“Wouldn’t mind,” Ramon said, Axel ducking back into the kitchen. Making a pile of sandwiches after getting onto Transport Canada’s website, looking up boat registrations, finding out about the boat, Triggerfish, showing the year the Grady-White was built, registered to one Rene Beckman. Had the home address as the Burrard Civic Marina, Axel saying, “Looks like your boy lives on board.”
Taking a bite, Ramon lifted the top slice of bread, checked out the sandwich: bologna, mustard and mayo, slice of onion, iceberg or something like it. Not bad. A plate of potato salad next to it. Never had it with apple.
Eddie shook his head, asking, “That sound like me, Ramon?” First time he called him by name, not Uncle. Needing another line to ease out his nerves. “Just walk up and shoot a guy?”
Ramon shrugged like it didn’t matter.
Eddie looked at the sandwich on his plate. Who could eat? The Taurus still over on the bar, Eddie hoping the piece of shit misfired. “Fucker says his sister would do this,” Eddie kept his voice low, mimicked the way Diego said it, dragging his vowels, sister sounding like seester. “Then I say let her go to town.”
“So why didn’t you tell him?” Ramon said, chewing.
“What?”
“Get his sister to do it.”
“That guy? You can’t tell him shit. And what’s with the one with the Elvis hair? Why’s he got to come with?”
“Making sure it gets done.”
Axel came back, set down a side of pickles, went back over to the bar. Doing some more searching online, finding out Beckman was an ex-cop, the guy stabbed in the line of duty, taking down some gun runners. Shit! Axel thinking he’d better go tell his old man. This shit getting deeper by the minute.
Ramon dropped the crust on his plate, took a pickle and crunched into it, glad he took his .357 from the boat, left it in the car under the seat. Just not sure how he would get to it, the car miles away at the truck rental joint.
Eddie thinking he could still run, sliding his plate over to Ramon.
“That one ham?”
“Yeah, with cheese.”
Ramon taking it, biting into it, saving the potato salad for last.
“And why not you? You pissed him off. You do it.”
“Didn’t ask me,” Ramon said, wiping his hands on the napkin. “Told me to drive. Best thing right now, kid, is chill.”
“Chill?”
“As in shut the fuck up, let me think.”
Eddie switched to sullen, thinking where he could run. Had his second cousin Juan in Calgary, a school buddy in Burlington, a chick he used to go with living out past Toronto, Bay of something; they kept up a Facebook thing. No way he was ending up like Uncle DeJesus, doing life behind bars, nothing to do but count the days. If he didn’t run, maybe he could score some blow off Regular Joe, get so fucking wasted nobody in their right mind would send him after the naked guy.
Back behind the bar, Axel got on the phone, hoping for word on the three hundred guns, the two bikers shooting pool, drinking the old man’s beer. The cartel crew showering and napping in their cabins out back. Rudi had gone out back to see Diego, trying to talk sense to him. Diego not understanding the problem: being an ex-cop was all the more reason to shoot the fucker in the head.
Ramon got up, clapped Eddie on the shoulder, telling him to relax, went to the fridge, seeing Axel on the phone. Helping himself to a couple of beers, he came back, set one in front of Eddie, told him to drink it. Sitting down, he grabbed another slice of dill, pulled the tab on his own beer.
. . . THIRD WHEEL
Beck followed them down the passageway on the tween deck, taking the stairs on the starboard side, Jimmy leading the way to the bridge, on a roll, telling Vicki what life was like in the Southern Ocean.
“Dangling from that ladder, man, what a rush . . .” Jimmy said, “Really had to reach deep, know what I mean?”
Vicki said, “Oh, God,” loving this, stepping next to him, her hand on Jimmy’s arm.
Jimmy recounted how he crewed with the Sea Shepherds, able seaman on the MY Steve Irwin last season, telling how he climbed into the Zodiac, plunging through icy seas, taking it to the Japanese whalers. “One slip on an icy rung, and, man, I would’ve ended under nine hundred tons of whaler, chewed by giant props.”
Beck thinking Jimmy was spinning a mix of Melville and Verne, throwing in a touch of Pequod. This asshole trying to make it with Vicki. Beck thinking he should have left her outside the Bay.
Taking the steps to the wheelhouse, Jimmy turned, was saying to her, “So we’re in this inflatable, just a four-man crew, bobbing after them on waves high as hell. Minus-zero ice water splashing over the bow, biting through our Mustang suits.”
“Oh, God.”
“We see the masts of the Nisshin Maru,” Jimmy said. “Rising like a tower three miles off, bearing down at seventeen knots. Our twin Mercs screaming, our Zodiac popping from the water, us giving chase.”
Vicki touched her chest, turned to Beck.
Jimmy kept talking, “Plunging and hopping like a PNE ride. On my feet, yelling, a bottle of acid in my hand. Closing the gap, dodging the growlers.”
Vicki wanting to know what that was.
“Killer ice, size of a city bus.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Hit one and you’re done.”
“Where’s this vegan place?” Beck asked her.
“Shh.” Then back to Jimmy.
Jimmy saying that’s when he spotted the harpoon ship bearing down on them. “Half mile off our stern, their LRAD screaming.”
“Let me get this,” Beck said, bottom of the steps, “Hundred tons of steel, harpoons and spray cannons against you and your rubber boat and bottle of rotten butter.”
“Butyric acid,” Jimmy said.
“These guys running from you?”
“Believe me, you don’t want that shit all over your deck . . .”
“Stop it, Beck,” Vicki said. “Go on, Jimmy.”
Jimmy reached for the door, music coming from inside the wheelhouse, something by Three Dog Night. “Got right under the giant bow, water cannons jetting all over us.”
Not following up the steps, Beck turned to the rail, looking to the North Shore Mountains, betting Jimmy got all this from watching Animal Planet. Tori was the smart one, leaving when she did, Beck remembering he was supposed to call Hattie, fillet of spring salmon in his fridge.
Shit.
“We’re throwing acid; me, I’m dangling the prop-fouling line, tossing it out, feeling it take, wrapping around their monster prop . . .” Jimmy holding the door open, Vicki following him, Jimmy talking, the music pumping.
This ain’t the way to have fun.
Damp sea air and fog settled in. Didn’t matter the drizzle started. A four-man inflatable and a pair of Jet Skis were lashed to the foredeck. Forearms on the starboard rail, Beck made out the line of lights going up Lonsdale. A SeaBus angled across the harbor, ferrying the nine-to-fivers home. Stanley Park at his back going from green to purple, the anti-whaler passing under the girders of the Lions Gate, cars up top rushing between downtown and the North Shore.
Couldn’t figure Vicki out, inviting him to dinner, near-naked on a downtown street, not saying Jimmy was coming along. Signing up to save whales.
Testing the engines, the engineer was doing a loop in the Strait of Georgia, Captain Angus getting looped on wine and alternative cheese, a microphone in hand, Beck hearing him drumming up support from the who’s who up in the wheelhouse. The breeze was picking up, squawking gulls circling, sounded like they were laughing at him, the foam washing off the bow.
The drizzle brought a chill, Beck going from thoughts of Vicki Moon to Ashika Shakira, thinking back to the night the woman stabbed him — something that woke him and left him in a cold sweat many a night. Beck remembering those eyes, the feeling
of the blade going in. Wondering if he could have pulled the trigger. Put a bullet in a woman. Beck guessing she fled across the border the same night she left him in critical condition, the woman long gone by the time the medics stopped the bleeding. Good chance they’d never catch her.
Beck noticed the two skinny guys in crew T-shirts on the upper deck call to him, the pair leaning on mops, guessing him for a fresh recruit set to heave his guts over the side, a couple hundred yards from shore.
The taller one was saying, “Wait till you get a load of the Roaring Forties, mate.”
Both of them killing themselves laughing, doubling over their mops.
Beck threw them a look, then a finger, not sure what a Roaring Forty was. He fished in a pocket for his cell, pressed the speed dial for Hattie. Seeing Vicki step from the wheelhouse, coming down the steps, he clicked off the phone, wiping the wet from his forehead.
Stepping to the rail next to him, a plastic wineglass in hand, rolled T-shirt pinned under her arm, she glanced at the two guys above, saying, “Making friends, huh?” She waved to them, calling, “Hey, Nemo. Hey, Knut.”
The two hands tripped into each other, as nerdy as their names, both waving back.
“Didn’t tell me we were pulling anchor,” he said, dropping his cell in the pocket.
“Took me on a boat ride; now I’m taking you on one. Only we’ll make it back without needing a tow.” Hooking her arm through his, she gestured toward the shore, the lights of Ambleside twinkling in the mist, a lone figure tossing a crab pot off the end of a pier. “Pretty, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Bumping him with a hip, she said, “Don’t do the wet blanket, okay?” Offered him her wineglass.
Sipping from it, he looked at her. “What’s the thing with Jimmy?”
“Just friends.” Taking the glass back, she started up the steps, saying, “Captain’s got canapés.”
Beck caught her arm, pulling her to him, wine spilling.
She pressed the rolled T against him, saying, “Think I got your size right.”
He held it up, ANTARCTICA CREW across the back. “Funny.”
“Could be, with you on board.” She set the glass on the deck, slipped her hands under his shirt, lifting it. Drizzle coming down.
Stopping her hands, Beck aimed his thumb at the two deckhands on the top deck. Like maybe she forgot they were there.
“Nothing they haven’t seen before,” she said, smoothing his shirt down.
He caught her hands, drew her close, Vicki letting it happen, kissing him, the lights from shore playing on the water, waves swishing against the bull-nose hull, drizzle coming down.
“Come with,” she said, last night’s anger gone, grinning, playing with him.
“Got my own boat, business to run.”
“Think catching salmon beats saving whales?”
“Think your fish are big enough to take care of themselves.”
“Mammals, not fish.” Vicki flicked a finger at his lip, saying, “Jimmy saw a cow and her calf harpooned right in front of their boat last year.”
“Ship, not boat,” Beck said.
Pulling away, she took her wine and went up the metal steps, this girl wearing heels on a ship. She pulled the wheelhouse door, the sound of the Doobies pouring out, talking ’bout China Grove. She looked back at him, saying, “You know it’s raining, right, Beck?”
Then she was gone.
Taking out his ringing cell, Beck looked at the display, no idea what to say to Hattie, dropping it back in his pocket.
The ship’s engines slowed, Beck felt the ship coming about.
. . . HEAVY COVER
The sub was moored along the rotting pier, the hull covered with soggy chunks of old planks, kelp fronds, boughs of cedar and bramble, piled to hide the conning tower. Done under the cover of night, the spot Ramon found.
A dozen bales of cocaína down in the steel hull, Ismael Rios Chavez sat up top, feet dangling down the hatch, keeping watch. First sight of a police boat and his orders were to scuttle the sub. Diego’s orders. Fucker too dumb to realize the sub was sitting too shallow, its bottom on the silt.
The only chance if he were spotted was to make a run. But for that he needed an extra pair of hands, Ismael wanting to keep Reyes aboard. Diego saying no, fearing the two Hondurans would take off. So here he was, a sitting duck.
All that cocaína and a crate of grenades at the bottom of the ladder. Dead Carlos down there getting ripe. No middle names, no last name, no idea about Carlos, just a Colombian fisherman looking for something better. Guy never said two words. Died after they entered Canadian waters, while Ismael manned the controls. Ismael guessing the Colombian couldn’t take the heat, had to be a hundred degrees the whole time they were underway, the crew sucking foul air for eleven days, thick and wet, not much oxygen. They would dump his body once they were back out at sea, hooking up with the cargo ship Costas, which would refuel them and replace their batteries.
Then he was thinking of the bikers that thought themselves hard men. Bikers like in Easy Rider. Ismael would like to show them what growing up on the streets of a Honduran coastal town was about, Ismael learning to dive for the lobster when he was six, watching school friends drown, stealing from market carts to stay alive. Killed his first man when he was thirteen, a jefe refusing to pay him his half day of wages. Snatching the facón from the fat man’s own belt, Ismael pushed it in, nothing to it, looking at the man, the jefe grunting, his knees buckling, with the light going from his eyes. Went through his pockets and took what he was owed and a little extra. And ran.
The laughing puto was next, in the San Pedro Sula prison. Ismael did it with just a piece of rusted steel. Pulled it from the back of his bunk, honed it on the stone floor, fashioned a handle from a patch of shirt, stuck the sharpened end in the man’s liver in the prison yard and walked away, the guards watching from their side of the yellow line, the line of death. Killed three more, not an inmate or jailer laughing at Ismael for the rest of his stay in the San Pedro Sula, the Valley of the Birds, where the inmates ran the prison.
Recruited upon his release, he was trained in Texas by his new CIA friends who taught him to kill with more than rusted steel. They had him placed at the marine infantry base in Coveqas, training with the Colombians, learning about submarines.
After the americanos punched his ticket back to San Pedro Sula, he was appointed to the Death Squad, applying what he’d been taught, working the secret jails of his country. Nearly a hundred citizens stood before him, mostly leftist dissidents, made to stand naked in damp cells, rats and roaches for company. Ismael had them chained to walls, whipped and beaten, filthy water thrown when they blacked out, spoiled food tossed on the floor.
For two years Ismael kept the rebel tongues wagging, the English priest taking the longest, Ismael using electrical shock. The smell of the man’s pale flesh burning filled the cell, his screams becoming moans near the end.
Receiving penance at the Church of Christ, Ismael kneeled at the confessional, saying the Hail Marys, forgiven by another priest, of his own faith. It was his last day with the Death Squad.
Two men approached him at a cafe a week later, asked to sit at his table and told him about a submarine being built in the jungles of Ecuador, said they were looking for good men, talked about more money than he ever dreamed. Pushed an envelope stuffed with cash toward him.
Ismael looked at it, then at the men.
A dozen runs behind him now, working for the cartel bosses, all had gone without a hitch. Ismael thinking he should have been put in charge of this one, the Baja Maritanos wanting one of their own, Lieutenant Topo giving the nod to Diego, the Mexican knowing shit about submarines. And now here he was, Ismael sitting on the sidelines, taking orders from Diego, the crisscrossed cedar boughs hiding him from view, affording him a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vantage.
&nb
sp; . . . A HIT’S A HIT
Late afternoon sun edged from behind the dark clouds. Amado climbed across the seat, getting out of the rental truck, arching his back, stretching.
They went into the Fifth Wheel, taking a booth by the window, Ramon and Eddie sitting across from him, Amado telling the waitress he wanted coffee, the girl going for the pot, Amado checking her out. Coming back, she set down mugs, pouring coffee like she’d done it a million times, pointed to the creamers and sugar packets in the trolley, asked if they wanted anything else and hurried off.
“Okay, here’s how I see this,” Eddie said. “We go down, give this guy the thumping of his life, all three of us. Wave the pistol in his face, let him know we’re not fucking around.”
Tasting his coffee, Amado tore a sugar packet and threw it in, swished his mug around, adding another sugar, finally saying, “In head,” tapping his temple. Guessing Eddie would piss his pants finding out the target was ex-police. Diego’s order was not to tell them till after.
Putting cream in his, Eddie watched it swirl, took a sip, looking at his uncle, then out the window. Wishing he could stoke a pissed-off feeling. This asshole coming up here in a sub built in the Amazon, shitting in a bucket, telling them how things were.
Ramon said nothing, told to sit in the passenger seat, Eddie to drive them to the marina. Returning the rental truck on the way, swapping it for the Town Car — his .357 under the seat — Ramon taking it one step at a time.
“So, Amado,” Ramon said finally, “what corner of old Mexico you from?”
That got him a look.
“Been to Puerto Vallarta a couple times.” Ramon mispronouncing it, saying, “Folks hustling time-shares, wearing those big fucking hats, everybody with a hand out for a tip, stray dogs with ribs showing, half of them hit by cars with no exhaust. People not giving a shit. You from a place like that?”
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