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be crushed.
    When they were done with the legal stuff, Estéban passed the
motivosa
. These baggies went in back pockets that zippered shut. In the end Estéban carried nothing. He gave Kelly a wad of pesos. “You can keep the change.”
    “Thanks,” Kelly said.
    They walked north without talking. The farther they went, the more they separated, until Estéban was well ahead and Kelly had him just in sight.
    Hookers were out on all the corners, standing alone or in clusters. The sidewalks were jammed with gringos, mostly young and a lot of them drunk. Kelly felt himself blend in among them; that familiar sinking sensation. No matter how many times it happened, it felt strange. He wondered whether Frank the fat man was still hiding weed in his folds and getting away with it. He wondered whether Frank was somewhere out here tonight.
    Estéban picked the places and Kelly followed. Kelly passeda uniformed policeman with a holstered gun and a baton in his hand. The cop’s eyes slipped over him without a pause; Kelly was invisible to him. On shopping nights, cruising the
turista
bars, Estéban was the one who stood out. Where the
Juárenses
spent their Friday evenings the police wore body armor and carried automatic weapons, not a little pistol and a stick.
    Anyone with half a brain could get bent south of the border on just about anything. The Rio Grande Pharmacy and a thousand others just like it made their livelihood catering to those who knew the score. But
turistas
were stupid: they paid too much for beers, too much for sex, too much for everything. The draw of the
farmacias
was that prescriptions were sometimes optional and the prices were low, but college kids, and teenagers especially, either didn’t know this or figured the
farmacias
were some kind of trap. They’d rather pay American prices to a man like Estéban than spend five minutes doing the same thing for less in a place without the noise and smoke and crowds.
    Kelly bought identical beers in identical bars with Estéban’s pesos while loud American music busted out on speakers overhead. The air reeked of bodies, drink and cigarettes. Estéban cruised the crowds and from time to time he fell back to Kelly. He pressed US money into Kelly’s hand and placed an order. “Two oxy, one
aracata
,” he might say, and Kelly would pass two baggies of pills and one of weed.
    Estéban didn’t carry on shopping nights. This was the way it worked because Kelly’s was the face the cops couldn’t see, or didn’t want to. Estéban held only on the short walk back to the buyer, and then he was clean again.
    They repeated the process over and over, working north block by block until even the hardiest partyers began to thin. Kelly’s pockets were almost empty. Some nights Estéban let him hold back a little
motivosa
for himself if they ended up with more than they could move. Tonight, though, they got rid of it all.
    Kelly’s end was fifteen percent. A member of La Raza would takeless, but he couldn’t glide beneath the radar the way Kelly could, either. As much as for his pockets and his skin, Kelly got paid for trustworthiness, too; he never held out on Estéban.
    They sat down in a booth at an all-night
taquería
. “Good night,” Estéban remarked. He counted money on the table where no one could see and gave Kelly his cut. Kelly put the dollars together with his leftover pesos.
    “Yeah,” Kelly agreed. He yawned into the back of his hand. The food came, they ate and he felt better.
    “You coming to dinner tomorrow?” Estéban asked.
    “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Just asking,” Estéban said. He ate, but stopped with food still on the paper plate in front of him. His eyes were bloodshot and bleary. “I’m fucking tired,
carnal
. You want a lift back to your place?”
    “Yeah, okay. You all right to drive?”
    “Better than a bus driver,” Estéban said.
    Estéban left a tip for the old lady who cleaned the tables and he and Kelly went out together.