Triple Crossing Read Online Free Page B

them.
    He found the looks on their faces pretty comical. What’s the matter? You never seen a U.S. Border Patrol agent chasing a Mexican
     through Tijuana before? See it and believe it, motherfuckers.
    Pescatore realized full well that he had crossed The Line. He had broken the ultimate commandment. He was making a suicide
     charge into enemy territory. He wondered what Garrison would say. He wondered what Esparza would say. But he felt dizzy liberation,
     as if the combined effect of the knock on the head and the incursion into Mexico had transformed him. He was a speed machine.
     A force of justice. A green avenger. He didn’t care if he had to run all the way to Ensenada. He was going to catch him a
     tonk.
    Pulpo fled down the middle of a residential street that went south from the Calle Internacional. It was a quiet, unevenly
     paved, anemically lit street in the Zona Norte area, dense with cooking smells. Rickety fences fronted low houses painted
     in orange, green and blue. There was a field in the distance, perhaps a schoolyard.
    Halfway down the block, Pulpo threw Pescatore another frantic glance. He zigzagged and cut left onto the sidewalk, knocking
     aside a gate. Pescatore pursued him into a narrow dirt lot between stucco houses, through an obstacle course of junk: bicycle
     tires, car parts, a lean-to fashioned from the camper shell of a pickup truck propped up with bricks. There was a wooden one-story
     hut at the back of the lot.
    Pescatore caught up to the smuggler just as he reached the open door. He jabbed with the baton, javelin-style, connecting
     with Pulpo’s back below the label of the overalls. It made a satisfying thud.
    The blow carried them both through a curtain of beads hanging in the front entrance and into the hut. Pescatore jabbed again and Pulpo went down, yowling, into a mangy armchair. Pescatore
     raised the baton with both hands to strike. A lightbulb on a chain swung above their heads, spattering images as if through
     a strobe: a dank cramped living room of sorts, a shrine with a Virgin of Guadalupe statuette, candles, an incongruously new
     and large television. A radio chattered. The bead curtain clattered in the doorway. Pescatore and Pulpo gulped oxygen in loud
     gasps.
    A tired-looking little woman in sweat clothes had stepped out of the shadows behind the armchair. On her hip she cradled a
     baby boy, who was bare-chested in miniature overalls. The woman’s mouth opened soundlessly. Pulpo had one thick leg splayed
     over an armrest, the bandanna skewed down, almost obscuring his eyes. They looked as if they were posing for a portrait: the
     Pulpo family at home.
    Silver spots swam in front of Pescatore’s eyes. The baton, held high like an executioner’s axe, weighed a hundred pounds.
     He heard scratchy voices on his radio. Agents called his name. A search was in progress on the other side. In San Diego.
    Pulpo’s narrow eyes were locked on Pescatore’s. The smuggler’s chest heaved. He remained in the armchair, cringing from the
     anticipated blow, a goofy incredulous expression smeared across his face. He looked younger up close; the facial hair was
     scraggly.
    Pescatore lowered the baton. He had regained his breath somewhat.
    His voice sounded pretty calm, given the circumstances. He enunciated carefully:
“Ahora sé donde vives, hijo de la chingada.”
    Now I know where you live, you son of a bitch.
    Pulpo’s face rearranged into a mask of contempt.
    “Bienvenido a tu casa,”
he growled. The standard deferential greeting of a Mexican host: Welcome to your home.
    Pescatore turned and ran.
    As he sprinted with long chopping strides, wiping clumsily atthe blood that was obscuring the vision in his left eye, Pescatore thought about the time when two PAs had tackled a belligerent
     drunk in the middle of the riverbed. During the struggle, the agents had rolled across the international boundary, a moment
     recorded, to their misfortune, by a Mexican news photographer.