by Mark Parragh
Then someone came in from the breezeway. The newcomer was young, tall and lean, black hair. He wore blue chinos, boat shoes, and a white linen shirt. Boz didn’t recognize him; still, he thought he noticed a flash of recognition when the stranger’s eyes fell on him. Then Orly showed the new guy to his table, and he returned his attention to the blonde.
At the end of the pier, Crane found an entrepreneur named Luis who ran a jitney cab. Luis drove him out on an unpaved road that hugged the coastline for a couple miles to a parking lot with a sign that read “The Beach Club at Punto Dorado.”
It looked like Boz was here. Chloe had said he drove a black Escalade, and there it was. But it wasn’t the stock model; this one had been heavily armored. Crane spotted a bulkhead behind the rear gate, run-flat tires, and heavy ballistic glass. Across the lot, two very large men lounged on the seawall. They eyed him with suspicion until he’d walked past the Escalade. Crane assumed they were part of the security package.
Crane could think of three reasons a man might own that vehicle. He could just be showing off. He could be seriously paranoid. Or he might actually have a legitimate need for that kind of security—like someone involved in trafficking women, for example.
Crane heard music coming from a breezeway, so he passed by the front doors and followed it through into a square courtyard dotted with tables and palm trees. Three sides were surrounded by a covered walkway lined with doors. The fourth looked out over the beach and the dock with a handful of motorboats tied alongside. A sound system played bossa nova, the music blending with the gentle, insistent roll of the surf.
An older man, thin, with gray dreadlocks, rose from his chair. This would be Orly Wilde. According to Captain Burch, Orly had been a serious drug smuggler back when the trade was beach bums with Jimmy Buffet tapes instead of cartel thugs with chainsaws. He’d gotten out when it got dangerous, or possibly been busted and done federal time in the States. Either way, he’d retired to Bahia Tortugas and built his place. Crane thought he looked the part.
“Hey, welcome to Punto Dorado,” Wilde said. “I’m Orly.”
“John Crane.”
They shook hands, and then Orly showed him to a table with a view of the beach and went for a menu. There were three customers: a couple at a table and a man standing nearby. That one matched Chloe’s description of Boz. He looked around thirty, average height and build, blond hair, blue eyes. He wore board shorts, blue canvas sneakers, and a muscle tee. As he swayed to the music, Crane watched the drape of the fabric, looking for a concealed weapon. He didn’t see one. He pretended to study his phone while he zoomed in the camera and took several shots of Boz.
Boz was enticing the woman to dance now. She laughed nervously, glancing from him to her companion. What was going on was something ancient and primal. Boz was claiming dominance, shaming the weaker man, claiming his woman. Finally she took his hand and stood up. Tension hung in the air despite the smiles and the music.
Orly returned with a menu, and Crane nodded across the courtyard. “He always like this?”
“It’ll blow over,” Orly said softly. “It’s nothing.”
Crane stood and walked toward them. Boz had led the woman away from the table, still holding her hand in his outstretched arm.
Crane strode up and slapped Boz on the shoulder. “Todd Osterberg, you old pervert! I thought that was you!”
Boz whirled and dropped the woman’s hand. Crane saw him trying to work through his confusion.
“Damn, buddy!” he added, ramping up his amazement at finding an old friend here. “Haven’t seen you since Tijuana! Remember? You, me, and that asshole Carmichael fighting over who got which hooker? I think Carmichael’s still on penicillin.”
Boz still didn’t know what to do. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone …” he said.
“Come on, pal, you weren’t that wasted!”
The woman dropped back to her table, and her companion stood up. Together they headed for the exit.
Boz tensed, and Crane caught a sudden flash of hostility. He shifted his weight, prepared to deflect a punch and sweep Boz’s legs. But then the moment broke, and Boz laughed. “Nice meeting you two!” he called over his shoulder. Then he laughed and shook his head at Crane. “Ah man. You cockblocked me! That’s cold, dude!”
“She didn’t look like she was into it,” said Crane.
Boz shrugged. “Eh, just passing time. I’m Brad Zahn. Call me Boz.”
“John Crane.” Boz grinned as they shook hands, but his eyes were cold.
“Well, John Crane, least you can do after that is buy me a beer.”
Crane gestured to Orly for two beers and joined Boz at his table.
“So you’re new here,” said Boz. “What brings you?”
“Just visiting a friend.”
“Haven’t seen many new boats lately,” Boz said. “You drive in?”
“Flew in yesterday,” said Crane.
“Ah, so you saw my jet, then.”
“The Embraer. You got the original model or the 100E?”
Boz looked confused. “What’s the difference?”
“The 100 had some issues with the brake-by-wire system. There were some runway overruns, blown tires. The E’s got new spoilers to make it more stable on the ground.”
Boz suddenly slapped the table. “Shit, I’m bored already. You do any shooting, John?”
Crane shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“I keep some shotguns here. We shoot pigeons off the end of the pier. What do you say? Come on and throw for us, Orly.”
Boz led the way to a side room that turned out to contain several wheeled racks of clay pigeons. A locker held a half-dozen Remington 1100 semi-auto shotguns and several green and gold boxes of 12-gauge STS shells. Boz handed Crane a gun and a box of shells, and they headed out to the pier, Orly following with a rack of pigeons and a hand thrower.
“This isn’t formal skeet or anything,” Boz explained. “Way we play, Orly throws one or two targets, your call. He throws from different angles, but we each get a throw from the same place. Dozen throws each, so anywhere from twelve to twenty-four targets, depending on how you call them. Your score’s hits minus misses.”
“Got it,” said Crane.
The pier ended in a large “T,” giving them room to spread out. Crane loaded his gun while Orly windmilled his arms to warm up.
“What do you say, John?” said Boz. “Twenty bucks a point?”
“Works for me,” said Crane.
“All right. I’ll shoot first, show you how it works. Give me two, Orly.”
Boz readied his gun. Behind him, Orly loaded two pigeons into the thrower, cocked his arm, and sent them out over the water in close parallel arcs. Boz raised his gun, tracked them for an instant, and then fired one shot that shattered both targets.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Two points.” He stepped back and let Crane move into position.
“I’ll take two,” Crane told Orly. Crane brought the gun quickly to his shoulder a couple times to get used to the weight. He’d trained with combat shotguns. He hadn’t shot clays in a while, but the movements came back easily. He placed his finger inside the trigger guard.
“Go.”
Orly hurled the two pigeons over the water. Crane held his breath, focused on a point directly between them, brought up the gun, and fired.
Both targets fell into the water intact.
“Oh!” Boz crowed. “Too bad, John. Minus two there. Might want to stick to single birds until you get the hang of it.”
Orly moved to another throwing position, and Boz held up two fingers.
This time the targets’ arcs took them farther apart. Boz fired and shattered one, and then snapped off a second shot but missed. Crane saw him swear under his breath.
“Still plus two minus two,” he said.
“Give me one this time, please, Orly,” Crane said as he took position. This time, as the target flew, Crane aimed directly at it and paid attention to the feel
of the gun and the recoil against his shoulder. He pulled the trigger and shattered the disc.
He was right. He took a couple shells from his box and studied them as he loaded the gun. The casings were labeled as #9 shot, but Crane knew they weren’t. They weren’t slugs, either. The recoil wasn’t that far off, and the end wasn’t open as a slug would be. But they acted like slugs.
The answer came to him as Boz squeezed off two more shots and took out both his targets. They were wax slugs. It was an old hunter’s trick for saving on ammo. They would open a regular shell, pour hot wax in around the shot, and let it solidify. Instead of spreading into a pattern when fired, the wax and shot remained a single mass. It was like shooting at clays with a rifle.
But as it happened, Crane was very good with a rifle.
“I’ll take two this time,” he told Orly.
“Sure about that, John?” Boz interjected. “Just digging yourself in deeper.”
Crane nodded to Orly. Whoever made these—Crane couldn’t see Boz doing it himself—had done a good job. Someone without Crane’s experience might never have realized why they kept missing. So Boz had gone to quite a bit of trouble just to cheat at his target shooting game. He obviously didn’t need the couple hundred dollars he’d get from a mark. He did it because he liked winning. No, not just winning—beating someone else.
That was a valuable clue to his character, Crane decided.
Orly threw the pigeons. Crane swung the gun up, nailed the first, and then quickly altered his motion and squeezed off another shot to shatter the second.
Boz looked stunned. “Nice,” he finally said.
Now that he knew where he stood, Crane consistently fired two shots, each taking a target dead center. Boz was a decent shooter, and he could take both targets with one shot if they stayed within his shot pattern. But he was inconsistent, and Crane’s steady, methodical shots unnerved him. He began to miss.
By the sixth round, the score was even. By the time Crane finished with two last clean shots, he was up by six.
Boz thrust a wad of cash at Crane without counting it. Then he put his gun over his shoulder and stalked off up the pier.
“Not a fucking word, Orly,” he snapped as they passed.
Crane slipped Orly a twenty. “Would you mind calling the payphone down at the harbor? Tell Luis to come pick me up.”
As the jitney drove off with John Crane, Boz stood in the doorway and watched it go. Then he summoned Arturo and Juan Manuel with a shrill whistle.
“Everything okay?” asked Arturo.
Boz pointed at the departing car. “That guy,” he said. “His name’s John Crane. Find out who the son of a bitch is and what he’s doing here. I want to know all about him.” He spat on the pavement. “And then mess him up.”
Chapter 6
When Luis let him off at the pier, Crane caught a panga and had it run him back out to the Emma. As it pulled up to the stern, he heard muffled shouting and noticed most of the crew were milling around on the rear deck. Burch came down to the swim deck and helped him out of the panga.
“What’s going on?” Crane asked.
Burch shook his head. “Scott and Chloe are getting into it. They took over the saloon.”
“What’s it about?”
“He took a job somewhere, and she’s not taking it well,” said Burch. “So I guess Scott will be leaving us. At least he got the electronics back up to spec.”
Crane had hoped for a quiet place to think, but it sounded like that was out. He headed toward the Emma’s bow. As he passed the main saloon, he heard Chloe shouting, “You didn’t even ask me!”
“What was I supposed to do? Not take it? ” Scott shouted back.
“You could have talked to me first! You’re supposed to care what I think!”
Crane left them to it and headed forward. He took a pair of binoculars from a cabinet, sat cross-legged on the canvas sheet stretched tightly between the boat’s forward hulls, and scanned the Gypsy. The tender was still gone, so Boz wasn’t aboard. Where did he go when he left Punto Dorado? Crane wondered. Did he have a place in town? That was worth looking into.
But what had he learned from his encounter with Boz, besides that it was short for Brad Zahn and that he cheated at target shooting?
He could certainly see why people avoided the man. After the initial flush of charm wore off, he was vain, crude, misogynistic, and untrustworthy. He had a need to dominate those around him, and he was very thin-skinned when he failed. Crane was no psychiatrist, but words like narcissist and sociopath came to mind.
But was he trafficking women?
Crane didn’t know what to think. In some ways, he seemed the type. The two thugs and the armored Escalade fit with a criminal lifestyle. Down here, they suggested narco cartels. But Crane wasn’t convinced. For one thing, Boz just didn’t seem that competent. And he was an outsider here. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for an American to talk his way into the kind of high-status position with one of the cartels that would explain the boat and the jet. And Boz didn’t strike him as someone who made friends easily.
If not a cartel, then where did his money come from? That was probably the best avenue of investigation.
His phone rang. Crane took it from his pocket in mild surprise and saw it was connected to a satellite uplink. Apparently Scott was as good as his word.
“Hello?”
“John!” said Josh Sulenski. “Where are you, man? You’re going to miss it!”
“Miss what?”
“Dude! Don’t you check your messages? The new Batman! I’ve got it. We’ll be the first people to see it who aren’t in I.A.T.S.E.”
“I don’t know what that is, Josh.”
“It’s a union for film crews, but that’s not important now. The point is, brand new Batman! Not in theaters yet. One night only on the big screen at my place. Drop whatever you’re doing and get over here.”
“Josh, I can’t just run over there. I’m in Baja.”
Josh paused. He sounded confused as he finally said, “Do you need me to send the plane?”
“No! I’m in Mexico. But while I’ve got you, I need you to run down some information.”
Somehow, this seemed to get through. “All right,” said Josh. “I’m with you, John. What’s going on?”
Crane gave him a quick rundown of what he’d found in Bahia Tortugas. By the time he was done, Josh said, “Okay, I’m at my desktop. What do you need?”
“Anything you can find about a Bradley Zahn, middle initial possibly ‘O.’ Caucasian male, early thirties, American, maybe Canadian.”
“Hang on, going to put you on speaker.”
Crane heard keystrokes, and then there was a pause before Josh said, “Couple dozen Bradley Zahns in the United States. Though a bunch of these are duplicates. And most of them are too old to be your guy.”
“Could be an alias, of course,” said Crane. He tapped a few buttons on his screen. “I just sent you some pictures.”
“Not a lot to go on, John, but okay. These are loading pretty slow. You on a satellite connection or something?”
Crane took the phone away from his ear for a moment and gave the water an exasperated look. “Yes! I’m not down the street in a Starbucks! I’m on a boat in the middle of the Baja Peninsula with the Pacific Ocean to my right and a couple hundred miles of empty desert on my left. I’m on a satellite uplink, and I’m lucky to have that!”
He realized Josh had gone silent. “What is it?”
There was no reply.
“Josh? Everything okay?”
When Josh came back, his voice suddenly seemed hushed. “I don’t need to run these. John, I know this guy.”
Josh was standing, leaning over his desk to look at the screen as Crane’s photos downloaded. Crane was ranting about how far out in the middle of nowhere he was, like that was his fault. Not this time.
An image slowly resolved out of large blocks of color. Josh made out tables, flagstones, a beac
h and the ocean in the distance, a palm frond out of focus at the edge of the frame, and a man. Blond hair, something about his face. Oh my God …
There were other photos resolving in windows behind that one. Josh flipped through them. It’s him. Jesus. He dyed his hair, but that’s him.
He edged around the corner of the desk and settled heavily into his chair. “I don’t need to run these. John, I know this guy.”
He really did skip the country. Hiding out in Mexico with a fake name and that ridiculous haircut. The rest of it must be true too. God …
“His name’s Jason Tate.”
“Seriously?” said Crane. “Who is he?”
The prodigal son.
“Someone I ran into when I first made it big out here. His father’s Alexander Tate. He’s the one who got rich. Jason’s a trust fund baby. Alex was a high roller back in the PC boom in the eighties. He was an angel investor. Backed the right startups and hit the jackpot. We hooked up not long after the stock market thing. Suddenly there were people coming out of the woodwork, throwing money at me, wanting to partner, wanting a piece of me. The sharks could smell blood. Alex helped me out, showed me the ropes, warned me off a few bad deals. He kind of watched out for me until I figured out what I was doing.”
“That’s the father,” said Crane. “What about the son?”
Josh sighed. This is going to be fun. “I met him a few times. He and Alex had kind of a strained relationship, but there was money to go around, so they mostly kept out of each other’s way. Jason was pushing a startup with some weird name. Dig something. Digara. Diganna. I don’t remember. But at one point, he wanted me to join the board.”
“Did you do it?”
“Oh, no. He had some kind of Vision Document, but it was just buzzwords about paradigms and disrupting everything and generational synergy. Half the names were deeply connected, like retired admirals, ambassadors. I think one of them was a national security advisor from the Bush administration. The other half was teenage pop stars and actresses. It was deeply weird.”
“I’m getting that,” said Crane.