Devil's Harbor (19 page)

“Where are you going?” she said.

“To Bonito's.”

“Finn, no!” She jumped up and blocked his way.

“Listen to me, Linda. You're right, I could arrest you. You're in deep, maybe even as accessory to murder. What happens to you next depends on whether you knew Cutts was going to kill Diego, or whether you chose not to know. Either way, that's up to the law to decide. You're also looking at aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, failure to report a crime, obstruction of justice, trafficking in controlled substances, and who knows what else. But here's the thing: if everything you told me tonight is the truth—if Cutts threatened your daughter's life—there's not a jury in the state that's going to put you away for it. Especially because now you're going to go home, pick up Lucy, go to the LAPD, and ask for Detective Mike Benitez. And you're going to tell him everything you just told me. You can trust him. He'll protect you and Lucy. You were frightened like any mother would be. People will understand. But you still did the wrong thing.”

“But you promised you'd protect me!”

He shook his head. “No. I promised I'd make sure Cutts doesn't touch a hair on Lucy's head. And I will.”

“He'll kill Lucy, Finn! You have no idea who you're dealing with!” She grabbed hold of him. “Please don't, Finn, please…”

He threw her off with more force than he'd intended to. She fell onto the bench and started sobbing again.

“Do as I say and everything will be all right,” he said.

She looked up at him with utter desperation, her face wet with tears, her hair disheveled.

A voice inside Finn, a very faint voice struggling to be heard, told him that the right thing to do was to stay put for a moment, to give her a bit more time, to talk her through her terror, reassure her.

But he didn't feel like doing the right thing.

The best he could do was to say, “You got plenty of problems, Linda. I know it. But I promise you this: Diarmud Cutts is no longer one of them.”

“Finn, wait!”

He walked out without turning back.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

Finn stormed through the door of Bonito's, his hair and jacket wet from the rain, and his Glock double gripped in front of him. The first thing he saw was Cutts standing behind the bar with a shotgun, aimed squarely at him. There was no one else in the bar. The door swung shut behind Finn, its little bell tinkling, the door stifling the sound of the rain still falling outside.

“Drop it, Cutts.”

Cutts kept the shotgun leveled at Finn. “A bit presumptuous of you, lad, don't you think?”

Finn took a tentative step forward.

“That's it, keep coming,” said Cutts. “You ever seen what a shotgun will do to a man at close range?”

Finn halted. If he pulled the trigger, would there be time for Cutts to pull his? In the bar's yellow light, the white-haired Irishman, wearing his usual white, short-sleeve shirt, looked old and sick. Surely his reflexes were diminished, thought Finn.

On the other hand, Finn had been drinking for days. He didn't feel all that steady-handed.

“I'm giving you a choice, Cutts. Either give yourself up, or else we shoot it out here. Up to you.”

Cutts contemplated Finn for a moment. Then he said, “Where I come from, negotiations always take place over a drink.”

“I'm not here to negotiate,” said Finn.

A smile flicked its tail at the corner of Cutts's mouth. “Of course you are. Think it through, boy. You're a murder suspect. I've got customers who'll swear on the Holy Bible I never left the bar that night. What have you got?”

“Linda Blake.”

Cutts chortled. “Just a momentary lapse by the lady, Finn. Who can blame the poor woman, with all the stress she's been under? Or maybe it was those blue eyes of yours which persuaded her. Either way, she's since seen the error of her ways. She'll swear on her daughter's life that she was at her sister's all night the night of your partner's demise. Just like she is tonight.”

Finn tried to make sense of what he was hearing. No more than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he'd walked off the deck of the
Pacific Belle
. What was Cutts talking about? Then he noticed the cordless phone sitting on the zinc-topped bar. He cursed himself. In that short interval, Linda had lost her nerve.

“You really think you're quicker than me, Cutts?”

“All the bluster of youth,” said Cutts. “No man can know the hour of his own death, lad, but I'll lay my money down that this isn't mine. I'll even tell you why: if you were as sure of yourself as you would have me believe, you would've pulled that trigger by now.”

Finn's Jim Beam buzz was wearing off. He felt a tremble in his forearms. His mind felt muddled, unfocused.

“And you forget,” continued Cutts, “of the two of us, I'm the one with nothing to lose.”

A voice inside Finn's head said,
Pull the trigger. To hell with the world. Just pull the damn trigger.

Then he thought,
What if Mona spends the rest of her life believing I killed her baby brother?

If there was an afterlife, thought Finn, would he be able to endure it knowing that Mona was hurting because of him? The Irishman was right: he had something precious to lose. If he died without bringing Diego's killer to justice, he'd be leaving Mona to a life without consolation. Finn didn't believe in closure—he had never shut the door on what his father had done, and knew he never would—but he did believe that justice was at least some kind of remedy. He wanted to give that to Mona. What he did with himself after that didn't matter.

He had to get out of Bonito's alive, grab Linda, and take her someplace safe, like he should've done in the first place. After that, he would come back for Cutts.

He started edging backward toward the door, keeping his gun on the old man behind the bar. But before he got to the exit, he heard the little bell tinkle and felt a gust of cool outside air and then cold metal against the base of his neck. A male voice behind him said, with a foreign accent, “Slowly put your gun on the floor.”

Behind the bar, Cutts smiled.

*   *   *

Turned out, Cutts had been serious about the drink. Finn was sitting on a stool, a shot glass filled with amber liquid in front of him on the bar. Cutts was looking much happier. He'd put away his shotgun. The man with the accent was sitting a couple of stools away. He hadn't said another word since sneaking up behind Finn. In his hand, still pointed at Finn, was Finn's Glock. On the bar next to him, and out of Finn's reach, was Finn's service weapon. Like the guy was starting a collection of Finn's guns.

The man wore a dark suit over a dark shirt, no tie, his open collar revealing a gold chain. He had on a pair of suede slip-ons, the kind with the little tassels that Finn thought looked tacky. He looked like he was in his fifties, clean-shaven, with well-groomed black hair and intelligent dark eyes. He had light skin. Linda had said he sounded Arabic, but Finn had spent many months in the Persian Gulf and the guy didn't seem Arabic to him. Not that it made a difference to Finn one way or the other.

He eyeballed the man and said quietly, “I'm going to kill you for what you did to Diego.”

The guy smirked.

“Come, come, forget about all that,” said Cutts. “Take a drink, lad. Then we can talk.”

Finn slowly turned his attention to the shot glass Cutts had placed in front of him. For the first time in his career as an alcoholic, he felt almost repelled by the sight of alcohol.

Almost.

Finn had screwed up big-time and was feeling it. He'd charged in like a bull, head down, straight at the billowing red skirts. The old man had outplayed him.
What difference would a drink make now?
he rationalized. He picked up the glass, threw back its empty promise, and slammed it down on the bar. The heat started in his gut, then rose through his chest and up to his head.

Cutts grinned.

“So then, Finn, now that you've wet your gullet with my whiskey, listen close to my offer: how about you come work for me?”

It took a moment for Finn's brain to register what Cutts was saying. When it did, he laughed and said, “You're not serious.”

Cutts was straight-faced. “I have the supplier and the boat,” he said. “With your knowledge of the waters and, more importantly, of how the government patrols them, you could get the product through easier than most. Think about it, Finn. There's no one better qualified to be a smuggler than you.”

Cutts refilled Finn's glass.

“And if I don't?”

Cutts glanced toward the tassel-shoed man. Then he said, “I have no further use for you.”

Finn scowled. “It doesn't sound like I'm in much of a negotiating position, am I?”

Cutts slapped the bar cheerfully. “There, I knew you'd be reasonable. Here, another one to celebrate.” Cutts poured Finn another drink.

Finn realized that he was drinking alone. The old man smiled apologetically.

“I must abstain on account of my insides, Finn. Doctor's orders. And Serpil here never drinks. But please: you go ahead.” Then he added, “Of course, given the situation, I'm going to need some form of insurance against you. A guarantee, like. Something to make certain you won't run to the cops the moment you've left the dock.”

“I go to the police, you turn in my gun and set me up for Diego's murder. Is that the insurance you had in mind?” said Finn, barely hiding his scorn. He was thinking about how his father had turned to smuggling and thrown away his life. Finn had no intention of going down the same path. He was just playing along with the old man's screwy fantasy, buying time.

Cutts looked at Finn coldly. “Check your phone,” he said.

“What?”

“Take out your cell phone and go to your messages from Diego,” he said, enunciating each word, as though speaking to someone slow on the uptake.

Finn looked at his phone. There was a sent message to Diego that he didn't recall sending. It was time-stamped 1:33
A.M.
on October 24—the night Diego was killed. It read: “Can't talk. Got lead on floater. Can you meet me at the San Pedro fish dock?” Diego had answered: “When.” From Finn's phone: “Now.” From Diego: “On my way.” Finn felt a rush of nausea.

“Diego's phone disappeared when it went into the water with him, which was a foolish oversight on our part,” said Cutts. “But surely the police will have acquired his phone record by now. I expect they'll start looking for you as soon as they read those messages don't you?”

Cutts poured Finn another shot. “Here, have another. You look like you need it. Now, if I were in your shoes, I'd be glad to be going on a little boat trip right about now. And, of course, I would do everything in my power to avoid running into any of my old colleagues in the CBP. That's what I would do, Finn, were I in your fucking shoes.” Cutts's tone slipping as he spoke, from falsely reassuring to hostile.

Finn downed the shot, slowly this time. It was worse than he'd thought. But Cutts was still making a mistake.

“Okay. I get it,” said Finn. “Collect the product or else take the fall for Diego's murder. I get it. I'll do what you want.”

Cutts held Finn's gaze. “I don't think you're taking this seriously.”

Then he turned to the man he'd called Serpil. “You think he's taking this seriously?”

Serpil shook his head.

“Neither do I,” said Cutts. He seemed genuinely angry, his face flushed, his eyes flared. He moved down the bar, picked up Finn's P2000, and pointed it at Finn. “Let's go,” he said.

When Finn asked where, Cutts told him to shut the fuck up.

They went to the San Pedro fishing dock. They went in Cutts's Jaguar, Cutts driving, Finn in the front seat, Serpil in the back with Finn's Glock 17 pointed at Finn's head. Cutts parked the car near the deserted section of the quay where Diego's truck had gone into the water. The rain had finally let up. Two glistening bollards caught in the Jaguar's headlights threw long shadows across the concrete toward the water. Cutts killed the ignition, and everything went dark.

“Get out,” said Cutts.

Finn got out. A few stars appeared in a gap in the clouds. Cutts had said, “No man can know the hour of his own death.” An image of his father, dead in his tan recliner, appeared in Finn's mind. He tried to remember whether his father had been wearing a watch. He wondered if his father had known his last hour.

Finn didn't wear a watch.

“What time is it?” he said to Cutts.

“Never you mind the fucking time,” said Cutts. “Walk.”

Cutts and Serpil shoved him down toward the water. When they got to the edge of the quay, Cutts told Finn to turn around. Serpil pressed the pistol to Finn's forehead. Cutts stood a little way back, holding his P2000 by his side.

“Your friend Diego thought I was fucking around,” said Cutts. “He didn't take me seriously. What about you, Finn? Do you think I'm fucking around?” The old man was breathing heavily through his nose.

“No,” said Finn.

Cutts made a show of cupping his ear with his hand. “What's that? I didn't hear you. You'll have to speak up, Finn. I'm an old man. My hearing isn't what it used to be.”

“I said, no, I don't think you're fucking around.”

Cutts nodded and said, “People ought to take it seriously when they have a gun pointed at their fucking heads. People ought to take that very seriously, Finn. Am I right about that?”

“Yes.”

“Because I don't feel you were taking it seriously in the bar, Finn. I got the feeling you weren't taking it seriously at all. I got the feeling you were just humoring me, like. I thought,
This gobshite thinks he can outsmart me? He thinks he can go aboard the boat,
my fucking boat,
and take it to the authorities?
Is that what you were thinking, Finn?”