“H-h-hello,” I quavered.
“Hetta, I got your cyber menace.”
“Good, send him over, Martinez, I need a menace. Uh, we are just a tad busy right now, can I call you back? And if you never hear from us again, hire Captain Ahab to avenge us.”
“What?”
“Later. Oh, just in case,” I gave him our coordinates before hanging up.
Fabio, flare gun in hand, rushed up to the bridge. When I pointed to our submerged whale on the fish finder, he yelled, “¡Carumba!”
“Carumba? You know, I’d rather hear something like, ‘Don’t worry, ladies, these whales do this all the time.’”
“Never. I have never seen anything like this. Cut the engines, maybe they annoy him.”
With the engines dead, all we could do was wait. The whale surfaced way too close, then began swimming around us in ever-smaller circles. The boat swayed in a way I’d never felt before, not quite spinning, but definitely not just drifting. The big, slow Pacific swells and lack of wind, combined with the strange turning motion, was definitely unsettling. The Bermuda Triangle came to mind. Were we about to be pulled down into a vortex created by an enraged whale?
Moby came just a little too close for comfort and Fabio changed his mind. “I am going to restart the engines. Perhaps it will frighten him away.
“And maybe it will just piss him off. And Jan, I do not owe you money. Piss is not a cuss word.”
Fabio started both engines and we held our collective breaths, waiting to see if the whale got pissified. Since he was submerged again, we thought, hoped, he was gone, but then the depth sounder turned pure red. All whale. Fabio let loose a string of Spanish that sounded decidedly scatological and rushed to the railing. Back over his shoulder he yelled, “Miss Café, put the engines in gear and bring the throttles up slowly to full speed. Steer directly south.”
South, south. Oh, yeah, south is 180. Soon we were clipping along at about twenty knots, blowing all our fuel out the exhaust. “Uh, just how fast can whales travel?” I asked no one in particular. Neither Fabio nor Jan seemed to know. “Okay, then. Fabio, you take over, I’m getting on the Internet.”
“What are you gonna put in the search engine?” Jan asked, “Mad Whale Disease?”
“You know, your sense of humor needs a sense of timing.” I started below, but had a thought. “Hey, Fabio, I got an idea. While I’m Googling this beast, shouldn’t we head for shallow water near shore? I bet a dollar to a peso that we have less draft than that big bastard.”
Jan started to open her mouth, but I growled, “Bastard is not a curse word.”
“I was just gonna say that the whale is staying up with us.” Drat. Tree huggers be damned; if I had a depth charge, Moby would be history.
“Señorita Café, going toward shore is an excellent idea.” Fabio gently, as gently as one can at warp speed, turned the boat toward land, which, by the way is never a great idea for those of you who plan to go cruising. Land is your enemy, as is running out of gas, but we’d have to worry about those little details later. Right now, though, I needed a quick surf on the information highway.
“Jan, while I boot up, look for a file folder marked ‘Whale Stuff’ will ya? Get out that marine biologist’s resume and phone number.”
I typed WHALES into the search slot and got a million and a half hits, most of them trying to sell me a whale watching trip. No thanks, I had my own.
I refined the search to WHALE ATTACKS, and got an account of an Orca attacking his trainer at some water park. I refined my search to BOATS SUNK BY WHALES and was assured I had a better chance of being hit by a bus or an asteroid than I did of whacking a whale. The same tongue in cheek site suggested that Jonah’s situation was extremely rare, but just in case, you should carry red pepper aboard. If we weren’t in dire danger I would have sent the site master a nasty e-mail. I went to the next site.
“Any luck?” Jan asked over my shoulder.
“In the eighteen hundreds there were reports of whales attacking boats but nothing…uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh, what?”
“Whale attacked a boat in Australia not long ago.”
“We’re a long way from there. Nothing else?”
“Nope. Give me our marine biologist’s phone number. Maybe he’ll tell us what to do.” Several failed attempts at contacting Doctor Yee later, we gave up and joined Fabio on the bridge.
Moby was very much still with us. He’d dive, surface nearby and blow. I’d seen those cartoon whales, little smiles on their faces, blowing a cute spout. Nothing like this bugger, I can assure you. Except, maybe, for what did look suspiciously like an evil grin right before he blew foul smelling spray into the air. He could really, really, spout and whale breath is way up there in the top ten malodorous substances. Like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, he launched a geyser as high as our flying bridge and he always managed to do so upwind from us so that a rain of stink fell upon our hapless crew. We quickly learned to dash for cover inside when he disappeared from the fish finder.
Moby didn’t attack, but neither did he go away. I won’t say we relaxed, but we did get used to him. As we raced toward shore we kept a tight watch on the depth sounder for both our oversized escort and the ocean bottom. Our GPS gave us our location, but Fabio didn’t totally trust the charts where depths were concerned. When we were within a half hour of shore, my idea of running willy-nilly into shallow water looked less brilliant. “Uh, Fabio, you do know this area well, don’t you?”
“Yes, but not close to the beach. This chart,” he pointed to the one I held in my hand, “become viejo, old, very near shore. After each tormenta, the bottom changes. We must slow when we have four fathoms.”
Four fathoms. Four fathoms. Twenty-four feet. I tapped a spot of land on the chart south of our westerly heading. “What’s this?”
“Punta Abreojos. If we change course, we shall be there before we lose the light.”
“I’d sure as hell like to get somewhere before dark. What’s there?”
“A small village. A military post.”
“Then let’s head for it. Do they have large guns? Maybe a bazooka?”
Fabio chuckled. “Perhaps.”
“Jan,” I yelled out the door, “we’re changing course, hang on.”
She hung the binoculars around her neck and grabbed the rail. “Okay, I’m hanging. Where’re we going?”
“Uh, Abreojos.”
“Always wanted to go there," she said sarcastically, then added, “What’s abreojos mean?”
I looked at Fabio. He shrugged. “Keep your eyes open.”
“I will, but what does Abreojos mean?”
“That is what it means, señorita. Ojos is eyes, abre is open: keep the eyes open.”
“For what?”
“Rocas. Rocks.”
Chapter 15
So here we were, steadfastly plowing toward Abreojos—which translates to “open eyes,” but, according to Fabio, really means “keep your eyes open”—with a pesky whale in hot pursuit. Two hours out, Dr. Yee, whale guru, finally calls back. He sounds out of sorts, letting me know I had jammed his message center and that one message, not fifteen, would have sufficed.
“Sorry, Doc, but we got a problem here. A big one.”
“So I gather. I understand you have collided with a whale? Is he hurt?”
“Not so you’d notice.” I told him the whole story.
“This whale, what does he look like?” His tone changed from mildly annoyed to what sounded like wildly excited. I rarely have this effect on men.
“Really, really big.” Really, really and big are sorely ineffective adjectives for describing our Moby, but it was all I could think of except, “fuckin’ huge,” which would cost me ten bucks.
“No, I mean his dorsal fin. And his back.”
I had noticed, in my one other conversation with Doctor Yee, that he had no discernable Spanish accent, but his resume said he was born in Mexico and carried a Mexican passp
ort. Interesting.
“Uh, just a minute.” Fabio, Jan and I held a quick confab. “Smoothish back. A smallish fin, if smallish is a word that can describe anything on this fish, way back toward his tail. Oh, and he has a huge flat head. No doubt from ramming our boat.”
“Not a fish.”
“What?”
“He is a mammal, not a fish.”
“Okay, so he’s a friggin’ humongous mammal. Fabio, our captain, says he thinks it’s a blue.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear? What does that mean?”
“He is very large, then.”
“No shit.” I glared at Jan, who whispered, “Ka-ching,” and got elbowed for her trouble.
Doctor Yee and I discussed our whale problem a while longer, me answering what questions I could. Finally, he came up with an hypothesis, but not one I wanted to hear. “What I suspect, “he concluded, “is that you have a lonely, pubescent male Balaenoptera musculus on your hands.”
“I’d like to buy a vowel.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. A what?”
“A young male Blue.”
“He’s pretty danged big for a teenager.”
“Actually, he sounds a bit small for his species. From what you tell me, he measures around twenty meters, about sixty-five feet, which is not large for a blue.”
“Why am I not comforted? He’s still got twenty feet on us. So, we got a horny whale with a short man complex. What’s that got to do with him harassing us? Why isn’t he out flirting with a girl whale?”
“That, I think is exactly the problem. Most whales have migrated north and since they are by nature social animals, he is most likely lonely.”
“I guess that would explain that big pink thing he keeps waggling at us?”
Yee chuckled. “We call that a Pink Floyd.”
“We’re being flashed by a whale? I don’t want the bastard psychoanalyzed, Doc. I don’t give a crap about his love life. I just want to know if he’s dangerous.”
“I did not mean to sound flippant, Miss Coffey. I only wish to advise you that he could be a danger if he becomes overly amorous. In this case, he could damage your boat in an attempt to, uh, woo it. I must do more research and get back to you. Where are you right now?”
“We hope to make Abreojos before dark.”
“Fantastic! I am only seventy kilometers away. I can meet you either this evening or tomorrow morning.”
“Tonight? Please?”
“Okay. Just in case my cell phone does not work there, keep calling me on VHF 16 when you get near Bahía Ballena.”
“We will. Hey, are you telling me that Abreojos is on Whale Bay?”
“Yep. Keep your eyes open.”
“Could you be a bit more reassuring?”
“Sorry, I assume your captain is familiar with the area?”
“Yes, he’s been there often.”
“Good.” Doc Yee sounded relieved.
“Is there anything we can do to shake this whale off? Maybe not brush our teeth? Tell him we’re looking for a commitment?”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. Call me back if you get any ideas. We’ll see you tonight. Bye.”
My shipmates were staring at me. “Not brush our teeth?” Jan asked. “What the hell was that all about?”
“It would seem that our whale wants to mate with Raymond Johnson.”
Fabio broke out in an infectious laugh that soon had Jan and I howling.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I managed to gasp, “So, Fabio. You’re a guy. What would you consider a major turnoff? What makes you run away from women?”
Fabio wiped his cheeks. “That would be my wife.”
“You’re married?”
“Many years.”
“Yeah,” Jan piped up, “leave it to a wife to take the romance out of a guy.”
Although dismayed to learn of Fabio’s marital status, I joined in the fun. “Evidently this whale ain’t got no stinkin’ wife, so he’s dogging Raymond Johnson. Instead of Moby Dick, we got Lonesome Floyd.”
I told them about the Pink Floyd thing and we broke up again, until a fine mist of foul smelling saltwater drifted over the decks, gagging us into silence. Jan held her nose and suggested we get back on the Internet and order a fifty-five gallon drum of Listerine.
Fabio, per Doctor Yee’s suggestion when I’d told him what we were doing to escape the whale, brought back the throttles. Outrunning Lonesome was out of the question; Yee said some whales could do forty miles an hour and that our best bet for getting rid of the lovesick guy would be to anchor as close in to shore at Abreojos as we dared. And to be prepared to abandon ship in case lonely boy wanted a little rough foreplay. We were all vastly relieved that Doctor Yee was joining us.
The phone rang again, raising my hopes that my marine biologist had come up with a recipe for whale saltpeter. “Hetta, were you planning on getting back to me in this century?” an annoyed-sounding Martinez asked. But then, he always sounded annoyed.
“Oh, sorry. I forgot. We’ve been preoccupied.”
“Problems?”
“You could say that.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Know any unattached female whales? One who isn’t real picky?”
“Never mind, solve it yourself. Uh, are you alone?”
“Sort of. Jan’s here, but Fabio’s out on whale watch.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. I nabbed your mystery e-mailer.”
“Really? Great. Did you bust his kneecaps for me?”
“No, his mama wouldn’t let me.”
“His mama?”
“Kid is eleven. Some woman paid him to send the messages. Told him to change his address each time. I actually witnessed him sending you an e-mail, which you should have by now.”
“I haven’t had time to check my mail, believe me.”
“Anyway, I followed the little brat home and nailed him.”
“And?”
“That’s it so far. I’ve paid the kid to go ahead and send more messages to you, hoping the woman will show up again. I gave him a Ladatel phone card so he can use a pay phone and call me. When I promised him a hundred bucks to lead me to his employer, his eyes lit up like a pinball machine.”
“He didn’t know the woman?”
“Naw, she came into the Internet café, gave him a hundred pesos and the message. He had never seen her before and not since. She also paid for him to have Internet time for the next two weeks. I’m working on finding out who she is. Do you want me to hang here, or give it up? “
“Hang. We need to know who and why. Don’t forget, we’ve also been getting phone calls, as well, and it doesn’t sound like the kid made those.”
“He says he didn’t and I believe him.”
“Good enough for me. Meanwhile, we’re making a pit stop in Abreojos before we continue on to Mag Bay.”
“Why the diversion?”
“We’re trying to scrape a whale off our keel.”
“Huh?”
“You hadda be here. Keep me in the loop.”
Jenks called as we were tooling for Abreojos, but I didn’t bother mentioning Martinez, the pint-sized e-mailer, or mysterious Mexican women. I did tell him about our whale, now dubbed Lonesome, but not that we’d whacked the big blue on my watch. “So, according to the marine biologist, we’re being flashed by a blue whale who’s taken a liking to Raymond Johnson. He keeps waggling his Pink Floyd at us.”
“How big is it?”
“Bigger’n yours.”
“I meant the whale, Hetta.”
“Oh, sixty-five feet or so.”
“Stay away from him.”
“Jealous?”
“Only of his Floyd. Leave the phone on so I can check on you. Have fun. Bye now.”
“Bye.”
So, judging by the lack of love you on his signoff, I was still in hot water. Maybe I’d glossed over the danger we were in? Or was he just taking
a cavalier attitude because of my bogus everything is just dandy voyage reports. After all, to hear me tell it, Jan and I were on a whale-watching Carnival cruise. Sigh. At least Jenks still called me; Lars didn’t even bother talking to Jan any more.
Lonesome was starting to look better by the minute. At least he cared.
Chapter 16
“Ha-ll-looo, Raymond Johnson,” a voice called from shore. Jan and I were finishing off our after dinner wine, enjoying the lights of Abreojos. After a couple of days at sea, any sign of civilization, even such a scantly lit village, was somehow comforting. Twilight was upon us, but when I trained my pricey Monk Admirals in the direction of the town, I could easily make out a figure wearing, what else? a Save The Whales T-shirt. Doctor Yee, I presume?
“Fabio,” I yelled down into the engine room, “let’s launch the dink and go pick up a doctor.”
Fabio looked concerned. “You are ill?”
“No, it’s the whale doctor.”
“Whales got doctors?” he asked, sounding just like Jan.
“You know, Fabio, you have been on this boat with us far too long. Doctor Yee is here from Scammon's Lagoon. Go get him, okay?” I hadn’t told Fabio why I had Yee’s phone number, because I didn’t want my captain to know I had a marine life expert on the payroll. Martinez didn’t want Fabio to know Jack doo doo, so that’s the way I planned to keep it. Luckily Fabio didn’t seem the curious type.
Within thirty minutes, Doctor Yee, myself, Jan, and Fabio were seated around our dining room, discussing whales. Again, if Fabio wondered how I had so easily gotten a whale expert on my boat, he didn’t say anything. In fact, his lack of nosiness was starting to get on my nerves. How can a person live with so little curiosity? Fabio excused himself and went to bed, leaving us to discuss Lonesome.
“Doctor Yee, my veterinarian friend, Craig, back in Oakland, tells me you are a world-renowned expert on whales.”
“Craig is very kind. It is true that I am dedicated to the preservation of whales. Some might say obsessed.” Yee spoke English perfectly, with just a hint of a British, not Spanish, accent. At least six feet tall, muscular and bronzed, his most startling feature were steel gray eyes. His sun, rather than age-wrinkled, skin, shock of black hair and sparkling white teeth, gave him the look of a California surfer dude of indeterminate age. Whatever Yee was in his ancestry had long since disappeared.
Just Add Salt (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 2)) Page 11