The Coyote's Bicycle (43 page)

“Oso,” he said without looking, “please bring me that bottle I have there in the kitchen.” Oso knew the bottle. It was a premium tequila called Cazadores that El Indio had bought in the presence of the men, intended for the celebration of the birth of his son.

Two workers with Servicio Médico Forense arrived for the body.

Oso and Chedas pulled Indio from Marta's bed and escorted him to the living room, where her mother and father sat at the edge of the couch as if awaiting further news. The mother wore a house robe, her posture correct; he was dressed for the ranch. Roberto stood to the side, his hands clasped over his belt buckle. Lupita looked at
Indio as if not seeing the man at all but an empty space between the moment and what had to be done. She said to Roberto, “Son, make certain that the little angel boy is buried separately, right away. He was never born, he never left the side of God. Look at me: The angel must have his own casket.”

The twelve mariachis walked single file up the shaded gravel road of Panteón Jardín. Their wide sombreros careened to either side, creating a writhing effect as their bodies remained in step. Their
trajes
consisted of white shirts, bow ties, and short, heavily embroidered jackets. Their pants were tight, and gold medallions rippled down the legs. There were violins, trumpets, guitars, a folk harp, an accordion, and a
vihuela
, or lute. The man who wielded the
guitarrón
, a voluptuous bass guitar, nearly disappeared behind the instrument. Twenty paces from the grave, the trumpeters sounded the first notes of “Despedida con Mariachi” (“A Mariachi Farewell”). The violinists joined in, and the accordion followed.

As at Puerta Blanca, from the grounds of Panteón Jardin one overlooks the border wall, the Tijuana River Valley, and the United States. The garden cemetery, however, is at a higher elevation and lush, defined by large acacia trees and a gently sloping lawn. Light fell on it differently—bright but filtered through the greenery. Rather than mossy crypts and sepulchers, the well-spaced, orderly tombstones of Panteón Jardín were clean and maintained. The care of loved ones was evident in the flowers and gifts placed before many of the graves. Local custom dictated that the deceased were to be interred at the cemetery closest to the family home, so as to be near. El Indio and Roberto talked it over and chose Panteón Jardín because it was closest to the canyons where Marta did the work that she loved. Roberto persuaded the director, who made a choice location available.

El Indio was dressed conservatively in black, as were most of the bereaved. His stubby nose and dark lips were slightly swollen. He
stood with the immediate family and El Oso before the open grave. Next to the hole in the earth was a small patch of flat tan dirt where the little boy had been buried the day before. Indio purchased mahogany caskets for both Marta and their son, but he never saw the little one as he'd agreed with Lupita's request to bury him as soon as possible. In the outer ring of guests stood many of their neighbors and a great number of Roberto's associates; some of them El Indio knew but some he did not. Among these were members of Tijuana's eleven
polleros viejos
, the council of elders. Marta had known them and their families in one way or another, so they'd come both in mourning for her and out of respect for Roberto. Within the group of neighbors was a girl named Marlene. She was about twelve years old and had silky black hair. The girl had wildly admired Marta, and often brought her small tokens of friendship. Marta had agreed to serve as Marlene's godmother at her first communion, and so Marlene was already calling her
madrina
. The girl's eyes were rimmed in red and her face was puffy but by the time the mariachis arrived at the gravesite, she'd stopped crying. Marta's parents sat in wood chairs before the large, deep-brown casket. They looked smaller somehow, and more frail—but dignified. Indio's own parents were not present. By the second song—“Amor Eterno”—most eyes had dried. Somewhere in the back of the crowd a mourner began to sing along. Others joined in.

The next day Indio found Solo at work. The crew was preparing for one of three crossings they'd orchestrate that day. Solo hadn't been invited to the funeral; neither had any of the workers. In fact, they'd passed a couple of dozen clients below the funeral as it unfolded at Panteón Jardín. Solo didn't understand his exclusion but he didn't resent it either. Indio wouldn't stop. In the canyon, he opened the passenger-side door of his new truck and grabbed some shopping bags. “These are for you and everyone,” Indio said with a wave.

Solo looked in. The bags contained black T-shirts and black pants.

“I understand,” Solo said, accepting the parcels. “How did it go?”

“I think it was beautiful, as much as it could be,” Indio said.

“Listen, Pablo,” Solo said. “I don't think you should be here. Why don't you take time for yourself?”

“Are you telling me that the people don't need to cross anymore?”

“No,” Solo said.

“Are they crossing themselves?”

“No. I'm saying that this is critical work. If your mind isn't right, you shouldn't be here.”

“
Amigo
, no matter where she is, I am a reflection of her. She worked up to her last day. I'm not going to stop.”

34

The building was low and flat—an insignificant aside to a wide palm-lined street that ran from the Coast Highway down to the railroad tracks. The empty spread of asphalt summoned a forlorn sense of Los Angeles noir. One could smell but not see the ocean. Abandoned-looking cars occupied curb space. Errant grocery carts were parked on grassy, overgrown meridians. Nothing inside the building broke the spell. It was cool and dark and filled with the presence of large men. The sensation was of entering an arboreal longhouse with vague questions about lost people and things. I didn't have much of anything to trade for the information other than my enthusiasm—or rather, a middling obsession. The truth was, if not for Kim Zirpolo, I would not have been greeted at the door. She arranged the meeting, calling the men “my boys” or “my guys.”

“Imagine my guys,” she said. “They're huge, intimidating, and most likely wearing their gang colors. They've got a truck full of bicycles and guns, and they're driving through Texas. There's no paperwork. What would happen, God forbid, if they got pulled over by some ranger? How would they explain, if they didn't get shot first?”

The moniker “swing gang” emerged from the era when multiple movie sets occupied one studio stage; via the swinging of hinged
walls into and out of place, the sets could be efficiently changed. The nickname was originally used for the workers who moved those walls, but the position grew into any kind of breaking down, transportation of props, or set dressing. And it might have been inaccurate to describe the men who worked for Stu Segall as a swing gang, because they did anything and everything to pull the job off. They were the strategy behind Strategic Operations.

Most of them hailed from Oceanside, California's significant Samoan community—known as a tough crowd in one of the coast's last rough-and-tumble beach towns. I was hesitant to approach them about an interview at that time because the most esteemed citizen Oceanside had produced,
NFL
linebacker Junior Seau, had recently shot himself in his beachfront home. The Samoan community was tight and extremely family oriented. Seau's death came as a sudden blow. He was their icon, their star. Further, the guys I'd come to meet had just been severed from employment with Stu Segall Productions. They'd seen it coming since talk of cutbacks in government spending began. But I didn't imagine they'd be in the mood to share tales of high times on the trail of coyote bikes.

The black vinyl chairs sat low and wide, as did the coffee table between us. I had to gaze up to meet the eyes of my hosts. Aaron Garrison, who sat across the table, looked something like the actor known as the Rock—handsome, intelligent, amiable, oversized. Eric Amavisca was tall and slender with bright blue eyes. Ron Nua stood a bit shorter, with thick rounded shoulders. He spoke with a raspy swagger. His sentences were peppered with “bitch” and “shit.” And within minutes of entering, I discovered that I really liked these guys. They laughed easily. Each of them could tell a story. They were fans of off-color details, and they never framed their answers to place themselves, or anyone, in a softer light.

The work had started with Garrison. In the late 1990s, one of his football coaches at Grossmont College happened to be a ranking
member of the local filmmakers' union. He helped Garrison get work on a series of Mexican soap operas called
telenovelas
that were filmed in San Diego. In time, Garrison brought friends from the neighborhood into the business. Around 2000, work with the
novelas
waned and so they “filtered” over to the only other gig in town, Stu Segall Productions. This trio represented the core of the swing gang. They confirmed that Kiser had turned Zirpolo on to Terry Tynan's swamp bikes. And one day when the workload at the studio was light, Zirpolo sent Garrison, Amavisca, and Nua down to the Kimzey Ranch with directions to load three hundred bikes onto a stake bed.

“That shit was a bike cemetery,” Nua said. The hemmed-in feeling of the border, broken-down ranches, dirt roads, and the demand for cash all evoked the foreboding of a strange deal. They described Tynan as an oddball. “He was
into
the bikes, the most I've ever seen in my life.”

But Tynan greeted the men much as he had me, with an unmasked appreciation of his own good fortune. He indicated the trails where he did his collecting. He walked through his piles, organized by style and quality, and separated the studio sales from the pack. In the beginning, it was the junk bikes for Segall. “Some had no seats. They were just bombers—two tires, a chain, and half a handlebar,” Nua said. Then Terry popped the doors of the wood garden shack, and “it was like bike heaven in there.”

There were vintage Italian racers and pristine Mongoose and Diamondback
BMX
bikes from the eighties.

“I was always looking for a bike,” Garrison said. They all were, in fact—everyone who ever marveled at the swamp bikes. Nua had his eye on a Redline, a model he remembered from his childhood. Amavisca developed a possessive fondness for a murdered-out beach cruiser that he'd later hide around the studio lot lest someone else admire it too. The men marveled at Tynan's operation. “He was making money,” Garrison said, “and not just off us.”

Nua called it clockwork. “We'd want to make an order, and he'd be like, ‘Give me another week,' and then there'd be another five hundred up in this bitch.”

The swing gang never questioned the origin of the bikes. They never considered the fact that each bike represented at least one new migrant. They admired certain machines but mostly, “We just put 'em on lots.”

This was not as easy as it might seem. Like the troops for whom they did their work, the men experienced a kind of deployment. They'd receive a packing list, broad instructions, and keys to a truck or a one-way plane ticket. They could remain on the road for six-to-nine-month stretches, unaware of the next destination, or the final one. Their per diem food allowance could be set as low as the cost of meals at the base cafeteria. In Louisiana, it was $11.25. Their salary was comparable to an army private's, but half of a base janitor's.

There wasn't a whole lot of support from Strategic Operations headquarters, either. For whatever reason, be it the fly-through nature of the movie business or the culture at Stu Segall Productions, permissions, forward notices, and paperwork on the dangerous loads were considered only in the rearview. Nua was once sent to Canada with a truck that contained bicycles, props, and sealed boxes. After a three-day drive that crossed state and international boundaries, Nua opened boxes to discover that they contained authentic AK-47 assault rifles. Nua was on parole at the time. A pull-over, or a single curious inspector, and there was a strong chance he would have been returned to prison. “Even the fake shit looks real as fuck,” Nua said.

“You really have to grab it and have a look at it,” confirmed Garrison.

Another contingent of the swing gang drove a load of pyrotechnic explosives to a base in Virginia. The studio had not communicated with the officer receiving the shipment. So the men spent their
day standing outside the base gates with rifles trained on them as soldiers searched the truck and verified identities.

“You're definitely scared,” said Amavisca, describing the experience of approaching any kind of state or Border Patrol checkpoint. The swing gang knew that in most instances, officials refrained from unpacking a fifty-three-foot truck. Still, Garrison said, “It's our job to drive. So we drive—and we have no idea.”

Garrison once worked at an East Coast facility for a week before his background check came through. It indicated a previous arrest for arms possession. The facility was an arms depot. He was kicked off but merely directed to another base. In Virginia, he'd just finished situating props when a small squad of soldiers entered the set. One of the troops looked around the street scene Garrison had just finished building. The man dropped his rifle in the dirt, threw up his hands, and ran away. “I thought,
wow, that's crazy
,” Garrison said. “I thought he was going to get in trouble because—well—that's some bitch shit, just running away.”

Garrison later learned that the fleeing soldier had just returned from Iraq, where he'd taken a bullet in a firefight—a shoot-out on a street that looked, apparently, just like the replica.

Desert winds, humidity, driving rain, hail, and snow—over distance and time, for the swing gang, the Baby Baghdads installed at disparate locations became, if not reality, a way of living real life. “When they throw the role players in there, it's like, you are there,” Nua said.