Sea Creature (5 page)

In four years Patrick had never seen this man. But he no doubt existed. He was told the results of elections months before they occurred; from bartenders, bouncers and fishermen, based on who the Great and Honorable El Copa preferred.

Patrick saw some American tourists eating chicken with yogurt sauce on a patio and he decided he was hungry. He entered the restaurant and was told it would be a ten minute wait and he sat in the waiting area.

“I like your bracelet,” the woman next to him said.

“Thank you.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“It’s from Borneo. A tribesman whose home I stayed at there made it for me.”

“What were you doing in Borneo?”

“Same as I’m doing here I suppose.”

“And what’s that?”

“Hiding away from civilization.”

She smiled. “Didn’t know it was looking for you.”

“It’s sneaky that way.”

She put her hand out. “I’m Jane Weston.”

“Patrick Russell,” he said as he shook.

“Ms. Weston,” the hostess said.

“That’s me. It was nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

He watched her walk away, her sun dress wrinkled in the back and sticking to her thighs. He turned to his bracelet and looked it over. It was dark brown leather entwined with bamboo. He thought it looked like something a child would make, but nevertheless it was polite of her to mention something.

A few minutes later the hostess came for him and he was sat out on the patio. Sitting by herself next to him, sipping a glass of white wine, was Jane.

“Hello again,” he said.

“Hi,” she said with a smile.

“Are you eating alone?”

“Just me tonight.”

“Would you mind then if I joined you? I hate to eat alone. Food tastes better with company they say.”

“Sure.”

He pulled out a chair and sat down, ordering a scotch and water with a beer.

“So where you from, Patrick? Not here I take it?”

“No, Boston originally, but I grew up in Miami. I’ve been coming here for quite some time though. How bout you?”

“California.”

“Really? I love California. The beaches there are some of the best in the world.”

The waiter came out with his drinks and placed them down. He then took a bowl of something brown and fried and put it on the table near Jane with lemon and butter. Patrick stared at the bowl, unblinkingly.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Jane finally said, “I ordered an appetizer.”

Patrick didn’t respond.

“Do you not like calamari?”

“No, I mean, yes. It’s fine. It’s fine. I just am, having one of those days I suppose.”

She dipped one of the squid in the butter and sprayed lemon juice on it as Patrick watched. She popped it into her mouth and wiped at the oil on her lips with a linen napkin.

“So,” she said, “what do you do in Miami?”

“Nothing at the moment actually. I was in the army, but not anymore. My father has an exporting business and I suppose eventually I’ll become a part of that in some way. What about you?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“Oh really?”

“Don’t look so surprised. We Californians like our women to be doctors.”

“No, no, it’s not that at all. It’s just that all the doctors I ever knew were field doctors. Tough guys with scars and tattoos and all. I’ve just never seen a doctor so lovely.”

She blushed and took another bite of the calamari.

They ate and drank well into the night. When they were through Patrick offered to walk her back to her hotel and they strolled in the moonlight and spoke of her practice back home and how her father had been a doctor and how he had wanted a son but gotten only daughters. They spoke of his life in the military and she asked about the war and he changed the subject to something else.

They stopped in front of a large white building with a red Spanish tile roof and the sign outside said it was a bed and breakfast. She turned to him and said, “This is me.”

“Well,” he said, taking her hand and giving it a kiss, “I had a fun evening. I hope we can do it again.”

“I do too. I’m here at the hotel for another week and then I’m off to Mexico for five days. If you like we could have dinner again sometime before.”

“I would like that, Jane.”

“Okay, well, bye.”

“Bye.”

He watched her leave and she waved before entering the bed and breakfast. He turned back toward the city, the moon bright in a cloudless sky.

Police Chief Hector Rojas stood on the pier and looked over the white yacht with the black and gold trim. It was a large vessel meant for parties that would last for days. Many of the wealthy that came to Viña would lease or buy them, stock them with food, liquor, drugs and women, and not be back to shore until they ran out of everything. In his twenty-one years with the police force, he had seen many famous American and British politicians throw such parties as well as movie stars and singers and business moguls. The ultra-successful, no matter from what walk of life, seemed to behave like animals when nobody was watching.

They would usually be so drunk or high on drugs that things would go wrong. The ship would hit a coral and they would need rescue, or it would catch fire, or they would run out of gas. One time a movie star, who was known for the amount of girls he had slept with, even rammed another yacht because he had released the captain and wanted to steer himself.

But Hector had never seen anything like this.

He walked back up the ramp and examined the deck while his officers interviewed the witnesses back on the beach. There were empty liquor bottles, half-burned marijuana joints, a few items of clothing and garbage, but nothing more. He went below deck and back to the room and leaned against the door and looked at the carnage.

At first he thought that perhaps someone had taken a chainsaw to somebody in here, but then he saw the blood and entrails and bits of bone that were on the window pane and leading out over the deck and into the ocean. He knew someone was dragged through the window and overboard.

The window measured nine inches by twelve inches.

He shook his head and walked back to the deck and leaned against the rail, looking out over the water. He had left police work in Santiago for this very reason. He was sick of the murders and the rapes and the bank robberies and the shootouts. He was only six years from retirement and he wanted somewhere comfortable and clean to finish out his time. There was nowhere more comfortable or clean in all of Chile, maybe all of South America, than Viña.

“Jefe,” one of his officers said, waving for him to come down.

Hector walked back and stood in front of Inspector Sosa and a woman. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had a jacket thrown over her shoulders. Her make-up had smeared over her face from tears and sweat and she was shaking.

“This is Pamela Kolo . . . Kolosk—”

“Kolkowski,” she said impatiently, wiping at new tears that ran down her cheeks.

“Kolkowski,” Sosa said, nodding, “she says her daughter is missing.”

“When did you see her last?” Hector asked.

“She went below deck to sleep in my boss’ cabin. She was just . . . she was just a baby.”

Pamela put her face in her hands and broke down, bending at the waist as if about to pass out. Sosa put his arm on her and whispered something. Hector turned and walked away.

Sosa led her to a bench on the pier and then ran to catch up with Hector.

“Jefe, wait.”

“What is it?”

“You know what this is.”

“This is a murder, Pablo. And I expect you to work the case and solve it.”

“Que chingados! How many people have to die here before we do something about it?”

“Watch your mouth, Pablo.” The chief stepped close to him, no more than a few inches from his face.

“I meant no disrespect. But people are dying and we’re not telling them this water is dangerous.”

“Do you know for sure it is dangerous? Have you ever seen this great monster? No? Then keep your mouth shut until we find out what the hell is going on.”

Hector got into his car and looked to see Sosa still standing there, his hands on his hips, watching him start his car and pull away. He was a damnable fool, but he was a good cop and Hector felt bad he had to intimidate him like that. But this wasn’t his doing, and he wasn’t going to put up with it any longer.

The mayor’s villa was one of the most secluded in Viña. Mayor Ignacio Silva had run an effective administration of the city the past three years, but he was a man that had many enemies. An unpopular anti-corruption measure had passed under his watch. Tourists were the lifeblood of Viña and Ignacio was one of the few locals who did not take this for granted. He knew all too well from his youth selling handmade trinkets on street corners that tourists were sensitive. A few bad rumors and they would look elsewhere for travel; and there were a thousand other places lined up to take their money and welcome them with open arms.

The measure had barely passed the city’s municipal council with the approval of the regional intendant who was appointed directly by the president and spoke on his behalf. It was a simple law, modeling an Israeli counterpart from some years back: any business owner caught dealing with drug cartels was subject to a fifty percent surtax.

The law worked beautifully because no violence was involved in its enforcement. The business could deal with drug cartels all they wanted, but they had to pay the government its share. And not just the legal share of what the business earned, but any ill-gotten proceeds as well.

If a business owner hid funds or refused to pay, the police would arrest them. The cartels, unwilling to wage a war with the police over a few low-level small business owners, would move on to someone else. But the business owner would be ruined; some of them receiving as much as fifty years in prison.

The measure cleaned up Viña like no other law in the city’s history. Business owners that were prone to work with cartels found it easier to move to a different city and the cartels found it more profitable to engage in gambling and prostitution—something the city officials turned a blind eye to—rather than go to the effort of building distribution channels for narcotics. When given a choice, drug peddlers always choose the path of least resistance.

The unpopularity had come about when the cartels did something unexpected: they didn’t respond with violence. These weren’t the cartels of twenty years ago; these new generations didn’t want national attention and intervention by the army. So they chose a different path: they funded bandits to attack goods moving out of the city. The merchants were upset that they were being preyed upon, but there was only so much the mayor of the city could do when crimes occurred outside of the city.

Eventually, the cartels cut the bandits loose but they had nowhere else to go and now the city was surrounded by roving bands of criminals with no work and no prospects for income. It was a problem that simply did not seem to go away.

Ignacio sat at his desk, reading the news on his computer, when his phone buzzed and his secretary said that the chief of police was here to see him. Ignacio said to let him through and a few moments later Hector walked in and sat across from him without being invited to do so.

“Hola, Hector. Como esta?”

“Bien.” Hector crossed his legs. “We had another attack.”

Ignacio stopped reading and turned to him, placing a pen in his mouth and chewing on the tip. “How bad?”

“Very bad. Two people are dead.”

“Anybody see it?”

“No. But there is—”

“Then we don’t have a problem.”

“But, Patrõn, we have much blood and the two people are missing.”

“They could have been murdered by each other for all we know. We don’t know anything, Hector. What have I told you about making guesses?”

Hector shook his head. “I do not think we can hide this much longer, Patrõn. I want to talk to the newspaper.”

“I wipe my ass with the
Valparaiso Times
. They are a piece of shit newspaper.” His face grew hot as he saw the headlines from last year, accusing him of embezzling funds from the city’s account.

“But people need to know it is dangerous.”

Ignacio leaned forward on his elbows. “Hector, you are a foreigner to this city, but I was raised here since I was born. I love this city. And this city cares for me. We are lovers that way; we need each other. I protect this city first, Hector, before even my own family, I protect the city.”

“I know, Patrõn. No one is saying that—”

“If anyone were to find out it is dangerous, the touristas would stop coming. They come for our beaches. No beaches, no touristas. Sí?”

“Sí.”

“Without touristas, our businesses suffer and go bankrupt and they move. When that happens, poverty comes. With poverty crime and corruption. You do not see it now, Hector, but this could destroy us. We must be very careful. Do you understand?”

“I understand. I just do not like it.”

“We must all do things we do not like, Hector. If you do not like it enough, you can always find other work. We could use good garbage men or people to work the gambling tables at the casino.”

“No need, I will do as you ask.”

“Magnifico. Go now and deal with the families of the missing touristas. Tell them to go home and stay by their telephones and you will call them with updates.”

“Sí.” He rose and left without saying goodbye.

Patrick picked up Jane at her bed and breakfast and they headed down to the beach. She had never been surfing before though she grew up fifteen minutes from one of the best beaches in the world. Patrick was intent on teaching her.

They reached the shore and a strong wind was blowing, the waves choppy and large. He decided it wasn’t good weather to teach someone new to surf so he rented a boat instead and they took it out a quarter mile from shore and turned the engine off. They had bought brunch from one of the local food shacks on the beach and they began to eat and talk of their lives back home.

Patrick would look into the water and then away almost every minute. Jane noticed and asked him about it.