Free Illegal by Paul Levine

road, bleeding, someone comes along and steals your shoes.
    My Reeboks!
    Tino untied his laces, pulled off his right shoe, removed the insole. There was the crumpled card his mother had given him. "J. Atticus Payne, Esquire." A very important man. One of the biggest lawyers in Los Angeles.
    "If anything bad happens and I am not there, go see Mr. Payne."
    Tino studied the address. Delano Street. He had no idea how to get there. No money. No papers. But his mother had taught him to be brave.
    " You're my little valiente."
    He looked left. Looked right. Then he started walking.
    Cars went by, but few people were on the sidewalk. When he spotted an Anglo woman, he asked in English where he could find a bus station, but she stepped off the curb to avoid him.
    Two hours passed. The sleepless night began to take its toll. Fatigue crawled up his legs. Hunger gnawed at his gut.
    A police car rolled past. The cop eyed him, suspiciously. Tino fought the urge to run. The police car kept going.
    He stopped in front of a small, neat house and watched as a man with hands stained the color of carne asada fertilized a flower bed. The bed was filled with plants taller than Tino. Stems topped by purple and orange flowers shaped like birds' beaks.
    "Flor ave del paraíso," the gardener told him.
    Birds of paradise.
    Beautiful. Tino had seen them once before, surrounding the house of a rich family in Caborca.
    The gardener wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and offered cold water from a cooler. When Tino told him he was hungry but had no money, out came a chicken tortilla wrapped in foil. And then another. The gardener was from Loreto in Baja. He had been here seven years without papers, and that made Tino feel better. He showed the man the card of Mr. J. Atticus Payne, Esquire.
    "Van Nuys. I can tell you how to get there," the gardener said, proudly. "The subway station is within walking distance for a strong boy."
    "I didn't know there was a subway here."
    "Most gabachos do not know, either."
    The gardener gave him directions to the Wilshire-Vermont station, with instructions to ride to Universal City. There, he would take a bus to Van Nuys. The gardener could not tell him exactly which bus to take, but a smart boy can figure it out. Then he gave Tino money. Winking, he said there are no toll collectors on the subway, so save a dollar twenty-five and buy a Coca-Cola. Use the rest for the bus.
    Tino thanked the man and headed toward the subway station. Soon, he thought, he would be speaking to one of the most important lawyers in all of Los Angeles. A good man who had helped the poor mojados cooked in that trailer truck. As he walked, Tino grew more confident. J. Atticus Payne, he concluded, must truly be a Good Samaritan.

NINETEEN
     
    Payne imagined swinging Adam's baseball bat.
    Smashing Manuel Garcia over the head. Crushing bone to splinters, tissue to mush. Luxuriating in each crack and squish . Reveling in the blood, feeling no more guilt than a kid stomping a grasshopper.
    But could he really do it? Thinking about killing was one thing. Watching the life seep out of a man was another. That was the debate raging inside him.
    Payne had left Sharon at the restaurant, her face pale with worry. She had buckled him into the front seat of his Lexus, as if he were a child, giving him a little peck on the cheek. A charity kiss, to be sure.
    His body aching from his run-in with the protect-and-serve crowd, Payne headed west on Wilshire. He had a notion about stopping at the La Brea Tar Pits. He used to take Adam to the museum there. All boys love dinosaurs and fossils. Adam would spend hours drawing pictures of the mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, whose remains have been preserved in the tar.
    A few minutes into the drive, Payne saw a Home Depot, and by instinct, swung into the parking lot. Two dozen Hispanic men in dirty jeans, T-shirts, and ball caps squatted on their haunches or sat on the curb, smoking, talking, hoping for an honest day's