by Don Winslow
Then he hears a laugh behind him.
It’s Carlos.
Callan has known María’s son since he was a kid and has to remind himself that Carlos isn’t a kid anymore but a full-grown man with a wife and two kids of his own. Whom he works like a mule to support. Carlos decks on the charter sports boats and crews on the commercial fishing boats and by working his ass off has saved enough money to put a down payment on a thirty-two-foot 1989 Topaz convertible with twin 735-horsepower diesel engines, tower release outriggers, a fighting chair and a forward cabin with a full galley so he can go into business for himself.
Callan’s been helping him fix the boat up, just like Carlos helps him out when he needs an extra hand, someone to take the tourists out on the water or run them to one of the parks, or when he needs a second pair of hands fixing a roof.
Now Carlos laughs and asks, “The motor fighting back?”
“And winning,” Callan says.
“You’re getting old,” Carlos says.
Callan is fifty-four and agrees. His shoulder-length hair is getting some silver in it. “And you look like shit.”
“Out all night.”
“With Bustamente?”
“Yeah.”
Callan asks, “Catch anything?”
“Some yellowfin,” Carlos says. “You want me to get that plug out for you?”
“No, I got it.” Callan gives the wrench another crank and the plug comes out. “You eaten? They got lunch on up at the house and we’re light.”
Just four guests—two middle-aged birders and a hippie couple.
“I’m good,” Carlos says, patting his stomach.
Or what there is of it. As María says, “If Carlos is carrying any fat, it’s in his head.” No, he’s lean, taut-muscled and killer handsome. If he weren’t such a faithful husband to Elisa, he’d be up all night banging tourist women.
Now he helps Callan swap out the spark plugs, and they make a date to work on the Topaz—Carlos wants to lay a wooden deck in the forward cabin. They talk for a few more minutes—the weather, fishing, baseball, the usual bullshit—and Carlos heads off to work a charter that’s going out for marlin.
Callan goes up to the house to see if the guests want to go out snorkeling.
Nora is in the kitchen, chopping some vegetables.
They’ve been together—with a few interruptions—for sixteen years now and she still stops his heart.
Nora Hayden is a startlingly beautiful woman.
Hair that can only be described as golden, cut shorter the past few years for life in the tropics.
Blue eyes as clear and warm as the Pacific.
At fifty-two, Callan thinks, she’s never been lovelier. Trim from the swimming and the yoga, and the age lines around her eyes and mouth just make her more interesting.
And that’s just the package.
What’s inside the package, Callan knows, is pure gold.
Nora is smart, a lot smarter than he is, a great businesswoman, and she has the heart of a lioness.
He loves her more than life.
Now he comes up behind her, wraps his arm around her waist and says, “How’s your day?”
She arches her neck back and kisses him on the cheek. “Good. Yours?”
“Good,” Callan says. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Nora says. “Depends on what I can find.”
“Carlos says they have yellowtail.”
“Who does?”
“Bustamente.”
Nora shakes her head. “No, he doesn’t. María went by this morning, he doesn’t have anything.”
“That’s weird,” Callan says. “Carlos said they went out last night.”
Nora shrugs. “What can I tell you? The boat ready?”
“Yup.”
He takes the guests out snorkeling, brings back as many people as he went out with—which is the bottom-line requirement—grabs a shower and then drives them into town for dinner.
Comes back to eat with Nora.
With no guests, she’s made them a simple dish of rice and beans, which Callan eats like a horse.
“Are you looking forward to the quiet season?” Nora asks.
“A little.”
A lot, Nora thinks. She knows her man. He’s a private person, a quiet person, and while he’s good at the socializing that comes with their business—he’s quite charming when he wants to be—she knows that it doesn’t come naturally to him and that he prefers solitude.
Would rather be alone with his work, and her.
Nora’s looking forward to it, too.
She likes the business, likes hosting, likes most of the guests, many of whom are repeat customers, but it will be nice to have some downtime and some time alone with Sean. Take their sunset walks on the beach, which they rarely have time for when the house is full.
Nora is happy with her life.
With the rhythms of their days and nights, their seasons.
She never thought she’d be happy, but she is.
After dinner and coffee, Callan drives back to Tamarindo to pick up the guests. He meets them at the Crazy Monkey. The birders are finishing up dessert, the hippies are dancing in the disco, so he has time to kill and sits down for a beer.
From the bar, Callan can see the Mexicans in the disco. They stick out, in their norteño cowboy garb.
It’s a fairly recent development here in Guanacaste, groups of a dozen or more Mexicans, mostly men, occasionally with girlfriends. He sees them at the Crazy Monkey, the Pacífico, in Sharkey’s watching fútbol or a boxing match.
Callan doesn’t like it.
It’s not that he has anything against Mexicans. He doesn’t—he just has something against these Mexicans.
“Rains are coming,” the bartender says, handing him a Rancho Humo and shaking his head when Callan reaches for his wallet.
Callan lays a tip that’s more than the cost of the beer. “You gonna hang out?”
“No,” the bartender says, “I’m going to go back to San José, see family.”
“That’s nice.”
He turns back and sees Carlos.
In the disco, talking with one of the Mexicans. Thick, burly guy in his thirties, has that A-male, leader-of-the-pack look about him. Just a little better dressed than the rest, a little better groomed.
The jefe, Callan thinks. He’s seen him around Tamarindo with two other men. Now he sees Carlos nod and then shake the jefe’s hand.
Callan finishes his beer, picks up the guests and drives them home.
Has a hard time sleeping.
Callan is strictly a “mind your own business” guy, and he knows that’s what he should do now.
But it’s María’s kid.
And he likes Carlos.
So despite himself, the next morning he finds Carlos working on the Topaz and hops on board.
“I thought we said Saturday,” Carlos says.
“We did,” Callan says. “I wanted to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“What you’re doing.”
Carlos looks uneasy. “What am I doing?”
“Come on, man,” Callan says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The coke runs you’re doing with Bustamente,” Callan says.
Why the Mexicans are here. They fly the cocaine up from South America, put it on small boats here that go out and meet larger boats for the run up to Mexico or even California.
They pay the local fishermen to make these runs.
Callan gets it; the fishing is bad, and even if it were good, it’s nothing compared to the money you can make—a month’s pay or more in a single night—running out the coke.
“I’m not—”
“Don’t insult me.”
Carlos gets pissed. “It’s none of your business.”
“Look, I get it,” Callan says. “A few of these runs, you can pay off the boat and you’re in business for yo
urself. That’s the dream, right? But I know these people. Believe me, you don’t want to be in business with them. You get the cash for a boat, you think you can just quit the other stuff. But they won’t let you, Carlos. They’ll want you to run dope on your boat.”
“I’ll say no.”
“You don’t say no to these people.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Carlos asks.
“I just know,” Callan says. “This isn’t for you.”
“No?” Carlos asks. “What’s for me, Callan? Be your cute Tico boat boy the rest of my life?”
“You buy your own boat, you start your own charter business.”
“That could be years away.”
Callan shrugs.
“Easy for you,” Carlos says. “You have your own business.”
True enough, Callan thinks. But he says, “Just being your friend, man.”
“Then be my friend,” Carlos says. “And don’t you say anything to my mom.”
“I won’t,” Callan says. “But how is she going to feel when they throw your ass in prison?”
Carlos smiles. “They have to catch my ass first.”
“You read the papers, Carlos?” Callan asks. “Watch the news? The Costa Rican government just renewed a deal with the US. The fucking US Coast Guard is out there patrolling. With the DEA.”
This won’t end well.
It’s just the next afternoon, Callan’s in the boat scrubbing out the salt water, when the jefe comes up on him.
“Nice boat,” he says, a smarmy fucking smile on his grill.
“Thanks.”
“You Donovan?”
“Yeah.” It’s the name Callan uses here.
“Carlos’s friend.”
“Right again,” Callan says. There’s no sense putting it off. “What do you want?”
The smile comes off. “I want you to mind your own fucking business.”
“How do you know,” Callan asks, “what my fucking business is or isn’t?”
“I know my business isn’t your business,” the jefe says.
“Look,” Callan says, “you can get all the boats and fishermen you want. All I’m saying is, why don’t you just leave this one guy alone?”
“You know how it goes,” the jefe says. “You make an exception for one person, you have to make it for everybody. Then it’s not an exception no more.”
“One guy, all I’m saying.”
“We don’t need no fucking yanquis,” the jefe says, “coming down here to tell us what to do, not to do.”
“Don’t need no fucking Mexicans, either.”
“You don’t like Mexicans?”
“I don’t like you,” Callan says.
“Do you know who we are?”
“Pretty much.”
“We’re Sinaloa,” the jefe says. “You don’t fuck with us. And you let Carlos do what he has to do.”
“He’s a grown man,” Callan says. “He can do what he wants.”
“That’s right.”
“That is right,” Callan says.
“Don’t fuck with us.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
The jefe gives him a Bobby Badass staredown and then walks away. Callan watches him go.
I should have minded my own damn business, he thinks.
The next few weeks go by quietly. The rains come and the tourists leave, except for a few adventurous types looking for an experience and a bargain. Callan sees the jefe a couple more times, once at the Crazy Monkey, another time at the Pacífico. He even sees him again with Carlos, but Callan looks away as the jefe smirks at him.
Callan doesn’t bring it up again with Carlos. They work on his boat, work on the guest cottage roofs and talk about anything but. I tried once, Callan thinks. Carlos is a grown man, and it would be insulting to bring it up again.
Life settles back into its routine.
Callan spends most of this time on repairs, sneaking away to his shop in the afternoons to work on the dining room table. Just before sunset, he and Nora meet and go walk the beach, even if it’s raining, because the rain is warm and they don’t mind getting wet.
They have quiet dinners, make love under the tin roof.
It’s May when he wakes up one morning, it’s still dark, and he hears a commotion downstairs.
It’s María and she’s crying.
When he gets down to the kitchen, Nora has María in her arms.
“They have Carlos!” María is sobbing. “They have Carlos!”
They calm her down to get details. What she knows, anyway. There was a “seizure,” an arrest out in the water. They say it was cocaine. Eleven Ticos have been arrested.
Carlos is one of them.
Callan drives into town to get details.
The local police chief talks to him.
It’s not good. It’s the largest cocaine bust ever in Costa Rica. Four tons of the shit. On Bustamente’s boat and one other. Eleven people in custody, all of them young, not one of them with a prior criminal record.
They’re all fishermen, Callan knows.
Tempted by the money.
Now they’re fucked.
Two tons of coke? Whether Costa Rica tries them or the US does, they’re looking at decades behind bars.
Callan drives back and he and Nora try to calm María. They’ll get Carlos a lawyer, maybe he can make some kind of deal . . .
But Callan knows that isn’t going to work.
If Carlos makes a deal, agrees to name names or testify, he’s a dead man. They’ll get to him in the jail.
They might anyway, just to be sure.
It’s that night the jefe comes back.
He has two guys with him.
They stand off to the back and the side.
Callan’s tarping the panga in expectation of a heavy storm that’s supposed to be moving in. He hops down from the boat as the jefe walks up.
“You heard what happened?” the jefe asks.
“I heard.”
“I’m wondering if you had something to do with it.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t know,” the jefe says. “But you’d better talk to your boy, tell him to keep his mouth shut.”
“He probably knows that already.”
“Just in case he don’t,” the jefe says. “If he talks, I’ll kill him, his mother, you, and that pretty wife of—”
The gun comes up from Callan’s shirt in a smooth motion.
Before the jefe’s eyes can widen, Callan puts two bullets between them.
One of the jefe’s guys goes for his gun but he’s way too slow and Callan puts two bullets in his face, then swings and does the same to the other guy.
Three dead in as many seconds.
Sean Callan, aka John Donovan, was known in another life as “Billy the Kid” Callan.
Hit man for the Irish mob.
Hit man for the Italian mob.
Hit man for Adán Barrera.
That was a different life, but some skills don’t die.
Callan loads the three bodies into the panga and takes them way out. He shoves some divers’ weights into their clothes and hefts them over the side. Then he tosses his pistol, a 9 mm Sig he’s had for a long time and will miss.
It’s raining hard now and Nora is curious when he comes in soaked. He tells her exactly what happened, because they don’t lie to each other and after all she’s been through, there’s nothing that’s going to shake her.
But it makes her uneasy, the Sinaloans being as close as Tamarindo. It was a long time ago, and most of the people she knew then are dead or in prison, but she had been Adán Barrera’s legendary mistress. He was the Lord of the Skies and she was his lady, and there might still be people who could recognize her, remember her.
She hopes not, she’s been happy here, finally at peace here, and she doesn’t want to go on the run again. But if she has to . . .
They have money, safely stored in numbered accounts in the Caymans, Switze
rland, the Cook Islands. They try to live on just the proceeds from the guest house, but if they need cash to disappear, it’s there.
“Call María,” Callan says. “Tell her it’s okay for Carlos to name names.”
“Are you sure?”
“The names he’d name are dead,” Callan says. “If Carlos can make a deal, he should. All eleven of them should—the cartel could give a shit if they flip on dead men.”
“What if the cartel sends more men down here?” Nora asks.
“They won’t have to,” Callan says.
He’s going to the cartel.
Callan hasn’t been in Mexico in twenty-one years.
He left after a shoot-out at the Guadalajara airport that killed the finest man he ever knew and never went back.
Father Juan Parada was his best friend.
Nora’s as well.
Adán Barrera set him up to be killed.
Callan left it all after that—it was the mercy of God that he and Nora found each other, and sometimes Callan thinks it was Father Juan looking out for the two of them.
But now Callan’s back in TJ.
So’s Nora.
She wouldn’t let him go by himself and finally talked him into it. He had to admit it was safer for her to be with him than by herself in Costa Rica.
He knows that if he’s going to save their lives, it’s going to be here.
They rent a car at the airport.
“Does it bring back memories?” Nora asks as they drive through Tijuana.
“A different life.”
“Apparently not.”
They drive to the Marriott in Chapultepec and check in as Mr. and Mrs. Mark Adamson, passports that Art Keller had arranged for them years ago. The room is bright and cheerful—white linens and pillows, white curtains, clean to the point of antiseptic.
Callan already misses Bahia.
He showers and carefully shaves, combs his hair and puts on a clean white guayabera and jeans.
“Stay in the hotel,” he tells Nora.
“Yes, sir.”
Callan smiles ruefully. “Please stay in the hotel.”