. Wade Baron stood nearby watching, anxious for his chance to get a hands on experience with discovering smuggled drugs. A chance, being mostly clueless even if a nice guy, Wade rarely got. In fact very, very rarely. OK. All right. More than that. So this was the first one. But he'd read about a whole bunch of them in the computerized seizure narratives.

Pancho suddenly stopped in his tracks, looking around him in confusion. "Elvis," he said. "The breakdown tool. It's not here." Just then Supervisor Tony Rivera came lumbering up, looking to Pancho like an armed hippo with a moustache. A grinning armed hippo with a moustache.

"Oh," Supervisor Rivera said, his face wreathed in a smart ass grin. "I guess I overlooked telling you." The grin grew even wider, exposing at least three quarters of his oversized set of teeth. "The tire breakdown tool broke down. It's in the shop being repaired." Another widening of the grin. So much so that absolutely every wrinkle in Tony's face was pulled flat, his eyes pulled wide with equal dramatic effect, so that it might have led Eloise 'Ching-Ching' Chang, were she there, to conclude Tony might be part Chinese and possibly, considering his general physical configuration, distantly related to the giant panda. "Sorry about that." Tony said. Which statement had about as much truth in it as a tired out working mother of four little kids telling her wannabe amorous husband he was sure hot and sexy but she had a bad migraine coming on and didn't want to puke all over him in an totally gross version of coitus interruptus when the migraine hit ground zero in mama's brainpan right in the middle of hubby's huffing and puffing. The actual truth being that sex in her worn out housewife four little kids world was about as appealing as walking barefoot over a field of broken beer bottles.

As it turned out it wasn't just the tire breakdown tool in the search compound that was broken. So was the hydraulic lift. No lift in the lift. They had to jack up each tire and manually cut it open. Pickup tires are not generally manufactured to be easily cut open by knives, tires subject to federal consumer safety regulations after having formerly been a favorite target of trolling hungry lawyers cut loose from various law firms as a cost cutting measure in a shrinking economic climate--which sliced way too much into the high six and seven figure incomes of the various law firms' principal partners. Cutting the tires open therefore was a sweaty miserable job, thanks, Elvis was thinking, to the goddamn federal government and all its rules and regulations about tire safety. Even though both Pancho and Elvis carried some wickedly sharp knives for such unforeseen eventualities they still had a tire cutting rough time of it. Pancho, who had even less patience than Elvis, laid out an ongoing low grumble of Spanish language expletives, a talent that, everyone agreed, he was so adept at that he was in a grumbled Spanish language expletive class of his own.

Finally they sawed through the first tire enough to reveal the packages inside. There they were. The quintessential brown tape wrapped brick sized packages cloned out by an adobe brick press. It would have been a hallelujah drug busting border moment in many situations. But not after sawing laboriously through the goddamn federally regulated tire in the steam bath San Luis heat. It was more of a thank God it's over pain in the ass moment. Elvis looked over at Wade.

"You're supposed to be helping us, dude. You take the sample." Wade took out his knife and cut into one of the packages. Or at least tried to cut into it. His knife wouldn't cut it. Elvis stared at him. Wade, however, looked at his knife blade, ran his thumb over it lightly, and mutely shrugged.

"Don't you ever sharpen your knife?" Elvis said. Wade reshrugged.

"Once," he replied, a little sheepishly. "I think it was some time early last year." Elvis tried hard to maintain a neutral expression as he handed Wade his knife. Wade took it and, before Elvis could stop him, ran his thumb lightly down the blade to feel its sharpness. Big mistake.

"Get the first aid kit," Elvis said to Pancho, Elvis with no little difficulty trying to control the volume level on his forcefully ejected words, as he reached over to apply pressure to Baron's recently acquired self-inflicted wound and stop the bleeding. "Wade's cut his thumb open." Ten minutes and three bandages later Wade finally cut into the marijuana package, took out a sample and put it into the test kit tube Pancho held at his side.

"Break the tube, Wade," Pancho said. Wade dropped the tube on the ground and stomped on it with his booted foot.

"There," he said with manly verve. "It's broken. What next?" About then Elvis was thinking strapping Wade to an outbound Mars space probe about to depart Earth wouldn't be a bad idea. If he'd had the power to do it, at that very moment, he very well might have hit the launch button. But. No launch button. Instead he tried, again with no little difficulty trying to stay cool, to patiently explain to Baron that the idea was to break the tube that was inside the test tube pouch with his fingers and see what color the chemical reaction with the marijuana sample would be. Wade listened, nodded understanding, and the process was repeated. This time he got it right. The tube broke inside the test packet and the marijuana changed color.

"Darn," Wade blurted out. "It's not green. Its purple." Again, before Elvis or Pancho could react, he dropped the test kit to the ground and stomped on it with his booted foot. It might not have been literally palpable, but it was real enough in their brains as smoke curled up from smoldering mental coals in Elvis and Pancho's minds and vented through the tops of their heating up craniums. Figuratively, of course. Mostly.

"Its supposed to be purple, Wade," Pancho said with tightly clenched teeth. "That's a positive chemical response for marijuana." About then Elvis was not only ready to fire Wade Baron off on a space probe, but he would strap Tony Rivera on it, too. Rivera being the snickerlip who dreamed up the whole goddamn help out poor Wade idea in the first place.

"Oh, my." Wade said defensively, his eyes starting to dart from face to face as he realized he was digging himself some kind of hole. "I thought it was supposed to be green. You know, like marijuana. Green. Plant green." Right then Elvis was feeling grateful he wasn't packing a taser. He didn't think he could have resisted pulling it out and zapping Baron right between the eyes to blast some sense into him. But at least now Elvis had a firm grip on the basic meaning of clueless. It was a synonym for Wade Baron. Sullenly standing next to them with tightly balled fists, Pancho's dark visage got even darker as the string of lowly muttered Spanish language expletives picked up both in volume and intensity.

Inside the secondary office Tony Rivera was watching all this on the monitor hooked to the security camera in the search compound and laughing so loud the border guys over on the Mexican side thought it was a low level earthquake. On the U.S. side working a primary inspection booth was Lionel 'Lion Man' Basworth, a jumpy new officer who regularly revisited in his dreams the moment an Iraqi mortar round hit the company latrine not long after Lionel had visited it--and gave Lionel a whole new appreciation for the old phrase, 'when the shit hits the fan.' Lionel, who was on Primary Lane Two, thought he saw the building shake just slightly at the very same moment when he clearly heard what was actually Tony Rivera's explosive laughter but which jumpy Lionel had a flashback and thought was an incoming mortar round. Terrorists! It shook Lionel up enough that he quickly slammed shut the door to the primary booth and crouched down inside. Being caught in the spewing after effects of an exploding outhouse once was all that he ever cared to experience. Though in his reactive haste he did not pause to mentally peruse the details of just how that would work in his current location.

Jumpy Lionel's reaction inside the inspectional booth immediately got the attention of Eduardo 'Fast Eddie' Contreras, the very same Fast Eddie who was the blackjack dealer at the nearby Indian casino who regularly cleaned out the gambling CBP officers. Which didn't win him any friends among the border officers and made each trip across the border a potentially nasty experience and therefore such crossings always stressful. Contreras had just driven up to Lionel Basworth's primary booth in his venerable Oldsmobile sedan. Being already stressed at the looming possibility of yet another encounter with a surly CBP officer he'd recently fleeced at the casino, the jumpy Eduardo misinterpreted Basworth's movements inside the primary booth as a genuine terrorist attack, which sent Contreras into a panic. He threw the Oldsmobile into reverse with the intention of getting the hell out of there, and fast. And he might have.

Had not there been another car right behind him.

Waldemar and Hilda Nopales, in their cherry red Honda Civic, were on their way to the Yuma Regional Medical Center where Hilda expected to give birth to their first child, Waldermar Jr., in the comfort and security of a facility peopled by competent medical professionals. One nicely inside the United States of America, which would mean Waldemar Junior would be a U.S. citizen, a fact Waldemar Senior had every intention of exploiting to the max. The jolt, however, from Fast Eddie Contreras barreling into the Honda Civic in reverse, sent Hilda's biological birth clock racing. Her contractions went from zero to a figurative sixty in a split gravid section and she went into labor then and there. The whole comfortable medical facility staffed by competent professionals idea went flying out the might have been window of the cherry red Honda Civic as Hilda Nopales' water broke and Waldemar Junior proceeded to make ready his grand entry onto the third planet from the star the locals called the Sun. A more or less puny star by Milky Way standards, but still functioning well enough, despite the occasional solar flares, for the inhabitants of Planet Three.

Waldemar took one horrified look at his wife and began to moan in Spanish.

"No. No. No!......Not here, Junior. Not here. Please. Hold off a little while. You've got to be in the United States to be born. Otherwise you won't be a citizen. And we'll be stuck permanently in Mexico with my in-laws for the rest of our lives. Do you hear me, Junior? Toughen up. Be a man, kid. Hang with your mother a little longer." Adding. "Inside your mother, that is."

Fast Eddie Contreras, who had rocketed out of his venerable Olds when he smashed into the front end of the Nopales' cherry red Honda Civic, was hopping nervously from one foot to the other when he saw his venerable Oldsmobile become a kind of metallic midwife as Hilda Nopales was about to go forth and multiply. Fast Eddie was expert at dealing cards but assisting in a live birth was something he didn't have much experience with. Actually, zero experience. Eddie's alternate foot hopping picked up speed.

Meanwhile, Lionel 'Lion Man' Bosworth was still scrunched down inside the inspection booth on Primary Lane Two, dreading the momentary arrival of the after effects of an exploding something or other, possibly an indoors version of an outhouse. Then he heard the crash when the venerable Oldsmobile banged into the cherry red Honda Civic and all the yelling that immediately followed. Yelling, Lionel's Spanish rudimentary at best, that he couldn't understand. That is until Waldemar Nopales thundered up to Lionel's inspection booth and began to pound on the window.

"Hey!" The agitated Waldemar hollered. "Anybody home?" Lionel's head appeared at window level. "You!" Waldemar hollered again. "Get help! Now. Junior is about to be born." This might have had some immediate positive effect. Unfortunately, Waldemar was speaking in Spanish and the only word Lionel could make out was ayuda, the Spanish word for help. Lionel at first figured his defensive measure had worked and that the exploding indoors outhouse or whatever it was had missed him and possibly landed on someone in the car lanes. Lionel slowly, and with a good deal of apprehension, rose to his feet.

No latrine or other blast residue. At least not that he could see. Or smell. He did however see Waldemar Nopales standing outside his primary booth window and yelling at him in Spanish. Then he saw the venerable Oldsmobile and the cherry red Honda Civic scrunched together and it sure didn't look like a friendly automotive embrace. Next he saw a man near the recently wedded cars hopping excitedly from foot to foot. Hey! It was Fast Eddie! The SOB who regularly cleaned out Lionel at the blackjack table at the Indian casino. Lionel had a quick and hopeful thought that maybe something really bad had happened to the SOB Fast Eddie. But then Lionel clearly heard a woman screaming inside the cherry red Honda Civic. Oh-oh! Big trouble on Primary Lane Two at the United States Port of Entry at San Luis, Arizona. And Lionel instantly comprehended that, whatever the bloody hell was going on, it required immediate action. The man had yelled for help. That was it!

Lionel threw open the inspection booth with no little force and leaped outside. This was the time for action. Lionel 'Lion' Man Bosworth did a lightning quick turn on his boot heels and lit out at a Lionel gallop for secondary yelling "Help! Help! Help!" This had the effect of immediately stopping Waldemar in mid-holler. What the hell was that fucking gringo doing? This was a crisis situation. Didn't he realize Junior's citizenship was at stake? A few feet behind him Fast Eddie Contreras continued hopping excitedly from foot to foot and Hilda Nopales was greeting the imminent arrival of Waldemar Junior with ear splitting whoops that would not generally be classified as whoops of welcoming joy.

Pedro--everyone called him Pete--Silva suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Actually, it wasn't nowhere but the men's room where Pete had been leisurely vacating his bowels when he heard the commotion. No mortar round had come out of nowhere to impact on the latrine, as Lionel had feared. But something had happened. For sure. What the hell was going on out on primary? Pausing only to deal with the bare necessities, Pete went barreling out the secondary office door for Primary Lane Two, passing Lionel Bosworth who streaked by him yelling "Help! Help!" Silva ran past both Waldemar and Fast Eddie to the cherry red Honda Civic where he, Pete having nine kids of his own, immediately knew just what the hell was going on. Waldemar, meanwhile, recognizing that someone was actually going to help, followed Pete to the Civic. Pete wheeled on him and told Waldemar to get his butt into the Civic and drive it to the secondary lot. Waldemar pointed to his Civic currently being blocked by unwanted close contact with the venerable Oldsmobile, so Pete grabbed Fast Eddie, who Pete knew not from the Indian casino, Pete not being a gambler, but from the Last Baptist Church where both of them somewhat regularly attended services. He told Fast Eddie to drive his Olds into secondary. And fast! Which Fast Eddie, being Fast Eddie, did in a big hurry. With Waldemar and a shrieking Hilda in the Civic right behind them.

Tony Silva was still watching Pancho and Elvis and Baron on the monitor in the supervisor's office in secondary and chuckling merrily away. He hadn't been this happy since his nagging second wife left him. Could it get any better? His first inkling that the events of the evening where going to take an abrupt quantum leap from getting any better to getting lots worse was when he saw Lionel Bosworth come running by outside yelling "Help! Help!" Bosworth might be an over reactive kind of guy, actually, in Tony's mind, a guy whose mental lights were dimmer than a dying firefly. But this was too much even for him. Tony was alarmed enough to almost immediately sit upright in his comfortable personalized imitation leather supervisor's chair. Then an aging Oldsmobile came tearing into secondary and screeched to a stop. The driver, who Tony did not yet know was that SOB Fast Eddie who fleeced him at the blackjack table at the Indian casino, hit the brakes so hard in his nervousness that he pitched forward and cracked his head on the windshield, blacked out and slid out of sight on the front seat. This was almost enough to get Tony on his feet. And then a second car, a little Honda with a woman flailing about inside, also came roaring into secondary and slammed on the brakes, the flailing woman's right leg thrown out the open car window and proceeding to jerk and roll in what damn sure didn't look like anything Tony, in his long years on the border seeing all kinds of weird stuff, had ever seen before. Tony was now about to get up when Pete Silva came running in. One look at Pete and Tony knew this was not going to be one of his better days. In fact it was looking to be one of his worst days. Maybe even the worstest.

"Call the San Luis EMT's!" Pete said, plenty of parturition-generated urgency in his voice. "There's a woman out in secondary about to have a baby." This did have the effect of bringing Tony to his feet. Though not exactly lightning quick. Not when Tony was three hundred pounds and counting with knees that were already going way beyond the call of skeletally engineered knee duty.

"Wha....." Tony started, half out of his chair, knees creaking in syncopation with Tony's chair, the chair creaks however creaks of relief whereas the knees were creaks of Good Grief! But Pete Silva was already out the door. Tony grabbed the phone and called up the San Luis PD.

"San Luis PD," said the perennially sleepy voice of Beata Botineau-Monriquez, the night dispatcher, who moonlighted as police dispatcher and daylighted as a waitress at Hernando's Good Diner over on Sixth Street.

"This is Supervisor Tony Rivera at the San Luis Port of Entry," Tony began.

Tony Rivera? Beata mouthed to herself. The same waddling behemoth who always stiffed her with miniscule tips at Hernando's Good Diner over on Sixth Street? A snarl came to her face, if not to her voice that came out more or less snarl neutral.

"What do you need, Mister Rivera," Beata said, knowing full well that Tony was chock full of himself about making supervisor and wanted to be called supervisor and not by the innocuous bland everyman title of mister.

"That's Supervisor Rivera, Beata," Tony corrected her. "And we need the EMT's here right away. There's a woman having a baby in secondary." Beata was thinking, well, Supervisor Rivera, you sure as hell aren't the father. Any woman you jumped would have been crushed into the thickness of one of those Hernando's Triple Burger Specials you always order long before your little sperm buddies ever made it to the end zone. And even if they did make it they'd be squirted back out again at close to the speed of sound when your full weight bore down on the poor doomed woman and squashed her flatter than the plate that formerly held your Hernando's Triple Burger Special. That was what she was thinking. But what she said was...

"OK. They're on their way.'' She couldn't resist. Mist...er...ah....Supervisor Rivera." This time the snarl in her mind made it to her voice. And Tony heard it.

Tony slammed the phone down so hard it cracked the housing and vowed that he never ever would give that smart ass bitch Beata a decent tip again at Hernando's Good Diner over on Sixth Street. Then he wheeled his considerable bulk with such agitated energy that the shock waves sent off by the sudden movement of his voluminous body knocked three flies hanging out on the secondary office wall right off the wall. One of them, recovering from a hangover brought on by shamelessly feasting on fermented grapes, was unable to compensate for the sudden air movement, crashing on the recently waxed secondary office floor and sliding clear across the room on the waxed floor and ending up on the opposite wall on what all the flies agreed was a memorable fly moment. But that didn't mean they beat a retreat for safer fly pastures. Whenever this mountain sized human was in the office there was absolutely always something good to eat. Tasty fly pickin's, as the flies put it in their own peculiar way of communicating--a fly lingo which no human had yet been able to discern, much less figure out and translate.

Inside the enclosed search compound Elvis, Pancho and Wade were about to try one more time to get a positive hit with a drug testing kit. Neither Elvis nor Pancho having seen the positive purple in the last kit pouch before Wade dropped it to the ground and stomped on it. And neither Elvis nor Pancho were inclined to just take Wade's word for it being positive purple. In Pancho's simmering Wade-averse fertile imagination, if Wade Baron stock went out for an IPO--initial public offering--on the stock market it would have started out at zero and immediately plummet from there. But before they could retest a marijuana sample, this time with very up close and personal direct supervision, they had to go get another test kit. They'd only brought two out from the secondary office. Which was the usual procedure. Always bring a backup. But that was BWB. Before Wade Baron. From then on, if Wade Baron was even remotely involved, they'd bring at least three.

"Wade," Elvis said with a tightly controlled thin-lipped enunciation. "Go get another test kit." Pancho reached over and tapped Elvis on the shoulder and gave him a sharp look. "Make that two test kits, Wade," Elvis added. Wade, who was more than relieved to be away from the smoldering soldering iron looks he was getting from the ET boys, threw open the search compound gates and almost lit out running. His largish size 11 1/2 boots however only smacked the secondary concrete a couple of smacks before several things happened.

Lionel Bosworth, himself the owner of some noisy size 12 boots, came size 12 boot thumping into secondary yelling "Help! Help!" Wade hardly had time to register that peculiar event in what Tony Rivera referred to as "Wade's burnt out light bulb of a brain" when a venerable Oldsmobile came hurtling into secondary, hit the brakes so hard the driver smacked his head on the windshield and disappeared from view as he slid knocked cold as a payday loan lender's heart out of sight on the Olds' front seat. If it were possible for a running guy to stop in mid run with one booted foot hovering ungrounded in the air, then this would have been the time. Wade's mind was flash frozen, overloaded by way too much information and a total lack of ability to comprehend. But that wasn't all his flash frozen persona would witness.

A second car, a little Honda, came streaking into secondary, also hitting the brakes hard. Someone's legs were dangling out the passenger side window and he could clearly hear in his flash frozen mental state a woman screaming as though she were about to be murdered. Or, Wade's flash frozen brain recalling the birth of his own kids, a woman having a baby. A woman having a baby! Wade's flash frozen brain instantly unfroze just as Pete Silva came shoe leathering out of the secondary office and blitzed over to the car where the woman was hollering. A few moments later the light from inside the secondary office was totally blocked off, looking as though someone or something had turned off the secondary office light breaker in the fuse box hanging defenselessly on the wall just outside the ladies room. But it was only the humungous form of Tony Rivera as he filled the door, cutting off all light from behind, as he also came lumbering out into secondary. Wade wheeled on his flash unfrozen heels and hurriedly retraced his steps to the enclosed search compound. Elvis and Pancho were already at the gate, having heard the commotion in secondary. Wade's pallid face popped into view at the entrance.

"I think you'd better come out to secondary," Wade said in one hell of a world class understatement. "There's something strange going on."

Tony Rivera stomped into secondary, already pissed off by that goddamn sarcastic dispatcher Beata, and got even more pissed when he saw Lionel Bosworth. He grabbed Lionel, who had calmed down enough to stop hollering out "Help! Help!" Bosworth was hovering, in what looked to Tony like a peculiar state of Lionel Bosworth suspended animation, near the Honda Civic where Pete Silva was trying to help Hilda Nopales with the imminent arrival of her son, Waldermar Junior. Waldemar Senior considerably calmed now that they were definitely inside the United States and Waldemar Junior would be born a United States citizen. A fact which the imaginative Waldemar Senior visualized as the first step to a ticket to ride for the Nopales clan on the North American Prosperity Train as it chugged away from the Cold Leftover Refries Station in Old Mexico. Tony Rivera was at that moment eyeballing Lionel Bosworth. And not with a noticeable degree of compassion, though Bosworth had frequently been very vocal in stating he was an Iraqi war veteran who suffered from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Though he rarely mentioned the specific details of the mortar hitting the company latrine. Which, to make it even more humiliating, the mortar turned out to be friendly fire. A short round from a nearby mortar battery. Of course it came from a National Guard unit. All Army soldiers, be they reserve or regular Army, considering the National Guard to be stuffed full of hopeless fuckups. Several of said National Guard fuckups manning a mortar near Lionel's company compound. All of them less than repentant when they heard their short round didn't cause any friendly casualties but did blow up an Army latrine and shower its contents on almost the entire Army compound. Something the National Guardsmen felt the Army richly deserved, it being a universal sentiment among the Guardsmen that the Army, be it reserve or regular, was stuffed full with terminal fuckups.

"Go back to your primary post, Lionel," Tony Rivera said in a peeved voice. "We'll handle things back here." Bosworth looked vacantly at Rivera. "Go!" Rivera said. "Now!" Bosworth went. Though he kept a sharp ear out for more incoming mortar rounds or other potentially dangerous intrusions into his somewhat shaky central nervous system equilibrium.

About that time the tepid air was split wide open by the shrill sound of sirens and the night lit up with flashing emergency lights as the entire San Luis fire and police department, at least those on duty, came wheeling into the Customs and Border Protection secondary lot. It was a slow night and the San Luis officers on duty were bored shitless and looking for a little action. And they got it. In a hurry. They were just in time to spell Pete Silva and assist Waldemar Junior in making his entrance onto planet Earth. For the rest of his natural life Waldemar Junior would be the only citizen of the United States who could say with all truth that he was born on the border in a cherry red Honda Civic with the entire San Luis Emergency Response Team as his godparents.

"Take a look at this," Wade Baron said to Elvis and Pancho as the miracle of birth was taking place in the nearby Honda Civic. "Inside the Oldsmobile." The ET pair moved over to look inside.

"Damn!" Blurted Pancho. "That's Fast Eddie." He looked with hooded eyes at Elvis. "Do you think he's dead?" Elvis, who, like a simple majority of the San Luis CBP officers, had his pockets emptied at Fast Eddie's blackjack table at the Indian Casino more than once, gave a sour look.

"We should be so lucky," Elvis said, remembering the avaricious leer Fast Eddie had shot him the last time he'd cleaned Elvis out at the casino. "He's probably just knocked out. But," he added, "maybe he has a nasty concussion that'll make him feel like his brain is on the Krazy Kamikaze Sudden Death rollercoaster at the San Diego amusement park." Wade blanched. He'd been on that same ride once himself when he unwisely accompanied his teenaged son Blade W. on the ride. The W stood for the kid's middle name, Wade, though the kid didn't much care for being called Blade Wade and instead went by Blade W. Which was already bad enough in his rebellious teenaged kid's mind. The Krazy Kamikaze was the one the kids called the Vomit Express. Something that Wade found out for himself within thirty seconds of the rollercoaster's first plunge. And a ride Wade wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. Who, truth be told, was his mother-in-law, Ophelia Knicknick of East Pocatello, Idaho. Ophelia having counseled her daughter from the age of two to marry "a doctor, or a lawyer, or, even better, a co-founder of Microsoft," and had never gotten over her dumb shit daughter marrying Wade Baron instead of the head of the New York Stock Exchange. And it stayed that way. How could the daughter explain to her mother that, despite Wade's many inadequacies, he was a gentle, kind and loving man. Plus he had one big non-inadequacy. Real big. The second largest pecker in Yuma County. And he sure knew how to use it. Which damn well was not a subject she was about to discuss with her mother.

"That's going kinda too far, Elvis," Wade chimed in. "Saying not nice things about this poor man." Both Elvis and Pancho shot Wade a hostile look. But Wade, who was a non-gambler and never lost a dime to Fast Eddie at the Indian casino, in fact never had even been inside the casino, remained clueless. Which, in both Elvis' and Pancho's minds, fit Wade to, as they say, a 'T'. Or in this particular case, a 'W'.

W for Wade. W for Wade for clueless.

Pancho started to open the Oldsmobile door to take a closer look at the inert unfasted Fast Eddie. Elvis stopped him. Elvis knew Pancho enough to know that Pancho was more likely to grab Fast Eddie's throat and start choking him than to offer any kind of first aid. Pancho having pounded down a few too many of the casino's signature Shoot the Moon mixed drinks one evening and subsequently losing two months pay, including overtime, at Fast Eddie's blackjack table.

"The EMT's are right over there, Pancho," Elvis said, gently patting Pancho's arm and pulling him away. "Let's have them check the guy out." Pancho lingered for a moment, looking longingly at the enticingly vulnerable unconscious form of Fast Eddie, who sure as hell wasn't looking fast right then. Pancho sighed in resignation and shut the Oldsmobile's door. He said nothing. But his mind was spitting out a stream of Spanish language expletives that would have shocked your average gutter-mouthed stand up comedian in every single Spanish speaking country and even, despite the evolved linguistic differences of the original Iberian twins, Portugal and large parts of Brazil.

Elvis waved over one of the EMT's, Sergio 'Always First' Cervantes, as other San Luis emergency personnel were gently loading Hilda Nopales and Waldemar Junior into an ambulance for the trip to the Yuma Regional Medical Center where a team of competent medical professionals would catch the Waldemar Junior live birth touchdown pass thrown by the San Luis EMT's. Cervantes, seeing Elvis waving at him, walked over.

"Say, Elvis. What's goin' on?" Elvis pointed at the motionless form slumped in the front seat of the Oldsmobile. Cervantes did a double take.

"Whoa. What the hell happened to him?" Wade Baron, who saw what happened and was standing nearby, interjected his observations.

"The guy hit the brakes too hard, flew forward, whacked his head on the windshield and knocked himself out." Cervantes was tempted to laugh and just barely caught himself. Not a cool thing for an EMT to do. Even if it was rattling his funny bones inside.

"Now that was a dumb ass move," he said. Then he opened the Oldsmobile's door and leaned inside to look at the person lying on the seat. In an instant he jumped back.

"Goddammit!" Cervantes snarled. "It's that son of a bitch, Fast Eddie Contreras." A quick look around to see who might be listening. Then, in a muted hopeful tone. "Do you think he's dead?"

"No such luck," Elvis replied sourly. "Guess you'd best check him out." His voice not showing much enthusiasm for Fast Eddie's well being. No surprise. It was a fact. Fast Eddie didn't have much in the way of friends. Actually, make that zero. Even his own mother quit speaking to him after he cleaned her out at the blackjack table when she was out on the town celebrating her 65th birthday. He did have one admirer, however. The actual non-Indian owner of the Indian casino. Non-American Indian, anyhow, the guy being a transplant from the Nepalese/Indian border where he made his first fortune overcharging would be mountain climbers from Europe and Japan, and providing emergency funerary services for those who screwed up and took a header off one of the many dangerous nearby mountains. His Indian casino profit margins had soared since he hired Fast Eddie and the owner was able to pump extra dollars into various local political campaigns whose principals championed free enterprise--in particular loosening the strangling government regulations on casino gambling.

Sergio Cervantes verified that Fast Eddie, unfortunately, was alive and, also somewhat disappointingly, in no imminent danger of making the last curtain call on Planet Earth. Another ambulance was called to take Fast Eddie to the Yuma Regional Medical Center where Sue Ellen Mandingo, the emergency room physician on duty, recognized Fast Eddie as the SOB who the week previous cleaned her out at the Indian Casino blackjack table. She had to several times repeat the Hippocratic Oath to herself--thinking at the moment it was more the Hypocritical Oath than the Hippocratic Oath--as she worked over Fast Eddie's unconscious prostrate form, her hands, echoing in inclination those of both Pancho and EMT Sergio Cervantes, aching to throttle the SOB instead. But. She didn't. Hypocritical lost out to Hippocratic. Well, actually it was more of an impasse. Kind of like a hung jury, Sue Ellen herself being one of the votes for guilty and summary execution.

Things now returned to normal in the San Luis Customs and Border Protection secondary lot, at least so far as the generally recognized definition of normal could possibly pertain to the San Luis Customs and Border Protection secondary lot. Elvis and Pancho motioned at Wade to follow them back to the enclosed search compound. Wade hesitated. If nothing else, Wade loved a good show, like had been going on the past few minutes in the secondary lot. Just so long as he was a spectator and not a participant.

"Go back? To the Chevy?" He looked over at where several of the San Luis police officers, the EMT crew, two fire department trucks and a sheriff's deputy squad car were still in the secondary lot. "Something still might happen. Let's wait for a little while and see." Tony Rivera was standing a few feet away, talking to Burtie Snokovic, a nearly seven foot tall Yuma County sheriff's deputy who had the bad luck to suck at basketball, and heard what Wade said. Tony turned his impressive bulk and pointed an index finger as thick as one of the super sized breakfast sausages at Hernando's Good Diner over on Sixth Street directly at Wade. Sausages that were among Tony's favorites at Hernando's place--the actual owner of Hernando's being Persephone LaGuardia, who grabbed Hernando's two years earlier in a nasty hostile takeover.

"Go!" Tony said. Wade got a pouty look on his face, which had always worked to get him seconds at the dinner table when he was the youngest kid growing up in a big family but hadn't done him much good since. Tony's super sized sausage shaped index finger continued to point at him. Wade slowly turned and followed Elvis and Pancho back to the enclosed search compound.

"And make sure to close the gate behind you!" Tony yelled after them, not wanting any smugglers to catch on that they had the Chevy in the search compound.

In a building a hundred yards away, Milo McGarg, Fico's gringo dope contact on the U.S. side of San Luis, was watching through a high powered pair of Zeiss binoculars as the goddamn ET team jerks were about to seize two hundred and fifty pounds of first quality fresh Sonora grown Madre Mia kickass marijuana.

"Fucking gringos," Milo muttered. "Grabbing our dope." Milo forgetting for the moment that the gringo label fit him, too. Anyhow, the ET pricks were the bad gringos. Milo and associates being the good gringos. Bringing as they were Fico's Stress Relief to the overstressed multitudes. At least that was the way Milo saw it. And, in fact, Milo was a long way from being the only one who saw things that way.

"OK, Wade," Elvis said. "Let's try it again. Take a sample out of that package you cut open, put it in the test kit pouch, break the tube inside and wait for it show color." Pancho reached over and placed a hand not so gently on Wade's shoulder.

"And keep it your hand this time," Pancho said with a barely suppressed growl.

Wade wobbled his head in recognition and proceeded to do as told. Slow and deliberate. He took a sample from the cut open brown wrapped brick shaped package and put it in the test kit, then crushed the vial inside the kit and waited for it to change color. Hopefully to the purple of a positive marijuana test. Nothing happened. After twenty or so seconds Wade turned to look in puzzlement at Elvis and Pancho, being very careful not to hurl the test kit to the ground and stomp on it out of exasperation.

"Nothing," Wade said. "Not a thing. This must not be marijuana."

Elvis was holding his head in his hands and moaning. Pancho stomped over close to the compound's gate where he rhythmically and with no little force was flexing his hands into balled fists. Wade was confounded. "What is going on?" He said. Then he realized what had happened. Elvis and Pancho were deeply disappointed that this wasn't really a marijuana load. "It must be a decoy," Wade said. "Possibly oregano. Or grass clippings from the golf course. But you guys can't be blamed. It was a darned good job at deception." Had Fico been watching this it would have confirmed without the darkest glimmer of shadowed doubts that the gringo Customs and Border Patrol hiring officials only took on those who miserably flunked the application tests. The flunkier the better, as Fico liked to joke to his smuggling brethren.

Pancho grabbed the metal fencing of the search compound and squeezed it so hard his palms were indented with metallic imprints from the fence. The grinding of his teeth was clearly audible at least ten feet away. Elvis was looking straight up at the heavens and muttering something not directly intelligible. And, judging by the look on his face, not likely intended for the ears of polite company. Elvis slowly, very slowly, turned to look at Wade.

"Wade," he began with a voice that reminded Wade of the hissing of a lit dynamite fuse. "Did you happen to notice the white powder that coats the packages? The powder that smells like soap? It smells like soap because it is soap. The smugglers use soap powder to mask the strong odor of marijuana." A pause while Elvis struggled to maintain his composure. "Did you happen to notice that, Wade?" Wade turned to look at the marijuana packages in the sliced open tire on the Chevy Silverado.

"To tell you the truth, Elvis," Wade said with growing trepidation. "I didn't really notice. One way or the other." Pancho meanwhile grabbed the compound fence with such force that it noticeably shook. Which drew the attention of Tony Rivera, who was still in secondary talking to Burtie Snokovic, the nearly seven foot tall Yuma County Sheriff's deputy who was doomed to a life of borderline underpaid cop penury because he couldn't dribble a basketball beyond the second bounce and had a body that was capable of jumping a maximum of 3.5 inches. Tony turned his head to look over at the shaking search compound gates, momentarily stopped by a shot of pain from his neck being craned back while he looked up at Burtie's face, perched as it was close to the top of his seven foot body, during their conversation about the best way to prepare shrimp fresh from the Gulf of California during the upcoming shrimp season. Burtie liked to fry the shrimp and sauté them with garlic and lemon pepper. Tony knew better. Grilling was the only way to go.

"What the fuck is going on over in the search compound?" Tony said to no one in particular. "What the hell are those ET dicks up to now?" Burtie Snokovic, who was looking the other way and didn't see the search compound shake, and who was supposed to be back on patrol, was thinking it was about time to get back to work. Besides, he was disgusted at the thought of plunking perfectly good shrimp on a grill. Which to him was a desecration on the order of Jean d' Arc being barbarically carbonized at the stake in what was otherwise a nation of sophisticated food lovers, old France itself, where no self respecting Frenchman would even consider grilling so much as a single shrimp.

"An earthquake?" Though he had felt nothing this time, Burtie was well aware--having responded to more than one worried citizen with an abnormally quivering China cabinet--that San Luis was close to an earthquake zone in nearby California and Baja California and often was visited by low level tremors. A jumpy senior citizen once mistaking one of the more vigorous tremors for the onset of a seizure and calling 911. Burtie was the responding officer and had a hard time convincing the histrionic senior that she wasn't having a seizure and what she had felt was an earthquake. She refused to believe him and the next day went to the Sheriff's office where she filed a complaint against "...that goddamn smart ass walking telephone pole with a badge and a bad attitude."

Well, it really was time for Burtie to get back on patrol and he headed back to his squad, actually an old Ford Bronco with nearly 200,000 miles on it and a transmission increasingly on the iffy side, the local voters having again turned down a bond initiative to upgrade the department's worn out equipment. The voters however almost unanimous in their demand that the Sheriff's department do more to counter the rising crime wave. "Do more with less," was the opponents' motto on election day when the bond initiative was voted down. Half of the department's officers had since left for better paying jobs--which still wasn't saying much--with other agencies. Which meant those who remained had more to do and ended up doing less with less. And not with much enthusiasm after the fifth year in row without a pay raise.

As Burtie headed back to his Bronco Tony Rivera turned to stare at the search compound's fence. Which, if anything, was shaking with even more violence. Tony bestirred his bulk and approached the fence. He was grinning. Whatever the hell these frickin' ET jerks were doing, it had to be good. Maybe even so good that they were trying to kill each other. In which case Tony would back off and let them finish the job. Like King Kong lumbering down the streets of New York in one of Tony's favorite movies, Tony's humungous bulk approached the closed, but still vigorously shaking, search compound gates. His grin grew even wider, stretching almost all the way from ear lobe to ear lobe. Which, anyone who saw it would have to agree, was quite a stretch. And also a great ad for a commercial teeth whitening product, Tony's teeth not coming anywhere near any definition of dentally dazzling.

Elvis was standing next to Wade. A very perplexed looking Wade. Was it his fault the Chevy was a decoy? And that it only had oregano, or some such other possibly harmless but not illegal substance? Wade was starting to feel a touch offended. Were they going to make him some kind of scapegoat? A flash of irritation touched his face. No way! That was going too far. Why......

Elvis put a hand on Wade's shoulder and squeezed. A little too much, Wade was thinking, his pique at being the scapegoat for this whole fiasco starting to grow.

"Wade," Elvis began in a very, very carefully controlled voice. "That sample you took?" Wade looked at Elvis with a growing I'm-no-scapegoat resolve.

"What about it?" He said defensively.

"That soap powder I was talking about," Elvis said. His grip grew tighter on Wade's shoulder. Wade's growing resolve prompted him to squirm away from the grip. Nope. Elvis held him firm.

"The sample you took, Mr. Baron, was not of the marijuana. It was of the soap powder. That was why it came out negative."

"Oh," Wade said, thinking that there were all kinds of places he would rather be at this moment. Even the Krazy Kamikaze ride at the San Diego amusement park or visiting his mother-in-law, Ophelia Knicknick, who detested Wade with an intensity of awesome mother-in-law proportions..

"Guess we'd better try it again, then," Wade offered hopefully. Pancho shook the gates with even more fervor and broke out into a long string of forcefully hurled epithets in the Spanish language, eclipsing his own record of consecutive forcefully hurled epithets by at least twenty-five percent.

At that moment the gates to the search compound were hurled open and there, nearly filling the opening, was the looming persona of Supervisor Tony Rivera. He saw Elvis grasping Wade Baron's shoulder.

"Assault!" Tony yelled. "You can't deny it. I saw it with my own eyes." Tony tried to hide the glee he was feeling. This was better than finding buried treasure. Almost better than fresh Gulf of California shrimp grilled on Tony's seven hundred and fifty dollar Hungry Man Super Grill.

"You've gone and done it this time, Elvis," Tony said, trying to keep the wide grin from returning to his face and taking up at least a semi-permanent residence there up to and including Elvis' conviction for assault. Oh, would that America was a civilized country where the guillotine was still used in appropriate circumstances. Like this one. Tony paused for a moment as he visualized Elvis' head toppling from the guillotine blade into a waiting basket. Oh, such justice!

But then, like a hapless kid holding tight to his helium filled birthday balloon as he blithely skips into a room where the ceiling fan is going, Tony's exultation was gone in an instant.

"There was no assault," Wade said, trying to recover at least some shred of inspectional dignity. "Elvis was just showing me the right way to do a drug test."

One hundred yards away Milo McKarg, suddenly alert when the gates swung open to the search compound where the goddamn gringos were ripping off his dope, peered with deep curiosity through his high powered Zeiss binoculars. A dandy pair of binoculars that Fico's cousin Alberto gave him, Alberto having found them in one of the cars he stole and already having his own pair of powerful binoculars. Which Alberto used for various purposes, one of the more frequent uses involving his neighbor with the dynamite curves, Carmelita Gonsalves, undressing in her bedroom. Which didn't work out too well for Alberto, Carmelita, despite her awesome jaw-dropping pulchritudinous dimensions, was on the shy side and never failed to tightly close her drapes before so much as removing a single stitch of clothing.

"Jesus," Milo muttered. "What the fuck is going on in there?" He was having a hard time making anything out, a guy looking like conjoined triplets with a single head blocking most of the view with his/their bulk. Then the Incredible Bulk moved and Milo got a clear shot of the interior of the search compound. Including the sliced open tire and the marijuana packages inside. "Godamnit," Milo said. "Those goddamn frickin' gringo jerks! Fico is going to be really pissed!"

And he was, after Milo used his mobile to text the code--FG for fucking gringos--for busted. But he also had to admit that there were at least a few gringos whose IQs were somewhat above the total blockhead level. Maybe some day, Fico was thinking, after they'd both retired, he could meet this red-headed gringo for a pitcher of draft beer and they could compare notes and reminiscenes about the good old days. But, until then, Fico was also thinking, prudence would continue to guide him.

Which meant he would damn well not be sending any more load cars through the border when that pinche gringo beanpole and his ET buddies were anywhere nearby.

### Chapter 8

Elvis Takes A History Class

In his spare time Elvis took various college courses in Tucson. Some at Pima College, others at the University of Arizona extension division and one or two at the Tucson Parapsychology Bible Institute. One of his Pima College assignments was to research a historical event and then write a short historical essay on the subject, the teacher instructing the class to "....humanize history." How do we do that? The class asked the teacher. The reply. " Use your imagination."

Which Elvis did.

The Discovery of America

(Part Of It, Anyhow)

by

Elvis Mahoney

The discovery of America. The true European discover of any part of what is now America was a Saxon German, Ludwig the Slow, who came by sail with three ships from a tiny hamlet called Er, which was a suburb of the Port of Hamburg. Both Er and Hamburg widely recognized at that time throughout the region as having the best beef sandwiches in all the Baltic and a good chunk of the North Atlantic.

One day local sword maker and part time mortician Wolf Dung came running into the great mead hall near the North Sea shore in ancient Saxony. "Hey!" Wolf Dung said in great excitement to his kinsman and tribal chief, Ludwig the Slow. "They're loading up the long ships to sail over the sea to Britannia. The Romans got tired of the lousy weather and bugged out. The place is ripe for the picking." Then Wolf Dung turned and ran back out of the hall to jump onto one of the departing ships. He slipped on a fish oil slick and tumbled into the water, but managed to climb on board when his brother Lars The Snickerer stuck out an oar and pulled him in. Lars the Snickerer snickering away as he hauled his doofus clumsy brother on board, which didn't make Wolf Dung any too happy. Though he did resist the urge to grab his brother and toss his snickering ass overboard.

Meanwhile, Ludwig the Slow immediately set about getting ready to join the Great Pillaging Expedition that would lead to the Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes conquering the Roman province of Britannia in what would be one day be Fish & Chipsland, also known as England. The 'Eng' of England coming from the Engs, a small and turbulent subtribe of the Angles whose overarching truculent tribal ambition was, translating from the colloquial Eng, "to conquer the entire freaking world."

But Ludwig the Slow, who had a bodacious stutter when he got all worked up about something, took so long in issuing his orders and instructions that by the time they were ready the great invasion fleet was gone. They had no idea exactly where they'd gone, or exactly where the former Roman island was, but they weren't about to miss out on the chance to practice the traditional tried and true Saxon virtues of RPB--Rape, Pillage and Burn. So off they went.

Unfortunately, they missed, sailing south of Britannia at Land's End one foggy night and off into the Atlantic. They were three and one half harrowing months at sea, during which one of the ships, Thorwald's Harlot, vanished during a fierce storm. The crew was never heard from again, though there have been rumors for centuries of blond, blue-eyed people among the natives of Jamaica when the Spaniards first arrived there and proceeded to exterminate just about the entire population, including those who may have been blond and blue-eyed--except for maybe a shapely maiden or two or three.

Ludwig the Slow and his two remaining ships, Iron Ass and Sea Bitch, actually arrived off the shores of North America. Probably somewhere between Newfoundland and Florida. They sailed for days along the shore, still thinking that this was the Roman province of Britannia and looking for other Saxon ships. They saw people from time to time, but the people quickly disappeared into the thick woodland behind the beaches. At times the voyagers stopped to go ashore and replenish their water casks, hunting the abundant deer, wild turkeys and other game, as well as taking hundreds upon hundreds of fish from the teeming waters and munching on oysters and roasted clams over roaring bonfires on the sea shore while singing Saxon folk songs about the traditional Saxon virtues of Rape, Pillage and Burn. Said clam and oyster munching, however, without any hot sauce. Hot sauce having not yet found its way into the Saxon cook books and the Saxons having to make do with various alcoholic beverages as condiments. Which worked out OK for them, hot sauce or not. If the food sucked they could always toss it away and drink the sauce. Which might well explain why the Saxons were constantly cooking and eating, with plenty of slurping of the various inebriating sauces. Which also might have had something to do with Ludwig the Slow's Saxon ships completely missing England and ending up off the coast of North America.

And off that coast in North America the local people always vanished into the woods at the Saxon's approach. Where they hot-footed it for the nearest village and over a cup of whatever the local brew was regaled their open-mouthed tribesfolk with tales of pallid horny-helmeted men with bushy beards and bad teeth.

The Saxons finally came to a place where the land ended again and sailed in a great turbulent sea that threatened to swamp their ships. Ludwig's other ship, the Sea Bitch, foundered and was lost, though most of the crew was rescued and brought aboard Ludwig's flagship, Iron Ass. They made it through the turbulent waters and sailed north for many more days, stopping regularly for fresh water and clams and an occasional RPB Saxon sortie into a local village. A seemingly invisible trek long vanished in the mists of history until modern DNA technology limned out just about every RPB Saxon visited village all the way from Tierra Del Fuego to Baja California. After many more weeks of sailing north they came to a place where they saw hundreds of dusky-skinned people on the shores eagerly waving at them. Ludwig's second in command, Horst the Horseless, stared hard at the people on the shore.

"Great Wodan! Ludwig," Horst the Horseless said, "the men don't have any clothes on!"

"Wha-wha-what about the wo-wo-women?" Ludwig the Slow replied, his stutter again revisiting him in this time of excitement.

"I didn't notice," Horseless Horst answered.

And that's how San Francisco was founded.

The End

by

Elvis Mahoney

The instructor, Seamus O'Reilly, a University of Dublin professor in Tucson on a college exchange program, gave Elvis an F Double Minus on the essay. A fire-eyed Seamus aflame with Celtic ire that a red-headed guy named Mahoney could commit such sacrilege. Every soul with Irish blood in their veins knew as sure as there were potatoes in Ireland that St. Brendan the (Irish) Adventurer was the true European discover of the Americas.

### Chapter 9

Mr. Fleshmound

"Wow!" Armen said. "Just like back home."

The curtain of astonishment dropped with a mind-numbing mental thud. What? What did he say? Back home? He said just like back home? The eyebrow muscles in every one of the other half dozen soldiers kicked in and hit their respective raised eyebrow switches in their guarded military brains. The squad of soldiers hadn't been this astounded since they'd come across a two headed goat in a foul smelling dingy mud brick village a month back. A wise cracking kid from New York immediately saying with a straight face that "maybe two heads really are better than one," to which a somewhat literal minded farm kid from Iowa remarked that "two udders would have been a hell of a lot more practical."

Every single one of Armen's soldier buddies stared at him. Their expressions ranging from the mildly surprised to what the fuck did he just say? Back home? Remind him of back home? Here in the frickin' dusty boondocks of Afghanistan? Did his neighbors back home routinely take pot shots at him or try to blow him into several hundred unidentifiable fragments with IEDs?

"Among the nuts," Armen added. "Back home. Lots of nuts."

The soldiers had just made it back to the relative security of their FOB--Forward Operating Base--in Afghanistan after a patrol through a tangle of local almond orchards. Orchards that Armen Chooljian half seriously joked to his Army buddies were like the almond and pecan and walnut and pistachio nut orchards back home. Which made him kind of nostalgic for the nuts of home. Which, Armen being from California, wasn't too far away from his buddies' general pop culture take on California. But they weren't envisioning the kind of nuts Armen was thinking of. With Armen it was flat out literal. He was raised on a farm in Fresno County in the San Joachim Valley of California surrounded by mile upon mile of orchards growing a bunch of different stuff including plenty of nuts of the standard non-human variety.

Armen was in his second year of elementary school before he realized there was more to the world than an endless terrestrial sea of orchards and vineyards as far as the eye could see. The omnipresent blanket of California valley smog lifted one crisp autumn morning and Armen's jaw dropped. Mountains! All around! Mountains! And they'd been there all along! And close! From that day on he leaned heavily towards the skeptical side. Not quite paranoid. But definitely suspicious. If God, or whoever was in charge of the Big Picture, was hiding the mountains from him all that time, then what else was hiding out there?

Armen's great grandparents came to the San Joachim from Armenia. Not exactly voluntarily. The Turks, who had governed part of Armenia since Ottoman Empire days, decided that Turkish Armenia would be a great place to settle their surplus population. The problem was that there were already people there, the Armenians, who had been there for hundreds, even thousands, of years. What to do? Simple. Get rid of the Armenians. Do 'em in. Which the Turks set out to do during the chaos of WWI. And they got away with it. The Armenian population of Turkey was practically wiped out. Those who weren't murdered fled to Soviet Armenia. Or overseas. Many to America. Many to the San Joachim Valley. Young Armen was raised with hoary tales of the Turkish genocide and an Armenian revulsion towards Turks was drummed into his head from infancy. To most Armenian kids growing up the boogeyman was real and he spoke fluent Turkish and had tender Armenian children for his evening meal. Not as dinner guests. As the main course.

But it was now a century since the ethnic cleansing in Turkey. There were other things on his mind. Mostly, at least in his mid teens, those things distilled to the mantra his favorite uncle Matsag Babajanian had practiced in his youth. Well, actually more than his youth. Uncle Matsag was still at it and not showing any signs of stopping soon. The mantra? One sure to set afire the innards of any healthy red blooded young American male and absolutely the 110 percent flat out slam dunk absolute best damn thing to come out of the crazy 80's.

Party on, Dude!

Armen thought that was one hell of a great idea and embraced it with a whole lot of youthful enthusiasm.

But then he got a little older, caught on that he had another fifty or sixty years ahead and that the whole party on dude thing might not work too well in the graying years. So he moderated his behavior--at least as much as he absolutely had to--and got serious about his studies at Fresno State. Before he knew it he was in his senior year at college. His voice dropped an octave, he went from tenor to bass in the school choir and he grew hair on his body in places which he never suspected could become hairy. His major was in business and accounting, with the intention of joining the family farming business. Which didn't do much to charge him up. A life of farming was about as appealing to him as pulling out his own teeth with a vice grip. Farming didn't give a guy a whole bunch of free time. He'd be so busy he wouldn't even have time for his weekly visit to Maggie O'Toole's, a strip club where cash strapped Fresno State coeds majoring in drama and dance, along with a few in psychology and sociology, and a set of knockout twins from Stockton studying comparative anatomy, did wonderfully creative and exciting strip dances, putting a whole new face on the concept of modern dance. And which went a long ways towards lightening the tedium of college course work for Armen and his college buddies.

The family farm, frankly, bored the hell out of him. Though very labor intensive, Armen's farmer father Sograd had decided they'd use manure rather than chemical fertilizers on their vineyards and orchards. Sograd proudly declared he was being environmentally conscious, but Armen suspected the real reason was that cow manure was a hell of a lot cheaper than the chemical fertilizers. Especially when Sograd had a home grown labor force in the person of Armen to do the spreading. Armen didn't much care for the idea. How could you get all worked up about spreading cow shit fertilizer, even if it was supposedly somewhat deodorized in what they called post source processing at the local humungous feed lot down the road in Sanger? Farming wasn't even in the same universe with an evening at Maggie's O'Toole's place. Still, Armen gloomily figured he was headed for a life on the family farm. Especially considering his hulking father Sograd threatened to disembowel and/or castrate him if he didn't join him in the family business. Sograd a man the wise knew better than to screw with. So. Sigh. Armen was doomed to a life of shoveling cow shit. Maybe not quite literally. But close. Way, in Armen's mind, too close.

But then came 9/11. No one, not even his hulking daddy Sograd, could talk Armen out of joining the Army. Armen volunteered and was among the soldiers who took on the Taliban lunatics in Afghanistan. That did it for the Armen and the family farm. Not that he thought dodging suicide bombers and RPG's was a more agreeable way to wile away his days than spreading cow manure on the fields back home. But it did open up a whole new world of other possibilities. Somewhere out there was an occupation that fit him better than either IED dodger or cow shit shoveler. He'd busted out and there was no going back. After his second tour to Afghanistan he knew for damn sure IED and RPG and AK 47 dodging wasn't in his future. A guy could only press his luck so far. But he still hadn't come up with an alternative.

He took a bunch of things with him when he left Afghanistan. A fondness for clean underwear. A keen appreciation for highways that were not mined with high explosives. An awakened gratitude for indoor plumbing, hot running water, air conditioning, home cooked meals and super markets and even fast food joints. And strip clubs, Maggie O'Toole's place back in Fresno having risen in his mind to the level of revered cult status. Plus he had a newfound appreciation for women who were clearly recognizable as such in whatever outfit they were wearing. Not to mention being around people who bathed with considerably more regularity than his foul smelling soldier buddies.

But his most directly relevant memento of Afghanistan was a leg peppered with shrapnel from an exploding IED in the boondocks outside Kandahar. That was when he met Elvis. In the hospital where both were recovering from their wounds. Armen from Afghanistan. Elvis from Iraq. Elvis was already an officer in the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection--CBP--branch when his reserve unit was called to active duty in Iraq. That was where Armen got the idea. From Elvis. When Armen recovered from his wound and got out of the Army he turned to the Department of Homeland Security. How about a job? A job? For a veteran of Afghanistan? With a purple heart? And a college degree? You bet your purpled hearted ass we got a job for you, buddy. Come on board.

He did just that. Came on board. With CBP. Before long he found himself on a different kind of front line in a different kind of war. The Mexican Border Drug War. Which turned out to be a considerably different from what he was expecting. And where he was soon to meet up again with his fellow wounded veteran from the Army hospital. Elvis. Who had planted the CBP seed in Armen's mind. "The same guy," Armen would one day eventually grumble in a definitely non-nostalgic voice, "who got me into this fucking mess in the first place."

On The Border

"What was that?" Armen said. He stopped and looked around. "Did you hear that? I could swear I heard voices. And nearby." He turned a full circle in the Nogales Grand Avenue Customs and Border Protection employees' parking lot. A lot just west of the car lanes and situated conveniently within rock throwing distance from Mexico. Which stimulated every Mexican kid on the other side of the fence to dream up creative ways to send rocks sailing over the fence and onto the parked cars of the U.S. officers in the lot and the U.S. officers to park as far away from the fence as they could. Next to the lot I-19 abruptly vanished into the Nogales surface street network. Where several times a day drivers still somewhat mentally numbed from the monotony of the freeway ended up in the local McDonald's take out lane. Almost half subsequently saying something like 'what the heck' or 'seize the day' and ordering a burger with fries and a Diet Coke.

The Wall

Looking like something from a Sci-Fi movie or a really bad propaganda movie from the Cold War days, the looming malevolent presence of the steel border wall abutted the parking lot just a few feet away. A glowering wall obviously created, in Elvis' opinion, by a seriously mentally ill person. Either that or a bipartisan Congressional Homeland Security committee in Washington D.C., which he considered to be a kind of collegial mental illness. A wall that Elvis in his less grumpy moments called the Great Wall of Nogales, but more often referred to as the Great Sieve of Nogales. He used to throw in a comment or two about the old story of the Dutch kid with his finger in the dike but the social media schooled newer officers just responded with blank stares of non-recognition. Which he and his fellow Enforcement Team officers took to be yet another sign of the decline of American civilization. His ET buddy, Native American Cletus 'War Whoop' Magellen, a scientifically minded honors graduate of the University of Arizona, offered his own studied opinion that "....by the 22nd Century the United States of America would be peopled by cyborgs in instantaneous communication with the entire planet and hard wired with the ability to transmute their innermost fantasies into viral holographic videos on World Tube with multi-player capability."

To which Elvis said.

"What?".......

Armen shrugged, looking confused. "I could swear I heard voices." Elvis, who was just behind Armen's Nissan in his old Chevy as they pulled into the lot, was also about to begin his shift at the Grand Avenue DeConcini Port of Entry. Elvis had seen the personnel rosters with Armen's name among the bunch of newly assigned Nogales trainees. He remembered the unusual name--so how could you forget a name like Armen Chooljian?--and heartily greeted his chat buddy from the Army hospital of a while back, who was barely two weeks out of the Federal Law Enforcement Academy in God's Steam Bath, coastal Georgia, and walked with him towards the car lanes. He stopped when Armen stopped.

"Yep. Voices. I heard them, too." Elvis said. Armen still looked confused. He grabbed another quick 360 view of the parking lot.

"But....but...where are they?" Elvis reached over and thumped him on the shoulder, then pointed straight down with his blue uniformed arm.

"There. Below you. In the tunnels." Armen didn't quite go pale--his swarthy Armenian complexion was often mistaken for a Mexican, which turned out to be a gratifyingly fortuitous coincidence, opening as it did the doors to some dynamite encounters with more than one hot local chica who at first figured him for a home boy. Still, the inclination to go pale got some serious consideration within his internal endocrinal control board. In fact the endocrine board did hit the pale switch, but pale switches often don't do much for swarthy Armenians. Especially at night or in poor light.

"In the ground? Tunnels? Below us. But....but...but...there're under us?" Elvis thumped Armen on the shoulder again. A grin spread across his freckled face. "A bunch of old drainage tunnels. And a bunch of new tunnels courtesy of the entrepreneurial spirit of the smugglers in the border towns of Nogales. An entrepreneurial spirit, however, that the government chooses to not spotlight as a positive example of individual capitalistic initiative." Another thump and they were off to work, Elvis' final words trailing behind them as they clumped off for the car lanes.

"Welcome to the wild weird world of the Mexican Border."

To which Armen thought. Well, it sure ain't Afghanistan, and it sure ain't the family farm, but it could turn out to be interesting. Which it was. In spots. Just like the Army. And it beat the hell out of hulling walnuts on the family farm. Which struck Armen as both funny and ironic. Seeing as how Nogales translated into English as....guess what?......

Walnuts.

In The Sand Again

San Luis

But it wasn't walnuts this time. Not in San Luis, which was the Sand Capital of the nation, if not the entire world and maybe even the known universe. Which was saying something, the soaring IQ brainy types with their PhDs and super telescopes continually expanding the frontiers of the known universe. A subject which didn't sit too well with Elvis' granny Rattler Sue Mahoney, back in the hills of home in Slippery Sister County. Rattler Sue was convinced that the PhDs with their telescopes were spying on God and that God didn't much care for that idea.

"There be repurcushens a-comin', Elvis," she said the last time he visited home.

"Repercussions?" Elvis replied, puzzled. Rattler Sue nodded her head with steely eyed Rattler Sue determination.

"Yep. Repurcushens. God don't like being snooped on. She be lettin' us know that before long. Fer sure." She reached over and flicked his nose. "You can bet yer durn socialist government pension on that one, buster." She paused, her eyes narrowing, the droopy right one a touch more than the left, the eye two years ago this past March having been injured when she was scrambling through the brambles fleeing the government men who'd just found her still back in the hills. A still, she was pretty sure, that had been snitched out by some lowlife dripweed turncoat local. Maybe one of those holier than thou born agains in those hollering charismatic ramshackle churches or one of those self righteous subversives in AA and NA meetings at the Slippery Sister Second Southern Baptist Church on Main Street and Second Street. The meetings having recently moved from the Slippery Sister First Southern Baptist Church being just down the block on Main and First Streets.

Or else, she later thought, maybe it was the competition that snitched her out. Likely her third cousin two and half times removed, Lithium Mahoney, who was a shady character if there ever was one in the extended Mahoney clan in Slippery Sister County and well beyond. And you better believe there were some real stinkers among them though, she was quick to explain to her close relatives, "none a' them lug nuts be close enough related to be yer kissin' cussin".

"And when God gets ready to drop the hammer, Elvis," she added, "then you'd best to ready to duck," she said. "And durn fast!" Elvis's worldly mind--he had after all been in a half dozen countries in the Middle East and once spent an entire afternoon snooping in the Smithsonian buildings on the Capital Mall, as well as having once gone--purely out of intellectual curiosity--to an empty onion warehouse in a suburb of Nashville where there was a cross dressers convention, did not take his granny Rattler Sue seriously. Still, despite his worldly self's skepticism, from that day forward Elvis paused every now and then to grab a look at the sky to see if there was a heavenly hammer poised somewhere overhead poised to flatten him into a Elvis tortilla.

Armen

A while after his first assignment to Nogales Armen had transferred from Nogales over to San Luis on the California border. It was closer to his family home near Fresno and he was tired of his mother, who was locally famous in Fresno County for being both somewhat whacked out as well as domineering to the point of being nicknamed the Dominatrix, or, to her less judgmental friends, just Ditsy Trixie, complaining that she never saw him anymore. So he moved to San Luis and made an occasional trip to Fresno. Not a lot. But enough to keep her from showing up on his doorstep demanding to know why she never heard from him. Showing up on doorsteps, Trixie was convinced, was far more effective than phone calls, emails, texts or FedEx boxes of old family photos and bronzed baby shoes. Which she had actually done with Armen's older brother, Haig, in Dallas. Showed up on his doorstep pretending to be a FedEx driver. Which didn't go over any too well with Haig's girlfriend at the time, Linda Sue 'Tag Me If You Can' McTag. Linda Sue not much impressed with a guy whose mother shows up unannounced pounding on his door yelling "FedEx!" when he and Linda Sue were grabbing a quick one on the couch and about to thunder over the finish line during an extended commercial break during the Seattle Sleazy Pawn Reality TV show.

So Armen went to San Luis as a kind of precaution. See Mama Chooljian once in a while and keep her away from his door step. Though San Luis did have a god-awful hot summer climate. Not so bad for Armen as for some of his coworkers. The San Joachim Valley where he grew up had some miserably hot summers, too. Though not as hot as San Luis, where the locals could hardly wait for the horde of snowbirds from the north every winter. Not that they liked the congestion that the doubling of the town's population every winter season brought. But it also brought a fresh crop of virginal eared snowbirds that the locals could take aside and with somber sun burnt faces spell out the realities of the fabled blast furnace heat of summertime San Luis and Yuma County.

Hot and Cold

"You don't need stoves here in the summer," began one guy with a crew cut and a sense of humor that twenty five years in the Marine Corps and three tours in the sand had somehow failed to conquer. "You just put your bacon and eggs on a clean spot of concrete or on a car hood--I always place foil on my car hood to avoid egg stains on the paint--and wait a few minutes." He paused, for effect, then added. "It works with toast, too, but you have to keep a close eye on the toast to keep it from getting too hot and exploding," adding as an afterthought, "though it does work real good with popcorn." The listener's eyes blinked. Was he hearing what he thought he was hearing? Did this guy think he was a total nitwit and believed stuff like this? He knew for a fact that popcorn popped much better on an aluminum platter on the concrete, and tasted better, too. The car hood popcorn having more than a touch of car exhaust flavor.

"I remember way back in nineteen and seventy seven," another local old timer recalled in a extemporaneous conversation with a newly arrived snowbird. The snowbird was from Saskatchewan and was sitting next to him at a popular local restaurant, Eat My Grits, in the nearby town of Yuma. "Hottest it's ever been hereabouts. 105. 110. 115. 120. And it kept on for weeks. Then," he stopped a moment, scratching his head as he searched his memories. "Then, it happened. August. I think right around the 20th. Hottest day so far. Up in the 120's. It had been so hot for so long that along about noon the desert started to smolder. By two o'clock it burst into flame. The whole damn desert was burning. Some kind of spontaneous desert combustion, my cousin Slackwell with the Yuma County Sheriff's Department said, Slackwell looking puzzled and scratching his head in some degree of befuddlement at the time. Slackwell was often in some state of befuddlement ever since a coconut fell off a palm tree he was sitting under and almost whacked him in the head. A head which got whacked anyway when Slackwell dodged the coconut but tripped and plunged headfirst into a pile of adobe bricks. He never fully recovered, though the whack on the head somehow triggered off a change in his mental makeup which made him suspicious of everyone and therefore came in downright handy in his job as a deputy sheriff. "

"Myself, I never, never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Who would have thought sand could burn?" A serious look on his face. "Well, it did. Took fire departments from all over Yuma County and across the California border in Imperial County to put it out." Another pause. "Let me tell you, friend. It was quite a sight. Quite a sight indeed. The entire chunk of desert that caught fire had turned to glass. After it cooled it was just about impossible to walk on it without slipping." He stopped, muttering a little bit of an ironic chuckle, then resumed. "Though it did turn out to be a banner year for the local bone doctors, especially orthopedic specialist Dr. Aswith Chiklet, what with a steady stream of people coming in with broken arms and legs from slipping on the glass desert." He chuckled again. "And it brought us a tasty little local scandal, too, when the cops found out that the guy who supplied the bone doctors with plaster for their casts was cutting the expensive medical plaster with Gold Medal flour and a cheap grade of spackling paste and doubling his profits. Plus the guy was also selling bogus desert walking insurance as a sideline."

The guy from Saskatchewan, a grizzled beet farmer with more wrinkles on his face than the entire nonagenarian wing of the Yuma County Golden Slippers Nursing Home, nodded thoughtfully. "We've had our share of weather events, too, up yonder in the cold country. Kinda inside out from you folks down here." Now it was his turn to let his mind wander over the possibly somewhat embellished memories. "I was outside shoveling snow from our driveway to the house when one of them Blue Northers come whistling in." He looked at the Yuma guy. "Don't know if you folks down here have heard about Blue Northers or not." The Yuma guy, who did not generally go by the name of Yuma Guy, preferring to be called by his nickname Sam, which he only rarely admitted was short for the given name his bonehead parents gave him, Samsonite, nodded negatively. "Well, Blue Northers are storms barreling straight out of the arctic and coming at hurricane speed. Temperatures can drop fifty degrees in just a few minutes. Sometimes even quicker." He sidled a little closer to Yuma Sam, dropping his voice so that no one else could hear, explaining that "....this is a little embarrassing." He glanced around to see if anyone was listening.

"Well," he continued. "I was outside shoveling when the three cups of coffee I'd had that morning decided they were ready to move on to a place somewhere on the other side of my kidneys and my bladder and on to my little buddy, Peter, a handy all purpose tool, including my bladder's drain hose, that I keep safely tucked away just inside my pant's zipper. So," he looked around to make sure no one was listening as a fuddled Yuma Sam was still fixed on the peculiar all purpose tool comment. "I took out my buddy Peter and set to relieving the wanderlust of the morning coffee." His voice dropped even lower. "And I was in the middle of doing just that, as usual trying to squirt my initials in the snow before Peter petered out, when the Blue Norther came whistling in and dropped the temperature fifty degrees quicker than a sneeze in a pepper factory. Which meant, since it was already zero, that it was fifty below zero." His eyebrows raised to Saskatchewan maximum in remembered exclamation. "Now let me tell you, buddy, that is durn cold! So cold my urine stream froze in mid air. Worse." Another pause while he looked around yet again to see if anyone was listening. "It froze right up to and including my good buddy Peter. I was locked in tight. Couldn't move. Peter couldn't move either. I had myself a genuine crisis situation right then and there."

His eyebrows raised and stayed raised. "Wouldn't be but a minute or two and Mr. Frostbite would take a big and probably permanent bite out of my buddy Peter. Though my wife, who for some time had viewed herself as a born again virgin, probably wouldn't have noticed and for certain wouldn't have minded it, I sure wasn't looking forward to a life without Peter. So I got pretty excited. I would have jumped up and down in agitation over my predicament but suddenly realized that might end in a real catastrophe. So what to do?" His eyebrows lowered, his eyes got wide open with flaring pupils that had flecks of green and something that looked like oatmeal in them.

"Then I had a thought. My pipe. I still smoked a pipe. I had a pipe in my pocket. A dandy of a genuine locally made corncob pipe, by the way, that I got for two bucks at a garage sale one sleety summer day in Winnipeg. And," he reached over to tap Yuma Sam on the shoulder. "What's more, I had a lighter. A lighter! I took it out and set to thawing out my good buddy before it was too late." Another tap on San Luis' shoulder. "And it worked. Peter broke loose and I went inside and spent a good hour getting him back to normal. A little scorched, maybe. But still mostly normal." He relaxed back in his chair. "I went back outside later and saw that stream of urine was still frozen solid in mid air. Didn't thaw out until the next spring."

A final tap on Yuma Sam's shoulder.

"You never hear about stuff like this when the anti-smoking lobby is putting out their stop smoking pitches on the airwaves. Not stuff like how my smoking saved Peter. Media in Canada are as bad as in the States," he said, bouncing a fist off the counter.

"Biased. All of 'em!"

Elvis was sitting on the stool on the other side of Saskatchewan Peter, grabbing a breakfast of grits and peanut butter before he went over to the Port of San Luis for a day's work. Ever since he was a little kid Elvis was known for having phenomenal hearing. When he was out hunting in the woods with his kidhood cohorts he would hear a squirrel or a quail long before the others did. And, not being hot on hunting quail and squirrels, believing in reincarnation in those days and thinking they might be some of his Mahoney ancestors, he'd made enough noise to warn the critters there was danger afoot. As a teen he made a nice chunk of pocket change when word got around about his hearing. Moonshiners lined up to hire him as a lookout. Elvis prided himself on the fact not a single still that he was lookouting for ever got busted. And his hearing ability came in for some goddamn serious use in Iraq when he'd hear incoming long before his buddies. Whenever Elvis erupted into a mad dash for shelter everyone else did, too, even if not a one of them heard so much as a faint incoming whistle. And Elvis the super eared heard every single word both Yuma Sam and Saskatchewan Peter said. It set him to chuckling.

It was darn near as good as being back home.

An hour later he'd driven the twenty miles from Yuma to San Luis, parked his car in the employee parking lot and went over to meet up with his Enforcement Team--ET--partner, Francisco 'Pancho' Soltero. That's when he saw Armen Chooljian and remembered he'd transferred from Nogales.

"Hey, Armen," Elvis said as they went through a convoluted border handshake that looked to an outsider like thumb wrestling or maybe some kind of arcane hand jiu jitsu. "How's it going over here in San Luis." Armen's brows scrunched down as he thought over what he was going to say.

"It's pretty darn hot in the summer, Elvis," he finally replied. "Oh, there's lots of girls. The Mexicans produce them on a regular basis. And I suspect their mothers tell them to find some gringo with a good job, get married and get a green card and then bring the whole family over to the U.S." He paused, eying a fly buzzing over head. "That's all well and good. I have plenty of female companionship and I've become a locally recognized expert on how to meet a girl's family. And this place has lots of good Mexican food, which, as you know, the Mexicans are also good at. But, good Mexican food or not, plenty of girls or not, it's still hot. And not just the girls. Its hot, girls or not. Too hot. I thought Fresno was hot. I thought Afghanistan was hot. I thought my four burner electric stove was hot. But nothing is as hot as San Luis in mid summer. Two days ago I saw a mourning dove get heat stoke in mid air and crash to the ground stone dead." He stopped to swat at a fly that was buzzing around his nose. "Did you see that? Flies. Damnit. A place as friggin' hot as this, with nothing but a grim bare desert all around, and they still have goddamn flies. Where the hell do flies come from in a desert? What the hell do flies eat in a desert? Man, that pisses me off nearly as much the friggin' heat." Another swat at a fly. "Frankly, Elvis I'm thinking about a new career," Armen said. "In the air conditioning business."

There wasn't much Elvis could say to that, so he said goodbye with just a plain old handshake without the time consuming hand jive modern histrionics and went looking for his Enforcement Team partner, Pancho 'Cherchez la Femme' Soltero.

Elvis found Pancho in the secondary lot standing next to a Nissan pickup with Arizona plates. A guy in a cowboy hat was behind the driver's wheel. Elvis was a little surprised. It wasn't like Pancho to start stopping cars by himself. They were supposed to be a team Elvis walked up to Pancho.

"So what's up, man?" He said with no little curiosity. "You starting without me?" Pancho pointed at the guy sitting behind the steering wheel in the Nissan pickup.

"I was waiting for you when this guy drove by." He pointed at him. "Take a look." Elvis bent over and peered in the Nissan's window. The guy inside turned his head away and tried to hide his face under the brim of the cowboy hat. Elvis turned to look at Pancho.

"Something wrong with his cowboy hat? We targeting cowboy hats today? This a stolen or bootleg hat? Something like that?" Then Elvis straightened up and took a step closer to Pancho.

"Hey! I got it," Elvis said excitedly. "This is a trademark violation. Probably a Chinese knockoff of a Stetson. Those frickin' Chinese sneaks are at it again. Like the time they tried to sneak in that truckload of phony autographed NFL Super Bowl game balls." Pancho shot a surprised look at Elvis.

"You mean my genuine autographed Super Bowl NFL game ball is a fake?"

"Just funnin' you, Pancho. I'm sure it's the real deal." Which he actually wasn't, but he wasn't about to say that to Pancho who definitely had an excitable side and could dead lift a Harley Hog three times out of four.

Pancho might have gotten steamed at anyone else talking to him like that, but he'd known Elvis a good while. Which meant it was just vintage Elvis. They'd get to the point of things soon enough. Pancho reached over and rapped hard on the Nissan's rolled up window. The driver's reflexes were quicker than his thoughts and he jerked his head to look at Pancho through the window. Then Elvis saw it. The guy had bloodshot, bleary eyes and the stupid look on his face of a guy gone staggering through the woozy suburbs and smack into the middle of Dead Drunk City.

"Hell, Elvis," Pancho said. "I couldn't let this guy go. As drunk as he is he might have killed somebody." Then two things happened. Elvis immediately understood. And a blue uniformed body came thundering out of the secondary office directly for them. The blue blur was a thin and awkward officer with his arms and legs wildly flailing as he beat tracks for them, making him look to Elvis like a blue windmill. With legs. And also a mouth.

"What the fuck are you doing with my father," the hurtling blue uniformed windmill figure hollered out as he charged towards them. "You have gone too far this time. I'll have your butts for this, you asshole ET jerks!" It was Lorenzo Pappagallo. Senior Inspector Lorenzo Pappagallo. Otherwise universally known as the port asshole. Though Elvis had his own name for him. Copro. Kind of like pro cop reversed, at least the way Pappagallo heard it. Copro. Pro cop. Copper. As in cop. As in policeman. As in federal officer. A compliment? Lorenzo should have known better. Elvis had a much different concept in mind. And no imagination could stretch far enough to make it come out even remotely complimentary.

"Hey, Copro," Elvis said. "Calm down. We haven't even got the waterboard out yet." Pappagallo came charging up to them and for a moment Elvis thought the guy was going to run right into them. Well, maybe him. Not Pancho. Pancho would have laid him out if he so much as touched him. Pancho was a hot head. Pancho was a martial arts dude. Pancho was a weight lifter and in his younger days a deadly street fighter. Pancho was a hell of a good guy to have on your side and Elvis was grateful--and relieved--that Pancho was on his side. Maybe Pappagallo recognized that. Anyhow, he pulled up short, puffing, blustering, breathing fire. And also on the edge of coughing his lungs out, Pappagallo a two pack a day man, even if they were lights.

"What the hell do you think you're doing with my father here? He's just on his way home only a couple of miles down the road."

"It doesn't take much to leave a path of destruction," Elvis said. "Just ask the residents of the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast where all the good seashore restaurants get washed out to sea when an unusually big wave washes up too far on the shore. Or the people in the Oklahoma panhandle during tornado season when their barns regularly relocate to the next county. Though, now that I think about it, not all bad considering that they don't have to homogenize the milk from cows the tornados tossed around," Elvis said. "Not to mention a guy in Borneo whose canoe sinks off shore but fortunately it's only twenty yards to the shore. A shore however not so fortunately lined with humungous salt water crocodiles." Copro blinked and looked confused, then started to get pissed.

"What? What? What the fuck has that got to do with anything?" Pancho stepped forward.

"It means your father is drunker than the entire line of bar stool drinkers at Chi Chi's Lounge on the Saturday night after payday. He could kill someone."

Pappagallo was getting a little nervous. Maybe he had himself a problem here. From his seat indoors as the shift senior manning the office he'd called out to the lane when he looked on the lane monitor in the secondary office and recognized his father, well actually it was his father-in-law, driving up in his pickup to Armen Chooljian's lane. He also saw that Chooljian was taking out a referral pad and about to refer him to secondary. Pappagallo's father-in-law already had a felony DUI on his record and almost certainly had a suspended license. Another DUI would send him to the slammer for six months. And if that happened, especially at the port while Lorenzo was duty senior when it happened, his wife would never let him hear the end of it. A wife who he personally considered the very archetype of the fiery Latina. Which could be a good thing. And which could also be a not so good thing. Lorenzo had been burned by the not so good things so many times that he thought there must be fiery Latina burn scars on his brain. Besides, when she got riled up she shut the Gates of Paradise so tight a skinny starving molecule would have a tough time sneaking in. So he picked up the port intercom phone and called out to Chooljian, telling him to let the old man go. Chooljian, still a relatively new officer at San Luis and unsure of the local human geography, reluctantly agreed.

But then these goddamn ET dicks Pancho and Elvis had to stick their noses in and fuck everything up.

Elvis and Pancho weren't at San Luis to catch DUI's. They were after drugs. And, anyhow, DUI enforcement was a local law enforcement job. All they could do was call up the city dispatcher and have a local cop come over and do the DUI routine with the suspect. That wasn't the end of it, though. The DUI testing, though they didn't talk about it much to outsiders, could be hilariously entertaining and liven up an otherwise slow night with an extemporaneous show of inebriated rubber jointed acrobatics. Like the time the gymnastics coach at Kofa High School tried to show how sober he was by walking a straight line on his hands for the responding police officer. Which had an exciting and definitely unplanned ending. His hands slipped, he went head first into the pavement and knocked himself out colder than the walk-in cooler at Louie's Diner across the street. They had to call the San Luis EMTs and the guy ended up getting busted when he woke up in the Yuma Regional Medical Center where his embarrassed and very pissed off wife was working a 12 hour nursing shift in the ER.

But no such action this night. Elvis already had a solution. Calling the cops wasn't really necessary. Still, they couldn't let the guy go and drive off in the condition he was in. So. Solution. Grab the guy's car keys--it was after all Lorenzo's relative--and have someone come over and either drive the car home or take the old man home. End of problem.

Not quite.

"I thought you told me to send the guy down the road," a voice said from behind them. Armen Chooljian had just been relieved on the car lane by Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden and was walking back into secondary. He was confused by what he saw. And also wondering if he'd screwed up. "Did I misunderstand?" Elvis took a couple of steps towards Chooljian as the swarthy Armenian, who had lots of Mexican girls' phone numbers on his mobile and never had to be alone if he needed solace and he might need to call one of them before this rapidly imploding night was over, approached the knot of men around the Nissan pickup. Elvis looked at Chooljian. His face was as somber as it was possible for Elvis' face to get. Which might not be a lot, but was good enough to make his point. At least when the light was poor.

"Did you say Pappagallo told you to let him go?" Armen answered, hesitantly, now really unsure of his ground.

"Well.....yes. He called me on the port intercom."

At that moment Senior Inspector Lorenzo Pappagallo's entire life came into focus. This was a direct challenge to his integrity. This would be the defining moment. The ultimate distillation. To face up. To this situation, to life, to fate, maybe even to his fiery Latin wife. This was the time for Lorenzo Pappagallo to shine his beacon to the whole world, including this clump of numb nuts fucking with his wife's father. It was time to man up. To step up to the plate. He boldly stepped forward. And he spoke, remembering a line from an immortal song called "The Tomato Vendetta."

His eyes grew cold

for he was a man

whose moment of truth

lay close at hand.

'"The son of a bitch is lying," Copro said in his best take on a firm and truthful tone.

"I never called him," Copro continued. He leaned forward and shook a scrawny forefinger in Armen Chooljian's face. Then he really got hot, and in his hot haste, he snarled at Chooljian and made one tiny grammatical slip of the tongue error. Instead of saying "this jerk Chooljian is covering his butt" he blurted "this Turk Chooljian is covering his butt." Armen instantly went as rigid as a granite outcrop on Mount Ararat. Turk! Turk! Armenian Turk Alert! The internal bells in the endocrine control board in Chooljian's brain went berserk ringing Emergency Alert. Turk! Turk! He called me a Turk! The endocrine control board completely bypassed pale and went straight to livid. Which was maybe not such a big deal, except that the owner of the livid was packing a 9mm Glock on his right hip.

All right. OK. So Armen was a fairly new CBP guy and trying not to fuck up too badly. But, what the hell, he was an Afghan war vet who'd taken on all comers in Afghanistan. Taliban, Al Qaeda, warlord thugs capable of beheading an elephant in twenty seconds, nasty tempered guards on opium fields armed with just about every weapon known to modern man, a couple of crazed camels and quite a few venomous reptiles, not to mention 250 pound mustached Darla Mae Dermovsesian who had stalked him all the way through high school and college. Was he going to let this lying son of a bitch pull this crap on him? His mental tea kettle was boiling and about to let fly when Elvis stepped in.

"OK. We got a situation here," Elvis said calmly, trying to contain an explosive situation. "I'm not going to accuse anyone. But I do have a solution." He looked Lorenzo straight in the eye, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the slippery asshole was lying. "Listen, Copro, this is what is going to happen. Either you drop this issue with Armen and forget about it or I'm going to dial the San Luis police on my mobile and have them come over and do a DUI test on your father." He stopped, his eyes burrowing into Pappagallo's. "Do we have an agreement?" Pappagallo was about to argue when Pancho moved to his side and not so gently took his arm.

"Don't be stupid, Copro. Take it." He squeezed Pappagallo's arm. "And if you try to back out of it and screw with the kid later, he's got two witnesses to back him against you. Capiche."

"Ca..what?...." Pappagallo said. "What's that mean?" Pancho shot him a puzzled look.

"What do you mean, what does it mean? It's Italian. It means do you understand. I thought you were Italian."

"Only on my father's side," Lorenzo replied. "And he was adopted. I think his real parents might have been French Canadian gypsies. Or possibly fallen Quakers." Pancho squeezed Copro's arm again. Harder.

"Do we have an agreement?" Copro slowly shook his head in agreement.

"OK. OK. OK. We have an agreement. Now will you let my father go?" And they did. But only after Copro called another family member to come over and drive the old man home. So was it over? Not hardly. Copro was not a man to let a slight go unanswered. So maybe he wasn't really Sicilian. Or even Italian. But he's seen all the Godfather movies, and more than once. He'd get even. Some way. Some day. With all three of them. Chooljian. Elvis. Pancho.

Did Copro's enmity worry them? Heck, no. Not Elvis and Pancho,

It gave them something to look forward to.

But Armen Chooljian had a feeling deep in his gut not unlike that of a sleepwalker who suddenly wakes on a set of railroad tracks to see the Tokyo Express Bullet Train hurtling towards him at what must be three hundred miles an hour.

Twenty minutes later an aging black Oldsmobile with peeling paint on its hood and an I Love Disneyland Girls sticker on the window pulled up to the lane where Armen Chooljian had been but was now womaned by Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden. Elvis and Pancho were out roving the car lanes coming from Mexico and were just walking towards Elaine when the Olds started to drive up. Pancho stared at the I Love Disneyland Girls sticker on the car's window.

"What the hell does that mean?" He said. "I love Disneyland girls."

"Maybe he's into girls that dress like Minnie Mouse and have squeaky voices," Elvis replied.

"Oh, come on, Elvis. That's fucking ridiculous."

"So maybe it is. How the hell am I supposed to know what I Love Disneyland Girls means? I was only there once when I was a little kid with my grandmother Rattler Sue and she kept hauling me from one food stand to another. I only got to go on one ride, and even it sucked."

"Oh-oh! Childhood trauma. Maybe you should see a shrink."

"Shrink? You, talking shrink? Listen here, shrink dick, go buy some tweezers and find some satisfaction. Why...."

"Goddamnit!" Boomed out a low tenor female voice, that of Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden. "Would you mushroom brains just shut the fuck up and let those of us who work for a living get on with what we're doing?" To which both Elvis and Pancho turned around and scanned the primary lanes. Then they turned back to Elaine.

"I don't see anybody working," Elvis said. He turned to Pancho. "Did you?"

"Not a one," Pancho answered. "Perhaps it was just a rhetorical question, knowing as we do that Elaine Spinstergarden is given to dropping your occasional rhetorical question bomb."

Then they all broke out laughing. All three had been in the same senior inspector class at the academy in God's Own Steambath in coastal Georgia where they did a lot of sweating and no little drinking while they palled around together there and been friends ever since.

"How you been doing, boys," Elaine said. "Long time no see. How was the VD clinic this time?"

"About the same as when you were there." Elvis replied, which brought chuckles to all three. Which comment, given the personal proclivities of all three, was definitely not a rhetorical question.

But just then the Olds rolled up to Matchsticks' booth. Old times week was over and it really was time to get back to work. She turned her attention to the Olds and Elvis and Pancho walked across the lane to the next one and started scanning the line of cars backed up to the Mexican border. Matchstick was about to enter the Olds' plate number in the computer, the "goddamn temperamental" automatic license plate reader out of action yet again, when she noticed a lookout taped to the window of the inspection booth. A booth which reminded her of a cross between an old time telephone booth and what Elvis said looked like a Porta Potty with windows. The license plate number she was about to enter in the computer was the same one as the lookout. Matchstick froze. And, being frozen in place, bolt upright, the outline of her skinny borderline anorexic form topped with a puffy reddish hairdo explained why she was known far and wide as Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden. But...wait. This was serious. The lookout? It said heroin.

Heroin!

Elaine's face morphed to eggshell white and her abdominal muscles went spastic on her, an unwanted characteristic of hers that had brought her lots of attention she didn't want at exactly the moments she didn't want it. A tween with a brand new training bra as an emblem of the onset of puberty, smack in the middle of the most dramatic of life's stages, happened to be looking at her from another car in the line and saw Elaine's midsection unnaturally shuddering. The kid dove for the floor in the back seat.

"It's an earthquake, mama," the kid croaked in a scared voice. "Duck!

Either unaware of ignoring the histrionic tween, Elaine bent down and looked at the guy in the Olds. He didn't return the look. His eyes were staring straight ahead so intensely Elaine turned to look herself to see what the hell he was looking at. Nothing she could see, unless the guy was into staring at blank concrete walls. Which reminded her of an ex-boyfriend, Slockwell Flowblast III, who was about as boring as a blank concrete wall. But he was a boring blank concrete wall with a Maserati Gran Turismo and heir to a humungous fortune his grandfather made in the processed cheese business. Elaine hung with him for a while but finally couldn't handle any more detailed discussions of the processed cheese business and hit the road for less boring pastures. She didn't miss him one little bit, but did sometimes dream about the Maserati. As well as having the occasional unsettling nightmare of diving into a swimming pool that turned out to be filled with processed cheese.

She looked in the Olds and knocked on the window. The window, however was already rolled down and she instead tapped on the side of his head. That did get his attention. He slowly turned to stare at her with a frigid expression spreading across this face that made her think of a calving glacier, though, now that she thought about it, she had no idea what a calf had to do with a glacier. These weird minded scientists who thought this stuff up! Which reminded her of yet another boyfriend. But...never mind that for now.

Elaine had never had a heroin lookout before, in fact had never had any kind of heroin seizure, and was flummoxed by the whole idea. The words that popped out of her mouth were genuine products of flummoxia. Flummox and, by logical extension, flummoxia, being new words she'd just picked up from the New York Times online crossword puzzle.

"Hi," she said. "What's up?" The man in the Olds frowned. Now that she got a good look at him she thought he would be a great choice for a before photo on a Weight Watchers ad. The guy didn't look like he'd missed a meal in a bunch of years. In fact, he looked like he'd had plenty of extra meals in those same years. And, from the looks of him, some good sized meals at that.

"No havlo inglés," he replied in a surly tone. No English. Flummoxed Elaine took a couple more mental flummox steps. This exchange didn't seem to be going anywhere, much as her most recent romance with Cosmo Torta, a man whose idea of a great date was to have sex on the couch during an NFL game on TV and time his orgasm to synchronize with a touchdown pass. Preferably by his favorite team.

Elaine tried to get the attention of Elvis and Pancho, who were standing a dozen feet away on the far side of her car lane. She put her arm above the car hood where Mr. Guinness World Record Calorie Champ inside the Olds couldn't see and waved her arm back and forth. A cherry red VW bug convertible was just pulling up to the next lane and both Elvis and Pancho were zoned in on it. Pancho having had an old VW bug in his college days and Elvis having once been almost run over in the secondary lot by a cherry red VW bug convertible at the Port of Nogales when the driver dropped a lit cigarette into his crotch and managed to slam down the accelerator in his lit cigarette in the crotch panic. The VW promptly smacked into a pillar that Elvis had been busy holding up, causing him to escape by somersaulting over a table and onto a parked Chevy Malibu, so shocking the woman in the Malibu that it caused her to have a miscarriage. At least that was what she claimed in the law suit. Until the defending assistant U.S. attorney found out the woman was a transsexual who had nary a functioning reproductive organ in her biological inventory. After which the government agreed to an out of court settlement for an undisclosed amount.

Unable to get the attention of Elvis and Pancho, Elaine had the mound of flesh inside the car get out and open up the car trunk. A ritual performed hundreds, no, thousands of times every day at the port and at ports all across the Great Southwest of the good ol' U.S. of A. The reasons for opening up the car trunks were many. One was to see if maybe the driver had plunked a few kilos of marijuana or some other whoopee drug in the trunk. Or to see if there was a person in the trunk, a spin off on the ancient drive-in movie tactic when teens would sneak other kids into the movies in their car trunks. Or the officer might want to see whether or not the driver was impaired and staggered when they got out of the car. But the number one reason for getting someone out of a car to open a trunk was to check out their bodies. Man. Woman. Or both. Wasn't nothing quite as mood elevating on a hot and tedious day as a well formed human rear end bending over a car trunk. Especially when inadequately covered by a skirt or shorts.

But not Mr. Calorie. Especially when his shirt rode up and exposed the crack in his ass and almost made Elaine sick to her stomach. A few extra pounds on someone was no big deal. Even more than a few. But this was way more than a few. Elaine was staring, transfixed, in something approximating a cross between shock and amazement. Jus then Elvis turned and saw Mr. Fleshmound leaning over his opened car trunk, the crack in his ass plainly visible and a funny look on Elaine's face as she gawked at the man. He jabbed at Pancho.

"Quick! Take a look at this, Pancho," he said in an unidentifiable tone of voice. "Matchstick's done flipped out and gone over the edge."

As Pancho turned to join Elvis staring at the bizarre spectacle at the Old's trunk, Elaine tried to mouth the word heroin without actually enunciating it so that Mr. Fleshmound could hear.

Heroin, she mouthed, putting what she thought was a dramatic flourish to it to grab their attention. Elvis looked at her and mouthed back at her.

He...he...ho..ho...hon...hon-ey. Honey? Elaine, this is so sudden.

Elaine shook her head with a mixture of one milligram frustration and a host of parts of maxigrams of irritation. This was no time for that goddamn Elvis to be jerking around. She walked towards Elvis and Pancho, threw a straight right to Elvis's solar plexus, and mouthed the word again, this time softly speaking it. "Heroin." Then, to finally make the point to this pair of lunkheads, she turned and pointed at Mr. Fleshmound. "Heroin," she repeated yet again. "Take him in." Which did get their attention.

Elvis and Pancho hotfooted it over to Mr. Fleshmound, did a quick frisk of his mountainous body for weapons, and clamped the cuffs on him. Pancho grabbed his arm and moved him towards the secondary office while Elvis climbed into the venerable Olds, slammed it in gear and hit the gas pedal in his hurry to get the Olds into the secondary inspection lot where they'd set to giving the car a thorough ET search. While Elvis drove into secondary Mr. Fleshmound was not being very cooperative and Pancho had to use his considerable strength to get the human mountain moving. Fleshmound was squirming in Pancho's strong grip and loudly protesting in Spanish that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. To which Pancho replied in Spanish, which translated roughly as....

"We'll see, buddy. We'll see. Now quit jerking around and move." Fleshmound threatened and protested and carried on until they got to the door of the secondary office. He turned to look Pancho directly in the eye with a baleful glare. And then he went completely limp. Try as he might, Pancho couldn't stop the human behemoth from slumping to the ground. And there, try as Pancho might to get him up, he remained. It was yet another version of a Mexican standoff.

A Fleshmound standoff.

On the primary lane Elaine punched in the license plate number of the Olds as Elvis drove it to the secondary lot and Pancho was close to the secondary office's door just before the Big Slump. As soon as she hit enter the TECS--Treasury Enforcement Communication System--alarm went off. And loud. Someone had turned it way up. Hardly ten seconds later Copro came thundering around the opposite side of the building from the ET team and their newfound acquaintance and the Olds. Copro built up a head of steam and headed straight for Elaine. Copro, in the eyes of most of his coworkers, couldn't find a load of dope on his own if it was gift wrapped in clear plastic, labeled marijuana in foot high incandescent letters and put in his meticulously ordered but mostly empty personal locker in the squad room. So Copro had trained himself by doing wind sprints in his back yard to be a first responder to TECS hits. He'd come racing out to the primary lanes whenever the TECS alarm went off. The first officer on the scene at a TECS hit the one who would get credit for the seizure if the TECS lookout was a good one. Copro came racing up to Elaine, breathless and hacking, being a two pack a day man.

"Where the fuck is my TECS hit?" He said with a mixture of confusion and irritation, but mostly irritation. Elaine, who cared even less for Copro than Elvis and Pancho did, had the initial urge to plant a booted toe in Copro's scrotum. Tempting. But she knew, alluring though the idea was, she couldn't do it. There was at least was some satisfaction in thinking it. She tried to hide the disdain in her voice, while also sternly ordering her booted foot to remain where it was and not launch a sneak attack at Copro's private parts. Her booted foot quivered but reluctantly remained dutifully in place.

"The TECS hit has already gone back to secondary. Elvis and Pancho have it." Copro's face turned a shade of crimson often seen on supermarket tomatoes just past their prime.

"What! Those ET shitheads jumped my TECS hit! Goddamnit. Goddamnit all to hell." He did a quick and very precise 180 on his boot heels, Copro a military veteran who prided himself on his parade ground skills, though he had never actually heard a shot fired outside of a firing range. With the notable exception of his fiery Latina wife's family reunions, which could get somewhat out of hand when the bootleg tequila was flowing. The upside of which was when the tequila was flowing in his fiery Latina wife's body she was one hell of a dancer good enough to ace any TV dancing competition. At least until the tequila put her over the edge and she started hallucinating and a stone crusher of a migraine took up residence in her cranium. Having a migraine and hallucinating at the same time were not the best of combinations. Which invariably killed any notions Lorenzo might have been entertaining about some hot fiery Latina wife conjugal relations at evening's end. Plus she would have a hellacious hangover the next morning and have the disposition of a surly three footed badger with its recently removed fourth foot dangling nearby in the jaws of a nasty looking steel trap. The end result of which was Lorenzo dreaded family reunions almost as much as a reoccurrence of his hemorrhoids or having Elvis and Pancho show up at the Port of San Luis and really roil his already iffy emotional equilibrium.

Lorenzo Pappagallo, AKA Copro, stomped back towards the secondary office to confront the ET assholes who had ripped off his TECS hit. This was too much. Way too goddamned much. First the ET dickheads fucked with his father, well actually his father-in-law, and now the m'fers had grabbed his TECS hit. His eyes were cold. His face somber. His gate determined. A man could only take so much.

This, you ET fuckheads, was war.

Elvis drove the Olds into secondary and was just unwinding his lanky frame from behind the wheel when he saw Pancho and Fleshmound come around the side of the building and the Big Slump that forthwith followed. The combination of aggravation, frustration and helplessness that plastered itself on Pancho's face was too much. Elvis started to cackle, which got the attention of the other two officers in secondary who were busy searching cars. They climbed out of the cars they were searching and looked over at Pancho and the mound of human flesh slumped on the sidewalk. They probably would have thought something serious had happened had not Elvis' cackling progressed to a loud hooting that even woke up the shift supervisor, Tony Rivera, from his reveries about the Food Channel and brought him hustling out of the secondary office to the spectacle of Pancho and Elvis, who was now at Pancho's side, still chuckling, with Mr. Fleshmound doing his best thespian routine of feigning serious injury.

Rivera grabbed his head in both hands. "Oh, Christ! Now what the fuck have you ET dickheads done?" Just then Copro came bundling around the side of the building and raced up to where the crowd was gathering around the writhing form of Mr. Fleshmound.

"I saw it all, Tony," Copro said to Rivera. "They intentionally knocked this poor man down." He reached over to tap Rivera on the shoulder as palpable punctuation to his words. "And without provocation of any kind."

"Police brutality!" Mr. Fleshmound chimed in from below. "This is police brutality!" Pancho looked down at him with no little vehemence.

"I thought you didn't speak English," he said in a sour voice. "You must be a quick study." Mr. Fleshmound promptly retreated to his previous verbal proclamation--"No havlo inglés." Adding, however, in Spanish, that he did know a few English words, police brutality being among them.

"They didn't beat this guy down," a voice said from a blue uniformed figure who'd just come out the secondary door. "I was watching from inside. The guy just fell down by himself. Pancho didn't do anything to him. In fact he tried to keep him from falling. And Elvis wasn't even there yet." It was Armen Chooljian, who'd gone inside to the secondary office head to drain the lizard, comb his hair and floss his teeth, not necessarily in that order, and was just coming back when Mr. Fleshmound pulled his dramatic act. Copro shot a lethal look at Armen that could have killed a chipmunk ten feet away. Especially if the chipmunk already was kind of old and had a weak heart.

"You fucking jerk. You fucking jerk Turk. Turk jerk. Jerk Turk," Copro hissed at Armen, muttering under his breath so that no one could hear but Armen. Your real father is a Turk.

Armen screamed something definitely on the unfriendly side in third generation American San Joachim Valley Armenian, jumped straight up in the air and lunged at Copro, the whites of his eyes clearly visible from across the street. However Supervisor Tony Rivera was between them and, being a three hundred plus pounder himself, was an effective counter to Armen's charge. Armen bounced off Rivera and almost fell over onto his back. Before he could right himself and charge again Elvis grabbed him by the arms and pulled him away.

"Cool down, Armen. Cool down." Then, whispering in Armen's ear. "We'll find a way to get the SOB. Trust me." Elvis nudged him towards the door. "Go inside and stay out of the way until you're calm. OK?" Armen nodded and reluctantly stomped back into the secondary office.

"These ET assholes stole my TECS hit," Copro said in a sonorous voice of outrage, something else he practiced at home, though in the basement rather than the back yard, what with the neighbors kind of touchy about noise besides already thinking him a definitely strange character after watching him doing wind sprints in the yard and yelling It's Mine! "You can't let them get away with this again, Tony," he added. "They think they can make their own rules and do just about any damn thing they want." He paused, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial near whisper. "They completely ignore you, even if you are the shift supervisor," adding in what he thought was pithy and very hip front line border officer speak. "They be blowin' you off, man. No respect, dude man. No respect at all." He tapped Tony on the shoulder. "No respect!"

Like almost everyone else at the Port of San Luis, Tony Rivera was none too fond of Lorenzo. An afternoon of swatting flies was a more productive use of time than being with Lorenzo. But the last comment definitely did get his attention. He didn't like being ignored. Which, Tony a lunker of a human being at over six feet tall and three hundred plus pounds, was not something he encountered often. It pissed him off. Especially considering he had been day dreaming about a mouth watering Mennonite pasta recipe he'd seen on the Food Channel last night and was none to happy at being interrupted.

"OK." He said to Elvis and Pancho. "Just what the fuck have you done now?" He dropped his gaze to Mr. Fleshmound, who was still heavily into his serious injury routine. "To make this poor man at my feet cower in fear of you two ET dickwads." Elvis stepped forward, right on the very edge of what Tony Rivera considered his inviolate personal space, something which Elvis was fully aware of and therefore rarely missed an opportunity to use.

"The man is a heroin lookout, Tony. We need to secure him inside the secondary office and begin a search." This caught Tony by surprise. He'd heard the TECS alarm go off, but TECS alarms almost always amounted to zilch. He considered them the fantasies of some college kid nerd intel specialist who sat behind a computer terminal somewhere playing online video games when no one was watching and had not clue one about what the hell went on along the Mexican border. So Tony didn't pay much attention to TECS lookouts. He hadn't looked at the TECS readout on the computer before coming outside. But.....heroin? That was a different matter. That wasn't something that happened often. In fact, it was about as common as a gully washer in bone dry San Luis or Tony's wife sensually beckoning to him from the bedroom. Which sure as hell wasn't often. A subject that could skyrocket Tony's blood pressure in a hurry.

"OK," Tony said in his confident supervisory voice, a voice which was one of the most important tools he had acquired during supervisory training back at the academy in Steambath, Georgia. "Take him in." Then Tony wheeled and headed back inside the secondary office and made a beeline for the secondary computer to read the TECS heroin lookout.

The door closed behind him and the officers standing around Mr. Fleshmound looked at each other with expressions that fell well within the parameters of what the fuck? Take him in? With three hundred pounds or more of uncooperative Mr. Fleshmound still writhing and moaning on the sidewalk looking like a beached walrus wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt with an I Love Disneyland Girls logo? Just how were they going to take him in? Pick him up, with him jerking around, and try to manhandle him through a door not designed for this kind of manhandling maneuver? And with the secondary lot video camera recording it? Oh, no! Not a soul so much as moved a single finger. They didn't even think about moving a single finger, though more than one sphincter did involuntary tighten. Then Elvis stepped over to Mr. Fleshmound's moaning form.

"Excuse me, sir," he began. Please forgive us. I've just learned that there has been a terrible mistake. Please come inside and we'll straighten this all out right away and have you on your way in no time." Mr. Fleshmound stopped in mid flop and stared at Elvis. He eyed him very, very closely. He stopped moaning and groaning. His appraising gaze arrowed Elvis. But no definitive reaction. Not yet. Pancho stepped in and leaned over Mr. Fleshmound and repeated in Spanish what Elvis had said.

"Okey-dokey," Fleshmound said in a suspiciously unaccented English. Then, with surprising agility, especially considering he was handcuffed, bounced to his feet and started on his own for the secondary office door. Surprised by Fleshmound's sudden agility, Elvis and Pancho took a few seconds to react and slowly followed him in. As the door closed behind them, the officers in secondary--there were now four--noisily applauded.

"Good show, Elvis," said Neville 'One Off' Goodfellow, a naturalized citizen originally from a London suburb and a British Army veteran of Iraq. "Bloody good show." Copro shot the guy a nasty look.

"Dumbass," he said in a low voice. But not so low it wasn't heard. Neville, who was in his own words a stout fellow who was always up for a rousing good game of rugby, heard Copro and started for him. Copro did one of his precise parade ground military about faces and was inside the secondary door before Neville got anywhere near him.

"Gobshite! Bloody feckin' nit," Neville snarled as Copro beat a hasty exit. To which fellow officer Francine Bellamagma said.

"Damn straight, Nev!" Then, getting a somewhat puzzled look. "Whatever the hell that means. But it sure sounds cool."

They settled the handcuffed Mr. Fleshmound onto a bench in the secondary office while everyone took a look at the TECS readout on the office computer terminal. It said only that the Oldsmobile was believed to be carrying heroin and interest therefore centered on the driver of the Oldsmobile, Mr. Fleshmound. The lookout was phoned into the port just two hours earlier. The source was a local Border Patrol officer who often worked in plain clothes. A guy who had a solid local reputation, at least in a cop sense, him having some peculiar personal characteristics involving some reportedly "unusual" interactions with pumpkins and watermelons and, occasionally, exceptionally large citrus fruits. But the guy's solid enforcement record meant they took the lookout, unlike many others which they considered to be mostly the delusive daydreams of doofus desk dwellers, seriously. Very seriously, considering it was heroin. Which meant they had to search the Olds. And which also meant they'd have to search Mr. Fleshmound, something which was about as appealing to Elvis and Pancho as doing a three legged race over a bed of hot coals at a Sedona personal growth seminar or, even worse, watching an entire DVD of love songs by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Melissa 'Omigawd' Trueblood pulled up into the secondary lot with her K-9 van just after the squabbling crowd of officers and their man mountain detainee had thumped into the secondary office. She hit the brakes on the van, this time just missing a thick concrete roof support the goddamn van had a habit of scraping, climbed out and opened the side door to let the light breeze that had come up play over her K-9, Wilbur Too, in his cage inside the van. Checking to make sure Wilbur Too had water and wasn't hot or about to take a dump in his cage, which pissed off Melissa almost as much as seeing that jerk Tony Rivera staring at her ass, she went curiously over to where a knot of officers were standing around the aging Oldsmobile.

"Something going on with this pile of junk," she said, not being a woman to beat around the verbal bush. "Though it sure don't look like a load car to this ol' gal." Ol' gal? Neville Goodfellow turned to look at Melissa. He was a handsome and muscular rugby playing man of thirty who hid his identity with a Batman costume when he practiced his secret avocation of base jumping from skyscrapers and bridges. A Batman costume he'd had since serving with the British Army in Basra in southern Iraq. Where he regularly dumbfounding the locals when he'd sneak off base and slink around the central market in his Batman outfit. Though it was his turn to be dumbfounded when he got two proposals of marriage from a disparate pair of legally blind somewhat over the hill local men.

Melissa was a good looking and well built young woman in her mid-twenties who was an ardent practitioner of balanced nutrition and prided herself on her home grown purely organic tomatoes, juicy veggies she was very vocal in claiming were a potent aphrodisiac as well as being lip smackingly tasty. Which set Neville's lips to smacking, too, but for a very different reason not related to tomatoes. At least not of the vegetable variety. Both Neville and Melissa had fully functioning glandular systems and the normal quotient of hormones. Both were also single and currently unattached, Melissa having at least temporarily bounced her provisional ex-boyfriend Wilbur as being a hopeless jerk. Both also were convinced of the intrinsic value of birth control and the therapeutic value of recreational sex. Which meant that both of them instantly were aware what they would be doing after their shifts were over. Their eyes telegraphed a resounding mutual Yes!

And, that out of the way, done very nicely in a thoroughly modern fashion without the need for the complications of the spoken word, they got down to business. Port business, that is.

"You best talk to Elvis and Pancho," Neville said, chuckling. "This could well turn out to be a bloody interesting evening."

"Better bloody interesting than just bloody," Melissa answered, thinking of the time a few weeks ago when Lorenzo Pappagallo had tried to drill into a car bumper looking for hidden marijuana. The drill bounced off the bumper and onto Lorenzo's foot, drilling right through his genuine imported Brahma cowhide boot and through the flesh next to his big toe. Not a serious injury. But bloody. And, Pappagallo being Pappagallo, elicited an Academy Award nominee performance for best supporting actor in the Secondary Search Bumper Drilling Category. "Now that I think about it," Melissa said, remembering the way that Lorenzo Pappagallo had hollered and screamed and jumped around with his bloody foot. "Maybe bloody wouldn't be so bad after all." She gave Neville a hooded look of a type that the female species has perfected through millennia of practice going back to when the ancestral Homo sapiens folk shuffled out of Africa for the Big Wandering. "I'm real big on encores, you know."

Neville's world stopped stone cold still. He temporarily lost his ability to speak. His eyeballs felt like two chunks of dry ice and his Adam's apple lodged prominently in the middle of his throat, almost cutting off his air and demonstrating for all to see a textbook example of what an Adam's apple was supposed to look like. Then Neville flash unfroze and forthwith set out at an urgent lope for the secondary office men's bathroom where he put his head under the cold water facet and kept it there for nearly a full minute. When he came back out into the secondary lot Melissa was gone, having headed into the search room where clustered a beady eyed bunch that grabbed her attention and stopped her in her tracks. WTF! Elvis, Pancho, Copro, Tony Rivera, Mr. Fleshmound and, much to Copro's irritation, Armen Chooljian. All looking like Judgment Day was just around the corner and they were all in big trouble. Melissa 'Omigawd' Trueblood was therefore true to form.

"Omigawd," she said, catching the scrambled group of mostly uniformed humanity by surprise. "I've just had an epiphany." The others all stopped what they were doing to stare, with no little perplexity, at Melissa standing resolutely in the doorway, hands on her hips and mockery on her lips.

"Now I know exactly what a circle jerk looks like."

Supervisor Tony Rivera would have liked to have given her one hell of a dressing down for talking to her superior in such a disrespectful fashion. It fact, he would have liked to have wrung her neck in a way not unlike the hapless chicken picked out for an intimate dinner date back on his maternal grandpa's little farm in Pitiquito. But there was a problem. All CBP female officers carried a pair of menacing weapons. The Glock 9mm or some similarly menacing weapon on their sometimes shapely hips. And an EEO sex discrimination complaint form crammed in their back pocket, totally irrespective of any hip shapes, comely or otherwise.

"Very funny, Melissa," Tony said in a voice that sounded like he thought it was about as funny as a root canal without pain killers. "Maybe you'd like to perform your assigned port function as a K-9 officer by actually letting your cute little doggy out of his pen and running a car or two." Melissa's brow lowered and she was about to let fly something she probably would have regretted. But then Elvis stepped forward.

"The Olds outside is a heroin lookout, Mel," he said. "Would you run it for us?"

"Omigawd," Melissa said. "Heroin! Of course, El." She wheeled on her padded insole jet black cross trainers and headed out the door. Her shapely rear, despite the somewhat strained circumstances, drawing more than one appreciate look.

"Nice ass, gringa!" Came a voice from the search room bench. Mr. Fleshmound got a shot at Melissa's rear as she walked out the door. "Real nice." Tony Rivera took his head in his hands again and shot a hot look at Pancho.

"I thought this guy didn't speak English." He shook his head woefully. "I've got this bad feeling that this is not going to end well." Then he grabbed his stomach. "I feel like I could puke." This immediately got everyone's attention, even Copro, for Tony had a well known penchant for puking in stressful situations and Tony puking didn't help a stressful situation get any less stressful. Pancho took him by the arm and guided him to another bench in the search room while Elvis went to get him a drink of water. Mr. Fleshmound, who was sitting directly across from him, saw what looked to him like Pancho pushing Tony onto the bench.

"So they finally caught you, hey, big fella," Mr. Fleshmound said. Then he winked. "But it was a hell of a ride, wasn't it?" Copro, who was standing next to them, and who was no one's idea of the resident port intellect, squinted and threw a suspicious look at Tony.

"What did he do?" Copro said, instantly regretting it when Tony shot him an incendiary look just barely shy of being able to singe the day old stubble on Copro's chin.

While Elvis and Pancho were calming Tony Rivera down, Melissa Trueblood went out to her K-9 van, her expression breaking into a scowl when she noticed a couple of borderline nerdy officers starting at her shapely rear but breaking out in a big welcoming smile when Neville Goodfellow took a look and raised his bushy eyebrows in admiration. Melissa got Wilbur Too out of his cage, careful to firmly attach a leash to his collar and thereby avoid Wilbur Too's habitual dash for freedom when the cage door opened. What with her falling out with her old boyfriend Wilbur, Melissa was had been mulling the idea of changing her K-9's name from Wilbur Too to something else. Her first choice was Wilbur No. She tried it once and got only a confused, testy look from Wilbur Too, who was well known among the port's pack of K-9s to be set in his ways and resistant to change. At least any change that did not involve something tasty to chomp on. Melissa was stuck in the mulling stage and hadn't made the name change yet. Maybe never. After all, didn't a dog, like a person, need a sense of identity? So, for now at least, Wilbur Too remained Wilbur Too, ex-boyfriend not withstanding. Meaning that dip shit Wilbur wouldn't be standing anywhere even remotely near either Melissa or Wilbur Too.

Wilbur Too was waiting to get out of his cage, crouched, his leg muscles coiled, and looking around with beady doggy eyes. Wilbur Too had no idea just what freedom meant, not being a dog that gave much thought to the deeper things in a dog's life, but still took off for whatever it was that he didn't know and set his feet to sailing. Wilbur Too leaped out of the cage and set off like a launched rocket for places unknown. Until he hit the end of the leash. Melissa, who had been knocked over more than once by Wilbur Too's impetuous canine dashes for freedom, set her feet. Her body absorbed the shock of Wilbur Too hitting the end of his leash, the dog temporarily silhouetted for a couple of unsplit seconds in the wan secondary light stationary in mid air with all four legs splayed out. Which would have made a terrific picture had anyone been idly standing by with a camera for just such an opportune picture taking moment. Wilbur Too forthwith dropped to earth and Melissa's body shook with the force of Wilbur Too's body stopped short by the leash, causing her shapely rear end and her not at all insubstantial upper body female protuberances to shiver and shake, thereby eliciting various groans and moans from the male officers standing nearby, plus Officer Francine Bellamagma, who had egalitarian viewpoints on human sexuality.

Melissa Trueblood actually was very well endowed with a dynamite set of D cup boobs, but usually squashed them with a special order sports bra that minimized the effect and considerably diminished the drooling lecherous states her busty profile typically elicited. But this day she hadn't worn it and her standard female profile was there for all to see. And moan over. Neville Goodfellow broke into an instant knee jerk hormonal reaction and drilled each of the oogling officers in secondary, including Francine, with a propriety and noticeably menacing glare. Which translated as. They're Mine! Though, when Melissa saw the look on his face, which came across to her as being the bastard child of dumb shit and macho, his chances for an evening's rollicking entertainment took a disastrous nosedive into the not-too-likely.

Melissa meanwhile, after first checking to see if Wilbur Too had any abrupt stop injuries, got the dog ready to run the Oldsmobile. Or, as she put, the 'pile of junk with wheels.' With Elvis and Pancho involved, who she considered to be several cuts above the typical secondary officers who were either hopeless dripweeds like Copro or burnouts walking around in a zombie semi-stupor from constantly changing shifts and long hours, Melissa was thinking a heroin seizure was just around the Wilbur Too canine alert corner. She did her usual lap around the Oldsmobile, instantly regretting not wearing her camouflaging specially designed sports bra when she noticed the several sets of eyes bouncing up and down as they mirrored her movements, one officer even staggering and having to look away when he had a sudden attack of dizziness.

The initial lap done, Wilbur Too thus far showing zero interest in the car, though Melissa saw him sneaking a look at her bouncing boobs and rapped him on his doggy nose, Melissa got ready to do a thorough K-9 search of the Olds. She led Wilbur Too on a much slower and more careful and cautious loop around the Olds, pausing at the bumpers, wheel wells and rocker panels. Still nothing. Wilbur Too was looking bored. Wilbur Too might be a pain in the ass with his frequent frenetic dashes for freedom--Melissa having designed a special harness that kept him from breaking his neck when he hit the end of the leash at full speed--but he was a good dope dog. Some days, when he hadn't expended too much energy trying to escape and the temperature at San Luis wasn't wilting everything and everybody with its blast furnace heat, Wilbur Too was so damned good he was flat out phenomenal.

Heroin, Melissa whispered to Wilbur Too. Heroin! She repeated, thinking to jolt Wilbur Too into his phenomenal overdrive. Wilbur Too had a limited English vocabulary and heroin wasn't part of it. He did however associate whispering with good dog and was in the process of rolling over to have his stomach scratched when a somewhat peeved Melissa jerked him back to his feet. Then she got really serious. She dropped her K-9 officer doggie command reserved for the most urgent K-9 searches. The incarnation of evil. Kind of like a canine version of Armageddon.

Osama, she said in a hiss. Osama bin Laden. Osama! A tone of voice which alerted Wilbur Too that something goddamn serious was going on and he'd damn well better get his doggie act together and pay attention. Screw this one up and he'd be lucky to get day old fried okra for his doggie treat that evening back in the kennel.

The Osama command, though certainly effective to Wilbur Too, did however cause Melissa an unforeseen problem two weeks earlier that blindsided her with at least a 7 on the 10 point Blindside Scale. A hot tempered Brooklyn-accented black officer with a chip on her shoulder the size of a 2x4, and who strongly suspected the entire white race had singled her out for persecution, thought Melissa said Obama instead of Osama. Being already mentally and emotionally predisposed to seeing KKK lynch mobs poised ready to momentarily thunder down on her, she instantly assumed it was a racial slur directed not just at Barak Obama, and the entire mostly--or at least somewhat--black race, but also very specifically at her. And never mind that her maternal grandfather was a tow headed Ulsterman from Belfast who played a nifty concertina. She blew and things promptly accelerated into a Shakespearean-flavored drama right in San Luis' secondary lot and gave supervisor Tony Rivera possibly his most memorable evening of his career as a supervisor. Tony having puked no less than four times during the unfolding drama of the evening. Naturally, when it was all over Melissa and the black--that's African American, buster--officer, whose name was Yoruba Sha'nee Wintergreen, became best buddies and hoisted a few cold ones that evening at Kaminski's Pub in Yuma.

During the Osama/Obama drama in the secondary lot Tony Rivera began to count the days and months and years until he could retire. Which added up to a bunch and brought him to the edge of puking yet again. This time unsuccessfully, his stomach having been already thoroughly and completely emptied for the first time in at least six, maybe seven, years. He did however provide an interesting spectacle as his ample body of cascading rolls of extra poundage quivered impotently, looking to Elvis, who was also there, like a Dairy Queen volcano on a dry run.

Wilbur Too gave it is his best doggie shot. Still nothing. Not on the outside of the Olds. Not unusual. Many a K-9 search didn't grab the gold until the dog was put inside a car. Lots of places there for hidden dope. Roofs, doors, floors, seats, dashes. Not to mention the numerous potential hiding places on or in human bodies, which had caused Melissa no little embarrassment when Wilbur Too detoured from a car and beelined for someone's nearby vulnerable body. Since most people didn't react out of a spirit of Christian or any other variety of forgiveness when Wilbur II buried his canines in various places on their respective fleshy presences, a grateful Arizona Personal Injury Lawyers Association voted Melissa and Wilbur Too their Officers of the Year two years running.

Melissa was still feeling confident about the heroin, even if her extracurricular activities after work were now in the subbasement of possibilities. With the exception of when she'd had too much tequila and slipped into her randy evil twin alternative persona, Melissa detested macho men almost as much as she detested ketchup on spaghetti. Both of which she considered to be alien to God's True Plan for Earth.

With hopeful looks on both her and Wilbur Too's faces, Melissa opened the Olds' passenger side door and took Wilbur Too off his leash--Melissa careful to block the door in case the dog had a sudden impulse to make another dash for freedom. But Wilbur Too, who, to be frank, had something of a conceit about being a good dope dog, was now tuned into the search. He scoured the front seat, dash, roof, floor and even the steering wheel for the odor of narcotics, plus memorizing the butt odors of everyone who had sat in the Olds in the last six months. But no dope. Zilch. Then he bounded, still somewhat hopeful, into the back seat and proceeded to sniff out the hidden dope. Nope. None. Melissa let Wilbur Too out of the Olds, careful to snap his leash back on before he got out of the car, took the keys out of the ignition and went back to open up the trunk. Wilbur Too jumped right in. Still nothing. Melissa even opened up the car hood and let Wilbur Too stand on his hind legs and sniff at the engine compartment. By now both Melissa and Wilbur Too were disgusted. It looked to be another bullshit lookout. Melissa give it one last try when she let some air out of a tire to see if Wilbur Too picked up any odor. Nope. Still nothing. Now really disgusted, Melissa put a dejected looking Wilbur Too back in his cage and stomped over to the secondary office and the circle jerk still in progress.

"Nada," she said in a peeved tone as she walked in the door. "Nothin' there. Big Fat Zero, boys." Which news definitely did not make Elvis and Pancho's day, or Tony's, for that matter, the big fat zero remark causing all the eyes in the room to at least momentarily bounce off his voluminous person. So, the ET boys thought. Nothing in the car. The only option left. Mr. Fleshmound. They had to search him. Which was about as appealing to them as wrestling a wild Zebra in a mud pit. And certainly not nearly as much fun as earlier that day before their shifts when they watched a TV sports analyst explain how a touchdown pass to a wide open tight end instead landed in the hands of an EMT stationed a few yards from the end zone. Prompting the confused former high school halfback EMT to extemporaneously break into a run for the end zone where he was tackled by members of both teams, two officials and at least one heroic hot dog vendor.

By now Mr. Fleshmound had figured out that the story about him being detained by mistake was just more typical bullshit corrupt cop deception and was trying to figure out what to do next. He was getting worried. Worried enough that he hardly noticed Melissa with her atypically prominent D cup boobs bounce through the door. All he noticed was the grim expression on her face. And the even grimmer expressions on Elvis and Pancho's faces as they turned to glower at him. That did it.

"I want a lawyer," Mr. Fleshmound said in his suspiciously unaccented English. "You are in violation of my constitutional rights. I demand that you immediately take these handcuffs off me and either release me or give me a phone so I can call my lawyer."

"You're not under arrest, sir," Elvis said calmly. "You are being temporarily detained until we determine whether you are carrying narcotics." Mr. Fleshmound shot an incisive look at Elvis.

"Carrying?" He said in a low voice. "What exactly does that mean?" Melissa, who was still pissed off about the negative K-9 search and consequently no heroin seizure--heroin always nicely enhancing a resume'--took a step forward.

"Carrying as in body carrying, buster," she snapped.

"My name is not buster," he snapped back. "My name is Chooljian. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Chooljian. Either FDR or Choo for short." Chooljian? Chooljian! Everyone in the room instantly threw looks of various types at Armen Chooljin, who had been up to that point a mere observer. Just a sapient lump in the corner with a badge and a gun. No more. He jumped forward, elbowing his way past the substantial presence of supervisor Tony Rivera and eyeballed Mr. Fleshmound. He spit out words that no one in the room understood. Except him. And Mr. Fleshmound, who answered back in the same language that nobody else understood. But all of them, even molasses brained Copro, figured out it had to be Armenian. Tony Rivera stepped forward. His voice was almost pleading.

"Chooljian, please don't tell me this guy is your relative." Armen shook his head, but not with a lot of conviction.

"I don't think so," he replied.

"You don't think so," Tony said unhappily.

"At least not a close relative," Armen added, remembering with a good deal of discomfort that he'd heard that a branch of the family had emigrated to Mexico years ago.

"At least not a close relative," Tony Rivera repeated, still sounding on the distant far side of unhappy. He lifted his head towards the heavens, uplifted his arms, and said in a throaty baritone, sounding to Elvis like a televangelist just busting loose with a Jesus rant sure to bring in enough bucks to pay off his new Lincoln Town Car.

"Why me, Lord? Why does it always have to be me?" Then he whirled and pointed his fingers at the officers surrounding him. Beginning with Elvis and Pancho. "First I have to put up with this pair of jerk off ET officers," then pointing at Melissa, "and the PMS Queen," and then to Armen. "And top of that I have the Godfather's cousin working on my shift." Copro, seeing an opening, moved closer to Tony.

"Absolutely right, Tony. These people don't deserve a supervisor like you." He paused, whipping a triumphant glare at the others in the room. "That's for sure!" Tony was not in the best of moods and therefore not as diplomatic as he might otherwise have been. Though, in plain fact, he was not generally recognized as being among the top ten diplomats at the port, leading one officer to remark that if Tony were appointed the United States ambassador to the United Nations he probably would have World War III started before his first day on the job even hit the noon hour and one of his favorite times, the lunch break. Tony whirled on Copro with the vehemence he usually reserved for waiters who brought him the wrong food order.

"What? Christ, Lorenzo, who the hell are you to talk? You'd fuck up a wet dream. When God passed out the body parts to those about to be born you were at the wrong end of the line. That's why you have shit for brains." This got everyone to chuckling. Even Mr. Fleshmound AKA FDR Chooljian. What? Fleshmound? A heroin suspect? Chuckling? So why not? True, he was in some trouble. But that didn't mean a guy couldn't have a chuckle or two to lighten things up some. Elvis--who was characterized by another ET buddy, the brainy and fluid tongued Native American U of A honors grad hotshot, Cletus 'War Whoop" Magellan, as "being genetically predisposed to jocularity"--did more than chuckle. He couldn't stifle his hilarity and slapped his sides and then grabbed his stomach as he lurched into a full bodied belly laugh. The sight of Elvis, who was already a borderline comical figure with his lanky frame and unruly red hair, poked a funny bone somewhere in Mr. Fleshmound's voluminous corpus. He started to laugh. The laugh morphed into a rumbling that in turn broke out into a raucous hyena like chortling that set a distant pack of coyotes in the desert to howling and stopped everyone in the room in mid-chuckle, including Elvis, to stare at him. Pancho leaned over to whisper at Elvis.

"I think we have a whacko on our hands, El," adding. "Or else we have ourselves a genuine first. A heroin smuggler with a sense of humor." Meanwhile Tony Rivera was thinking it wasn't bad enough he had Elvis and Pancho, Melissa, Armen and Copro. Now he had a fucking lunatic heroin smuggler who looked like a giant mound of cookie dough and who weighed more than a Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle after a big meal. And on top of that the goddamn human donut was a relative of one of his officers. But he wasn't about to say to himself that it couldn't get any worse than this. He knew better. It could. With him it was almost inevitable. His privately held firm conviction was that the Gods of Fate had been out to get him ever since he derisively mocked Greek mythology back in high school world history class.

"Don't fuck with the Gods," his grandfather Bernadillo 'the Exterminator' Rivera had warned him years earlier. "They'll get you." But no, smart ass and headstrong teenager that he was, even if seriously overweight even then, he hadn't listened. "Fuck Zeus, Odin, Buddha, Krishna, the Great Spirit and all the rest of their bullshit god buddies," being one of his favorite teenaged epithets. If there were any god or goddess he'd not offended, it sure wasn't intentional. And now he was paying for it. When no one was looking Tony would quietly step out of sight, raise his eyes to the heavens and say.

"Hey, you Gods. I apologize. I really mean it. Now please leave me alone." Unfortunately, it didn't work. Either that or things could have turned out a whole lot worse than they did and the Gods of Fate had interceded to stop the chaos from getting any worse.

Which was something he didn't even want to think about.

Then another voice interrupted the circle jerk in progress. A face appeared at the door.

"Hey! Does anyone work here? We have all these cars in secondary sitting there like it's a used car lot with no salesmen." It was Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden, relieved off the car lane by Neville Goodfellow and come schlepping back to secondary. A secondary full of cars referred for further inspection but mostly empty of officers to search them. "How about a little help out here? Secondary looks like a frickin' Wal-Mart parking lot at rush hour." She wheeled and stomped back out the door. Tony Rivera's day continued to crumble, reminding him of the sand castle he'd built as a little kid on the beach at San Diego when the tide came in and gradually washed it away. Life had never really been the same since after that. There was no permanence. There was always a goddamn wave coming to fuck things up. To this very day he detested San Diego, including the Padres and especially the Chargers, who he'd bet five hundred bucks on to lose a game that the insensitive bastards ending up winning.

Christ! He thought. Another one. Elvis and Pancho, Melissa, Lorenzo, Armen and his behemoth of a smuggler cousin. And now the frickin' anorexic Spinstergarden broad, who was on the underfed borderline of needing suspenders to hold up her gun belt, and was for sure as much a pain in the ass as her buddies, Elvis and Pancho. Could it get any worse? Then he caught himself, thinking the fickle Gods of Fate might have heard him, and backtracked, his thoughts unconsciously sliding from his mind to his tongue.

"No. No. No. I didn't mean it...." Which got everyone's attention as they all stopped whatever they were doing or thinking--at least one of them thinking stuff not repeatable even in impolite company--and turned to look curiously at Tony.

"Don't worry, Tony," Copro said. "We understand completely." Though the fact was he had not clue one what the hell Tony was talking about but saw another chance to suck up to the boss.

"Does this mean you are finally apologizing for pissing in the punch bowl at the port Christmas party?" Pancho said.

"So, no Lap Band after all, hey bloat boy?" Said Melissa, who was still peeved at Tony always starting at her ass.

"Does this mean I don't get the blow job?" Elvis said.

"Who the fuck are you guys?" Mr. Fleshmound said with a genuine perplexed look on his face.

"Maybe life on the farm wasn't so bad after all," Armen Chooljin muttered disconsolately, one eye on his mountainous found possible Mexican cousin and the other on the assemblage of supposedly highly trained professional border officers. "This isn't exactly what I envisioned when I signed on."

Pancho was the only one to physically react. He was out the door following Elaine Spinstergarden into secondary. "I'm gonna help Matchstick check out the cars," he said as the door swung closed behind him. Elvis clenched both his fists and his teeth.

"Shirker!" He snarled at the distant back of Pancho disappearing into the secondary lot. He knew what Pancho was up to. The sneaky bastard. Now Elvis was stuck with searching Mr. Fleshmound. He raised a clenched fist and shook it at the distant form beyond the door.

"Shirker! Traitor! Fair Weather Friend! Lurch Leaver! Benedict Arnold!" Then, on a roll, adding. "And Arnold Schwarzenegger, too!"

At that precise moment the paradisial image of an early retirement came floating into Tony Rivera's mind. He could stay at home, once and for all free of these dripwicks. He could watch the Food Channel all day. He would have time to refurbish his collection of dinosaur miniatures he'd been collecting since he saw Journey to the Center of the Earth as a kid and became obsessed by dinosaurs in what was his second epiphany--the first having been when he discovered the Food Channel. His favorite dinosaur was the towering bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus Rex, and if Tony could somehow conjure a real one into reality, he'd for sure set Rex loose on the bunch of misfits clogging the secondary office. He closed his eyes tight and relished the image of the beanpole figure of Elvis dangling from Rex's jaws. He could almost hear Elvis screaming. And, in actual fact, he did hear Elvis. But not screaming.

"What the hell are you grinning at?" Elvis said, completely shattering the magic of the moment. Tony opened his eyes with a glower that even took Elvis aback.

"Get on with your fucking inspection, officer Mahoney," he said with a voice twin to his expression. "We ain't got all night here."

"Don't, not ain't," came another voice. Mr. Fleshmound. "Ain't is not good English. Ain't got is even worse. Don't have. Not ain't got." Tony wheeled on his heels so suddenly Armen, who was watching, got a sudden jolt of vertigo from seeing such a large mass move so suddenly right in front of his eyes. Life on the farm was looking better and better to Armen. Even spreading cow shit didn't seem so bad. He decided it would be a wise move to slip out into secondary and help Pancho and Elaine search the cars there, which were continuing to build up as more kept coming in from the over enthusiastic--or indecisive or even possibly malicious--officers on the primary lanes. Tony Rivera held up a meaty palm as Armen started for the door.

"You're not going anywhere, snipwell. You stay here and help Elvis search your cousin in case he starts off in that weird foreign language again."

"That's Armenian. And in Armenia English is a weird foreign language!" Armen snapped back.

"Right on, cousin," Mr. Fleshmound chimed in. "Armenian power! Goddamn Turks!"

Goddamn Turks? All the hoary horror stories he'd heard as a kid about the Armenian holocaust came flooding back into this mind. He decided that if this guy really was a distant relative, and if he did get busted for heroin, Armen was gonna help him find a darned good defense attorney--preferably an Armenian.

"OK," he said, a strange glint in his eye. "I'll help Elvis with the search."

"What about me? Copro interjected. "This is my TECS hit. These ET jerks jumped it. I should be doing the search." Tony was beyond being pissed.

"Go out in secondary and help with the searches there," he said in a tired voice. Copro was about to object, but Tony held up a finger to his lips. "Just go, Lorenzo. Now!" Lorenzo went, trailing a disgruntled grumbling litany of personal grievances behind him as he opened the door and stomped out into secondary.

"He's a strange one, that guy," said a voice from a rather large figure plunked on a secondary room search bench. Mr. Fleshmound. "Even stranger than the rest of you guys." He paused and smiled at Armen. "Except for my cousin here. He's a cool dude." Tony wheeled his considerably bulk abruptly on his heels once more, sending a second wave of vertigo over Armen's already unsteady equilibrium.

"Elvis!" Tony said, almost spitting out the words. "Search this freakin' guy. I want this over with and him either out the door or on the way to the slammer. Either way, I want him gone." He smashed one meaty fist into the palm of his other meaty hand. A bit too hard. He recoiled, shaking his somewhat injured, if only fleetingly, smarting palm. "Damn!" He spit out, then eyeballing Elvis with a sizzling look that reminded Elvis of a raging Cyclops from the Saturday morning cartoons he watched on TV as a kid. "Now!" Tony hissed. "Now! Goddamnit, do it NOW!"

"Wow! Hey, dude, you're kind of excitable," Mr. Fleshmound said in an amused voice. "You better watch out. With you being so overweight, getting fired up like that could give you a heart attack. Might do you in permanently. You know, tubby dude boss, send you on the one way trip to the big sleep." Tony whirled on him with an astounding agility for such a large person.

"What? You are calling me overweight? You who weigh more than my son's entire high school geometry class?" He whirled again, facing Elvis. "Damnit, Elvis. Get rid of this bladderwort. And," reverting to his most intense take on a menacing hiss, "do it now!"

Elvis was not a cruel man. He had the usual complement of compassion in his feelings toolbox. He could see Tony Rivera was teetering on some kind of emotional edge. Who was he to fuck with the guy and push him over the edge? Yeah. Who was he? Are you kidding? He was Elvis, that was who he was, and Tony Rivera had earned not just one but tens, dozens, scores of over the edge pushes in his bulldozing antics over the years. But, Elvis decided, this wasn't the time. Not now. Not yet. It wasn't time.

But that could change in a hurry.

It was not a frequent occurrence when Elvis and Tony were of one mind. Not hardly. About on the level of likelihood of the President of the United States and the Premier of the Soviet Union grabbing a burger and a beer together to talk over old times smack in the middle of the Cold War. Yet it did happen, at least with Elvis and Tony, if not with the U.S. Big Man and the Russian Top Dog. This was one of those infrequent Elvis and Tony's minds meet occurrences.

Elvis and Pancho almost never got involved with computer generated TECS hits in the first place. They'd only stumbled into this one when that goddamned troublemaker Matchstick Spinstergarden discovered the lookout and sucked them in. They were stuck. There was no choice but to take action and haul the guy into the secondary office. Their job as ET officers, which was exactly why they jumped at the chance to join the ET, was to choose their own cars and people to search. They didn't want the freakin' TECS hit. If anybody else, up to and including Mongo the port maintenance guy or even some inept dude delivering Mexican take-out to the port, had responded to the TECS hit, Elvis would have turned it over to them. Anyone. Anyone but Copro. Copro was the sole occupant of the top ten spots on the Asshole lists of every single officer at the port, plus a very long list of Mexicans extending well beyond the states of Sonora and Baja California who'd encountered him when crossing into the U.S. from the Sonora side of San Luis. Not to mention Copro's neighbors and relatives. So, much as he didn't like the idea, Elvis was stuck with the search.

Elvis wanted Mr. Fleshmound gone, too, one way or the other. And that meant he had to get on with the distasteful job of doing a thorough body search of the voluminous person of the guy who might or might not be a heroin smuggler. Melissa had searched the Oldsmobile. Pancho would double check that with a hand search. If that was also negative, and Elvis thought it would be since Melissa and Wilbur Too were damned good at snooping out hidden dope, the heroin had to be somewhere on the bulky guy who might be Armen's cousin.

"OK, Armen," Elvis said. "Let's search your long lost cousin."

"I don't know that he is a cousin," Armen answered with little enthusiasm. "Or even a relative."

"So how common is the name Chooljian?" Elvis asked out of a somewhat suspicious curiosity.

"About like Smith," Armen answered. Then, in a low voice. "In Hong Kong."

Elvis stepped over to where Mr. Fleshmound was sitting.

"Time to stand up, sir," Elvis said. Mr. Fleshmound looked innocently at Elvis.

"I don't feel like standing up," he said. "I'm kind of tired. You guys carrying on the way you do has drained my emotional tank. I need to rest." Now it was Elvis' turn to wish he was somewhere, possibly anywhere, else. The memory of Mr. Fleshmound flopping on the sidewalk outside in secondary popped back into his mind. Oh, no. Not again.

"Sir," Elvis continued, speaking in a somewhat slurred voice though clenched teeth. "Don't make this any more difficult than it already is. You don't have any choice. We have the legal right--and in your case, also the legal obligation\--to search you. No matter what you think. Just cooperate and we'll get this search over with and get you on your way." Mr. Fleshmound looked up at Elvis with a completely calm face and spoke in a voice equally as calm. As though he was chatting with a buddy over an espresso double caramel latte at a sidewalk table at Bernie's Caffeine Emporium over on Adams Avenue in trendy San Diego.

"You are a fascist stooge, beanpole, and I will not allow you to violate my God given constitutional rights our Founding Fathers, and possibly a few Mothers, brought forth upon this continent." Armen stared in stupefaction at Mr. Fleshmound, then said.

"I think you're mixing your metaphors here, Mr. Chooljian." Elvis threw a not altogether friendly look at Armen.

"You're not being helpful, Armen," he said, his teeth returning to the clenched position.

"But he's mixing together the U.S. Constitution and the Gettysburg Address...." Elvis interrupted him, speaking through the clenched teeth position.

"Armen, we are conducting a personal search here, not a civics class."

"I always liked civics class," Armen replied. "And I did well, too."

Elvis could think of all kinds of things to say to Armen, most of them decidedly on the unfriendly side. He also thought of several things he would like to do to Armen, which were even unfriendlier. But he did nothing and what he actually said, in the tightest clenched teeth position his jaws could manage, was "Armen, we need to get this gentleman to his feet so we can proceed with the search."

"I want a lawyer," Mr. Fleshmound said. "I'm not moving until I see my lawyer. Get me a lawyer, preferably one who graduated in the upper third of his class at law school." Tony Rivera was standing nearby, watching. Watching and listening. Then something inside Tony busted loose. The Tony stream of consciousness broke over the Tony self restraint dam and his eyes were steaming towards the ocular boiling point. He threw up his arms, lurched over to where Mr. Fleshmound was plunked on a bench in the search room, and reached down to grab Mr. Fleshmound by both shoulders. Then, throwing the entire upward momentum of his three hundred pound plus frame into it, he jerked Mr. Fleshmound onto his feet. And held him there.

"You're gonna get searched, munchlock," he said in a definitely genuine snarl, "whether you like or not." Right then and there Tony Rivera won a reprieve--at least a temporary one--from any mischievousness Elvis might have considered sending his way to roil Tony's supervisory equilibrium. Attaboy, Tony! Elvis thought. Attaway to go. At that moment Mr. Fleshmound repeated his rubber leg routine, intending to once again flop onto the ground. Nope. Not gonna happen. Tony, who actually had some steely muscles underneath his bulk, held him upright. Flopping somewhat, but upright. A dangling flopping that reminded Elvis of a chubby carp he'd caught while out fishing on a Colorado River oxbow lake on his last day off. A carp which promptly spoiled the magic of the fishing moment by letting fly a stream of fish urine that just missed Elvis' surprised face but not his favorite lucky fishing shirt.

"Search him, Elvis," Tony said, gasping with the exertion of holding Mr. Fleshmound upright. "And do it quick." Then he looked at Armen.

"Chewing Gum," he said. "Go outside and grab a couple of officers to come in and help me hold this guy up." Armen threw him a hot look.

"That's Chooljian," he shot back. "Not Chewing Gum. I don't care if you are a supervisor or not. I won't have you slurring my ethnic heritage!"

"Right on, cousin!" Mr. Fleshmound blurted out. "Armenian power. Goddamn Turks." He swiveled his well larded neck to look at Tony. "You look like a Turk to me." Tony lasered Armen.

"Go! Get some help! Mr. Chooljian." Armen went to get help. Tony turned his glare to Mr. Fleshmound. "I am not a Turk. I have never been to Turkey. In fact, I'm not even quite sure where Turkey is. But," his glare intensified as he zeroed in on Mr. Fleshmound, "I sure know a turkey when I see one." An electric shock seemed to blitz through Mr. Fleshmound's voluminous corpus. The shock was accompanied by a sizzler of a thought that flew off his tongue like a bolt out of a Medieval crossbow.

"You are calling me a turkey, you giant donut?" Fleshmound's face took on the color of a squashed tomato. "Scurrilous thugs!" Fleshmound spit out. "Libel! Slander! Perverters of the American Way! Jackbooted storm troopers! Faschisti!"

"Faschisti?" Elvis blurted out. "You're calling us Faschisti?"

"Damn straight, beanpole," Fleshmound snapped back. "It's Italian for shithead." Tony Rivera moaned. And not just any ordinary run of the mill every day kind of moan. This one came deep within him. And, Tony being a largish dude, it was deep indeed.

"Why me, Lord," Tony moaned. "Why does it always have to be me?"

"Why not?" A deep muffled voice answered. Elvis couldn't resist. So much for a Tony reprieve.

Tony's head snapped around. "Who said that?" Snarled Tony.

"Said what?" Elvis answered. "I didn't hear anything."

"It was the fascist beanpole," Mr. Fleshmound spit out. "He's fucking with you." Then his own take on a snarl. "And you deserve it, Lard Butt."

"Lard Butt! Tony bellowed. "You are calling me Lard Butt?" Tony shook Mr. Fleshmound so vigorously that his shoelaces came untied.

"Excuse me," Mr. Fleshmound said. "How impolite of me. That's Mister Lard Butt."

"Hey. Wait a minute!" Tony suddenly said. "You speak perfect English. Complete with colloquial insults. Just like us. I thought you were a Mexican." Mr. Fleshmound thought he saw his chance. He tried another flop on the floor. No luck. Tony, though now groaning with beads of sweat popping up on his forehead, still held him in a firm Tony grip.

"I never said I was a Mexican," Mr. Fleshmound replied. "You assumed I was a Mexican."

"When a guy says in Spanish that he doesn't speak any English it ain't such a wild assumption," Elvis interjected. "Besides which you have an ID that says you're a Mexican." Mr. Fleshmound harrumphed at that.

"Fake ID's go for a hundred bucks tops in Mexico. Some of them better than real ones."

Just then Armen came back in with Pancho and Neville Goodfellow, with Melissa Omigawd Trueblood right behind them. They didn't need to be told what to do. One look was enough. They added their collective muscle power to Tony's in holding rubber legged Mr. Fleshmound upright. Armen had heard the last comment about fake ID's.

"Fake ID?" He said suspiciously. "Then Chooljian is not your real name?" Mr. Fleshmound actually chuckled, despite being in mid-flounder.

"Fuck no, nerd boy. It's not even on my fake ID." Another chuckle. "But it is on your nameplate." Armen glanced down at the nameplate over his shirt pocket. Chooljian.

"Omigawd," Melissa blurted out. "You've been flummoxed, Armen." Everyone in the room, Mr. Fleshmound included, turned to look at Melissa with a bewildered look. Flum...flum...what? Melissa, who was a quick study and had been every since the first mortar round came whistling in to her unit's FOB--Forward Operating Base--in Iraq, caught the drift.

"Flummoxed," she repeated. 'It means fooled. Suckered. Snookered. Deceived and decepted and generally conned but good. Therefore, flummoxed." Adding, "I read it in the New York Times."

"Thank you for your erudite and scholarly explanation, young woman," Mr. Fleshmound said sarcastically. "Now be a good little girl and go make us some coffee." Elvis was not the only button pusher in the room. Actually, they all were. Mr. Fleshmound was no exception. And he pushed Melissa's male chauvinism button in the absolute dead direct center. Her face turned the color of Elvis' hair and her eyeballs bulged out so far Elvis thought they looked like blue-eyed golf balls. Elvis grabbed Melissa's arm before she could draw her 9mm Glock and wrestled her out the door.

"Not now," he hissed at her. "Maybe later. But not now." He turned to go back inside. "Stay here. At least until you've cooled down." He headed for the door and went inside. Before it shut he heard footsteps right behind him. The door closed behind him. Behind them. Melissa was already inside.

"I'm cool," she said. "Don't worry." Elvis knew Melissa. And he did worry. He kept a wary eye on her gun hand.

"What a woman," Mr. Fleshmound said. "Feisty. And with a great ass to boot." Melissa surged forward with the irresistible momentum of a Pacific tsunami about to rearrange the Alaskan coast.

"Let me search him," she said with hot eyes that perfectly matched her hot words. "Please." Mr. Fleshmound caught a good look at her expression.

"I don't think that's such a hot idea," he said. And was dead serious, his attention focused on the absolute vulnerability of his dangling gonads, especially when he was handcuffed. For just the briefest of moments, well, maybe not all that brief, Tony considered actually letting Melissa do the pat down search. It would be a story worth passing down through the coming generations of Riveras and probably lots of other folks' generations. For sure the Elvis generations, that is if people like Elvis actually did successfully reproduce. Oh, to actually see it! But. But. A great Big But. It was so against CBP policy that it was tantamount to dropping a bag of dog shit on the Commissioner's lunch table and telling her to eat it. No can do. Nope. No can do. But still one hell of a great idea.

"Thank you for the offer," Tony said, and really meaning it. "But we both know you can't search a member of the opposite sex. Get us both in big trouble."

"I'm not really a woman," Melissa shot back. "I'm a cross dresser. If you saw me in the shower room you'd know. I'm actually a man. But nowadays women get promoted quicker than men. So for now I'm a fake woman." She paused with not even a glimmering of deception on her I'm not a woman face. "Now can I search him?"

"Hey! Strip down and prove it to us," Pancho said, Pancho being a man who rarely missed any kind of opportunity to ogle the pulchritudinous marvels of the female species. "Put up or shut up, Melissa. Or, Melvin, whichever the case may be. Enquiring minds need to know." There was an undercurrent of a universal murmuring agreement, even including Mr. Fleshmound, to Pancho's really great idea. Right! Yeah! Prove it!

"Come on, Melissa," Tony said in a tired voice. "You know I can't let you search him."

"Would you believe transsexual?" She said. "Or how about transgender? That work?"

"Melissa," Tony repeated. "Please. You know better." She shrugged. But she had one more try in her.

"How about a sizeable bribe? Season tickets to the Diamondbacks or the Cardinals? That do it for you?" Tony shook his big, somewhat shaggy head, him being badly in need of a haircut, his regular barber being temporarily incarcerated over a misunderstanding concerning unpaid child support, in an emphatic no! Bribe? Tony Rivera? The pride of the entire southwestern Rivera clan on both sides of the border? (Not counting his second cousin Rigoberto, who was a hero in the town of Cananea as the local more or less Robin Hood style drug lord.) Not even in the realm of possibility. Not even in the universe of possibility. And sure not for some crummy season tickets. But, had Melissa offered a ticket on the Food Channel's Gourmet Cruise to the Caribbean, Tony would have had to think hard on it. But she didn't. And a good thing she didn't. Tony's supervisory integrity might have gone down the Gourmet Cruise tubes.

"OK. OK," she said, giving up. "But can I at least cheer from the sidelines? And maybe offer a suggestion or two?"

Melissa!" Tony said in a not so gentle tone. "Enough already."

"Enough already is also poor English," Mr. Fleshmound spit out. Before he could say anything more Tony shook him again, reminding Elvis of his Blue Tick Hound, Simon Don't, shaking off the water after a dip in the cool somewhat muddy waters of Slippery Sister Creek back home and as often as not splattering Elvis with drops of muddy water as Elvis impotently muttered "Simon Don't."

"Elvis," Tony ordered. "Search this guy. Get on with it." Adding, "Get 'er done." Mr. Fleshmound was about to correct Tony again. "Don't even start!" He bellowed at Fleshmound.

Elvis slowly put on a pair of latex gloves before beginning the pat down, apparently getting his thumb stuck in the same hole as his index finger. As he vigorously shook his partially gloved hand to get the wandering thumb back in its appointed location, Mr. Fleshmound decided it was time to shift into a higher uncooperative gear.

"Do you guys video this stuff?" He asked. Tony nodded at a camera over the secondary door that was pointed right at them.

"You bet," Tony said. "So guys like you can't go making a bunch of false accusations. Hire some sleazy bottom feeding shyster lawyers and try to rip off the government."

"Now, wait a minute," Armen said. "My brother-in-law is a lawyer. And I thought about going to law school myself. Not all law......"

"Armen, goddamnit," Tony said. "Do something with your mouth that doesn't involve talking or making any kind of noise."

"We are being videoed right now?" Mr. Fleshmound continued, not to be deflected from his train of thought, which was definitely starting to pick up speed.

"That you are," Tony answered somewhat peevishly.

Which was exactly what Mr. Fleshmound wanted to hear. Bang! As quick as the shutter on a high end Super Zoom digital camera, which was amazingly quick, being made in China by the steady hands of certified non-drinkers under the age of 15, Mr. Fleshmound's entire rather large body shuddered like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and he let out a moan that would have scared the hell out of anyone even remotely near a creepy graveyard.

"Help!" Fleshmound yelled, his anguished face pointed pleadingly towards the video camera. "Please don't hit me again. I'll do anything. I'll confess. I'll confess to anything. Anything you want. Please! Just don't hit me again!" He jerked his body and tilted his head at the side of his body away from the camera where the blow allegedly fell, his ample mound of personhood nicely blocking the camera's view.

At that moment Armen was just about convinced he should have stayed on the farm and spread cow shit over the vineyards and orchards. It really wasn't so bad. Just so long as you used nose plugs and took a long hot shower afterwards with lots of soap. Though the odor still could linger and had screwed up more than one date with a promising hot young babe. Girls didn't much care for getting it on with a guy who smelled like cow shit. But there might be a solution. Find a girl from another farm who also spent her days spreading cow shit. The mutual odors would cancel each other out and open the door wide open to an evening's rollicking activities. And, the olfactory senses being what they are, without the daunting possibility of unwelcome spectators. Armen made a mental note to check it out when he got a chance.

"Oh, please, please, mister policeman," Fleshmound said, his voice wavering plaintively. "Please don't hit me again." Elvis looked at Melissa and winked. Just a little. But just enough so she could see.

"Melissa," Elvis said in a loud, theatric voice. "Go into the office and check the video recorder. We want to make real sure it is working." Then he gave a very big wink aimed at Mr. Fleshmound. "We sure wouldn't want to miss any of this perfectly legal and very professional search on the recorder." Another very big wink. "Right?"

"I'll go check it right away, Officer Mahoney," Melissa said, trying not to smirk at the...dare she say it?.....flummoxed expression on Mr. Fleshmound's face. In a little over a minute she was back.

"All clear, Elvis," she said with a big grin. "Absolutely clear." Tony Rivera wasn't the only one with beads of sweat popping on his forehead. They were popping up on Mr. Fleshmound, too. And not just on his forehead.

"You can drop the act now, buddy," Elvis said. "The recorder is shut off." Mr. Fleshmound wasn't done yet. He suspected the camera was still on. It was a ruse. A trick. A subterfuge, which was a nifty word even if he had no idea how to spell it. That kind of devious, sneaky, low life chicanery by these border thugs and ruffians would not surprise him one bit. After all, he rarely missed the chance to chicane himself whenever the opportunity arose.

"This is an illegal search," he said, with snaky eyes and a voice to match. "Not only will I sue you for every penny you have or ever will have, I will bring criminal charges against you for unlawful imprisonment." He let out one hellacious monster of an angry snort, sounding to Elvis like his grandfather Festus' cranky old John Deere tractor that was none too cooperative starting up. Especially on cold mornings. Armen thought he sounded like a bull huffing over the fence at a mere human fool enough think he had a chance to climb the fence and escape unhorned. Melissa thought he sounded way too much like her ex-lover Thelonius Kasinski reaching one of his all too frequent premature ejaculations. Tony thought he sounded like the loudest fart he had ever heard, which was at a country music festival outside of Phoenix when Tony's cousin Alejandro ate way too many hot dogs with mustard and sauerkraut. The resultant farty explosion was not only the loudest one that Tony, or anyone else present, had ever heard, it also brought three security guards hotfooting at them with drawn pistols, thinking that someone was shooting up the place with some kind of high powered and very loud hidden gun. The worst part was that the guards were so pissed off they booted Tony and Alejandro out of the festival. And the rotten bastards didn't even refund their tickets. The thought of it still got Tony riled up.

"Rotten bastards!" He said, reliving the memory. Not loud. But out loud. And enough for the others to hear.

"Did you get that, camera!" Mr. Fleshmound hollered. "He called me a rotten bastards." Then he abruptly stopped, looking perplexed. "Rotten bastards? Plural?" He whipped a lashing glare at Tony. "And now you are insulting me even further! Making fun of my weight by using the plural! I'll have you know that I have a genetic condition that causes me to be overweight."

"Which is what?" Tony shot back at him. "A mouth that refuses to stay shut? A stomach that can't say no? Jaws that require constant exercise or they'll freeze shut and condemn you to a life of sucking straws through the big gap in your front teeth?" This was more than Elvis could handle. Especially after looking at Mr. Fleshmound's mouth and seeing he really did have a big gap between his two front teeth. Much as Mr. Fleshmound was really irritating him, along with Armen's totally unhelpful thickheaded attitude, he just couldn't contain himself. He grabbed his sides and began to laugh. One of those laughs that start in the toes and work their way up the body until they explode out of the mouth. Like fireworks at the annual Yuma Fourth of July celebration. Which, seeing as how the Fourth of July was in the hottest part of the summer and the temperature was likely to have left 110 way behind on its climb to the daily high, was so miserable the fire department eventually had to start spraying the crowds with water from their tanker trucks to cut down the number of heat prostration attacks. Which in previous years kept the paramedics and the emergency rooms busy well into the 5th of July.

Why, Elvis wondered, didn't they reschedule a lieu Fourth of July for January or February, when the temperature was at least sub lethal? What the hell? Wasn't America supposed to be innovative and flexible? Wasn't that the American way? Why not move the 4th, or at least the outdoor celebration, to a cooler month? In fact Elvis actually tried to get a movement going for changing the annual 4th of July celebration to February 4th. He gave up the idea after receiving a series of death threats from veterans of Afghanistan, Iraq, the First Gulf War, Viet Nam, Korea and even World War II. Not to mention a nasty letter from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and, which really set his head to scratching, another nasty letter from the Commander of the Arizona Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Even his own mother sent him an email calling him a "...lunkhead just like your father," also commenting that she "....obviously raised at least one dumb kid". He did, however, get one favorable reply from a shadowy Mexican-American group, Chinga Los Gringos.

Tony Rivera was not a man widely known for a sense of humor. Those rare times he tried telling a joke all he got were blank expressions from the listeners. And maybe a polite try at a chuckle when he said "it's a joke, damnit!" At first he was about to blow when Elvis started to laugh. Then he caught on that Elvis was actually laughing at something he said. Him. Tony Rivera. OK. So it wasn't intentional. Kind of an accidental joke. But still a joke that didn't fall flatter than the Bonneville Salt Flats or the front tires on his pickup after he drove over a 2x4 festooned with protruding three inch nails that fell off a lawn service truck in front of him when he was pulling into the local Burger King's take out lane. He got a self satisfied smile on his face and nodded affirmatively at his funny. By, God. He'd said something funny. A wide grin took over his face and looked like it wasn't about to leave any time soon. But, as Elvis' granny Rattler Sue often said, 'all good things got to come to an end.' Though she was using the phrase specifically to describe the end of one terrific run off her best moonshine still, a reliable old homemade antique passed down from her own grandfather, Mobius Mahoney, who because of his cantankerous and obstreperous ways, no doubt assisted by his constant sipping on a jar of his home made white lightning and his huge size and pale complexion, was known locally as Moby Prick.

"Laugh it up, assholes," Mr. Fleshmound snarled. "You won't be laughing when I take you to court." Then the thought hit Tony with the force of a winter gale slapping the hell out of the California shoreline. The smug grin on Tony's face slowly faded like the twilight after the sun plunged behind the mountains on its solar way to export its rays to, where else, China.

What if this guy actually doesn't have any heroin?

That thought thundered into Tony's brain like a clumsy and possibly inebriated water buffalo, ricocheting inside his cognitive skull until the sides of his head hurt. This could be bad. More than bad. No heroin? And all this on video? With Tony holding the guy up like a flapping floundering flounder for all the world to see on the video? His mind went into fast forward reviewing various future scenarios, none of which were likely to still the ricocheting runaway paranoid water buffalo thoughts inside his skull. Tony as the lead story on CNN. Your Tax Dollars at Work: Border Bully Assaults Honest Citizen. Or the headline article in a humungous type face in the Yuma Daily Sun. Disgraced CBP Supervisor Tony Rivera Fired from CBP. Or a forty foot high digital You Are There news billboard right on the freeway in downtown Phoenix flashing in numinous pulsations visible nearly all the way to Flagstaff.

Former San Luis CPB Supervisor Antonio, 'Fat Tony', Rivera to be Sentenced Today.

Tony was so upset he couldn't even puke. His face so pale even Mr. Fleshmound did a double take. He could barely get out the words. "Elvis. Do it. Search this guy." And if Tony ever in his life let fly a fervent prayer to the Heavens, this was it. Please. Please. We need some heroin here. Adding, as a prudent prayer postscript afterthought.. Even a little would be OK. Elvis had no clue just what was going on in Tony's mind, but it was obvious something had the big guy rattled. Which, to be honest, in almost all scenarios Elvis could think of, was not something Elvis was about to lose even a second of sleep over. Elvis never having either forgotten or forgiven Tony for whispering to Miranda Zellorina, a fellow CBP officer that Elvis really had the hots for, that Elvis was bisexual and had AIDS and several other STD's, some of which had yet to be identified by modern medicine. On top of which, he concluded with his whispered warning to Miranda, Elvis was known to have a mere stump where most adult men had full sized and fully functional manly extensions. Miranda, who, although being a genuine hot babe, was at least two bricks short of a load on the perceptive truck, actually believed Tony. From then on she wouldn't even look at Elvis except to throw a malevolent scowl at the general area of his privates capable of wilting a head of lettuce ten or, when the atmospheric conditions were just right, possibly as much as fifteen feet away. But, Elvis realized, this was different. It was time for another Tony reprieve. Temporary reprieve, anyhow.

Elvis forthwith set in to patting down Mr. Fleshmound. Which, considering the guy was only wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt, wasn't a major undertaking after all. Mr. Fleshmound jerked and squirmed and moaned pitiably, casting mournful glances at the camera. "Help! Help! Anybody! They're hurting me!" He repeated several times during the pat down. Which was being ably assisted by Tony and Pancho and Armen holding him upright. While Elvis was busy emptying out Mr. Fleshmound's pockets onto the search room counter, Armen looked at Fleshmound with a perplexed look on his face. Armen remaining true to Armen form and not being especially helpful.

"Are you really Armenian?" He said. Fleshmound scowled.

"Hell, no. My grandparents on my mother's side came from a small village in southern Lithuania where they grew barley and potatoes and drank lots of home made vodka, there being not much else to do in the long winters. My father's family came from the Louisiana bayous where they alternated more or less equally with eating alligators and being eaten by alligators." This got even Elvis and Tony interested and they leaned closer to listen. Armen threw a skeptical look at Mr. Fleshmound.

"So how does this explain you knowing Armenian?" As Elvis was plunking Mr. Fleshmound's wallet onto the counter, Fleshmound snarked out the reply.

"Foster care, dude. Foster care. My parents went to the slammer for selling phony time shares to condominiums on a Hawaiian island that turned out to be mostly underwater at high tide. The frickin' do gooder courts sent me and my brothers into foster care. They sent me to the Hakliarjarian family in Visalia, where I learned how to play backgammon, plant grapes and speak Armenian. That all might have been a good thing for me had not the Hakliarjarians been also growing some dynamite weed out in the vineyards. Though they claimed it was purely for medical reasons, which they both said they had plenty of. Especially arthritis, bursitis and rheumatism from working in all kinds of weather in the vineyards, and bad feet from years of jumping up and down on the grapes they made into their own brand of local brandy, Visalia Blitzkrieg. I didn't really have any medical reasons of my own, so I made up a few and helped myself to the weed patch. From there it was all downhill. When I was a teenager I grew my hair out, started wearing sandals and began going to Grateful Dead concerts in San Francisco. And I also got a bad case of MDUM, Medically Diagnosed Uncontrollable Munchies, which explains my current somewhat overweight physical status.

By this time Elvis had stopped the pat down and was staring at Mr. Fleshmound.

"By God," Elvis said. "You are good!" He leaned closer to Fleshmound. "Have you ever thought about going into politics?"

"As a matter of fact, I have," Fleshmound answered. "In fact I was about to run for the city council in Visalia when I was unfortunately detoured by a thirty day visit to the local jail for simple possession." Adding, with an air of indignity. "For which I was absolutely innocent, despite what the goddamn cops said."

Elvis turned to look at Pancho, who had broken into such a wide grin that a substantial portion of his lower face was so wrinkled up that he looked like an accordion with all white keys and a mustache.

"This is why I love this job," Elvis said. "You can't make this stuff up."

"I can't," Pancho said. "But I'm pretty sure you could."

"Could we please get on with this," Mr. Fleshmound interjected. "I need to be on my way. So little time. So many lawyers."

So they did. And found nothing. Zilch. Not a trace of heroin, or any other drug of any kind on Mr. Fleshmound's voluminous corpus. He had a few dollars and some change in his pockets, a comb missing several teeth that was badly in need of cleaning, and a pair of cracked knockoff Gucci sunglasses. In his wallet there were some larger bills, amounting to just under three hundred dollars, and eleven receipts from various all you can eat restaurants. But, search as they might in the wallet, there was no clue to his identity. No driver's license. No social security card. No credit cards. Not even a pawn shop receipt with his name on it. There was just a single business card in the wallet. For a Real Good Time, call Susie at 1-800-GET-LAID. That set Elvis to thinking. How in the heck would that work? With this guy over 300 pounds? What hooker would be crazy enough to take him on? As his mind began to wander a little further into the thought he abruptly put a brake to it. This was going nowhere he wanted to be.

The only ID the guy had was a Border Crossing Card with his picture identifying him as forty one year old Francisco Villa. The card was a good job. Looked real. Would have fooled a lot of CPB officers. Including Elvis.

"Where'd you get the Border Crossing Card?" Elvis said curiously, thinking that a wise man ought to have a connection to creating a new identity in a hurry, should the occasion somehow arise. Mr. Fleshmound shot Elvis a hooded look.

"That's privileged information," he said. "Private professional information." Another hooded look. "You are aware that snitch rhymes with switch. As in switchblade. As in cutting the throat of a snitch. Get it, dude?" Elvis got it. The pat down done, and with nothing found, they took the cuffs off Mr. Fleshmound and told him to sit down again on the pat down room's law enforcement no frills bench, which nevertheless cost the government more than the gold plated bench with genuine Canadian bison leather padding in the governor's office. Fleshmound sat on the bench. And with a thinly veiled smug look on his face. His tactic had worked. He put up such a fuss with them finding nothing that they'd have to let him go.

Which was exactly what Elvis was thinking. He took Tony aside in the semi-privacy of the supervisor's office. "Tony," Elvis said. "The Border Patrol officer who put in this lookout is always accurate and reliable. I think we should do a strip search of this guy." If there was any one idea that could have made Tony's day any worse than it already was, this was it. Worse. The idea unfortunately, even if it came from that dripswitch Elvis, was right on. Strip searches were about as common at San Luis as cold snaps in mid-August, though one old Yuma Indian back in pioneer days had claimed there was one around the time of Coronado that froze the Colorado River all the way to the Grand Canyon. (The same old Indian also claimed he was a descendant of Meriwether Lewis and therefore entitled to some sort of government pension.)

Tony was in a quandary. Should he authorize a strip search or not? About that time Copro came back into the secondary office with a shaggy looking white guy right on his heels. It was Tommy Lee LaQuinta, the Border Patrol plain clothes officer who had phoned in the lookout in the first place.

"Tommy Lee here wants to talk to you, Tony," Copro said, trying to sound important and not so coincidentally insinuate himself back into whatever the hell was going on. It didn't work. Tony told him to go back out into secondary and help with the vehicle searches there. Copro promptly wheeled on his heels and stomped back outside, muttering to himself about all the injustices he had to suffer over the years from tyrants like Tony.

"I got the message you guys hit on my lookout," LaQuinta said as Copro disappeared into secondary. "And I see the Olds outside. What's going on?" Tony looked mournfully at LaQuinta. He could already see where this was going.

"Negative search of the Olds. Negative patdown." Elvis chimed in. Then came the words that really nailed the lid shut on the coffin of Tony Rivera's day.

"Did you do a strip search?" LaQuinta said. Tony shot him a look not unlike a horse thief in the Old West about to be hanged for stealing a horse that was just wandering around aimlessly and probably just looking for someone to take care of him and maybe give him some oats or even sorghum and all he did was just try to rescue the poor horse. At least that's what he told the judge, who obviously wasn't listening. Plus it was the judge's horse.

"Do you think a strip search is really necessary?" Tony said in a hopeful, if borderline desperate voice. Knowing as he did that something light years worse than a negative pat down search for a CBP officer was a negative strip search. You did what? And found nothing? Which would ring the public image alarm bells of the Hind Sight Specialists who populated at least several dozen desks in Tucson and Washington DC and possibly a secret location known only to the Presidential Inner Circle, the CIA and the Iranian agent who shined shoes at the Pentagon. Hind Sight Specialists who, in Tony's fervid imagination, took their inspiration directly from the Spanish Inquisition with a sizeable modern addendum from the Gestapo files captured at the end of WWII.

"Yes," Border Patrol officer Tommy Lee LaQuinta said. His voice coming on as determined and absolutely convinced, despite him having a mild speech impediment that made 'yes' sound like 'fresh'. Adding, "yes, for sure." Which sounded to Armen like 'fresh manure' and brought back increasingly nostalgic memories of spreading cow shit on the fields back home in the not as hot as San Luis or Yuma San Joachim Valley of Central California. He was almost willing to accept the overpowering embrace of his mother back in Fresno and head back home. Almost.

Not yet. But it was getting closer.

"This dude has got heroin with him." Officer LaQuinta continued. "Somewhere. My source, who is very reliable on his smuggling information, as well as predicting the winner of the Super Bowl and the length of the Atlantic hurricane season, says the guy is either a swallower." He paused and shot a possibly amused look at the CBP officers. "Or a stuffer."

A stuffer! The coffin of Tony Rivera's day forthwith plunged without ceremony at least six feet underground. Swallowers were no problem. No problem because there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. Swallowers, which meant some flatulent brained nut goodie had ingested some kind of drug, usually in balloons or condoms, had to be sent to a medical facility where a licensed physician oversaw the not very pleasant process of the swallower's digestive system doing its digestive thing. Which required what was euphemistically referred to as fecal monitoring. Something absolutely no one at the port, with the possible exception of Copro, would ever willingly volunteer for. Stuffers, however, were a different matter. It usually meant someone had stuffed some drug up one of Mother Nature's lower access points to the human body. With women that usually meant Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, a location absolutely inviolate to all CPB comers--though there would undoubtedly have been plenty of volunteers.

The presence of an unnatural protuberance would land the suspect a quick supervised ambulance ride to the hospital and the immediate attention of another legally licensed and hopefully reasonably experienced physician. But if the unnatural protuberance was in plain view in the digestive system's--or a female's reproductive system--exit point? And therefore easily extractable? Then it became a judgment call for the supervisor on duty. And this supervisor on duty, Tony Rivera, had already made his mind up that if there was something sticking out of the business end of Mr. Fleshmound's ample posterior he was gonna bundle him into an ambulance quicker than a credit card company sky rockets the interest rates on a monthly payment more than three seconds late. And, he thought with no little dark humor, Elvis would be his absolute first choice for the officer assigned to watch Mr. Fleshmound's fecal movement progress at the hospital. Hopefully a slow and messy progress that would leave Elvis as nauseated as Tony was at this very teetering on a strip search moment.

"OK," Tony finally said, the word reverberating through his mind like a voice bouncing off the walls of a very long echo chamber leading to an unmarked door possibly leading to a medieval torture chamber where an extra large Iron Maiden had been prepared just for him by the Hind Sight Special Ops Team. "I guess we're gonna have to do a strip search."

"Good," Elvis said. "I'll go tell Copro." Tony blinked.

"Copro? Lorenzo? Why Lorenzo?" Elvis was as quick with his answer as that nasty tempered snapping turtle that damn near scissored his index finger when he was rebaiting a hook on his last fishing trip on the Colorado. The turtle did, however, make for a tasty soup.

"This is a natural for Lorenzo. He is your most qualified officer to perform a strip search." Another puzzled blink from Tony.

"Lorenzo? Qualified? A guy who has trouble finding his own dick when he has to take a leak? You call him qualified?" Elvis shook his head in a vigorous affirmative.

"Absolutely!" He said. "Lorenzo is your man. Without a doubt." Elvis had figured out that doing a strip search of Mr. Fleshmound was already taking things too far in a personal Elvis sense. Peering into Fleshmound's bodily exit points was definitely not at the top of Elvis' list of Cool Things to Do. What the hell. Let Copro get the credit if the guy has some dope. As the Mahoneys back home in Slippery Sister County were wont to say, "even a blind hog gone find an acorn once in a while." A concept that dovetailed nicely with Elvis' somewhat jaded view of Copro's inspectional abilities.

Tony wasn't seeing it that way. Not hardly. Things were starting to look up. Definitely on the Tony Rivera upswing. Elvis might be on a special Enforcement Team that floated between ports, but he still at least arguably--especially considering that this incident was the frickin' dumb ass result of Elvis and Pancho grabbing the guy--fell under Tony's supervisory umbrella while he was working during Tony's shift. Supervisory umbrella one of Tony's favorite on the job expressions. Along with "what the fuck did you numb nuts do now?" And "what's for lunch?" Tony was thinking the only thing better than Elvis having to search Fleshmound, and maybe having to go to the hospital for the up close and personal fecal matter dive, was Elvis having to do it against his will. Against his will! Smart ass Elvis forced to do something! Could it be any better? There is, Tony muttered to himself, some justice in this world after all.

He quietly thanked God, or whoever or whatever was in charge of dwindle berries like Elvis, for this golden opportunity. This was one video he was goddamn sure going to get a copy of no matter what the two foot thick book of CBP regulations had to say about appropriating government property. A book that was one part regulations and fifty six parts consequences, fines and penalties up to and including, at least according to his somewhat sarcastic fellow supervisor Myrtle Oh, being publicly whipped by a carbon fiber re-enforced six foot strand of spaghetti by a Congressional page during a management working lunch at Headquarters. True, Myrtle did tend to add a bit of colorful exaggeration to her speech, but there had to be some fire beneath the smoke.

Less than a week after she wrote a scathing denunciation of yet another in the long string of Headquarters' lamebrain dumb ass operations she was gone. Poof. Gone. A few days later the Port Director told the assembled supervisors that Myrtle Oh was "....tapped for a very important extended assignment as a liaison on the British icebreaker Titanic's Revenge." The Port Director adding with a totally straight face that "Myrtle is now dutifully serving her country somewhere off the northern coast of Greenland." From that moment on all the supervisors, including Tony Rivera, thought once, twice, thrice, and rethought again before criticizing upper level management, AKA the Big Bosses in the Big Offices. At least in any way even remotely traceable to themselves.

Despite the chilling example of Myrtle, and even bravely facing the possibility of being publicly whipped at a management working lunch at Headquarters or joining Myrtle Oh on the British Icebreaker Titanic's Revenge, Tony Rivera was gonna get himself a copy of the strip search video. No matter what. Sometimes a guy has to think outside the box. A box which Tony in his rather large size always did have trouble fitting into, anyhow. Like his mentor at the Federal Academy in Sauna, Georgia, Buster Joe Nkrumah, used to say. "Tony, don't ever let your sense of duty stand in the way of doing what's right." A concept that Tony had never quite grasped. Until now. He grabbed onto the idea like his neighbor Celso Valencia's Rottweiler Brutus grabbed onto the leg of any deliveryman unlucky enough to get within Brutus range. Tony was gonna get a copy of the video of Elvis searching Mr. Fleshmound and lock it away in his secret wall safe behind the velveteen painting of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson walking hand in hand down a heavenly lane in his man cave at home. A man cave which, his wife considerably on the possessive side about the various spaces in their home, was actually a recycled broom closet in the basement, half of which was occupied by a noisy but mostly reliable 40 gallon water heater.

"No, Elvis," Tony said, trying with all his might to suppress the sadistic leer that was threatening to plaster itself on his face. "This is a very sensitive matter. We need a thorough professional to handle it." The leer got within a handful of muscle movements to gaining control of Tony's face, but he manfully beat it back. "That's you, Elvis," Tony said, his voice coming out kind of strange sounding since his jaws were set hard in the battle with the rebellious leer. A losing battle. "Excuse me for a moment, Elvis," he suddenly said. "I have to use the bathroom." Tony wheeled his large bulk and hotfooted for the men's room. As soon as the door closed behind him he relaxed his jaws and the sadistic grin triumphantly galloped onto this face. It was a full two minutes before the grin lost some steam and Tony was able to push it back into his inner repository of various expressions. He went back out to the search room. Elvis looked at him uneasily.

And also somewhat suspiciously.

"You OK, Tony? You were looking kinda strange there." The sadistic leer immediately tried a comeback. Ineffectually. Tony was ready for it.

"Just feeling a little woozy, El," Tony said. "You know me and my stomach." Elvis did indeed have plenty of experience with Tony and his stomach. Tony had a notoriously queasy stomach that had the unfortunate tendency to volcanically unload its contents at what were almost always the most inopportune of times. Tony's surreptitious port nickname was Tony the Puke. Not that anyone ever said it to his face. Except Copro, who snitched on the other officers, telling Tony what their nickname for him was. Which, contrary to Copro's expectations, didn't win him any points with Tony. All it did was piss him off and unfortunately for Copro he was the closest target of opportunity. A typical Copro miscue in a long series of them that were more or less the story of his life.

Elvis was immediately on his guard. The only times Tony ever used Elvis' nickname 'El' was when he was up to something. A something that invariably did not have Elvis' well being in mind.

"Let's get on with the strip search," Tony said, trying to keep his voice sounding both neutral and authoritative. Which was another important management tool he'd picked at Supervisors' School in Sweat Bath, Georgia. "This has been dragging on long enough." Elvis looked around.

"Where's Lorenzo? Should I go get him? This is definitely a job for him. Besides, he could use some stats. The poor guy sure doesn't get many."

Poor guy? Lorenzo? That didn't sound like Elvis at all. Tony knew damn well that Elvis was none too fond of Lorenzo. So much the better, Tony thought. That meant Elvis for sure didn't want to strip search Fleshmound. A tiny smile flickered on Tony's face. That made it even sweeter!

"Not Lorenzo, Elvis," Tony said in that firm and authoritative supervisor's voice he had perfected back in Supervisors' School. "This has to be done by a thorough professional." He arrowed Elvis with a look gravid with all kinds of implications, possibly non-committal on the surface but not anywhere near favorable to Elvis underneath. "You have to do this, Elvis. And that, Elvis Mahoney, o ye shining star of the firmament of shining stars of the Enforcement Team, is that!" Another strong and equally determined voice suddenly interrupted.

"I'll do it," Melissa said. "Let's go." She turned towards Mr. Fleshmound, who was still sitting on the battered hard bench--the officers called the miserably uncomfortable bench Mr. Hemorrhoids--in the search room. Mr. Fleshmound had grown uncharacteristically silent. There was a grim expression on his face. His tactic wasn't working. They really were going to strip search him. "OK, buddy," she said. "Get up." Tony clenched his fists so hard he cut off the circulation to three of his meaty fingers.

"Melissa!" He said through clenched teeth that missed by just the merest of millimeters slicing his tongue. "Damnit, you know you can't do it."

"You owe me, as the supervisor on duty when this flumpstricker made several sexist remarks to me." She hissed out the three letters all supervisors lived in terror of hearing. "EEO! Now let's get on with it." She reached over to grab a pair of latex gloves, icicling Fleshmound with a frigid glare. "You and me gonna have a real good time, Bubba." Without thinking, Tony wheeled around and blurted out to Elvis.

"Elvis! Get her out of here! Now!" Before Tony could even begin to think of backtracking on his whopper of a tactical mistake, Elvis reacted with something approximating--on a recalibrated Homo sapiens scale--the speed of light. He grabbed Melissa by the arm and had her out the door before Tony could get the word 'no!' formed on his well fed lips. Once he hustled Melissa outside Elvis yelled over at Lorenzo, who was busily performing his hopelessly inept idea of a vehicle search.

"Hey!" He yelled. "Lorenzo! Tony wants you inside! And now!" Lorenzo stopped, digested what Elvis had yelled, then exploded in a blizzard of shoe leather for the secondary office's back door. Elvis returned his attention to Melissa, expecting that she would be on fire and about to burn his butt but good. Nope. She was grinning.

"I love to screw with Tony," she said, chuckling. "I hate it when that lecherous bastard stares at my butt." Elvis, who was at times inadvertently adept at saying the wrong things at the wrong moment, replied.

"Well, you have to admit you do have a very nicely rounded and attractive rear end, Melissa."  
"Omigawd," Melissa snarked back at Elvis, thumping him on the head. "You are just goddamn clueless sometimes, Elvis." Elvis continued in the same Elvis vein.

"Well, you do have a nice rear end. And nice front, too. As well as some fine sides, as well."

To which, had Elvis been almost anyone else, Melissa would have responded with a straight right to the jaw. But, Elvis being Elvis, she only shook her head and groaned.

"Elvis," she said. "What am I gonna do with you?" Elvis's ears perked up.

"Want some suggestions?" He said with a mysterious and somewhat hopeful tone. Melissa shook her head again. Wordlessly. What was she going to say? Elvis was just....well......just Elvis.

With a long legged lope that reminded Elvis of his cousin Derwin Mahoney, who ran some nifty wide out patterns as a tight end with the Slippery Sister High School's varsity football team, Lorenzo AKA Copro went blitzing towards the secondary office's back door with such enthusiastic force Tony thought he was going to break the glass in the door as he stormed inside. "I'm here, Boss," Lorenzo said. "Reporting for duty. As ordered." Tony blinked. Then his eyes morphed into blastoff mode.

"Ordered?" He stammered, repeating "ordered?" But Tony was already beginning to catch on.

"Right on, Boss," Lorenzo said eagerly. "Elvis said you wanted me inside. And right now!"

Elvis, Tony thought darkly to himself. That goddamn Elvis. He was about to thump out into the secondary lot and grab Elvis and bodily drag him back in to do the strip search. He actually turned and started to stomp towards the door. But then he caught himself. Something deep inside his rather substantial supervisory set of paranoid what-ifs stopped him dead in his tracks. Whoa! This might not end up so well. Grabbing an employee, who was in more or less good standing with the goddamn frickin' troublemaking employees' union, might not look so good on the secondary video camera. "Oh, crap," he moaned, his whole body seeming to shrink--a little anyway--in resignation. "OK, Cop...er, Lorenzo. Let's get on with the search."

Tony turned to look at Mr. Fleshmound, who definitely didn't look like he was having a good time, and beckoned at him to get up. Mr. Fleshmound didn't move so much as a single muscle, at least not in his voluntary muscle group. His involuntary muscles however were churning away at considerably beyond normal churn speed.

"I have to go to the bathroom," he blurted out, grabbing at his several layers of stomach fat. "And bad!"

"OK," Tony shot back. "We can do the strip search there if we have to." He beckoned at him again. "Well. Come on. Let's go." Mr. Fleshmound had his own tactical quandary. The bathroom ploy wasn't working. What to do? He decided the bathroom was still his best chance. He'd flush the dope before they could stop him. Yep. The more he thought about it, the better it seemed. Best chance.

"All right," he finally answered. "I'm coming." He stood up. Tony turned to Copro, pointing down the corridor. "You lead, Lorenzo. Head for the head." Copro was about to protest that the bathroom wasn't the direction Tony was pointing but Tony shot him as a sizzler of a warning look that would have seared a T-bone.

"Right, Boss," Lorenzo said uncertainly. "Head to the head." He started off, with Mr. Fleshmound following behind and Tony behind Mr. Fleshmound. Armen was behind Tony, trailing along uncertain about what he should be doing and looking like there were a large number of places he would rather be at that bathroom headed moment. Then, when Fleshmound got adjacent to an open cell door, Tony did a smooth move right out of the NFL playbook and threw a cross body block that sent Fleshmound lurching into the open detention cell. Tony was right behind him and right behind Tony was Copro.

"Hey, Tony," Lorenzo said in confusion. "There's no bathroom in here." Tony shot a look at Lorenzo that was a close match for the one Tony's wife shot him when she was really, really pissed off at him.

"That's right, Lorenzo," he said in a low tone. "But this is where we are supposed to do strip searches. A secure, private area." At which point Mr. Fleshmound's eyes rolled back in his head, he grabbed his chest and flopped over onto his back.

"Call an ambulance," he moaned. "I'm having a heart attack. You fuckheads have caused me to have a heart attack. I might die right here. Right now. This is police brutality." He cracked open one eye to see if anyone was listening. "For sure police brutality." Then he really got into it. "Storm troopers. Jack booted thugs. Perverters of the American Way. Th......" Tony leaned over and interrupted him.

"No video camera here, buddy. And that's for real." Fleshmound immediately stopped and looked up at Tony.

"I'm not moving," he said. "Camera or no camera." Tony turned to Lorenzo, who was standing in the detention cell door. "Lorenzo," he said in a voice trying hard to remain patient. "Go out into secondary and round up some officers to come in and help us here."

"But what if they are in the middle of a search?" Lorenzo replied, thereby forever cementing himself in Tony's mind as being the Clueless King of San Luis and possibly the entire Southwest.

"Copro," he said through lips drawn back into the close neighborhood of a growl, thinking Elvis' name for him somehow better fit the situation. He didn't know what it meant, but, knowing Elvis, had not a single mouse whisker of a doubt that it was damn sure nothing favorable. "I don't give a fuck what they are doing." Tony snapped. "Tell them to unsearch themselves and get the hell in here." He lasered a patented pissed off Tony look at Lorenzo. "And now!" There were a few times in Lorenzo's life when he might have moved faster. Like the time he stopped to answer his cell phone in the middle of the street in downtown Phoenix and a city bus almost ran him over. Or the time his wild eyed soon to be ex-wife pumped a double ought buckshot shell into the chamber of his pump action shotgun with four more double oughts in the magazine backing up the one in the chamber and pointed the shotgun directly at him. He might have moved faster then. But not by much. He streaked out of the secondary office and out into the lot where he repeated Tony's orders. More or less.

"Unsearch yourselves! Immediately! And get into the secondary office. Tony's orders."

While most of the officers in secondary were trying to decipher just what the hell unsearch yourselves meant, Melissa took off on her padded insole jet black cross trainers so fast Elvis could have sworn she left scorch marks on the blacktop in secondary. And, seeing her sprinting off and strongly suspecting no good could come of it, Elvis hotfooted after her. Just behind him Pancho jumped out of the back of Papa Pesca's Home Made Tortillas step van he was searching and also went shoe leathering it in a hurry for the secondary office. Papa Pesca, along with a half dozen other suddenly abandoned previous searchees in the secondary lot stood and looked at each other in astonishment.

"Are we being invaded?" One of them said.

"Is this a fire drill?" Another one said.

"Did the lunch wagon just arrive?" Said yet another.

"What a bunch of government jerk offs," said a fourth man. To which all the abandoned former searchees in the secondary lot nodded an enthusiastic agreement.

Melissa, Elvis, Pancho, and Copro came running into the detention cell where Tony and Armen were standing looking down at the prostrate form of Mr. Fleshmound. Tony didn't waste any time. He threw a don't even think about it look at Melissa, who tactfully--or possibly tactically--retreated to the detention cell door. "Pull him to his feet," he said gruffly. Several pairs of hands reached down and grabbed at various portions of Mr. Fleshmound's anatomy and, grunting heavily, jerked him to his feet. Tony looked him straight in the eye.

"Either you take your clothes off or we'll do it for you. Your choice." Mr. Fleshmound thought about it a moment, then figured he'd have more control over the flow of events about to unfold, which he had already planned out, if he did the stripping himself.

"OK. OK," he said in a resigned tone of voice. Or at least what sounded like a resigned tone of voice. "I'll do it." Tony nodded at the others and one by one they released their grips on Mr. Fleshmound's ample being. Tony half expected him to do another floundering hippo move and flop back down on the floor. He didn't.

"Good," Tony said. "That's good. It's always best if you cooperate." He looked over his shoulder at Melissa standing in the detention cell door. "At least avert your eyes, Melissa. Will you do that much for me?" Melissa nodded and proceeded to study the fly specks, of which there were plenty, on the ceiling. But no, despite what the local Mexican newspaper claimed, blood spatter. "OK," Tony said to Mr. Fleshmound. "Please remove your shirt. Which he did, grudgingly, mumbling what had to be not very complimentary remarks as he did it. Then the I Love Disneyland Girls T-shirt was off and Mr. Fleshmound's bare chest was exposed for all to see.

"Whoo," Pancho said in astonishment. "You've right up there with Buxom Bertha, the lead dancer at Sam's Strip Shack on Fourth Avenue in Yuma." Tony hadn't even formed his lips to say something suitably scathing to Pancho when Armen chimed in.

"What exactly does that T-shirt mean? I love Disneyland Girls?" Tony' eyebrows shot up so high they almost touched the bottom of his hairline--which, he was quick to point out, hadn't receded all that much in recent years. Copro, meanwhile, as always thinking himself the consummate professional, albeit he was alone in that assessment, was examining Mr. Fleshmound's substantial unshirted torso for any sign of hidden contraband. An idea not so outrageous considering the numerous overlapping rolls cascading down Mr. Fleshmound's chest.

Elvis was also looking, though not so obviously. And so was Melissa, now that no one was paying any attention to her. That is, so long as she kept her mouth shut.

"Jesus," she blurted out. "You've got bigger boobs that my granny Saggy Sue Trueblood."

"Melissa, goddamnit!" Tony hollered. "Get the hell out of here? Chop Chop!"

Chop Chop? At least two, possibly three, of those present repeated. What does that mean?

"It means get gone!" Tony shot back, in no mood to screw around with anyone about anything. He was so pissed off he completely lost his appetite. Melissa slipped around the corner next to the detention cell door. But not by much.

"Nothing here," Tony said, himself examining Mr. Fleshmound's bare chest. "He looked straight into Mr. Fleshmound's eyes. "Now for Round Two. Drop your pants." This was not a moment anyone in the search room was looking forward to with anything in the remotest neighborhood of what might be called enthusiasm. More like the flat out opposite. Though one or two had to wonder if his pecker was even visible through the layers of blubber. Mr. Fleshmound hesitated. His gaze bounced from one face to the next in the detention cell. He found not trace one of any sympathy, any empathy, from the cold hearted Gestapo guards who were persecuting him. At least that was the line he was going to use if there had been a camera. But. No camera. So he dropped his shorts with only an angry groan.

This was not a high point in the evening for the men in the search room. Looking at a fat guy with a hairy ass and a pecker that was probably there somewhere was not the way they had hoped their day would end. It could be said with absolutely no doubt whatsoever that not a single one of them woke up that morning with--"Hey! Let's look at some hairy asses today." As the Brit Neville Goodfellow would say in his east London accent. "Not bloody likely!" It was at this very moment that Armen realized that being a Customs and Border Protection officer was not such a hot career choice after all. Fleshmound stood in the middle of the detention cell, naked as the day he was born but considerably hairier and with a weight closer to that of the entire delivery room staff where he made his initial entrance.

"See," he said with a triumphant air, his arms outstretched and turning in a slow circle. "Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Rien. Niet. No dope, you dimwitted bloomsuckers. Man, am I gonna sue your asses off but good. Kiss your careers goodbye, boys." Then he squatted down to grab his shorts and pull them back on.

"Not so fast, Bubba," Melissa, back in the cell doorway, snapped. "You gotta check his bathroom buddy, guys. That's where it's gonna be." Every single man in the secondary office, especially Mr. Fleshmound, drilled Melissa with a reasonably accurate iteration of the infamous Death Glare of Sci-Fi novels. Who in their right mind wanted to poke their nose close to this guy's butt hole? Tony felt sick to his stomach. Not so much as about to puke. But nevertheless with a substantial internal belly rumbling.

"OK. All right. Yeah. She's right. Damnit." He stopped, threw another lethal glare at Melissa, then looked back to the assembled group of officers, all of whom had grown pale out of fear that they would draw the short straw.

"Copro," Tony said. "Check it out." This was more than Copro had bargained for. While Copro's eyeballs were busy caroming inside their spacious somewhat sunken sockets, Tony turned to Mr. Fleshmound again. "OK. Let's get it over with. Bend over."

"Not gonna," Mr. Fleshmound replied truculently. "This bullshit had gone on long enough. Call my lawyer."

"Bend over," Tony said. "Or we'll do the bending." A small sly smile played on the edge of Tony's lips. "And you might not much like our idea of bending." Fleshmound's eyes flashed. It was just about time to implement Plan B. B for Butt.

"All right," he said, with a grudging tone but a suspicious glint in his eye. "All right." Then, while every single man in the room recoiled in the opposite direction, Mr. Fleshmound bent over.

"Spread 'em out," Tony said, feeling disgusted with himself and knowing he wouldn't be up for his midnight snack when he got home from work. Mr. Fleshmound reached up and grabbed his butt cheeks, pulling outwards until his bathroom buddy was in plain view. His bathroom buddy, however, had company.

"Hey," Copro said, somewhat puzzled, as usual not too quick to figure things out. "He's got something there that doesn't look like it belongs." No shit! Elvis was going to say. But before he could say anything, or anyone in the room could react, Mr. Fleshmound blitzed into Plan B. He did it so quick he was nearly a blur, but for everyone else in the room it was almost in stop action slow motion. While they all looked on in a frozen stupefaction Fleshmound's hand grabbed at a protruding object in his rectum, jerked it free and repositioned it to his open mouth.

The slow motion abruptly ended. Everyone in the room exploded into action, all piling onto Fleshmound and trying to stop him from swallowing the mystery object. They all fell to the floor, rolling around and yelling and swearing and sweating, steel muscled Pancho managing to pry Fleshmound's jaws open. "Dig it out," Pancho said, groaning with the exertion of holding Fleshmound's mouth open. "Damnit! Someone get in there and dig it out." Copro, thinking this was his chance to be the hero of the night, reluctantly put the fingers of his right hand into Fleshmound's gaping mouth.

"There's something in here," Copro said. "I can feel it." A pause. "I've got it!"

"Thash mi tung," Fleshmound stuttered. "Mi tung, u dubchit."

"Wait!" Copro said. "Something else. It feels like plastic. Something hard in it." He grunted and tried to get a grip on the object. "Here. I've just about got it."

Just then Fleshmound let out a blood curdling yell and his entire substantial person jerked violently and bounced two inches off the floor. Pancho lost his grip and Fleshmound's teeth made an abrupt intimate acquaintance with Copro's hand. Pancho whirled around to see what had caused Fleshmound to jerk so violently. He was greeted with a triumphant grin from Melissa, who had snuck into the room and, when no one was looking, grabbed Fleshmound's gonads and gave them a hell of a jerk that would have been enough to start even the most reluctant of lawn mowers. Then they all heard it. Oh-oh! Fleshmound's mouth was no longer Pancho contained.

Gulp!

It was just a tiny sound. But to them it might as well have been one of the government's very expensive but highly effective cruise missiles slamming into the building next door. They all looked in various degrees of dismay at Fleshmound. And were greeted with what was pretty much literally a shit eating grin.

"Game over, boys," he said with that same grin. Then, throwing a malicious look at Melissa, who so recently did her best to remove his testicles from their normal anatomical attachment to the rest of Fleshmound's body, adding "and you, too, Madame Community Punch Board." Not a single one of the officers present would later testify that Melissa, as Fleshmound stated in his police brutality complaint, had then jerked Fleshmound's gonads so hard they were permanently lowered three inches farther below his pecker than before.

It was, however, not over. Fleshmound had just swallowed something he had been hiding in his anus and it sure wasn't a Snickers bar. He'd just won himself an ambulance ride to the local hospital. If he had swallowed heroin he could be in danger of a fatal overdose. They couldn't just cut a guy loose like that and hope he didn't turn up dead twelve hours later from a heroin overdose. Something like that would have the Hind Sight Specialists in Washington apoplectic and sharpening their beheading swords. Plus Fleshmound was a heroin suspect and had to be observed until the swallowed object finished its alimentary journey and reappeared once again in the light of day. Or at least in the light of a hospital room. A hospital room with a Customs and Border Protection officer in close attendance. And that meant it was time for the fecal monitoring dive. And that, the thought of which tightened the windpipes of every officer present and left them gasping for air, meant someone among them had to do the monitoring. It was short straw time again. Since they all knew Tony had to decide who the not so lucky guy was to go on the fecal monitoring detail, not a single eye went anywhere near his direction. They looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the walls and the door with its dense covering of fingernail scratches and partially obscured obscene graffiti. They looked at their shoes and at everyone else's shoes and compared shoe laces. But not one came anywhere near eye contact with Tony. Who, at this fecal detail moment, was not a great deal different to them than Beelzebub lining up souls to roast.

"Any volunteers?" Tony said. "For you know what." Not an eye moved in his direction. Not a voice answered him. The only sound in the room was of lots of heavy breathing. Elvis wasn't absolutely positive, but he thought he could actually hear the sound of people sweating. Kind of a liquid 'sqoosh-sqoosh-sqoosh' that reminded him of the leaking faucet in the port men's room that Mongo the port maintenance man could never quite seem to fix.

"I think I'm going to have to go to the hospital, anyhow, Tony," Copro said, holding up a hand imprinted with the business end outlines of a half dozen of Fleshmound's teeth. He looked mournfully at the others. "This guy's got some set of nasty teeth. Anyhow," he continued, "I think a couple of my fingers are broken and I will have a lengthy recuperation period. At government expense." He looked ruefully at Tony. "But if I have to I'll still watch the guy." He stopped, looking hopefully all around him. "That is, if everyone else here is a selfish shithead who would sit back and make a seriously injured man sit in pain and watch this criminal until he produces the evidence."

"No, Lorenzo," Tony replied in a somewhat dispirited voice, already having somewhat enjoyed the thought of Lorenzo doing the fecal monitoring dive. "You have to go to the emergency room. It'll have to be someone else." The room became so still that Elvis, who after all was widely known for his phenomenal hearing, was certain he could hear the valves swooshing open and slapping shut on the racing hearts of half the people in the room.

At that exact moment Elaine 'Matchstick' Spinstergarden's face appeared in the detention cell's door. Whatever she was going to say, and it probably was none too complimentary, froze in her mouth when she saw the jumbled up pile of officers on the floor with the naked Fleshmound still plunked smack in the middle of the pile. Matchstick stood still as the reproduction statue of Quetzalcoatl in the Chinga Los Gringos clubhouse in South Tucson, her mouth dropped so wide open a regulation sized softball would have had at least a slim chance of fitting into it.

"No one," she finally sputtered. "Absolutely no one is ever gonna believe this.

"Sweet Jesus," she finally said, her temporarily benumbed verve roaring back to life. "What the fuck is this? An impromptu border mosh pit? Did somebody put LSD in the drinking water? Am I really seeing this? Is this really real? Am I going to be called as a witness in some kind of trial, possibly criminal, that will undoubtedly come out of this? "Anyhow," she said in a voice as sharp as Jack the Ripper's razor, "we still have a secondary lot full of cars." Another withering blast furnace look. "And NO INSPECTORS to search them."

Elaine actually had to jump out of the way as Elvis, Pancho and Michelle erupted quicker than Mount Etna when its magna chamber hit the overflow valve and were out the door and into the secondary lot. They were immediately totally immersed in searching cars with an intensity probably never seen anywhere on the entire border. With the possible exception of when the President of the United States came on an inspection tour of the Southwestern border ports. Elaine, realizing almost too late that she might have put herself in an awkward situation, did a nifty 180 degree turn on her boot heels and was out the door in an Elaine flash after them.

Only Tony and Copro remained. And also, as both Tony and Copro's eyes slowly turned to focus on him with the acuity of a steely eyed bombardier in an old WWII movie, was none other than Afghan War vet and also, as Armen had unfortunately let everyone know, a veteran of a good deal of shit shoveling back home on the farm, Armen Chooljian. A smile started to spread across Tony's face. Armen, who had shown himself to be an obdurate thickhead nearly as dense as the other thickheads who had so recently done a chickenshit blitz out of the detention cell, would do just fine.

"You're it, Armen," he said, the smile now residing comfortably on his face. "Ride with this guy to the hospital and superglue yourself to him until you recover whatever the hell it was that he swallowed." Tony paused a moment, staring at Armen. "And fingerprint this guy before you go. We don't know who the hell he is." Another pause, another intense supervisory look, yet another timely use of the handy tool Tony had picked up in Supervisors' School in Sweat Lodge, Georgia. "Don't fuck this up, Armen. Got it?"

Armen got it. Did he ever. He would never ever forget the very, very, very long hours of his fecal monitoring detail with Mr. Fleshmound. That was when he realized how foolish he had been to leave behind the idyllic life on the Fresno County farm and wander afar, first to Afghanistan, and then, even worse, to end up spooning through Fleshmound's fecal matter for an as yet unfound object.

But the object did eventually get found. And it was heroin. Enough to keep Fleshmound floating on Cloud Heroin for a good while. He, however, found himself lying on a hard metal bunk in the Yuma County Jail instead of floating on Cloud Heroin. Armen did fingerprint him and, to everyone's surprise, with the possible exception of Fleshmound himself, there was no record of him. Nothing.

The same with a DNA sample and search. His identity remained a mystery to everyone but himself. And, thinking back to that watershed day on the border in San Luis and Fleshmound's weird histrionics, Armen wondered if even the guy himself was none too sure who he was. Anyhow, whoever the guy was, and wherever he was now, doing the fecal monitoring detail had made up Armen's mind with the finality of the San Francisco 49er's go ahead field goal in the final seconds of the game against the Cowboys last November. Armen went back to the farm, making his father happy and, somewhat unhappily, putting his mother within easy striking distance.

Not long after he got back home he ran into Darla Mae Dermovsesian, the 250 pound girl who had stalked him all through high school and college. At least she claimed to be the same girl, which he at first found hard to believe. It turned out that she joined Weight Watchers, started walking, then running, then half marathons and then full marathons and then triathlons. By the end of which she was 110 pounds of sizzling ropey muscled babe who still had the hots for Armen. Plus she had a sinus problem and was unable to smell cow shit. This time Armen, not really being quite the terminal thickhead Tony Rivera thought he was, returned her interest. He rarely thought about the border any more. Though he still did have the occasional somewhat unsettling nightmares about fecal monitoring.

Armen had already resigned and headed back to his destiny on the farm back in Fresno. Lorenzo's mashed fingers had healed and he was back at work. Mr. Fleshmound was in jail awaiting trial, his public defender defense attorney, Huisking Deng, who was really happy to land any kind of job in the glutted market for recent law school grads, claiming that the heroin allegedly found on her clients was an honest mistake. Fleshmound--who now claimed his real name was George Washington IX--had innocently picked up a tube of heroin thinking it was a suppository. That, plus he had a pathological distrust of law enforcement, "a womb memory" going back to when his pregnant mother was beaten to the ground with a blackjack by an undercover policeman during a drug buy 'she just stumbled into'. Which, Huisking continued in her meandering lawyerly way, resulted in the hubbub in San Luis' secondary that was in actual fact just an "honest misunderstanding." The jury, after listening to the prosecution and defense closing arguments, repaired to the jury room to make their collegial decision. Sixteen minutes later, including a bathroom break, they were back with a guilty verdict. Fleshmound was forthwith returned to his jail cell, where he immediately threatened to go on a hunger strike if the jail didn't come up with better food. And soon!

Weeks later. Elvis and Pancho, Lorenzo AKA Copro and Elaine Matchstick Spinstergarden were standing in the San Luis secondary lot. It was a quiet night. No traffic. The weather had backed off to a less than third degree burn level and the water coolers only had to be refilled once a day. They got to talking and the subject of Mr. Fleshmound came up. Which was no surprise, since it had already become legendary on the entire southwestern border and even parts of the northern one, including the Port of No Return, Pembina, North Dakota, on the frequently inundated flood plain of the Red River of the North. Where there were at least a dozen different not always polite words describing the omnipresent Pembina reality generically known as 'cold'.

But not here. Not in Toaster Oven City, San Luis. Where the officers were verbally masticating the events of that infamous Fleshmound night. Lorenzo suddenly stood stock still, and then pointed a finger at Elvis.

"Say, Elvis. That name you call me. Copro. Just exactly what does it mean? Pancho's eyes flashed and he looked about to swallow his tongue. Elvis didn't look much better.

"Er, ah, well, ya know, Lorenzo.....well, it just doesn't really mean anything. Something I made up on the spur of the moment. It's like, um, er, well...Bubba, or buster. or buddy. Stuff like that." Lorenzo nodded, thoughtfully, or at least what passed for thoughtfully with Lorenzo, which was a pass that rarely connected with any kind of mental receiver.

"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. "I kinda thought it was a take on Pro Cop. You know. Professional cop. Something like that." A hopeful look at Elvis.

"Nope. Nothing like that, Lorenzo," Elvis said, not having the heart at that moment to go any deeper into the matter, knowing Lorenzo was already despondent about being forced to return to work, smashed fingers or no, and didn't get his lengthy recuperation--which he would have spent at the beach in Guaymas--at government expense. Plus his wife had come back home after leaving him for the fourth time that year and really upset him when she said "this time I'm staying home for good." So, somewhat uncharacteristically trying to soften things a bit, Elvis added. "But it is close to a term often used by scientists like archaeologists and anthropologists in their investigations."

"Oh? Cool." Lorenzo said, looking pleased. "So...guess I'll go back in and do the evening stats." With that he turned and left with a sprightly step to go into the secondary office. As soon as he was inside, Elaine Spinstergarden wheeled on Elvis and poked a red, white and blue painted index fingernail into Elvis' bullet proof vested chest.

"All right, Elvis," she said with serious Elaine finality. "Now tell me what the hell Copro really means." Pancho started to chuckle. "Out with it, Elvis," she insisted. Elvis didn't chuckle. But he did have just a touch of a grin on the edge of his lips.

"Well, most of the time I would have just flat out said what it meant. But Lorenzo's been kind of depressed lately over his hot blooded Latina wife leaving him for a Laotian elephant handler with the Greenberg Brothers' Asian All American Traveling Circus. So I just figured this wasn't the time to tell him. Maybe later, when he's more back to his usual jerk self. But not now." Elaine drummed the fingers of an impatient hand on Elvis' bullet proof vested chest.

"Lay off the bullshit, Elvis. I know Lorenzo's upset because his wife came back home, not because she left him. And you're sure as hell no bleeding heart humanitarian. I would believe that Adolf Hitler was a cross dressing dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet before I'd believe that, Elvis. Out with it! What does Copro mean." She punctuated her words with a sound thump on Elvis' shoulder right next to his neck, a spot the bullet proof vest didn't quite cover. Elvis grimaced.

"Ouch! OK. OK. Copro is short for coprolite," Elvis said.

"Oh!" Elaine said, flailing the air with both arms. Elaine having a dramatic side that rarely missed the chance to pop out at promising dramatic side moments. "So Mystery Man explains all! Copro is short for coprolite." She wheeled on her boot heels, her boot heels already well scuffed from a lot of dramatic moments wheeling on them, and pointed a finger at Pancho. "Quit your chuckling, Pecker Mind." Then she completed her wheel and returned to face Elvis again. "So what, oh Elvis the Devious Pelvis, the fuck does coprolite mean?

"An underweight cop?" Elvis said with an unreadable expression. Elaine stared at him.

"Try again, smart ass," she snarled.

"A minimum wage security guard?" Elvis replied with a straight face.

"One more try, smart ass moving towards dumb ass," Elaine snarked.

"A copper alloy without much copper?" Elvis said with his lips starting to quiver. Elaine was in semi-exploding Elaine mode.

"What, goddamnit, Elvis, does coprolite really mean!" She said in Elaine semi-exploding mode. Elvis finally caved in and delivered an honest answer in the manly Slippery Sister County way that his granny Rattle Sue Mahoney had taught him many a year ago.

"A coprolite?" Elvis replied with manly grit, staring at Elaine for a moment with a wise ass Elvis grin taking root and slowly spreading across his sunburned Celtic face. "A coprolite, Ms Spinstergarden, is.....

".....a fossilized turd."

****

The Border Tales Too books have their origin in the first Border Tales book, which is not a fictional work, but a first person journalistic account of the working life of a border officer. The original Border Tales had its genesis in the twin careers of author Whitesell, who was both a journalist and a CBP border officer. Here is a sample chapter from the original Border Tales--

### Chapter 10

Sample Chapter from Border Tales

### A Quartet of Crotches

So you're a wanabee smuggler who's going to try body carrying hard drugs over the border. But where on the body? Drugs under shirts or jackets or blouses, or wrapped around the legs, could easily be detected by the briefest of border pat downs. So where to put the drugs? The choice quickly narrows to one. Where else but the crotch? They don't call the crotch the private area for nothing. It would take more than a simple frisk to find a chunk of cocaine or methamphetamine or heroin or some other illicit substance stuffed into someone's crotch. And what officer is going to go probing people's private parts in public at a border crossing station? So that's it. The smart money settles on the crotch. The Privates. The Naughty Bits. The Forbidden Zone. The smugglers' all purpose, all weather repository of choice.

The Crotch.

It was a lovely evening in San Luis. Late October, still warm but no longer the blast furnace heat of the deep desert summer. We had closed up the port building and moved the pedestrian entry outside to an unused car lane. It was a week night. There wasn't much car traffic. Even less pedestrian traffic. It was pleasantly mild and quiet and we were all enjoying the respite from the noise and bustle and heat. I was lolling at the improvised outdoors pedestrian entry when a guy came walking up from Mexico. I immediately zeroed in him. This dude was something you almost never saw this time of the evening coming on foot from Mexico into San Luis, Arizona.

He was a white guy. A Rubio. A blond white guy. Very mainstream, middle class looking dude. And he was not only a young white guy, but a very fit and muscular looking young white guy. Which conjured up a single word in my skeptical border officer mind. Steroids. The Red Flag of Suspicion was already up before I even talked to the guy. But the alarm bells weren't going off quite yet. It was mid summer and the guy was dressed very lightly. T-shirt and shorts and shoes. So where was a guy going to hide steroids when he wasn't dressed much beyond beach basic? It didn't even seem that the Forbidden Zone--the crotch--could have concealed much beneath his light summer clothing. But he did have a small gym bag with him. That at least required a look see. So I called him over.

The guy identified himself as a U.S. citizen by the name of Breitenbach. I asked him what he was doing in San Luis. He said he was passing through the area and thought he'd go into Mexico to take a look around. Look around San Luis? Did this guy have an abnormally low entertainment threshold? There wasn't much of anything to see across the border on the Mexican side of San Luis unless you were into shabby buildings and denuded landscapes. For that matter, there wasn't much to see on the Arizona side of San Luis. I took a look in his bag. Nothing illegal. I asked him if he had any steroids. He said no. I wasn't so sure. There remained the possibility of the Forbidden Zone and I told the buff young dude I was going to do a quick pat down. I moved to begin the search. Up that point he had been pretty calm. No more. The guy's hands commenced a subtle but clearly visible shaking.

"Do you have anything hidden on your body?" I asked.

"No," he replied, not at all looking like he meant it. I started to pat him down.  
"Wait!" Breitenbach said abruptly. I stopped. "O.K." He said. "O.K. I'll do it." Then he began to pull packets and vials out of the Forbidden Zone one after the other. By this time some other officers had noticed what was going on and walked over to watch bemusedly while the guy kept pulling packages of steroids out of where no one would have thought there was enough room to hide much of anything. He ended up pulling a total of three vials and 150 tablets of steroids out of his underwear in numerous small packets. He had enough steroids to juice up the New York Yankees starting lineup.

Breitenbach's tourist visit to San Luis was about to be unexpectantly prolonged.

It was another summer evening in San Luis. The pedestrian entry had not yet been moved outdoors and I was sitting at the counter next to the pedestrian gate--that prosaic yet semi-mythical chunk of shiny metal turnstile that gave access to the Great Cornucopia of the United States of America. I was the keeper of the gate. I was the man. The man with the power of the gate. The man with control over people's entrance into the U.S. The spotlight was on. I was the guardian of the border. I was ready.

Except there was no one around. Empty. So I just sat there, probably looking dumb, waiting for my half hour on the pedestrian gate to pass. I was diddling with the computer terminal. From the corner of my eye I saw someone come through the double doors from Mexico. I turned to look. And up went the Red Flag again. Maybe not quite of suspicion. Not yet. But certainly of curiosity. Sauntering in from Mexico was what some of my younger testosterone blasted co-workers would have called a real babe.

A good looking, shapely and minimally clad young woman came walking up to me with a toothy smile. She had on very brief shorts and a summery tank top and tennis shoes, like she was dressed for beach volleyball. She was alone. What? This good looking girl? Dressed like this? Alone? In San Luis? At night? And she was that rarest of pedestrians at any hour in San Luis, and even more so at night. In a place that was 110% Hispanic, this young woman wasn't anybody's idea of Hispanic. Pura gringa, this one.

There had to be something more to this story.

Her name was Bell. Mainstream, middle of the road middle American who looked like she should be hanging out with her buddies in a sports bar in Yuma. So what the heck was she doing in not so safe after dark San Luis by herself at night? Which is exactly what I asked her.

"I was with friends," she said, still flashing me her toothy smile. "But they wanted to keep on partying and I wanted to go home." She shot me one of those cute and innocent looks that probably would have immediately bought her a ticket north with most of my gonad juiced younger co-workers. "So I decided to come back across the border and go home." While she was talking I ran her name in the computer. Nothing. But I did notice that on a closer look her youthful beauty was a little faded around the edges.

"Do you have a car on this side?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied, nodding towards the U.S. side of the border. "Right over there." In an intuitive flash I asked the simple question that changed everything.

"Do you have your car keys with you?" It was the right question to ask. From my viewpoint, anyway. Not hers. The smile left Bell's face. Her friendly, calm demeanor fled before obvious alarm. She began to rummage through her purse, growing more and more nervous and agitated as she did. By then I had a pretty good inkling of what was going on. She was still rummaging through her purse, approaching panic, when I picked up the intercom phone and called back to the secondary office for a female officer to come over to the pedestrian gate.

In a few moments feisty little Teresa Guzman came determinedly marching through the door from secondary. Teresa was an intense firecracker of an officer. If there was anything to be found, Teresa would find it. I took her aside and explained to her what had happened, and that I suspected the young woman to be a body carrier. Teresa took Bell into a side room, leaving the door ajar with me standing just out of view beside it in case she needed immediate assistance or a corroborating witness. It wasn't much more than a minute or two before diminutive Teresa poked her head around the corner and gave me a thumb's up.

"It's positive," she said.

Positive. But positive what? Pat downs by definition are done over a person's clothing. Teresa had patted Bell down and when she got to the young woman's Forbidden Zone had felt something hard protruding from the girl's private parts. Teresa knew there was sure as heck something there besides the usual feminine equipment. But exactly what? Removing objects from body cavities was a touchy subject in more ways than one with Customs, and Teresa didn't want to proceed any further without discussing it with the supervisor on duty. So we removed Bell to the Customs secondary office where the young woman solved the dilemma herself by agreeing to voluntarily remove the object from her private parts. She did so in a discreet area with Teresa as a witness. The tightly wrapped object turned out to be a hefty chunk of methamphetamine worth a whole bunch of money.

Ms Bell wouldn't be needing her car keys that evening after all.

A March evening in San Luis. Still cool. The oppressive summer heat was a couple of months away. A little past 9:00. I had just rotated off a car lane and plunked my butt down at the pedestrian gate inside the government building just north of the border. And then it happened. Again. Another sticks-out-like-a sore thumb white guy coming in from Hispanic San Luis. At night. Alone. And he hit the ground talking.

Or maybe I should say chattering. He kept up a constant banter from the moment he walked up to me. He was a young man in his early twenties. Dressed for the weather in a shirt and long pants. Not a big guy. On the light side of middle height. Slender. He pulled out an Arizona ID card with the family name of Burnette. If he'd had time, he probably would have told me the story of his life. As it was, before I could even ask him any questions he volunteered that he had been in Mexico drinking with his buddies and for some reason they'd left him. He was afraid to be in San Luis by himself at night, so he came back across the border. He said he was going to call up his mother in Yuma to drive the twenty or so miles down to San Luis to pick him up. He said all this is a chatty, conversational way and did not appear apprehensive or nervous. But appearance is only one factor in assessing nervousness. Another factor can be excessive chattiness. Like Burnette was at that very moment.

I ran his name in the computer, thinking there might be a warrant out for him. Nothing. No warrant. Not a felony warrant, anyhow. But something bothered me about Mr. Burnette. He said he'd been down in Mexico hitting the bars with his buddies. Yet he didn't seem at all impaired by alcohol. But what really got my attention was that there wasn't any noticeable odor of alcohol on him. And, though he was friendly and talkative, he also seemed to be in a hurry to leave. Another of those occasional mysterious enforcement intuitions hit me. I slid off my chair and moved behind him so that he was hemmed in between me and the locked turnstile.

"Do you have anything on you? I said, even as I was already starting a quick pat down. He didn't even get a chance to answer. Mr. Burnette's future prospects took an abrupt nose dive when I got to the Forbidden Zone. Burnette had a chunk of something very hard in his crotch and it sure wasn't Mr. Woody. His body slumped. He knew he was busted. He gave up right then and there and didn't even try to run or resist.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Crystal meth," Burnette replied glumly, then fell silent. No more Mr. Chatty.

Just four or five feet away on the adjacent pedestrian gate was Chris Eidbo, an INS officer new to the border. He had his face glued to his computer terminal and didn't at first notice what was going on. He saw the movement when I started Burnette's pat down and turned to look at us questioningly.

"He's got dope," I said. Eidbo's new to the border mouth dropped open. He stared at me in astonishment a touch longer, but quickly reclaimed his composure and jumped over to help me handcuff the guy. It didn't matter. Burnette wasn't making any attempt to resist. I escorted him over to the nearby Customs secondary office where we did a more thorough search and then placed him in a detention cell. Then I turned to the dope that had been in the guy's Forbidden Zone.

In my witness statement I described the hard wrapped methamphetamine package as being six inches long, two inches wide, irregular in contour and with a bulbous shape at one end. I didn't remark on it then, but now the image leaps out at me that the damn thing was shaped like a dildo. Did the smugglers do that intentionally? I don't know, and I don't even want to begin ruminating on the permutations of that idea. But the package did fit the specs for the Forbidden Zone's compartmental dimensions. Anyhow, I cut open the package and took a small sample. It tested positive for methamphetamine. 207 grams. Not a whole lot less than a half pound. The value of methamphetamine can vary by quite a bit, depending on how and to whom and when and where it is going to be sold. But, even taking a DEA low end figure, the 207 grams of dildo shaped methamphetamine stuffed into Dennis Burnette's Forbidden Zone was worth a considerable chunk of cash. Thousands of bucks. Maybe even as much as ten grand.

There would be some very pissed off meth dealers in Yuma that night.

The Three B's--Breitenbach, Bell and Burnette, none of whom I considered anywhere near hardcore criminal types--were all flagrantly obvious non-Hispanics. Their physical appearance and clothing and ethnicity made them Day-Glo targets for border officers in the almost totally Hispanic world on both sides of the border at San Luis. The thought might occur to you that a smart smuggler would be looking for drug mules that weren't so obvious. You can bet your 401K and the entire equity in your home and grandma's too that they had. It also occurred to me. The notion that the smugglers were using ordinary looking people as mules to body carry thousands of dollars worth of methamphetamine--and probably also therefore cocaine and heroin--was unsettling. And it was more than just a notion. The Three B's and their Forbidden Zones proved that most eloquently. It was happening. So how in the world did an officer figure out who among the crowd of ordinary border crossers might actually be hard drug body carriers?

The short answer is that you didn't. A normal-looking person whose actions and behavior and documents raised no questions was almost always fast tracked through the border. I don't even want to think about how many times a local Hispanic who came through me who was supposedly on the way to the grocery store or an auto parts store in San Luis or Nogales but was actually body carrying a chunk of methamphetamine or cocaine or even heroin. I am certain it happened, and I am certain it happened to every single officer who ever worked on the border. It will continue to happen until somebody comes up with an effective and fast non-intrusive sensing system that reliably detects the presence of hard drugs without a muddying bunch of false positives. Something like the discreet T5000 passive imaging technology camera system that was in the trial stage in England. Or, approaching detection from a different, behavioral, perspective, the Sci-Fi sounding but real technology called the Laser Doppler Vibrometer that was being tested at the University of Arizona might just turn out to be workable. But until--if ever--one of those whizbang new technologies change the rules of the game, the good old crotch will continue to take first place in the Body Carrying Olympics at the border ports.

The Forbidden Zone still rules.

There were two of them. Same place. The indoor pedestrian gate at San Luis. But not evening this time. Mid afternoon. And not gringos. They were a pair of young Hispanic males, one 17, the other 20. The younger one was well dressed and clean cut, wearing a short sleeved shirt, shorts and a baseball cap. He didn't look at all like a gang banger type. The other young man, though similarly dressed, had a kind of veiled tough arrogance to him that caught my attention. I had no idea of it then, but I was about to enter the outer edges of what could be a very dangerous world. This guy looked tough and arrogant because he was tough and arrogant. No hapless down on his luck everyday drug mule, this dude. He was the real deal. A bona fide, one hundred percent genuine bad ass bad guy.

The younger man, Luis Rivera, said he had no ID with him. He told me he was a U.S. citizen and gave me his date of birth. I ran the name and date of birth in the computer and came up with nothing. The other young man, Pedro Jimenez, did have an ID with a date of birth on it. His name did come up in the computer. Did it ever. Big time. He was a DEA suspect, believed to be part of a smuggling ring and involved in a recent smuggling run to Hawaii. Hawaii? From little old San Luis? And more. The Customs special agent who had entered the record wanted him ID'ed and searched, and, because of Jimenez's suspected serious involvement in a sizeable smuggling ring, requested that the agent be contacted immediately if the guy showed up.

I didn't know exactly what, but I knew this was going to amount to something. It got my blood up in a hurry, yet I managed to keep my cool. I'd lost enough runners on peds to learn the hard way to keep things as low key and subtle as possible. I kept up a casual banter with the two young men while picking up the intercom telephone and calling back to the Customs secondary office for a backup officer. I was still chatting with the two guys when Woodrow 'Chuck' Westerfield, a good sized, Kentucky accented former Marine, came walking in from secondary. I motioned Chuck over to take a look at the computer screen that had alerted me. He did. The two young Hispanic men couldn't see the screen from where they were standing, but must have had figured out by then that something was going on. They missed their chance to run for it. Chuck and I deftly slid behind them, took control of the two by their arms and escorted them back to the Customs secondary office. Chuck took Rivera. I took Jimenez.

We got the pair into the secondary office and started to pat them down. Chuck, who was a man long on ambition but short on enthusiasm for finding dope, surprised me when he jumped back from Rivera almost immediately. He's just hit Rivera's Forbidden Zone. "He's got something!" The unusually agitated drawling Kentuckian said. Westerfield wanted to get the duty supervisor's permission to do a strip search before he went any further. That approval came lightning quick. Before the strip search had hardly even kicked into gear a brown tape wrapped, sausage shaped package about two inches in diameter by ten inches in length came sliding down the boy's leg. Either he had a salamander tail for a pecker, or the boy was smuggling something. And he sure didn't look like a salamander.

There were two of those ten inch brown tape wrapped long, thin packages. The first one had voluntarily surrendered. The second was a recalcitrant holdout. It was so securely taped to Rivera's leg and underwear that we had to cut away at it before we finally were able to tug the dope loose from the kid's leg and underwear. The two dope packages were hard to the touch. Marijuana packages usually were soft or spongy. Excitement flooded into the search room. Hard drugs. Finding the hard stuff always got the juices going with us, even the more jaded among us. We expectantly tested samples from the packages for heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. The methamphetamine test was positive. It was meth. 1.1 pounds of it. Worth lots of money. A darned good seizure for a body carrier.

But it wasn't over. Rivera had given me a phony date of birth. We ran his correct name and date of birth in the computer. The ordinary looking kid had been busted at the nearby Calexico port of entry in California just weeks before driving a load car with 70 pounds of marijuana in it. The courts might have cut him some slack over the first marijuana bust because he was a juvenile. But now Arizona law would mandate he be tried as an adult.

And there was the other guy. Pedro Jimenez. A search of him was negative. So what was his role in this? Customs agents came down to the port of entry and seemed pretty excited by the seizure of the methamphetamine and catching the kid and Jimenez. They said that Jimenez was the controller who was watching over Rivera, who was the mule. The agents busted both of them and hauled them off to jail. Several weeks later I recognized Jimenez walking through on the pedestrian lane from Mexico. He had that same tough, smug arrogance as before. It was obvious he recognized me, too. He didn't look at all like he was nervous or might run. I ran his name in the computer, thinking that there likely was a warrant out for his arrest. The DEA lookout was still there. But no warrant. What? Nothing? This guy who the agents had insisted was a drug trafficking organization controller for a methamphetamine courier was still on the streets? Bizarre, maybe, but not at all unusual. I did a thorough pat down of the guy and came up with nothing. I don't remember if I had INS check his immigration status--the guy was born in Mexico--but I probably did. But what stuck in my mind was something the guy said.

"I know you," Jimenez said to me, smiling in that smugly veiled menacing way he had. I looked at him, not quite sure what he was getting at. Then he shocked me. "Your daughter plays volleyball for the high school," he said with that same arrogant smugness. And that was a fact. My daughter did play volleyball for a local high school. It might sound innocuous enough on the surface. But this was coming from a known member of a sizeable narcotics trafficking organization who was an active DEA suspect. A guy who'd I'd busted once already, and whose organization lost a bunch of money on the seized methamphetamine. And besides that I'd busted a sizeable cocaine load on the primary lanes that was probably also tied to the same organization and that involved some really big money.

I took his comment as the veiled threat that it was and immediately reported it. Soon after Lori Janosko, a Customs special agent, came to talk to me about it. Later she gave me a sheet of paper with photos of the other major players in the trafficking organization that Jimenez was part of it. She told me to show it to my family and for all of us to watch out for any of their faces in the photos. If one them showed up, I was to call her or another agent immediately. I never saw any of them again, Jimenez included. But Jimenez remains of keen interest to the DEA to this day. Pedro Mario Jimenez had moved on to bigger things. He was no longer just a DEA suspect.

At the time of this writing he was on the DEA's wanted fugitive list.

****
