Authors: Jinx Schwartz
Chapter 25
By the prickling of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.—Shakespeare
Operation Aguas is a go,” Hector said into his cell phone, “and on schedule.”
The man on the other end bit back a sharp comment and thought:
Operation Aguas? Jesus, this clown is starting to sound like a B movie
. “No problems I should know about?”
“Nope,” Hector told him. “Everything’s copacetic, dude.”
Copacetic? Dude? Goddamed Beverly Hills beaner
. “It’d better be.”
“Like I tol’ you, man, I know how to fix things,” Hector said, struggling to choke back a snigger.
Like I fixed that pilot and like I’m gonna take care of that runt Pedro if the little bastard even thinks of waking up before this is over. But no use getting this Gringo bastard’s bowels in an uproar with such details
. He stifled another giggle over what a funny fellow he was, and barrio-whined, “I got it all under control, bro.”
“Good, you’d better. And keep your nose clean. I trust the fly boy got off all right?”
“Sure did. I took care of it myself.” Then, no longer able to maintain his cool, he laughed and wiped a trace of white powder from his nose. “I gotta go,” he barked out, and hung up quickly before he lost it completely.
The line went dead, and the American stared at the phone as if it had grown scales and fangs. “The son of a bitch is high,” he muttered, wondering what he should do about it. He threw the phone on a boat cushion and downed a shot of Wild Turkey.
Christ, if our connection finds out Hector’s using, they’ll shit bricks. Maybe even delay the drop. And they’ll have my ass for not staying on top of him.
He poured another shot to steady his nerves.
Well shit, it’s too late now. Aguas will be a done deal in a few days and we’ll all be rolling in it. Even that idiot Hector.
Leaving the boat, he went to find a pay phone. The call he had to make could not be entrusted to the airwaves.
Chapter 26
Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.—Shakespeare
Jaime and Jerry were already eating breakfast when Nicole trudged into the hotel dining room. Jerry looked up from his oatmeal and warned, “Uh-oh Jaime, this doesn’t look good. Good morning, Nikki. I was considering sending a maid to your room with a mirror.”
Jaime looked puzzled. Nicole nodded to him and gave Jerry’s gaudy Hawaiian shirt a once-over. “Good morning, Jaime. You too, Lava Lava. And now Tiki-Boy, I shall ply my weary body with the goddess caffeine, and you may clarify your pathetic attempt at adolescent wit to Jaime.”
While Jerry explained he was making a joke about mirrors that cloud if the victim still breathed, Nicole grabbed a carafe of coffee from the table and filled her mug. She caught two women at another table casting sly glances their way, checking out the men. Nikki turned a critical eye on her companions, trying to see them from another woman’s perspective. Jaime, tall and handsome, dressed in a casual white shirt and chinos, epitomized the Latin playboy. And with his cherubic face and curly white hair, and in spite of the loud shirt, Jerry exuded his own aura of teddy bear charm. On the whole, she’d give them an eight on a scale of one-to-ten. The women admirers had no way of knowing that one was just her best friend, and the other was off-limits. She took another gulp of strong Mexican coffee.
“Soooo,” Jerry teased, “looks like someone got up on the wrong side of her bed this morning. Someone who, if I recall, promised yesterday evening she’d be in a better mood today.”
Nicole growled, “So sue me. I thought I’d sleep like a log, but I kept waking up. I do that when I sleep in strange places.”
Jerry’s eyes twinkled with mischief, then he slapped his own cheek. “I shall refrain from the obvious.”
“There is a God.”
Jaime was having a little trouble following the repartee, even with his excellent command of English. Learning to use and understand sarcasm and humor, he knew, was the pinnacle of mastering a second language. Right up there with insults. The wordplay made one thing obvious though; even with Nicole’s surliness, he was going to enjoy working with these clever people.
If,
he added to himself,
Agent Nicole Kristin will give me a break.
Puzzled by her peevish attitude towards him, he wondered,
Have I offended her? And if so, how?
Jaime and Jerry made small talk while Nicole polished off a bowl of papaya and mango slices, eggs scrambled with peppers and onions, a pile of steaming corn tortillas, and a mound of refried beans. Jerry watched her eat with envy, popped a Tums into his mouth and asked, “Now that breakfast is over, Nikki, which forest do you choose to cut down this morning?”
Nicole gave him the look and condemned him to explain his lumberjack joke to Jaime. And although Jaime seemed to be eating up the humor, she vowed to take Jerry aside later and tell him to cut the crap or they’d spend half their time explaining his lame jokes.
After a last swig of coffee Nicole said, “I believe you said the boatyard was within walking distance, Jaime. I need to stretch my legs.” Unfolding from her chair she stretched and her shirt top lifted to reveal a hint of flat belly. Jaime gulped. Nikki added sweetly, “And Jerry, I’m sure you, too, could use the exercise.”
“Isn’t it wonderful, Jaime, that such a lovely young woman worries about my health?”
“Zactly. Very fortunate, indeed,” Jaime agreed, admiring Nicole’s retreating form and the way her beige cotton outfit set off her coloring. Then he sighed, “I have observed that, for the last few years, those of Nikki’s age and beauty give me,
or
my well-being, small notice.”
“Hell, with me they never did. I think I was born old,” Jerry said sadly, then the two men sighed collectively and plodded after the object of their admiration.
Nicole strode ahead for two blocks, then turned and waited at a road junction for the men to close the gap. Pointing towards twin peaks dominating the skyline across San Carlos Bay, she asked, “Is there a path to the top?”
“Yes, but in my opinion, only best used by goats,” Jaime told her. “The footing on the Tetas is very treacherous.”
“Tetas?” Jerry asked.
Jaime looked uneasy, but Nicole said, “It means teats, Jerry. They look like tits, so the Mexicans, probably male Mexicans, charmingly nicknamed them Tetas de Cabras. Goat tits.”
“Don’t look like any tits I’ve ever seen.”
“How many goats have you known, Jerry?”
Jaime, although wanting to add that the Indians called the peaks the Tetakawis, remained silent, leery of raising Nicole’s ire with a wrong comment. But he was getting a little tired of walking around on eggshells.
The Marina Seca, or dry marina, was chockablock with yachts high and dry, held aloft by metal stands. The area bustled with activity and buzzed with the sound of machinery as boats were scraped, sanded and painted. Boatyard workers and boat owners worked side by side, preparing vessels of all sizes and configurations for return to their natural environment.
Walking through the dusty work area, Nicole spied
Water Princess
, her disagreeable captain yelling at a Mexican worker.
Guy stays in such a dither he’s gonna give himself an ulcer
, she thought. She noticed, with more than a little satisfaction, that the sailor’s antics seemed to be falling on highly disinterested ears. The worker, a silent power tool in hand, was paying as little attention to the angry
Gringo
as he was to the gouges in
Water Princess’s
huge keel.
In a Ford Bronco parked on the shady side of
Water Princess
, a black-haired man wearing reflective wraparound sunshades smirked at the captain’s useless tirade. Only when the American looked as though he might actually slug the Mexican did he exit the Bronco, walk very close to the worker, and say a few words. The laborer immediately threw himself into grinding the keel as if his life depended on it.
Nicole was impressed.
I’d like to know what “Sunglasses” said to inspire such a lively response. The man must be a motivational genius.
She watched as Sunglasses threw a contemptuous look at the ineffectual captain, sauntered back to his Bronco, and turned up his stereo to drown out the grinder’s whine.
“So much for the laid back life of yachting,” Nicole commented. Just as she spoke the grinding suddenly stopped, and in the silence the captain heard Nicole’s caustic remark.
“Up yours,” he spat.
Nicole tossed her hair and kept walking.
“What was that all about?” Jerry asked. He waited for her to fill him in, but when she didn’t, he said, “Forget I asked.”
Nicole gave him a mysterious smile and commented that she thought all these boats out of the water looked marooned, especially those that, judging by thick coatings of dust, had been stored a long time. In an isolated corner, cordoned off by ropes and Do not Enter signs in Spanish and English, sat the most bereft looking vessel of all:
Hot Idea
. Someone with a sick sense of humor had hung a skull and crossbones on her flagstaff.
A police officer, slumped in a black, yellow and white cruiser, and listening to blaring rancho music, scrambled from his seat and sprang to attention when the trio ducked under a rope. Jaime made a beeline for the transom, Jerry and Nicole close on his heels.
Hot Idea’s
keel rested on thick wooden blocks under her keel, and carpeted metal stands cantilevered against her hull to hold her upright. To Jerry’s thinking, the whole thing looked a little precarious.
They slowly circled the boat, Nicole wrinkling her nose at the stench of sea life drying on the barnacle encrusted bottom. When Jaime swung onto a transom ladder and deftly climbed onto the boat’s aft deck, Nicole easily followed, but Jerry continued to closely inspect the hull.
“Jerry, do you want me to come get you?” Nicole cooed.
“Jaime, there’s nothing worse than a mean woman. She knows damned well I have an aversion to my feet leaving terra firma.”
Nicole fixed him with an impatient glare and planted her hands on her hips. In the face of such disapproval, Jerry took a deep breath and blew it out. “Oh, all right. Here I come, ready or not.” He reluctantly climbed the shaky ladder, but once on deck he was surprised how solid the boat felt.
Nicole and Jaime had already scaled two more sets of short stairs to the flying bridge and motioned for Jerry to follow. Carefully holding onto rails until he reached the bridge, he sank onto a solid bench in the center of the deck. Craning his neck to look down, he estimated that it was at least twenty long feet to the ground. “Jesus, I hate this. I like boats when they’re in the water, but there’s something real unnatural about being high and dry,” he moaned. “Especially high.”
“Those in the know call it being on the hard,” Nicole commented, using a term she picked up from cruisers the night before. “Some boats spend every summer here while their owners escape to cooler climes.”
“Some life, huh?” Jerry said.
“Didn’t work out too well for the Goodalls,” Nicole commented, almost in a whisper.
Jerry found the gumption to push himself to standing. “Speaking of, where were they found?”
“In the aft cabin.” Jaime pointed behind them to the deck they crossed to get to the bridge. “Their sleeping quarters. It looks as though they barricaded themselves inside. When we go back down to the main deck, you will see that someone chopped down the door.”
“Chopped?” Jerry asked.
“Zactly. Machetes are very sharp. In the right hands they can fell a small tree in a single blow.”
“Jesus,” Jerry muttered, blowing a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
Jaime spent a few minutes showing the DEA agents the boat’s controls on the bridge. “Everything you see here is duplicated inside, so the boat can be operated from either station. When you are ready we’ll go down.”
“Let’s do it,” Nicole said through her teeth, then, despite herself, inhaled sharply when she saw the mangled teak door leading into the boat. Although she struggled to maintain her professional objectivity, this was no longer just another case of drug peddlers offing one another. Her heart skipped a beat as she imagined the abject terror the Goodalls must have felt when the door was destroyed by thugs with long, sharp knives. Aloud she muttered, “Oh, I’d really like to get my hands on those sons a bitches.”
Jaime cut a sidelong glance at her, wondering just exactly what she would do if the culprits were left in her tender care. He wouldn’t want to be one of them.
The interior of the boat was in shambles, tossed asunder either by police, the bad guys, or a combination of the two. Wires dangled where electronic instruments had been ripped from their moorings, cabinet drawers and their contents littered the floor. Nicole fingered the wires and raised her eyebrows in question.
“We don’t know who took the radio, GPS and fish finder,” Jaime told her, “but it could have been almost anyone who came on board before the port captain in Guaymas put a guard on the boat.”
Turning towards the aft section of the main saloon, Jerry pointed to a second shattered door hanging from one hinge. “That their last stand?”
“Yes.”
Nicole’s eyes followed the direction of Jerry’s pointing finger, then, after a moment’s hesitation, led the way. From the top of the stairway she heard the flies. Three steps down, the smell of death filled her nose and turned her stomach. The Goodalls were gone, but their blood covered walls, floors and even the ceiling. A foam mattress, or what was left of it, lay across the bed.
Following Nicole’s gaze, Jaime said sadly, “It seems they tried to use their mattress as a shield.”
Jerry spotted what appeared to be a bright orange pistol in a corner. “Flare gun?”
“Yes. Our guess is that Mr. Goodall attempted to shoot a flare at the attackers, but it did not fire. The date on the cartridge shows it expired ten years ago.”
“The Coast Guard would be thrilled,” Nicole commented, willing her voice to nonchalance. “I guess
Hot Idea
didn’t go through safety inspections down here.”
“They are few, and not in all ports. When our navy boards a foreign vessel they ask for visas, boat documentation, perhaps a life jacket count, maybe even check the fire extinguishers, but that is about all. If we were too strict, most American vessels would pass while Mexican vessels would not.”
“And the only protection the Goodalls had was a faulty flare gun,” Nicole said, almost to herself.
“Yes. Unlike your country, private citizens are not allowed to have guns in Mexico. Personally, I think cruisers should be permitted a shotgun on board, as they are so often in remote locations. But it is against our laws. Just possessing a bullet in Mexico will earn you a long stay in our jails. From experience, I know many vessels have hidden weapons compartments. But not
Hot Idea
. Obeying our law probably cost Mr. and Mrs. Goodall their lives.”