The Catalina Cabal

by Bill Thesken

  “He was a statistician,” said Don. “Doing an independent study. Hoped he was gonna get a grant from the State or Feds to do a full-fledged report on the travelling habits of people to the island.”

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “He was perplexed when he saw very few Chinese looking people getting off the boats, but saw a whole bunch of them getting on the boats for the ride to the mainland.”

  “A real racist,” said Corbin. “How in the hell could he tell who was Chinese and who wasn’t?”

  “And then he stuck his nose in places that it didn’t belong,” said Jack.

  “The bastard,” said Corbin and took a slow drink.

  “Started asking questions all around town,” continued Jack. “Surveying the business owners on how many Chinese tourists they served per week, per month, and per year...”

  “And then he got stupid,” said Corbin.

  “…And followed one of our groups onto the ferry and started asking them questions. Where did they come from, how did they get to Catalina. Like he was the damned FBI for crying out loud. Once they get on that ferry they’re no longer our responsibility. There’s someone hidden in the crowd who takes over, guides them to their next destination. We don’t know who they are, and we don’t want to know.”

  “The Chinese mafia, the Triad,” said Corbin. “Must have latched onto that guy pretty quick.”

  “He disappeared,” said Don. “The ferry had a record of him getting on the boat, he bought a round trip ticket, and he never came back. The Inn called our office a couple of weeks later to let us know that his room was abandoned, and they had to gather up his belongings and turn it all over to us. His family came over to pick it up, they put out a reward for information on his whereabouts. Last I heard he’s still missing. It’s been two years.”

  “Poor bastard,” said Corbin and got up to get another beer. “Maybe they’ll find him someday, what do you think?”

  “Sure, and maybe they’ll find the two retirees out of Newport who fell off their boat two years ago.”

  The group fell silent. Two years ago they lost another package under different circumstances, and since it wasn’t their fault they didn’t get involved. The guy missed his step getting off the cargo ship into the life raft and got swept under the giant ship with the stern wash. The retired couple was out for a cruise a couple of days later and found him, then started doing their own investigation and the Triad stepped in quickly.

  Jack pointed his finger at Corbin. “Don’t ever mess with them, you understand?”

  Corbin’s eyes narrowed and he spoke very slowly. “Don’t you ever point your finger at me, and don’t ever tell me what to do. No one can touch me on this island, no one, do you understand?”

  “He’s trying to help you,” said Don. “You have a habit of throwing your weight around, and it might get you in trouble someday.”

  “When’s our next shipment?” asked Kyle. “I need to get the boat ready.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “Just get it ready.”

  11.

  Jack got back to his house at exactly nine o’clock the next morning.

  The ferry ride from Catalina was smooth as silk down-wind and down-swell and only took two hours.

  He was still worried about Corbin, and his hot temper. Someday he’d do something stupid and get himself killed, Jack just hoped he wasn’t anywhere nearby when it happened. They all knew about the married women and gambling debts and it was only a matter of time before someone put a bullet or two in him.

  He pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door opener on the dash.

  Nothing.

  He pushed it again and again and got no response from the door.

  The little red light on the remote was flashing on when he pushed the button, but still nothing. Maybe it wasn’t getting enough power, so he took the plastic back off and rotated the batteries, spun them in their bays, and tried again. Zero.

  So he put the truck in park and got out, he’d have to do it the old fashioned way from inside the garage, and since he was out on the driveway, might as well check the mailbox.

  He stepped towards the box and cursed when he saw the brown shape.

  Damned little mutt up the street left him a deposit by the pole, and he narrowed his eyes and looked towards the old lady’s house. He’d check the security footage to confirm, but he was sure it was her. Just because he’d kicked at the dog one time, she made a habit of bringing the mangy mutt here to do its business. So far there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t have clear footage that would prove that it was her, but maybe this time, lady, maybe this time.

  He walked in the front door, tried a few light switches and shrugged his shoulders, realizing that the power was indeed off. He set the briefcase on the floor and instantly saw the broken window in the living room, a hole the size of a fist.

  “Well, well what do we have here?” He whispered. He pulled a handgun from the holster at his back and moved cautiously into the house, checking each room, fully ready to blast a hole in anyone he saw. Finally convinced that whoever was stupid enough to break his window and break into his house was long gone, he relaxed and re-holstered the gun.

  He looked closely at the window. One of the panes of the French window was busted completely out, and the shards were on the inside of the house below the window, but the latch was closed and locked. Maybe the culprit did not break into the house and just broke the window. Maybe a bird flew into the window.

  There was one way to find out.

  He went up the stairs to the office, flipped the switch on the battery back-up and turned on the computer, and clicked onto the security camera icon. He had three security cameras set up around the house, one at the front of the garage set next to the light, one in a clock on the wall in the living room, and one right here in the office. All of them battery powered for just the scenario that occurred.

  He toggled through the living room footage first and sure enough, there was a fist going through the window, and then a shape going up and into the room. It looked like a man but there was no light and it was hard to make it out. The figure was carrying a red beamed flashlight.

  Very smart. And then it got real close to the camera and he cursed. The guy was wearing a tight-fitting hoodie that covered his face, and tinted glasses that hid his eyes.

  Bastard.

  Then he toggled onto the office icon and shuffled the footage backwards till he saw the intruder right here where he was sitting.

  He watched as the guy looked in the drawers but did not take anything, and he looked carefully at all the pictures on the wall, and how he paid close attention to the old picture when he was in China so many years ago. Then the intruder looked at his watch and hurried out of the room, out the window the way he came, and reached into the window to re-latch the lock.

  Jack timed the footage from beginning to end, and noted that the intruder took nothing. From the time he entered the window, to the time he left was just about three minutes.

  It wasn’t a burglary. It was a reconnaissance mission.

  12.

  The office on the top floor of the building in the middle of Chinatown was anything but ornate. Five hundred square feet with high ceilings, light bamboo flooring, and green walls.

  There was a large rectangular desk, three identical high backed chairs (one behind the desk and two facing it), a two-person wooden couch along one of the walls, a clock on the wall and a small good luck bamboo desk piece.

  The middle-aged oriental man sitting in the chair behind the desk liked to have the world around him simple and clean, and to him simple and clean was elegance and wealth.

  The man looked at his smart phone on the table, which was ringing, and noticed that the caller ID showed an area code of 310. Catalina Island. But he didn’t recognize the other numbers. He picked up the phone and politely answered. “Yes.”

  The voice on the other end was abrupt and angry, the edges of the words slurred and mumble
d, the man was drunk. “This Chang?”

  “Who is this please?” he asked, still with a polite tone of voice.

  “Listen up you piece of garbage slant eyed whore. You owe us twenty-five grand, and you are going to pay up, or we’re coming after you. Understand?”

  He waited for the man on the other end to finish. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You know what I’m talking about you walking piece of horse dung with legs. Twenty-five grand. You try to rip us off, I’ll come over there and tear you apart with my bare hands. Piece by piece. You don’t know who you’re dealing with here. Twenty-five. You got that? You pay up or I’m taking it out of your hide.”

  Again he was polite. “I mean I don’t understand what you are talking about sir, because my name is not Chang. It is Smith. I believe you have the wrong number, goodbye.”

  He tapped on the red button on the face of the phone to end the call and sat there looking out the window at the wall of city buildings, stacked haphazardly to the horizon. The city surrounding his oasis was un-simple and un-clean.

  The phone rang again, with the same caller ID as before. He let it ring until it went to voicemail which was a generic robot voice asking the caller to leave a message. After a while it rang again, from the same ID, and he let it go to voicemail again. And then the phone was silent. The small icon on the bottom right side of his phone now showed that he had two new voicemails, which he would listen to later.

  For now though, the perfect afternoon schedule that he was used to enjoying was ruined. His cup of green tea to end the day, the evening jog through the park, an hour of martial arts and an hour of Tai Chi would have to wait.

  He knew what happened. Jack was careless with his phone. Being careless could get you killed.

  He tapped on his cell phone and dialed a number, which was answered right away. “Please come to my office,” he said and hung up.

  Five minutes later a young man knocked at the open door and entered. He was impeccably dressed in a grey suit with a light blue tie. He bowed to the man seated at the table and sat across from him.

  The older man wasted no time. “I just received a call from one of our friends on Catalina. I don’t know exactly how he got my number but that is beside the point. I think it’s about time that I reconsider your proposal regarding that particular entry point for our product into the United States.”

  The other man nodded but kept silent while he listened.

  “We’ve had a fairly good relationship with the Cabal, as they like to call themselves. Our goods have, with the exception of last week, always arrived on time. We have delivered on our promises to our people in China, which has made for a good and untroublesome business.” He tapped his fingers together and leaned back in the chair. “Now however, their team is coming apart at the seams. I can sense that they will be a problem in the future, and have become a risk that we do not want to continue with.”

  “We’re ready to take over,” said the young man. “Whenever you give us the word.”

  “The profit from the human smuggling has been good. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per load, ten loads per year, two point five million per year. In five years we have made nearly thirteen million dollars. The technique that we have perfected is unmatched and nearly foolproof. However, it’s unfortunate that the chief of police has prevented us from including drugs in our shipments. Our two and a half million per year could be ten million per year, fifty million over five years. It is time to streamline the operation and eliminate the middle man, so to speak.”

  The young man nodded. This is what he has been advocating for and he will finally get his way, but he holds his emotions in check, his face remains stoic, and he does not show an inkling of a smile, although that is what he is feeling inside. Finally the old man is listening to sense, and it apparently has been triggered by a phone call from someone in the Cabal. Perfect.

  The old man continued. “If we could arrange for the chief of police to have an unfortunate accident that couldn’t be tied to us, like a fall off a cliff or getting run over by a car, then perhaps we could still utilize the rest of their team and the technique that they have developed to incorporate highly valuable drugs with our shipments. However, it appears that they now have a loose cannon in their midst. And he might not be the only one. Have your team mobilize and eliminate all four of the Cabal at one time.”

  “Yes Uncle.”

  “We’ll instruct them that we have a shipment scheduled for in two days and you can use that opportunity for the hit. We won’t actually have a shipment en route but they won’t know that and they’ll proceed as normal. We’ve observed their method of preparation. It’s the same every time. They’ll all be on their vessel at one time near midnight as they’re getting ready for the pick-up at sea. It will be the perfect time to eliminate them all. Send two of our best assassins to Avalon two days ahead of time to scout out the location. They’ll need to time it just right.”

  “Yes Uncle.”

  “That is all for now.”

  As Chang watched his assistant leave the room, he thought about Jack. He gave him plenty of time to remedy the situation, and bring his group together to include drugs in the shipments. As he told Jack on the park bench yesterday, everything is replaceable. He had his chance, and he failed.

  13.

  The two oriental men arrived on the four-thirty afternoon ferry to Avalon. No one would assume they were Chinese hit men from the cartel, here to complete a job.

  He was impeccably dressed in brand new crisp golf attire, bright shirts and black slacks neatly pressed, and if you looked close enough you would notice that even their socks and golf hats had been hand pressed. New black shoes with a mirror shine.

  They purposely looked and dressed like rich dorks.

  They were pale and slim of build, spoke fluent Japanese to each other, and bowed quick and often. With their slick black hair, metal rimmed sunglasses and polite attitude, everyone assumed they were Japanese tourists on a sightseeing tour.

  In fact, they were not one hundred percent Chinese, each had at least one quarter percent Japanese ancestry running in their veins due to the brutal Imperial Japanese Army occupation in world war two. In many ways that fact was a detriment to their development physically, spiritually and politically. Deep resentment within the general population still flowed and bubbled from the occupation and for good reason. Twenty-five million civilian and military Chinese lost their lives in the war that lasted eight years until the Japanese army surrendered on September 9, 1945.

  They were at a disadvantage from the start and had to excel at everything they did just to stay even with the pack.

  Raised in military families and members of the Red Army in their youth, they were now members of a different kind of army. The Chinese Triad. Highly trained in hand-to-hand combat, espionage, and every type of weapon and firearm that was ever made. If they came across a front loading ball and powder flint trigger rifle from the seventeenth century, they could make it work and take out the enemy.

  They were excellent shots with modern sniper rifles, and each suitcase held the latest model with a breakdown barrel and metal stock, with both daytime and night-vision scopes.

  Each of the assassins were fluent in their native Mandarin Chinese, and also in Japanese, English and Russian, with a working ability in the Germanic and Latin tongues. They could be sent anywhere on assignment by the Triad, go anywhere in the world, and blend in as tourists while understanding what was being said around and about them.

  They disembarked from the ferry, bowing deeply to the purser on deck and thanking him profusely in a mix of Japanese and broken English. Each of them carrying their own small metal suitcase, they hailed one of the taxi’s for a short ride up the hill to the hotel and checked into two adjoining rooms on the second floor facing the water.

  Mr. Kubota and Mr. Saiki. Their ID’s showing that they were from Tokyo. and The clerk smiled when he saw this and tried to
speak Japanese.

  “Doi to mustache,” he said beaming. “I took Japanese in high school.”

  They smiled and bowed.

  “Aw velly good, sank you,” said the shorter man, and he pulled out a pocket book translator and flipped through the pages.

  “Where best restaurant?”

  The clerk smiled. “Well, you can’t beat The Bent Whistle. It’s two blocks over and they have the best buffalo steak this side of the Mississippi.”

  “Hai, Bent Whistle,” the shorter man repeated and bowed as he took the electronic card keys, handed one to his friend, and headed for the elevator.

  When they were settled in, front doors locked and double bolted, drapes across the windows, they opened the door between the rooms. They set their cases on one of the twin beds and checked their equipment.

  One of the suitcases held what looked like a small hand-held radio with antenna sticking out of the top, but was in fact a device to check for electronic eavesdropping microphones and tiny cameras. It would detect the electronic transmission signal whether wireless or hard wired, whichever way it was connected. The taller of the two men walked around both rooms, sweeping it slowly and methodically in every crevice and corner, walls, floors, ceilings, over and under the beds, dressers, lights, around the TV and phones and windows, and all throughout the bathrooms. Every inch.

  The other man put a piece of black tape across the peep hole on each of the front doors. He put a rolled up towel on the floor by the door where there was a gap, so no one could slide a mirror or small camera under the door.

  They were taking no chances. This was standard operating procedure whenever they were staying at a hotel room, whether they were on a mission or not. It was common sense as far as they were concerned.