by Pablo Poveda
Blanca stood up, grabbed her car keys, and left the room. I understood the disappointment in her face. I walked after her seconds later, but it was too late. The wheels of her vehicle left a trail of sand in the wind.
* * *
A suffocating breeze slapped me behind the wheel of the red car, my lungs struggled for air at every breath. The summer was unusually hot — hotter than it had been in years.
I drove calmly to Santa Pola pier. I parked next to the dock and scoured the area. It was painful. I had been there before. I recalled the night I boarded the taxi to go to Tabarca with that woman. The island was far, and numerous groups of tourists got off large ships that docked at the port. It was getting late, and the sunset was beautiful. I savored the moment, looked at the girls wearing nightgowns, their skins tanned and their eyes dark. Men wore handsome shirts and khakis and escorted their dates for an appetizer before dinner. I smelled the ocean and proceeded to follow the trail of fresh fish that reached my senses. The stalls at the market were already open. That meant the fishing boats had returned with their loot. There were all kinds of fish there — prawns, crayfish, lobsters, tuna, bonitos, cod. The fish market in Santa Pola was one of the best in the country. The place was full of bypassers, merchants, hoteliers, some tourists who purchased an occasional kilogram of sardines and observed the strange fish the boats had brought.
I made sure I would go unnoticed, avoiding policemen at all extents. I snuck among the stands and entered a fishermen’s bar at the end of the breakwater. From the bar one could hear the men speaking with a characteristic accent from the coast. Their language was unique, a Spanish that had undergone a Valencian process because of their argot, jargon, solitude, and the ocean. Unshaven men had returned from work to have a beer and garlic potatoes on a metal bar. I sat like one of them on a stool, intoxicated by the smell of frying and grilled fish and ordered a beer. A group of men in their fifties, worn out by the salt spray, saw me enter the bar. One of them came up to me and ordered another beer.
“Are you lost?” he asked. His skin was toasted by the sun and his beard was graying. He wore a white shirt open to his chest, from which a mass of curly white hair protruded, and from his neck hung a golden cross.
“I am looking for — ” I replied without looking in his eyes. I was not afraid, he did not look dangerous, but I sensed that the situation could turn violent.
“A job?” he inquired. “There is always work to do.”
“Someone. I am looking for someone. A friend.”
The man took a drink and looked at his group.
“What is your friend’s name?”
“Francis,” I said.
“Many go by that name here,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. The group watched me. The man took a gulp of his beer and told the bartender to charge for everything.
“Listen, kid,” he whispered with a thick accent and without looking me in the eye. “Around here, we don’t like narcs, much less journalists. I don’t know what you heard, but if I were you, I’d finish the appetizer and get out of here at once. Whatever it is that you are looking for, it is not in this place, and if it is, you won’t find it. Understood?”
He slammed the table with the palm of his hands and left a crumpled five-euro bill on it. He turned around and walked to his group. I got out of there, lit a cigarette, and waited next to the jetties. Fifteen minutes later, the same man left in direction of the dock where the fishing boats were moored. There was no Francis — of course — and if there was, I was not going to find him. Keeping my distance, I followed him between the pillars of the fish market. It smelled like rotten fish, saltpeter, and moisture. The man, who wore a sailor’s cap, walked to a boat with a light on the inside.
“Ximo!” he yelled. At the call, one man appeared. I could not believe it. The man spoke in Valencian dialect, “Your friend was hanging around the bar. If he shows up again, he’ll sleep with the fishes; so, get rid of him. I want the people calm, and I want this to come out right. Alright?”
Rojo’s muscular body was sunburned. His beard had grown, and no longer was he the pristine police officer who walked the streets.
“We have a deal,” he replied. “Don’t worry about him.”
Then he went into the boat. The man in the cap glanced around him and talked to Rojo inside the boat.
“We do. And tomorrow will be the last day,” he said. “I don’t like those people. I give you that scoundrel, and you tell your friends to turn a blind eye.”
“We’ll discuss the conditions at its time.”
“I expect you to fulfill your part,” the man replied. “I trust you, just as I trusted your father back in the day.”
“We are men of our word.”
“So be it,” he sentenced and walked away without noticing me.
Blanca was right, but what was Rojo doing there? Why did he go under a different name, and who had his father been? The story was getting murkier.
Suddenly, I got a text message.
It was Blanca.
The Finn had escaped.
* * *
The phone vibrated once more. Rojo took off a pair of worn yellow gloves and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The breeze swept away an unpleasant smell of decomposed fish, part of a lifestyle for many who worked there. It was the smell of the port and work
The boat’s name was Agatha, and it was a twenty-four-foot ship. A sailing and motor fishing boat, somewhat old, with a tiny storing deck and a cabin inside. In its interior, four of five crew members would spend days, and nights, together, lost in the solitude of the sea. Nearby, bigger fishing boats were marooned on the deck. Most of them were longer and of industrial type. The Agatha was a peculiar ship, discreet and she must belong to a family of fishermen. The fact that among the crew there was an ex-cop was most notorious.
Encouraged, I walked out of my hideout to face him, even though I was aware that I could find a truth that I did not want to hear. The solitude of the dock accented my footsteps. Rojo was on the ship, so I did not hesitate, took momentum, and jumped to the stern of the fishing boat. The boat rocked on the water. He noticed me.
“You!” he said, sticking his head out of the deck and with his hands smeared in foam. “You!”
“I expected a different reception,” I said.
“What are you doing here, you idiot?” he asked.
“As you can see, Rojo,” I said. “You can’t get rid of me. I have come to find out the truth.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Gabriel,” he replied. “This isn’t for you. Get out of here before anyone comes.”
“No. I’m not leaving,” I said. The night was falling, and the cool breeze embraced us tightly. The ship’s lanterns did not illuminate the deck enough. We were hiding under the pier’s shadows and the spirits of the ocean. “When did you become a fisherman?”
“I warned you, Caballero,” he uttered. “Don’t make me use force.”
“Blanca knows I am here with you,” I replied. “She’ll find you.”
He finished smearing his hands and grabbed a large carabiner. “Rojo, who is behind all of this? The Finn has escaped from jail.”
“What a surprise,” he said sarcastically. “What else do you know?”
“I have my theories,” I replied. “I know you resigned to meet with the head who organized all of this. Whoever that person is, they will guide you to your wife. On the other hand, we suspect that drug shipments enter the Peninsula through the Balearic Islands, and that is the reason for everything that has happened since I arrived from Mallorca. Yes, I know it’s a coincidence, but it makes sense — the crab is nothing but a symbol, let’s say, casual, or even minor. We still don’t know how your wife relates to the deaths yet, but it looks like she does, and we’ll find out how sooner or later. However, we still don’t know who Heikki Hämäläinen is, how he’s gotten there, and what his position is. I know it sounds fanciful, but we may find ourselves in front
of a network of different illegal businesses, among them, drug and human trafficking.”
Rojo clapped calmly and ironically.
“Bravo, Gabriel, bravo. Very clever,” he said. “Fanciful, appealing, and with a hook. Your hypothesis has all the necessary ingredients to make the morning cover. So, why don’t you go and write it and leave me alone?”
“So, I am right. Aren’t I?”
Rojo opened a beach cooler, popped two red cans of beer, and tossed one at me with precision, like a baseball pitcher.
“You know you aren’t,” he said after taking a drink. “Although, I have to admit that it sounds much better than the truth.”
“Your resignation is a sham, right?”
“A decoy.”
“So was the escape from jail.”
“They forgot to lock the door.”
“The corps is complicit.”
“Just the regional branch,” he said. “The jurisdictions are autonomous.”
“What will happen when it reaches Madrid?”
“When the news comes,” he explained, “we will have solved the case, we will have detained whoever was necessary and no one will ask further questions. Case closed, end of story.”
“What about the Finn?”
“He’s a merchant,” he said. He has businesses all over the coast in Alicante, he owns night clubs in Benicàssim, Benidorm, and Torrevieja. He invested in residential areas that the banks had foreclosed. Hence, today, the area is full of Poles, Norwegians, and Russians vacationing in El Campello, Guardamar, and Santa Pola.”
“So, you were after him,” I deduced. Once again, I felt cheated. “So, why the deaths?”
“Someone smuggled a defective batch,” he said. “That damn drug comes in from Russia. It’s produced at a laboratory. It is meant to simulate the effects of marijuana but ends up frying your brain.”
“And you are — ”
“As you understand,” he interrupted me, “it is impossible to find thousands of pills scattered through the region. Although it grinds me to admit it, we don’t have the technology or methods to reach so many people in such a short time. And devoting elements to the task is a waste of time.”
“Who would do something like that?”
“We fear it’s a reckoning or a drug war.”
“What about Miranda? What role does she have in all this?”
“She is indirectly cooperating with us,” he explained with a laugh. “In reality, she never has, but it was just a matter of following her trail to know that she would lead us to someone. That girl has a lot of flair.”
“Why did you lie to me, Rojo?” I asked indignant. “Why waste my time?”
“I warned you the first day, Gabriel,” he said. “I told you to stay out of it. This is a large-scale operation. Nothing interesting, nothing new. Typical summer story.”
“What about the crabs... your wife?”
“I am sorry,” he said sheepishly. “That was also a sham.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Rojo,” I said. “We both saw it. It was the day we found Bordonado in the bathtub.”
“Yes... that kid... you should be more careful when picking out your companionship. He was just a junkie,” he said. “I’m sorry Gabriel. But I told you that you wouldn’t like the truth.”
“That woman who appeared with your wife had a crab tattooed on her torso.”
“That’s right,” he replied. “Although the connection with what is happening is nothing more than a mere coincidence.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied. “The Finn told me that the crab — ”
“The Finn is just a lunatic.”
“But I saw the damn film myself.”
“I am sorry to tell you the footage was a homemade job.”
“Also a sham?” I asked. Rojo nodded. “What about your wife?”
“That’s an old film, Gabriel. I was afraid this moment would come.”
I squeezed the empty beer can in my hand and tossed it at his feet.
“You’re a bastard,” I said. “A lying bastard!”
“You had better get out of here, Gabriel.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me again?”
“Don’t insist,” he said. “I’ve told you the truth. Now I need you to leave.”
“Honestly, Rojo, you can go to hell.”
“As you wish,” he replied. “That girl, Blanca, is here for you. I doubt she’ll believe the story, but she’s still by your side. Man up, Caballero. Don’t let her down and do what matters, what really matters. There will always be time to solve mysteries and play detectives.”
“You’re a jerk.”
I left the boat with a bad mouth taste. The taste of betrayal and the loss of a friend. Perhaps that was the taste of half-truths, a certainty that is rarely held. Everything that had happened was nothing but a summer show, a theatrical performance to keep me busy brooding over siren songs. But why? I wondered, why would Rojo have taken so much trouble to pull me away? And as for Blanca, what did she know and what did she not?
I returned to the fishermen’s bar and sat at the countertop. By then, there was hardly anyone left. I looked at the watch, it was ten at night. There was only a nostalgic waiter left, the music of the waves, and the noise of dishes hitting the sink.
“A whiskey with cola,” I ordered.
“We’re closing in one hour,” he said while he washed a highball glass.
“That’s plenty,” I said. “Life has given me a slap in the face.”
“Easy, man,” he said. He put a highball glass in front of me, three large ice cubes, a squirt of whiskey, and some Coca-Cola. Then he took out a plate of olives and set it next to the glass. “In this life, only death is certain.”
He took out an old-fashioned glass, grabbed a bottle of cognac whose label featured a raging black bull, and filled it up to the half. “I’ll join you. At this hour, no grieving man should drink alone.”
“Thank you.”
“Women?” he asked. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”
“That too,” I said. “That’s life, in general.”
“Breakups should be forbidden,” he said, sipping his brandy, “at least in the summer.”
On television they played a summer gala in which children wore different animal costumes. Lobsters, octopuses, and crabs appeared. Coincidences piled up like soil pulled out by a miner with a shovel. I was tired of everyone and everything. Because of everyone and everything. Tired of myself and life.
“The girl; is she pretty?” The man asked, wagging his mustache.
“She is,” I said. “Very pretty, but we belong in different worlds.”
“That will always be the case, young man,” he said. “If she is worth the try, and she fancies you, just keep trying. Women are forgiving. They have that quality that we struggle to display.”
“Forgiveness will set us free,” I said.
“Isn’t it true?” the man inquired.
“It is, it is — ”
The phone started vibrating in my pocket.
It was a text message.
“It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I responded. “She’s asking me to call her.”
“Well come on, run,” he replied. “I’ll clean up.”
“Thank you,” I said, finished the glass in one gulp, and paid. That accomplice waiter, life standard bearer for many, stayed there, in the solitude of his own space, washing my glass, watching television, and finishing his drink.
I went out to the beach and dialed the number. I was about to tell Blanca that everything was over — the lies, the games, us.
But I did not.
My heart skipped a beat when I heard somebody else’s voice instead.
On the other side of the line, someone took a deep breath.
“If you want to see your friend,” — said a masculine voice; it was Heikki Hämäläinen — “you’ll have to hurry up.”
“I’ll chop your head off
if you touch her,” I said trembling.
“Then, let’s make a deal,” he said, “and I’ll give her back to you the way I found her.”
“Son of a bitch!”
The cry of a fragile voice was heard in the background.
Blanca.
“Watch your language, imbecile,” he said and laughed. “I want you to turn over your friend, the policeman.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I replied.
“Aaargh!” Blanca screamed in the distance.
“Another lie and I’ll send you a picture of her hand,” he said, “There is a delivery tonight. I know your friend organized the transaction. Officer Rojo thinks he’s smarter than everyone, right? Probably you already know. Well, one of my men will be on the fishing boat when the exchange is made, waiting for my signal to detonate a bomb. They expect me to be on the boat, but I’m not that gullible. Make sure the exchange takes place and you will prevent a disaster. Otherwise, they will turn into shark chum.”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” I said. “Rojo won’t budge.”
“I am well aware the task won’t be easy,” he replied. “That’s why the price to pay is so high.”
“He won’t listen to me.”
“Convince him,” he said, and Blanca screamed again in the background. “I hope you are motivated enough.”
He hung up.
My heart kept pounding on my chest.
12
As soon as I hung up, I turned around and ran toward the Agatha. Minutes later, out of breath, I saw her from afar — the engine was on, and five men were coming up and down her hatches. I had to tell Rojo the truth. The instinct led me to trust him, but something prevented me from it. The priority was to board that ship and hide until the delivery. Then, I would have no alternative other than to disarm them all and turn Rojo over to them. The men came out again and walked in the dark toward some sheds. I took advantage of their distraction, took several strides, and jumped onto the boat. I was on. The noise they were making while moving stuff around and talking helped muffle the sound of my movements on board. The inside of the boat was not too roomy, but I was confident I would not be discovered. The dormitory did not have a door, so my options were limited to a rusty metal sheet gate that had been repaired on numerous occasions, and the moisture kept consuming. I pushed in, but it was stuck. Suddenly, I heard voices outside. I pushed again with all my strength and felt it move a few inches. The voices were coming, and I had no choice but to kick it hard. A big blow resonated on the boat. The voices got quiet. The door was open, I walked in and closed without looking inside.