Just Follow the Money

by Jinx Schwartz

  “Merci monsieur,” Jan trilled as he let us through, but he just glowered.

  We were about six feet down the dock when I heard him hawk, spit and growl, “Beurs.”

  I whipped around and yelled, “Hey, asshole, it’s a charter!”

  “How does he know the boat belongs to an Arab?” Jan asked after that rude epithet.

  “I got a feeling everyone knows everything about everybody around here. We’d better be more careful.”

  Rhonda wasn’t in her cabin, nor in the galley. The dining area was spic and span, with all dishes put away, so she at least did that job.

  “Po Thang, go find Rhonda, okay?” Jan ordered.

  He sat and tilted his head.

  “Who do you think he is? Lassie? Po Thang, tell your Auntie Jan you ain’t no search and rescue dawg.”

  “He’s a retriever, for crap’s sake, so make him retrieve Rhonda.”

  “Like I can make this dog do anything?”

  Po Thang suddenly took off like a shot and was out of sight before we could track him. Jeez, I could use another retriever to follow my retriever. He started howling and yipping, as though injured, so my motherly instincts—of which I have nearly none—kicked in and I raced to the rescue. As we entered the flying bridge we saw he had some poor schmuck pinned down while he continued to raise all Billy Hell.

  “Good dawg,” Jan yelled.

  “Po Thang! Stop it!” I ordered, which he, of course, ignored. I grabbed his Liberace collar and yanked him back.

  The man rolled over and Jan and I both spat different expletives.

  Sitting up, Nacho said, “I am deeply hurt. What kind of greeting is this? At least Po Thang covered my body with kisses.”

  Chapter Nine

  Nacho?

  Of all the people on earth I could even imagine seeing in France, it was not Nacho. In Mexico, we never knew when or where he would show, but Cannes? No way.

  He stood and brushed slobber and dog hair from his crew uniform. Po Thang still wiggled and whined, overjoyed to see his old friend, so I let him go to continue his overzealous greeting. He charged Nacho, but the man pointed a finger at him and he instantly sat. This annoyed me even farther. Since when did Po Thang mind anyone?

  Jan recovered from her surprise before I did. “Nacho, what the hell are you doing here? And why are you dressed as crew?”

  “Because I am crew. I will explain everything soon, but we must wait for the others.”

  “What others? And where’s Rhonda?” I demanded, finally remembering we were looking for her.

  “I sent her shopping. Can you believe there is no tequila on this ship?”

  “The horror!” I threw my hands up in feigned indignation.

  “I see a French vacation has done little to improve your temperament,” he said with a roguish grin.

  “It certainly has not,” Jan agreed. “She’s still meaner than snake crap. You should see the way she treats Jean Luc.”

  “Jean Luc?”

  “Her French boyfriend.”

  “Okay, that’s it!” I protested. “I’m going to my room and when you’re ready to explain what we’ve gotten into, call me. And not before.” I flounced off, or as close to a flounce as I’m able to execute. When I realized I was flouncing alone, I glared back at my dog, but he was leaning up against Nacho’s leg, a dreamy look on his face as he got an ear rub from yet another man I’d hoped to never set eyes on again.

  Po Thang gave me a, “What’s a dawg to do?” look.

  Back in my cabin, I called Jenks, but it went to voicemail. Ditto, Prince Faoud. I was pacing and cursing when I heard voices on deck, so I went outside and saw Rhonda returning in the company of what I surmised were two more new crew members. They were all lugging shopping bags. Who knew you could find tequila in Cannes?

  I took a hot shower and dressed in a rust-colored chic gauzy thing I’d bought in Cannes a few weeks earlier. Jan said it suited my red hair. I also caught myself putting on more makeup than usual and told my image in the mirror, “This is not for Nacho. It’s just so I won’t look like such a dud next to Rhonda and Jan.”

  It was nearing cocktail hour so I headed for the bar in the sky lounge, but found it empty. Below me, in the dining area and main salon, my ears detected the lovely clink of ice cubes hitting crystal—always a strong draw for me—and followed the sound. I found Rhonda, Jan, Nacho, Po Thang, and the two new crew members making drinks. One of the men was dressed in the ubiquitous crew outfit, but the other was in chef’s whites, complete with the toque blanche, the traditional hat. He was putting together a tray of canapés.

  Both the chef and the other man looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place them, except for the fact I was almost positive they were Mexican. That would make Jan, Rhonda, and me, the only non-Mexicans on board. Well, maybe except for Po Thang, but since I found him on a Mexico roadside, I guess he’s technically a Mexican. He has yet to produce an ID to prove otherwise.

  Nacho, holding a tumbler of what was surely tequila, gave me a nod and tapped the glass with a small silver fork. Everyone, including the chef, turned toward him and he motioned for us to be seated on one of the leather couches and chairs. I chose an L-shaped settee and Po Thang jumped up next to me. I shoved him off, warning, “You are getting way too big for your britches, you double-dealing dawg.”

  He gave me a dirty look, slinked over to Nacho, and leaned up against his leg. Nacho gave me a self-satisfied grin. He had changed from his day uniform, and was looking sharp in starched dog-hair-and-slobberless dress whites. His thick black hair, with just a touch of grey here and there, was combed back à la Antonio Banderas. Those gleaming white teeth twinkled in contrast to his café au lait complexion.

  Rhonda, who sat down next to me, sighed and whispered, “Oh, my! Isn’t that Nacho just about the best-looking man ever?”

  “You have absolutely the worst taste in men of anyone I’ve ever met, you know that?” I growled in response.

  Tears welled in her big blue eyes, and I felt rotten immediately; she'd been through a nasty ordeal with a French conman cum terrorist, and I needed to stop messing with her.

  Jan stepped in for the save, “Trust me, Rhonda. You can’t hold a candle to Hetta when it comes to falling for scuzzbuckets. You’re not even a close second.”

  “Hey, I’m a reformed woman. And sorry, Rhonda, I was only joking.” Well, sort of. “The thing about Nacho is—”

  Evidently my voice had risen above our conspiratorial whispering. “Did I hear my name escape your lovely lips, mi corazón?” Nacho purred, wagging his eyebrows at me.

  “Yes, I was about to warn Rhonda what an undesirable character you are.”

  “Me? Undesirable? And here I thought we were close, after all the time we lived together on your yacht in Mexico.”

  Rhonda looked confused. “You and Nacho? I thought you had a thing with Jenks. Or Jean Luc.”

  “Who is this Jean Luc?” Nacho asked for the second time of the day.

  Jan, by her annoyingly bemused expression, was enjoying herself at my expense. She gave Nacho the same answer she had earlier. “I told you. Jean Luc is Hetta’s French boyfriend.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Rhonda said. “Jenks is Hetta’s American boyfriend, Jean Luc is Hetta’s French boyfriend, and you, Nacho, are Hetta’s Mexican boyfriend?”

  Jan guffawed. “A man in every port. That’s our Hetta.”

  “Okay, that is quite enough!” I huffed and stood to leave. “Jenks is my only boyfriend and that is that.”

  “And here I thought you only had eyes for me, Loocey,” a deep voice boomed from behind me.

  I whirled. “Fabio?”

  “Yes, it is I, Capitán Fabio, a su servicio.” He gave us a deep bow.

  Jan and I rushed to hug him, and he returned our affectionate greeting. We had hired him to captain Raymond Johnson from San Francisco to Mexico two years before, and then last summer he later joined us as the research ship’s captain for ou
r great Manila galleon treasure hunt. Evidently he had forgiven me for getting him thrown into a Mexican jail during the first voyage from San Francisco aboard Raymond Johnson, and then for sinking the Nao de Chino, the expedition ship under his command last summer. Not that I ever admitted my guilt, mind you.

  Po Thang, who came into our lives after Fabio captained my boat, wasn’t real crazy about our lavishing affection on a total stranger, and growled. Fabio, always capable of handling any situation, grabbed a canapé from a silver tray and offered it to my dog, making an instant new friend.

  Po Thang is easily bought off.

  He learned it from me.

  We chit-chatted with Fabio briefly about his wife, Fluff, a blue-eyed blonde knockout who looks much like her nickname, and their son, who was now a teen. Fabio, a licensed boat captain, is also a Navy veteran who graduated from the Mexican Marine Academy. When we’d parted company in Cabo once he got out of jail, his last words to me were, “Should you ever need another capitán? Por favor, do not call me.”

  He later relented when Jan’s boyfriend, Chino, needed him to help find a sunken ship in Magdalena Bay. However, when the research vessel went down under suspicious circumstances, he had a strong suspicion it was due to something I did, and he was right. Fabio is evidently a slow learner, for here he was, once again, on a sea-going vessel with me.

  Nacho tapped his glass again and was about to make introductions when we heard someone clomping up the boat ramp. There was something extremely familiar about that plodding gait. I looked at Jan, who mouthed, “Martinez?” The door flew open and yep, it was he, in all his picklepussed glory.

  Jan and I are big fans of “vintage” TV shows, and one of our favs was “Barney Miller” and especially the character, Detective Fish. Marty Martinez not only resembled Abe Vigoda, the actor who played the curmudgeonly and crotchety senior detective on the show, he even talked like him. The last time I saw him, he presented me with a fat bill for his travel expenses to retrieve his pickup, which I sort of stole in Arizona and drove to San Carlos, Mexico.

  Given my checkered history with all but two of these men—and that’s because they didn’t know me yet—one might surmise they had not traveled thousands of miles to bring me early Christmas gifts.

  So, just what, and why, were my not-so fan club dudes doing on a yacht in Cannes for crying out loud? And who else was going to show up?

  Chapter Ten

  “So, now that we are all here,” Nacho said, answering my unasked question: And who else will show up? “I think we owe you lovely ladies an explanation. But first, I would like to introduce Lieutenant Roberto Rogoff, of the Mexican Navy, who is from a well-known family of restaurateurs in La Paz. He is not only a talented chef who studied here in France before joining the military, he speaks French, and is first cousin to the reason we have assembled here in Cannes. While he will act as chef for us, he is part of my investigative team.”

  I leaned over and whispered in Jan’s ear, “I knew I’d seen him before. It was in La Paz. This is getting verrry interesting.’

  Chef gave us a slight nod and a smile, and Jan whispered in my ear, “He’s Mexican? Must’a been a Gringo in the woodshed.”

  “Shhh. I want to hear Nacho,” I hissed quietly.

  “And this fine gentleman,” Nacho patted the bulked-up shoulder of a dark- complexioned, stern-faced young man towering next to him like a Mayan version of the Incredible Hulk, “is also associated with the Mexican military. We shall call him José Smith, because if I tell you his real name and rank, he will have to kill me. And all the rest of you as well.”

  Nervous chuckles filled the room; no one doubted for a minute that the stone-faced, muscled up Joe Smith was fully capable of carrying out Nacho’s threat. He gave us a slight dip of his head, acknowledging our presence with dark shark eyes. His thick, jet-black hair was pulled back in a bun; if he was in the military, my guess was he must work undercover, and was maybe the Mexican equivalent of a Navy seal.

  Nacho definitely held my attention as the intros continued. “We men all have strong ties to Mexico, even if some of us are...not so Mexican. Lieutenant Martinez is American, but he is of Mexican heritage, despite the fact that he was born and raised in the United States. He still has contacts there due to a long and distinguished career in the Oakland, California Police Department, from which he is retired. Oakland is where he met Hetta.” Something between a grin and grimace creased Marty’s face as he jerked his head in my direction. “She was shooting up the neighborhood.”

  Despite the need for a fact checker here, I had to laugh. Okay, so I had disquieted my neighbors when vaporizing a giant wharf rat in my living room. The big sucker had hitchhiked a ride with my furniture shipment that was delivered that day, after I returned from a project in Japan. Or maybe with the stuff I’d stored in Oakland while I was overseas. Luckily, I had already unpacked my grandmother’s .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver—she called it her PO-lice special—from a storage crate before the mongo rodent scurried into sight. I was terrified my dog would go after him, so what was a girl to do?

  Martinez was the first to arrive after reports of shots fired, and after surveying the bloody mess of furry remains left as a result of me emptying the .38 on the rodent, he lectured me on gun use in the city limits. After I finished laughing—we’re talking OAKLAND here—the dour dick left me with a warning to keep my nose clean.

  Then, sometime later, he ended up at my house again when my home alarm went off in the middle of the night, and I inadvertently forgot to put down my gun before walking outside to thank OPD for answering the call.

  Okay, and I did blast an inflatable dinghy out from under a guy trying to kill me in San Francisco Bay, but “shooting up the neighborhood” was a stretch.

  “She seems to do that a lot,” Nacho agreed. “Hopefully France will be safe enough until we can all go home. Can we count on that, Hetta?”

  I gave him a non-committal shrug, which meant little since the French authorities were in possession of the only weapon I’d smuggled into France, so me shooting up the country was doubtful.

  Nacho’s eyes narrowed briefly at what he took as a lame commitment on my part but evidently decided to let it go. “Also on our team, but working from his office in California, is our Mexican computer guru and cyberspace technician, Rosario Pardo.”

  “Our Rosario? Whooboy, this must be a doozy of a caper,” Jan said. Jan and I had busted the little hacker, Rosario, in the Baja when he was trying to run a scam on us, and he had subsequently become a good friend and taught us scads about the fine art of cyber espionage, which comes in handy on occasion. Like today, when Jan used one of his techie devices to sweep the boat for bugs. She found none, but a gal just can’t be too careful these days.

  Nacho shook his head. “It is not a caper, as you call it, but a mission. A clandestine one, I might add, to seek out and extract a subject. With, if necessary, extreme prejudice. But that part you must leave to us, the professionals.” He gave me a stink eye for emphasis.

  “Oooh, Tom Clancy talk,” I cooed.

  “I mean it, Hetta. It is imperative that you do not interfere. Here is the situation. Our chef’s young cousin, who recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday here in France, disappeared in Cannes last week. We are going to find and return her safely to Mexico. I will only tell you that she was last seen boarding a large yacht here, in the company of a young man who had invited her to a party. That is all you,” he pinpointed me and Jan with those dark eyes of his, “need to know. You women are not to involve yourselves in any way in the investigation. You are merely a front for my team.”

  “Can you at least tell us her name? And who saw her board the boat?” Jan asked, as though she hadn’t heard that ‘not getting involved’ part.

  Nacho looked at her under his eyebrows. “Did I not make myself clear, Jan?” He pronounced it Yan. “You are only to be seen, not to act. You are here simply to divert attention from me and my men while we work. Do
I make myself any clearer now?”

  “As mud,” Jan groused. “Okay, can you at least tell us mere diversions why this isn’t being handled by the French authorities?” She took the words right out of my mouth.

  Nacho sighed and looked at our chef, who must have figured it was permissible to answer Jan’s question. “Because my family, and especially our grandfather, who is a very influential man in Mexico, does not trust the, as he calls them, Gabacho.”

  “Is that anything like Gachupine?” I asked.

  Nacho blinked in surprise. “Café, you never cease to amaze me.”

  I felt that little flutter he stirs up somewhere south of my navel when he purrs his nickname for me.

  “And the answer to your question is yes, and no. Both are slurs against white foreigners. Gabacho literally refers to the chewed-up leftovers from crushing sugarcane, or white trash. It became a popular derogatory term for the French during the Maximillian invasion of Mexico. Gachupine was what the indigenous Indians of Mexico called the invading Spaniards, the Conquistadors. The Aztecs, who had never seen horses, at first thought those astride them were half-man, half-animal, and grew to detest the gacha, or four-legged, spear-carrying tyrants.”

  “You Mexicans are the masters of the racial slur,” I quipped. “My favorite is gringa, since I am one.”

  Nacho tipped his head and said, “Might I remind you that you once called me a Spic, Gringa?”

  “Only after you kidnapped me. And threatened the marina dog. Also, since I thought you were a Mexican drug runner, you didn't deserve any respect. Matter of fact, I still hold some of those thoughts.”

  “Okay, get these thoughts through that thick, stubborn, Texan skull of yours, Hetta. I. Am. Not. A. Drogista!” He had moved into my personal space and was punctuating each word with a poking finger.

  I was backing towards the cutlery when Jan stood, pushed herself between us and held out her arms, one palm in my direction and the other at Nacho. “Children, children! Can we get on with this before I have to give you time outs?”