Why’d you have to pay him?
They call it a tax. But it’s a bribe.
Isn’t that against the law?
Sure is. But he is the law.
He’s the police?
Basically.
If the police break the law then who arrests them?
I don’t know. Good question, Ollestad.
He let me stew over the paradoxes for a while. Then he spoke.
In a poor country like Mexico people try to get money any way they can. They even do it in a rich country like America. It’s not right. But sometimes—like with that guy—you play along because you understand the circumstances.
He checked on me a couple of times as we wound out of Tijuana and back along the coast. It was black outside. A few lights scattered around in the distance.
He’s a liar then, right? I said.
The border guard?
Yeah.
Uh-huh. That’s right.
I wanted to blurt out that I had lied too, about skateboarding, about where I got my scrapes. I pressed my forehead against the passenger’s window. I could feel my dad’s eyes on my back. I flashed on Nixon, his saggy jowls and hunched shoulders, and the policeman’s gold teeth, and him sitting in his box all night and him taking money from people and stuffing it in his pocket.
Take it easy on that window, Ollestad, said my dad.
Sorry.
You want to rest your head in my lap?
Yeah.
I swiveled around and put my cheek across his thigh and my bent knees up on the seat so my feet could fit against the door.
Sunlight poured in the truck’s window onto my head. I sat up and wiped my forehead with my T-shirt.
I noticed the creases under my dad’s eyes—they were lined in an olive yellow, standing out against his smooth honey-brown skin. He looked older and more tired than I had ever seen him look. He drank coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.
Where are we? I said.
Just pulling out of Ensenada.
One eye was still blurry and I looked out the windshield. The sun cut across the sagebrush and the sage climbed the hills, spotting them with dull greens. It reminded me of Malibu. I looked west out the passenger’s window beyond the bald headland cliffs, and the Pacific Ocean spread as far as my eye could see, the water tinted peach in the morning light.
My dad yawned.
Did you sleep? I said.
Yeah. I pulled off to the side of the road in Rosarito and took a nap.
Why didn’t Sandra come?
His smile drained away like water seeping into sand. He stared out along the highway and his eyes narrowed.
She was pissed off at me about something, Ollestad.
What?
It’s complicated.
Did you fight?
Yeah. But that’s not why she’s mad.
Why’s she mad?
Nick’s brother. You know Vincent, right?
I nodded.
Yeah well he thought it was funny to take Sandra’s bird.
He took her little parrot?
Yeah.
Why?
To play a joke, he said shaking his head.
What kind of joke?
He pretended to be a birdnapper I guess. We even left money in that phone booth by George’s Market. We didn’t know it was him until he showed up with the bird.
My dad moved his puckered mouth from one side to the other just like Grandpa did sometimes.
Sandra wanted me to call the cops, he said.
Did you?
Naw.
So she left?
Yeah. She gave me an ultimatum.
Like you better or else?
Exactly.
Who was the guy on the motorcycle?
I don’t know. Some friend of hers.
His eyes were soft and the hook-shaped bone of his brow was less pronounced. There was no sign of that raw animal in there.
Why didn’t you call the cops? I said.
Vincent is a friend of mine.
I had seen my dad and Vincent play poker together at Barrow’s house on the beach and I had always thought it was weird that my dad was friendly with my mom’s boyfriend’s brother. But I didn’t say anything about that.
Was what he did against the law?
My dad nodded.
Then why didn’t you call the cops?
It was just a stupid prank.
If you were still in the FBI would you have arrested him?
He laughed.
No. We went after real bad guys, not pranksters.
I stared out the window at the road. I had heard about my dad’s one-year FBI stint, stationed in Miami from 1960 to 1961. About the book he wrote exposing J. Edgar Hoover’s hypocrisies, one of the first of its kind.
Dad joined the FBI at age twenty-five. It was a coveted job, demanding a graduate degree, preferably in law. Before joining he read every book he could find about J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, wanting to familiarize himself with the man who was considered the greatest crime fighter in American history.
In the first weeks of FBI training school Dad was shocked to find so many cracks in the facade. The instructors boasted to his class that no president would ever fire Hoover and that Congress never dared challenge the great director’s assertions about anything. Dad was surprised when he took his first exam and the instructors gave everyone in the class the answers—ensuring the success of Hoover’s policy that all FBI agents get A’s on the exams. The only real test was the final one, when he met the director himself. Hoover either gave you his blessing or dismissed you as unfit. If you caught his eye then you were thrown out. If he didn’t like your physical appearance, such as a pinhead-shaped skull, you were dismissed.
On Dad’s first day as an agent he couldn’t understand why all the veteran agents picked the most beat-up FBI cars from the garage, even though they were unreliable in a chase and the radios didn’t work. He learned that
