“On the beach or on the mountain?”
Those hills looked like the ones above my head. Hardly mountains. “I’d like the beach.”
“You look like a beach guy,” she said, as if that were the most peachy thing she’d ever heard. “This one’s available.” She pointed to an end unit near the harbor, quoted me a price, and told me what I would get for the money.
“Sounds like a good deal,” I said. And it did. Almost too good. “When would it be ready?”
“Construction is going on now. We’re dredging the harbor first.” She flicked her lovely dark eyes toward the boom of a huge dredging barge looming in the middle of a lagoon behind us. There didn’t appear to be much activity.
“Once that is finished, we will start the roads and the infrastructure.”
“And how long will it take for construction?”
“About six months,” she said.
It would take six months just to dredge a harbor the size of the one in the model. And that was if people were working. I looked outside. No one appeared to be there.
“Can I take a look around?”
“No. I am sorry. It’s a construction site. Too dangerous.”
“Okay. Do you have anything else to show me?”
“No. I am sorry. We shall be building the models soon. Perhaps you would like to come back?”
“Perhaps. Do you have a card?”
“Certainly, Mister …”
“Caine. John Caine. I’m just visiting, but I’d love to see it when it’s complete.”
She handed me a business card, but suddenly something in her manner turned ice-cold, like the mention of my name flicked her off like a switch. She knew my name. She’d heard it before.
“Thank you. Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Caine, I have some other appointments.”
I looked around the sales office. It was vacant, but for the two of us.
“Okay, Ms. Garcia,” I said.
“Gonzales.”
“I beg your pardon.” I looked at the card she had given me. It read Elena Gonzales, Sales Manager. “I can’t read all that well without my glasses. I could have sworn it said Garcia.”
“No,” she said, carefully enunciating each word. “It doesn’t. My name is Gonzales.”
“Well, then, thank you.”
“Have a nice day,” she said. She didn’t say it like she meant that, either.
I climbed back into the Range Rover and drove down the sandy road through some scrub trees and brush to a padlocked chain-link gate. The lock was rusty. So was the fence, which extended in both directions and appeared to enclose the entire harbor. What I could see of the dredging machine looked rusted and ill-used.
I turned around and headed back toward the Ensenada-Tijuana Highway. As I passed the big window of the sales office, I saw her at her desk. She was on the phone, speaking passionately, her free hand a closed fist.
31
An hour later I was ten feet down off the top of the ridge, just south of the harbor, lying in damp nettled scrub watching the activity below. There wasn’t any.
The dredging machine floated on pontoon barges in the middle of a lagoon. Two areas of sandy beach on the north shore appeared to have been dredged a long time ago. New foliage grew along the edge of the sandpiles.
The lagoon, a shallow bay at the end of a long, wide river canyon with two black mesas off to the east, was one of those natural, brackish backwaters that exist at regular intervals along the California coast. Even though we are two countries, the geography has been here longer than the political entities and knows no boundaries. Geologically, the northern end of Baja California is identical to the southern end of California. This place could have been Carlsbad or Encinitas, or Malibu.
Tall stands of grass and reeds bordered the edges of the lagoon. Beyond that, the sand dunes went on up the beach for miles, disappearing into the coastal mist. Bare postage-stamp concrete slabs, nearly covered by encroaching dunes, sat back from the water. They were old, still bearing the pattern of vinyl asbestos tile, the remains of a fish camp. That and the ancient dredging machine were the only evidence of human habitation. Tall birds, snowy white egrets with long, graceful necks, waded in the shallows. Seagulls swooped in and out, going about their business in their loud, frenetic way.
A pleasant breeze flowed down from the mountains through the canyon. The sun felt warm against my back. I had the same feeling that Brigham Young must have had when he first saw the basin of the Great Salt Lake. This is the place.
When I was certain the place was deserted, I began moving down the hillside. Mindful of the sign at the border, I had no weapon other than my Buck knife. Aware of the existence of young men armed with submachine guns, I moved cautiously, the way they’d trained me so long ago. I didn’t like the odds. And didn’t old Sun-tzu say the best way to win a war is not to fight one in the first place? Having participated in more than a few wars myself, I was a firm believer in that kind of sentiment.
If only they would let me.
It took me half an hour to descend the hill in stealth. No one accosted me. Besides the birds, the only living thing I saw was a ground squirrel that stared at me briefly and fled chittering into the underbrush. When I reached the sandy dunes, I moved faster through the ravines, keeping my head below the ridge tops.
Up close, the old dredging machine looked even worse, covered with rust, missing cables and secondary booms, derelict. A vacant space existed where the engine should have been, the whole thing, as I suspected, a prop for the sales office back at the road.
I visited the concrete slabs. Partially covered by intruding sand, they were old, rusting anchor bolts protruding every foot or so, stained and chipped from decades of hard use. Once upon a time the place had been a fish camp. Someone must have purchased the property and torn down the shacks and built the sales office. They may even have had excellent intentions at first. But the enterprise somehow degenerated into a scam, just another way of extracting another Yankee dollar.
Was this all it was? Did Paul Peters sacrifice his company, and his marriage, and even his life, for this?
The lagoon was lovely with the bright, clear sky reflecting off its surface. From here the hills above did, indeed, look like mountains from the shore. Over the sand spit, the big blue Pacific Ocean stretched to infinity. The breeze I had felt on the hill also eddied across the lagoon, ruffling my hair. Although I preferred it the way it was, I could picture the possibilities. And I could see how someone could become addicted to the idea, especially when Lorena Garcia (or was it Elena Gonzales?) turned on the sexual heat. Add steamy sex to a beautiful setting and you might have a winner.
But that didn’t answer the basic question. Peters was smart enough to have balanced an affair with his business and his marriage if that was what he wanted. He could have had it all. The sad truth is that many men do it. Why would he throw away everything, even to the extent of looting his personal and corporate accounts? His were the actions of hate, not love. He could not have ruined the people he loved any more thoroughly if that had been his stated intent.
The recent rains had washed the sand away from a corner of one of the slabs and I sat on it to think about the problem. After all those days under cold gray skies, the sun felt good on my face. I picked up some sand and ran it between my fingers.
Unless one is hopelessly mentally ill, there is logic to everyone’s actions. That’s the premise I was forced to use, but I couldn’t see the logic here. If I knew the reason Paul Peters did what he did, I might deduce the wheres and the hows. I had the feeling I was in the middle of the answer, yet it somehow eluded me.
I felt I was pushing my luck, sitting out in the open. The peacefulness of the locale had lulled me into a false sense of security. I stood and started toward the ocean. Something solid just below the sand caught my toe and I sprawled across the old slab.
I got up on all fours and brushed the sand from whatever it was I’d tripped over. It was another slab, buried more deeply tha
n the others, near the surface only because the sand had been washed away by the recent heavy rains. I brushed more sand away. It was newer, inexpertly finished. Why, I wondered, would anyone put a slab there, then bury it?
I removed my jacket and cleaned off the cement until I had an outline. It looked like a cap slab, about four feet wide by five feet long, recently poured, the concrete still curing. The other slabs were more than fifty years old, but this one didn’t belong.
It could have been a grave, but I tended to doubt it.
Then I knew.
I covered the slab again and took some reeds and brushed my handprints away. They would be gone in a day or so, anyway. This beach sand had the consistency of sugar and didn’t accept much of an impression.
When I’d hidden the slab to my satisfaction, I retreated along my original route. I watched the Range Rover from cover to make sure there was no sign of anyone near it, not approaching until I was certain. Then I drove back to the highway and headed south.
In fifteen minutes I reached Ensenada. It took me another half hour to find a store that sold the tools I wanted. Within an hour, I was back at the beach.
Stripped to the waist, I worked for two solid hours. Even though the concrete was green and relatively soft, concrete is still concrete, and using hand tools is not the easiest way to get through twelve inches of the stuff. I was just thankful there were no rebars or mesh in the mix.
By the time I’d broken through, the sun was angled in the west, and I put my shirt and jacket back on, chilled by the cold wind that swept in off the sea.
Two metal footlockers, heavy and sodden, lay like buried treasure beneath the sand. I dragged them out, one by one, and carted them a hundred yards into the dunes and reburied them. The sun was nearly set by the time I finished, giving me only one last chance to triangulate the location with nearby monuments.
For added insurance, I paced off the position in two directions. The boxes were metal. If I couldn’t remember, at least I could use a detector to find them. They were heavy, and had a lot of mass. It wouldn’t be too difficult.
In the meantime, I was the only one in the world who knew where they were.
Satisfied, I returned to the lagoon and swept the area clean of my activity. When I finished, it was pitch-dark, and I had to feel my way up the mountain and down the other side to get to the Range Rover.
In an hour I arrived at the Otay Mesa border crossing, where a hefty young woman dressed like a forest ranger ordered me to pull into a covered area and wait until they searched the car. I was instructed not to use my cellular telephone. An armed guard watched me. I waited thirty minutes, watching the guard watching me. While I waited, I smoked one of the last of my Esplendidos.
When they did search, they opened everything, including the spare tire. Finally, they brought in a dog. When that didn’t work, an older, gray-haired border guard took me into the station, where I was strip-searched. He looked like retirement was only a few months away. His eyes had that tired, used-up look, as if they had seen everything a pair of eyes could see in one lifetime.
Two men went through my belongings. When they went through my clothing, they found my remaining Cohiba in my jacket and confiscated it.
“It is a violation of federal law, Mr. Caine,” said the gray-haired officer, “to bring products of the Republic of Cuba into this country.”
He waited for an answer. I just looked at him.
“I have the authority to confiscate your vehicle, too.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Am I,” I asked, “to be shot at dawn?”
“This is a very serious violation of the law.”
“Yeah, and John Kennedy bought twelve hundred cases of Cuban cigars just before he ordered the ban.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he said tiredly. “Get dressed, Mr. Caine. Go home.”
“Why did you do this?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t tell you, but you’ve been had. We were waiting for you. Had a tip you were carrying drugs. It came from a normally reliable source.” It was evident the gray-haired officer didn’t like his job some of the time. Nobody does, when he discovers he’s been used.
“Mexican law-enforcement officer?”
“No comment.”
“Teniente José Enrique de la Peña?”
“He has something on you?”
“I annoyed him,” I said.
“Then you better watch out. If you go back, you might just stay on that side of the border.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re the second one to give me that same advice.”
“If I were you,” said the old border guard, “I’d take it.”
32
The key to the whole mess was now in my hands and I didn’t want to waste it. It was obvious that Lorena Garcia—Elena Gonzales or whoever told de la Peña about me and he had, once again, overreacted. To me, it was good news. I’d lost a cigar, but gained a clue. It confirmed the closing of the circle.
I punched the numbers on the car phone. It was dark, but not yet five o’clock, and I hoped people would still be working.
“Esparza.”
“This is Caine, back from Mexico. Had no trouble until I got back to the good old USA.” I described my detention.
“Border weenies apologize?”
“One guy did, his way.”
“They stop us from time to time. Don’t take it personally.”
“They got a tip from a Mexican law-enforcement officer.”
“De la Peña?”
“Apparently. Customs was waiting for me. Tore my car apart. Even got strip-searched. De la Peña told them I had dope.”
“I can see why they’d want to search.”
“You find out about that address?”
“I sure did. Property’s owned by a Delaware Corporation. Stevenson and Stapleton handled the transaction. Their address was all over the paperwork at county records.”
“Thank you. You know what that means?”
“I was certain you would tell me.”
“Means Stevenson is in this.”
“In what?”
“Tomorrow. Give me until tomorrow. Then I can tell you.”
“Well, I don’t really have anything else to do right now. The president’s coming out here in a couple of weeks to press the flesh, so I’ve got eighteen or thirty Secret Service agents hanging off the edge of my desk, but that doesn’t add much to my workload, plus I’ve got sixty or seventy other major crimes I’m working. I guess I can wait until tomorrow, considering I’m not working on this as a crime in the first place.”
“Oh, it’s a crime.”
“Thanks.”
“Think of it as job security.”
“I worry about running out of things to do.”
“I’ll call you.”
“I’ll wait breathlessly.”
I’d forgotten to ask about Tyrone Crenshaw, and Esparza hadn’t volunteered the information. It would have to wait. I hung up and punched in a new set of numbers.
“Law offices of Stevenson and Stapleton. How may I direct your call?” The receptionist’s voice, quiet and peaceful like an FM classical music station announcer, had a slight British accent. I wondered if it was real.
“This is John Caine. I’d like to speak with Mr. Stevenson.”
“Would Mr. Stevenson know what this is regarding, Mr. Caine?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Our mutual client is Mrs. Claire Peters.”
“Oh, certainly. One moment, please.”
She put me on hold. I listened to Kenny Rogers for five seconds, an oldie, something from the seventies, bringing back pleasant memories that vanished when Stevenson picked up the line.
“I’ll give you thirty seconds to tell me where you’ve got Claire Peters.”
“That’s not a professional way to open a conversation betwe
en colleagues.”
“Caine! Where the hell are you?”
“Heading north on I-Five,” I said, “approaching downtown.”
“You kidnapped my client!”
“She’s hiding. You know why.”
There was silence on the line. I moved over a couple of lanes. The Balboa Park exit was getting closer.
“I’m not certain I like the implications of that remark.”
“I’m not certain I give a shit. Like ’em or don’t, it stands. I’m hiding Mrs. Peters from everyone. You, too, Joe, until I know who can be trusted and who cannot. You lied to me more than once. I’m not sure you can be trusted.”
“That suggests I might have had something to do with the break-in. Am I included in your list of suspects?”
“Don’t know. Can’t take the risk.”
There was more silence. He was thinking, digesting what I had said. The only thing he had now was my legal status. If he was involved, he’d bring that in. I took the freeway exit and went up the long, shallow grade toward Sixth Street.
“I fired you. You’re no longer on this case.”
“There’s a licensed PI working for Mrs. Peters. I’m affiliated with him.”
“I see.”
“No, Joe, you don’t. You’re missing the obvious.”
“And that is?”
“How is your ex-Treasury agent getting along? Has he found the money yet?”
“You are no longer involved. I cannot divulge information that belongs to my client. That would be unethical.”
“Claire called you yesterday. She asked the same question.”
“I refuse to discuss my client’s situation with you.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t exist. Does he exist?”
“I’m hanging up. You should find your own attorney. You’ve gone too far.”
“If you were going to hang up, you would have done it. And it’s privileged communication, Counselor. You and me. Nothing actionable about that. You hired me to find the money. I did.”
“What?”
“I found the money. Couldn’t find the husband, but I found the money.”
“You’ve got it?”
“Nope. But I know where it is.”
Sand Dollars Page 18
