A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1:8
I moved through Huron and Avenal quickly. The people in question were home and cooperative. There’s no special skillset required for serving subpoenas, you just follow directions. I had names, addresses, vehicle descriptions, even photos of the people to be served. The only thing I was uniquely good at was getting information from people, remembering small details and doggedly running down leads.
I usually employ the Buck Owens technique. Act naturally you know, just a big dumb white guy trying to make a living among faster and cheaper Mexicans. When I got to Coalinga it went something like this…
“Hi I’m looking for uhhh (looking down at the subpoena) Muh-gel Ser-van-teez?
A cute little girl, maybe 10 years old turned back to the inside of the house and yelled “Mama, donde esta Papa?”
A voice from deep inside the home replied. ”Se yibbida yibbida tienda con el Jesse del tío. Porque?” to which the girl replied in rapid fire Spanish…”Ahi un gabacho aquí yibbida yibbida buscando lo.”
That brought mom to the door. She looked me up and down and said…”Preguntele porque el yibbida su padre. “
Which prompted the girl to say “Why do you want to see my dad?”
“I have some papers…and a check here for him -eyes open wide, a little louder and slower- do-you-know-when-he-will-be-home?” I held the subpoena up for Mrs. Cervantez to examine along with the $87.00 appearance fee. She seemed skeptical.
”Digale que su padre esta yibbida del norte”
“She says he is up north, working.”
I smiled at the little girl “Uh…OK, thank you.” I nodded to her mother respectfully “Mu-chis grah-cee-is.
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but you know what? A big smelly, load of shit is even better. Miguel Cervantes was over at the store with uncle Jesse.
In Coalinga, the white folks shop at the Save-Mart and the Mexicans shop at RN Market on Elm, so I headed over there. I hadn’t seen Miguel’s green ‘96 Buick Le Sabre parked back at the house but there was one parked at the edge of the lot in the shade of a couple Cottonwood trees. I recognized Miguel from his photo, drinking Budweiser with two other men also in their thirties.
“Hola Senor Cervantes, esto es para usted.” I set the subpoena and the check down next to him on the hood of his car and turned on my heel.
“What is this all about?” Miguel asked. It was a legitimate question and there was nothing at all evasive or threatening in his tone or body language, so I went back and explained. ”It’s a subpoena Mr. Cervantes, Belinda Cruz’s attorney needs you to appear at her hearing next Tuesday in Fresno. That 87 dollar check is what the State of California assumes it will cost you to drive from your home address into Fresno and back.”
“They told me something about this at work, I’d forgotten all about it.” How did you know I’d be here?
I’ll tell you Mr. Cervantez, but it will cost you a beer.”
He reached into the ice chest and handed me an ice cold tallboy. The sun was almost down but the hot wind was still flapping through the cottonwoods. I told him about his daughter calling me a gabacho, and his job up north and we all laughed.
Driving out of Coalinga with a little beer buzz, the dusky hills littered with dormant oil rigs, I was halfway home with three down, three to go. I was getting a little tired and started thinking about just how long I’ve been running around doing this shit. Hassling Mexicans for 20 years and I have yet to meet anybody in the business remotely resembling Charlie Askins, much less Mike Hammer.
Pembroke Investigations worked hard to divorce themselves from that kind of hardboiled detective image with an absolute no firearms policy and a company logo featuring a cute little Pembroke Corgi dressed up like Sherlock Holmes in a raincoat and Deerstalker cap. We avoided divorce and criminal investigations, concentrating on the more lucrative Worker’s Comp. and personal injury claims.
Jack Pembroke realized that the business had drastically changed over the years. Used to be, you could take the local claims manager out golfing a few times a year, give him some box seats for the horse races, lunch at The Elbow Room and you had a client. Nowadays there are almost no claims managers locally, just adjusters, many of them soccer moms. They didn’t appreciate the races or a good steak sandwich, but how they love that little Corgi on the T-shirts and coffee mugs we gave away at their associational meetings and continuing ed. seminars. All this was fine by me, I’d had pretty much all the cowboy kicked out of me back in the ’90s working for La Migra.
I’d applied and tested for The Border Patrol back in ‘82, right after my Grandpa died. He’d always told me they were a tough outfit. I was surprised when six months later, I was invited to the academy back in Glynco, Georgia. There, for 19 weeks I was trained in all kinds of useful stuff like immigration and criminal law, observation and tracking, communications, armed and unarmed self defense. Most useful of all, I was forced to learn Spanish. The Spanish exam was what had eliminated the most trainees but I found the same gift that enabled me to mimic Marty Robbins and pick out chord progressions off the radio also helped me to pick up the language fairly easily.
Upon graduation, I was assigned to the San Diego Sector. My life in San Diego was pretty intense compared to Fresno. In the 12 years I lived down there I bought my first house, became a husband and father, opened for The Blasters, and killed a man.
I started out at the San Clemente Station, working the checkpoint on I-5 up by San Onofre, searching vehicles tor illegals and drugs. I rented an apartment in Oceanside, saved my money and worked overtime on the weekends. When I wasn’t working or sleeping, I’d drive around trying to get a feel for SoCal. I learned that that the big city was just a bunch of little cities and the people were friendly. I was happy down there. I really loved the North County area so even when I’d transferred to the El Cajon Station, I bought a small house in Poway. I never worried for money and only felt a little guilty buying a brand new Martin guitar and a used bassboat.
Have you ever had a day in your life when things are going so good you have to stop and take note? Just let it soak in because you know you’ll need it later? I remember my mom and dad came down to visit in ‘86, my dad and I spent the morning fishing on Lake Hodges. We brought a bunch of big bluegill home and I showed my mom how to make make fish tacos and Margaritas without a blender. Then we drove down to the Murph and watched the Padres beat the Dodgers. My dad wanted to retire and move down the next week.
My mom was uneasy though. Sure I was 27 and having the time of my life but she worried I was lonely and depressed, or even worse…gay. She told me an old friend of mine had moved down, had his address and phone number all printed up on a 3 x 5 card. “He met a nice girl down here and got married.”
Hopefully you know? Like marriage is a contagion that spreads through a group of acquaintances. Moms possess ancient wisdom.
I called up my old pal Stacy Watson a few days after my parents drove back to Fresno. He lived just on the other side of the 15 in Penasquitos. We we were practically neighbors. He’d gotten hired right out of college to work for the San Diego power company. They were having a BBQ the coming Sunday and he invited me over. “Bring your guitar” he said.
Stacy and I had gone to the same high school and been in a couple party bands together. He was the best musician I’d ever met. He played lead guitar but could play many other instruments as well. I saw him pick up a mandolin for the first time in his life and in a few minutes he’d figured out the basics and was playing “Mandolin Wind”. If the drummer didn’t show up, Stacy would put down his guitar and become the drummer. Piano, bass, lap-steel? If it had strings it was fair game. And the guy had a sense of rhythm that baffled me. We could be playing a song using the exact same chords, just simple stuff and he could make the thing bounce and breathe.
That day at the barbeque I met Stacy’s wife Janet, and her sister Jennifer, two Texas girls that had moved to San Diego in the ’70s. It was a setup from the word go, Stacy’s mom and my mom had set the wheels in motion weeks before and Jennifer and I were married within the next 18 months. If that sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. Jenn’s the best thing ever happened to me.
Stacy and I picked up right where we’d left off musically. He needed a bass player/vocalist for a company picnic, I knew most of the songs, a couple rehearsals and we were good to go. We started getting invitations to play house parties on the weekends doing Tom Petty and ZZ Top covers. Stacy came up with the name Day Job and Jenn designed a logo and surprised us with 500 stickers that began showing up on cars and surf shop windows.
Jenn liked the idea of being married to a musician and she was our booking agent. She got us a few bar gigs and then made sure all our usual house party crowd showed up and bought lots of drinks. We got a bit of a rep as a safe bet for a cover band.
Everybody was happy. I mean a band is a pain in the ass to keep going but Stacy and Jenn had a handle on that. We had trouble keeping drummers but that all worked out. Some of the younger kids (when did they become kids?) in the area looked up to us and we were kind of a proving ground for them. New players brought new customers for the bars. I could play bass or rhythm guitar as needed and handled all the vocal chores.
My biggest problem was my work schedule. I worked nights and although I had most weekends off we’d get offers for some of the better clubs like Caine’s or The Belly Up in the middle of the week and have to turn them down. I’d never thought about it as a money maker, it was just fun.
I loved the Border Patrol back then. It had always been kind of a rough and tumble outfit and I got in right at the tail end of that era. Nowadays they have more mountain bikes than horses and that’s a shame in my book. I had settled in out at El Cajon pretty good. I enjoyed Linewatch on the border southeast of town. I had my four-wheel drive Blazer, night vision gear and the radio. There were fifteen of us in Blazers and one van on standby to drive the people we’d apprehend back to the station. We all stayed very busy.
We’d rotate van duty because it was such a pitiful job driving those people back to the detention center. They’d be hungry, thirsty and just heartbroken. Half the time I’d end up stopping at the McDonalds on the way back and buying them some burgers. We all did it, you couldn’t help but feel for the “wets”. Most of them just wanted to get in, hook up with family and go to work. They almost never gave us any problems when we rolled them up. Maybe a runner now and then but violence out there was pretty rare. The Chula Vista Station was where all the real action took place. We’d hear all about it at the briefings and you had to stay sharp, every year more agents were killed or injured in the line of duty than any other Federal law enforcement agency.
And that’s the way it went, 8 hours a night, five, sometimes six days a week. Pension, medical and dental until our daughter Michelle was born in 1989 and I switched over to days as soon as I could after that to keep things on more of an even, family sized keel. I was moved away from the border, back to the checkpoint on HWY 94. For awhile there I led a pretty normal life. 8:00-5:00, traffic home, dinner, fawning over our daughter and planning for the future.
