Free Finnegan's Week by Joseph Wambaugh

This is your fuckin country, remember? You’re the one talkin big and makin all the plans! What do we do?”
    â€œMaybe we go to hees mamá . Leave shoes. Get out of Tijuana.”
    â€œShit!” the ox said, turning his Mötley Crüe hat around frontwards again. “I mighta known!” After a moment he said, “Okay, drive this piece a shit bobtail back to where that kid was.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œBack where Soltero’s mother lives.”
    â€œWe put shoes een her garage?”
    â€œYeah, what choice we got? But I wanna give that kid some shoes. Let him trade em fer some good dope or somethin.”
    â€œOkay, Buey,” Abel said. “Okay.”
    â€œAnd let’s leave this van as close to the border as we can,” Shelby said. “Some fuckin mastermind!”
    When they got back to Colonia Libertad , Shelby told Abel to drive around the streets for a few minutes until he spotted the kid with the chewing gum. When he did, he ordered Abel to stop.
    â€œHey, kid!” the ox yelled at the little boy. “C’mere!”
    When the child came forward with a handful of gum, the ox said to Abel, “How you say shoe in Mexican?”
    â€œ Zapato .”
    â€œ Zapato !” Shelby said to the kid. “ Zapato !”
    Then he startled the boy by pushing open the door and heaving himself out. Shelby lumbered around to the back of the bobtail truck, opened the cargo door, climbed into the van and ripped open a carton.
    Shelby tossed two dozen pair of shoes onto the dusty street, yelling: “ Zapato. Viva fuckin zapato !”
    Suddenly, a swarm of people emerged from the jumble of houses and began crawling all over the pile of shoes. By the time Abel got the truck turned around, the little boy was running off with his arms full.
    â€œLike cock-a-roaches,” Shelby said. “They jist crawl outta nowhere like cock-a-roaches.”
    The house of Soltero’s mother was near the top of a promontory overlooking The Soccer Field, a desolate barren wasteland of relatively flat U.S. soil that served as a place for the poor of this colonia to play soccer unmolested by day, and to gather for their rush north by night. Scanning the soccer field as always was la migra , who captured only a fraction of the pilgrims and deported them just about long enough for them to gather themselves again for the next attempt. And so it went.
    But after the soccer field lay El Cañon de los Muertos , better known to the U.S. cops as Deadman’s Canyon, where Mexican bandits preyed upon the pollos coming across in the night. The house of Soltero’s mother looked down on all that, on the misery of those border people who gazed across at el norte . Who could play soccer on U.S. soil anytime they wished.
    The house was not a flat-roofed shack like the others. It had a pitched roof, the only one of its kind in the colonia , and a great deal of wood had been used in its construction, including wood siding. There were two mature cypress trees, one on each side of the asphalt driveway, and they too distinguished this home. The entire street had been blacktopped, probably as a result of Soltero paying mordida to the right street-maintenance supervisor, and the new blacktop extended from the curbless street in front, into a spacious two-car garage that was an unheard-of luxury in the colonia .
    Abel backed the van into the driveway and walked to a side door that seemed to lead to a patio. No one answered his knock. Shelby discovered that the overhead garage door was not locked, so he swung it open.
    When Abel raised the van’s cargo door, Shelby said, “Somebody better get here quick and lock this fucker after we get them shoes inside.”
    â€œI theenk,” Abel said, “somebody watch us now. Maybe mamá of Soltero. When we drive away somebody weel lock the door. Don’ worry.”
    Abel climbed into the van and shoved the large cartons to Shelby,