by Alex Gilly
Back on deck, Finn thought he heard something from the direction of the quay. He had switched off his flashlight when he came up from below, so it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they had, he scanned the quay. He saw a creature, either a small cat or a large rat, scuttle between two bollards. He turned his attention to the fish hold. The hinges squeaked when he raised the cover. He peered in, but of course without turning on the flashlight he couldn’t see a thing.
Finn gingerly made his way down the steel ladder, pulling the hatch shut behind him. It was pitch-black inside. The hold smelled of fish and of something else, too. Something a bit like spoiled milk. His feet landed on something soft, like a mattress. He switched on his flashlight. Its narrow white beam revealed refrigeration pipes snaking around the hold’s fiberglass lining. He looked down and saw that he was standing on a neat pile of fishing net. He bent down and touched it. It was completely dry—it had been out of the water for so long that dry rot had set in. Which accounted for the sour smell, thought Finn.
Something else on the other side of the hold caught his attention: a large roll of thick neoprene—thicker than any wet suit he’d seen. Unrolled, there must’ve been hundreds of feet of the stuff. He got onto his knees and shone the flashlight’s beam down the middle of the rolled-up material. The surface wasn’t smooth. He reached in and touched what felt like kitchen tiles. He flipped over the end of the roll and found that it was covered in black, diamond-shaped tiles about the size of his palm and fitted closely together, like the scales of a crocodile’s skin. He tried to pry one off, but the tile was fixed firmly in place. He had no idea what it was or what it was used for. It looked vaguely military. He took a photo of it with his phone.
He started feeling ill again. There was no reconciling a belly full of liquor with a fish hold. He climbed back up the ladder, pushed the cover open, and clambered gratefully back into the fresh air.
He was walking down the gangway back to the quay when he noticed the three police cars. As one, they switched on their headlights and blue lights, blinding him. He shielded his eyes and cursed. Someone yelled at him to put his hands in the air. Officer Wilkins appeared with a set of handcuffs. He looked almost apologetic.
Finn was about to say, How did you know I was here? when he saw Linda Blake, her arms crossed, standing in the pulsating pool of blue-and-red light on the dock, glaring at him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was close to nine thirty in the morning by the time Finn got home from the port police lockup.
Mona’s RAV4 was parked outside. He walked into the condo, his head aching, and heard her moving around upstairs, in the bedroom. The living room was a mess. There were empty bottles and dirty plates on the coffee table and empty cans on the floor. His clothes were strewn across the furniture. The TV was still on. He’d been living like he had before he was married. In the kitchen, he saw that Mona had put the coffee on. He searched the back of the cupboard for a clean mug, filled it with coffee, drank it straight down, then took a refill upstairs.
She had all her luggage out. She’d taken all her clothes from the closet and laid them on the bed. Two cases were already packed. A third lay open on the floor, half full. She wasn’t packing for a return trip—she was clearing out. The irrational hope Finn had entertained while driving home now evaporated.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You stink, too. Are you sober at least?”
Finn let that one through to the catcher. He noticed Mona’s straw hat on the bed.
“Isn’t that some kind of bad luck, putting a hat on the bed?” he said.
“I’ve had more than my share of bad luck this week. Can it really get worse?”
Finn privately thought so. In his view, it could always get worse.
Mona looked at her watch. “Where’ve you been?”
“The captain of the Pacific Belle called the cops on me last night. I’ve been lying on a bench in a cell down in San Pedro.”
Mona stopped packing. “You find anything?” she asked.
“Her nets haven’t been in the water in a long time. And this.” He showed her a photo he’d taken on his phone of the neoprene roll with the tiles.
“What is it?” said Mona, screwing up her face.
“I have no idea.” He sipped his coffee. “Did you speak to Mrs. Gavrilia?”
Mona nodded. “She said there was no way the Caballeros de Cristo have established themselves north of the border. She said when the Caballeros take over a town, they really take it over. I mean, they’re fanatical, they’re about total control—that’s their thing. They move in and get rid of all opposition until they control everyone, from the mayor to the guy grilling tortillas by the side of the road. Anyone who doesn’t like it … too bad for them. They can’t operate like that in L.A. It would be a war zone.”
“So how come Espendoza had that crucifix tattooed on his neck?”
“She said he probably went down to Mexico and joined the Caballeros there. They cultivate a kind of mystical aura around themselves, like a cult. You should see the songs they put on YouTube about how great they are. She said kids in the neighborhoods hero-worship them, talk about how they’re restoring pride. She said young men were heading south and signing up. It’s no different, I guess, from those kids who grow up in Boston and Atlanta and then go fight for jihad in Syria.”
None of that made any kind of sense to Finn. In his view, the Caballeros were narcotics traffickers and murderers. Where was the pride in that?
“I figured if he’d gone to Mexico, he’d have needed a passport,” continued Mona, “so I checked with the Department of State. They say they never issued him with one. As far as they’re concerned, Miguel Espendoza never once left the United States during his short life.”
“Plenty of people cross the line without passports,” said Finn. He thought of the bunks in the airless cabin in the bow of the Pacific Belle. “He could’ve gone by boat.”
Mona nodded. “That’s what I figured.”
Then she said, “You know, if Internal Affairs sees you like this, it’s one more thing they’ll use against you. You know that, right? They’ll say you’ve got an alcohol problem. They’ll ask whether you’d been drinking when you shot Perez.”
“The answer is ‘no.’”
“Doesn’t matter what the answer is. In court, it’s the question that does the damage. Like those articles in the paper. They hurt you whether they’re true or not.”
He turned to face her. “I’ve given up alcohol,” he said.
She laughed out loud. “I can smell it on you from here, Nick.” She was standing on the other side of the bed.
“That’s from last night. I haven’t had a drink today.”
“It’s nine thirty in the morning.”
“I’ve quit. I’m serious this time.”
She shook her head sadly, stuffed the rest of her clothes without folding them into the case, and zipped it up. Then she picked up her straw hat.
“I can’t have this conversation again, Finn. I have to go. I’m going to church with my parents.”
That surprised Finn. Mona hadn’t been in a church since their wedding day.
“I’m going to light a candle for Diego,” she said.
“Mona, I mean it,” he said. “This time, that’s it. I don’t want to lose you.”
She fixed her eyes on his, making it a question. He tried to look at her as though he meant what he was saying—tried to give her a gaze that said Believe me. He didn’t know what she saw when she looked at his beat-up, liquor-ravaged face. Much later, he would admit to himself that all he had been thinking about at that moment was how much he wanted to open the fresh bottle of Jim Beam that he’d picked up as soon as the port police had released him from lockup, which he had been careful to leave in his truck when he’d seen Mona’s RAV4 parked outside the condo.
At least when she left, he had the decency to carry
her bags to her car. And to wait until she was out of sight before retrieving the bottle from his truck.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He spent the morning drinking and the afternoon sleeping. Now it was night and he was in the Pacific Belle’s galley. Rain started drumming down on the deck above—he had to listen closely to hear footsteps through it. The moment he did, he stepped to the side of the door, out of sight. The door swung open. Linda came in, set a bag of groceries on the counter, and switched on the light. Water streamed off her green slicker. She wheeled around when Finn said her name, then stepped back when she saw the gun in his hand.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the table.
She sat. He sat opposite her, still pointing the Glock at her.
“You’re going to tell me who killed Diego,” he said.
She looked at him fearfully. “I swear, Jesus, I don’t know. Please … I have a daughter…”
She put her elbows on the table and started to sob. With his free hand, Finn reached into his pocket, pulled out the bottle of Jim Beam, and put it on the table between them. Then he took his finger off the Glock’s trigger and put the pistol on the table next to the bottle.
Linda Blake stopped crying and gave him a quizzical look. Then she snatched up the gun and with both hands pointed it at Finn’s heart. A long moment passed. The veins in her neck pulsed. He waited for her to pull the trigger. Instead, she weighed the weapon in her hands, feeling its lightness. The skin around her eyes slackened. “It’s not loaded,” she said.
Finn held her gaze. “You got any shot glasses aboard this rust bucket?”
* * *
It turned out that all she had were chipped and coffee-stained mugs. She sat tall and still, watching him while he poured bourbon into them. “Jesus, look at you,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone beat up that bad not in the hospital.” She lit a cigarette with a Zippo, then put the lighter and the pack on the table. “Does it hurt when you drink?”
He raised his mug and threw back the shot it contained. “I don’t feel a thing,” he said.
She gave him a half smile and drank the bourbon from her mug. Finn poured them each another shot.
“On the bright side, at least things can only get better from here,” he said.
“Don’t kid yourself.”
“You’re a pessimist.”
“I run a commercial fishing boat. You spend enough time offshore, you learn things can always get worse.”
“Is that how Diego got killed? Because things went wrong?”
The smile evaporated from her face. “I don’t…”
He grabbed her wrist across the table. “I saw the dry rot in your nets down in the hold—they haven’t been in the water for months. You’ve got no crew. Espendoza was no fisherman. You haven’t filed any catch reports. You’re covering for someone. Who killed Diego?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice rising. She writhed away from him, trying to free her wrist. He tightened his grip and gave her a hard look through the snakelike slit of his swollen right eye. He had no idea how menacing he looked with his face like a bruised apple, but he hoped it was plenty.
“You do and you’re lying. Whatever you’re into doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, but there are plenty of people who’d be happy to make it their business: the cops, the CBP, the coast guard, Fisheries—everyone’s about to get real interested in the Pacific Belle.”
He leaned forward and, in a softer tone, said, “I know you’re scared, Linda. You feel like you’re caught between him and me. You’re scared of him and you’re scared of me. But he’s not your friend—I am. I can help you. We can help each other.”
She tried to yank her wrist away from him again but he only tightened his grip.
“You’re hurting me!” she said.
“I’m your friend! Talk to me!” His voice was hard and unfriendly.
With her free hand, Linda Blake scooped up Finn’s Glock and jammed it against his chest and pulled the trigger repeatedly: click-click-click-click-click. He knew it wasn’t loaded, but his heart still jolted into overdrive. His face was so close to hers that he could distinguish the lashes above her green eyes, which gleamed like mossy stones in a shallow stream. She stopped pulling the trigger. Her lips began to tremble and Finn thought she was about to cry again. He released her wrist. She slumped back into her seat, but she didn’t cry. She stuck out her lower lip and blew away an escaped lock of hair. Then she laughed.
“Bang bang, you’re dead,” she said, almost whispering, still pointing his gun at him. “You didn’t think I would really shoot you, did you?”
His heart only now started to slow down. He slugged a shot of bourbon to collect himself.
“We both knew it wasn’t loaded,” he said. “You’re not the type to shoot anybody.”
“I was four years in the navy.”
“Aboard an aircraft carrier. I bet you haven’t fired a weapon since basic training. I bet you’ve never killed anyone in your life.”
She tilted her head quizzically. He noticed the down at the bottom of her earlobe, the freckles on her nose.
“But you have, haven’t you?” she said.
He couldn’t help but think of Perez.
She must’ve seen the thought drift across his face like the shadow of a cloud over a patch of sea, because she said, “Did you like it?”
“What?”
“Killing that unarmed man in cold blood, the one I read about in the Times. Did you like it?”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
“I bet it was a rush,” she said.
Slowly, he raised his hand until it covered hers and took the gun away from her. He put it on the bench next to him, out of her reach. Loaded or not, she made him nervous.
“Even if you pull the trigger for the right reasons, it messes up your life. Does that answer your question?” he said.
Her face slackened, and the tears he’d been expecting began welling in her green eyes. He leaned forward, put his hand against her cheek. “It’s okay, Linda. Whatever it is, no matter how bad, I can help. But you have to tell me: who killed Diego?”
“If I tell you—” A sob shuddered out of her. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto Finn’s fingers. She rested the weight of her head in his palm.
Her skin felt soft. “It’ll be all right,” he said.
She pulled away from him, wrapped her arms around herself, and started sobbing. “You don’t understand, Finn. He said if I said anything, he’d kill Lucy.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Who did?” said Finn.
Linda composed herself, wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and drew a cigarette from her pack. Finn picked up the Zippo from the table and lit it for her. She took hold of his hand, held it up in front of her eyes, and stared at the flame.
“It was my husband’s Zippo.”
Finn flicked the top shut and turned it over. The metal lighter had a picture of an aircraft carrier etched into it, with USS ROOSEVELT engraved below. Linda pried the lighter from Finn’s hand.
“After David died, all the other captains expected me to just sell the boat,” she said. “But the inshore tuna ban had just come into effect and everyone had to go way out to fish, so no one wanted a small boat. People said to me, unless you’ve got a big boat, a factory boat that can be out for months, you’re not gonna make it. Anyway, I couldn’t sell her. No one wanted the Belle.”
“How’d he die?” he said.
She took a drag on her cigarette. “There was a storm. He was swept off.” She paused. The rain had dwindled to a pitter-patter on the deck above. “So I started working the Belle myself. I switched to mackerel. I had Lucy to take care of, I needed to make a living, keep us both afloat, right? At first I didn’t catch enough. I couldn’t even break even. So I went to the bank and took out a loan against the boat. I figured my luck would turn eventually and I’d start catching fish. Things couldn’t get any worse, I figured. I was wrong.”<
br />
She knocked the ash off the end of her cigarette and stared at the Zippo. “Lucy got sick,” she continued. “Really sick. She needed specialist treatment, and it was expensive. I went to the VHA, but they wouldn’t cover her. Medicaid said we didn’t qualify. So I maxed out my credit to buy her private coverage. Then, when I tried to claim the costs, they wouldn’t pay. They said it was a preexisting condition that I had failed to declare. Like I knew. I was going to sue, but then the credit crunch hit and anyway I’d used all my money on the premiums. Everything collapsed. I defaulted on the boat payments and the bank refused to negotiate. They were going to take the Belle and the Belle’s all I have, Finn. Her, and Lucy. I was desperate. That’s when Little John—one of the other captains, you met him this morning—Little John told me about this Irish guy, owns a bar up the road, has some kind of maritime background, I never found out what, exactly. What John said was, this guy knows boats and likes to invest in fishing operations when no one else will.”
Finn felt his temperature rise. His good eye started twitching. “Diarmud Cutts,” he said.
She looked alarmed. “You … you know him?”
Finn nodded. “What happened next?”
“I went to see Cutts. He said, yeah, he could loan me some money, buy out the bank’s share in the boat, get me off the hook, let me get back to fishing and looking after Lucy. All he asked for in return was a share in the Belle.”
Everything started falling into place in Finn’s mind. He remembered Mona saying Muir meant sea in Irish. He remembered the tattoo on Cutts’s right arm: HOPE FROM THE SEA BUT NONE FROM LAND. Linda added another butt to the already overflowing ashtray.
“Then things got even worse,” she said.
“How?”
“About a month after he paid off the bank, Cutts came to see me and said he wanted me to stop at this fishing village in Mexico, pick something up. That’s all he said. I didn’t need to know what it was, he said. Just pick up a small package and bring it back to me. You getting the picture?”