Miguel's Gift Read online

  “OK. Everybody stop what you’re doing,” he roared, and the room fell instantly silent. Moretti began pacing back and forth like a sentry guarding a checkpoint. “I don’t care if the wets hear this. They can be my witnesses if the shit hits the fan. I’ve got a list here with eighteen names on it.” He lifted a pair of glasses to his eyes. “We’ve got Nigerians, Jamaicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Chinese, a Laotian . . . all arrested early yesterday. But what else do you suppose they have in common?”

  He continued pacing, knowing nobody would answer.

  “They all pose a threat to my financial well-being because they’ve been sitting in lockup for twenty-three hours and haven’t been served with a formal notice as to why they’re being deported. This presents a bit of a problem because the ACL fucking U would love nothing more than to sue the shit out of . . . guess who?”

  Moretti stopped pacing and faced his audience. He paused for emphasis, then bent forward and spoke with exaggerated gentleness, as if addressing schoolchildren.

  “Yeah, me, that’s who. And anybody else they can shake down. They’re going for personal assets these days, ladies and gentlemen, not just the government’s. They have this crazy idea that I am somehow responsible for everything you guys do. And I find that very frightening.” He straightened and his voice deepened. “So whichever of you is responsible, I want something on my desk within the hour.”

  There were several moments of silence as Moretti scanned the room with tired, cynical eyes. He stopped when he noticed one of the prettier transvestites and the agent sitting next to her in the middle of the room.

  “Wickberg, I don’t care if you bring in fake women, as long as they’re deportable,” he said. “But there’s no reason to take two hours to process each one. People are starting to talk.”

  Leticia Boyer, the Hispanic Judy Garland, fluttered her fake eyelashes at agent Adam Wickberg. “Adam, I didn’t know you took more time with us. That’s so cute,” cooed Boyer as she reached over to pat his hand.

  Wickberg’s face turned crimson as the squad room erupted in laughter. Moretti rolled his eyes and shook his head. “OK, OK. Remember, I want that paperwork within the hour.” The office buzz quickly resumed.

  Hayden turned to the Mexican sitting next to him. “Bad luck today, no?” he asked in Spanish.

  “Yes, sir. You run very fast,” said the Mexican.

  “The mud slowed you down.”

  Willis observed the exchange with visible irritation. “What the hell are you doing, Hayden?”

  “Just trying to be civil,” Hayden responded.

  “We don’t have time for fuckin’ civility,” said Willis. “This guy ran you through a mud pit, remember? Collect the information and ship his ass.”

  At that moment a tall, heavyset man in a tweed jacket appeared next to Hayden’s desk. Charlie McCloud had wavy brown hair, his eyebrows and mustache flecked with hints of red.

  “You upset again, Joe?” said McCloud with a patient smile. “Let your blood pressure skyrocket and you won’t make retirement.”

  “Mind your own business. Besides, I don’t wanna retire,” Willis said, with a wearied look, as if he’d been through this before with McCloud.

  “Young fella was just exercising his Spanish a little,” said McCloud. “No harm in that, is there?”

  “We don’t have time for idle chitchat,” said Willis sharply, getting up from his desk. “I’m going for coffee. Watch my guy, Hayden.”

  McCloud chuckled softly and turned to Hayden. “Nick Hayden?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hayden. He stood and shook McCloud’s hand.

  “Charlie McCloud, your training officer. I’ve been out of the office for a few days. How things going so far?” There was a trace of sympathy in McCloud’s eyes.

  “OK. I’m sure I can learn a lot from Mr. Willis.”

  “Yeah, Joe’s been around—knows the street. Listen, when you get a break here, stop by my office. No rush—I’ll be in all afternoon.”

  After Nick finished the paperwork, he interviewed and processed two more of the Mexicans they’d captured outside the factory. Willis had caustically informed him that the only way to remove dozens of illegals in a single day was to convince them to give up their right to a deportation hearing and return voluntarily to their homeland. The court system would collapse if they all demanded a hearing before an immigration judge, and it would delay their departures for several days. But each of the three Mexicans Hayden interviewed had readily agreed to return to his country immediately. Altogether, fifty-eight Mexicans had been arrested that day by area control units in Chicago, and almost all of them would be on the bus headed for Juárez later that night. After being released on the other side of the border, many would quickly return, often to the same jobs they’d left behind. Clearly, the merry-go-round of capture, removal, and reentry satisfied everybody, even those temporarily caught in the net. Delays orchestrated by the bureaucracy were a relatively small price to pay.

  It was late afternoon before things quieted down and Willis allowed Hayden to leave the unit. Nick stopped in the washroom on his way to McCloud’s office. Tired but exhilarated, he splashed cold water on his face and took a moment to reflect. This was going to be more of a challenge than he’d anticipated—thrown into the fire without formal training and partnered with a guy who seemed like a character out of a Dickens novel. He could see that the job’s physical and emotional demands were such that his clandestine mission could not be his top priority, at least for now. Still, he was confident that in time he would find answers to the questions that had been preying on his mind all these years. Keep your eyes and ears open and trust nobody, he told himself. He patted his face dry, brushed the remaining bits of dried mud from the sleeves of his sport coat, and began the short walk to McCloud’s office.

  * * *

  Charlie McCloud picked his way through Nick Hayden’s personnel file with growing interest. Hayden had earned a degree in English literature from the University of Illinois and spent almost two years traveling and working odd jobs in Spain and Germany. Then he’d successfully completed a year of law school before dropping out and signing on with INS—a rather curious sequence of events, McCloud thought. Why would he give up the prospect of a lucrative career as a lawyer in favor of employment with a relatively obscure federal agency?

  McCloud had arrived at the INS Investigations Division in Chicago by a more traditional route. Born and raised in central Michigan, he’d been hired by the Border Patrol upon graduation from college and been dispatched, along with his young wife, to Yuma, Arizona. But after two years on the job he’d begun to find the work tedious; and his wife, never excited about her husband’s career choice, felt marooned in the heat, wind, and isolation of the desert. Encouraged by his wife, McCloud had applied and been accepted into the graduate program in political science at UCLA. Almost simultaneously he’d been selected for a criminal investigator position at the Chicago INS office, a job he’d applied for on a whim. He ultimately convinced his wife that the job would pay for his education and he could attend night school at DePaul University. The job would be temporary, he’d told her, until he could transition into the world of academia.

  On reporting for duty at his new post, McCloud was assigned to area control but was soon transferred into the fraud investigations unit where he began working criminal cases—setting up complex undercover operations that targeted organizers of immigration fraud schemes and traffickers in counterfeit green cards, social security cards, visas, and birth certificates. In the process, McCloud discovered that life as an investigator in a large city, particularly one as riddled with crime as Chicago, was far more interesting than tracking illegals in the desert.

  McCloud was soon hooked. The cases were like novels crammed with vivid characters, and he was orchestrating the storyline. Within a few years he’d posted more convictions than anybody else in the office and had become an acknowledged expert in the immigration fraud cases that abounded in the
Chicago area. Prosecuting attorneys could rely on McCloud to deliver cases that were so well documented that there was little or no question about their outcome. And when the defendants received prison sentences, nothing could match the feeling of accomplishment—knowing that he’d helped bring at least a small measure of justice to society.

  To his wife’s chagrin, he’d never gotten around to enrolling at DePaul, and she began to observe unwelcome changes in her now remote and distracted husband. His warm, vulnerable side seemed to have disappeared, and he’d developed a blunt, condescending way of communicating that made her feel cut off and alone. Five years after their move to Chicago, and feeling as though she was living with a stranger, she took their two girls and left him. On reflection years later, McCloud couldn’t blame her. For reasons he didn’t grasp at the time, he’d become self-absorbed, begun drinking heavily, and devoted most of his energy to his beloved investigations. Only in retrospect was he able to see that in his zeal to succeed professionally, people had become as impersonal to him as chess pieces on a board. Perhaps unavoidably, it had spilled over into his personal life.

  Finally, after more than nineteen years on the job, his forays into criminal investigations began to lack the urgency that had sustained him for so long. He lived in a small one-bedroom apartment and did his best to hide the fact that he was very lonely. He put in long hours at the office, hoping a new case would reignite the old magic, and secretly feared what appeared to be the barren landscape of retirement.

  When the training officer position opened up, McCloud jumped on it, keenly aware that if he didn’t take the job, some young, ambitious agent hoping to pad his résumé would happily parrot the company line to new agents, who had no idea of what they were getting into. McCloud knew things—not just how to conduct investigations—and he wanted to share them.

  McCloud worked out of a small, windowless room—“the bunker,” he called it—the walls lined with bookcases. When Hayden arrived, the door was open, and McCloud had him take a seat while he finished reviewing his file. Hayden noticed that among the manuals and law books on the shelves were several volumes by Steinbeck and Hemingway.

  “Everybody knows the first year of law school is the hardest,” said McCloud finally, peering at Hayden over reading glasses that sat on the tip of his nose. “You made it through and then walked away. That’s pretty unusual.”

  “I was tired of school and wasn’t looking forward to two more years,” said Hayden. “Besides, this job sounded fascinating—being around people from other cultures . . . a different kind of learning opportunity.”

  McCloud raised his eyebrows. “That sounds pretty esoteric, Hayden. This isn’t some human laboratory where you go around in a white coat and make notes on a clipboard. If you keep talking like that, they’ll call you ‘the professor.’ And that ain’t good.” McCloud nodded toward the squad room down the hall. “They want you to be good backup, not a student of local anthropology.”

  “No, of course not,” Hayden replied stiffly.

  “Most of these guys aren’t impressed with degrees or higher education. In fact, having a degree can work against you and create suspicion. It’s like in Cambodia when the Commies took over—Pol Pot wanted to kill anybody who wore glasses because he thought they were intellectuals and couldn’t be trusted. Your law school experience won’t help. If anything, it’ll create distrust.”

  “I never expected it to give me any special status,” said Hayden.

  “Well, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s good that we’re hiring guys who are educated and creative, because the cases we’re working in other units are becoming more complex.”

  “What kind of cases?”

  “Smuggling, counterfeit documents, fraud schemes to get papers. There are great cases out there, hanging like ripe fruit. But for now, as a trainee, area control is the best place to learn the street.”

  “How long will I be there?”

  “At least two or three years. Area control is the equivalent of being a uniformed beat cop but without the uniform. Eventually you’ll get a chance to work criminal cases in another unit, which is like being promoted to detective.”

  “I don’t have any problem with picking up illegals for a couple years.”

  “Good, because you have no say in it. You go where they want you to go and do what they want you to do.” McCloud paused momentarily for a reaction.

  Hayden nodded respectfully.

  “You’ll go to the academy in a couple of weeks,” McCloud continued. “Then we’ll have training classes for you and other guys who are in their first couple of years on the job. You’ll have to go before the retention panel after a year to find out if you’ve made it through probation.”

  “Yes, they told me.”

  “I’m surprised with your background you didn’t go with one of the pretty-boy agencies—the FBI or Secret Service. They would have taken you.”

  “This opened up first and . . . it looked like a good opportunity.”

  McCloud leaned back, webbed his hands behind his head, and studied Hayden for a moment. “I don’t know if anybody’s mentioned it, but the bosses have decided to be aggressive again in picking up wets, at least for a while, so things can get pretty dicey in area control. When you’re arresting hundreds of people every week there are going to be some bad apples in the mix, so be prepared for anything. Stay alert. And regardless of what Willis or anybody else tells you, don’t forget that you’re dealing with human beings out there. You have a lot of power in this job, and even though you have to enforce the law and arrest people, they deserve respect. It’s part of being a true professional. Some of these guys have forgotten about that.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll remember that,” said Hayden. McCloud seemed to have finished, but his penetrating stare made Hayden uneasy. Nick nodded toward the bookcase. “I see you like Hemingway. I’ve read almost everything he’s written.”

  “The short stories in particular are great,” said McCloud. “Hemingway’s books are even more interesting after you’ve read his biographies.” McCloud gazed distractedly at the bookcase for a moment. “He was a genius, but he wouldn’t have been any good at this job.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he was an artist, and artists are looking for transcendent truths. Where could he find that around here? Plus, he had internal demons and was always trying to prove something. That can be dangerous in this line of work. Hell of a writer though.” McCloud paused briefly. “Anyway, we’re done here for the moment. I’ll let you know about your training schedule in the next few days.”

  “OK.”

  Hayden stood up to leave and was reaching for the door when McCloud thought of something. “You know, the name Hayden sounds kind of familiar. Can’t place it, but I know I’ve heard it before.”

  “It’s a pretty common name. Everybody’s run into a Hayden at some point, I guess.”

  With a grimace and shake of his head, McCloud shoved the file into his desk drawer. “OK, I’m here if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Hayden closed the door and stood in the hallway, his heart galloping. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Perhaps McCloud had come across some other Hayden and his curiosity meant nothing. But Nick had known all along that he was vulnerable, that it was entirely possible that McCloud or another veteran agent could make the connection. It was as if he were straddling the rim of a deep canyon. Even a small gust of wind could send him tumbling off the edge.

  * * *

  Tom Kane drove the Plymouth Fury through the bright morning sunshine that streamed between abandoned warehouses on South Halsted Street. Many of their large windows had been shattered by vandals’ rocks, and flocks of sparrows soared through the openings like fleets of tiny warplanes. The sweet aroma of bread from a commercial bakery filled the air. As Hayden took in the scenery from the passenger seat, they entered an area of decaying apartment buildings and small businesses, some of which were boarded up.
/>   “Ten years ago this area was thriving,” said Kane, playing the role of tour guide. “A lot of the businesses moved to the suburbs where it’s safer. But there are still a lot of wets down here in these roach-infested buildings.” Kane waved dismissively toward a bus stop where several Hispanic-looking men were huddled. “Hell, we shouldn’t even bother with factories. We could fill up our cars right here.”

  Kane was wearing his usual charcoal-colored suit, the elbows shiny from wear, a narrow black tie over a white shirt, and dark sunglasses. If you gave him a black fedora, he could pass for one of the Blues Brothers. Kane had a rangy, powerful build and thick, dark brown hair that flowed over the tops of his ears. When he flashed one of his infrequent smiles, it came off anywhere from mischievous to menacing. Though women considered him handsome, they also found him gruff, remote, and a bit frightening.

  Kane had never thought that growing up in a working-class Irish family on the southwest side of Chicago had prepared him for much of anything. But sharing close quarters with five brothers and four sisters in an atmosphere of nonstop bedlam seemed to have girded him for his future profession. From the start, he brought to his work an almost manic energy and an instinct for taking charge of fast-moving events in the field. His confidence, often drifting into arrogance, sent a warning to anybody who might challenge him and kept most people on the defensive. He thought of the job as his salvation, a crusade that filled the emptiness, though he never spoke of it in those terms. Instead, he adopted the more typical agent’s pose of the grim and bemused cynic.

  Kane was apprehensive when told he’d be partnered for the day with Hayden, who had been to the academy for training and was now four months into his first year. Though Kane, like Hayden, had not come through the Patrol, he sensed the new guy was a “thinker.” Too much thinking and analyzing, the theory went, creates confusion, hesitation. Hayden also had an independent streak, and unlike most young agents who sought the approval of senior officers like obedient lapdogs, he didn’t follow his superiors to their favorite watering holes at the end of the day, keeping his distance as if he didn’t want anybody to get to know him. Aside from being irritated with having to buy their own drinks, Kane and many of the journeymen resented what they saw as aloofness.