by Alex Gilly
“Can you e-mail me the most recent catch log for a seiner out of San Pedro, the Pacific Belle?” he said. He also asked for a copy of her commercial fishing license. He gave his personal e-mail address and hung up. Mona was back in her seat.
“I’ll contact the DMV and chase down the Pacific Belle’s registration,” she said. “See where that leads.”
Finn told Mona he was going to take another look at La Catrina. Perez had been ready to kill federal agents to protect her, he said. He was convinced the answer was still hidden aboard her somewhere. They arranged to phone each other at the end of the day, or as soon as either one discovered important information.
When he left, they parted with the same stiff manner with which they’d met. A stranger watching would’ve been surprised to learn that they were married.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Finn drove to the CBP station. Along the way, he picked up a pint of Jim Beam and a large bottle of Coke. He poured out half the soda on the road and replaced it with bourbon. By the time he got to the boat he had a nice buzz going.
La Catrina was still cradled in the hoist parked at the top of the boat ramp. It was Sunday and there were no forensics guys around. Finn had her to himself.
He started on the outside. He walked slowly around the entire hull, tapping it every few inches, listening for hollows that shouldn’t have been there. He scrutinized the fiberglass, running his fingers over it, looking for sections that might’ve been cut, then patched over and resprayed. When he got to the stern, he saw that the line with which he’d stopped her was still tightly wound around her propeller shaft. He tapped the rope with his knuckle—it was synthetic rope, which was why it had melted and then fused around the shaft. He couldn’t help smiling at his own handiwork: the rope felt as hard as concrete.
After tapping his way around the entire hull, Finn stepped back to get a broader perspective of it. But looking at the boat close-up or farther back, he couldn’t see any signs of tampering.
He climbed up the rolling ladder, stepped onto her deck, and began searching. He started in her engine bay, which was hardly bigger than a crawlspace and still smelled of burning plastic and oil. The fire extinguisher with which he’d tried to put out the fire was still there, leaning uselessly in a corner. He checked every nook and cranny.
He climbed back out of the engine bay and methodically went over La Catrina’s stern deck, making sure to feel along the lining of all her storage compartments for false bottoms. He checked the refrigerator, the bait box, the drinks holders, the rod holders, and the storage compartment under the bench seat.
He went through the tinted-glass door into the cabin. Inside, he was pleased to see how thorough the forensics guys had been before they’d been pulled off the job. They’d dismantled pretty much everything that could be dismantled. They’d pulled the flat-screen TV out of the wall to check the cavity behind it. They’d knifed through the throw cushions and the tan leather banquettes to check for contraband hidden within. They’d unscrewed the air-conditioning vents. They’d even pulled out the recessed light fixtures in the ceiling and left them dangling on their wires. They’d taken everything out of every drawer and cupboard in the galley, then taken the drawers off their rails and dumped it all into one corner. They’d opened all the canned food and all the food cartons, searched through their contents, and then thrown it all into a lidded plastic bin. Finn was hit by the smell when he lifted the lid, all the food beginning to go bad. Still, he poked through it all.
He went through all the charts and pilot books and paperwork in the drawers of the chart table next to the control console. He went into the bedroom and the bathroom and found the mattress slashed and the vanity unit dismantled. He found a flashlight, located the bilge hatch, then lay down on the floor, lowered his head through the hatch, and shone the flashlight around the bilge.
He went back out to the stern deck and climbed the external ladder to the flybridge. There was a second console up there, so the boat could be driven from up high as well as from the cabin. There was also a second icebox, in which, Finn assumed, Perez had kept his weapon. If he was going to find traces of gunshot residue anywhere, it would be up here. Yet when the forensics team had run all their fancy tests, they’d come up negative.
Of course, it didn’t take a genius to see why, thought Finn. The flybridge was completely exposed to the elements on all sides. Because of his trick with the rope, La Catrina had been unable to travel under her own steam, and in the six hours it had taken to arrange for a boat to come out and tow her back to Long Beach, a Santa Ana had blown down off the mountains, and La Catrina had been towed straight into the eye of a wind gusting upward of forty miles per hour. It would’ve blasted away whatever residue there might have been on the exposed surfaces of the flybridge.
Finn thought about all this, and then thought how flimsy that would sound in court. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I assure you, the wind blew away the evidence …
He climbed off the boat empty-handed, walked back to his truck, and grabbed the bourbon-laced Coke from the storage compartment in the door.
When the liquor’s glow had blunted the edges of his anger, he drove home.
* * *
He spoke with Mona on the phone that night. He was sitting at the kitchen table in their Redondo home with his laptop open in front of him, a drink with ice cubes in it next to that. He was bare-chested. She asked him whether he’d found anything on La Catrine and he said no, but he wasn’t done looking.
She told him that she’d gotten the Pacific Belle’s registration details from the DMV, and he was impressed by her powers of persuasion. He’d never gotten any document that quickly from the DMV.
“Linda Blake owns forty-nine percent,” said Mona over the phone. “The rest is owned by a corporation called Muir Holdings. I did a company search to try to find out who that is, but whoever’s behind Muir Holdings doesn’t want to be identified. The company’s held by a trust, and there’s no way of finding out who the beneficiaries are. It means ‘sea,’ by the way.”
“What does?”
“‘Muir.’ It’s the Irish word for ‘sea.’ I googled it.”
Finn never did have a head for languages.
“Did you speak to La Abuelita?” he said.
“She’s never heard of the Pacific Belle.”
When they’d said everything they had to say about the case, the conversation ran out of fuel and sputtered to a halt. Finn wanted to keep Mona on the line. He said he hoped she was planning on taking time off work. She was, she said. He asked how her parents were doing. He closed his eyes while she told him. Then he asked about the dogs.
“They lie on the floor whimpering, staring at the front door,” she said.
Finn couldn’t count the number of times Diego had told him that Rhodesian ridgebacks had been bred to hunt lions. “Strongest breed in the world, kick any dog’s ass, including pit bulls,” he used to say, prompting Finn to nod politely and try to keep a straight face. He’d known Ronald and Nancy since they were puppies, and he’d never met a softer, more spoiled pair of canines. They might’ve looked tough, but Finn pictured them bolting behind their favorite couch the moment a lion so much as glanced in their direction. For Diego, they’d been family.
“What are you doing, Nick?” said Mona.
“I just want to talk, Mona. That’s all.”
“Are you drinking right now?”
He picked up his glass. The ice cubes in it clinked. “Yes,” he said.
The line clicked off.
He put down the phone. It was very, very quiet in the room. One of these days, he thought, he would have to do something about his drinking.
One of these days.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Finn spent the rest of night lying on the couch, the TV flickering in the background with the sound down low, the bottle of bourbon he was working his way through his only defense against the black dreams. He slept in fits and starts only, afraid to sle
ep too deeply or too long lest the dreams return.
He got to the dock at first light, the sky streaked with gold and purple. Linda Blake was standing on the quay by her boat, talking to a refrigerator-size man wearing a grizzly beard, yellow bibs, and Xtratuf knee boots. Finn saw her see him and say something to the man, who turned and ambled past Finn, eyeballing him.
Linda was wearing the same sneakers and jeans as yesterday, plus a green fleece. An elastic band held her hair away from her face, and he caught the green-and-gold shimmer in her eyes. She didn’t look pleased to see him.
“I’m busy,” she said.
“This won’t take a minute.”
“Like I said, I’m busy.”
“You said yesterday that you’d been out on a weeklong trip.”
She stuffed her hands into her pockets. “That’s right.”
“How many crew?”
“However many I can afford. Two, this time.”
“Same crew, usually?”
“Whoever I can get.”
“You gonna tell me their names?”
“You gonna get a warrant?”
Finn tried a different tack: “Where’d you go?”
“Out past the banks.”
Finn nodded. “You were fishing mackerel, huh?”
“Mostly.”
Finn ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth. “Yesterday when I asked you how it went, you said the fish are all gone. But you must’ve caught something, right? A week at sea, you have to come back with something?”
She stiffened. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Why didn’t you go farther out? A week, that’s hardly worth the effort, seems to me. Why didn’t you head out farther west?”
“You seen the size of my boat? I’m lucky if I make it past Cabo. I can’t compete with those big boats go out all the way to Japan. I don’t have a helicopter for spotting schools. And anyway, no one wants radioactive fish. You got a point?”
“I called Fish and Wildlife,” he said. “I saw your catch log.”
She gave him a hard look.
“You haven’t caught anything this season. Fish and Wildlife says you’re not even close to your quota. So I figure three things could be happening here. Either you’re the unluckiest fishing boat in the Pacific, or you’re not declaring your catch, or you’re not fishing at all.” He held her gaze. The green-and-gold shimmer had sharpened. “You don’t declare your catch, you could lose your license,” he said.
“My generator gave out. I had to throw out the catch. I wasn’t going to declare a catch I couldn’t sell.”
The lie was so blatant, Finn could only admire her for telling it with a straight face.
“My dad worked a seiner back when I was growing up in the nineties,” he said. “Small boat, like yours. He used to go after the tuna every spring. Then the tuna stopped coming inshore, and only the big boats could go out far enough to get them. The industry collapsed. All those men out of work, boats getting repossessed. You wouldn’t be the first fishing boat to turn to trafficking. What did you do? Stop at some quiet fishing village in Baja, take on a few packages?”
She pulled her hands out of her pockets and lit a cigarette, the flame guttering in time with the tremor she was trying to hide. She took a deep drag and then, with the cigarette clasped between her index and middle fingers, waved toward the fishing fleet. “You see all these boats here?” she said. “All these guys, they go out there, risk their lives to catch fish. This is the most dangerous business in the world. There are lots of accidents. Men die all the time.”
An image of his father’s fake leg came to Finn’s mind. “If you’ve got a point, I missed it,” he said.
“What I’m telling you, Finn, is that this is a dangerous business, and we look after our own. We don’t talk to outsiders. Especially not those who come around here disrespecting us, making allegations.”
She was talking tough, but her tone didn’t match her words. She sounded scared.
“Who’s your co-owner?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Muir Holdings? Who is that? Who are you protecting?”
She dragged on her cigarette, fixed her eyes on his. “Go home to your wife, Finn. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“What happened to Espendoza?”
“I haven’t seen him—”
“Bullshit. I think you know exactly what happened to him. In fact, I think he came off this boat.”
She started up the gangway. He hustled behind her, the metal clanging under his feet.
“How did you know I’m married?”
She turned and glanced at his left hand. Finn didn’t wear a ring.
“Get off my boat,” she said.
“Not before you tell me what happened to Diego.”
Someone stepped onto the gangway behind him. He turned and saw the man in yellow bibs. He had two companions behind him, both the size of NFL nose tackles.
“Is there a problem here?” said the refrigerator.
Finn turned back to Linda. “I know Diego spoke to you, Linda. I don’t give a damn what you do with your boat. All I want is whoever killed Diego.”
“This guy bothering you, Captain?” said the man in bibs.
“Yes,” she said.
Finn turned to the man. “This is official business. I’m a marine interdiction agent with Customs and Border Protection. There’s no trouble here.”
From their dead-eyed looks, Finn got the impression that the trio did not give much weight to the federal government or its agents.
“Captain says get off her boat,” said the man.
“We’re just having a conversation.”
“Conversation’s over.”
Finn looked at the three men and wondered if he was about to get the crap kicked out of him again.
They looked like they were wondering the same thing.
He threw up his hands. “Okay, okay, I’m going,” he said, glancing back.
Linda Blake had disappeared into the wheelhouse. She had more flint to her than he had thought. She wasn’t going to give up Diego’s killer without some arm-twisting, and he couldn’t twist her arm with her sitting safely in the pocket. She had quite the offensive line around her, and, truth be told, Finn was relieved to get off the gangway before it collapsed under their combined weight.
* * *
He’d been waiting in his truck for two hours by the time Linda came off the Belle and appeared in the parking lot. He shrank down in his seat and watched her get into a white Tahoe. She pulled out of the lot and turned left. Finn gave her ten seconds, then pulled out behind her.
The sun was up now and the air was getting warmer. The roads were filled with people on their way to work. He followed the Tahoe down West Twenty-second, pulling up a couple of cars behind her at each of the lights. She turned left on South Gaffey, then right onto Twenty-fifth. A couple of miles down the road, Twenty-fifth Street turned into Palos Verdes Drive. Linda stuck to the speed limit. The farther they went into Palos Verdes, the more the neighborhood improved, with eucalypti standing guard over mowed front lawns, trimmed hedges veiling wide, pricey-looking houses with double-front garages, the street spotless, not a pothole in sight. The white Tahoe turned off on a local road. Finn knew what kind of money fishermen took home, and this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood in which they lived.
Linda pulled into the driveway of a single-story, modern-looking, cement-and-wood house. Finn drifted past her. Through his tinted windows, he saw the front door of the house open and Lucy appear next to a woman who looked enough like Linda for Finn to figure she was the sister.
He got to the end of the street, turned around, and pulled up in the shade of some trees. He checked his watch. It was 9:45 A.M. Too early for a drink.
He had one anyway.
That Linda had led him to her sister’s house disappointed him. He’d hoped, unreasonably, that she would lead him straight to Diego’s killer. But all she’d
done was go home. He searched around for a piece of paper on which to write down the address. All he could find was the counselor’s card that he’d thrown on the floor.
He was about to leave when he saw Linda, Lucy, and the sister reappear from the house. The sister had on a nurse’s uniform. She held open the Tahoe’s back door while Lucy climbed in, then closed the door and got in the front passenger side, next to Linda at the wheel. For the hell of it, Finn pulled out from the shade and followed them. Linda navigated her way through the back streets of Palos Verdes, Hermosa Beach, and Manhattan Beach. She turned right onto Rosecrans, and Finn almost overshot the ramp when she veered onto the 405 northbound. He had to cut off a Suburban, whose driver honked exuberantly. He kept his eyes fixed on the Tahoe: if Linda had made him, she hadn’t reacted.
Half an hour later, she took the Santa Monica exit and drove west to a large hospital. The white Tahoe went through a boom gate into the parking lot and headed down a row of parking spaces. Finn followed, took the next row, and pulled into an empty space. He watched Linda and her sister get out of the car and open the back door for Lucy, who was playing with a length of rope. The three of them walked into the hospital.
Linda had talked about taking her daughter to a doctor’s appointment, but he’d imagined an office visit, not a hospital. His heart went out to her. He thought the kid must be sicker than he’d realized. Maybe his gut had been wrong about Linda. Maybe she had acted the way she had because she was stressed about her sick daughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Forty minutes later, Finn got out of his truck and walked up the set of stone steps, through the tinted-glass door, and into the air-conditioned, tube-lit foyer of the L.A. County Coroner’s office.
He walked to a counter next to a set of double-swing doors marked CORONER STAFF ONLY and asked the receptionist, a light-skinned black woman with the elongated eyelashes and straightened hair of a pop star, to page Eugene Geisinger, the medical examiner. While he waited, he wandered over to the gift shop. The sign over the door read SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET, the font arranged out of little bones. In the shopwindow he saw beach towels, T-shirts, tote bags, and baseball caps printed with body outlines, skeletons, and L.A. County Coroner emblems. The boxer shorts were branded UNDERTAKERS.