by Jerold Last
Raul and Barbara dominated the conversation with horror stories about their trip to Mexico City the day before, and today’s flight to Guaymas. Neither flight was on time. Their hotel reservations were lost and only found again after bribes masquerading as tips exchanged hands. Most of the night had been spent in their hotel’s adjacent nightclub rather than in bed, so they were all tired, just like on the flights from Quito to Baltra.
“You can imagine how surprised we were to see you and your family here,” Barbara exclaimed to Suzanne. “What are you guys doing in Mexico? We thought you’d be back home in Los Angeles by now.”
Suzanne had been expecting this question sooner or later and had her prepared answer at the ready. “We wanted a weekend to decompress before going back to Los Angeles, so we’d made plans to stay here before we came down to Quito. Don’t tell me you’re following us around Latin America.”
Barbara studied her closely for a second or two. ““No, we had our plans made before we left San Francisco. Raul decided to join us on the spur of the moment. What a coincidence! It’s like the scene from the movie Casablanca where someone says something like ‘of all the bars in all the cities all over the world, imagine us meeting you here now’. I don’t understand how you could possibly have gotten here ahead of us!”
Suzanne was saved from having to say more by the arrival of the waiter, who told us about the dinner choices and suggested a round of Margaritas to complement the chips, salsa, and guacamole he had already brought to the table. Along with the drinks, tonight’s dinner featured a Restaurante Especial of the Sea of Cortez version of bouillabaisse, prepared with a tomato sauce base like the Italian Cioppino. The rich mixture of fish, seafood, and spicy tomato flavors was wonderful. We all ordered it except Sophia, claiming a delicate constitution and fear it might be too spicy. Like most South Americans from the countries in the southern part of the continent with temperate climates, she did not eat, or like, spicy foods. She had the grilled fish, unadorned by sauce or spice.
Given the European themed dinner, we shared a couple of bottles of an Argentine Malbec from the menu. The rest of the dinner worked out exactly as we hoped it might. Suzanne and Raul had a quiet little tete-a-tete, which ended up with them planning to get together the next day for an all-day trail ride in the local mountains. I ended up with two dates for tomorrow, Barbara in the morning for tennis and Gretchen for an afternoon of sailing in the bay.
We compared notes in the room after dinner. Sophia was quietly smug as we acknowledged her plan seemed to be working. Suzanne looked pensive. “Is this a little too easy, Roger? For a trio of young swingers, they seem awfully willing to waste a day with a couple of older folks.”
I’d been thinking the same thing. “Yeah, I thought about that. I’m beginning to wonder whether one, or all, of them are just as anxious as we are to get us separated for some reason. Let’s see how it plays out. You should be able to handle Raul in a fight, so there’s no obvious reason to worry about you two going off alone. If either of the sisters tries to seduce me I’ll just have to play along and pump them for information.”
That earned me a whack in the back of my head from Suzanne.
I turned towards our fellow conspirator. “Sophia, are you OK with having to look after Robert by yourself all day tomorrow? I think that’s the only way we can make the logistics of all this work.”
Sophia smiled. “Of course I’m OK with that, Roger. That’s why I came with you three. I’m guessing Eduardo and Bruce will rejoin us late Monday or Tuesday. Until then you can assume I’m available for Robert care 24/7. If all goes well, you’ll be able to give Eduardo a definitive answer whether the girls and Raul should be arrested or allowed to go home by the time they get here.”
Chapter21.Mexico: Sunday---Day 3
Darwin: Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.
Barbara Kaufman and I were volleying tennis balls on a concrete court, one of four courts in a tennis-basketball-volleyball complex between the hotel and the beach. We had paired off for tennis this morning, hoping to beat the worst of the heat and humidity to come. After we hit some balls back and forth for ten minutes, it was obvious she had a strong backhand and a more consistent game than mine. I was much taller, much stronger, and could easily dominate at the net. We could well turn out to be fairly evenly matched if we both played hard to win. But singles tennis, especially serve and volley singles, eventually goes to the stronger and bigger player if all else is equal, and that was yours truly.
Barbara held up a tennis ball. “Shall I serve first?” she asked innocently.
I guess that answered my question about whether she would try to sucker me into not taking her seriously as a tennis player so she could blow me off the court. But I could play this game, too. “Sure, go right ahead. Do you want to take a couple of practice serves?”
“No,” she replied. “These count”. With almost perfect form she blasted a hard serve towards my backhand side.
I was ready for that maneuver. It’s what I’d have done in her place. I hit a hard backhand down the line on her forehand side as deep as I could, and charged towards the net.
Her forehand smash straight down the line was a set-up for my crosscourt backhand return at the net. My point.
Her next serve was hard and deep, aimed towards my feet. “Deep,” I called. “Take 1”
Her second serve was softer, accurate, with lots of spin. I showed her my topspin lob, deep and to her backhand. She lobbed back, not deep enough. I hit an overhead smash.
“Love-30”, she called out. Two minutes later I was ahead 1-0, and clear signals were being sent in both directions that we should take it easy and play for fun. We did, and we had a lot of fun.
We took a long break between sets because of the heat and humidity while sitting on a bench in what passed for shade, talking. Barbara asked me, “I don’t understand how you got here before us. We didn’t see you on the flight out from Baltra to Guayaquil, so you must have left after us. They told us the only flight from Ecuador to Mexico went from Quito to Mexico City, so we flew to Quito, caught a late flight to Mexico City, and spent the night there. We took the first flight in the morning to Guaymas and you weren’t on that one either. And yet you beat us here. How’d you get here so quickly?”
It seemed safe to assume whatever I answered would be repeated to Gretchen and Raul. So, what did I want them to think? That was easy. I wanted them to go on thinking we were meeting here purely by coincidence and completely by accident. “On the flight down from Guayaquil to Baltra we lucked out when we ended up sitting next to a general in the Ecuadorian Air Force, who happens to be the base commander at Baltra. We talked about places to go and things to do in Ecuador and Central America. I told him about our reservation to spend a few days at the Club Med here in Guaymas before we go home. He suggested we could skip the extra day flying through Mexico City and have a longer weekend here. The general had a patrol flight scheduled to fly from Baltra along the Pacific coast to Mexico at just the right time and offered us a free ride on it if we wanted to come directly here.
“That worked out well since Bruce wanted to stay and visit with some friends who had a smaller boat in the Galapagos Islands for a couple of days. So, here we are waiting for Bruce to catch up with us while we catch up on our quota of sun, sand, and sleep.”
I watched Barbara closely while seeming not to notice. I could almost see the wheels turning inside her head as she calculated times and distances, weighed the improbability of my story, and drew the obvious conclusion. If it were me in her place I’d be concluding the part about the flight from Baltra to Guaymas had to be true, but there was no way it could happen because of a casual meeting with the base commander on the plane ride from Guayaquil the previous Sunday. So, that meant I had connections and juice down here, which made me a big time drug dealer or some kind of cop or spy. I didn’t know what, or how much, Raul had told her about me and my recent interactions with the DEA in California, but her q
uick assimilation of my story without missing a beat made me wonder whether she was really a very dumb school teacher or actually was a very sharp undercover agent of some sort herself.
Barbara toweled a few gallons of sweat off her forehead with her towel. “Let’s play one more set, then cool off in the pool if that’s OK with you.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied, adjusting the sweatbands on my wrists and forehead.
Set #2 was similar to set #1. Two well matched type A personalities impersonating type B’s playing for fun. Close, but she was inconsistent lobbing and hit some short ones, so eventually my size and strength won out.
She was playful in a platonic way in the pool before we both headed back to our rooms to shower with promises to see each other at lunch.
I had a date with Gretchen to sail in the afternoon. In the meantime I mulled over what it might mean if Barbara were indeed an undercover something or other. My conclusion was obvious. If she was either an undercover good guy or bad guy, so was Gretchen. It might be a real good idea to find out which this afternoon if there was any opportunity to do so.
A few hours later, I was sailing a small catamaran parallel to the beach about 250 meters offshore with Gretchen Kaufman as my crew. Theoretically, I was teaching her how to sail the 16-foot boat in the steady, gentle offshore breeze. Conditions were perfect for sailing, but we were just enjoying the sun and surf. And I was enjoying the view of Gretchen, who was wearing a minimalist Bikini for our sailing adventure.
Gretchen looked down at the water, idly trailing her hand in the bay, while occasionally lifting it out of the water to flick droplets on my leg. “Where are you and your family from, Roger?”
I flicked some water back at her. “We both live and work in L.A.”
She looked up at me. “What kind of work do you do when you’re back home in L.A.?”
Hmm. How should I answer this one? When in doubt, go with the truth. “I’m a partner in a private detective agency there.”
Gretchen reacted quite visibly to that answer, and I had the sudden impression of a very intelligent lady thinking about my answer. As fast as the flash of a completely different person lasted, it disappeared and she almost immediately regained her flirtatious and not overly bright image. There was a long pause. “Do you by any chance know a detective inspector from the San Francisco Police Department named Harry Callahan?”
Talk about questions coming from nowhere. Harry and I had worked closely earlier this year on a complicated case involving murdered judges at dog shows in Northern California. We became friends during a long and complicated investigation that culminated in my shooting Raul’s colleague from the DEA. I decided to continue following the guideline of when in doubt, go with the truth, and see where it led us. “Yes, I know Inspector Callahan. We worked together on a murder case last year and earlier this year.”
Gretchen got a very funny look on her face, like she’d bitten into something very unpleasant. “Do you know Raul thinks you’re a murderer and a big time drug dealer?”
I smiled wryly. “He shared that opinion with me on this trip.”
“What did you tell him when he accused you?”
This was getting very interesting. These weren’t the type of questions a naive schoolteacher would be asking a relative stranger whilst sitting in a small sailboat some distance from a beach in the middle of nowhere. Another dollop of truth probably wouldn’t make things any worse.
““I told Raul I shot his DEA colleague James Corley in self-defense while he and his partner were trying to kill me. And that Corley was a drug dealer and a murderer. I reminded him that no charges were ever brought against me by the local authorities. I also told him if he was close with Corley that made him dirty, too, as far as I was concerned. Later on, he took a swing at me. He’s not only stupid but he’s too slow to fight anyone who knows what they’re doing. I don’t think that will happen again.”
I watched Gretchen closely, this time studying her eyes and face. I had the impression of a brief flash of intelligence again, which was quickly hidden behind the dumb bimbo facade. I quickly reviewed everything I knew about her. Suddenly a few random pieces fell into place.
I looked directly at Gretchen. “You know what makes the most sense to me, Gretchen? This isn’t a pleasure cruise for you and Barbara. You’re here to figure out whether Raul really is dirty. That makes you DEA Internal Affairs or FBI, unless you’re involved with one of the major drug cartels along the Southwest border. It must have really seemed surreal when Suzanne and I showed up in Quito, but you covered it up very well. Tell me, is Barbara really your sister?”
Gretchen’s body language seemed to say she was making an abrupt decision as she reached for her little bag. I was halfway expecting to see a gun and got my legs under me and my arms positioned ready to take it away from her.
Instead she pulled out a card wallet to show me her ID. Gretchen Kaufman, Special Agent, FBI, San Francisco Field Office. “I met Harry on the same case you did. We worked together in California and in Texas, investigating the DEA. Harry describes you as a combination of Nero Wolfe and The Lone Ranger. From the reams of paperwork in the case file and your last demonstration of deductive logic I’d draw the same conclusion, especially heavy on the Nero Wolfe half. I have a funny feeling we’re operating at cross-purposes here and we shouldn’t be.
“So, let me tell you what my sister, who is also an FBI agent, and I are doing here. You realize this is the worst possible breach in procedure an undercover agent can make, but I’ve learned to trust my gut instincts. I’d appreciate it if all of this stays confidential between us, even including the rest of your team. In return, I only ask that we exchange information and you honestly let me know what you’re here for. I can decide then whether it’s time for Barbara and me to go home. OK?”
Now I knew how Alice must have felt when she descended through the hole to enter Wonderland. I hadn’t seen this one coming until two minutes ago. I nodded my agreement.
Gretchen put her ID back in the bag, relaxed back into her seat on the boat to send me ‘I’m harmless’ vibes, and started telling me her story. “I was assigned to handle liaison with the FBI agents in West Texas and with Inspector Callahan and the SFPD in San Francisco, and to direct the FBI investigation of the DEA in California, just after you solved most of the case for us. Several months and several fired or retired DEA agents and administrators later the case is still technically open. My sister and I decided to use the cover of taking a vacation down here to follow up on Raul Vonhorst. His working and social relationship with DEA agent James Corley made us suspicious of him. So did the DEA suddenly reassigning him to Ecuador where he would be out of sight as far as the FBI is concerned. We think he’s dirty and that he’s tied up in some way with the drug dealing Corley was involved in. But we haven’t any proof.
“When we met you and Suzanne at the museum in Quito, Barbara and I caught your name but we weren’t sure you were the famous Roger Bowman from the Corley case. I finally figured out the connection with Harry Callahan would be a safe way to ask if you were just plain Roger.”
There was a subtle change in her position and tone. “Is it safe for me to assume you’re not a murderer and a big time drug dealer, Roger?”
It was decision time for me. Should I play it safe or think platitudes like ‘in for a dime, in for a dollar.’ Part of what we’d been sent here to Guaymas for had just been accomplished. We now knew the Kaufman sisters weren’t the oversexed mindless bimbos they seemed to be, as we suspected, but they were good guys, which was a pleasant surprise.
I gave Gretchen my most sincere look and answered her question. “Yes, you may assume I’m not a murderer and a big time drug dealer, Gretchen.”
Of course she was smart. She wouldn’t have made it to FBI Special Agent in her 20s unless she was very, very smart. She looked at me with her facial expression suggesting curiosity, and maybe even a little admiration. “You seem to lead a charmed life. You managed to
win a gunfight all by yourself, armed with only a Glock pistol, against two experienced and well trained DEA agents with Uzi’s. As Raul put it, you seem to have enough juice, or friends in high places, to not only walk away from the gunfight without any charges being filed against you but to have the LAPD return the Glock to you with their apologies. Would you like to share whom your friends in high places are?”
I had to be careful here, but if I did this right maybe I could make a powerful ally in the FBI for future reference. “Suzanne and I came here on vacation purely on impulse. She read about the tour in Sunset Magazine and we got a great deal on the package. We met the commander of the Ecuadorian Air Force base on Baltra as a seatmate on our flight. It turned out the meeting wasn’t by chance. He had a problem or two he needed help with, and was scouting me out. He later explained we had a mutual friend who recommended Suzanne and I as being potentially helpful, and he planned to take advantage of our being there. The mutual friend also showed up on the cruise. He has some very significant resources available to him and might qualify as being a friend in high places, at least in South America.