Just The Pits (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 5) (4 page)

FALL FOUL OF (Nautical term): Collide with or become entangled in conflict.

It had to happen.

While my mess hall lunch settled I fired up my surprisingly new office desktop.

Much to my delight the twenty-inch monitor showed I had an Internet connection. Logging into Yahoo, I checked my email, then Googled that troublesome-looking volcano I'd seen on the way to work. I wasn't convinced those were just  clouds hovering on the peak.

La Virgen
was my smoker, but there were two more,
El Viejo
and
El Azufre
. Basically meaning the old one and the sulfurous one. The chain is called
Las Tres Virgenes.
According to the site I found, they line up from the northeast to southwest, and
La Vírgen
, the youngest, is an
andesitic stratovolcano with numerous dacitic lava domes and lava flows on its flanks. A major plinian explosive eruption from a SW-flank vent was radiocarbon dated at about 6500 years ago, but Helium exposure and Uranium-series dates give a late-Pleistocene age for this event. An ash plume was reported from Tres Vírgenes volcano by a Spanish Jesuit priest while navigating the Sea of Cortez in 1746. No tephra deposits from such a young eruption have been found, but young undated andesitic lava flows at the summit could potentially be related to this event.

I translated this vulcanologist gobbledygook as, "She ain't gonna blow any time soon, but just in case she does, I'll cover my scientific ass with that last sentence."

Say what they will, those three virgins still spooked me, as if sitting in a potentially dead man's chair hadn't already done the job.

I checked out the Sea of Cortez, geologically, and learned it was only five million years old, making it the youngest sea in the world. I'm not so sure that's such a good thing, for in my uneducated opinion it hasn't had time to cool off. Kinda like a teenager's hormones.

Hormonal thoughts brought Jenks to mind, a diversion from imagining the earth blowing up under my feet. I wanted to email him, maybe catch him live for a chat, but it was still only two
PM in Santa Rosalia and that meant two in the morning in Dubai. Rats. Jenks is an early riser, but not
that
early.

Instead, I emailed my BFF list: Jan, Craig and Allison. We are all friends from back in the San Francisco Bay Area, and some from Houston before that, but Allison, now married to The Trob, is the only one left in San Francisco.

Jan lives over the mountains from Santa Rosalia, on Baja's Pacific coast, and Craig runs a large animal veterinary clinic in Bisbee, Arizona. I let everyone know I was in Santa Rosalia and had started the new job. After that I did a little mindless online surfing, posted to Facebook and looked at other friends' posts. Ah, the black hole of social media. I soon grew weary of cute kids, dogs and cats and set about arranging my new office.

A raid on the supply room garnered pens, pencils, Post-its—in my opinion the single greatest invention since chocolate—then dug framed pictures of my boat, parents, sister, my dog RJ, and Jenks and me from my knapsack.

Jenks, tall, lean and tanned, looks much like I envision his Viking ancestors. Jan had snapped the photo of us on
Raymond Johnson's
deck, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. We wore matching windbreakers, reminding me that even though it can be cool in the Baja this time of year, San Francisco is cold all the time. Jenks had a long arm slung over my shoulder and we looked like Mutt and Jeff, those cartoon characters from my childhood. I sighed, wishing him teleported to my side, right now. I so missed my whatever he is.

I was tacking an overall jobsite plot plan to the wall when my computer dinged and I saw Jenks was awake and online.

He'd been on the go for days, ever since we'd crossed the Sea of Cortez from San Carlos on the Mexican mainland. He took a day to help me settle my boat,
Raymond Johnson
, into a slip at the marina, and then he took off.

About my boat's name, one might think
Raymond Johnson
a little odd, but my dearly departed dog would have liked it just fine. He was given that name by Jan, my bestest friend, after I'd been calling my new pound hound Dawg for a several weeks. Jan felt that maybe if I showed the pooch a little more respect, gave him a real name, he might act better.

She had loved the
Redd Foxx Show
and we both watched reruns of
Sandford and Son
sitcoms whenever we got the chance. Both had this character, Raymond J. Johnson, who did a schtick: "My name is Raymond J. Johnson, Jr. Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Junior; now you can call me Ray J, or you can call me RJ, or you can call me RJJ, or you can call me RJJ Jr., but you doesn't hasta call me Johnson!" Anyhow, Raymond Johnson it was, and we called him RJ. Naming him did nothing to improve his incorrigible nature, which Jan said was because he took after me. Maybe that's why there was still a hole in my heart he used to fill.

In his photo on my new desk, RJ sported one of those goofy yellow lab grin-shots, stick in mouth, dripping wet. A placid Russian River lazed in the background. I snapped the picture, a canoe floated into sight, the people calling, "Oh, look at that cute dog."

RJ still answered to Dawg.

He perked, turned and rushed back into the river while I yelled warnings neither he nor the canoeists heeded. A strong swimmer, he was on them in seconds. Launching his sixty-pound heft from the water, he hooked his paws over a gunwale. Screams, woofs and curses ensued as people and coolers hit the chilly drink. By the time they righted the boat and climbed back in, they were quite a bit downstream, and had given him a few new names, none of which were,
cute
.

It was losing RJ that launched me into the boating world. I'd been looking around to change my life, and when he died my need for a house no longer existed. I sold my lovingly renovated three-story, hundred-year-old Bay Area home and moved aboard
Raymond Johnson
. Well, at the time it was named
Sea Cock
, but that name had to go.

A forty-five foot Californian motor yacht, she is basically a three-level, two-bedroom floating condo. Carpeted throughout in a rich marine blue, the furniture—real furniture, not built-ins like I’d seen on so many boats—was upholstered in ivory. Had anyone told me back when I was in my snobby decorator mode at my home in Oakland—where almost anything worth covering was done up in buttery soft leather—that I would learn to love pleather, I would've un-friended them on Facebook. On a boat, however, it is ever so practical.

My large aft master suite has a queen-sized bed, tons of closet (locker) and storage (locker again) space, and an en suite head, or bathroom. In the bow there is a two-bunk guest room with its own shower and toilet. Jan's quarters, for the most part.

There is a well-equipped galley with a full-sized AC/DC stainless refrigerator, three-burner stove, oven, microwave, and built-in banquette for informal dining.

In the main cabin, or saloon (pronounced salon, as in beauty shop, not a shoot-em-up western bar), there's a small office area and upholstered sofas and chairs, plus a navigation station for driving from inside the boat. This comes in handy when the flying bridge is being inundated by rain and wind, or in my case, when bad guys are shooting at you.

She (all boats are she, no matter the name) even sports a covered verandah, or sundeck as it is properly called, furnished in slightly faded Brown Jordan fake rattan with blue-and-white striped cushions. There's an ice maker, a rack of blue and white plastic stemware and a wet bar, and the whole thing can be zipped up against crappy weather. Three steps up is the flying bridge, my preferred place for driving the boat and watching for marine life in daylight hours.

Raymond Johnson
is my home, which I share on and off with Jenks Jenkins, my whatever he is. He left for Dubai after a little growling and warning of "consequences" if I even
thought
of moving the boat from her slip before he returned. He'd hopped a bus to Loreto, then a plane to San Francisco, where he boarded a Baxter Brothers company jet for Dubai. I couldn't prove it, but I suspected he and the Trob finagled this job for me so I'd stay out of trouble for the next few months while he finished up in Dubai. Whatever, I never look a gift job in the mouth.

Jenks telling me what to do with my boat or life, and me actually doing it stood a pig's flight chance in Hell, but since we both knew that, I refrained from getting into a dust up with him before he left. Consequences? What was he gonna do, take away my birthday?
That
I can live with.

Or, he could dump me, which I didn't think I could live with, so maybe I
would
leave the boat in her slip and take road trips. Besides, I was probably going to be so busy at my new job, whatever
that
was, I might not have time to take the boat anywhere anyhow.

Seeing he was online, I typed:
Wanna get nekkid with me?

Sure! Who is this?

Very funny, Jenks.

How's my girl?

Lonely.

You made a typo. Didn't you mean looney?

Aren't you the clever one so early in the day?

Early to bed, early to rise. How's the new job?

Don't know yet. Had lunch and got a desk. That's it so far.

I gotta go. Getting ready for a big meeting. Looks like I might have found land for you-know-who. I'll call you tonight.

I have a date.

Ha! Love you.

You too.

The you-know-who is Baxter Brothers, and Jenks was flying under the radar in Dubai, trying to get stuff done before the world hears the stunning announcement that one of the biggest construction/engineering companies in the world was moving out of San Francisco, lock, stock and barrel. Talk about your brain and economic drain. Too bad Baxters is privately owned; I could make a killing with this kind of insider info.

At four that afternoon I met my problem.

There is one on every project and I instinctively sensed the minute I laid eyes on him sitting behind his desk that he was IT. For starters, he was reading a sheaf of documents when Laura showed me into his office. Unless he was deaf, I'm sure he heard her say, "Señor Sanchez, this is Miss Coffey."

He didn't look up or acknowledge our presence in any way. Laura was obviously embarrassed, but I waved her out of the office with a smile and turned my attention back to my target. The little fart didn't know it yet, but his life was about to take a turn for the worse.

I gave him to a count of five.

"Five! Here, let me help you with that." I whipped a pair of cheaters from my windbreaker pocket and shoved them between him and those important documents. His head snapped up. "I have the same problem. Must be middle age or somethin'. Well, for you anyway. Man your age probably should have those ears checked, as well, 'cause you didn't hear Laura introduce me. Oh, never, mind," I stuck out my hand, thereby knocking a cascade of papers into his lap. "Oopsy-daisy about that. Hetta Coffey here. You can call me
Café
if you like, many of you Mexicans do, because Hetta is so hard to pronounce. Comes out sounding something like, 'I ate ya.' You wanted to see me about something?"

I gave him the full benefit of my latest bleaching session with the dentist and he finally, but reluctantly, took my hand. He gave it a limp shake. I refrained from totally breaking his fingers.

He grimaced, flexed his fingers and growled, "My eyes and ears are perfectly fine,
Hetta
." He was heavy on the H and T to let me know he had no problem pronouncing my name properly.

"Oh. Well, then you were just being rude and self-important? Sorry."

Now I had his full attention. He stood to his full five-six, topping me by a whole two inches. I had to remember to dig out my high-heeled boots. As soon as he stood, I sat. "Please, Osvaldo. Say, was your mother a Wizard of Oz fan? Can I call you Ozzie? Anyhow, go back to what you were doing. I'll sit here until, well, quitting time. When is that, by the way?" 

"Three-thirty."

"Oh, goody, I'm on overtime, which I normally don't charge for unless I am being subjected to really annoying people. So, what do you do around here?" As if I didn't know. The guy was head of Purchasing, already a bad thing in my book. My history with purchasing managers was less than sterling. I'd already snooped his resume in the company files: Chicano (US born of Mexican parents), raised in Bakersfield, Business degree from California State University there, then worked in procurement for an oil company in the San Joaquin Valley for ten years before landing this job. Probably by virtue of the fact that he was bilingual, because nothing I saw in his resume qualified him as a Purchasing Manager for a construction project as big as this one. Maybe he has connections?

"I am the Purchasing Manager, as my office indicates."