Devil's Harbor

by Alex Gilly

  Later that night, Finn drank himself to sleep. In his sleep, he had an erotic dream. In his dream, he was lost in Mona’s long tresses. Then he heard a man laughing. He looked up and saw Diego watching.

  “I told you she’d miss me more than you,” said Diego in the dream. Finn turned back to Mona, but when he did, she was gone. In her place was a void. He started falling.

  He woke in a cold sweat. He didn’t go back to sleep. He went downstairs, turned on the TV, and waited for dawn. Then he took a shower, not bothering with the hot water.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Early that morning, Finn drove back to the fishermen’s dock where Diego’s truck had been lifted out of the water. He pulled up next to a couple of refrigerated trucks, killed the engine, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. His eyes ached, and the bruises and scrapes on his face throbbed and smarted, just to remind him that they were there.

  He looked through the windshield at the row of commercial fishing boats parked alongside the dock. He saw a longliner with a big coil drum on its stern deck, and green nets heaped over the gunwales or on the decks of the seiners, which made up most of the fleet, and the trawlers with their gantries. He noticed the rust streaks around the welds and bolts on most of the boats. The usual seagulls flocked around the pylons and clung to the rigging and rails, and the usual stench of fish and of an industry in terminal decline hung over the whole place. A handful of men with cigarettes hanging from their mouths were loading plastic boxes laden with fish and ice into refrigerated trucks. Everything about the place reminded him of his father.

  He got out of the truck and walked down the dock, past the fishermen unloading their catches. If they noticed him at all, it was with suspicion. Finn knew that they were a dying breed, and from the pall that hung over the port it was clear that they knew it, too, despite the hopelessly optimistic names they had given their boats: Free Spirit. Daisy. Sea Fox. China Doll. High Hope. And then Pacific Belle.

  She was a seiner, her bridge set forward and high, but she didn’t look comfortable with her rig—with her mast and boom and all the gear crammed onto her stern deck—and Finn figured she’d been a bait boat once, converted for seining. Finn gave her about forty feet, which made her tiny compared to the boats next to her. Her red hull looked rustier than her neighbors’. No one was unloading her catch. There was no one on her deck, but he glimpsed movement in the wheelhouse. He stepped aboard, walked across the deck, past the foot of the mast, and up the steps to the bridge’s thick steel door, and knocked. A woman opened it.

  She wore a tight-fitting, pale-green T-shirt, body-hugging blue jeans, and worn sneakers, the laces loosely tied. She was about five-and-a-half-feet tall, which was smaller than he was, but he was standing a step below her so she looked taller, and she had a determined, ferocious look about her. Her green eyes were speckled with gold. Unbrushed, dirty-blond hair spilled down past her high cheekbones and the soft-looking skin of her neck, which had that even, permanent-looking tan of someone who spends a great deal of time outdoors. She had the looks of a beauty-pageant queen and the straight-spine bearing of a professional athlete.

  Finn hadn’t expected to meet a woman, let alone an attractive one. He was even more thrown when he noticed the child.

  A skinny, very pale girl of around eight or nine stood staring at him behind the woman’s leg. She had the same color hair as the woman, the same intelligent green eyes and small, round-tipped nose, the same small, pouty mouth.

  “Can I help you?” said the woman.

  Finn took off his sunglasses. It seemed more friendly.

  “Good morning, ma’am. I’m with Customs and Border Protection,” he said, glad that he was wearing his uniform. “I’m looking for the captain of this vessel.”

  Her eyes twitched. “You’re looking at her.”

  Finn hoped his surprise didn’t show.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  He glanced at the child and said, “Can we speak privately?”

  She raised one corner of her mouth and considered him. Finn became acutely aware of how repulsive his face must’ve seemed to her. She turned to the child and said, “Lucy, Mommy needs to talk to this man outside. Why don’t you go practice your knots for a few minutes?”

  The kid shook her head and stared at Finn.

  “Now, Lucy.”

  The kid shook her head again and just kept staring, her expression saying that she was amazed, amazed, that someone like him should exist. Feeling self-conscious, he rubbed his hand over his face and watched her mother walk to the chart table, from which she picked up a picture book and a length of rope.

  “Look at all these knots you can learn, sweetie,” he heard her say, pointing at the book. The kid wasn’t interested; all she wanted to do was stare at the bruiser in the doorway.

  “Mind if I come in, ma’am?” said Finn.

  The woman gave a noncommittal shrug.

  Finn put on a smile and bent at the knees so that he was at the kid’s eye level.

  “It’s Lucy, right? My name’s Finn. I work on boats, too. I make knots all the time, tie all kinds of things, not just my shoelaces. You know how to tie a bowline, Lucy?”

  The kid moved back behind her mother’s legs and shook her head some more.

  “It’s easy. I’ll show you. Can I borrow your rope?”

  Lucy hesitated, then peeled away from her mother’s leg, walked over, and handed Finn the rope. He held up the rope in front of her and made a loop.

  “What you have here, see, is a rabbit hole”—he showed the kid the loop—“and a rabbit who lives in it.” He wiggled the end of the rope. “You want the rabbit to come out of the hole and look at you, like this.” He pushed the rope end through the loop and wiggled it. “The rabbit runs out of his hole, around the tree”—he looped the end around the rope—“then runs back down his hole.” He passed the rope back through the loop, tightened it, and showed the girl the noose. She was looking at the knot now, not at Finn.

  “That’s a bowline,” said Finn. He untied the knot, showed her again, patiently, and then again.

  Finally he handed the girl the rope. She approached him, her eyes on the rope now, not his face.

  “Now you try. Remember, you want the rabbit to come out of its hole towards you.”

  He stood up and smiled at her. She smiled back.

  Finn and the woman stepped outside and stood on the landing, under the power block hanging from the end of the raised davit. She left the door open and kept glancing back at her daughter, who was fiddling with the rope as she sat at the table.

  “You have kids?” she said.

  He shook his head. The woman lit a cigarette.

  “You should,” she said.

  “Mrs.…?”

  “Blake. Linda Blake.”

  “Mrs. Blake, were you on your boat about this time yesterday?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Was anyone?”

  “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “I just need to ascertain whether another CBP agent, same uniform as me, came aboard your boat about this time yesterday. A marine interdiction agent named Diego Jimenez.”

  Linda Blake barred her right arm across her chest, supported her left one on top of it, and blew a plume of smoke in his direction.

  “Who?” she said.

  He looked at her and told himself to forget that she was beautiful. She was sucking too hard on her cigarette, getting an uneven burn.

  “Agent Jimenez?” he said. “Came up here yesterday at first light to see you?”

  “Maybe he did, but I wasn’t here till the afternoon, so I didn’t speak to any Agent Jimenez yesterday morning.”

  “Can you tell me where you were?”

  “At home.”

  “You were at home all morning?”

  “No. I took Lucy to her doctor’s appointment about nine. I met my sister, Rhonda. We did some shopping. I didn’t get down to the boat until after three. That’s when I s
aw all the commotion at the end of the dock. You mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “Do you live alone, Mrs. Blake?”

  She screwed up her eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Mrs. Blake…”

  “And as far as I can tell, you’ve got no business at all here on my boat.”

  “An agent’s been killed, Mrs. Blake.”

  She held his gaze. “Is that what all that was yesterday?”

  He gave a curt nod. She dragged some more on her cigarette. She was down to the butt.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I still don’t get what you’re doing here on my boat. You’re not a cop.”

  “You got a lot of experience with cops, Mrs. Blake?”

  “My husband was a master-at-arms. You know what that means?”

  “Sure. I did eight years in the navy.”

  “Which boat?”

  “Maritime Expeditionary Security Force.”

  “David—he was my husband—we were both on the Roosevelt. It’s where we met.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet a fellow squid, Mrs. Blake.”

  “Linda. My husband’s dead. Being called by his name freaks me out. Makes me think he might reappear, you know? But he won’t.” She ran her hand through her hair. “So, you going to answer my question?”

  “Agent Jimenez was my patrol partner and my brother-in-law.”

  “I get it. It’s personal.”

  “Yeah, it’s personal.”

  “And you think he came here.”

  Finn realized that she was asking all the questions. He took back the initiative.

  “When was the last time you saw Miguel Espendoza?” he said.

  He caught the tremor at the corners of her eyes.

  “Is he involved? I haven’t seen him in over a year.”

  “But he used to work for you?”

  “He did one trip. And like I said, that was over a year ago.”

  “Know if he worked any other boats after you?”

  “I doubt it. If he’d crewed on any of the other boats in the fleet, I’d have heard.”

  “Why just the one trip?”

  “He realized it wasn’t the life for him. Too much hard work. Did he kill your brother-in-law?”

  Finn rubbed his chin. “He’s not a suspect.”

  She looked surprised. “So why are you looking for him?”

  He fixed his gaze on her and said, “We’re not. We found him floating out in the channel.”

  If she was rattled, she was hiding it well.

  “You mean he was murdered, too?” she said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t say anything.” She lit another cigarette.

  The little girl came out of the wheelhouse. “Look!” she said. She held up the rope. She’d tied a bowline, almost.

  Finn smiled, squatted down beside her. “That is sweet. You’re a sailor now, Lucy,” he said, saluting her.

  She beamed. Then she said, “What happened to your face?”

  “I bumped into the floor.”

  She laughed. “Here,” she said, handing him the rope, “It’s a present.”

  Finn smiled and thanked her. He put the rope in his pocket.

  Linda took the little girl by the hand. “All right, Lucy, it’s time for your medicine. Say good-bye to the funny-looking man.”

  She turned to Finn and said, “We live with my sister, Rhonda. She takes care of Lucy when I’m at sea. Speak to her if you want to check my alibi.”

  Finn handed her his card. “You think of anything else regarding Espendoza, anything at all, you give me a call.”

  “‘Nick Finn,’” she read. “What do people usually call you? Nick or Finn?”

  “Nick’s fine,” he said, surprising himself. Everyone called him Finn except Mona.

  “I prefer Finn. Suits you better.” She put the card in her jeans pocket. “You look like a dangerous guy, Mr. lone-wolf, expeditionary-force, no-warrant marine interdiction agent, with your beat-up face and all, but I bet you’re not. I bet you’re quite nice to look at when you’re not so ugly.”

  The little girl giggled. Linda laughed outright, opening her mouth and revealing sharp little canines. Finn obliged them with a smile and headed toward the stern.

  At the gangway, he turned and said, “One last thing, Linda. This time of year, you’re fishing for what?

  “Mackerel.”

  “Any luck?”

  “With what?”

  He pointed to the nets. “With the catch.”

  She pulled her child closer and said, “The fish are all gone, Finn. We’re all out of luck.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At the Self Help, Mona met Finn in the reception area and led him to the small room where they’d interviewed La Abuelita. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Mona took a seat behind the desk, with the window behind her. She looked thinner and older, with bags under her eyes, her clothes loose rather than form-fitting. Her eyes seemed to have dimmed, the shine gone out of them. She hadn’t bothered with makeup. Mona, it quickly became clear, was there to work and nothing else. She had greeted him curtly. She avoided all physical contact.

  Finn told her about his visit to San Pedro that morning.

  “The Pacific Belle links Espendoza and Diego,” she said.

  Finn nodded. “There’s a link with Perez, too: we found Espendoza’s body in the same patch of sea where we intercepted La Catrina.”

  Mona picked up the handset and asked for a whiteboard. A moment later, the door opened and the kid with the face jewelry rolled one in. She gave Finn her usual glower.

  When the door closed behind her, Mona got up and stood in front of the whiteboard with a marker. On the left side, she wrote Diego’s name. In the middle, she wrote Espendoza’s. On the right, Perez’s.

  Then she turned to Finn and said, “Perez, Espendoza, Diego. Let’s get down everything we know that links them.”

  “Diego was found in the San Pedro fishing port, where the Pacific Belle docks,” said Finn. “Diego and I found Espendoza out in the channel, off of Two Harbors. Espendoza’s probation officer said he had a job on the Pacific Belle.”

  Mona wrote “Pacific Belle” on the board, drew a line linking it to Espendoza and another to Diego. She wrote “San Pedro” under Diego’s name. She stepped back and looked at her work for a moment.

  Then she said, “All three of them were at one time or another in that same patch of sea where you found Espendoza: Diego on patrol, Perez on La Catrina.”

  She drew more lines linking the three men, forming a triangle on the whiteboard. In the middle of it, she wrote “Two Harbors” with a red marker.

  “Looks like the Devil’s Triangle,” she murmured.

  Finn thought of all the shark sightings that had been reported in that area. “Here’s another possible link,” he said. “The port authority told Diego that the Pacific Belle returned to port the same morning we found Espendoza’s body. So it’s possible, in theory at least, that she was out there in the channel, in the Devil’s Triangle, that morning.”

  Mona drew a line linking the Belle to Two Harbors and put a question mark next to it. “So you think Espendoza might’ve come off the Pacific Belle?” she said.

  Finn shook his head. “Espendoza was floating; bodies sink and don’t surface until they gas up, which can take days. If he’d come off the boat that morning, he would’ve sunk first. He’d been in the water awhile.”

  Just then his phone rang. The screen showed a Mexico City area code. Finn answered. It was Vega, his contact at the Mexican Federal Police, whom he’d asked to run a check on Perez before Diego’s murder. Finn had forgotten all about it.

  “You sitting down?” said Vega.

  Finn said he was.

  “Perez was a cop.”

  “What?”

  “He was with the Policía Municipal Preventiva up in Rosario, in Sinaloa.”

  Finn was glad he was sitting down. He said, “I thought
he was—”

  “A gangster, yeah, I know. But listen, he was a local cop in Rosario, and the Caballeros own Rosario. That means they own the judges, the mayor, and the cops, too.”

  “So you’re saying Perez was dirty?”

  “He was alive, wasn’t he? I mean, before you shot him? If you’re a cop in Caballeros territory and you’re not dead, that means only one thing: you’re working for them.”

  “Sinaloa. That’s miles from Tijuana.”

  “At least a thousand.”

  “What was he doing off Catalina? Why does he own gas stations in Tijuana?”

  “I can’t answer that. All I can tell you is, you shot a dirty cop from Rosario.”

  “I need proof Perez was dirty.”

  Vega laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

  Finn thanked him, hung up. On the whiteboard, Mona wrote “Caballero” under Perez’s name.

  Finn thought, What if the Caballeros killed Diego in retaliation for Perez? What if they killed the wrong migra agent?

  From the black look she was giving him, he guessed Mona was thinking the same thing. He felt a hollowness in his gut. He regretted holding back from taking a drink that morning. He thought about the bottle of Jim Beam waiting for him in his truck, the seal unbroken. He breathed hard through his nose, tried to set his thinking straight, focus on the task at hand. He looked at the board, at all the lines and arrows connecting each name to the others. A crooked cop from a small town in Sinaloa; a teenager from East L.A.; a marine interdiction agent.

  Mona had referred to the patch of sea outside Two Harbors as the “Devil’s Triangle.” It seemed appropriate. He remembered pulling Espendoza’s body from the water, the bloodied stumps in place of legs, the great dark shape gliding beneath him. He got up and took a pen from Mona and circled the “Pacific Belle” on the board.

  “It keeps coming back to the boat, doesn’t it,” he said.

  Mona nodded. “You met the skipper. You trust her?” she said.

  “She seemed cagey,” he said. “Like she was scared of something and didn’t want me to know it.”

  “Maybe she’s doing something she’s not supposed to be doing.”

  “She’s supposed to be fishing, so that’s easy enough to find out,” said Finn. He still had his phone in his hand. He dialed a contact at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.