Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  “I thought you were flat broke,” Randy remarked.

  Chase took the small plastic sack the vendor gave him and stuck it carefully in the chest pocket of his shirt, taking care to button the flap down. “I am now,” he said. “But if a guy doesn’t remember his anniversary, he’s dead meat.”

  Randy snorted. “Yeah, I know what you mean. So it’s coming up?”

  “Not ’til July fourth.” An easy-to-remember date. The Perinis’ hypothetical marriage—a second for them both—took place in 2000, an easy-to-remember year.

  “You got married on Independence Day?” Randy laughed. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Laugh all you want,” Chase told him. “But we never have to pay for the party. And we always get fireworks.”

  They moved on to a table of leather items. There was even a saddle on the back of a chair. He picked up a belt, uncoiling it to admire the elaborate tooling of flowers and vines. When—if—he ever got married, he’d pick July fourth or December thirty-first for exactly the reasons he had named. He could picture himself as a husband, sharing lazy Sunday coffees with his wife.

  Somehow he couldn’t quite picture Summer lounging around reading the paper or making French toast, though. That bothered him. Seemed more likely that she’d be off traipsing through the wilderness while he sat alone at the kitchen table. But she’d given him that backpack for Christmas—didn’t that signal that she wanted him to come with her?

  “Charlie!”

  A few yards away, Nicole gestured to him. She stood in front of a large old canvas tent with the rest of their little troop, including Dread. Chase put down the belt and joined them. “Sorry. I was thinking about that asshole that fired me down in Tampa.”

  Nicole reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “You gotta let that go, sweetie.” Her fingers briefly squeezed hard, pinching.

  Chase snorted and pulled her arm from his neck. “You’re right, hon,” he said mildly. But as he turned away, he rolled his eyes and grimaced for the men to show his annoyance with his nagging wife.

  Dread pulled aside the tent flap and ducked inside. They all followed, clustering in the center to keep from rubbing their heads on the slanted canvas overhead.

  Along the sides of the tent were folding tables. Each featured an array of rifles and pistols and other related paraphernalia: scopes and silencers and night vision goggles. A man with a black goatee and a complicated Celtic tattoo on his right forearm observed them from a chair at the other end of the tent.

  Dread moved toward him. The man rose to shake hands and slap shoulders, saying simply, “Dread.”

  Next Randy stepped forward to shake hands with the stranger, and then Joanne and Marshall. The guy acknowledged each in turn. “Randy, you old skunk.” “Joanne, lovely as usual.” “Marshall.”

  Dread introduced Chase and Nicole. “Charlie, Nikki, this here is Ryder, my main man in the desert.”

  Ryder eyed them, saying nothing.

  “Ryder,” Dread continued, “Nikki here might look like a sweet flower, but she’s one of the best damn shots you’ve ever seen. And Charlie can match her bullet for bullet.”

  Chase nodded at Ryder. “Hey.” The guy’s flat gaze reminded him of a snake waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

  “What’s up with the tent, man?” Chase asked. “I thought everything was easy in Arizona.” The state had practically no laws about purchasing or carrying weapons.

  Ryder continued to stare silently at Chase and Nicole, as if trying to remember if he’d seen them before. The hairs on the back of Chase’s neck began to prickle.

  Marshall stepped close to Ryder. “They’re already proven. That little incident couple nights ago? At the old cockroach hotel north of Tucson?”

  “He got the light; she got the tire,” Randy threw in. “A couple bales of grass went up, but we got away with a big haul—dope, booze, and moola.”

  Finally, Ryder blinked. “Heard about that. Glad to meet you.” He stepped toward them with his hand outstretched. “We got plans to intercept a whole load of cucarachas coming across any day now. Or I should say any night. Roaches always travel in the dark.”

  “That sounds entertaining.” Nicole rubbed her hands together. “Is it going to be just us, or is there going to be a big party?”

  Nobody said anything for a long moment, and Chase wondered if the question sounded suspicious to the others. To fill the void, he said, “Big, small, I don’t give a shit. I’m tired of sitting on my hands; I’m itching for some action.”

  Ryder nodded. “There will be.” He turned to Dread. “How many boxes of ammo you lookin’ for?”

  Thank God the guy didn’t say the big event was going to take place tonight. There was no way in hell he and Nicole were ready for action. They had to maneuver their way to a hotel tonight, someplace with privacy, an Internet connection, and a public phone. Everything was too nebulous; they had to swap info with the SAC and nail down some sort of plan. And he had to find out what was going on with Summer.

  “Charlie, check out this Kimber.” Nikki thrust a pistol in his direction.

  He took the weapon from her and turned it over in his hands, feeling the weight, aware of the other men watching him. “Sweet.”

  “This is even sweeter.” Ryder flicked back a beach towel at his elbow to reveal a fully automatic rifle.

  * * * * *

  Sam walked from the Municipio building back to the harbor, her anxiety growing with each step. She understood how a diver might have found her earring near the rocks where she discovered Dan’s body, but why was it bagged with that dive knife? Had Dan lost his knife in the same area? Or did the knife belong to Dan’s killer? She wanted that earring back. She had a bad, bad feeling about everything that happened at the police station. But what the hell could she do about it?

  On the corner ahead she spotted the police officer who had finger-wagged her for taking a photo. He watched as she passed, and she felt his gaze burning into her back as she continued down the street. She was a rabbit surrounded by coyotes and a long, long way from her safe hole. She could hardly wait to get back to Papagayo.

  Her watch told her it was a few minutes past three o’clock. According to the ship’s schedule, the passengers were on their own until eight—a night out on the town after several days in the close quarters of Papagayo. She’d have to find a water taxi to take her back to the yacht earlier so she’d have time to write and upload posts for Wilderness and Zing.

  A rumble erupted from her midsection, embarrassingly loud. She glanced at two Americans standing nearby. They politely looked away. She rubbed her stomach as it gurgled again, reminding her that she’d missed lunch. There’d be no supper on board the yacht tonight, either. At least this was a problem she could solve.

  Many of the restaurants had locked doors, and one open-air café was simply vacant. As well as her luck, her timing was lousy today: it was obviously siesta hour. She followed the melody of “Margaritaville” to a small hut surrounded by homemade stools and wooden wire-spool tables. Only one table was occupied by a couple. A neatly lettered sign advertised cerveza, Coca-Cola, and an “especial” called Pollo Ayora. She knew that cerveza was “beer” and pollo meant “chicken,” which sounded good after all the fish she’d eaten lately. She slid onto a stool in front of the only table that hosted an umbrella and a circle of shade.

  As she pulled out a notepad and pen, a teenage girl appeared beside her, a question on her face. Sam ordered cerveza and the Pollo Ayora.

  She stared at the blank lines on her notepad. Okay, Wilderness: what’s your story for tonight? She wanted to keep her two characters separate, but it would be good to tie in something with Zing’s quest for the truth about Daniel’s death. Her digital camera held photos of Darwin Station, Diego, baby tortoises, and the Puerto Ayora municipal building. You are a wildlife biologist, she reminded herself. The galápagos? Diego or the tiny tortoises. She scribbled a note—tortoises. She could write about the captive breed
ing program at Darwin Station, the threats of tortoise slaughter made during various uprisings by the local fishermen, the tortoises that had been murdered during the protests. After staring at the word for a few seconds, she added, AGAIN? She’d already done a post on tortoises. Puerto Ayora would be a better subject. She pulled out her camera and snapped a photo of the little café, and another of the bay with all the boats. Given everything that had happened to her over the last few days, the pretty scenery was starting to feel like a cheap façade. Could she write about that?

  Her beer arrived in an icy glass with a napkin, a small plate of sliced limes, and another with three tortilla chips spread with a pinkish paste. Ceviche. She lifted a chip and sniffed the pepper/onion/fish mixture. It smelled fresh enough. She grew up eating perch and catfish out of the river that ran past her grandmother’s house in Kansas. She’d cleaned plenty of fish and, after getting a close-up of the parasites that most aquatic creatures carried, she was not inclined to eat uncooked fish. Still, when in Rome or Ecuador . . . She took a bite. Delicious. Sour and oniony and . . . hot! If the lime juice hadn’t killed any worms, those peppers surely would. She washed down the rest with a swallow of beer and picked up a second chip.

  Out in the harbor, sea lions had taken over a number of small boats, using the craft as personal sunbathing platforms. Maybe Wilderness Westin should film these bullies on the way back to Papagayo. As Eduardo said, the sea lions—or sea wolves, as they were called in Spanish—were the true rulers of the Galápagos. Sam closed her eyes for a moment, giving them a rest from the blinding reflections off the water. Think. Could she tie in sea lions with Dan’s death? Frolicking sea lions had led her to his body. The tooth marks on his thigh, the sea lions tugging off his flipper . . .

  Was it possible that Dan’s death was an accident? Could a beachmaster have killed Dan? She pictured a huge bull seizing a diver by the leg, dragging him through the water until he lost his mouthpiece and . . . No. Dan’s regulator hose had been sliced through, and he had a gash on his neck and face. That wasn’t the work of a sea lion. The officers had acted surprised by her suggestion of murder, but she was reasonably certain that they were acting.

  “Pollo Ayora.” A heavy ceramic plate thunked down onto the table in front of her. Sam opened her eyes. From her apron pocket, the girl pulled a knife and fork rolled into another paper napkin, and placed them beside the plate.

  Steam rose from a chicken quarter stewed in tomatoes, cilantro, pineapple, and onions. A pile of brown rice occupied the other side of the plate. Sam ordered another beer and dug in. “Delicioso,” she announced when the child brought the second beer. She was pretty sure that was a Spanish word. It must have been, because the girl repeated it loudly to her mother behind the stove.

  As she ate, she mulled over her ideas for her blog posts. Wilderness Westin hadn’t written anything about Dan yet—that had been Zing. Zing had reported on shark finning and other illegal fishing, then on longline fishing and the dead albatross, and Zing did the chat session about Dan’s death. So Wilderness had better write about Puerto Ayora and leave Dan’s death for Zing.

  Did Wilderness dare write about the Navy and the Ecuadorian government and Darwin Station and the Park Service; the way the whole system worked? That might be interesting as a blog post, but it would hardly persuade the authorities to help her. She couldn’t forget that knife with her earring at the police station. What were the fiscalia doing? Who were they listening to? Crap. She’d fallen into a snake pit. How was she supposed to tell the vipers from the harmless look-alikes?

  A stool scraped the concrete floor as the tourist couple left their table. They left behind a newspaper, and Sam jumped up to grab it. What she wouldn’t give for The New York Times right now.

  No such luck—the headlines were in Spanish. Gazeta Galápagos. The local rag. The front page featured a photo of two men in Galápagos Park Service uniforms; they looked as if they might be father and son. She couldn’t make out the story. Another photo showed a brush fire eating up the vegetation around a beach. The biggest headline contained the words cientista and muerto. A dead scientist—that had to be about Dan. She tucked the paper into her day pack so she could study it later with dictionary in hand.

  A shadow fell across her arm. She swiveled to look at the young man who had taken the stool at the table beside hers. She felt the blood drain out of her face as she recognized Black Tank Top from Darwin Station. Her own twin reflections stared back at her from his sunglasses.

  He raised his beer glass in a salute, his neatly trimmed mustache parting to reveal white teeth. A tiny designer label—PCB—was etched in gold on his sunglasses where the earpiece joined the right lens. Just like the glasses worn by the hostile boat driver, Ricardo Diaz.

  “Wilderness Westin?” Black Tank Top stood up and walked close, looming over her, blocking her view of the harbor.

  A thrill of fear spilled down her backbone. Should she grab her pack and leave? But where would she go?

  He stuck out his right hand and said, “Carlos Santos. I’m glad to meet you.”

  She exhaled with relief. He wasn’t a killer stalking her. But she wasn’t accustomed to meeting fans in person. And she certainly wasn’t used to strangers identifying her on sight. Somewhat reluctantly, she said hello and placed her fingers in his. His grip was hard and dry. Calluses roughened his palm. That hand didn’t spend all its time at a desk or at a computer keyboard. When he released her fingers, she resisted the urge to massage out the cramp he’d squeezed in.

  Using his index finger, he snagged the nosepiece of his sunglasses and slid them down his nose. The irises of his eyes were such a dark brown that she had to look hard to distinguish his pupils. He smiled, and a few crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. Carlos Santos was a very handsome man.

  “May I join you?” He slid onto the stool across from her, plunking his beer onto the table. “You are Wilderness Westin, aren’t you?” His accent was heavy, but his use of contractions and inflection proved he’d spoken English for a while.

  “I’m Westin,” she confirmed.

  “I’m sorry for the loss of your colleague, Dr. Kazaki,” he said.

  Her throat tightened. “Thank you.” That always struck her as an odd way to respond, but she was well trained from her youth as a pastor’s daughter.

  His gaze flitted around the café. “Where’s Zing?”

  “Zing isn’t here.”

  “You were together at the hotel.”

  Hotel? She stared at him in confusion. She’d only been in one hotel today, and she’d been the only visitor there at the time. “You mean Hotel Aurora?”

  He nodded.

  He had to be referring to when she and Dan had stayed there. But she hadn’t even known what Zing looked like then. When she first heard the name of her alter ego, Sam had pictured Zing as an Asian anime type, not a brazen red-haired dive diva.

  Abruptly, the scenario clicked into place in her head. Santos had seen the red-haired Scandinavian tourist return Sam’s sunglasses. That woman had long red hair and was pretty. Maybe she had looked like Zing. Santos must have been the newspaper guy in the lobby.

  This was creepy. How long had he been tracking her?

  She shook her head. “You’re mistaken. I haven’t seen Zing since I arrived.”

  Santos peered over his sunglasses, narrowing his eyes. “Where is Zing now?”

  Sam tried diversion. “I’m surprised that people here read Out There.”

  He pulled off his sunglasses, placed them on the table, and smiled again. “We’re not all hicks. There are many computers here in the Galápagos. It’s one world now with the Internet.”

  Great. Just what she needed. Another Galapagüeño keeping track of her. “You speak English well,” she told him.

  “I worked in L.A. for three years. I have a brother there.”

  “Ah.” Snap out of it, she chided herself. You’re a reporter: here’s your chance to get the straight scoop from a local. She
leaned forward. “So, you live here in Puerto Ayora?”

  “Villamil. There is a ferry.”

  Her throat tightened. Villamil? Was he a fisherman who followed Out There? Then he had no doubt seen her stories about illegal fishing. Correction: Zing’s stories. Shit. She wasn’t cut out for this undercover crap. Her expression would give her away any second now. She took another swallow of beer, and decided that Wilderness should play dumb. “I didn’t know there was a ferry.”

  “It runs every day.” He wiped down his mustache with a finger. “Where is Zing staying?”

  Thank God Out There made her write under that stupid pseudonym. “I don’t know where she is right now,” she told him. Actually, I’ve never laid eyes on her. She suddenly felt like giggling and pressed her lips together to stifle the urge.

  He put his elbows on the spool table. “Can you give Zing a message?”

  “A message from Carlos Santos?”

  “From the fishermen of Galápagos.”

  Her stomach did a flip-flop. “You represent all the fishermen?”

  “Yes.” He flashed her another handsome smile. “When will you see her?”

  She used her fingertip to draw a zigzag design down the side of her beer glass. “I don’t know. I can send her an email message,” she offered. She looked up and returned his smile. “But then, so can you. Just use the link on Out There.” Maybe he’d already sent one of those threatening comments.

  “No email,” he said enigmatically.

  What did that mean? That he didn’t have email or that he didn’t want to leave a computer trail? She was afraid for Wilderness Westin to seem too curious. “What’s the message?”

  “Tell her she’s got it wrong.” As he turned his head, sunlight glinted from a large diamond stud in his left earlobe. Fishing must pay well here.

  “I don’t understand.” Sam swirled the remaining beer in her glass. “What does Zing have wrong?”

  “Tell her there’s nothing illegal about fishing in the reserve. Fishing boats are licensed; we are allowed to fish for our families. I eat shark, and so do many Galapagüeños.”