Just Add Salt (2) (11 page)

“No,
señorita
, you engines are good.”

“Then where did all the fuel go?”

“Pemex
milagro
.”

“Miracle?”

“
Sí, milagro
. In the whole of Mexico, one can always put at least twenty-two
litros
into a nineteen
litro
container. A
milagro
, no?”

“I’d say so,” Jan agreed with a chuckle.

I didn’t think it all that funny. “Okay, that would explain about fourteen percent more. What happened to the rest?”

“You paid in dollars.”

“So?”

“Another five
por ciento
. They have a bad
cambio
rate.”

“Okay, crappy exchange rate. That it?” As if that wasn’t enough.

He shook his head.

“What more can there be?’

“Count you money. I think you have got the, how you say it?
Cambio
chort?”

Jan burst out laughing. “Hetta got chort-changed?”

“
Sí
, chort-changed.”

I felt my blood pressure soar. If we weren’t already underway, I think I would have climbed up on the pier and strangled the bastard. “How in the hell do we get around these crooks?”

“You must use pesos and let me count the change.”

So much for Martinez’s advice about not letting Fabio handle the money.

Jan patted his shoulder. “Trust me, next time we’ll let you deal with the jerks. So, they only cheat gringos?”

Fabio shook his head and gave us a toothy smile. “Oh, no,
señorita,
they cheat us all equally. Mexico is a democracy.”

Chapter 14

“You owe me money, Martinez,” I growled when he called that evening after we left Turtle Bay, and the fuel pirates, in our wake. Jan and I were sharing the first half of Fabio’s watch, since the smarty pants won the fuel pool.

“I owe you money? I just checked into this nice hotel in Ensenada, which is setting you back seventy-five a night and the missus and I are about to go out for a lobster dinner, thanks to your expense account.”

“Lobster sounds cheap right now.” I told him about the fuel rip-off.

“Okay, I was wrong on that one,” he said when he recovered from his pleural glee. “Didn’t take us long down here to pay in pesos and count our change. Oh, and another thing, make certain they clear the register before they start pumping.”

“We were twenty feet from the pump and I don’t think they had no stinkin’ register.”

“Then add another ten percent.”

“So, as a rule of thumb I can just automatically add thirty percent to whatever the going rate seems to be?”

“Not if you learn the game. Then it’s only ten, twenty.”

“Now I know how those ancestors of mine felt at the Alamo. Did you check out that Internet café in Ensenada yet? Or have you had time, what with lollygagging in a first class hotel and power munching lobster on my tab?”

He ignored my snide remarks. “Found it, just snooped around, sent a couple of e-mails and over-tipped the guy running the joint for helping me out. I’ll drop in several times a day and make a new best friend. And you were right. They keep a log, so I’m sure my new buddy will be more than happy to let me take a peek after a day or two of buttering him up. Did you get the e-mail I sent you?”

“Haven’t checked today. If I get anything from our perp, I’ll forward it to you. Gimme your hotel phone number so I can reach you.” I jotted down his number, said my good-byes and hung up.

Jan, who could only hear my end of the conversation, asked, “So, what was the other way we got took at the fuel dock?”

“Not checking whether the pump register was cleared before they started to fill us up. Next time, I’ll go ashore and be looking over their shoulders. We’ll be ready for the bastards.”

“Yeah, that way they can only rob us a little. Kinda being a little bit pregnant.”

“I think you just used a cuss word. Gimme ten dollars credit.”

“Pregnant is not a cuss word, although I think it should be. Gee, you just gotta love a country where, if you only get
slightly
cheated, you feel lucky.”

“No wonder Tanuki is keeping this thing in Mag Bay quiet. Seems there’s someone looking for a fast buck around every corner. And maybe every stateroom,” I said, cutting my gaze toward Fabio’s quarters.

“I certainly hope not, Hetta, what with your sordid history of an affinity for consorting with criminals.”

I gave her a
who, me
? look, but truth be known, when I looked at Fabio’s closed stateroom door I secretly wondered what he wore to bed.

My next call from Jenks went a little better than the last; he didn’t call me a harebrain and I didn’t hang up on him. He didn’t say so per se, but I think he was beginning to believe we just might make it to Mag Bay without him, and without sinking
Raymond Johnson
. I didn’t bother mentioning threatening e-mails, or that I’d hired Martinez to find out who was sending them, and Martinez promised he wouldn't tell Jenks anything about that. I did recount our getting taken at the fuel pump, but all in all, to hear my end of the story, we were practically on a Carnival Cruise.

I also didn’t mention the pelagic speed bump.

Pelagic speed bump? Honest, I only nicked that whale, but I have to allow it made for a sphincter puckering moment.

Fabio, asleep in the forepeak, was flung clean out of his bunk. “¿
Que Paso
?” a half-naked Fabio yelled as he rushed to the bridge, almost colliding with Jan, also on her way up, after a whale tail whapped
Raymond Johnson
. At least I learned what my captain wore to bed. Boxers.

“I was minding my own business when this whale drifted into my lane.”

“Well, crap, Hetta. Did you get his license number?” Jan giggled.

Fabio’s brow furrowed handsomely. “He hit us?”

“Well, he came out of nowhere, so I don’t really know who hit who. Whom. I didn’t see anything on radar until after the jolt, but then he surfaced. I actually saw him before he dove. Look,” I pointed to a blip on the radar about a quarter mile away, “thar she blows.”

Fabio cursed, Jan grabbed the binoculars and ran out on deck. I started to follow her, but Fabio grabbed my arm to stop me and ordered, “Turn off the pilot, slow down to engine speed. I will go below to see if there is damage.”

He rushed off, but not before I yelled, “Hey, nice chorts, Desi. And by the way, what happened to your stinkin’ accent?”

Jan scanned the horizon while I followed orders.

“Uh, Hetta,” she croaked, “I think your whale is on his way back.”

I grabbed the binocs and looked where she pointed.

“Oh, crap. That is one really, really, big mother and he’s definitely coming our way.” I steered the boat hard to port, hoping I didn’t throw Fabio into some chorts-eating machinery. “Quick, Jan, go get the camera.”

“Camera, my ass, where do we keep the harpoon?”

“Oh, come on. He isn’t Moby Dick. Whales do not attack boats in real life.”

“I am afraid they do,
señoritas
,” Fabio said from behind us. Unfortunately, he’d pulled on a pair of jeans.

“You’re shitting me.”

“You owe me ten bucks,” Jan said primly.

“Make it twenty. Fuck! He’s coming straight for us. Fabio, do something!”

But Fabio was gone, and Jan yelled, “Hetta, he just dove!”

“What a coward. Diving into the cabin like that. Deserting his post. What happened to women and children first?”

“Not Fabio, you imbecile: Moby Dick. He dove under the water. I don’t know where Fabio went.”

One tense minute later, the depth sounder started shrieking and the fish finder turned solid red. “Uh, I think you better go find Fabio. Moby is under us and he might have an agenda.”

“Whales got agendas? Oh, never mind, I’m gone.”

I sat, mesmerized by the reading on the depth sounder twenty feet under us, where a whale lurked. I shut off the alarm on both the fish finder and the sounder. Why listen to all that clamor when there was nothing to do but wait? Oh, and answer the phone, which I’d brought with me while I was on watch.

“H-h-hello,” I quavered.

“Hetta, I got your cyber menace.”

“Good, send him over, Martinez, I need a menace. Uh, we are just a tad busy right now, can I call you back? And if you never hear from us again, hire Captain Ahab to avenge us.”

“What?”

“Later. Oh, just in case,” I gave him our coordinates before hanging up.

Fabio, flare gun in hand, rushed up to the bridge. When I pointed to our submerged whale on the fish finder, he yelled, “
¡Carumba!
”

“
Carumba
? You know, I’d rather hear something like, ‘Don’t worry, ladies, these whales do this all the time.’”

“Never. I have never seen anything like this. Cut the engines, maybe they annoy him.”

With the engines dead, all we could do was wait. The whale surfaced way too close, then began swimming around us in ever-smaller circles. The boat swayed in a way I’d never felt before, not quite spinning, but definitely not just drifting. The big, slow Pacific swells and lack of wind, combined with the strange turning motion, was definitely unsettling. The Bermuda Triangle came to mind. Were we about to be pulled down into a vortex created by an enraged whale?

Moby came just a little too close for comfort and Fabio changed his mind. “I am going to restart the engines. Perhaps it will frighten him away.

“And maybe it will just piss him off. And Jan, I do not owe you money. Piss is not a cuss word.”

Fabio started both engines and we held our collective breaths, waiting to see if the whale got pissified. Since he was submerged again, we thought, hoped, he was gone, but then the depth sounder turned pure red. All whale. Fabio let loose a string of Spanish that sounded decidedly scatological and rushed to the railing. Back over his shoulder he yelled, “Miss Café, put the engines in gear and bring the throttles up slowly to full speed. Steer directly south.”

South, south. Oh, yeah, south is 180. Soon we were clipping along at about twenty knots, blowing all our fuel out the exhaust. “Uh, just how fast can whales travel?” I asked no one in particular. Neither Fabio nor Jan seemed to know. “Okay, then. Fabio, you take over, I’m getting on the Internet.”

“What are you gonna put in the search engine?” Jan asked, “Mad Whale Disease?”

“You know, your sense of humor needs a sense of timing.” I started below, but had a thought. “Hey, Fabio, I got an idea. While I’m Googling this beast, shouldn’t we head for shallow water near shore? I bet a dollar to a peso that we have less draft than that big bastard.”

Jan started to open her mouth, but I growled, “Bastard is not a curse word.”

“I was just gonna say that the whale is staying up with us.” Drat. Tree huggers be damned; if I had a depth charge, Moby would be history.

“
Señorita
Café, going toward shore is an excellent idea.” Fabio gently, as gently as one can at warp speed, turned the boat toward land, which, by the way is never a great idea for those of you who plan to go cruising. Land is your enemy, as is running out of gas, but we’d have to worry about those little details later. Right now, though, I needed a quick surf on the information highway.

“Jan, while I boot up, look for a file folder marked ‘Whale Stuff’ will ya? Get out that marine biologist’s resume and phone number.”

I typed WHALES into the search slot and got a million and a half hits, most of them trying to sell me a whale watching trip. No thanks, I had my own.

I refined the search to WHALE ATTACKS, and got an account of an Orca attacking his trainer at some water park. I refined my search to BOATS SUNK BY WHALES and was assured I had a better chance of being hit by a bus or an asteroid than I did of whacking a whale. The same tongue in cheek site suggested that Jonah’s situation was extremely rare, but just in case, you should carry red pepper aboard. If we weren’t in dire danger I would have sent the site master a nasty e-mail. I went to the next site.

“Any luck?” Jan asked over my shoulder.

“In the eighteen hundreds there were reports of whales attacking boats but nothing…uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, what?”

“Whale attacked a boat in Australia not long ago.”

“We’re a long way from there. Nothing else?”

“Nope. Give me our marine biologist’s phone number. Maybe he’ll tell us what to do.” Several failed attempts at contacting Doctor Yee later, we gave up and joined Fabio on the bridge.

Moby was very much still with us. He’d dive, surface nearby and blow. I’d seen those cartoon whales, little smiles on their faces, blowing a cute spout. Nothing like this bugger, I can assure you. Except, maybe, for what did look suspiciously like an evil grin right before he blew foul smelling spray into the air. He could really, really, spout and whale breath is way up there in the top ten malodorous substances. Like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, he launched a geyser as high as our flying bridge and he always managed to do so upwind from us so that a rain of stink fell upon our hapless crew. We quickly learned to dash for cover inside when he disappeared from the fish finder.

Moby didn’t attack, but neither did he go away. I won’t say we relaxed, but we did get used to him. As we raced toward shore we kept a tight watch on the depth sounder for both our oversized escort and the ocean bottom. Our GPS gave us our location, but Fabio didn’t totally trust the charts where depths were concerned. When we were within a half hour of shore, my idea of running willy-nilly into shallow water looked less brilliant. “Uh, Fabio, you do know this area well, don’t you?”

“Yes, but not close to the beach. This chart,” he pointed to the one I held in my hand, “become
viejo
, old, very near shore. After each
tormenta
, the bottom changes. We must slow when we have four fathoms.”

Four fathoms. Four fathoms. Twenty-four feet. I tapped a spot of land on the chart south of our westerly heading. “What’s this?”

“Punta Abreojos. If we change course, we shall be there before we lose the light.”

“I’d sure as hell like to get somewhere before dark. What’s there?”

“A small village. A military post.”

“Then let’s head for it. Do they have large guns? Maybe a bazooka?”

Fabio chuckled. “Perhaps.”

“Jan,” I yelled out the door, “we’re changing course, hang on.”

She hung the binoculars around her neck and grabbed the rail. “Okay, I’m hanging. Where’re we going?”