Greasing the Piñata (17 page)
Sally kept her eyes open as she slipped under water.
The bath was long and deep, almost as wide as a jacuzzi and set into the floor of her loft. Some women took baths to wash away their stress in a miasma of bubbles, but Sally preferred to drown her sorrows by not breathing.
There is a legend in China about a drowning man that sees his future instead of his past. So instead of having his life flash before his eyes, he sees his life as it might have been—if only he had not fallen in the water. If only he had made different choices in life. But like so many Chinese fables, it ends tragically when the man realizes he is dying and will never have the future that the water reveals. There is a moral to the story but no happy ending.
Sally almost drowned when she was barely eight years old. Her school in Hong Kong had a series of interconnected pools that were used to train the girls to swim. Sally’s instructor camouflaged one of the tunnels between the pools and she almost lost consciousness before she found an opening.
At that moment, when there was no more air left in her lungs, Sally had seen her parents as if they were still alive. Smiling as if they had never been murdered by the
yakuza
. As if they were still a part of her life. Whenever Sally took a bath she would submerge until she saw spots, sometimes until she had visions. Occasionally she saw her parents, but often she saw only bubbles straining toward the water’s surface.
Tonight she lay at the bottom of the tub, her eyes open as she slowly let the air out of her lungs. The water was calm but her hair had come loose, flowing sinuously around her as she stared at the surface of the water. She blinked and focused her energy, slowing her heartbeat as the last bubble escaped her lips.
Sally blinked again as the spots appeared around the edges of her vision. She kept her body still but the water was lapping against the edges of the bath as if a tide was pulling on her. It almost felt as if she had fallen into the sea.
The water grew cold as Sally’s hair flowed like seaweed around her face, covering her eyes and turning everything black.
Luis Cordon stroked the glass of the tank as the jellyfish passed by and wished he could go swimming.
The jellyfish was the size of a dinner plate, but it had plenty of room. The tank had been custom-built into the wall, over ten feet high and twenty wide. Thousands of gallons of seawater trapped behind three inches of glass, big enough to hold a microcosm of the ocean he loved so much. Fish of every conceivable shape and color swam past, bottom feeders and rays, even reef sharks. Some of them deadly, others merely hostile, like the jellyfish.
He almost didn’t notice when Enrique came through the door, but his lieutenant coughed to make his presence known. Sneaking up on Luis Cordon was not a big idea.
Cordon gestured at the jellyfish, its tentacles trailing four feet behind the bulbous head.
“What do you think of my newest pet?”
“Very nice.” Enrique had a talent for keeping his real opinions to himself, one of the many reasons he had survived this long.
“Do you know these are foreign to Mexico? This is a spotted jellyfish, from Australia.”
Enrique stepped closer to the tank, studied the diaphanous membrane of the creature. “How did you transport it?”
“It came to me.” Cordon smiled, the beveled glass reflecting genuine affection. “A few years ago these beautiful animals—
Phyllorhiza punctata
—invaded the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists were baffled. They believed the creatures too fragile, too passive to make such a journey. But the spotted jellyfish followed their instincts and came here, where the water is warm.”
“And the fish are plentiful?” Enrique always tried to be helpful.
“Exactly.” Cordon rubbed his hands together. “In Australian waters things are very competitive, and these jellyfish only grew the size of a man’s fist.” Cordon clenched his right hand and held it aloft. “But here, in Mexico, they became monsters. Some have grown as big as
hula hoops
.”
Enrique tried to look impressed.
“The oceans are changing, amigo.” Cordon took a deep breath. “The planet grows warm, the ice melts, currents change. Animals are forced to adapt—and you know which ones thrive, Enrique?”
“No.”
“The creatures that bring pain and death.” Cordon looked chagrined. “I wish it were not the case, but the climate is not something we can control, though many would disagree with me on that point.”
Enrique didn’t disagree.
“And as our planet becomes hostile, only the dangerous will survive.”
Cordon stroked the glass as the tentacles brushed it from the other side, as if visiting a soul mate in prison.
Enrique clasped his hands behind his back and waited until the moment passed. “They are ready for you outside.”
Cordon followed Enrique down a long hallway, the walls made from the kind of rough stone seen in castles more than a century ago. Every few feet another glass tank appeared on either side of the hall, some filled with water, others filled with rocks and sand. Piranha glared from behind tinted glass, their razor teeth too numerous to count. Gila monsters hissed at their reflections as they scampered over pitted rocks. Tarantulas crawled over each other in a tangle of hairy limbs.
Enrique took a deep breath once they were outside, the sun blinding but also healing after the dank feeling inside the mansion. He would never tell his boss, but Enrique was slightly claustrophobic. He opened his eyes wide until they started to water.
Cordon squinted against the glare at his ruined front yard and nodded his approval.
A trench had been dug around the circumference of the property, fifteen feet wide and ten deep. The native soil had been removed, and huge mounds of loose sand lined the edges of the pit, positioned to fill the newly constructed moat.
More than a dozen men worked hurriedly at the bottom of the hole, connecting long pieces of plastic PVC pipe together, the kind used for plumbing projects. Tree-like configurations of the tubing lined the trench where the workers had finished. Even from the front door, standing above the hole, Cordon could see tiny holes drilled along the lengths of pipe.
Every ten feet a giant metal canister sat at the bottom of the pit, leaning against the wall closest to the house, a valve near the base connected to one of the plastic trees. Each tank displayed a warning label with a drawing of an exploding circle, looking almost like a cartoon bomb, the hazard symbol for
contents under pressure
.
“You’re sure this will work?”
Enrique nodded. “We tested it on a smaller scale. Three times.”
“What happens next?”
“They connect the pipes to the air tanks, we run a switch to the house, and that’s it. Then we line the walkway with bricks.”
“That is all?” Cordon sounded like a disappointed parent.
“It is what we discussed,” Enrique said in a measured tone. “It is a good plan.”
“I suppose.”
“You have another suggestion?”
“I wish it were water, and not sand.” Cordon frowned.
“Not practical.”
“I know.” Cordon put a hand on Enrique’s shoulder and squeezed. “Tell them to keep working, but don’t pour the sand yet. I have an idea.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.” Cordon turned and reached for the door. “Come inside when you’re done. I have something in one of my tanks that might just be the missing ingredient.”
Enrique waited until his boss had left, then he turned his face skyward, staring at the sun until his eyes watered and tears streamed down his cheeks.
Rebecca was straddling him, her hair falling across his face as she leaned forward. Her hair was wet and tangled, heavy and cold against his skin.
Cape tried to brush it away but Rebecca snapped her head sharply to the right, her hair whipping across his face. He cried out as she swung her head the other way, a maniacal gleam in her eye, hair slapping hard enough to draw blood. Cape felt it running down his cheek and tasted salt.
The black water surged in a cruel wave and slapped Cape hard enough to wake him. His eyes fluttered as the nightmare of Rebecca dissolved in a spray of sea foam.
He was lifted, then dropped, every surge of current pulling him farther into the bay. He tasted blood and almost blacked again out as he fought the urge to vomit.
Moonlight revealed his car trapped by the wreckage of the pier, trunk pointing skyward. It was growing smaller with every swell of the tide as Cape drifted away from shore.
He couldn’t feel his legs, already numb from the cold, until he started kicking. The effort brought spots to his eyes as a sharp pain shot across his forehead and down his neck. His arms felt like lead weights.
He gagged and spit as a wave covered him, then he put his head down and started to swim. Five strokes, ten. Twenty. He raised his head and tried to find his car.
It was even smaller now.
Cape heard blood rushing through his ears, the sound of his own gasping breaths, and knew he wasn’t going to make it.
He let the current take him and angled toward the bridge, realizing the direct approach would only take him to the bottom of the bay. He forced his head under and swam.
The car was to his left now, but the retaining wall and the road were closer. With each agonizing stroke, he was moving in the right direction. He could see the steps leading from The Embarcadero to the water’s edge.
He could barely feel his arms. The edges of his vision were turning black and narrowing with every stroke. He swallowed more water and kept swimming.
White light exploded behind his eyes as his head slammed into something impossibly hard. Cape blinked away stars and felt his right hand scrape against stone, skin tearing off knuckles.
He had swum headfirst into the steps. The tide sucked at his legs and pulled him back into the water. Cape kicked frantically and used his elbows to climb the first step, then the second. He shoved his chin onto the third step and wrapped his arms around the rough stone like a mother clutching her child.
A rogue wave crashed and pulled him down, banging his head against the lower step. Cape felt a surge of bile deep in his throat as he clutched at the stairway. He felt his legs dangling in the water, tugged by the relentless tide, and he wondered if he could hold on if he lost consciousness.
Then he blacked out.
An hour later two joggers saw him, half in the water and half out. Neither wanted to touch him, so they called the police to say they’d just found a dead body near one of the abandoned piers. Then they ran away just as the tide started to come in.
Cape was sinking into the abyss. Bubbles raced for the surface as he plummeted toward the bottom.
But the deeper he sank, the brighter it became, the darkness collapsing into a single black circle at the center of his vision.
“He’s awake.” Beau’s features swam into focus.
Cape squinted against the glare of fluorescent lights. “Your face is a black circle at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Even delirious the man’s a poet.” Beau smiled at the nurse standing at the edge of the bed, a stern-looking woman in her fifties with hair the color of iron. She stepped to the bed and roughly lifted Cape’s right eyelid with her thumb and shined a penlight directly at his pupil. Despite his squirming she managed to repeat the procedure with his left eye.
She shot Beau a warning glance.
“I’m going to call the doctor.”
Beau nodded. “How long till he stops by, ma’am?”
The
ma’am
softened her a bit. “Probably ten minutes. How much time do you need, young man?”
“Thirty?”
She shook her head. “Fifteen.”
“Deal.”
After she’d left Cape rotated his head in Beau’s direction. The pillow felt like a waffle iron. He tentatively raised his right hand and felt bandages encircling his forehead.
“My car—”
“
Blub…blub…blub…
” Beau pinched his nose. “Was a piece of shit anyway.”
“It was vintage.”
“You mean old.”
Cape tried to sit up but couldn’t. He felt faint. “I feel like I’m still drowning.”
“Remember what I said about swimming? I take it all back—doctor said you were lucky to be alive.”
“What else did he say?”
“Called you an idiot for falling into the bay in the first place. Only drunks and tourists pull that shit.”
“What did you say in my defense?”
“Told him you were a tourist from New Jersey who’d had too many Mai Tais.”
“I don’t drink Mai Tais.”
“You’re missing the point.” Beau moved his chair closer to the bed. “Nobody knows you’re here, other than the hospital staff. No one knows you’re alive.”
“How long have I been here?”
Beau ignored the question. “I take it this wasn’t a case of you talking on a cell phone or changing the radio station when you should’ve been watching the road.”
Cape told him about the brakes, the car in the rearview mirror.
Beau frowned. “You sure it was the same car?”
“No.” Cape rubbed the back of his neck, which hurt about as much as the rest of him. “Didn’t see the driver, either. But my brakes didn’t just stop working.”
“On that car, don’t be so sure—it’s not like they made anti-lock brakes or warning lights when that
vintage
automobile was coming off the assembly line.”
“What are the odds?”
“I hear you, but fucking with a man’s car isn’t Frank Alessi’s style. He favors the direct approach.”
“Bullet to the back of the head?”
“And
then
a swim in the bay—we’ve found more than one of his rivals washed up on Baker Beach. Still, I won’t argue that you managed to piss somebody off.”
“You want a list?”
“It might have just gotten longer.” Beau reached behind his chair and grabbed several newspapers, which he tossed onto Cape’s lap. “The story broke.”
The headlines said it all.
State Senator Dies With Son. Senator And Son Murdered In Mexico. Former Senator Eaten Alive And Found Dead.
The story was every newspaper’s dream: gory, sensational, and unexplained. Who needed news when you could get circulation?
“The cat’s out of the bag,” said Cape.
“And it’s big and furry.” Beau grabbed the top paper and flipped to an inside page where the cover story had been continued. He jabbed his index finger right above the fold where a short paragraph described the family history of the late Senator Dobbins: his deceased wife, his son Danny who died with him, and his daughter, Rebecca. “Your client is on the radar.”
“Shit.” Cape’s head felt like it was about to implode. “Her phone must be ringing off the hook.”
“Maybe, but she’s not answering.”
“Would you?”
“No way, but I called anyway, wanted to let her know what was happening with you. Left a message. She still staying at her Dad’s?”
Cape nodded. “As far as I know—I’ll go over there.” He tried to sit up but only managed to scoot a few inches higher on the pillow.
“Maybe in a day or two.”
Cape suddenly had a sick feeling in his gut as he remembered the question Beau hadn’t answered. He looked toward the window. No light was coming through the blinds.
“How long have I been here?”
“Almost twenty-four hours. They found you close to midnight.” Beau watched him carefully. “You lost a day.”
Cape twisted his neck and confirmed there was a phone next to his bed before taking a deep breath and shoving hard against the mattress. He managed to sit up just as the room started to spin. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and closed his eyes, Beau watching him with a look of bemused skepticism.
There was a knock at the door, the perfunctory
tap-tap
of a doctor already on his way in. Cape looked up to see a young doctor with wire-frame glasses and short black hair, flanked by the iron nurse. He gave them a wave and tested his legs on the cold tile floor, then took a tentative step forward.
The room did a somersault. The nurse cried out. Beau started to laugh.
And Cape passed out right before his ass hit the floor.