The Catalina Cabal

by Bill Thesken

  “You see how boisterous they are? How loud, and show-offish? They’re pretenders, here for the day or the night, but pretenders nonetheless. They might be able to afford a boat, but they couldn’t navigate it across a bathtub.”

  “You’re pretty good at this.”

  “I live here, I see it every day. Sometimes it offends me and I have to get as far away as possible from here, and other times when I see someone on the island who’s self-confident, calm and assured, that makes me happy. Very happy in fact.”

  I glanced down at her hands that held the iced tea, and she gently sighed, and held up her left hand with the large diamond encrusted wedding ring.

  “Oh yeah, by the way, I’m married.”

  The offhand way she said it and the look on her face didn’t make it sound too thrilling.

  “Happens to the best of them,” I shrugged.

  “I see it hasn’t happened to you.” And she nodded towards my hands. No ring.

  “People that are married don’t always wear a ring.”

  “So are you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She smiled at that and her face got soft and dreamy, trying to make the best bedroom eyes that she could manage. Of course it didn’t matter, not to her.

  “I own this bar,” she said. “Or, should I say my husband and I own this bar.” She hesitated, sizing me up one last time, looking at my eyes, and then bent down and whispered near my ear. “But he doesn’t own me.” Her breath with a hint of vodka was warm against my earlobe, and her perfume lingered in my nostrils as she stood straight again, and she smiled, empowered at her statement of independence. “So I ask again, can I get you a drink?”

  “Club soda over ice with a big wedge of lime, or two if they’re cut small.”

  In my line of work I’d come across a few vicious cold blooded killers, and none of them held a candle to this broad. This woman was dangerous. I’m sure Amber would have some different words to describe her, maybe a short sentence that ended with slut. And as I watched her swish her tail for my benefit towards the bar I felt sorry for her schmuck of a husband, whoever the poor bastard was.

  The last time I flirted with a dame in a bar, her boyfriend shot me in the ass from across a loading dock and I nearly bled to death.

  This broad was married and there was no telling what could happen to me if she tried to get cozy. I decided to keep it cool. I was just playing around and didn’t think it was going to go this far. She called my bluff and whispered in my ear. All I wanted now was to pay for my drink, take a couple of sips and get the hell out of there in one piece.

  When she returned with the drink, I pulled out my wallet and set it on the table.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “The drinks on the house,” she purred.

  “I insist,” I said as I pulled out a five dollar bill.

  “No I insist,” she said and put her hand on my mine.

  I slowly pulled my hand back so as not to offend her. “Look,” I said. “I’m really flattered and all, you’re very beautiful, but I’m not interested.”

  That seemed to amuse her and she smiled and tapped her toe and tilted her head.

  “Why, are you gay?”

  The question was a challenge, and it showed that she had a mean streak. Obviously this woman was so incredibly gorgeous and had gotten her way with men for most of her adult life, that to her, the only ones able to resist her charms must not be attracted to women at all.

  “The truth is, that I could never, ever, and I repeat ever fool around with…” I let the sentence dangle for a moment, “…a brunette. I really only like blondes,” I lied. “Sorry, it’s just one of those things.”

  She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Bullshit.” She didn’t like my little joke and now she was getting pissed off, I could see the anger building in the corners of her eyes.

  “Okay you caught me,” I said. “Truth is I’m engaged to be married to a wonderful girl. She’s the love of my life, my soul-mate.” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “What can I say, I’m toast.”

  She studied me for a moment to see if I was telling the truth this time.

  “Now that’s more believable.” She tried to salvage some of her pride and with a whip of her head threw her hair over her shoulder. “So what makes you think I was coming onto you anyways? I told you I was married.”

  She reached down and sullenly picked up the five dollar bill.

  “It’s three fifty for the soda water with lime. I’ll bring your change.”

  “Keep the change,” I said, and tried to give her back some of her lost honor. “And by the way I’m sorry for thinking you were coming onto me, you’re just so damned beautiful I thought that I was day-dreaming.”

  I winked at her. I could see that she was torn between a smile and a frown. She settled on the frown and walked away without the extra shimmy this time.

  15.

  The Avalon Sheriff’s station is located one block from the harbor on Sumner Avenue.

  Sitting in his air-conditioned office on the ground floor, the Watch Commander, Sergeant Don Baker’s attention was consumed by the stack of paper on his desk.

  The big cheese, the Station Commander was still on the mainland and every request for manpower, supplies, and equipment went through him. Which meant that Don would need to wade through the pile. He shook his head and made a command decision. All official business would have to wait for a couple of hours. He pushed that stack to the side, and brought another stack to the center. Personal business first. He measured the stack with his two fingers, about five inches tall, he surmised. Credit card bills and business statements, daily ledger reports. Half a million dollars a year from his little smuggling operation wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it took some effort to wash it, put it through the laundry so it was legit as far as the bean counters at the federal and state tax offices were concerned. Add to that the Police ethics and integrity department, which was geared towards investigating any potential graft in the department: bribes, kickbacks, extortion, all the bad things a cop could use to get extra cash under his belt, and he had to be careful.

  Spending the half million per year wasn’t the hard part, just ask his wife and take a look at the stack of receipts in front of him. She was on a yearlong party, from New Year’s day to New Year’s Eve. Every other week it seemed, she was off to the mainland to see her sick mother, or help a friend with an event, and while she was there a lot of shopping needed to be done.

  Sometimes she needed to get farther away and went with her girlfriends to Tahiti, or Maui. Still, it wasn’t too bad most of the time. He knew that he married way over his head, cheerleader at Long Beach High, prom Queen, it went on and on. She was a genuine beauty, and he was lucky to snag her away from all the other bastards who were trying to hook up with her. It took every bit of conniving and money and energy he had in the beginning to keep her attention on him, and him alone. And now it was nearly half a million a year.

  He separated the stacks of paper into three smaller stacks. Receipts from personal credit card purchases, cash receipts from the bar, and receipts for supplies for the bar. It was actually pretty easy. Half a million dollars divided by three hundred and sixty-five was a measly thirteen hundred and change per day. The bar was doing pretty good, averaging three grand in receipts per day, so he just added thirteen hundred in cash sales every day to the till, and voila. Take out the cost of the food, booze, cooks, bartenders, insurance, lease rent, utilities, and after paying the state and federal tax on what remained, he cleared a tidy four hundred grand per year, plus his sheriff’s pay of fifty grand. You could live pretty large on that amount of money, and as far as the government was concerned, he was legit.

  16.

  It was a ten minute walk from the bar to the Harry L. Hufford Government Complex which housed the Sheriff station, courthouse, library and county offices down a street lined with shops and restaurants, and parked up and down that street were doze
ns of golf carts with the odd car here and there. Ironically, a Chinese restaurant specializing in Mandarin Cuisine was two doors down from the little civic center.

  “Can I help you?” The uniform standing behind the plexiglass window was pleasant and straight to the point.

  “I’d like to talk to the Station Commander.”

  “He’s not in. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Wednesday. Can it wait?”

  I shook my head. “Is there someone filling in for him?”

  “Sergeant Baker is the Watch Commander. He’s in his office. Can I ask what this is about?”

  “I’m the guy who found the body in the ocean on Saturday. I just want to see how the investigation is going.”

  He nodded. “Okay, what’s your name.”

  “Badger Thompson.”

  He gave me that look that everyone did when they heard my name.

  “You mean like the animal?”

  I just nodded and he didn’t press the issue.

  “Okay, just sign this form, let me see your ID and we’ll get you in.”

  He passed a clipboard under the opening in the window and I printed and signed my name, put my driver’s license on the clipboard and slid it back under the window. He took a quick look then returned the license and opened the door to the side. I followed him in through the office.

  He knocked and then opened the door to the small office down the hallway. The sergeant looked up from his pile of paperwork.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Badger Thompson to see you sir. He’s the guy who found the body in the ocean on Saturday.”

  I could see by his eyes he was startled, and then calmed himself.

  “Sure, come on in. Have a seat.” He stood up without making a comment about my name, and motioned to the two chairs in front of his desk. The officer left the room and closed the door. I reached over and shook the deputy’s hand and he introduced himself.

  “Don Baker, how can I help you?”

  I didn’t say anything at first as I sat in the chair on the right side. My eyes scanned the office, the neat and tidy framed citations, awards, certifications, photos on the walls. My gaze lingered a little longer on one particular photo and he followed my eyes to see which one it was. A wedding picture, a younger version of the man who was sitting in front of me right now, standing stiff and starched in a tuxedo, holding his hat in one hand, and the hand of his blushing bride in the other, dressed in a flowing white wedding dress, with long black hair and wild eyes.

  The girl from the bar.

  He noticed my attention on the picture. “My wife Amanda.”

  I nodded and looked directly at him, so this was the poor bastard who was married to the man eater.

  “I met her at your bar just before I walked over here.”

  His eyes narrowed nearly imperceptibly with suspicion, but I saw it. The jealous husband.

  “She introduced herself as the owner,” I continued. “I was there a couple of days ago, on a Friday, and thought it had a pretty good view of the harbor, so I thought I’d go back and have a soda. Friday night was hopping, we were lucky to get a table, but it’s slow in there today, not much happening.”

  “Crowds come and go, with the weekend. As predictable as the tide.”

  I got to the point. “We were here in Avalon Friday night and Saturday morning. We were here for the party at the Zane Grey estate.”

  “And?”

  “Saturday morning we took a sail along the north coast, and found the body of the woman, and turned it over to the Coast Guard. I’m just curious how the investigation is going, and if anyone has come forward to claim the body. I was at the mortuary earlier this morning, they couldn’t help me.” I motioned to the pile of papers in front of him. “Sorry, I can see you’re busy.”

  He nodded, dug under another pile, and pulled out a thin manila folder. He looked through it, then read a paragraph.

  “On November Twenty-First at eleven hundred hours, Badger Thompson, captain of the forty-five foot sailboat the “Sugar” found the body of a female approximately thirty-five years of age one half mile outside of Arrow Point, Catalina Island.” He looked up from the folder. “Do you have identification?”

  I nodded.

  He held out his hand. “Can I see it?”

  I pulled out my wallet and handed him my California driver’s license. He looked it over carefully front and back, then pulled out a small flashlight from the top drawer of his desk, shined a small blue light on it. I knew that it was an ultraviolet flashlight, a black-light that every bar door bouncer and airport TSA agent carried to spot fake ID’s. I decided to play dumb.

  “What’s with the light?”

  “Embedded water mark, the black light makes it visible. Old habit. You’re legit.” He still held the card and looked closer at the front. “Your address is a boat slip in Dana Point Harbor.”

  Again I just nodded. “It’s a place to hang my hat.”

  He handed me back the card. “It’s a hell of a thing to find a dead body anywhere. But out in the ocean…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head and frowned.

  “It wasn’t very pleasant.” I was thinking that I sure wish I’d had that ultraviolet black light to shine on Mei Ling’s driver’s license the day we found her. I needed to get my hands on one.

  “Did you sail back over in the Sugar today?”

  I studied him, but unlike the deputy my eyes did not narrow even though my suspicions had been aroused. I hadn’t told him that I left the island after the finding the body, so why would he assume that I had sailed back over today?

  “I had a problem with the Sugar, so I left it in Dana Point and brought my other boat over.”

  The inflection of his voice rose a notch and he said it more as a statement than a question. “You have two boats?” I could see he was surprised.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s good to have a back-up. Anyways, the girl was carrying a large amount of money, and a driver’s license with a Long Beach address.”

  He flipped through some pages in the file and nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “How much did it count out to? I was estimating about ten grand. Was I right?”

  “I can’t give out that information.”

  “What about the address on the license? Did someone go and check it out?”

  “I’m sure someone did, we forwarded this file to the LAPD to follow up on it.”

  “Any response yet?”

  He closed the file and sighed. “Well, Mr. Thompson this is an open investigation and as such I really can’t give you any details. I hope you understand.”

  I did not understand. I was being stonewalled and I didn’t like it.

  He leaned forward, and gave me his tough guy look. “But since I have you sitting in front of me, perhaps I can ask why you’re so curious?”

  The way he asked the question made it sound like he thought I was a suspect. What he didn’t know is that it would take someone a lot tougher than him to make me crack and walk away.

  “I don’t like mysteries. They keep me up at night. I found the body, and as such I think I have the right to make sure the family of this person knows what happened to her.”

  “Do you have any idea how many deceased bodies went unclaimed in Los Angeles County just last year?”

  I shook my head.

  He reached behind his chair to a bookcase and pulled out a binder and opened it up to a page near the front and put his finger in the middle of it and read off the numbers.

  “One thousand five hundred and fifty.”

  “C’mon,” I snorted. “That seems pretty high. Fifteen hundred unidentified bodies? You got to be kidding me.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not talking unidentified, I’m talking unclaimed. They die at home, hospitals, homeless shelters, and on the streets. Funerals are expensive, times are tough and sometimes it’s easier for the family to just lo
ok the other way and let the State take care of it.”

  “Alright well how many of those were classified as unidentified?”

  He looked back at the page with his finger on it. “Unidentified, and those that were unidentifiable totaled eleven. Four men, three women, and four whose gender was unknown.”

  “How many on Catalina?”

  “None.”

  “What about the body I found?”

  “She’s unclaimed, not unidentified.”

  “Getting back to those fifteen hundred not unidentified, but unclaimed deceased bodies, they must have had ID’s then. Right? You know who they are, or who they were since they had some type of identification.”

  “Sure.”

  “How many of those had fake ID’s? Did someone shine the black light and see the embedded water mark on all those ID’s? It would seem that would be company policy for identifying dead people to make sure they had the right person.”

  His eyes glazed over and his face went blank. He was done with me, and yet he knew where this was headed.

  “Bear with me,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure this out, I’m new to this whole unclaimed body scene. Did anyone shine a black light on Mei Ling’s ID?”

  A tiny bead of sweat appeared in middle of his forehead.

  He didn’t say anything right away so I tried to help him out. “The dead girl at the mortuary.”

  “I know who you’re talking about. I didn’t personally shine the UV light on the ID that was found with her, and to tell you the truth I wish I had.”

  “We can go over there now and shine it.”

  “The only thing at the mortuary is the body.”

  “Do you still have the evidence?”

  I wasn’t going away. He nodded, resigned to the fact that the easiest way to get me out of his hair was to shine the light on the ID. He picked up the phone.

  “Darnell, please bring me the evidence bag from the Mei Ling case.”

  It took about five minutes for a stocky brunette woman in her early forties to show up carrying a zippered blue bag which she handed to Don. She stood on the side and waited as he opened it and pulled out a double bagged wad of cash, and a double bagged driver’s license and set them both on top of the desk in front of him. Then he reached behind his chair and pulled out a brand new pair of evidence handling gloves, slipped them on and opened the bags containing the license. He held it by the edges and studied it front and back, just the way he had for my ID. Then he picked up the black-light and shined it on the front, and shook his head and turned it so I could see.