Devil's Harbor (20 page)

Finn didn't say anything.

“You know what will happen if you go to the authorities, Finn?”

“No.”

“No, you don't know? Well, I can help you with that. I know someone who knows. She'll tell you. We'll go see her, and she'll tell you what will happen if you go to the authorities. Turn around and walk.”

Finn turned and walked. He heard Cutts's labored breathing behind him.

They reached the
Pacific Belle
.

“Stop,” said Cutts.

Finn stopped. Serpil went aboard ahead of them. Cutts didn't tell Finn to move, so he stayed put. He and Cutts on the dock, Cutts with the P2000, Finn with the bad feeling, wondering if this was his hour. He looked down the dock, vainly hoping that Benitez had posted someone to stake out the
Pacific Belle
.

There was no one there.

He heard a whistle from the deck of the
Pacific Belle
.

“Okay. Let's go,” said Cutts.

Finn walked onto the
Belle
's deck and into the cabin he had left not so long ago.

He found Linda kneeling on the floor with her hands clasped behind her neck. Serpil had Finn's Glock pointed at the side of her head. She was biting so hard on her lower lip, Finn thought she would draw blood. Tears streaked her cheeks. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her cheeks were hollowed. Her eyes darted from him to Cutts to Serpil and back again.

“Please,” she said to Cutts, pleading. “Please, for Lucy's sake. For my daughter. I did what you asked me to do. You said you'd let me go. Please, let me go to my daughter.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Cutts said to Linda. Then, to Finn, he said, “You too. On your knees, you fucking piece of shite.”

Finn knelt, put his hands on his head. He blamed himself for not staying with Linda, going with her to pick up her daughter, putting them both in a motel somewhere, giving her a chance to breathe, feel safe. He should've slowed it down. The truth was, he'd been angry at her for lying to him and angry at her for her part in Diego's murder. He'd blamed her for the mess he was in. He realized now that Cutts had been terrorizing her for months. She'd been
conditioned
.

Finn looked up at Cutts. “Let her go,” he said, as calmly as he could manage. “I don't need her to work the boat. Look at her, the state she's in. She's no use to me. If anything, she's a liability. Let her go, and I'll do the run alone.”

Cutts shook his head in disbelief. “You're still not taking me seriously, Finn. Look at you, the state of you, you're giving
me
terms? She's going with you. Because why? Because she's my insurance, that's why. You understand? I have her daughter. I have your little girl, Linda.”

Finn glanced over at Linda. She looked like an animal heading into the slaughterhouse and knowing it. She tried to get up, but Serpil shoved her back down.

“No!” she shouted.

“You don't believe me? You don't fucking believe me? Get your phone, call your sister.”

Sobbing, Linda pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed.

“Rhonda?” she said. “Let me speak to her. Let me…” She didn't finish her sentence. She listened to whoever was speaking on the phone. Then the phone slipped from her hand and Linda collapsed on the floor. Serpil picked it up and put it in his pocket.

Cutts turned his attention back to Finn. “You see how it is, Finn. You go to the authorities and the girl dies. You want to know how? Badly, Finn. She dies badly. I met Serpil here in Kosovo. I've seen him do things to people there that no man should ever see. Are you taking me seriously now, you cocksucking gobshite?”

Finn looked at Linda lying on the floor. She opened her mouth and released a terrible, suffocated moan. Serpil yanked her violently by her wrist back to her knees.

“You win, Cutts, I'll do it. Whatever you want. Just let her go,” said Finn, raising his voice.

“You're not telling me a fucking thing,” said Cutts, shouting now. “I'm telling
you,
Finn. I'm telling
you
. You go to the authorities, the child dies. You hear me? If you get intercepted, even by accident, the child dies. Are you taking me seriously now?”

Linda was wailing. Cutts was shouting, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. Finn's heart was racing. Only Serpil appeared calm. He seemed almost to be enjoying the chaos. Like it was all for show, for his entertainment. And when Cutts cracked Finn in the head with the side of Finn's P2000, Serpil laughed out loud. Finn felt blood trickle down his jaw.

“How do I know you won't just kill the girl anyway?” said Finn.

The question appeared to exasperate Cutts. He pointed the Heckler & Koch P2000 at Finn's forehead and said, “Fuck this shite. I've run out of patience, Finn. I've made my offer: you bring me the shipment, the kid lives. You can't ask for fairer than that. You
don't,
then you die now. Then I fetch the kid, and I kill her in front of her mother's eyes. Then I kill the mother. Then I go find your wife and I tell her, ‘I'm the one that killed your brother and husband. Now I'm here for you.'”

Cutts caught his breath, looked at his watch, and said, “I'll give you five seconds to decide.”

Finn glanced at Linda. Her eyes contained the question.

“Five…” said Cutts.

But there was no real question, of course. He thought of Mona, of their vanished future together. Tears welled in his eyes.

“Four…”

He thought of his father in his tan recliner. Finn had to tried to lift himself up, tried to become a better man than his father had been.

“Three…”

But he'd failed. He made a simple vow to himself. First, he would get Linda's daughter back. Then he would kill Cutts and Serpil.

“Two…”

Then he would follow his father's way out. Men like the Finns had been making deals with the devil forever.

“One…”

This was his.

He nodded at Cutts.

The Irishman raised the gun so that it pointed at the ceiling.

“About fucking time. You leave now,” he said. Then he looked at Linda and said, “Our friends are expecting you. You can explain to Finn how it works on the way down. We'll meet you at Two Harbors at midnight on the sixth. I'll wait till half past the hour. If you don't show by then, or if we get word that you've contacted anyone—anyone at all—we'll do to your daughter what we did to Espendoza.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Finn wasn't a religious man in the conventional sense, but at sea he felt part of a natural order that vanished the moment he set foot ashore.

Thus, on the morning of their second day at sea, as he stood on the
Pacific Belle
's stern and kept his eye on where his fishing line disappeared into the water, his CBP jacket zipped up against the chill, and the eastern horizon the color of rust, it seemed to him that this private disk of ocean, this moveable and sequestered world, was his reward for the resolution he'd made when he left the San Pedro dock. Aboard the
Pacific Belle,
he had come to realize that all he needed to restore clarity and grace to his life was firmness of purpose. He felt as though he had stolen away from the common world, as though he and Linda were the only beings in the universe God didn't have his eyes on. The sea was having its tonic effect. The cuts and bruises on his face were beginning to heal, and he felt like he'd been given these days at sea—days of blamelessness—on the condition that once they reached their journey's end and were sucked back into the undertow, he delivered on the promise he'd made to himself on his knees that night in the cabin below.

It helped Finn's condition, of course, that he hadn't taken a drink since Bonito's. He hadn't deviated from his father's counsel never to drink at sea.

Linda was still asleep in a cot below. He had told her that he would wake her at sunrise so that she could replace him on watch, but she had spent the night crying her eyes out over her daughter. Finn was happy that she was sleeping at last and didn't want to wake her. He wasn't tired and he was glad for the respite from her hurt. He had been navigating the
Belle
for eight hours on his own, but she was equipped with autopilot so there was very little for him to do in terms of actual navigation. Mostly, his watch consisted of keeping one eye on the gauges and another on the radar, for they had agreed that they would keep all other boats beneath the horizon.

Remarkably, they had managed to travel some 350 miles from San Pedro without passing within sighting distance of another boat. They were northwest of Cedros Island. Another 40 hours' sail would bring them level with Cabo San Lucas, at which point they would turn east toward the Sinaloa coast. For the time being, however, they were in rich fishing grounds, and Finn figured that fishing would keep his mind occupied. He fetched the old rod and reel he'd found in the storage locker below, along with a plastic box containing a motley collection of lures, rusty hooks, floats, and weights.

He spent the morning jigging off the stern. In the first hour, he caught so many jack mackerel so quickly that he figured the
Belle
must've been traveling above a school of them. Futilely, he wished he could call Mona, tell her that he was on a commercial fishing boat, just like they'd talked about.

Reeling in yet another fish, Finn started to feel more ambitious. If the mackerel were schooling so close to the surface, chances were that they were being corralled by something bigger. So when he pulled the fish out of the water and saw that it had swallowed the lure entirely, he cast it back out at once and gave it enough slack to dive.

The line reeled for a minute before slackening. The mackerel was slowing. Finn cautiously started bringing it back in. It resisted, but not much and he had no trouble until something hit it hard, and the line started running out again, much faster this time, catching Finn by surprise and bending the rod close to the breaking point. He thumbed on the reel lock and still the line ran out, smoke rising from the brake. He clicked off the lock and moved all around the deck, the line screaming off the reel, Finn working the rod to prevent whatever had taken his bait fish from passing beneath the hull.

*   *   *

The sun was high by the time he'd worked it to the surface. His forearms and back ached from the strain and his mouth was as dry as sandpaper. He was exhausted, but he still had the weight on the line. He was winning the battle. Then, where his line scythed through the water, he saw a flash of silver and yellow. His heart pounded. He made tiny adjustments to the drag, giving the line enough slack in case the fish still had enough fight left in him to dive but not so much that he could undo all Finn's hard work. Finn raised and reeled, raised and reeled until he'd maneuvered the fish alongside the boat.

Just then Linda appeared. Finn handed her the rod. “Don't let him throw the hook,” he said breathlessly, pointing to the fish.

He grabbed the gaff and leaned over the rail, leaning right down, looking to get a clean shot, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. A cloud passed overhead and darkened the water beneath him in a way that reminded him of the shadow he'd seen pass beneath Espendoza's body. He told himself he was imagining things. Suddenly, the
Belle
lurched awkwardly and he nearly tumbled in. With his spare hand, Finn took hold of the rail, leaned out, and contemplated his catch in the blue water directly below—a beautiful yellowfin, at least three and a half feet long. He had no idea what the fishing line he was using was rated for, but he was sure it was for less than whatever this fish weighed. He could tell that the fish was out of fight by the way it lingered at the side of the boat, like a boxer slow out of his corner in the late rounds. He held his gaff suspended over the water, his arm tense, waiting for his chance. Then he struck hard and fast at the fish's shoulder and gaffed it under the gills. The yellowfin was heavy; it took everything he had left to haul it up. He had it halfway up the side when he saw the water beneath him bulge and then the dark shadow turned into a shark barreling at him, its rows of triangular teeth thrust forward, its eyes rolled back, its underside a clean and perfect white. It launched itself from the water and locked its jaws around the fish on his gaff and tore it away with such force that the gaff went flying from Finn's hand. The shark fell back into the water with a heavy splash and backed away, violently shaking its catch, fading into the deep.

Finn found himself sitting on his ass on the deck. He realized he must've fallen back and that his legs must've given way, but he had no recollection of either event. His vision seemed sharper and time slower. He saw Linda leaning over him, her green eyes burning bright; he saw her lips moving, but instead of her voice, he heard a tinkling sound, like marbles being thrown against a mirror.

*   *   *

Finn lay on the cot, trying to sleep. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw the shark charging up at him, breaking clear of the sea, and swallowing up the big yellowfin, its maw just inches from Finn's arm. He figured the yellowfin must've been hunting the jack mackerel, and the commotion must've drawn the sharks. Prey being preyed upon by predators, themselves just prey to even bigger predators. The kind of convergence commonplace in nature. Finn had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like Diego had been that night on the
Belle
.

When he knew for sure he wasn't going to sleep, he peeled himself off the cot and went above, expecting to find the refreshing breeze that usually picked up in the afternoon in these latitudes. Instead, it was hot and sticky, and the sea had an unpleasant, oily sheen to it. The world seemed especially still and soundless, with nothing moving except the
Belle,
and nothing speaking except her diesel. He looked up at the pale sky, noted the high-altitude streamers, and remembered the redness he had seen on the eastern horizon that morning. His shirt clung to his skin. When he took it off, the sun felt harsh on his back.