Free Lines and shadows by Joseph Wambaugh

Deadman's Canyon. They were about one hundred yards inside the line and were walking west. They were tense, excited, alert, but not very afraid. This was their first night posing as pollos in the canyons but they were already finding enough confidence to talk with parties of real pollos heading north. Manny Lopez bet Eddie Cervantes could fool anyone. Manny did most of the talking. Tony Puente spoke such poor Spanish he was ordered by Manny to keep his mouth shut. Carlos Chacon carried the sawed-off shotgun under the oldest and funkiest jacket he owned. The happening of note on that very first evening occurred in the vicinity of the Tijuana airport. The four cops were walking like a covey of quail, alien style, when just before nightfall they saw a blue and white Tijuana Municiple police car on a dirt road south of the fence. There were no cops inside. The cops were behind them talking through the fence to three girls who had just crossed into the United States. Three Tijuana policemen then file://C:\Documents and Settings\tim\Desktop\books to read\Wambaugh, Joseph - Lines a... 11/20/2009
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    stepped over the barbed wire fence onto American soil. One of the cops caught his tan uniform pants on the wire and began to curse.
    One Tijuana policeman said, " Vengan !" but Manny Lopez and his three men continued walking.
    Then all three Tijuana cops, without wasting any more breath, simply drew their automatics, jacked rounds into the chambers and said, " Vengan, cabrones !" And the neophyte pollos responded. They said:
    "Holy shit!"
    "Hey! Hey! HEY!"
    "What the fuck!"
    And while the Tijuana cops were puzzled by these weird pollos babbling in English, Manny Lopez pulled his badge and his gun. Then his three subordinates drew their guns. The first evening in the canyons, their first hours in the canyons, there were seven cops pointing guns not at bandits but at each other.
    "That's what you'd call a righteous Mexican standoff." Eddie Cervantes later said. But not at the moment. Nobody was thinking up at the moment. They were all staring down very large barrels and getting very tense.
    " Policfas !" Manny Lopez warned. " Somos policfas!"
    "Ooooooh! Policfas ! Well, we thought you were ditos . You weren't acting like pollos! We wanted to get back to our side," the cops told them.
    But Manny Lopez wasn't buying any of it. There been too many reports of Tijuana policemen robbing aliens.
    "Why don't you control the bandits from your side. That's where they're from," he told them in Spanish. "Now let's see some identification."
    They, being on American soil, reluctantly obeyed, and Eddie Cervantes took the HandieTalkie out of the plastic drawstring "pollo bag" he was carrying and relayed the names of the Tijuana cops to communications.
    Then there were many apologies while the Tijuana cops tried to convince Manny Lopez that they, too, were after bandits.
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    "Cops and robbers," Manny said disgustedly in English. "These motherfuckers're cops and robbers! Take a walk, Jack," he said finally to the senior Tijuana policeman, who understood that well enough..
    "What the hell kind a job is this going to be?" Tony Puente wanted to know as they resumed walking. He thought about Manny drawing down on them while facing their guns. He thought maybe he should start wearing his glasses even if it did blow their cover. Then it got so dark that glasses wouldn't have helped much.
    When the sun dropped, the huddled masses unhuddled to begin the nightly crossing ritual. One of them was a twenty-five-year-old campesino named Lino Ariza. Lino Ariza was of course very frightened to begin with, and even Sipore so when he and his party were instructed by their coyote to remain near the international border until their guide came for them. Lino was from Durango, as was one of his companions, Luis Rodrigues. A third man, who