Devil's Harbor (17 page)

Something else on the other side of the hold caught his attention: a large roll of thick neoprene—thicker than any wet suit he'd seen. Unrolled, there must've been hundreds of feet of the stuff. He got onto his knees and shone the flashlight's beam down the middle of the rolled-up material. The surface wasn't smooth. He reached in and touched what felt like kitchen tiles. He flipped over the end of the roll and found that it was covered in black, diamond-shaped tiles about the size of his palm and fitted closely together, like the scales of a crocodile's skin. He tried to pry one off, but the tile was fixed firmly in place. He had no idea what it was or what it was used for. It looked vaguely military. He took a photo of it with his phone.

He started feeling ill again. There was no reconciling a belly full of liquor with a fish hold. He climbed back up the ladder, pushed the cover open, and clambered gratefully back into the fresh air.

He was walking down the gangway back to the quay when he noticed the three police cars. As one, they switched on their headlights and blue lights, blinding him. He shielded his eyes and cursed. Someone yelled at him to put his hands in the air. Officer Wilkins appeared with a set of handcuffs. He looked almost apologetic.

Finn was about to say,
How did you know I was here?
when he saw Linda Blake, her arms crossed, standing in the pulsating pool of blue-and-red light on the dock, glaring at him.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was close to nine thirty in the morning by the time Finn got home from the port police lockup.

Mona's RAV4 was parked outside. He walked into the condo, his head aching, and heard her moving around upstairs, in the bedroom. The living room was a mess. There were empty bottles and dirty plates on the coffee table and empty cans on the floor. His clothes were strewn across the furniture. The TV was still on. He'd been living like he had before he was married. In the kitchen, he saw that Mona had put the coffee on. He searched the back of the cupboard for a clean mug, filled it with coffee, drank it straight down, then took a refill upstairs.

She had all her luggage out. She'd taken all her clothes from the closet and laid them on the bed. Two cases were already packed. A third lay open on the floor, half full. She wasn't packing for a return trip—she was clearing out. The irrational hope Finn had entertained while driving home now evaporated.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You stink, too. Are you sober at least?”

Finn let that one through to the catcher. He noticed Mona's straw hat on the bed.

“Isn't that some kind of bad luck, putting a hat on the bed?” he said.

“I've had more than my share of bad luck this week. Can it really get worse?”

Finn privately thought so. In his view, it could always get worse.

Mona looked at her watch. “Where've you been?”

“The captain of the
Pacific Belle
called the cops on me last night. I've been lying on a bench in a cell down in San Pedro.”

Mona stopped packing. “You find anything?” she asked.

“Her nets haven't been in the water in a long time. And this.” He showed her a photo he'd taken on his phone of the neoprene roll with the tiles.

“What is it?” said Mona, screwing up her face.

“I have no idea.” He sipped his coffee. “Did you speak to Mrs. Gavrilia?”

Mona nodded. “She said there was no way the Caballeros de Cristo have established themselves north of the border. She said when the Caballeros take over a town, they really take it over. I mean, they're fanatical, they're about total control—that's their thing. They move in and get rid of all opposition until they control everyone, from the mayor to the guy grilling tortillas by the side of the road. Anyone who doesn't like it … too bad for them. They can't operate like that in L.A. It would be a war zone.”

“So how come Espendoza had that crucifix tattooed on his neck?”

“She said he probably went down to Mexico and joined the Caballeros there. They cultivate a kind of mystical aura around themselves, like a cult. You should see the songs they put on YouTube about how great they are. She said kids in the neighborhoods hero-worship them, talk about how they're restoring pride. She said young men were heading south and signing up. It's no different, I guess, from those kids who grow up in Boston and Atlanta and then go fight for jihad in Syria.”

None of that made any kind of sense to Finn. In his view, the Caballeros were narcotics traffickers and murderers. Where was the pride in that?

“I figured if he'd gone to Mexico, he'd have needed a passport,” continued Mona, “so I checked with the Department of State. They say they never issued him with one. As far as they're concerned, Miguel Espendoza never once left the United States during his short life.”

“Plenty of people cross the line without passports,” said Finn. He thought of the bunks in the airless cabin in the bow of the
Pacific Belle
. “He could've gone by boat.”

Mona nodded. “That's what I figured.”

Then she said, “You know, if Internal Affairs sees you like this, it's one more thing they'll use against you. You know that, right? They'll say you've got an alcohol problem. They'll ask whether you'd been drinking when you shot Perez.”

“The answer is ‘no.'”

“Doesn't matter what the answer is. In court, it's the question that does the damage. Like those articles in the paper. They hurt you whether they're true or not.”

He turned to face her. “I've given up alcohol,” he said.

She laughed out loud. “I can smell it on you from here, Nick.” She was standing on the other side of the bed.

“That's from last night. I haven't had a drink today.”

“It's nine thirty in the morning.”

“I've quit. I'm serious this time.”

She shook her head sadly, stuffed the rest of her clothes without folding them into the case, and zipped it up. Then she picked up her straw hat.

“I can't have this conversation again, Finn. I have to go. I'm going to church with my parents.”

That surprised Finn. Mona hadn't been in a church since their wedding day.

“I'm going to light a candle for Diego,” she said.

“Mona, I mean it,” he said. “This time, that's it. I don't want to lose you.”

She fixed her eyes on his, making it a question. He tried to look at her as though he meant what he was saying—tried to give her a gaze that said
Believe me.
He didn't know what she saw when she looked at his beat-up, liquor-ravaged face. Much later, he would admit to himself that all he had been thinking about at that moment was how much he wanted to open the fresh bottle of Jim Beam that he'd picked up as soon as the port police had released him from lockup, which he had been careful to leave in his truck when he'd seen Mona's RAV4 parked outside the condo.

At least when she left, he had the decency to carry her bags to her car. And to wait until she was out of sight before retrieving the bottle from his truck.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He spent the morning drinking and the afternoon sleeping. Now it was night and he was in the
Pacific Belle'
s galley. Rain started drumming down on the deck above—he had to listen closely to hear footsteps through it. The moment he did, he stepped to the side of the door, out of sight. The door swung open. Linda came in, set a bag of groceries on the counter, and switched on the light. Water streamed off her green slicker. She wheeled around when Finn said her name, then stepped back when she saw the gun in his hand.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the table.

She sat. He sat opposite her, still pointing the Glock at her.

“You're going to tell me who killed Diego,” he said.

She looked at him fearfully. “I swear, Jesus, I don't know. Please … I have a daughter…”

She put her elbows on the table and started to sob. With his free hand, Finn reached into his pocket, pulled out the bottle of Jim Beam, and put it on the table between them. Then he took his finger off the Glock's trigger and put the pistol on the table next to the bottle.

Linda Blake stopped crying and gave him a quizzical look. Then she snatched up the gun and with both hands pointed it at Finn's heart. A long moment passed. The veins in her neck pulsed. He waited for her to pull the trigger. Instead, she weighed the weapon in her hands, feeling its lightness. The skin around her eyes slackened. “It's not loaded,” she said.

Finn held her gaze. “You got any shot glasses aboard this rust bucket?”

*   *   *

It turned out that all she had were chipped and coffee-stained mugs. She sat tall and still, watching him while he poured bourbon into them. “Jesus, look at you,” she said. “I've never seen anyone beat up that bad not in the hospital.” She lit a cigarette with a Zippo, then put the lighter and the pack on the table. “Does it hurt when you drink?”

He raised his mug and threw back the shot it contained. “I don't feel a thing,” he said.

She gave him a half smile and drank the bourbon from her mug. Finn poured them each another shot.

“On the bright side, at least things can only get better from here,” he said.

“Don't kid yourself.”

“You're a pessimist.”

“I run a commercial fishing boat. You spend enough time offshore, you learn things can always get worse.”

“Is that how Diego got killed? Because things went wrong?”

The smile evaporated from her face. “I don't…”

He grabbed her wrist across the table. “I saw the dry rot in your nets down in the hold—they haven't been in the water for months. You've got no crew. Espendoza was no fisherman. You haven't filed any catch reports. You're covering for someone. Who killed Diego?”

“I don't know,” she said, her voice rising. She writhed away from him, trying to free her wrist. He tightened his grip and gave her a hard look through the snakelike slit of his swollen right eye. He had no idea how menacing he looked with his face like a bruised apple, but he hoped it was plenty.

“You do and you're lying. Whatever you're into doesn't mean a damn thing to me, but there are plenty of people who'd be happy to make it their business: the cops, the CBP, the coast guard, Fisheries—everyone's about to get real interested in the
Pacific Belle
.”

He leaned forward and, in a softer tone, said, “I know you're scared, Linda. You feel like you're caught between him and me. You're scared of him and you're scared of me. But he's not your friend—
I
am. I can help you. We can help each other.”

She tried to yank her wrist away from him again but he only tightened his grip.

“You're hurting me!” she said.

“I'm your friend! Talk to me!” His voice was hard and unfriendly.

With her free hand, Linda Blake scooped up Finn's Glock and jammed it against his chest and pulled the trigger repeatedly:
click-click-click-click-click.
He knew it wasn't loaded, but his heart still jolted into overdrive. His face was so close to hers that he could distinguish the lashes above her green eyes, which gleamed like mossy stones in a shallow stream. She stopped pulling the trigger. Her lips began to tremble and Finn thought she was about to cry again. He released her wrist. She slumped back into her seat, but she didn't cry. She stuck out her lower lip and blew away an escaped lock of hair. Then she laughed.

“Bang bang, you're dead,” she said, almost whispering, still pointing his gun at him. “You didn't think I would really shoot you, did you?”

His heart only now started to slow down. He slugged a shot of bourbon to collect himself.

“We both knew it wasn't loaded,” he said. “You're not the type to shoot anybody.”

“I was four years in the navy.”

“Aboard an aircraft carrier. I bet you haven't fired a weapon since basic training. I bet you've never killed anyone in your life.”

She tilted her head quizzically. He noticed the down at the bottom of her earlobe, the freckles on her nose.

“But
you
have, haven't you?” she said.

He couldn't help but think of Perez.

She must've seen the thought drift across his face like the shadow of a cloud over a patch of sea, because she said, “Did you like it?”

“What?”

“Killing that unarmed man in cold blood, the one I read about in the
Times
. Did you like it?”

“Now
you're
making me nervous.”

“I bet it was a rush,” she said.

Slowly, he raised his hand until it covered hers and took the gun away from her. He put it on the bench next to him, out of her reach. Loaded or not, she made him nervous.

“Even if you pull the trigger for the right reasons, it messes up your life. Does that answer your question?” he said.

Her face slackened, and the tears he'd been expecting began welling in her green eyes. He leaned forward, put his hand against her cheek. “It's okay, Linda. Whatever it is, no matter how bad, I can help. But you have to tell me: who killed Diego?”

“If I tell you—” A sob shuddered out of her. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto Finn's fingers. She rested the weight of her head in his palm.

Her skin felt soft. “It'll be all right,” he said.

She pulled away from him, wrapped her arms around herself, and started sobbing. “You don't understand, Finn. He said if I said anything, he'd kill Lucy.”

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Who did?” said Finn.

Linda composed herself, wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and drew a cigarette from her pack. Finn picked up the Zippo from the table and lit it for her. She took hold of his hand, held it up in front of her eyes, and stared at the flame.