by Ed Teja
“That's why we come to take water temperature readings, to add information to the pool and see if the big brains back home can guess right this time.”
He shut off the engine and let the boat drift toward the island while he took an aluminum clipboard from the side of the console and a thermometer on a line from a box under the seat. He lowered the thermometer over the side until he reached a knot in the line.
“It’s important to always take the readings at the same depth,” he told us. “Raising or lowering the thermometer even a few feet can give inaccurate readings.”
“Why not just take the temperature at the surface?” Maggie asked.
“The temperature at the surface varies due to a lot of factors, such as how much sunshine there is. Down a ways, it's more stable, so the readings will indicate more significant changes when they happen.”
After he had carefully noted the temperature in spots on both sides of the island, he packed the thermometer away. I noted that the log was complete with his regular readings written in a small hand.
He started up the small engine and we crossed El Oculto at an easy pace. I could see some fishermen on shore glance our way, curious for a moment. Then, seeing nothing special happening, just some gringos motoring, they lost interest.
Chris drove the boat onto the beach near a fish camp, pushing the keel into the sand. He shut off the engine and hopped out over the bow, carrying a mushroom anchor tied to a rope. The other end of the rope was secured to the bow of the boat. Going up the beach until the rope was run out completely, he wedged the anchor in some rocks.
“Grab that backpack and come with me,” he shouted at us. Maggie found the backpack under one of the seats and scrambled out onto the beach. “Look in the compartment on the console,” he shouted back at me. “Inside it you’ll find a video camera. Bring it along.” So, I did, curious about the scientific value of videotaping beaches.
Chris opened the backpack, taking out a pair of thick gloves and some large, black plastic bags. “For the garbage,” he said grimly, and then he picked up the video camera, turned and started up the beach, walking heavily and leaving deep footprints in the hard-packed sand.
I saw that he was leading us away from the fish camp, and I paused for a minute, looking back to examine it carefully before following. There wasn’t much to see, just two rude concrete buildings with open sleeping areas—covered spaces where hammocks were slung between poles. Crude, but certainly a comfortable enough way to sleep in this climate. Three heavyset women, their hair pulled back tightly, cooked with large pots hung over an open fire. I saw no men. The one who had been watching us must have come from this camp.
I noticed that Chris and Maggie were busy at something and wandered down to see. Chris was stuffing garbage into his bag while Maggie videotaped him. When I arrived, he had me hold the bag open wide so he could work faster. He cursed furiously as he worked.
“Being a glorified garbage man is not my favorite part of this job,” he said.
I wondered what part, outside of driving the boat and watching whales, was.
“I just wish I could get these people to understand.”
I didn’t say anything and neither did Maggie. I don’t like people trashing the planet, but I’m not comfortable around true believers, either. I figure you do what you can and that’s it. You can’t control other people. Worrying about how other people think, and what they do, will drive you nuts. Every true believer in any field I’ve ever met felt completely unappreciated. So, I doubt there is anything useful you can say, when it comes down to it, although Maggie managed some sympathetic clucking.
As we started back toward the boat, I fell into step beside him. “Do you think anyone has talked to the people in this fish camp about what happened?”
“We talk to them all the time,” he snapped. Then, realizing what I meant, “Oh, about the killing? The police? I doubt it, why would they? It’s a pain for them to come out here. They don’t have any boats and the Guardia wouldn’t be thrilled about giving them a ride out.”
“You can see the spot where Antonio was killed from here,” I said pointing. “It's possible that someone standing here might have seen what actually happened.”
Chris looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. “Hardly. I mean, you can see the spot, but you wouldn’t be able to see any detail from here.”
“They might be able to identify someone making his way up there,” I insisted.
“Look, I told you that these people don’t see things. By choice. The cops know that and won’t bother with talking to them. If they knew anything and were willing to tell it, they could go to the cops, or talk to Antonio’s father, and he would certainly make the information available.”
I could see that I wasn’t going to be able to ask questions without making Chris angry. He seemed to feel that Tim’s arrest was the end of the story, and any investigation was just an inconvenience that unfortunately hadn’t waited until he was out of the country.
“That’s a lot of garbage,” I said, trying to soothe things somewhat.
“It would be a lot worse if it weren’t for the Pampero Foundation,” Maggie said.
“They help,” Chris agreed, grudgingly.
That news surprised me. “Isn’t Pampero a brand of rum?”
“It sure is,” Maggie said. “It is owned by an international umbrella company that has a number of projects, many educational, to help the country.”
Chris snorted. “Most large companies here have something like it to show they care about the country. Pampero just happens to support annual beach-cleaning campaigns.”
She grinned. “Yeah, but it does kind of make a person like me, a rum loving person, I might add, a tad brand-conscious.”
“They don’t think you’ll look the corporate gift horse in the mouth,” Chris said darkly. “Then they do a little that’s good to justify their profits.”
Maggie laughed. “Hey, Chris, wake up. I’m a capitalist too.”
“Not on that scale.”
“I’m working on it. Give me a little time. I can see it now, you know. Listed on the big board in New York, Maggie’s Charters, now selling at more than you can afford per share.”
“It isn’t funny,” Chris grumbled. As he tossed the full garbage bag in the boat, it was easy to see that a sense of humor didn’t run deep in this lad, but as Maggie didn’t seem upset, I decided I might as well play him along.
“Are there any other corporations active in this area?” I asked him.
“Yeah, tons.”
“Any that might have some interest in Tim’s case, the outcome of it, I mean?”
“Not that I know of.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t think of one, why?”
“Because it seems that someone outside of the normal, expected parties is showing an intense interest. It is some party with money and connections and I just thought, after thinking about what you said, it could be some corporation.”
“What makes you think someone is interested?” he asked.
My observation had piqued his interest, so I sketched out a version of my meeting with Señorita López—a version that omitted all names. When I finished, he scratched his head.
“A lawyer? I guess that does make it sound like some kind of corporate deal, but I can’t think who or why might be behind it.”
“Or a drug cartel,” Maggie pointed out.
“You haven’t had any hassles from companies who don’t like what you are doing out here?”
He laughed. “It’s like I told you, they love ecology these days. For the enormous PR benefit they get from it, most of the companies are either supporting us with donations to do what we do, or they set up their own high-profile programs so they can do it directly. Any thorn in the side that our work might be for them is far less important than the PR value of either supporting us or beating us at our own game. At least on the surface.” He slapped the side of the boat. “Th
is boat was donated by an oil company, the motor by a gas company, two of the environmentalist’s traditional opponents. Oh, no, these boys are smart.”
“It still could be one of them,” Maggie said.
“How so?” I asked.
She wiped sweat off her forehead and climbed into the boat. “If there was too much noise about Tim’s trial, and too much of an investigation, then it could undermine that PR effort you were talking about. There might be headlines telling everyone that an environmental worker, whose salary, incidentally, is paid by corporation X, killed a fisherman. That would not do the trick in terms of a good image.”
She was right, and it was a sobering thought.
“Hell,” said Chris. “It’s more likely that your other guess was right, Mag. That this lawyer works for some drug lord who also doesn’t want anyone paying too much attention to what goes on in this area. They always prefer to see everything swept under the rug.”
I pushed the boat back into the water and climbed over the bow with the anchor as Chris started the little engine. It coughed to life with a reassuring purr.
I jumped in and sat on the gunwale as Chris steered into deeper water. “But all that speculation just gives us an idea of people, or entities, who might not want a public investigation. It doesn’t give any clues about what really happened at that shack on the hill.”
On shore a woman, maybe thirty, with a hard face, looked straight at me. She looked to me like a person who saw things, and clearly. She lived here and knew when things or people didn’t fit in. I could see her suspicion of us. I would have to come back alone if I wanted to talk to her and wasn’t even sure the trip would be useful. The fact that she saw something out of the ordinary didn’t mean she would talk about it, especially to a gringo. And it was only my imagination, or perhaps intuition, that told me she might be a person who observed things.
“I think that it always helps to know who all the players are,” Maggie said as we motored past a small beach tucked back in the rocks. “Even if they aren’t directly involved.”
I pointed to a lovely beach that we were passing. “Aren’t we going to check that beach?” I asked. “It looks nice. I’d like to see it.”
“No.” Chris said. “We stay away from that one completely. It’s a turtle-breeding beach. There’s no anchoring allowed, no visiting—period. The turtles could be frightened away. Once in a while, if I am alone, I check on it. But I don’t want to risk it when there are so many of us.”
But we did check the next bay to the south, and one after that, working silently, except for a few instructions from Chris. I can’t speak for the others, but my mind was caught up again in a whirl of my own thoughts, of fantasies of nefarious corporate executives and what schemes they might hatch against my little brother. I never managed to think up any that made sense, but I did get a lot of wild ass schemes.
By the time we got back to Mochima, it was nearly two.
“Time for lunch,” I shouted.
“And beer!” Maggie joined in, her bright eyes shining.
But Chris was shaking his head in a laggard negative. “I have to get back to Puerto La Cruz.” He said. “Thanks anyway,” he added, not sounding too upset that he couldn’t stay. He dropped us at Maggie’s boat. When he had fired up the ninety-horse motor and roared off again, Maggie and I hopped in her rubber dinghy and went ashore.
“What’s with Chris?” I asked. “He doesn’t want a free lunch?”
Maggie grinned. “A very possessive wife wants him home for lunch.”
“A wife?”
She nodded. “A wife. She's a lovely Venezuelan girl from the country. They have a one-year-old son, a little house above Puerto La Cruz, and all the problems of a relationship where she has little to do but stay home all day with the rug rat and worry about what Chris is really doing all day, and with whom.”
“You had a good time teasing me with Chris,” I said.
She smiled her best innocent smile. “Oh, did I?”
We went into El Mochimero and had a lazy lunch of immense proportions, then sat back to enjoy our coffee and contemplate the possibility that our futures could embrace a dessert of Quesillo, a flan. We were still contemplating the possibility when Maggie’s cell phone rang.
It didn’t seem odd for Maggie to get a call at the restaurant, but when she answered I saw her look puzzled. Then she held the phone out to me.
“It’s for you,” she said.
I laughed, unable to imagine why anyone would call me there, or even how anyone would know I was there.
“It’s a woman,” she told me.
“Victoria López!” I said. It answered a lot.
“I’m hurt,” Victoria said when I picked up the phone. “You haven’t called me. I thought you liked me, would want to buy me a beer this time.”
“Well, I’ve been busy sorting some things out. You told me to think about your proposal and I didn’t have an answer for you yet.”
“I understand, but you might have been nice enough to invite me along on your little tour of the park. I get so few holidays and a boat ride, disguised as work, would have been glorious. We could have left the American woman behind to scrape the hull of the boat.”
I wondered how she managed to have me followed so easily. I hadn’t seen anything, no one following me, but then I hadn’t expected to be followed and hadn’t watched carefully. “Do you know everything I do?”
She laughed. “Of course not. I know about you and the woman and such things, but if I knew everything, I wouldn’t need to call you and ask what you have decided. Today is Thursday, yes?” It was. “Will you have things sorted out by Friday?”
“Hard to say.”
“I see. If you met me in Cumaná tomorrow morning for coffee, we could catch up and compare notes on the near-term future of Martin Billings. I might have some information for you that would help you as you consider your options. It would be a convenient meeting. If you decide not to use the ticket, you can give it back to me. If you are going to use it, I can drive you to the airport and maybe buy you another beer.”
“You are quite the travel agent.”
“I try, mi amor.”
We agreed on a place and time and she was gone.
Maggie’s mood was serious when I came back to the table. “I’m meeting her tomorrow morning in Cumaná.”
“Why?” Her look held concern. “Did she promise to tell you anything useful?”
I chuckled. “The lady doesn’t promise anything, much less information. But she hinted that she might share some. I think she wants to find out what I know, what Chris might have told us.”
“Chris? She knows we went with him already?” I nodded. “Are you sure about the wisdom of going to that meeting?”
“No. In fact, there’s very little I am sure of. But I doubt it could hurt to meet her in a public place downtown.”
“Unless she represents the wrong people and other people think you are working with her.
“There is that, of course. It didn’t occur to me to worry about what people might think about me. I figured they would realize that I was on Tim’s side.”
“But it is beginning to seem that there are more sides than we thought—more interested parties.”
“True.”
Maggie made absent-minded swipes across the table with her napkin. “I have a couple of errands in Cumaná this afternoon,” she said. “I was thinking that I could drop you off to talk with María. Now that I know that López woman is looking over our shoulders, I feel like we need to get answers as fast as possible. The more we know, the less danger there is of being conned.”
I looked into her serious don’t-ask-me-why expression and nodded. “Let’s go,” I said.
Three quarters of an hour later, she dropped me off on Perimetral, near the barrio. Perimetral circles Cumaná, running parallel to the waterfront. As I got out of the car, Maggie gave precise directions to María’s addr
ess: turn left at the hardware store, go to the middle of the block. It was a bit of a walk, and I watched so intently for landmarks that I didn’t pay enough attention to my general surroundings. Suddenly, I had the sharp feeling that I sometimes get—the sense that I was walking into something unpleasant. I call it my shit’s-about-to-happen feeling, and while it isn’t infallible, I’ve learned to ignore it at my own peril. So, I took a deep calming breath, opened my eyes wide, and resolved to keep them open.
It didn’t take long to spot him. Across the street from her house was a panadería, a bakery. A tall, skinny gringo stood in front, drinking a beer drink. He wore silvered aviator sunglasses, a flowered shirt, and a baseball cap. He had a noticeable twitch, as if he had a nervous disorder. He had his eyes on María’s house. I crossed the street and passed close by him as I went into the panadería. He ignored me. I bought a coffee and stepped outside. He seemed to be alone.
“Good afternoon,” I said in English. He scowled, made some sort of grunting sound and moved away from me.
Since he seemed intent on watching María’s house, I decided to give him something to watch and crossed the street to her front door. I could hear angry voices coming from inside. I knocked, and a pretty young woman opened the door. I realized that the voices came from a television. She was watching a soap opera.
She stood in the doorway, looking at me appraisingly and saying nothing.
“My name is Martin Billings, Tim’s brother,” I told her. “Are you María?”
She nodded, all the time squinting as if it would help her to see a family resemblance, then sighed, and let me in. Inside the concrete building, the air smelled of dust and mildew, but it was cool. Near the door was a white plastic chair, a lawn chair. The bed was unmade, and she had clearly been lying in it watching the television. My timing turned out to be perfect—the television program came to an end as we entered the room. She switched off the set and offered me the chair. When I sat, she sat on the bed, crossing her brown legs, tailor fashion.
