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the block, I noticed a second loading dock with more
trucks, many emblazoned with the names of large
grocery chains on the side. One door in and one door
out. Some of the workers had bragged to Lena about
the volume of meat they were able to turn out on a
single shift. Parking a block away from the main
entrance to the plant, I waited for the shift to end.
Nearly a hundred men and women were gathered
outside the main gate waiting for the night shift to
begin. Snapping a zoom lens onto my Minolta, I took
a few quick shots of the workers. If the workers were
illegals, they wouldn t be happy to know a stranger
was taking their picture.
At precisely six, an armed guard opened the
electric gate at the main entrance. A mass of men and
woman began pouring out of the plant and headed
eagerly for the gate, mingling briefly with the
workers waiting to enter. From where I was sitting, it
appeared that well over three-fourths of the workers
were Hispanic and predominantly men. Their clothes
looked filthy and were covered with reminders of
their work. Groups of them passed by my car,
carrying on animated conversations in Spanish. Once
upon a time I had had a passable knowledge of street
Spanish, but now I could only recall enough to catch
an occasional phrase.
While I was struggling to pick up what I could, I
noticed a white Lincoln Town Car, with the maximum
window tinting allowed by law, pull up to the front
gate. The vehicle nosed through a few workers and
stopped, so the driver could speak to the guard before
proceeding to a parking area near the front door of
the building. A large, well-dressed man, who
appeared to be Hispanic, got out of the car and looked
around. He yelled something at some of the workers,
and they moved a little more quickly into the plant.
The man, still wearing sunglasses even though the
sun had nearly dropped behind the building,
proceeded into the building as I managed to take
shots of his car. I would get Pauli to trace it through
DMV for me later after I enlarged the license plate
number.
Deciding to go to the cantina and play stupid
white woman for a while, I started my truck and
looked around to make sure there was no one coming
before I pulled away from the curb, waiting as
another tractor-trailer rumbled by. I hadn t seen it at
first, but a metallic blue-gray Mercedes 380 SL was
following the truck. Shit, I thought. If I had hit that
sucker, my insurance premiums would have doubled
overnight. The Mercedes stopped briefly at the plant
gate, and the guard waved it through. As I watched, it
pulled in next to the Lincoln. Refocusing my camera, I
snapped off a couple of shots of the Mercedes. The
driver of the Lincoln came out of the plant entrance
and walked to the driver s side of the Mercedes,
leaning down and speaking to whoever was driving.
Finally, the car door opened, and the second driver
got out, but my view was blocked by the Hispanic
man as they walked back into the plant.
After waiting for a second tractor-trailer to pass, I
made a quick U-turn and drove toward Rafael s
Cantina. The cantina was a stand-alone building
squeezed in between two larger buildings, and all
three looked run down. No pride of ownership here.
Fiesta lights hung under a faded striped awning,
which was held up by dented aluminum poles. I had
no trouble finding a parking space near the cantina
and guessed that most of the workers who frequented
the businesses along the street couldn t afford
vehicles. In fact, the only things on wheels that I had
seen worth owning were the two that had pulled into
the ABP parking lot. Throwing my jacket over my
camera case, I looked around inside the truck to make
sure there wasn t anything in sight that might entice
someone to break in.
As I got out, a small group of four or five men
walked past my truck, speaking in subdued voices
and glancing at me out of the corners of their eyes.
Illegals almost never looked directly at you, thinking
perhaps that someone could tell they were illegal by
simply looking into their eyes. Two of the men turned
into the cantina while the others kept walking.
Rafael s Cantina was pretty much what I had
expected. I d been in a hundred places like it before, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]