by Lex Lander
It was still there, and this late in the year rooms were available. Accommodation was a mere detail in my grand plan, which was to cross the border without crossing the border. Now I needed a contact.
Money talks loudly in Mexico, especially US dollars. The desk clerk, whose name was Alejandro, was susceptible to a twenty dollar bill. Certainly he knew several guys who took clients on fishing trips. For another twenty he would name the ones who would not be deterred by a minor border infraction. This turned out to be all of the names he had given me at the start.
A shrewd operator, Alejandro. I patted him on the shoulder and left him to choose which of the boat operators to send me for interview.
It was early evening before Alejandro’s choice showed up. A stocky, slightly bow-legged individual called Paco Robles. An unlit cigar jutted from his sparsely-toothed mouth and he was overdue for a shave. He looked seriously disreputable, which suited me down to the ground. I just hoped he behaved that way.
His English was passable. After effecting introductions, Alejandro faded from the scene and left us to talk terms in a gloomy alcove.
‘Jandro say you want cross border, señor.’ No wasted breath on chit-chat, no skirting around the order of the day.
‘Is that sort of thing possible?’ I asked him, avoiding a direct answer, phrasing it as a hypothetical question in case he was really an undercover cop.
He shrugged. To ask such a question was almost an insult.
‘At a price.’
I waited for him to name the price. He waited for me to ask him to name the price.
‘Well?’ I said, somewhat irritated by this cat and mouse game.
‘It depends on where you land. More far we go, more dollars you pay.’
Made sense.
‘North of Torrey Pines.’
From studying a map, I had concluded that the stretch of uninterrupted beach between the communities of Torrey Pines and Del Mar Heights would be the loneliest spot along the coast within comfortable range of Tijuana.
‘Many patrols,’ Paco said laconically.
‘They frighten you?’
He hastened to assure me that was not the case. Even so he proposed a price of $5000, which seemed to me to be a lot for a few hours non-frightening work.
At a table next to us, three women in colourful dresses were seated. All of them were smoking cigarillos and looking at me. Two were standard call girls with their exotic hairstyles and excessive make-up and dresses so tight their flesh seemed to be oozing out of them. The third, youngest of the trio, was more downbeat and paler skinned and far more attractive. My cue in ages past to stroll across and separate her from her colleagues with a view to spending the evening and maybe the night together. No longer. When I saw a woman, I saw Maura, like a superimposed image, and my taste for girls per se withered on the vine.
So I confined myself to a polite smile and turned back to Paco, who was lighting his cigar and creating odious-smelling billows.
‘Two thousand,’ I countered.
He didn’t even consider it, just shook his smoke-veiled head.
‘If patrol catch me I am in prison. Four thousand.’
We settled at three. Shook hands, as if it meant something, which it probably didn’t – not on his part, at any rate. The up-front payment was five hundred, the balance on delivery.
The girls across the lobby exploded into a noisy bout of giggles. They were still eyeing me and I got the impression the older ones were egging the younger one on. To do what, would become apparent shortly, I guessed.
‘She like you,’ Paco observed, with a tilt of his head towards the women. ‘The young one.’
‘I’ll be sorry to disappoint her.’
We made arrangements for me to go on board at midnight. The trip up the coast would take maybe four hours, depending on Coast Guard activity. His boat had a secret compartment where I would hide if we were apprehended.
Deal done, Paco left. I was bushed from my two flying stints, and vacated my seat with the intention of grabbing a siesta in my room. Halfway between the alcove and the elevators the girl with the pale skin intersected my route, forcing me to come to a halt.
‘Yes?’ I said coolly.
‘You look for girl, señor?’
Tarts the world over use the same hoary line. Not that I was averse to paying for services when in a bind. This particular floozy was a cut above the average, not too shop-worn, and probably still in her teens. Even as recently as a week ago, I might have been seduced.
‘Some other time, honey,’ I said, trying to be friendly.
Like many of her ilk, she was not readily discouraged. She clamped my wrist in her taloned hand.
‘Que pasa?’ What’s up. ‘No te gustan las chicas?’
She was asking me if I didn’t like girls.
I leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. ‘Fuera de aqui, antes de que te rompa el pequeño cuello flaco.’
Not textbook Spanish, but enough for her to understand that if she didn’t vamoose I’d break her skinny little neck.
Paco’s fishing boat was called Flamenco. It was clinker built, with a boxy wheelhouse on a flush deck. Fishing gear took up most of the space. Below, some very basic accommodation – two single bunks, a screwed down table, a sink and a toilet that stank like, well, a toilet only more so. The vessel was badly in need of a coat of paint inside and out. In addition to Paco, there was a crew of two, who paid me no heed. Paco demonstrated the entry hatch to the secret compartment, which was below the lower deck. I didn’t much care for it, but was prepared to use it if need be. Without a gun I felt naked.
As long as we were in Mexican waters I stayed on deck and contemplated the stars, keeping my overnight bag close at hand; it contained most of my money. The sea was choppy, though I had sailed in a lot worse over the years. Paco offered me a swig of tequila. I declined. I needed all my mental faculties for whatever lay ahead. We sailed due west to begin with, the engine clanking away below, the stink of its exhaust tainting the night air. The crew chatted to each other and less often to Paco, who was mostly in the wheelhouse. They didn’t address me at all.
After a half hour or so, we veered to starboard to run parallel to the coast. My chosen spot for coming ashore was about thirty miles above the border, say five hours sailing at the boat’s best speed. About two hours into the jaunt I tore up my James Freeman passport and tossed the scraps overboard. The driving permit and credit cards were untearable, so I just bent them double before consigning them to the deep. They didn’t float. Now I was Jack Henley. Now I was incognito.
Paco emerged, lit a cigar, and told the crew to start preparing to fish. It’s illegal to fish in US waters, but the punishment would be less harsh than for smuggling an alien.
‘Are you actually going to fish?’ I asked him. I was anxious not to spend too long at sea, as it would expose us to more risk of an encounter with a coast guard launch.
‘No, senor, but we need look like we fish.’
He was thinking smart.
No coast guards came sniffing around. The only other vessel we sighted during our run north was a supertanker that passed us in the opposite direction, blazing lights from stem to stern. Not long afterwards, we made our second swing to starboard. The coast lay dead ahead, spattered with the lights of San Diego and smaller towns to the north, partitioning the sparkle of the Pacific and the false dawn in the east.
They conveyed me and my overnight bag from boat to shore in an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor. Four star service. I didn’t even get my feet wet. Paco wasn’t impressive to look at, nor was his boat, but between them, they did what it said on the label. I gave him five more $500 bills, and he stuffed them in the greasy breast pocket of his shirt, grunting his thanks.
That was when our run of luck came to an abrupt end. A shout, two flashlight beams from up ahead on some dunes. I shot off to the right, slipping on a patch of seaweed, while the dinghy took off like a hydroplane, back towards the Flamenco
. From here on in, I was on my own.
More shouts. ‘Stop or we shoot!’ which meant cops not coast guard; coast guards wouldn’t be so quick on the trigger.
They were too far behind for accurate pistol shooting, so I ran on, my shoes thudding on the hard packed sand. The bag slowed me down, but I couldn’t afford to ditch it. I just hoped they weren’t armed with rifles. On my left the dunes, overlooked by cliffs, continued along the beach as far as the eye could see. The cliffs were sandy and about fifty feet high. Too high to climb with the law baying at my heels. A gun cracked. The bullet went nowhere near me, but it was a worrying development.
I slipped again, went sprawling, lost my grip on the bag. A quick scrabble for it, then I was up and powering on, one arm pumping, wind still good. My pursuers weren’t gaining, if anything they were dropping behind. The average American cop is notoriously unfit. The cliffs to my left dipped abruptly, opening up a V, creating a small ravine of dunes. I angled towards the ravine. Another shot sent up a spurt of sand a few yards ahead of me. Then I was into the ravine, shielded temporarily by steep dunes on both sides. I scrambled up the dune on the left, stumbling and sliding and generally making heavy going in the softer sand. The flashlights bobbed behind me as they followed me into the ravine. Another shot. I felt it zip past my ear, it was that close.
Wheezing now, I crested the dune. Out of sight of the cops again, at least for as long as it took them to reach the top. I hit a paved surface, a footpath, and put on a spurt, using up what remained of my wind. Grass all around. A golf course. It was light enough to see the kidney shape of a bunker over to my right, pale against the grass. The path veered around it. I cast a glance over my shoulder. No flashlights as yet. I swerved off into a wooded area and lost myself among the trees. Chest heaving, I reduced my pace to a lope. The bag weighed a ton. After colliding with a tree trunk, the impact violent enough to dump me on my backside, I slowed to a trudge and eventually sat down, ears attuned for the sound of running feet.
I didn’t have to wait long, though they weren’t running any more.
‘You see anything, Jock?’ It sounded as though the owner of the voice was only feet away, though it was probably amplified by the early dawn stillness.
‘Nah. He’s gone, and I’m bushed.’
‘Me too.’ They were walking along the golf path, heels dragging.
‘Aw, fuck it, I ain’t gonna crease myself for some motherfucking wetback. What’s one motherfucker in all the thousands comin’ across the Rio Grande.’
‘You got a point. You know what, I’m fucking starving. Let’s go feed the breadbasket.’
The dialogue and the footsteps receded. Impossible to say which direction they had taken, so I played safe and sat tight, waited for the dawn proper to lighten the sky and allow me to move out of the wood and rejoin society.
As I stepped out of the trees, a couple of early morning golfers passed me in a cart, obliging me to move onto the grass. They gave me curious stares, but didn’t challenge my presence on their hallowed turf.
I proceeded along the path, away from the sea. Traffic noises reached me. The sun peeked over some far off hills throwing out a fantail of rays. A jogging girl approached. She had long straight blonde hair tied in a ponytail that swished from side to side. She gave me a wide berth. Just ahead, a road; I saw a high-sided van go by, then a bus. Once I hit the sidewalk I would blend in with other pedestrians, and I would be home free. Back in the good ole USA, with a new identity and no Gratrix to harass me.
The Courtyard San Diego Hotel in Solana Beach was a two-storey building with, as the name implied, a central courtyard. My cell phone chirped while I was checking in. The front desk girl smiled sympathetically, a cross-we-have-to-bear kind of smile.
It was Maura, so no cross at all.
‘Hi, honey,’ I said.
‘Hi, yourself,’ she said, as clear as if she were standing next to me. ‘Where are you?’
‘Back in the land of the free. Place called Solana Beach. Nice hotel, dishy receptionist.’
The front desk girl looked up, amused. Not Maura.
‘You better behave yourself,’ she said, in mock severity. ‘No philandering before we’ve even consummated our relationship.’
‘What about after?’
She pretended to be mad, but couldn’t sustain it and dissolved into gurgles of laughter.
Moving away from the desk, out of the girl’s earshot, I said, ‘Miss you.’
‘Oh, darling, it’s so nice to hear you say that. I can’t wait to see you again.’
The sentimental stuff done, we talked practicalities. A meeting, to make plans about rescuing Belinda, was top of our mutual list. The nearest towered airport to my new location was San Diego Montgomery Field, north of the city. It was arranged she would fly the Seneca there tomorrow. Distance about two hundred and fifty miles, ETA 3pm-ish. I would rent some transport and meet her at the airport.
The day dragged by. I read the San Diego Union-Tribune from headlines through sports pages. It dawned on me gradually that I really was missing Maura and couldn’t wait to see her again. After a measly thirty-six hours apart. How would I deal with a really prolonged separation?
Little by little, the shadows lengthened. At sunset I took a stroll on a walkway along the top of the cliffs. Everyone was accompanied by a dog except me and a grande dame done up in furs, towing a pair of Siamese cats. The sun went down over the Pacific in an orange fireball against a mauve sky that looked like ploughed furrows. I captured it on my cell phone camera.
Later I dined, watched some quacking TV in my room, went to bed. Slept on and off and was up at 7am. Counting the minutes.
Renting a vehicle kept me occupied for some of the morning. I selected a Jeep Cherokee without the “Grand” because they didn’t have one to spare. The all-terrain capability was the priority anyhow. I had a vague idea that being able to quit the highways and take to the hills might give us a useful edge when it came to escaping with Belinda.
At two-thirty I was in the arrivals lounge of Montgomery airport. Maura was early too, touching down a few minutes later. I remembered the five recognition letters of her aircraft – Five-five-seven-mike-echo. I sat without much patience while she tucked up her aircraft for the night. When she showed up in the arrivals lounge, it was like a breath of cool air in a sauna. Even as I revelled in the sight of her, and returned her wave of greeting, the cool air turned icy when I saw who was tagging along behind her.
Richard Heider. Son of Jeff, stepson of Maura.
NINETEEN
Richard or no Richard, she didn’t act coy when she came within touching range; her embrace and the kiss that followed it were as uninhibited as ever. When I came up for air and found myself facing Richard, the guy was actually grinning. The cast in his eye disconcerted me; I didn’t know where to focus my gaze.
‘He’s fine about us,’ Maura said, showing talent as a mind reader. ‘In case you’re wondering.’
‘I was.’
Richard stuck out a hand, and with a certain reluctance, I clasped it in mine.
‘I am fine with it,’ he confirmed.
That he could be fine with his stepmother making out with a contract killer, even a reformed contract killer, proved to me that the human race is ever full of surprises.
Maura tucked her arm in mine, and we headed off towards the exit. Richard kept step with a truckload of suitcases and bags, one of which was mine. Maura looked ravishing in black jeans and a clinging turtle neck sweater under a thigh length grey coat with a fur collar.
‘Have you missed me?’ she said as we emerged into bright sunlight.
‘And how.’
‘It serves you right for going away.’
She hugged my arm in both of hers. The physical contact on its own made my day.
We loaded up the Cherokee and drove out of the airport, heading for Interstate 805. Traffic was thick on the asphalt but making steady progress.
‘Where are we staying?’ Ric
hard asked.
‘Maura and I are staying in Solana Beach. I wasn’t expecting you, but I guess the hotel will have room for you.’ I looked across at Maura. ‘Presumably you’re going to explain to me why Richard is here.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, but can we leave it till later? We had a bumpy flight, and I’m a bit frazzled.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘For the record, James,’ Richard said from the rear seat. ‘I’m on your side.’
So to him I was still “James”. Maura had respected my insistence not to divulge my real name.
‘We’ll see.’ If he were not on my side, I couldn’t very well knock him off. Not now that I, in Maura’s eyes at any rate, was out of the killing business. If Maura trusted him enough to bring him to meet me, I should accept that. She would have her reasons. I just hoped they were acceptable to me.
We held our conference in my room at the Courtyard. I sat in one armchair, Maura in another. Richard made do with the bed.
‘So now tell me,’ I said, as my opening gambit. ‘How does Richard come to be here?’
‘He wants to help,’ Maura replied, and maybe for her that was enough.
‘He wants to help,’ I intoned. ‘Is that what he says?’
Maura seemed offended that I should question it.
‘Yes.’
‘I do want to help,’ Richard stated with some emphasis.
I exhaled with feeling. ‘If only it were that simple. You say you want to help, and that I should believe it. Despite your having connived, and continue to connive, in the abduction of Maura’s daughter as a pressure tactic.’
They both stared at me, as if the contradiction had only just occurred to them.
‘How did you two get together on this, coming here?’ I asked them jointly.
‘Richard was in town, and came by to say hello at the office,’ Maura said, and her tone was defiant, perhaps expecting me to castigate her over it. ‘I invited him for lunch, someplace I knew we weren’t being bugged. I thought that if I appealed to his better side he would come in with us.’