Rosarito Beach (15 page)

M
ike Figgins was trying to button a sport coat he hadn't worn in a year. He turned to his partner, Patterson, and said, “Ray, can you see my gun?” He sounded like a wife asking her husband
Honey, does this dress make my ass look fat?

Patterson ignored the question. “If Hamilton finds out about this, she's going to kill us, Mike. I mean, we won't just get fired, we'll lose our pensions.”

“She's not going to find out. It's one fucking night. If we don't do this, I'm gonna kill that little Mexican bitch. I can't take any more of her whining and screaming and all the rest of her shit. This will settle her down for at least a little while, and pretty soon the lawyers will start prepping her for the trial, and that'll give us another break. Plus, I need to get out of here, too.”

“We can't drink,” alcoholic Patterson said to alcoholic Figgins. “We gotta stay sharp. You're gonna have to stay glued to that broad like you're Siamese twins.”

“Yeah, no drinking,” Figgins said, but he was thinking there was no way he could go the whole day without a drink. He'd just have to pace himself.

Fortunately, María's mother had a cold and didn't want to go. There was no landline in the house, she didn't have a cell phone, the nearest pay phone was ten miles away, and they'd be taking the only vehicle they had. Sofía would be okay.

—

A
n hour later, at ten in the morning, they all piled into the Explorer: Figgins, Patterson, and the Delgato siblings, who were acting like two kids on the last day of school.

The nearest major city to Neah Bay—and calling it a major city was a stretch—was Port Angeles, Washington, population nineteen thousand. It was eighty miles from Neah Bay. The first thing they did was have lunch at a place overlooking the ocean. Figgins and Patterson both winced when the Delgatos ordered steak and lobster and the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. The agents were personally funding this little outing, because if they charged it to their DEA credit cards, Hamilton might catch them. They had figured it would cost them each five or six hundred bucks, but as they were making so much in per diem with nowhere to spend it, they could handle the money. Now they were both thinking that maybe they'd underestimated.

Figgins and Patterson both looked at the wine bottle when it arrived. “Aw, one glass ain't gonna kill us,” Patterson said, and the four of them ended up drinking two bottles of wine.

The waiter was a handsome kid who looked like a jock and was maybe twenty-two. María's eyes followed him around the restaurant like a hunter tracking game, and when he came to their table she batted her eyes at him. At one point, gazing at the young waiter, she said, “God, I'm horny. I'd screw a—”

“Jesus, María!” her brother said, cutting her off, embarrassed she'd say something like that in front of Figgins and Patterson.

“Well, aren't you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Oh, pour me some more wine and quit acting like Mama.”

—

T
he next stop was a salon where María could get her hair cut and a manicure and a pedicure. Before they got out of the car, Figgins said to her, “I swear to Christ, María, if you start jabbering to anyone about where you're from or where you've been staying, I'm going to drag you out of this place so fuckin' fast, you'll get whiplash. You tell the hair gal you're from L.A., visiting a cousin, and then you basically keep your mouth shut. I'm going to be sitting as close to you as I can get and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” María said. “But I gotta ask where I can buy some clothes.”

“Fine. You stick to that. Where can I go shopping, take a little more off the top, that kind of shit. Because I'm telling you, María, anything you tell somebody about yourself, even the smallest thing, could come back to bite you on the ass, and by that I mean you could get killed. I'm taking a big risk with you and I'm doing you a favor, and—”

“Mike, I get it. I swear. And I appreciate what you're doing. I won't screw up.”

Before Figgins and María went into the beauty parlor, Patterson said he and Miguel were going to stretch their legs, take a little walk around the neighborhood. Patterson
never
stretched his legs. Figgins bet they were going to walk as far as the nearest bar.

—

M
iguel tried to tell María that the casino wasn't a fancy place, that most people who went there wore jeans. María said she didn't give a shit; she was dressing up. She'd been wearing baggy-assed jeans and sweatshirts for four goddamn months, and for just one night she was going to look good. She had wanted to find a Victoria's Secret but learned from the beauty parlor lady that there wasn't a Victoria's Secret in Port Angeles—or a Neiman Marcus or a Nordstrom or even a Macy's. To which Figgins said, “Thank God,” since he was paying for María's outfit.

They finally ended up at a little boutique/consignment store, where she tried on one outfit after another. Figgins figured that Harry Truman spent less time deciding if he should drop the atom bomb on Japan than it took for her to decide which dress to buy. She finally settled on a skimpy red number that stopped about three inches below her crotch, had no back, and had barely enough material to contain her tits. She looked incredible—and Mike Figgins wished that he wasn't old and fat and that every vein in his nose wasn't broken.

But the dress was a problem. María was so damn good-looking that she could have worn bib overalls and still turned heads. The way she looked in the slinky dress, every man—and every woman—in the casino was going to stare at her. Plus, the casino had cameras; some security guy who was supposed to be looking for cheaters at the blackjack tables was going to zoom right in on her.

Figgins tried to talk her into buying something a little less flashy, but she went postal on him, telling him he'd
promised
her she could buy whatever she wanted, and he finally gave in because she was starting to make a scene. The good thing about the casino was that it wasn't a big place—it wasn't the Bellagio in Vegas—and most of the people who went there were locals. People from Seattle or Tacoma usually didn't go there because there were nicer, bigger casinos closer to the major cities. And someone from San Diego or Mexico sure as hell wouldn't go there unless they just happened to be in the area for some other reason, like salmon fishing.

Figgins figured the casino would be safe enough. They'd only be in the place a couple of hours and, unless María did something totally outrageous, the people there would only remember that they saw this good-looking Hispanic woman one night and then forget about her.

At least, he hoped that was the case.

The feeling that he and Patterson were making a big mistake was starting to vibrate through him.

—

T
he casino was called 7 Cedars. It was located at a speed bump in the road called Sequim, Washington, about twenty miles from Port Angeles and a hundred miles from Neah Bay. So it was a long way from where they were hiding out with the Delgatos, but it was a lot more crowded than Figgins had expected. For one thing, it was a Friday night and some shit-kicker band was playing; it looked as if half the people on the Olympic Peninsula were in the place. Then he thought maybe it was a good thing the place was crowded. The more people there were, the less noticeable María would be.

Yeah, right.

First they had dinner and two more bottles of wine. While they were eating, María had to go to the restroom—the one place Figgins couldn't follow her—not once but twice, and on her way there she swished her ass like a hula dancer to make sure every male standing at the bar noticed her.

Then it was time to gamble. But did María pick a nice, quiet blackjack table or a slot machine way in the back? Hell, no. She had to play craps, where there were fifteen men at the table, not counting the dealers, and where everyone walking by could see her butt every time she leaned forward to throw the dice.

Figgins had told her and Miguel that they'd spot them each two hundred dollars to gamble with but when the money was gone they wouldn't get any more. Figgins figured they'd lose the money in about twenty minutes. But María didn't. Whichever god it was who allowed a few players to beat the house odds and win decided to kiss María on the head that night. She won five hundred bucks, and while she was winning, there was a lot of shrieking and shouting and high-fiving the guys standing next to her. In case anybody hadn't noticed her earlier, they did by the time she was done.

Next, María wanted to dance. Figgins and Patterson had agreed that Patterson would watch Miguel and Figgins would stick with María. Miguel behaved himself; he was one of those guys who, the more he drank, the quieter he got. He didn't want to dance. He and Patterson took a seat at a blackjack table and sat there the rest of the night. And it looked like they were winning, too. Everybody was winning but Mike Figgins. He also noticed that Patterson was now drinking Jack Daniel's.

The evening was turning into a nightmare—and it was about to get worse.

Figgins sat with María on the edge of the dance floor, close enough for the shit-kicker band to rupture his eardrums. With his thinning gray hair, his tight-fitting sport coat, his gut slopping over his belt, he knew he looked like María's grandfather. It didn't take long at all for the young guys in the crowd to figure out that she was available.

She finally locked on to some tall, dark-haired guy wearing cowboy boots and started rubbing her boobs up against him. Why she'd picked him Figgins couldn't figure until she came back to the table where Figgins was sitting and said, “I'm taking that guy out to the parking lot and fucking him. He's got a camper.”

“The hell you are!” Figgins said.

Then he noticed her eyes. Then he noticed the little smudge of white powder on her nostrils. She was higher than a kite. She'd been to the restroom half a dozen times since she'd finished playing craps; she must have used the cash she won to score coke from some gal in the ladies' room.

Figgins thought he should just take out his gun, right now, and eat it.

“The hell I'm not,” María said. “I'm getting laid tonight. If you try to stop me, I'm gonna start screaming, tell everybody you're packing heat and you're trying to kidnap me. I'll scream my fuckin' head off. Now, I'm not gonna mess up, Mike. I've told the guy I'm from L.A. and just passing through. He thinks my name is Carrie. I'll be gone about an hour. You want to come out and look through the camper window like some kind of pervert, I don't give a shit, but you're not stopping me.”

—

T
wo hours later, they were on their way back to Neah Bay. Figgins was the only one sober enough to drive, and he'd be in trouble if they got pulled over by a cop. María, Miguel, and Patterson were all passed out. Patterson was snoring like a hog, and María had a small smile on her face.

Please, please, God,
Mike Figgins prayed,
don't let this night come back and bite me on the ass.

—

S
hirley Young woke up about two in the afternoon on Saturday, about the time she normally woke up, and the first thing she did was call her supplier.

“I was over at the casino last night,” Shirley said.

“Oh, yeah,” her supplier said. He sounded like he'd just woken up himself.

“There was this gal there, this good-looking Latina who bought some blow off me.”

“Shirley, get to the fuckin' point, will you, please? I've got a hangover. Do you need more?”

“No. Remember a couple months ago when Ricky was up here from Seattle to go fishing and he talked about these hotshot Mexicans trying to find some woman? I think he gave you a picture of her. Do you still have it?”

“Hell, I don't know. I doubt it. Do you think this woman is the one you sold to?”

“I don't know. But she's the right age and Ricky said she was a friggin' knockout, which this chick was. He said the Mexicans were offering a lot of money for her, so why don't you call him, see if he's still got her picture, and have him e-mail it to me.”

M
ove it, you asshole!” Kay screamed. She didn't have a siren in her Camry, but she did have a portable cherry—a flashing red light she could stick on the roof. She was thinking about using it when she finally caught a break in the stream of cars coming her way and was able to make a left-hand turn.

She was supposed to be at a parent-teacher conference at Jessica's school—forty minutes ago. She'd tell Jessica she got stuck at the office—or maybe taking down a meth lab, as that would sound more dramatic—but the plain truth was that she'd forgotten about the conference and didn't remember it until ten minutes ago. She found Jessica sitting on a bench just inside the main entrance to the school and she didn't see anyone else around; it looked as if the other kids and their parents had already left.

“I'm really sorry,” she said. “I got stuck—”

Jessica just shook her head and said, “Come on. Mr. Adams is waiting.”

The conference itself was anticlimactic. Adams—Kay couldn't remember if he was a guidance counselor or Jessica's homeroom teacher—was a sweet man in his sixties who wore a corduroy jacket with suede patches on the elbows; he was out of central casting for Mr. Chips. Adams said Jessica was doing great, an exemplary student, acing everything; the sky was the limit for her. After the conference, Kay asked Jessica if she'd like to go out to dinner to celebrate.

“Celebrate what? It was a mandatory parent-teacher conference.”

“Well, would you like to go out to dinner anyway?”
Sheesh.

Kay picked a nice place in La Jolla where they could see the beach. There were a dozen kids out on the water, dressed in wet suits, surfing in the fading light. Kay groped for something to say. She had been trying like crazy to talk to the girl, to get her to open up in some way, but so far . . . She figured the guys who ran North and South Korea had a warmer relationship than she and her daughter.

“Have you thought about what you want to take in college?” Kay asked. Adams—the teacher, guidance counselor, whoever the hell he was—had said that with her math and science grades, Jessica could probably get into any college in the country.

While watching the surfers, Jessica said, “I'm not sure yet, but most likely something that would get me a job with some high-tech company dealing with genetic research, microbiology, developing drugs, that sort of thing. I don't know. Maybe pre-med.”

“Pre-med?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Jesus.
Her daughter, the doctor. When Kay was her age, all she'd thought about was being a cop like her dad—and screwing the guy who eventually knocked her up. How the hell could she possibly connect with this . . . this rocket scientist?

Noticing Jessica seemed to be mesmerized by the surfers, Kay asked, “Have you ever surfed?”

“Surfed? I was raised in Nebraska.”

“Well, would you like to learn to surf?”

Jessica thought about the question for less than a second, and for the first time since Kay had known her, she let down her guard and grinned and said, “You know, that would be cool.” Then, realizing what she'd done, she added, “I mean, if you're not too busy, if it wouldn't be an imposition.”

Sheesh.

—

K
ay had learned to surf in Miami—her ex-husband had introduced her to the sport. She'd started too late in life to ever be a truly stellar surfer, but she wasn't bad. The Saturday after having dinner with Jessica in La Jolla, Kay grabbed her board and they headed to Pacific Beach.

“We'll rent you a board and a wet suit at the beach,” Kay said.

“That's cool,” Jessica said. She didn't say anything else during the drive to the beach, but Kay could tell she was actually excited.

They spent three hours in the water. Jessica wasn't afraid, she didn't ask about sharks, and she took her licks without whining when the surf pounded her into the sand. In general, she had the same kind of gritty determination that Kay had. She also got the hang of things quickly, and Kay liked to think that she'd inherited her athletic ability—if not her brains—from her.

They stripped off their wet suits and Kay got a blanket from her car and bought them hot dogs and Cokes from a stand on the beach. Kay was wearing a high-cut, one-piece black suit that maybe showed off a little more of her butt than it should. Jessica had on a red bikini and Kay thought she had a cute figure, although she wasn't as busty as Kay had been at her age—but maybe that was a good thing. Her legs were terrific.

“Would you be interested in taking lessons?” Kay said. “I mean, surfing's really a San Diego thing and a lot of kids your age are into it. It'll give you a chance to meet people outside of school, and it would be better if you learned from a pro than from me. I'll pay for the lessons.”

Jessica thought about it for a moment and said, “Yeah, I think I'd like that, but you don't have to pay.”

“I'll pay,” Kay said. Sometimes she just wanted to smack her. She also knew she was too impatient to teach her more about surfing, and they'd be fighting if she tried. “Before we go, we'll stop at the surf shop and sign you up.”

A few minutes later, two girls just a little older than Jessica walked by, both of them wearing bikinis that had less material than a Band-Aid. The little sluts.

Following the girls with her eyes, Jessica said, “Maybe I'll save up and get a boob job.”

“Are you insane!” Kay shrieked.

“Easy for you to say. You got a rack on you like . . .” Then she started giggling. “Aw, lighten up. I'm kidding.”

That was the first time Kay and her daughter ever laughed together.