Potrero, California never quite managed to turn its back on Mexico despite a century of temptations, both illicit and sublime.
The border was just a few miles south of town. The rest of America, which Potrero clung to with the desperation of a delusional day trader, felt farther away each year.
The six oilmen climbed a flight of stairs and came out into a warehouse much like the one they had entered on the Otay Mesa.
They were ushered into the same navy-blue van which had picked them up at the golf course. The same two men were up front.
Tires squeaked on a polished gray floor. The van pulled out of the warehouse into the darkness. They drove slowly along a narrow road which coiled up into the purple mountains like a sleeping serpent.
After a series of switchbacks they reached a broad mesa carved with two long valleys.
Through the windshield, they noticed an outer perimeter of black steel fencing bolted to thick concrete posts. It surrounded a walled compound.
Back up north, across the border in Potrero, California, somebody made the fatal mistake of throwing an empty bottle of Coors Banquet into the bed of a 1963 Studebaker Champ.
