Kingfish

by Frank Perry

headset connected to his phone. “Hey. It gets better. The undercarriage of the car has distinctive creases along the under-side of the rear door sills, and the tailpipe is crushed in the middle, presumed to be caused when the car’s rear wheels rolled over the stern of the ship, and it teetered before being pushed overboard. The lab was able to compute the curvature of the ship’s stern. They even gave a drawing. There’s even some paint residue on the undercarriage that is a marine-grade black paint.”

  “John, do you know what this means?”

  “Yeah. I think so, Kasey.”

  She added. “Alright. We can’t say anything. We’re building a case and I don’t want any leaks to scare away the killer.”

  “It won’t come from me, Kasey.”

  John was not told that the FBI had initiated passive monitoring (wiretap) of cellphone calls from Peña’s registered phone. Unfortunately, he only used it for family calls, not business. Kasey had tried to go get court permission using the new technology to activate the microphones on Peña’s registered phone in order to listen to conversations that take place near him, but her request was denied after several weeks because the NSA (National Security Agency) would not authorize use of the technology.

  Peña frequently communicated with dealers over the internet for voice and data communications using online encryption tools. So far, the FBI had been unable to break these coded messages. The FBI had been watching Peña’s ships for a couple years and had hundreds of surveillance photos. The largest ship, the Ocean Wanderer, had been gone for weeks, but Sea Fury was in port, recently returned from a “fishing” trip, and Ocean Queen was in port frequently, only used for local coastal fishing. As the smallest of the fleet, the “Queen” was the most likely candidate to have dropped the Mercedes close to the island cliffs.

  From previous surveillance photos, Kasey had a technician verify the netting and stern geometry of the Queen. Unfortunately, the resolution wasn’t enough to verify the net gauge, and the stern was partially covered by the stacked net. The ship had just finished a two-year overhaul period in the shipyard, where the hull was sandblasted and repainted. It wasn’t possible to verify the paint sample from the car.

  That evening, Luciano Peña was in his office late, monitoring a delivery from Ocean Wanderer (“Wanderer”) to his distribution team in Los Angeles, who would hold the shipment until he completed the deal with Mojo. Wanderer had been fishing off the coast of Chile until the hold was full then stopped in Nicaragua for twenty thousand kilos of cocaine, costing him more than thirty million dollars. The loading and unloading process was a masterpiece of engineering. When Peña attended Berkeley, he read about the Hughes Glomar Explorer deep recovery ship, which was launched in 1974 to secretly recover a sunken Russian submarine for the CIA. This gave Peña the idea for installing chambers below the freezer holds on Wanderer and Fury. In Nicaragua, several water-tight containers were lowered at night by a barge in a deep cove near Puerto Sandino. The following night, Wanderer used its ASK (Auto Station Keeping) System, copied from the Glomar Explorer, to position above the containers and divers secured them to cables from inside the hull, then massive hydraulic systems closed the clamshell bottom of the hull, securing the load.

  Wanderer was intercepted by a U.S. Customs Boat off San Diego after dawn and cleared into American waters. The first stop was at the Port of San Pedro, in Los Angeles harbor. It was after dark as the captain skillfully maneuvered down Berth Row and docked opposite one of the large cranes used to lift pallets of processed frozen fish and other cargo from the holds. These cranes worked around the clock and could move up and down the row of moored ships on railway tracks. The captain had called ahead, and there was a large refrigerator truck waiting for Wanderer’s catch. While part of the crew managed the offloading process, two men worked below decks, setting the illicit load on the harbor floor below the ship with floats that would mark the pickup cable. U.S. Fish and Game inspectors made random inspections along the dock when ships came in, so the valuable containers would sit on the bottom until it was safe to pull them up for loading in oversized dump trucks that would arrive after the fish truck and inspectors were gone. This was the only time Peña worried. The ship wouldn’t move until everything was quiet on the dock. Once the ship pushed sideways away from the birth with its water jets, the floats showed the cranes where to hook the cargo before lifting it into the trucks. It was all done precisely in less than three minutes, but no one saw the camera man on top of a nearby warehouse.

  Luca held the ship captain responsible for the loading operation on the dock. He threatened the crew with extermination if the drugs were captured. He’d never lost a shipment, but it could happen if anyone squealed. The only way to prevent it was to threaten total extermination of every man’s families by torture if they talked. Peña risked his ships, his business, and his family with each delivery. For this, he received a ten-fold return on his investment. His crews were paid several times more than ordinary fishermen.

  Around ten o’clock, he received a text message from the captain, “Fish delivered to San Pedro, departing for Monterey.” If he had not received the message before midnight, he would have gathered his family at the airport and departed immediately for Mexico. He had several hundred-million dollars in untraceable accounts and could retire in luxury at any time. He didn’t want to risk being caught and would flee if anything signaled a problem. This was also the concern of the FBI. He called his wife.

  Luciano Peña met Melanie Millbury at Berkeley, where she majored in political science and had plans to become an activist attorney for human rights. Peña mesmerized her. Her family lived in Chico, California, where her father was a logger, and mother worked in a bakery. Both scraped by for years to pay for Mel’s attending college and she rewarded them academically by qualifying for admission to California’s flagship university. Peña brought the promise of wealth from his old San Francisco linage. They were married in 1992 when they graduated. Mel never went to law school and worked at various white collar entry jobs until she got pregnant with their son, Luke, in 1996. She didn’t need to work, but wanted to be active outside the home until the children came along. In 2000, their daughter, Monica, was born. Peña’s business began skyrocketing, and they moved to their mansion that same year.

  Mel never questioned Peña about rumors of mob activity, and she accepted that armed guards were necessary to protect the family. They weren’t the only wealthy Californians with bodyguards. She never asked Peña about his business. If some of her friends insinuated anything, she simple replied that fishing had become incredibly lucrative under Peña’s educated leadership. They were a model couple and a model family. She didn’t care much for Peña’s constant attention seeking and public appearances. He liked the flattery in the limelight, but she wanted a quiet life. Peña had been good to her, if not entirely loyal. He was away one or two nights every week, and she found indications that he was philandering, but her life was otherwise full and happy with the children, and Peña had even taken care of her parents in their retirement. He had a good heart, even if it opened too widely on occasion.

  Congress Action

  Hunter’s phone rang just as he finished showering after his morning workout. Brian Collie was hyper. “Hunter, Ben Willis was just down here from Senator Blithe’s office. He demanded to see the draft bill, specifically the drug legalization language.”

  “Is it a problem, Brian?” He neglected to say that he’d seen Willis the week before.

  “I don’t know, Hunter. Senator Blithe doesn’t get involved in much lately, and she’s not even on the committee. Her EA (Willis) came in here like he owned the place.”

  “Look, Brian. I know Willis. He’s even rougher around the edges than I am. He’s a military intern, trying to learn the ropes.”

  “Well, he needs to learn that Blithe doesn’t run the Appropriations Committee! She gets one vote on the floor, and that’s it.”

/>   “I think she’s an ally, Brian. I’m only guessing, based on my own military time, that Willis thinks he’s been given an order. He’s just doing what his boss says. In the long run, maybe she’ll get some others to support it.”

  “Hunter. She’s been around here a long time. She’s a wild card. I can’t imagine an old-line legislator suddenly shifting off a thirty-year policy. She could do some real damage if she calls in chips from her cronies. These guys keep markers forever.”

  Hunter decided it would jeopardize the relation with Brian if he disclosed his discussion with Willis and Leigh’s discussion with the Senator. He couldn’t afford to have his link to the committee staff cut off. He advised, “Look, Brian. I’ll do some snooping around. If I find anything out, I’ll tell you.”

  “That’s what I was hoping, Hunter. You’ve got more latitude than I do. While you do that, I’m bringing it up with the Chairman.”

  Hunter cringed that someone would get cold feet. “You do that, Brian. I’ll get on this and call you when I find anything out.”

  Hunter hated to lie. He knew what was happening and he lied outright to Brian. He’d witnessed the political