“You’re no fun anymore.”
“Just stay here and try not to look like you’re gonna go nuclear on someone. Just relax and let me ask around about the La Bonita. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I liked our odds. According to Joe Fossil of the California Fish and Game, Ensenada was the hot-bed for shark fin trafficking in this area. The Gulf of Mexico had an even bigger market, which was hard for me to fathom as I looked upon the rows and rows of inexpertly chopped-up fins.
The La Bonita had to sell its fins somewhere, and this was the closest place to do it. Perhaps there was another shark market in town, but it was hard to imagine a bigger one than this.
Like I said, I liked our odds.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sanchez talking with some people. He then moved on and talked to someone else. I stopped in front of a handsome young man who was watching me suspiciously. I pointed to the fins and asked him how much. He said something in Spanish. I know a little Spanish. And I know how to count fairly high in Spanish, too. The number he quoted me sounded suspiciously in the thousands and thousands of dollars.
Sweet Jesus.
The sharks didn’t stand a chance. Not with numbers that high.
No wonder these guards are packing heat. There was a fucking fortune up here.
Sanchez came back. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t ask any questions. When one is undercover in a highly illegal environment and one’s partner says “let’s go,” you go. No questions asked.
We were down the stairs and moving quickly toward the nearby docks when Sanchez finally spoke. “It was getting dicey up there.”
“Too many questions?”
He nodded. “That’s right. But I did learn one thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Where most of the shark hunters dock their boats.”
“And where’s that?”
He pointed toward the marina in front of us. “Dead ahead, matey.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
As far as I could tell, we hadn’t been followed.
Here, the docks looked old, and there wasn’t a single Corona sign to be had anywhere. I decided to keep this last observation to myself.
As late afternoon faded into evening, it was hard to get a feel for the place, but my perception was that this was a forgotten stretch of marina. Maybe it was a carefully cultivated look. Forgotten and ignored were helpful to those in the illicit trade of shark fins. Or the illicit trade of anything else, too.
Seemingly forgotten boats that didn’t look entirely seaworthy bobbed and rocked near piers that looked shaky at best. Other boats were docked around the sturdier perimeter of the marina itself, which seemed like a better idea. Old boats were piled around the dock, some literally on top of others. More than anything, a heavy stink filled the air. A combination of rotting fish, rotting boats and rotting humanity.
“You know what this boat looks like, right?” asked Sanchez.
“I know,” I said, and described the forty-foot vessel that had been clearly modified to easily accommodate shark hunting. Such as, a removable bulwark where the hunters could haul up their catch and pull it easily onto the deck. I recalled the fisherman discarding the bleeding, dying hammerhead. They had simply pushed it off the boat.
“Not to mention it says La Bonita on the stern,” said Sanchez.
“That too,” I said.
We split up, each covering one side of the decrepit marina, which was separated by about three long piers, all of which had listing boats tethered to them. Trash and other flotsam huddled around the foaming waterline. I would be shocked if anything was alive within two hundred square yards of this cesspool.
After my perimeter sweep turned up nothing, I headed out onto the first floating dock. I sidestepped rotting fish and fish guts and other organic material that could have been anything. Human brain? Hard to know. I powered through the seagull crap since there was really no way of avoiding it.
I examined every boat, dismissing only those that were clearly too small or big. I felt like Goldilocks...looking for the one that was just right. Goldilocks, of course, didn’t have shoulders wide enough to swing from.
I read many a stern. Most were written in Spanish, although a few were in English. None said La Bonita.
I continued on to the second floating pier. Sanchez, I saw, was still working his way down the pier closest to his side. Slacker. Water slapped the floating bridge, which swayed under my feet and created a general state of nausea in my stomach. Either that or I had eaten a bad batch of corn chips and salsa.
I continued on, pushing through the nausea and the seagull crap, dismissing boat after boat until a sound reached me.
I paused, listening hard.
There it was again.
The whining of a dog. Stray dogs in Mexico are nothing new. Stray dogs whining several hundred feet out on a pier was something else entirely.
I picked up my pace, following the sound. And the closer I got to it, the more emphatic the whining got. Someone shouted at the dog and the whining briefly stopped.
Now I was running, feet pounding on the wobbling pier, which juked and jived with each step. My nausea was long forgotten. The pain in my bad leg was alarming. On the pier next to me, in my peripheral vision, I saw Sanchez turn toward me. Peripheral because I had to keep my eyes focused on the narrow pier. Wouldn’t do to take a wrong step and dive into the filthy muck. Without looking at him, I waved him over. Emphatically.
He must have gotten the hint because he disappeared out of my vision. I picked up my pace.
And there it was, just a few feet away. Son-of-a-bitch.
It had to be it. The length and general size felt right, and the name on the stern said it all. La Bonita.
The whining turned to yelping.
Another shout, followed by the stomping of feet going up a wooden flight of stairs. The boat shook with each step. I leaped from the pier, over the bulwark and landed awkwardly on the deck, my bad leg nearly giving out.
And what I found there, I would never forget.
Ever.
Chapter Twenty-nine
A man appeared from the lower cabin.
The man, who hadn’t looked very happy to start with, blinked once. His mouth dropped open. He looked utterly perplexed to see a massive Caucasian standing in his boat. His perplexity might have been comical if he hadn’t been holding a very long carving knife.
I couldn’t tell if he was the same guy who’d sported the neat part down the center of his head—since this guy’s hair was in current disarray—but if I was a betting man, I would bet that he was.
Just as his shock turned to rage, he launched himself out of the lower cabin, bringing the knife up in a gutting motion. Unlike the helpless sharks he was used to carving up, I could fight back.