by Alex Gilly
Cutts grinned.
“So then, Finn, now that you’ve wet your gullet with my whiskey, listen close to my offer: how about you come work for me?”
It took a moment for Finn’s brain to register what Cutts was saying. When it did, he laughed and said, “You’re not serious.”
Cutts was straight-faced. “I have the supplier and the boat,” he said. “With your knowledge of the waters and, more importantly, of how the government patrols them, you could get the product through easier than most. Think about it, Finn. There’s no one better qualified to be a smuggler than you.”
Cutts refilled Finn’s glass.
“And if I don’t?”
Cutts glanced toward the tassel-shoed man. Then he said, “I have no further use for you.”
Finn scowled. “It doesn’t sound like I’m in much of a negotiating position, am I?”
Cutts slapped the bar cheerfully. “There, I knew you’d be reasonable. Here, another one to celebrate.” Cutts poured Finn another drink.
Finn realized that he was drinking alone. The old man smiled apologetically.
“I must abstain on account of my insides, Finn. Doctor’s orders. And Serpil here never drinks. But please: you go ahead.” Then he added, “Of course, given the situation, I’m going to need some form of insurance against you. A guarantee, like. Something to make certain you won’t run to the cops the moment you’ve left the dock.”
“I go to the police, you turn in my gun and set me up for Diego’s murder. Is that the insurance you had in mind?” said Finn, barely hiding his scorn. He was thinking about how his father had turned to smuggling and thrown away his life. Finn had no intention of going down the same path. He was just playing along with the old man’s screwy fantasy, buying time.
Cutts looked at Finn coldly. “Check your phone,” he said.
“What?”
“Take out your cell phone and go to your messages from Diego,” he said, enunciating each word, as though speaking to someone slow on the uptake.
Finn looked at his phone. There was a sent message to Diego that he didn’t recall sending. It was time-stamped 1:33 A.M. on October 24—the night Diego was killed. It read: “Can’t talk. Got lead on floater. Can you meet me at the San Pedro fish dock?” Diego had answered: “When.” From Finn’s phone: “Now.” From Diego: “On my way.” Finn felt a rush of nausea.
“Diego’s phone disappeared when it went into the water with him, which was a foolish oversight on our part,” said Cutts. “But surely the police will have acquired his phone record by now. I expect they’ll start looking for you as soon as they read those messages don’t you?”
Cutts poured Finn another shot. “Here, have another. You look like you need it. Now, if I were in your shoes, I’d be glad to be going on a little boat trip right about now. And, of course, I would do everything in my power to avoid running into any of my old colleagues in the CBP. That’s what I would do, Finn, were I in your fucking shoes.” Cutts’s tone slipping as he spoke, from falsely reassuring to hostile.
Finn downed the shot, slowly this time. It was worse than he’d thought. But Cutts was still making a mistake.
“Okay. I get it,” said Finn. “Collect the product or else take the fall for Diego’s murder. I get it. I’ll do what you want.”
Cutts held Finn’s gaze. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”
Then he turned to the man he’d called Serpil. “You think he’s taking this seriously?”
Serpil shook his head.
“Neither do I,” said Cutts. He seemed genuinely angry, his face flushed, his eyes flared. He moved down the bar, picked up Finn’s P2000, and pointed it at Finn. “Let’s go,” he said.
When Finn asked where, Cutts told him to shut the fuck up.
They went to the San Pedro fishing dock. They went in Cutts’s Jaguar, Cutts driving, Finn in the front seat, Serpil in the back with Finn’s Glock 17 pointed at Finn’s head. Cutts parked the car near the deserted section of the quay where Diego’s truck had gone into the water. The rain had finally let up. Two glistening bollards caught in the Jaguar’s headlights threw long shadows across the concrete toward the water. Cutts killed the ignition, and everything went dark.
“Get out,” said Cutts.
Finn got out. A few stars appeared in a gap in the clouds. Cutts had said, “No man can know the hour of his own death.” An image of his father, dead in his tan recliner, appeared in Finn’s mind. He tried to remember whether his father had been wearing a watch. He wondered if his father had known his last hour.
Finn didn’t wear a watch.
“What time is it?” he said to Cutts.
“Never you mind the fucking time,” said Cutts. “Walk.”
Cutts and Serpil shoved him down toward the water. When they got to the edge of the quay, Cutts told Finn to turn around. Serpil pressed the pistol to Finn’s forehead. Cutts stood a little way back, holding his P2000 by his side.
“Your friend Diego thought I was fucking around,” said Cutts. “He didn’t take me seriously. What about you, Finn? Do you think I’m fucking around?” The old man was breathing heavily through his nose.
“No,” said Finn.
Cutts made a show of cupping his ear with his hand. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up, Finn. I’m an old man. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.”
“I said, no, I don’t think you’re fucking around.”
Cutts nodded and said, “People ought to take it seriously when they have a gun pointed at their fucking heads. People ought to take that very seriously, Finn. Am I right about that?”
“Yes.”
“Because I don’t feel you were taking it seriously in the bar, Finn. I got the feeling you weren’t taking it seriously at all. I got the feeling you were just humoring me, like. I thought, This gobshite thinks he can outsmart me? He thinks he can go aboard the boat, my fucking boat, and take it to the authorities? Is that what you were thinking, Finn?”
Finn didn’t say anything.
“You know what will happen if you go to the authorities, Finn?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t know? Well, I can help you with that. I know someone who knows. She’ll tell you. We’ll go see her, and she’ll tell you what will happen if you go to the authorities. Turn around and walk.”
Finn turned and walked. He heard Cutts’s labored breathing behind him.
They reached the Pacific Belle.
“Stop,” said Cutts.
Finn stopped. Serpil went aboard ahead of them. Cutts didn’t tell Finn to move, so he stayed put. He and Cutts on the dock, Cutts with the P2000, Finn with the bad feeling, wondering if this was his hour. He looked down the dock, vainly hoping that Benitez had posted someone to stake out the Pacific Belle.
There was no one there.
He heard a whistle from the deck of the Pacific Belle.
“Okay. Let’s go,” said Cutts.
Finn walked onto the Belle’s deck and into the cabin he had left not so long ago.
He found Linda kneeling on the floor with her hands clasped behind her neck. Serpil had Finn’s Glock pointed at the side of her head. She was biting so hard on her lower lip, Finn thought she would draw blood. Tears streaked her cheeks. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her cheeks were hollowed. Her eyes darted from him to Cutts to Serpil and back again.
“Please,” she said to Cutts, pleading. “Please, for Lucy’s sake. For my daughter. I did what you asked me to do. You said you’d let me go. Please, let me go to my daughter.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cutts said to Linda. Then, to Finn, he said, “You too. On your knees, you fucking piece of shite.”
Finn knelt, put his hands on his head. He blamed himself for not staying with Linda, going with her to pick up her daughter, putting them both in a motel somewhere, giving her a chance to breathe, feel safe. He should’ve slowed it down. The truth was, he’d been angry at her for lying to him and angry at her fo
r her part in Diego’s murder. He’d blamed her for the mess he was in. He realized now that Cutts had been terrorizing her for months. She’d been conditioned.
Finn looked up at Cutts. “Let her go,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “I don’t need her to work the boat. Look at her, the state she’s in. She’s no use to me. If anything, she’s a liability. Let her go, and I’ll do the run alone.”
Cutts shook his head in disbelief. “You’re still not taking me seriously, Finn. Look at you, the state of you, you’re giving me terms? She’s going with you. Because why? Because she’s my insurance, that’s why. You understand? I have her daughter. I have your little girl, Linda.”
Finn glanced over at Linda. She looked like an animal heading into the slaughterhouse and knowing it. She tried to get up, but Serpil shoved her back down.
“No!” she shouted.
“You don’t believe me? You don’t fucking believe me? Get your phone, call your sister.”
Sobbing, Linda pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed.
“Rhonda?” she said. “Let me speak to her. Let me…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She listened to whoever was speaking on the phone. Then the phone slipped from her hand and Linda collapsed on the floor. Serpil picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Cutts turned his attention back to Finn. “You see how it is, Finn. You go to the authorities and the girl dies. You want to know how? Badly, Finn. She dies badly. I met Serpil here in Kosovo. I’ve seen him do things to people there that no man should ever see. Are you taking me seriously now, you cocksucking gobshite?”
Finn looked at Linda lying on the floor. She opened her mouth and released a terrible, suffocated moan. Serpil yanked her violently by her wrist back to her knees.
“You win, Cutts, I’ll do it. Whatever you want. Just let her go,” said Finn, raising his voice.
“You’re not telling me a fucking thing,” said Cutts, shouting now. “I’m telling you, Finn. I’m telling you. You go to the authorities, the child dies. You hear me? If you get intercepted, even by accident, the child dies. Are you taking me seriously now?”
Linda was wailing. Cutts was shouting, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. Finn’s heart was racing. Only Serpil appeared calm. He seemed almost to be enjoying the chaos. Like it was all for show, for his entertainment. And when Cutts cracked Finn in the head with the side of Finn’s P2000, Serpil laughed out loud. Finn felt blood trickle down his jaw.
“How do I know you won’t just kill the girl anyway?” said Finn.
The question appeared to exasperate Cutts. He pointed the Heckler & Koch P2000 at Finn’s forehead and said, “Fuck this shite. I’ve run out of patience, Finn. I’ve made my offer: you bring me the shipment, the kid lives. You can’t ask for fairer than that. You don’t, then you die now. Then I fetch the kid, and I kill her in front of her mother’s eyes. Then I kill the mother. Then I go find your wife and I tell her, ‘I’m the one that killed your brother and husband. Now I’m here for you.’”
Cutts caught his breath, looked at his watch, and said, “I’ll give you five seconds to decide.”
Finn glanced at Linda. Her eyes contained the question.
“Five…” said Cutts.
But there was no real question, of course. He thought of Mona, of their vanished future together. Tears welled in his eyes.
“Four…”
He thought of his father in his tan recliner. Finn had to tried to lift himself up, tried to become a better man than his father had been.
“Three…”
But he’d failed. He made a simple vow to himself. First, he would get Linda’s daughter back. Then he would kill Cutts and Serpil.
“Two…”
Then he would follow his father’s way out. Men like the Finns had been making deals with the devil forever.
“One…”
This was his.
He nodded at Cutts.
The Irishman raised the gun so that it pointed at the ceiling.
“About fucking time. You leave now,” he said. Then he looked at Linda and said, “Our friends are expecting you. You can explain to Finn how it works on the way down. We’ll meet you at Two Harbors at midnight on the sixth. I’ll wait till half past the hour. If you don’t show by then, or if we get word that you’ve contacted anyone—anyone at all—we’ll do to your daughter what we did to Espendoza.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Finn wasn’t a religious man in the conventional sense, but at sea he felt part of a natural order that vanished the moment he set foot ashore.
Thus, on the morning of their second day at sea, as he stood on the Pacific Belle’s stern and kept his eye on where his fishing line disappeared into the water, his CBP jacket zipped up against the chill, and the eastern horizon the color of rust, it seemed to him that this private disk of ocean, this moveable and sequestered world, was his reward for the resolution he’d made when he left the San Pedro dock. Aboard the Pacific Belle, he had come to realize that all he needed to restore clarity and grace to his life was firmness of purpose. He felt as though he had stolen away from the common world, as though he and Linda were the only beings in the universe God didn’t have his eyes on. The sea was having its tonic effect. The cuts and bruises on his face were beginning to heal, and he felt like he’d been given these days at sea—days of blamelessness—on the condition that once they reached their journey’s end and were sucked back into the undertow, he delivered on the promise he’d made to himself on his knees that night in the cabin below.
It helped Finn’s condition, of course, that he hadn’t taken a drink since Bonito’s. He hadn’t deviated from his father’s counsel never to drink at sea.
Linda was still asleep in a cot below. He had told her that he would wake her at sunrise so that she could replace him on watch, but she had spent the night crying her eyes out over her daughter. Finn was happy that she was sleeping at last and didn’t want to wake her. He wasn’t tired and he was glad for the respite from her hurt. He had been navigating the Belle for eight hours on his own, but she was equipped with autopilot so there was very little for him to do in terms of actual navigation. Mostly, his watch consisted of keeping one eye on the gauges and another on the radar, for they had agreed that they would keep all other boats beneath the horizon.
Remarkably, they had managed to travel some 350 miles from San Pedro without passing within sighting distance of another boat. They were northwest of Cedros Island. Another 40 hours’ sail would bring them level with Cabo San Lucas, at which point they would turn east toward the Sinaloa coast. For the time being, however, they were in rich fishing grounds, and Finn figured that fishing would keep his mind occupied. He fetched the old rod and reel he’d found in the storage locker below, along with a plastic box containing a motley collection of lures, rusty hooks, floats, and weights.
He spent the morning jigging off the stern. In the first hour, he caught so many jack mackerel so quickly that he figured the Belle must’ve been traveling above a school of them. Futilely, he wished he could call Mona, tell her that he was on a commercial fishing boat, just like they’d talked about.
Reeling in yet another fish, Finn started to feel more ambitious. If the mackerel were schooling so close to the surface, chances were that they were being corralled by something bigger. So when he pulled the fish out of the water and saw that it had swallowed the lure entirely, he cast it back out at once and gave it enough slack to dive.
The line reeled for a minute before slackening. The mackerel was slowing. Finn cautiously started bringing it back in. It resisted, but not much and he had no trouble until something hit it hard, and the line started running out again, much faster this time, catching Finn by surprise and bending the rod close to the breaking point. He thumbed on the reel lock and still the line ran out, smoke rising from the brake. He clicked off the lock and moved all around the deck, the line screaming off the reel, Finn working the rod to prevent whatever had taken his bait fish from
passing beneath the hull.
* * *
The sun was high by the time he’d worked it to the surface. His forearms and back ached from the strain and his mouth was as dry as sandpaper. He was exhausted, but he still had the weight on the line. He was winning the battle. Then, where his line scythed through the water, he saw a flash of silver and yellow. His heart pounded. He made tiny adjustments to the drag, giving the line enough slack in case the fish still had enough fight left in him to dive but not so much that he could undo all Finn’s hard work. Finn raised and reeled, raised and reeled until he’d maneuvered the fish alongside the boat.
Just then Linda appeared. Finn handed her the rod. “Don’t let him throw the hook,” he said breathlessly, pointing to the fish.
He grabbed the gaff and leaned over the rail, leaning right down, looking to get a clean shot, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. A cloud passed overhead and darkened the water beneath him in a way that reminded him of the shadow he’d seen pass beneath Espendoza’s body. He told himself he was imagining things. Suddenly, the Belle lurched awkwardly and he nearly tumbled in. With his spare hand, Finn took hold of the rail, leaned out, and contemplated his catch in the blue water directly below—a beautiful yellowfin, at least three and a half feet long. He had no idea what the fishing line he was using was rated for, but he was sure it was for less than whatever this fish weighed. He could tell that the fish was out of fight by the way it lingered at the side of the boat, like a boxer slow out of his corner in the late rounds. He held his gaff suspended over the water, his arm tense, waiting for his chance. Then he struck hard and fast at the fish’s shoulder and gaffed it under the gills. The yellowfin was heavy; it took everything he had left to haul it up. He had it halfway up the side when he saw the water beneath him bulge and then the dark shadow turned into a shark barreling at him, its rows of triangular teeth thrust forward, its eyes rolled back, its underside a clean and perfect white. It launched itself from the water and locked its jaws around the fish on his gaff and tore it away with such force that the gaff went flying from Finn’s hand. The shark fell back into the water with a heavy splash and backed away, violently shaking its catch, fading into the deep.