The Catalina Cabal

by Bill Thesken

  Jack came out of the house carrying a large square briefcase. He slammed the front door hard and jumped in the driver’s side of the truck, backed out of the driveway, and raced off.

  I followed far behind. He zigzagged the three miles through the afternoon traffic towards Long Beach Harbor and parked in the lot next to the Catalina ferry.

  I parked a block away, my bike hidden by a row of cars, and watched through the scope.

  It was five-thirty in the afternoon and the crew was nearly done boarding the ship, getting ready to shove off for their last trip of the day.

  Jack half-ran, half-jogged toward the ramp and showed the two agents at the gate a ticket. They smiled, slapped him on the back, and talked for a bit. I took three things from watching.

  They were friendly.

  They knew each other.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d been on the ferry to Catalina.

  9.

  I decided to take a ride back over to ‘ol Jack Wilson’s house, wait for it to get dark, and poke around a little bit. See who I was really dealing with.

  I parked by the harbor and watched the sun slowly melt into the horizon, a red ball sinking into a dark vat of smog and salt spray.

  Off in the distance you could hear a tugboat’s mournful horn as it entered Long Beach harbor escorting another giant container ship. With the sun well below the horizon now and the land temperature dropping, the wind turned from on-shore to off-shore, and the smell of the wind turned from salt spray and kelp to ozone.

  I could see Jack’s house from my seat on the bike. All the streets had underground utilities and with no lines leading to the roof line, I couldn’t spot where the electric meter was hooked up to the house. I took out my scope and pinpointed the breaker box on the other side of a short brick wall next to the garage. When it was nearly pitch black I took a little walk.

  It was guaranteed he’d have motion activated perimeter lighting, and an alarm system for the interior of the house, so I’d have to work fast.

  The way I figured it, all I really needed was three minutes. I didn’t have to find out everything about this guy right now, I just needed a little snapshot. Some pictures on the wall, what’s in the fridge, the medicine cabinet, the top drawer of his desk. Three minutes, and if the alarm went off I could be in and out long before the cops got there to ask me what I was doing.

  The street was quiet and deserted, everyone nearby had either gone out to eat, or was inside having dinner and watching TV. No one sitting on their front porch, no one walking their dog. No one looking out of their windows.

  I angled in along the driveway, walking normal, not fast or running, just another resident out for an evening stroll. When I got within ten feet of the house, the light on the front of the garage door lit up. I jumped over the fence, opened up the breaker box, pulled out my taser, put it next to the main switch, and pulled the trigger. A blue bolt of current from the taser fried the main breaker and sent a little surge through the house electrical system, knocking out the perimeter light, all the breakers in the house, and hopefully the interior security system.

  You never could be completely certain about these things. Usually the system ran strictly on direct current power, but sometimes it was rigged as a dual system, wired to the house electrical grid and with a battery back-up in case of a power outage.

  Five minutes. That’s all I needed and the clock was running. Time for some old fashioned B and E.

  Breaking and entering.

  There was a row of French style windows waist-high on the side of the house. I picked out the closest one, and with my gloved fist, punched out a little square frame of glass.

  That is why they call it breaking and entering, first you break the window, and then you enter.

  Reaching up I unlatched the window, pulled it up, and climbed in. No alarm yet, no alarm that I could hear, that is. They could always have a silent alarm, they were actually the best, get the thief to relax, stick around long enough for the authorities to show up and put some metal brackets on their wrists.

  I went quickly through the house, shining the red flashlight on all the walls in the living room, sweeping through the kitchen, looking in the cabinets and the refrigerator, there was a lot of frozen meat and dark beer, then finding the stairway to the second floor.

  Three steps at time, I scanned the master bedroom, looked in the drawers, the closets, the bathroom and the medicine cabinet.

  He had the usual items: aspirin, mouthwash, toothpaste, and wha-da-ya-know, a bottle of human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, and

  a little clear bottle full of little pills of prescription methamphetamine. My new best friend was a muscle and meth junkie.

  There was a small handgun in the top drawer of the bedside table, and a sawed off double barreled shotgun under the bed. This guy was ready for action.

  I swept through to the second bedroom. It had a couple of single beds and an empty closet. I got out of there quickly.

  A third bedroom had the door shut, I carefully opened it. Looked like a typical home office with a desk, computer, printer, shredder… and another handgun in the top drawer. Not so typical.

  The walls were filled with framed photo-graphs, I looked quickly and carefully at each of them.

  They must have been sentimental, keeping all these photos on the wall where he could look at them now and then, and not locked away in some cabinet.

  Events, awards, hunting trips with big guys in safari hats kneeling down next to large dead animals, holding up lines of little fish, and one photo of a big black marlin on a hook next to a yacht in Hawaii.

  Must have been a fishing tournament, since there was a pretty native girl wearing a colorful lei and a bright smile, and not much else, on the other side of the fish. A chalkboard above the harpoon read nine hundred fifty-five pounds. Not bad.

  Off in the corner at the end of the wall was a small photo. It looked like one of the oldest ones of the bunch, the paper faded and brown with age. Jack Wilson in his younger days, looking very serious and standing on a great big brick lined avenue on top of a wall with a couple of serious looking Chinese dudes.

  He was standing on the Great Wall of China as a matter of fact. I could see the massive structure winding off into the distance like a giant castle wall.

  I studied the faces. There were two Asian guys standing on either side of Jack. They all looked to be in their early twenties at most.

  Slim, tall, rigid framed, square shouldered, and stone faced. Now why in world, I wondered, were they so unsmiling and grim faced? Guys in their twenties were naturally like this, I knew, but this was over the top.

  And then it hit me. They were grim faced because they were military. I knew it. I also knew that my three minutes was up, and I needed to get the heck out of there.

  Down the dark stairs, out the open window on the side and crouching by the wall next to the garage, I peered over the side. Now, of all times, an old lady was walking her dog, and coming my way.

  She was carrying a little plastic bag in case the dog does its business. She was a fairly old lady, walking a little crooked with frazzled gray hair and a dark overcoat. The dog stopped next to Jack’s mailbox, sniffed around it, and then crouched over, leaving a small load.

  “C’mon lady,” I whisper. “Pick it up and get the heck out of here so I can leave.” But she didn’t pick it up. She looked around a bit, turning her head this way and that to see if anyone was watching. Satisfied that no one saw the dirty deed, she turned around and headed right back down the street the way she came.

  I could almost see a little smile on her face.

  She was carrying the plastic bag as a decoy, never intending to pick it up in the first place.

  Brought her dog up here to leave Jack a present. I shook my head in dismay. You can’t trust anyone these days.

  10.

  It was a ritual they started in the very beginning when they were young and none of them had a dime to their names. They sa
t around the big square table in the clubhouse and waited until everyone had an unopened beer and an envelope in front of them. All four of them, Don, Jack, Corbin, and Kyle.

  The clubhouse had redwood paneled walls, a sand floor, and a tiny sliver view of the blue harbor at Avalon. Assorted trophies lined the walls, sailing races, swim races, surf contests, jujitsu, karate, skeet shooting.

  There was also a monkey pod bar imported from Hawaii just last year, a slab cut from a single eight foot wide tree, the jagged irregular edges still intact with bark while the top surface was oiled and vibrant with the colors of the dark brown grain.

  A pool table filled the remainder of the room, and a wide screen TV hung on the wall, next to photographs of races and contests and award ceremonies. It’s was their sports cave, a shrine, of sorts, and a testament to past deeds of glory.

  The clubhouse was a far cry nicer than the discarded wood and cardboard shack they built on the hill overlooking Avalon Bay when they were all kids, set into a hedge of cactus and shrub brush with a dirt floor and rocks for chairs.

  “All set?” asked Don, and when they all nodded he twisted opened his beer and toasted them. “Here’s to you and here’s to me, and if we ever disagree, then screw you and here’s to me.”

  “Hip hip,” said Corbin, and they all opened their beers and envelopes, took long drinks and started counting the bills.

  Each letter sized envelope had exactly four hundred and fifty Benjamin Franklins, crisp one hundred dollar bills stacked neatly in an inch thick bundle, and bound with a thick rubber band, and each man counted their personal stack carefully and silently, some of them stopping now and then to take a swig of beer.

  Forty-five thousand per man.

  Kyle finished counting first. “I’m five thousand short.”

  “How much you got?” asked Jack.

  “Forty-five thousand.”

  “That’s the take,” said Jack.

  “Supposed to be fifty.”

  “Should have been fifty,” said Jack. “Except you lost one of the packages. Get out your calculator, ten packages, twenty grand each equals two hundred thousand. Divided by the four of us equals fifty grand.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “Except you lost one of the packages. We lost twenty grand which divided by the four of us equals five grand each. Fifty minus five equals forty five all day long. You want me to get a calculator for you?”

  “I didn’t lose the package. Butterfingers over here lost the package.” And Kyle pointed across the table at Corbin.

  Corbin stared back at him. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s not nice to point?”

  “You lost the package. You cost us money.”

  Corbin threw his envelope on the table, his face beet red. “Don’t give me that crap. We went over this already, we’re in this together, one for all and all for one, like the four musketeers right? Like a team, we win as a team, and we lose as a team. We lost a package so we split the cost.”

  Kyle kept it up. “You were on the starboard side. That was your responsibility. You couldn’t pull her in and now I’m short five grand. I got bills to pay you know.”

  “You got bills to pay? YOU GOT BILLS TO PAY? Keep it up and you’re gonna have some hospital bills to pay asshole!”

  Corbin slid out of his chair and kicked it clear, clenched his fists, crouched low and was ready to jump over the table at Kyle who also got up and stood ready, veins sticking out of their arms and necks.

  At six-foot five and two hundred and fifty pounds of lean muscle, a black belt in karate who could break a cinder block in half with his fist, Corbin was used to pushing his weight around wherever and whenever he wanted.

  Smaller in size but also a black belt in Jiu-jitsu, Kyle avoided fighting, but was an expert grappler and could submit an orangutan with a choke hold.

  “Maybe we should see which art form is the best?” said Corbin, and he started to circle around the table to his right. Kyle smiled and motioned with his hand to bring it on.

  “Alright enough!” shouted Don and slammed his palm on the table. The two combatants slowly settled back into their chairs. “Shit happens right? First one we lost in a couple of years. We absorb the cost together, that’s our deal.” Don looked at Kyle. “It’s only five grand, you worked ten days last year and made half a million bucks. Let it go.”

  “It’s the principal,” said Kyle.

  “I had my hand on her,” said Corbin. “And then that asshole Chinese dude panicked, thought he was gonna drown or get left behind and he climbed right the hell over her, used her like a damn ladder, just stepped right on top of her head and shoulders to get in the boat. Then he’s grabbing onto me like a crab on the rocks, and I’m thinking he’s gonna pull me over the side. I had to knock him in the jaw and drag him on the boat, the way he was scrambling he probably kicked her in the head and knocked her out, she gets pushed under water, and probably went under the starboard hull of the boat before she surfaced again. Or maybe way out the back I don’t know, I never saw her again. A rogue wave hits the boat, people are screaming and yelling in Chinese. That was the worst drop we ever had.” He took a long drink of his beer, then let out a sigh.

  “She had to have been knocked out, unconscious,” said Kyle. “And floated away, otherwise she would have yelled out and we could have found her. I’m the captain and it’s ultimately my responsibility for the ship, the crew, and our passengers. Once we got everyone calmed down, I made our count and found out we had nine instead of ten. But by then it was too late. We were drifting, she was drifting, and probably at odd angles to each other, since the wind and current were offset where we were. We were catching a bit of the wind and she was only in the current. We were calling out to her, but she was unconscious and unable to shout back to us, I couldn’t turn on the engines until we were sure she wasn’t near us. The sea was rough, no moon, we used the red beam searchlights but she never showed on the crests of the waves. If their lifeboat hadn’t flipped in the first place, none of this would have happened. It wasn’t any one person’s fault. What’s done is done.”

  “I should have thrown that Chinese dude overboard,” said Corbin, “and made him swim to shore.” He turned to Jack. “You see what’s happening? You’re throwing a wedge into our team. You tell Chang next time you see him that we want that twenty thousand, or I’m going to take it out of his hide.”

  “How you gonna do that?” said Kyle. “He never comes over here, and you haven’t left the island in what, two years?”

  Corbin leaned back, took a long sip of his beer and smiled. “I’ve got everything I need right here. And if I need something that’s not here, I have it shipped, special order. Like that Russian babe, Svetlana. Straight from Stalingrad, right out of a catalogue. But I might make an exception to make a visit to that slant-eyed bastard. ”

  “You want me to tell Chang that you’re going to come over to the mainland and take it out on his hide? Are you crazy, or just stupid?”

  Corbin pointed his finger at Jack and spoke slowly. “Don’t you ever say that to me again.”

  They all sat silently for a moment until Don tapped the table and spoke. “Alright back to business. So, you all know that a pleasure boater found the girl off the north side of the island two days later.”

  They all nodded and a few took sullen swigs of beer. It was depressing. They were all watermen; sailors, swimmers, surfers and to lose someone to the ocean was a tragedy, business or no business, it was a life. They all knew that they were each holding a one-way ticket in this world, and it could be any one of them at any time, checking out and heading to the other side.

  “What about the police investigation?” asked Kyle. “Any leads on how she went in the water?”

  “The investigation is closed,” said Don. “The coroner’s office is reporting an unattended death by drowning, no head trauma, no foul play. The ID she was carrying is fake, so our determination is that she was being smuggled into the country and died in the
attempt. We have no leads, no one has claimed the body, and no further investigation is necessary.”

  “However,” said Jack. “We do have a bit of a situation.” And they all looked over at him. “The guy who found her in the water is poking around, asking questions. He came to the fake address yesterday afternoon, said he was a friend of hers and that she told him to stop by sometime to visit her. He gave me a fake ass name, but we tracked him down. He called the Sheriff station this morning, looking for a status report, wanting to know if anyone claimed the body.”

  “Nosy bastard, isn’t he?” said Kyle.

  “What are we going to do about this guy?” asked Corbin.

  “I took care of the problem.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I sent him a message, and I don’t think we’ll see him around here ever again. I sank his boat. We found out where he was moored, and I went down there and sank the bastard’s boat, right at the dock.”

  They sat in silence watching him.

  “It takes about ten seconds to open up the bilge pipe and bada bing.”

  “I don’t like that,” said Kyle. “You should leave the guy’s boat out of it.”

  “What if that just pisses him off?” asked Don.

  “Then we’ll take it up a notch” said Corbin with a grin. “And I’ll get involved. But I’ll sink his boat with him in it.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be a problem,” said Jack. “But if we do see him again, we’ll have to deal with it, just like the last situation a few years ago. Another do-gooder snooping around, trying to find out where the Chinese tourists are coming from. This operation is worth five million a year to us, and we barely break a sweat. No one is going to get in the way I tell you, nobody. I’ll make certain of that. Unless the other side takes care of it first.”

  “You remember that guy a couple of years ago, right?” continued Jack as he looked around the group. “Rented a room at the Inn for two months. Decided to do a survey on the ethnicity of tourists coming across on the ferries. Sat down there by the dock for a couple of weeks, all day, every day with a camera and a notepad and wrote down the creed and color of all the people coming off and going on when the boats came in, and when they left.”