Cabo

by Davis MacDonald

  The Judge looked in disbelief at the second line, which was loosely coiled on the deck, then ran aft a few feet to a 50-pound anchor leaning loosely against a stanchion supporting the deck safety lines. Alan was screaming curses at Eduardo now, struggling to get out of the lines tying them together, but with no success. Eduardo looked amused. Mary’s screaming reverted to a high-pitched keening that was painful to hear.

  Eduardo moved swiftly, unhooking the forward lifeline to leave a gap in its protection, then turning and shoving the distraught pair off the bow into the sea. Their screams were lost as they fell paired into the water with a huge splash. Eduardo tossed the anchor into the water behind them.

  Their heads bobbed up briefly, level with the cockpit as the hull careened past, mouths open gasping for air. Then their heads were yanked below the surface as the anchor line tightened, starting them on one last journey. The sea turned smooth and calm where they’d been seconds before, as though they’d never been.

  The captain was laughing hysterically now, mad with excitement, dancing around the bow like an Indian, his gun dropped on a coil of line. Eduardo turned and started to make his way back the 40 or so feet to the cockpit, looking grimly at the Judge.

  In the cockpit, Carla’s gun had drooped, her eyes focused with fascination on the spot in the water where Alan and Mary had grabbed their last breath. Fascination, but no remorse.

  “Oh, oh!” the Judge cried. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  The Judge brought his hands, bound tightly with the zip lock, up above his head, his face painted with the look of someone who couldn’t breathe. Carla smirked at his discomfort.

  “Probably an easier way to go, Judgy.”

  The Judge brought his arms down sharply in a V shape, smashing them into the sides of his hips. As if by magic, the ratchet on the zip-lock came apart, freeing his hands.

  Carla gaped at him, very late starting to think about her drooping gun, as the Judge’s fist, swung with all the torque his 225 pounds could muster, crashed into the side of her nose, pulverizing cartilage and bone, sending a spray of blood along with the gun across the cockpit as she collapsed in a heap at his feet.

  “Katy, quick, do what I did, with your arms.”

  Katy tried it once to no avail, yelping as the band cut into her wrists, but a second try with desperate force succeeded in stripping the ratchets on her ties as well, freeing her hands.

  “Now, Katy. Jump for it. Here, take my hand.”

  The Judge grabbed a life preserver from the cockpit, and they jumped together off the back of the transom.

  CHAPTER 39

  The water was warm, nourishing, like a bathtub. They sank, still holding hands, then bobbed up, the yacht twenty yards past them already, all turmoil and angst as Eduardo, still maneuvering to reach the cockpit, screamed at Carla for screwing up. The captain lumbered behind him, gun in hand. Carla was down on her knees in the cockpit holding her nose, her head held back, trying to stem the flow of blood choking her throat, all thought of the boat and its wheel forgotten.

  With no one at the helm, the sailboat spun hopelessly around, propelled by the wind, the chop and the tide, bringing herself broadside to the rising whitecap, heeling way over to port, heading for the towering rocks by the Arch.

  The Judge saw Eduardo make a final mad dash for the cockpit and the wheel. But he wasn’t in time. The hull slammed across underwater rocks, jerking to a stop, throwing Eduardo to his knees, and heeling over to its side, exposing its beam to oncoming waves which crashed over it without mercy. Eduardo and the captain were carried off the boat by the force of the waves, their heads smashed into the towering rocks at the schooner’s far side, their limp bodies sliding down into the churning water and disappearing.

  The Judge’s last view of Carla was her plunking her large bottom down into a tiny yellow emergency raft, shoving away from the broken yacht, and paddling like mad out to sea, away from the sinking schooner and yawning rocks.

  The Judge and Katy kicked off their shoes and swam slowly, tired, stopping now and then to tread water or float on their backs, sharing their single life-preserver. The sun’s departure left the surface of the sea dark, murky, almost black, matching his mood.

  He showed her the resting technique of letting your entire body go, floating naturally on your stomach without effort, one arm stretched out and one on the preserver, head several inches below the surface of the water, eyes closed, slowly releasing bubbles. Totally relaxed. As you exhaled the last breath of air, you made a single low energy paddling stroke downward with your outstretched hand, using minimum effort, sending your head above the surface briefly for air intake. Then sinking back again to your natural buoyancy, just below the surface, softly blowing out more air bubbles.

  It helped. It rested her. And as importantly, it rested her mind, focusing her energies on relaxing, letting go of the panic.

  They were making headway toward The Arch he thought, and Lover’s Beach beside it, slowly, but with persistence. Then suddenly a wave lifted them up high and slid them down onto the beach, grinding their tummies along the sand, then trying to pull them back again with the receding water. He grabbed her with one hand and grasped sand with the other, digging his feet in, trying to impede the backward undertow. The water finally let its clutch go for a moment and he half dragged half crawled them higher up the wet sand, collapsing over its top onto dry crusty sand which still held the departed afternoon’s heat. They lay there for a time, sprawled, exhausted, almost in shock. The Judge finally sat up, pulling Katy up beside him. She looked at him then, eyes wide, frightened. He wrapped his arms around her. She buried her head into his chest and began to softly cry.

  He waited perhaps ten minutes, letting her weep away the raw emotion bottled up inside. Then he released her and got unsteadily to his feet.

  “We’d better move, Katy. We can’t stay here.”

  “Where, Judge, where? We’re surrounded by water on three sides and high cliffs at our back.”

  “There’s supposed to be a path, Katy. Part path, part climb. Steep but passable, over to the other side, to our favorite Pacific beach where we almost drowned. We can walk from there back to our hotel.”

  “I don’t see it Judge.”

  “I don’t either. But it’s here. Others have taken it. We just have to find it.”

  He pulled her up and they drew close to the cliff, feeling along its base for an opening. The moon had come up, still at a small angle to the horizon, casting weak yellow light onto the beach, deepening the shadows at the base of the cliff.

  The Judge missed it, would have walked by, but Katy spotted it.

  “Here, Judge. Look, there are even footprints in the sand. Leading in and up. This has to be it.”

  They stumbled into a narrow cleft that widened at its back. The rocks were arranged like steps there, leading higher, up into the night. It was the beginning of a twenty-minute climb, more rock wall than path, that took them to the top of the cliff, and then over, down the other side, to the beach where the drone had attacked them.

  They rested briefly at the top, and again on the beach on the other side, but high up on the sand, giving the huge Pacific rollers licking up the beach no chance to reach them. They started a slow walk north along the Pacific beach toward their hotel, arms wrapped around each other for mutual support, like surviving remnants of some lost foreign legion. Exhausted. Emotionally distraught.

  They reached their hotel and walked around the pool on its far side opposite the large palapa dining room where couples lingered over their dinner and margaritas, enjoying the moonlight and the ambiance of Cabo. They slipped into the elevator, avoiding the lobby, and rode to the third floor where the Judge persuaded a housekeeping lady to use her master key card to open their door.

  Their room was the same as they’d left it several hours before, yet somehow different. There was no safety for them in Cabo any longer. Perhaps there never had been. The room hadn’t changed. But they had. />
  They collapsed on the bed for a while, the Judge wrapping his arms around Katy, holding her very close.

  “I kint bree,” Katy muttered.

  “What?” He pulled his arms away to look at her, worried.

  “I can’t breathe, Judge. You’re holding my chest too tight.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  They smiled at each other then, her unsinkable Molly Brown attitude infectious.

  “You’ve got to leave now, Katy.”

  “I know. I need you to come with me.”

  “I can’t. I have to finish it here. Otherwise the next we know they’ll be on our doorstep in Los Angeles. But you must go. Go back and stay with your parents, protect our Ralphie.”

  She looked at him, putting her hand to the side of his face, caressing it. Trying to imprint his image in her mind for eternity.

  “You have to come back, Judge. I can’t live without you. We have a life planned and everything. Ralphie needs you too.”

  “I’ll follow as soon as I can. But come, let’s get you out of here.”

  She quickly showered, changed, took just what she could fit in her purse, passport, driver’s license, credit cards, cash, cell phone, leaving the roll-aboard suitcase in the closet under her hanging clothes.

  They walked out the back of their hotel, past the pool, down to the rugged beach and its yawning surf, and along to the next hotel over, the Playa Grande Resort. Then up, past the Playa’s lower pool and chaise lounges, circling the crowded tables around the second pool enjoying a show of fire dancers over their dinner, and up and through its lobby, to the taxi stand outside.

  They grabbed a no-name taxi on a no-name basis and sped off to the airport, the Judge paying cash as they alighted, no credit cards. The Judge switched Katy’s ticket for an immediate flight on Alaska Air leaving in thirty minutes, and walked as far as the security line with her. He gave her a long hug and kiss worthy of the end of World War II.

  He stood to the side, watching as she went through the security check. There were no customs. Her Mexican visa card would be collected by the airline at the gate. He lingered awhile outside the terminal over a stiff vodka-tonic, listening for the final boarding call for her flight, then watched outside against the security fence. A sizable weight lifted from his shoulders as Katy’s plane raced down the runway with a roar, lifted, and soared up into the night.

  He trudged back toward the taxi pickup area, stopping short as a voice rang out to his left.

  “Judge. Wait up. I want to talk to you.”

  It was Chief Inspector Garcia, leaning against a roof support, folding a newspaper he’d been reading, positioned so he could scan both the flow of people in and out of the terminal and the taxi pickup line that had been the Judge’s destination.

  Garcia motioned toward a nearby table, and the Judge reluctantly changed his course.

  “I heard of course that your wife had a change of plans and was flying out tonight. I was surprised you weren’t accompanying her.”

  “Can I trust you, Garcia? Really trust you? Whose side are you really on?”

  Garcia spread his hands, palms open, feigning innocence.

  “I suppose in the end we are each only on our own side, señor. But I take my duties as a policeman seriously. We’ve caught the perpetrator who killed the Cervantes sisters. In no small part due to your help. I’d like to think we are friends.”

  “Trusted friends?”

  “Yes. Which brings me to the small matter of a sailing yacht that ended up on the rocks off The Arch just after sunset tonight, and sank.”

  “Yes. That was unfortunate.”

  “More than unfortunate. It was the Lieutenant Governor’s pride and joy. Someone stole his schooner this afternoon and took it for a joyride, ultimately smashing it on the rocks. There’s a rumor in the harbor that two portly men in their fifties and two younger women in their early thirties took the yacht, but didn’t know how to sail it. One of the women had long blond hair and startling blue eyes, or so I’m told.”

  “A pity,” said the Judge. “I used to race sailboats like that. Too bad I wasn’t aboard. Perhaps I could’ve helped.”

  “Let’s not be coy, Judge. You and your lovely wife, Katy, and your friend Alan Clark, and another woman, the timeshare woman I believe, were seen boarding the boat before it set sail.”

  The Judge sighed, took a big breath, then launched into the sordid story of his ill-fated sail. It was as though he needed to tell the story to someone, anyone, to get it out, give it a life of its own in words, just so he could step back from it, gain distance and perspective, get it out of his head.

  He could still hear the awful keening of Mary; the rage of Alan, and the plopping noise as they hit the water. His voice cracked when he told of his last glimpse of Alan Clark, face twisted, gasping for breath, tied back to back to his sobbing date, their struggling heads yanked below the surface by the sinking anchor.

  They sat silent for a while after he finished, each digesting the tragedy that had been the sunset cruise. Finally, Garcia spoke, his voice subdued.

  “You and Katy disturbed a profitable and expanding industry for the cartels here in Mexico, Judge. Your commotion over human trafficking for sex and as work slaves upended their ‘live and let live’ environment where officials have been encouraged to look the other way. The cartels don’t take such interference lightly, particularly from a Yankee judge.

  You have a parable in your country, I believe. About an emperor who has no clothes. If no one acknowledged that the emperor had no clothes, there was no problem. But you, and even more your wife, by calling out the Mexico City Congressional authorities, your State Department, the United Nations, and various do-gooder organizations around the world, have got everybody talking about our lack of clothes. It has made things very uncomfortable for the cartels.

  They can’t afford to let this pass, lest people get the idea the cartels are not invulnerable. Somebody’s head must roll to satisfy their sense of pride and balance.”

  “Yes,” the Judge agreed. “Well, apparently they’ve decided it’s to be mine.”

  Garcia nodded. “Let me give you a lift into Cabo and we can talk some more, unless you’ve decided to catch another flight out?

  “No, Garcia. I don’t think fleeing to Los Angeles will solve my problem.”

  “Unfortunately, in this, I concur.”

  They rode back to Cabo and to the Judge’s hotel, mostly in silence, the Judge considering alternate courses of action, feeling like a rat trapped in a maze where each of its exits had been slammed shut.

  As they approached the Judge’s hotel, and coming up short of viable options in his own mind, the Judge finally turned to Garcia. “What do you think I should do, Garcia?”

  “There will be a primary overseer for human trafficking in Baja, Judge. Someone who coordinates the harvesting of people and their placement within clubs, organizations, factories, cooperatives and so on. Placed where they can’t escape and where they can be used to best advantage for profit. You need to find that person. Take him out; put him in jail. Let him be the scapegoat for the cartels’ unhappiness, and deflect attention from you and Katy.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No. He, likely not a woman, has been very careful to stay in the shadows. My guess is it’s because he’s someone of position, well known, recognizable in Baja society. Not just an average thug.”

  “How do we find that person?”

  “Perhaps we can use the Lieutenant Governor’s boat sinking to our advantage. You could talk to the press, call the henchmen who tried to drown you reprehensible. Challenge whoever is behind the human trafficking in Baja California to come forward and face you, face the community, admit the sickening business they are in. Use your flowery judge language to condemn them and their trafficking. Stir the pot some more just as your wife did.”

  “Wave the red flag at the bull.”

  “I’m afraid so. The cartels don’t like heat. They
could decide the person in charge in Baja should deal with you directly. Should ‘solve the problem or become the problem’, so to speak. The cartels often think that way.”

  “I would be the target.”

  “I think you already are. I can assign one of my men to shadow you, and to close in at the right time.”

  “Would it work? Would the big cheese in Baja come after me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all I can think of.”

  “Are there some civic-minded people or organizations that would stand up with me, speak against human trafficking in Baha?”

  Garcia grew silent, considering.

  “There might be a couple, foolish enough or hotheaded enough to stand up with you at that podium. Let me think about it. I’ll develop a tentative list. I’m afraid it will be a very short list. And for God sakes don’t mention my name.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The Judge moved through the Finisterra lobby at a quick walk, swerving around clusters of Americans in loud shirts and shifts, like a full-back for the Miami Dolphins. He was desperate to reach his air-conditioned room and cool down.

  He didn’t notice the shape that lifted itself from the bowels of an overstuffed lobby chair and flitted after him, through the lobby, up the stairs and down the corridor to where he fumbled with the door key. As he opened the door, he felt a small tug at the tail of his shirt, which had been hanging out apparently some while. He whirled, ready to defend himself, scanning the hallway from his height and almost mowing down the small creature behind him.

  He took a closer look. It was Cristina Reyes, the stowaway from the plant. She was dressed in a flimsy white sack dress that had seen better days, threadbare in spots, faint stains in others. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, severe on the sides, but she wore scarlet lipstick and full eye makeup, making her look older, and sadly wiser then her fourteen years.