Finnegan's Week by Joseph Wambaugh

moment.
    â€œOkay, how we gonna get back to the U.S. with our drums full a who-knows-what kinda poison?”
    â€œWe don’ come back weeth truck.”
    â€œWhat the fuck?”
    â€œOur truck get stole. We go to San Diego police to make report.”
    â€œWait a minute! You’re movin too fast.”
    â€œLook, Buey,” Abel said. “I know how to do! We sell shoe, we leave truck een Tijuana. We walk back through border gate.”
    â€œWe gonna tell the cops our truck got hijacked? At gunpoint, or what?”
    â€œNo. We say we stop for burrito een Chula Vista. Lunchtime. We eat, we come out, truck gone. We don’ care. Our job gone anyways.”
    â€œI got a bad feelin about this, dude,” Shelby said, “I got a bad feelin.”
    But he didn’t object when the Mexican turned south on Interstate 5 and headed toward the San Ysidro crossing.
    There were four lanes handling the southbound traffic at the international border. Unlike yellow caution signs at deer crossings that show antlered stags in black silhouette, the caution signs in these parts showed the silhouettes of a man, woman and child running. Every year, caution signs or not, many illegals were killed dashing across the freeway. Dying as they ran north to survive .
    Abel pulled off the freeway at the Virginia Street truck gate, the gate used by commercial vehicles going into Mexico. As the van rumbled along the dusty hardpan road, Shelby saw several mobile homes, permanently on foundations, that served as offices for insurance and customs brokers. Before Abel wheeled the truck into the customs yard, the ox looked off to his right and saw two green and white U.S. Border Patrol Ford Broncos parked on top of the levee over the Tijuana River.
    What made it an astonishing sight was that the uniformed Border Patrol officers were smoking and chatting and drinking soda pop, not thirty yards from a dozen Mexicans just on the other side of the broken-down border fence, who were preparing for their dash to el norte as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The Border Patrol knew they were coming. The Mexicans knew they knew. No hard feelings on either side.
    Shelby Pate didn’t want any part of this place. In his entire life, four years of it in the San Diego area, he hadn’t been to Tijuana more than twice, once to buy meth and once to buy a hooker. One had been as bad as the other, so now he bought his cringe and pussy in San Diego.
    When speaking of drugs or hookers, Shelby Pate always said, “Be a patriot. Buy American.”
    After they were inside the customs yard, Abel got out and approached a Mexican customs officer he knew well. Shelby watched Flaco jabber in Spanish to the guy, who wore a light-blue uniform shirt with epaulets, and a rakish cap with a sixty-mission crush.
    At first, the customs officer turned away and shook his head, but finally he shrugged and nodded. Then the two Mexicans walked to the far side of the truck, away from traffic, and Shelby watched in the side-view mirror as Abel peeled off several twenty-dollar bills from the money they’d been given at South-bay Agricultural Supply.
    When Abel came back to the truck he said, “I pay five hundred. Two-feefty my money, two-feefty from joo.”
    â€œYou lyin little asshole!” Shelby said. “I saw you give him on’y two hunnerd at most !”
    Abel grinned sheepishly and said, “Okay, no problem, no problem. I take one hundred from the two thousand I geev to joo.”
    â€œ Three thousand. We’re partners, goddamnit! Three fer you, three fer me. Fuck this!”
    â€œOkay, Buey, okay,” Abel said, shrugging his eyebrows.
    â€œYa know, dude,” Shelby said, “we coulda jist dumped the drums out by Brown Field or somewheres. A real truck thief mighta did that before drivin south, right?”
    â€œNo,” Abel said. “I cannot dump poison.”
    Shelby paused, then said, “Good