Crimespree Magazine #56

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “What do ya mean?” Roach whined. “We could have made it work. Just bad timing.”

  “Timing, hell. You expect to drive down here and buy a trunk load of weed without knowing anybody?”

  “You’re right, you’re right. It’s not like the old days. Now it’s big business, cartels, and people gettin’ whacked.” Roach winced, having burned his lips on coffee served by an even-hotter señorita.

  “Well, we’re stuck in this hellhole. Good luck explaining to the Border Patrol how some whores stole all our shit.”

  Roach grinned. “I can pass for a gringo easy. You’re the one that looks like an illegal.”

  “So now you’re gonna ditch me? I should just bury you on the beach and let the defensores find you.”

  “Relax, guy. We’re in this together. We’ll make it back across, it’ll just take some figuring.”

  “I still think we should go to the American Consulate and explain—”

  “Damn it, Lenny. I told you that won’t work with my outstanding warrant. Just drop it.”

  The pair blew on their coffees. Lenny dumped four packs of sugar into his cup and stirred. He needed carbs to keep his big body going, while scrawny Roach could exist on air and Quaaludes. He’d met Roach at Pandora’s Bar in the Tenderloin, two years back, right after Lenny’s wife had left him. A dozen beers later, he’d invited the red-headed space case to move into his apartment near Golden Gate Park. They both made good money, being employed by contractors for the Bay Bridge reconstruction project—Lenny as a welder, working the high steel, Roach with traffic control. But their jobs petered out, leaving them with an empty refrigerator, an eviction notice, and Roach’s drug habit.

  “What should we do with the Plymouth?” Roach asked while ogling the waitress.

  “With no gas, it’s not going anywhere. We could try selling it. You got the pink slip?”

  “Yeah, somewhere back in The City.”

  “No sweat. We don’t need it here.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Roach said and frowned. “We’d never get enough for that heap to pay the coyotes to take us across.”

  “Yeah, but at least we could eat.” Lenny reached into the basket of chips for the umpteenth time, picked at the salty fragments, and scooped up the last bit of salsa. His stomach rumbled. He thought about the meals Catalina used to cook for him—Sunday morning scrambled eggs with cheese and peppers, served in bed, with her brown body snuggled close and him reading the Chronicle and sipping champurrado.

  Two tables over, a man pushed his chair back, stood and walked toward them, his hands tucked into an expensive leather jacket. His slick clothes didn’t fit the body type: heavyset with a soft gut and a pale face that looked like it had been beaten, allowed to heal, and then beaten some more.

  “Mind if I sit?” Roach pulled out a chair and the man lowered himself slowly.

  The dude must have marinated his mug in bay rum because the spicy scent tickled Lenny’s nose. He sneezed into his napkin. The man raised a thick hand and a waitress appeared. He muttered something in Spanish and she hurried away.

  “I ordered breakfast for both of you.”

  “Thanks,” Roach said.

  “De nada. Look, I couldn’t help but hear your hard luck story. I might be able to help you guys out.”

  “We’re used to figuring stuff out for ourselves,” Lenny said.

  “Yeah, well that might work in the States. But not here.”

  “We’ve noticed,” Roach said. “So what’s your deal?”

  “I know someone who needs a couple men to help crew a boat that’s heading north. You interested?”

  “What’s in it for us?” Roach asked.

  “A free ride back to the States and money.”

  “How much?” Lenny asked.

  “That depends. You guys know anything about boats?”

  Lenny grinned. “Yeah, I was in the Navy, mostly special warfare craft…ya know, small stuff.”

  “What about you?”

  Roach leaned back in his chair. “I can handle myself. So how much money we talkin’ about?”

  “For you pendejos, two grand apiece.”

  “What kind of drugs are you runnin’ anyway?” Roach asked.

  The guy smiled for the first time, showing porcelain-capped teeth. “You don’t need to know the details…but the haul’s worth more than you’ll make in a lifetime.”

  “You got any ’ludes, man?” Roach whispered. “I could really use some ’ludes.”

  “Nobody sells that shit anymore. But there were some South Africans through here a couple days back. Maybe they’re still around and will sell you some.”

  Lenny looked at Roach and frowned. “Relax, idiot. You don’t have a dime to spend on drugs.”

  “You’d better be careful,” the man said. “The Police are already watching you…and we shouldn’t talk much longer. If you’re interested, meet me at Señior Frog’s tonight, after nine. Just ask for Miguel.” He stood, slid a wad of folded bills into Lenny’s shirt pocket, then moved away just as the waitress delivered plates of eggs with chorizo, sliced mango and pineapple, tortillas, and a pitcher of Margaritas.

  Lenny watched him leave then turned to Roach. “I’m not sure I wanna join up with that guy. Running dope for some cartel can get us killed.”

  “Hey, a few hours on a boat and money for rent…it’s worth talking to the dude tonight.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Lenny stared at the horizon, bit down on a warm tortilla, and sipped a Cadillac Margarita. At least our last day in hell will be well spent.

  ***

  The next morning, a battered Jeep carrying Lenny and Roach pulled into the fishing village of Popotla, just south of Rosarito Beach. They snaked their way along a narrow lane crowded with vans and pickups and pulled between two buildings into a spot that overlooked the cove. It was too early for the tourist crowds. But a row of open boats with outboards tilted forward lay bow-in at the water’s edge.

  Their driver pointed to a grayish-teal craft with three men standing beside it. “Allá.”

  Lenny nodded and the pair climbed from the shuddering vehicle. The driver crammed it into reverse and backed away.

  They ambled across the sand toward the boat, the three beefy guys staring them down. The craft looked maybe thirty feet long and had twin Yamaha outboards clamped to her stern.

  “That sucker will really fly,” Lenny muttered. “She’ll outrun the Coast Guard easy.”

  “Yeah, but not cannon fire,” Roach said. “If the Feds want to board us, I’m lettin’ ’em.”

  “I’m more worried about these fools.”

  Lenny approached a somber-looking dude who wore an open Hawaiian shirt that exposed a blubbery belly; the grip of a pistol stuck out above his belt.

  “Miguel sent us. Are you Travis?”

  “Yeah. You’re late. Let’s get movin’.”

  “Where do you want us?”

  “You at the stern to keep her fueled; your scrawny friend forward to help with the tarp.”

  The five of them tugged and shoved the boat into the sea. They rocketed offshore, heading due west, the panga skittering across the slick surface with its outboards screaming.

  “Where do we pick up our load?” Lenny shouted.

  Travis pointed to a yacht several miles out. Lenny nodded and watched the shoreline fade rapidly and the speck of a ship grow until they pulled along her port side. For the next half hour, the four of them and the yacht’s crew hustled to transfer 50 bales of weed and a couple dozen bricks of “H” onto their panga while Travis scanned the sea and sky with binoculars.

  Finally, they loaded 20 gasoline containers and stored them near the stern. Except for Travis, there was no place left for any of them to sit. Lenny crouched on top of a fuel pod and wondered how sore his ass would be by the end of the voyage. Near the bow, Roach straddled one of the weed bales. The smugglers had used blue plastic to wrap the merchandise and had also painted the boat’s interior the color of the s
ea. Lenny figured that from the air or water they’d be hard to spot.

  Fully loaded, the panga rode low, her rails just a few inches above the surface. One rogue wave would send her to the bottom, with the crew pulling for shore. But without life jackets it would be a futile swim.

  Roach scrambled to the stern. “What the hell are we supposed to do with that?” he asked Travis and pointed to the bluish-gray plastic tarp scrunched against the starboard rail.

  “You pull it over us. The Coast Guard won’t be able to see the boat, not even at night when they use heat-seeking gear.”

  Roach frowned. “I’m gonna spend the entire trip under that thing?”

  “Only when we’re near shore or in the shipping lanes. Now haul your ass forward and be ready when I tell you.”

  “Aye, aye, captain,” Roach said, gave a mock salute, then returned to the bow.

  “Your friend’s a real asshole,” Travis muttered.

  Lenny smiled. “Yeah, but he grows on you.”

  With a signal from Travis, the three forward crew spread the tarp and tied it to hooks along the rails, then scrambled beneath it, each finding their own hibernation pocket. Travis turned the panga due west and gunned her engines. The boat moved sluggishly, but in time managed a respectable clip.

  “Why are we headed out to sea?” Lenny asked.

  Travis shook his head impatiently. “The patrols will spot us if we’re close to shore. And the Navy has a sound station on San Nicolas. We’ve gotta give them a wide berth.”

  “How far out will we go?”

  “About a hundred miles.”

  “Jesus, that’s…that’s the open ocean…and in this thing?”

  “That’s why we get the big bucks.” Travis laughed.

  “Yeah, but we gotta live to spend ’em.”

  “You leave that to me. I’m the Captain here.”

  They sailed west for hours. At a nondescript spot in the rolling sea, Travis turned the boat north. The swells came at them almost head-on, slamming against the fiberglass hull. Travis opened up the throttle. The panga fought wind and waves. But even with the roaring engines, Lenny dropped off to sleep.

  He woke with a start. In the darkness the wind howled fiercely. The boat wallowed between swells, its outboards silenced. Travis bent over one of them with a flashlight. He’d removed the engine cover and poked around with a screw driver, the ocean spray blasting the exposed internals.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Lenny asked.

  “Number two started running like shit.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Hell if I know. Could be bad gas. I’m no damn mechanic. Do you know engines?”

  “Yeah. Check the plugs. Maybe one of them’s burned.”

  “Good idea.”

  Travis fumbled in a metal box for the right tool and removed the sparkplugs. He tossed one overboard and replaced it with another. When he cranked the starter the engine fired up and ran more-or-less smoothly. The hulking Mexicans and Roach crawled out from under the tarp. Roach looked strung out, having gone without Quaaludes or booze since their breakfast in Tijuana. “So when the fuck do we get there?” he asked Travis.

  “We’ve lost time. With these winds and seas, we’ve got another full day, maybe more.”

  “Jeez, where the hell are we landing, San Francisco?”

  “No. It’s a spot north of San Simeon.”

  Lenny choked back a laugh. “That’s way the hell up the coast. Why so far?”

  “Everything south of Santa Barbara is heavily patrolled with too many eyes. The cove we’ll land at is near a highway with no towns around and few cops.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done this before,” Lenny said.

  “It’s my sixth run, but never this far north.”

  “Did you make it every time?”

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just keep the goddamn engines gassed.”

  They continued pounding their way northward, the wind and waves never letting up. By morning of the second day, they’d passed the seaward side of San Miguel Island, heading toward Point Arguello with its gale-force winds and treacherous shoals. Waves broke over the panga’s bow. While the tarp kept much of the sea out, enough of it flowed through the cracks and flooded the hull. One of the Mexicans used his jackknife to cut the tops off four empty fuel canisters. They tried using them to bail the boat. But the panga was packed tightly and the containers so bulky that they couldn’t get to the water unless they tossed some of the weed overboard.

  By mid-day they had slowed to a crawl, the boat moving ponderously. By sunset, they stood off the coast of Vandenberg Air Force Base, its missile gantries just visible in the dusk. A huge comber hit them on their port side and they almost swamped. The sea gained on them with the panga’s rails at the waterline.

  Travis screamed at them. “Come here, all of you.”

  The crew stumbled aft, looking exhausted from hours of fighting a losing battle.

  “We’ve got to lighten the boat,” Travis told them.

  “We can ditch the empty fuel containers,” Lenny offered.

  “Fill ’em with water from the boat first then sink ’em. But hold back two.”

  The crew got to it and in a short while a portion of the boat’s stern was laid bare. But cold saltwater sloshed around their knees and some of the bales threatened to float away…and the sea continued to pour in.

  “That didn’t help one damn bit,” Travis said. He stared at the bales then pulled the pistol from his belt.

  “You two, over the side.”

  The big Mexicans stared at him, seeming not to understand.

  “You heard me, vámanos!”

  The men looked at each other. One pulled a knife and lunged at Travis, who raised his pistol and shot him through the heart. The other dove into the sea and disappeared. Travis rolled the dead guy overboard.

  Lenny stood shaking. “Wh-why…”

  “They’re illegals. Nobody gives a shit. Besides, we’ve already got their money. Now get forward and start bailing.”

  Roach and Lenny hustled to comply, but the sea stayed relentless and with fewer bailers, the boat continued to founder.

  “Come here, you two,” Travis yelled.

  Lenny and Roach looked at each other and sloshed their way aft. When they reached the stern, Lenny folded his arms. “Look, you might shoot one of us. But the other will get ya, mark my words.”

  “Just shut the fuck up. We’re going ashore and wait out this wind.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s an Air Force base. They’ll have patrols everywhere.”

  Roach stood shaking and stared at the pistol in Travis’s belt.

  “We’ll make shore after dark. Then if the wind doesn’t die in three or four hours it’ll be every man for himself.”

  “You mean you’d ditch the load?” Roach asked, his eyes wide.

  “Yeah. It happens. You can make it to the nearest town by dawn. Now get back to bailing until I tell ya to stop.”

  When Travis turned the panga toward land, the flooding slowed. They ran with the wind and current, heading toward the dim shoreline. In a couple of hours the boat nudged a broad beach. The light from a half moon outlined the sand dunes. In the distance, a missile gantry blazed with lights.

  “Now what?” Roach asked, shaking hard, as much from the cold as from his drug withdrawal.

  “We sit tight,” Travis said. “I’ll keep watch for patrols.”

  “I’m thinking maybe I’ll just jump ship here,” Roach muttered.

  “I don’t think so.” Travis pulled his pistol and pointed it at him. “Now both of you crawl under that tarp and shut the fuck up.”

  The two moved forward. “What do ya think?” Roach whispered in their tarp cave.

  “I think Travis needs us to get ashore. This wind may let up, but those coves north of San Simeon are tough going. He won’t be able to land this thing by himself.”

  �
��They’re gonna have a crew to unload when we get there,” Roach said. “They could kill us.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But leaving dead bodies behind will complicate their getaway and piss off the cops.”

  Lenny reached up and pulled the edge of the tarp down to block the wind. They sat back-to-back and talked about their days on the bridge job, Lenny’s life with his wife, and Roach’s exploits with a hooker in a North Beach fleabag. As the moon rose higher, the wind died, like someone had turned off a huge hurricane fan. They pushed back the tarp and stood, rubbing their sore backs. An offshore fogbank rolled toward them.

  “Let’s, go,” Travis hissed. “You two, get out and give us a shove, but don’t try anything stupid.”

  Lenny and Roach dropped over the side, rocked and shoved the panga until it was free of the sand, then turned her bow seaward. Travis started the engines and the pair scrambled aboard. The boat moved slowly, Travis keeping the outboards at low throttle until well offshore before turning north and cranking them up. They bailed the boat dry and secured the tarp. Lenny rejoined Travis at the stern. The panga rocketed along, the thick fog soaking up the snarl of her engines.

  At a spot just offshore of Morro Rock, the sky cleared. Travis pulled out a cell phone and yelled into it. “We’ll be there in an hour, maybe two…A couple of the illegals had an accident…We’ll need to hustle.”

  “I’m not sure we’re gonna make it,” Lenny told Travis after he’d hung up.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I emptied the last fuel container south of here.”

  “I’ll back off the speed and maybe stretch it. We’ve gotta get there and be gone before sunrise, one way or another.”

  The pitch of the engines lowered from alto to tenor and they motored on without speaking. They cruised by long sections of coastline with no lights and slid past the towns of Cambria and San Simeon. Ahead, flashes from the Piedras Blancas station guided them forward. As they neared the light, the engines sputtered. Travis hit the kill switch to one of them and the other smoothed out.

  “We’ve gotta get ashore.” he muttered.

  “Where?” Lenny asked.

  “That cove.” Travis pointed to a shallow stretch of beach below a low bluff. The reflector posts of a highway that bordered the coastline gleamed in the moonlight. Travis fingered his cell phone.