Sand Dollars (19 page)

Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Sand Dollars

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“I'm leaving tomorrow. Flying back to San Francisco. Got to go back to work. I just wanted to get to know you a little better.”

“Did you succeed?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Better than I thought I would.”

Then she went below again, leaving me alone in the last moments of the sunset.

I found my cigar. It had gone out. I dug around in my pockets until I found my lighter and set fire to it again, turning it all the way around until it was perfectly lit.

My God, Caine, I thought. You are one dim-witted bastard.
Life just isn't long enough to turn down a woman like that. Under any circumstances. You'll be dead someday and then who'll know? Who will care?

But as I puffed away on the Cohiba Esplendido, the little voice in the back of my head told me that I would know when it was time. And in its way, it would be another betrayal of Claire. Not that I wanted to go to bed with herâwell, that wasn't true, either, but I knew that wouldn't happenâbut it would be, in essence, another betrayal, an insinuation between myself, her protector, and her best friend.

Better to stay aloof from the fray.

I had no one to answer to but myself. Sometimes it's hard. And sometimes it's even harder.

This was one of the hardest of all.

I remained on deck until the sun slipped over the Point Loma peninsula and the evening breezes came up and chilled me, even through Paul Peters's leather jacket with the Thinsulate lining. I didn't go below until the cigar had burned all the way down, and I probably broke all sorts of environmental laws when I tossed the butt into San Diego Harbor.

In my life I've learned many lessons, but one stands out above all the others: Most of the time doing the right thing is a thankless chore, and all the time it's a monumental pain in the ass.

I crossed the border at five the next morning, full of purpose and hot coffee. When the sun rose two hours later, I was settled inside the Range Rover, parked at the curb between two other luxury cars about a hundred yards south of the estate. It looked different in the sunshine. The whole street looked better. What had been gray the day before was now vibrant. Even the walls were pretty. Vines and other tropicals covered some of them, giving the street a hanging-garden effect. I liked that. The greenery covered some of the broken glass.

No one bothered me. The street could have been populated, but I saw few people. In comparison to the crowded avenues of the poor, it was deserted.

It was purely a guess, but I thought the woman in the estate would come out this morning. The sky was blue after nearly a week of rain. Today was a day to play, or to work, if one worked.

It was a good guess. At eight-fifteen the electric gates opened. I started the Range Rover's engine and waited.

A blue BMW convertible, a Z3, the same model and color as the one from the James Bond film, backed out of the courtyard and headed north, down the hill toward Tijuana. I followed. As I passed the estate, the gates slowly closed. Before they shut all the way, I got another glimpse inside. All I could see were red Mexican paver tiles and white stucco walls.

I kept the Range Rover over a hundred yards back until we reached the high-traffic area. She turned on RevoluciÃ³n and followed it until she turned on Internacional, a four-lane highway that ran parallel with the border, the same road Esparza had taken. I remembered that it ran near the bullring
and then turned south, where it became the toll road to Ensenada.

I kept close behind the Beemer, about three cars back, unconcerned that the driver could pick me out of traffic. Her car was low to the ground, and I was up high and could see over the top of the cars ahead. Traffic thinned after Rosarito Beach, however, so I gave her a longer lead. The blue convertible was easy to spot, even when it hit 180 kilometers per hour. Peters's car had no trouble keeping up and it felt good to let the Range Rover push its upper limits. After bumping along in second gear, it felt as good as stretching my legs.

I fell behind when we reached the coastal mountains, where the road twisted and turned through the narrow passes. Cliffs on the western edge of the road fell half a thousand feet to the Pacific below, giving me reason for caution that the young woman in the low two-seater didn't seem to have. When we came out of the last pass, she was long gone. I used the straightaway to try to catch her, but she had vanished.

When I reached the northern suburbs of Ensenada, I realized I'd lost her, so I turned around and headed north again. Logic dictated that she wouldn't travel faster than road conditions permitted. She didn't seem stupid. She must have turned off the road soon after leaving the mountains. With that in mind, I drove slowly, watching both sides of the road for a sign.

Three kilometers below the final pass I found it. It wasn't a sign from heaven, it was one that said RESORT TIME SHARE PROPERTIES. Under that, TOP PROPERTIES, S.A. stood out in bold red lettering. Parked behind a small stone building with a lot of glass and a waterfall artfully falling in front of the entry was the blue BMW roadster. I drove into the crushed-gravel lot, parked next to the Beemer, and got out.

I stretched my legs and put on my jacket. Then I thought about it and took it off and stowed it under the seat. If this was the woman Paul Peters had an affair with, she could recognize the jacket. I knew I had taken a chance with the Range Rover, but there are so many of them in Southern California it would not be remarkable to see another one the same color.
But if I came in wearing an expensive suede jacket the same cut and style and color that belonged to her former lover, she would know.

Shivering a little, I hurried to the front door. When I opened it, a little bell tinkled on a string, just like an old-fashioned general store you'd see in the movies.

She sat behind a big oak desk, looking through some paperwork, when I entered. When she glanced up and saw me, her face became radiant, as if I were her long-lost twin brother she hadn't seen since the womb. I don't know how she did it, but she also managed to convey the impression that she'd like to screw my legs off.

“Hello!” she said. “Welcome to Baja Dunes. I am Elena. How may I help you?” Her voice had a lilt and a slight inflection, the only trace of an accent. She wore a conservative business suit that modestly bared only a tiny portion of cleavage but made me wonder what she looked like unrestrained by cloth and latex. She was using a different name, but it was Lorena Garcia. It had to be. Once again Tim and Jim were correct in their reportage.

“I was out for a drive and saw your sign. You're selling time shares in a resort?”

“Come over here,” she said, indicating a table in the middle of the room. That's what she said. Those were the words she used. It sounded like she really said, “Come over here and take off your clothes.” “We have a scale model of the development.”

I joined her at the table and saw a model of a blue glass harbor bordered by a green golf course in what looked like a ravine. On the tops of the hills surrounding the golf course and the harbor were tiny white structures, snaking along the natural shape of the hillside in sinuous curves.

Other, larger buildings surrounded by walls occupied the peninsula between the harbor and the ocean, estates with private gardens. Sand dunes ranged behind the condominiums and the golf course, sheltering the community from intrusion. She took pains to point that out. The community was private and isolated. Just the thing for the upwardly mobile.

“That's nice,” I said, impressed. It was an excellent design.

“Here is the hotel,” she said, pointing out the largest structure, straddling the south side of the sand spit, occupying the entire peninsula. “A big American company just bought that. They're planning on two hundred rooms. Not so big it would draw crowds, but big enough to help with the expense of the golf course and the harbor.”

“Nice,” I said.

“They will have, of course, two gourmet restaurants. We expect them to have a French chef and an internationally qualified sommelier.”

“How nice,” I said, starting to sound like a parrot with a limited vocabulary.

“Are you interested in a condominium or a detached house?”

“A condo would be nice,” I said.

“On the beach or on the mountain?”

Those hills looked like the ones above my head. Hardly mountains. “I'd like the beach.”

“You look like a beach guy,” she said, as if that were the most peachy thing she'd ever heard. “This one's available.” She pointed to an end unit near the harbor, quoted me a price, and told me what I would get for the money.

“Sounds like a good deal,” I said. And it did. Almost too good. “When would it be ready?”

“Construction is going on now. We're dredging the harbor first.” She flicked her lovely dark eyes toward the boom of a huge dredging barge looming in the middle of a lagoon behind us. There didn't appear to be much activity.

“Once that is finished, we will start the roads and the infrastructure.”

“And how long will it take for construction?”

“About six months,” she said.

It would take six months just to dredge a harbor the size of the one in the model. And that was if people were working. I looked outside. No one appeared to be there.

“Can I take a look around?”

“No. I am sorry. It's a construction site. Too dangerous.”

“Okay. Do you have anything else to show me?”

“No. I am sorry. We shall be building the models soon. Perhaps you would like to come back?”

“Perhaps. Do you have a card?”

“Certainly, Mister â¦”

“Caine. John Caine. I'm just visiting, but I'd love to see it when it's complete.”

She handed me a business card, but suddenly something in her manner turned ice-cold, like the mention of my name flicked her off like a switch. She knew my name. She'd heard it before.

“Thank you. Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Caine, I have some other appointments.”

I looked around the sales office. It was vacant, but for the two of us.

“Okay, Ms. Garcia,” I said.

“Gonzales.”

“I beg your pardon.” I looked at the card she had given me. It read Elena Gonzales, Sales Manager. “I can't read all that well without my glasses. I could have sworn it said Garcia.”

“No,” she said, carefully enunciating each word. “It doesn't. My name is Gonzales.”

“Well, then, thank you.”

“Have a nice day,” she said. She didn't say it like she meant that, either.

I climbed back into the Range Rover and drove down the sandy road through some scrub trees and brush to a padlocked chain-link gate. The lock was rusty. So was the fence, which extended in both directions and appeared to enclose the entire harbor. What I could see of the dredging machine looked rusted and ill-used.

I turned around and headed back toward the Ensenada-Tijuana Highway. As I passed the big window of the sales office, I saw her at her desk. She was on the phone, speaking passionately, her free hand a closed fist.

An hour later I was ten feet down off the top of the ridge, just south of the harbor, lying in damp nettled scrub watching the activity below. There wasn't any.

The dredging machine floated on pontoon barges in the middle of a lagoon. Two areas of sandy beach on the north shore appeared to have been dredged a long time ago. New foliage grew along the edge of the sandpiles.

The lagoon, a shallow bay at the end of a long, wide river canyon with two black mesas off to the east, was one of those natural, brackish backwaters that exist at regular intervals along the California coast. Even though we are two countries, the geography has been here longer than the political entities and knows no boundaries. Geologically, the northern end of Baja California is identical to the southern end of California. This place could have been Carlsbad or Encinitas, or Malibu.

Tall stands of grass and reeds bordered the edges of the lagoon. Beyond that, the sand dunes went on up the beach for miles, disappearing into the coastal mist. Bare postage-stamp concrete slabs, nearly covered by encroaching dunes, sat back from the water. They were old, still bearing the pattern of vinyl asbestos tile, the remains of a fish camp. That and the ancient dredging machine were the only evidence of human habitation. Tall birds, snowy white egrets with long, graceful necks, waded in the shallows. Seagulls swooped in and out, going about their business in their loud, frenetic way.

A pleasant breeze flowed down from the mountains through the canyon. The sun felt warm against my back. I
had the same feeling that Brigham Young must have had when he first saw the basin of the Great Salt Lake. This is the place.

When I was certain the place was deserted, I began moving down the hillside. Mindful of the sign at the border, I had no weapon other than my Buck knife. Aware of the existence of young men armed with submachine guns, I moved cautiously, the way they'd trained me so long ago. I didn't like the odds. And didn't old Sun-tzu say the best way to win a war is not to fight one in the first place? Having participated in more than a few wars myself, I was a firm believer in that kind of sentiment.

If only they would let me.

It took me half an hour to descend the hill in stealth. No one accosted me. Besides the birds, the only living thing I saw was a ground squirrel that stared at me briefly and fled chittering into the underbrush. When I reached the sandy dunes, I moved faster through the ravines, keeping my head below the ridge tops.

Up close, the old dredging machine looked even worse, covered with rust, missing cables and secondary booms, derelict. A vacant space existed where the engine should have been, the whole thing, as I suspected, a prop for the sales office back at the road.

I visited the concrete slabs. Partially covered by intruding sand, they were old, rusting anchor bolts protruding every foot or so, stained and chipped from decades of hard use. Once upon a time the place had been a fish camp. Someone must have purchased the property and torn down the shacks and built the sales office. They may even have had excellent intentions at first. But the enterprise somehow degenerated into a scam, just another way of extracting another Yankee dollar.

Was this all it was? Did Paul Peters sacrifice his company, and his marriage, and even his life, for this?

The lagoon was lovely with the bright, clear sky reflecting off its surface. From here the hills above did, indeed, look like mountains from the shore. Over the sand spit, the big
blue Pacific Ocean stretched to infinity. The breeze I had felt on the hill also eddied across the lagoon, ruffling my hair. Although I preferred it the way it was, I could picture the possibilities. And I could see how someone could become addicted to the idea, especially when Lorena Garcia (or was it Elena Gonzales?) turned on the sexual heat. Add steamy sex to a beautiful setting and you might have a winner.

But that didn't answer the basic question. Peters was smart enough to have balanced an affair with his business and his marriage if that was what he wanted. He could have had it all. The sad truth is that many men do it. Why would he throw away everything, even to the extent of looting his personal and corporate accounts? His were the actions of hate, not love. He could not have ruined the people he loved any more thoroughly if that had been his stated intent.

The recent rains had washed the sand away from a corner of one of the slabs and I sat on it to think about the problem. After all those days under cold gray skies, the sun felt good on my face. I picked up some sand and ran it between my fingers.

Unless one is hopelessly mentally ill, there is logic to everyone's actions. That's the premise I was forced to use, but I couldn't see the logic here. If I knew the reason Paul Peters did what he did, I might deduce the wheres and the hows. I had the feeling I was in the middle of the answer, yet it somehow eluded me.

I felt I was pushing my luck, sitting out in the open. The peacefulness of the locale had lulled me into a false sense of security. I stood and started toward the ocean. Something solid just below the sand caught my toe and I sprawled across the old slab.

I got up on all fours and brushed the sand from whatever it was I'd tripped over. It was another slab, buried more deeply than the others, near the surface only because the sand had been washed away by the recent heavy rains. I brushed more sand away. It was newer, inexpertly finished. Why, I wondered, would anyone put a slab there, then bury it?

I removed my jacket and cleaned off the cement until I
had an outline. It looked like a cap slab, about four feet wide by five feet long, recently poured, the concrete still curing. The other slabs were more than fifty years old, but this one didn't belong.

It could have been a grave, but I tended to doubt it.

Then I knew.

I covered the slab again and took some reeds and brushed my handprints away. They would be gone in a day or so, anyway. This beach sand had the consistency of sugar and didn't accept much of an impression.

When I'd hidden the slab to my satisfaction, I retreated along my original route. I watched the Range Rover from cover to make sure there was no sign of anyone near it, not approaching until I was certain. Then I drove back to the highway and headed south.

In fifteen minutes I reached Ensenada. It took me another half hour to find a store that sold the tools I wanted. Within an hour, I was back at the beach.

Stripped to the waist, I worked for two solid hours. Even though the concrete was green and relatively soft, concrete is still concrete, and using hand tools is not the easiest way to get through twelve inches of the stuff. I was just thankful there were no rebars or mesh in the mix.

By the time I'd broken through, the sun was angled in the west, and I put my shirt and jacket back on, chilled by the cold wind that swept in off the sea.

Two metal footlockers, heavy and sodden, lay like buried treasure beneath the sand. I dragged them out, one by one, and carted them a hundred yards into the dunes and reburied them. The sun was nearly set by the time I finished, giving me only one last chance to triangulate the location with nearby monuments.

For added insurance, I paced off the position in two directions. The boxes were metal. If I couldn't remember, at least I could use a detector to find them. They were heavy, and had a lot of mass. It wouldn't be too difficult.

In the meantime, I was the only one in the world who knew where they were.

Satisfied, I returned to the lagoon and swept the area clean of my activity. When I finished, it was pitch-dark, and I had to feel my way up the mountain and down the other side to get to the Range Rover.

In an hour I arrived at the Otay Mesa border crossing, where a hefty young woman dressed like a forest ranger ordered me to pull into a covered area and wait until they searched the car. I was instructed not to use my cellular telephone. An armed guard watched me. I waited thirty minutes, watching the guard watching me. While I waited, I smoked one of the last of my Esplendidos.

When they did search, they opened everything, including the spare tire. Finally, they brought in a dog. When that didn't work, an older, gray-haired border guard took me into the station, where I was strip-searched. He looked like retirement was only a few months away. His eyes had that tired, used-up look, as if they had seen everything a pair of eyes could see in one lifetime.

Two men went through my belongings. When they went through my clothing, they found my remaining Cohiba in my jacket and confiscated it.

“It is a violation of federal law, Mr. Caine,” said the gray-haired officer, “to bring products of the Republic of Cuba into this country.”

He waited for an answer. I just looked at him.

“I have the authority to confiscate your vehicle, too.”

I didn't say anything.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Am I,” I asked, “to be shot at dawn?”

“This is a very serious violation of the law.”

“Yeah, and John Kennedy bought twelve hundred cases of Cuban cigars just before he ordered the ban.”

“I've heard that before,” he said tiredly. “Get dressed, Mr. Caine. Go home.”

“Why did you do this?”

He shook his head. “I shouldn't tell you, but you've been had. We were waiting for you. Had a tip you were carrying drugs. It came from a normally reliable source.” It was evident
the gray-haired officer didn't like his job some of the time. Nobody does, when he discovers he's been used.

“Mexican law-enforcement officer?”

“No comment.”

“He has something on you?”

“I annoyed him,” I said.

“Then you better watch out. If you go back, you might just stay on that side of the border.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You're the second one to give me that same advice.”

“If I were you,” said the old border guard, “I'd take it.”