by Alex Gilly
“Yes. Thank you,” said Finn, meaning it.
“Don’t thank me, they’re not mine. They washed up on the beach like everything else here. Except the books. I brought those with me.”
It wasn’t just the flip-flops Finn was thanking him for, but he let it go.
The old man stretched out on his sleeping bag. Finn lay down on his, on the opposite side, and watched the play of the shadows cast by the fire on the roof of the cave. His thoughts turned to Mona. He whispered her name. On the Belle, he’d tried to think back to when things had started to go bad for him. First, he’d traced it back to when he and Diego had found the floater off Two Harbors. Then he’d thought, no, it had started before that, when he’d shot Perez. Lying there in the cave now, Finn realized that he’d been wrong in both cases. His life had gone off the rails the moment he’d taken that first drink in Bonito’s. Everything else, he was equipped to deal with. The consequences of shooting Perez had been difficult, but he’d had Mona on his side, and together they would’ve gotten through it. Finding Espendoza’s shark-eaten body had unnerved him, but he’d seen worse things and put them behind him. He could deal with everything life threw at him except alcohol. He had no defense against that.
Neither had his father, he realized. Finn had hated the man for taking what he’d always considered the coward’s way out. He’d spent years hating his father for teaching him that the world was cold and uncaring, then leaving him alone in it. But now it seemed to him that his father had been wrong about the world, that he’d made a mistake in leaving it. Finn understood that it was the drink that had taken his father at the end. Once the drink had him, he’d done what every alcoholic eventually does one way or another: he’d given it everything that mattered in his life. And then he’d given it his life.
That night in Bonito’s, when the darkness had occupied his mind and he had taken that drink against it, Finn had started down the same road. He was no better than his father; he was just luckier. He was lucky because he was still alive (although only just, he had to admit). And he was lucky, he realized, because he was stone-cold sober. He hadn’t taken a drink since the Day of the Dead. He was back among the living.
He thought about Mona, how much he loved her. He closed his eyes and pictured her in her straw hat down by the water’s edge, laughing.
Just then, as though reading his thoughts, the old man broke the silence: “You’re lucky. It’s good to have a wife.”
* * *
Finn’s ordeal had weakened him physically far more than he realized. Even after two days, the old man didn’t think he had recovered enough strength to walk the seven miles to Two Harbors, but Finn insisted on leaving. He wanted to get back to the mainland as soon as possible. He wanted to make sure Linda, Lucy, and Navidad were safe. He wanted to bring Diego’s killers to justice. And he wanted to put things right with Mona.
The old man gave him a couple of handfuls of wild berries and two bottles of water for his journey. He went through his pile of flotsam and fished out a faded canvas tote bag to carry the water bottles in, as well as an old Dodgers cap and a long-sleeve T-shirt. “Sun can be fierce, even this time of year,” he said. Finally, he gave Finn a handful of cash. “For the ferry,” he said. When Finn tried to protest that it was way too much, the old man shrugged it off.
“It’s not my money,” he said. “It washed up on the beach, a wad of it wrapped in plastic. Personally, I hate the stuff.”
He nodded toward the trail leading north.
“Two Harbors’s that way,” he said.
* * *
Clambering up the steep goat track out of the bay, Finn found out the hard way that the old man had been right about his diminished strength. Despite the food and water and the two days’ rest, his legs felt like they were running on empty, and he had to take frequent breaks.
Finn turned things over in his mind while he walked. He’d expected Cutts to try something, he just hadn’t expected it to come through Linda. He should’ve known better, of course. She was a desperate parent. Someone had told him a story once of a woman who had lifted a car clean off her child—how she’d developed superhuman strength to save her child. In Finn’s mind, Linda was like that woman. She’d go to any lengths, that was clear. She’d said herself that she was prepared to do anything to save her daughter. Even if “anything” meant leaving him for dead in the sea. What had happened between them at Escondido made no difference.
After an hour, the slope began to lessen and he emerged at the bottom of a pasture that rose to the crest of the hill. He vaguely noticed a large boulder on the crest. He paused again, wiped away the sweat streaming down his face with his sleeve, and looked west, out over the Pacific. A gentle onshore breeze was blowing, cooling him. Countless silver pinpricks glinted on the surface of the sea. He saw the dark patch of the kelp bed he had swum through and the mouth of the little bay far below, the water there greener than that beyond its mouth. He saw the white triangles of several sailboats a few miles offshore. They looked immobile.
A loud snort behind him made him wheel around. A huge bull bison was sitting on top of the rise. Finn had been so focused on recovering his breath, he’d mistaken it for a boulder. The animal turned its massive, horned and bearded head toward him. Finn remembered the sharks down in the bay, and in the bison’s eye he saw the same fixed, inscrutable look he’d seen in the sharks’.
He gave the animal time to see him. He let his shoulders drop. After a long minute, he started walking slowly up the hill, arcing around the colossal beast. The bison let out a loud snort. Flies buzzed around its eyes. Finn reached the crest and found the rest of the herd grazing on the green slope. Far beyond it, to the north, he saw a few buildings crammed into a narrow isthmus and a few yachts bobbing silently on their moorings on either side.
Two Harbors.
* * *
Three hours later, Finn walked into town. A handful of off-season day-trippers wandered about in Crocs and breezy tans. Normal people doing normal things. Finn, despite his worn flip-flops and weariness, felt returned to the land of the living.
He went into the public restroom at the ferry pier, cupped his hands under the faucet, and washed his face in the cool, soft water. Then he checked his appearance in the mirror. Sweat had bleached the underarms of his shirt. His eyes and skin were red, and he hadn’t shaved since he’d left the hotel in Escondido. He splashed more water on his face and did his best to untangle his hair. Then he refilled his water bottles and made his way to the visitors-information board. The ferry was due in an hour. He bought a ticket from the kiosk and asked for a handful of quarters. He dropped four of them into the pay phone by the kiosk.
“Hello?” said Mona. Hearing her voice, his heart skipped a beat.
“It’s me. Don’t hang up,” said Finn.
A long silence, but no click.
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m on my way home. Listen, I know who killed Diego. It was a man called Diarmud Cutts, who owns a bar called Bonito’s down in San Pedro. Him and his associate, Serpil. They killed Diego because we connected the floater we found out in the channel to the Pacific Belle. Cutts uses the Belle to smuggle narcotics in from Mexico. The skipper is a woman called Linda Blake. Cutts kidnapped her nine-year-old daughter, Lucy, and threatened to kill her if Linda doesn’t do what he wants. Hello? Are you still there?”
After a moment’s silence, Mona said, “The police have issued a warrant for your arrest.”
Finn pulled the bill of his cap down lower. “Arrest for what?”
He knew the answer before she said it.
“For murdering Diego.”
He heard a stifled sob.
“Mona, listen to me. I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t do it.”
“For God’s sake, Nick. I know you didn’t kill Diego. But they have your gun. They say the ballistics match. Every cop in California is looking for you.”
Finn’s shoulders bunched up around his neck. He inst
inctively looked up from the pay phone.
“Cutts set me up. That night I drank, when you went to Sacramento? Cutts mugged me and took my gun. He killed Diego with it so that the cops would have a culprit. Listen to me, Mona: Cutts killed Diego and set me up because he wanted to get rid of us both after we found out about the Pacific Belle.”
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m coming back. I need help. Can you meet me?”
A beat. He waited for her reaction.
“Where?” she said.
His heart leaped. He told her he’d be at the San Pedro ferry wharf at 8:00 P.M.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mona’s RAV4 pulled up outside the ferry terminal. Finn got in. He had the bill of his cap down low. She pulled away from the curb and merged into northbound traffic on Harbor Boulevard.
Mona was also wearing a baseball cap. Hers was in USC Trojans’ colors, cardinal red on gold. She’d been on the soccer team as an undergrad, including the year they’d won the national championship. On the sideboard in the living room of their house was a framed photo of Mona and her team holding up the trophy.
The sight of his estranged wife gladdened Finn’s heart. She’d lost weight since he’d seen her last, but she still looked beautiful to him. She seemed much more composed than she’d sounded over the phone when he’d called her from Two Harbors.
She looked him over and said, “You look like a vagrant.”
Finn rubbed a hand over his gaunt, bruised, scarred, and bearded face. He couldn’t argue with that. He’d slept the last two nights in a cave. Before that, he’d spent the night adrift at sea. Before that, he’d stayed awake for forty-eight hours. He’d done some hard drinking in Mexico. He’d been badly beaten up. He’d killed four men and watched four others die. The last time he’d seen Mona was when she’d packed her bags and moved to her parents’ house. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Finn started talking. He told Mona how, after she’d left, he’d gone back to the Pacific Belle and confronted Linda Blake; he told her how Linda had broken down and confessed that she’d been running narcotics for Cutts, who’d loaned her the money she needed to pay for her daughter’s medical treatment, and who’d taken a share in the Belle as collateral, through his company Muir Holdings.
Finn told Mona how Cutts had lured her brother down to San Pedro, and how Serpil had killed Diego with Finn’s stolen gun; he told her how Cutts had then kidnapped Lucy and threatened to kill her unless Finn helped Linda smuggle in another load of narcotics aboard the Belle.
He told her about Escondido and the Caballeros, about La Abuelita’s fisherman cousin, and about the cocaine hidden in the fire extinguishers. He told her about Navidad. He told her about the storm and the Bertholf off San Clemente. He told her how Linda had betrayed him at Two Harbors, and how he’d washed up in the cove where the old man had saved him.
He told her the whole story except the part about what had happened between Linda and him on the Day of the Dead. What had happened in Escondido now seemed unreal to Finn, like a feverish dream that dissolves with wakefulness. He saw no reason to hurt Mona with an incident as hazy as that. He never wanted to hurt her again.
They were on the freeway now. They drove on awhile, Mona not saying anything, absorbing it all.
Finally, Finn said, “I wasn’t sure you’d even talk to me, let alone help me.”
“The detectives investigating Diego’s murder came around asking questions about you,” she said. She shook her head slowly. “You’ve got a lot of problems, Nick, but I know you didn’t kill my brother. I know I didn’t marry a murderer. I asked them what motive they thought you had, and when they said to stop Diego from testifying against you for shooting Perez, I knew for certain they had it all wrong. I told them Diego had given a sworn statement supporting your account of what happened on La Catrina. They said they had a different story. They said Diego was ready to write an affidavit stating that you were emotionally unstable when you shot Perez. They seemed pretty sure of themselves. They said that it fit with your history of violence. Then they told me that they had your gun and how the ballistics matched. For them, that sealed it, they said. I told them they weren’t as smart as they thought they were if they believed that rubbish. They wanted to know if I knew where you were or where you might’ve gone. I said I had no idea.”
She glanced at Finn.
“After the police left, I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer. I knew you were still looking for Diego’s killer and I knew you were suspicious about the Pacific Belle. So I went down to San Pedro and asked a fisherman there which one she was. The guy told me she’d put to sea. He couldn’t tell me where she’d gone or when she was due back or how to get in touch with her. All he knew was that she’d left on the morning of the twenty-eighth—right when you disappeared. I took an educated guess and figured that you were aboard.
“Then I thought, Why would he go to sea without telling me? We were supposed to be working together. Something wasn’t right. I had to figure out a way to get in touch with you without alerting the CBP or the port police or coast guard or anything like that. So I went to this private investigator we use sometimes to find people. He tried contacting the Belle through VHF radio, but you didn’t answer. He said you were probably out of range. But I had a bad feeling. I asked him to keep the port under surveillance and let me know when the boat came back in. Then the big storm hit Baja—it was all over the news how all these boats were destroyed—and I got really worried. Finally, two days ago the PI called to say the Pacific Belle was back in port, but that you weren’t aboard. When he told me that, I imagined the worst. That’s why I was so emotional when you called.”
Finn stared out the passenger-side window awhile, at the millions of city lights latticed across the darkness. Then he said, “What happened with your bill? In Sacramento?”
“The bill? The committee passed it without amendment. They’re sending it to the floor to vote.”
Finn felt a surge of pride. A lot of people talked about making a difference. Mona made it.
He went back to staring out the window. He was trying to formulate a way of telling Mona how much he loved her. How he wanted to come back to her a better man.
“Mona…”
“Nick, please, don’t. I’m glad you’re okay, but that doesn’t mean I want to go back to before. I’m helping you because so long as the police believe you killed Diego, then they’re not looking for the real killer. The person who really killed my brother is still free and the police aren’t doing anything about it. That’s the reason I came down to pick you up. Let’s not make this about anything else.”
It was a sound enough reason, thought Finn. Still, he knew the risks Mona was taking to help him—risking not just her career but her liberty. Her composure, her matter-of-factness, seemed put on. He could hardly blame her for holding back from him, after everything he’d put her through, bringing his drinking and its chaos into their marriage.
“I was just going to say, congratulations on getting the bill through the committee,” he said. “That’s really great.”
“Thanks. You said on the phone you needed help.”
Mona in strictly business mode. Smart and efficient.
When Finn had left for Escondido aboard the Belle, he’d vowed to kill Cutts and Serpil when he got back, then kill himself. But after his moment of clarity in the cove, he now imagined a different future. He no longer wanted to check out of this life the way his father had. He wanted to live. Preferably with Mona, but even without her, he wanted to live.
“I need a car,” he said.
She waited for more.
“That’s it?” she said.
“That’s it.”
“Are you serious? You think I’m going to sit on the sidelines? You think you’re what, my champion? Do you even know me a little bit?”
“These are really dangerous people, Mona. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Oh, please. Have you seen y
our face? Anyway, look in the glove compartment.”
He opened the compartment and found a semiautomatic. “Jesus. When did you get this?” he said.
“My father got it for me. After what happened to Diego.”
Finn took it out. It was a Heckler & Koch P7—a powerful, reliable, and easily concealed 9-mm. He popped the clip.
“Here, I’ve got more of those,” said Mona. She took a hand off the wheel and used it to rummage around in her handbag. The car veered alarmingly. She dumped three more magazines into his lap and straightened the wheel.
“We’re a team, right?” she said.
“Seems that way,” he said.
“So you take the gun. You know how to use it better than I do. Now, tell me your plan.”
There were two parts to Finn’s plan. First, he said, they had to find Linda, her daughter, and Navidad and take them somewhere safe, after which they had to persuade Linda to testify against Cutts. Second, Finn planned to find Cutts. This time, Cutts wouldn’t be expecting him.
Mona asked if Finn knew a safe place, and he said no.
“I know a place,” she said. “A safe house up in Inglewood, where we take women trying to escape their traffickers.”
Finn said that to persuade Linda to testify, they would have to satisfy her that Lucy was safe from Cutts and Serpil. They’d also have to reassure her that she wouldn’t do any prison time because that would separate her from Lucy and Navidad.
“That’s going to be hard,” said Mona.
“Why?”
“Because it’s not true.”
“All the crimes she did, she was coerced into doing. Cutts took her daughter.”