“ I work with everyone. A shark is a shark, right?”
“ That’s what I always say,” I said. “I just need to know how all this works.”
“ You must have a license to commercially harvest and sell saltwater products, and you may sell only to a licensed California wholesale dealer.”
“ And you’re a wholesale dealer?”
“ In good standing.”
“ Of course. And you, in turn sell to?”
“ Retailers around the state. You will need to learn which species you can hunt, and you will need permits on various equipment, as well, like gill nets.”
I nodded and lowered my voice. “I’ve heard shark fins are big business.”
He sat back and his handsome features darkened. I suspected that he was waiting for this. I suspected that a part of him was on guard from the moment I had walked in.
“ Finning is now illegal in California,” he said.
“ That is, catching the sharks just for their fins?”
“ Right.”
“ Oh, I wouldn’t do anything illegal,” I said. “I just want to make a buck. And what are a few sharks anyway, right? Nasty creatures. So what’s the next step?”
“ Once you have your licenses, we can set you up with an account.”
I nodded. I needed to push this. It was too much by the book. “And what if I came back with just shark fins?”
“ Just the fins?” he asked.
“ Yes.”
“ Then I would call the Department of Fish and Game and you would lose your license and be heavily fined. There’s a chance your boat might even be confiscated, as well.” He stopped and looked at me long and hard. “Look, Mr…?”
“ Anderson,” I said.
“ Look, Mr. Anderson, I run a very up and up wholesale business. I work with well-known and respected fishermen. I respect the laws of California and elsewhere. If you are considering anything less than legal, then I think our business here is done.”
“ That’s good to know,” I said. “Do you know anything about the murder of Mitch Golden?”
He didn’t blink. He didn’t react. His not reacting was, in effect, a reaction. “Excuse me?” he asked after a moment.
“ Mitch Golden was a conservationist for Sharks Now. They found his body yesterday. Apparently he’d been shot and dumped overboard. Chained and everything. I saw the body. Not pretty.”
“ I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you a fisherman?”
“ I’m told that one of your shark hunters might have threatened him,” I said. “I’m also told that you buy illegal shark fins.”
“ Get out.”
But I didn’t get out, even when he opened the drawer and removed a handgun. It wasn’t the first time a gun has been shoved in my face.
“ Who are you?” he asked.
I reached carefully into my back pocket and withdrew my wallet. From it, I extracted my business card and handed it to him. I had nothing to hide. From anyone.
He took the card, looked at it, still holding the gun on me. “You’re a fucking private investigator?”
“ I’m also a righter of wrongs,” I said.
“ What the hell does that mean?”
“ It means that if you are who I think you are, you’ll be seeing me again.”
I got up and left, all too aware that the gun was pointed at my back.
Chapter Thirteen
Sanchez and I were working out at the 24-Hour Fitness in Newport Beach.
Today was our “pull” day. That meant biceps, lats, abdominals and hamstrings. Like anyone who’s serious about getting bigger and stronger, we never work the same muscles two days in a row. Amateurish. Muscles need time to rebuild, especially when you hit them as hard as we hit them. Tomorrow would be our “push” day…any exercises that consist of a pushing motion, with bench presses being the obvious one.
Right now we were doing sets of old-school pull-ups on the horizontal bar. I was on pull-up number fourteen when Sanchez said, “Taking you long enough to do twenty pull-ups.”
I cranked out three more, then paused while hanging from my hands. “It’s my third set, asshole.”
“ And your skin’s all red and blotchy.”
“ Latinos sweat,” I said, resuming my pull-ups, grunting as I spoke. “Gringos blotch.”
Sanchez shook his head. “You gringos are weird.”
I finished my third set, and now Sanchez cranked out his own final set of pull-ups. I mentioned how he looked like a girl, with his legs curled up the way they were. He paused and said something about the unappealing lack of pigmentation in my skin, then finished his own third set.
Next, we hit the row machine hard, and by our second set, I had gotten him caught up on my current case. Sanchez, a homicide investigator with the LAPD and an ex-teammate at UCLA, was a good person to bounce cases off of, although I would never let him know that.
“ This guy, Trujillo…”
“ Is Latino,” I said.
“ What does being Latino have to do with anything?”
“ I thought we were finishing each others’ sentences.”
“ We ain’t fucking finishing each others’ sentences.”
“ See,” I said. “I could have finished that one for you.”
Sanchez shook his head and finished his third set of rows. He was wearing a tank top and his muscles bulged and rippled and I caught more than one woman admiring him. I didn’t need to tell him the women were admiring him. Sanchez noticed everything. Besides, his wife, Danielle, would have my head on a platter if she knew I had pointed out any women.
Sanchez said, “So why do we think this guy Trujillo plugs our golden boy and dumps him in the Long Beach Harbor?”
I was on the machine now, pulling the chromed bar back slowly and with near-perfect form. “Because Mitch Golden was giving him grief. Hurting business.”
“ Hurting business how?”
“ Exposing the shark finners for the shitbags they are. Helping the game wardens arrest his suppliers.”
“ So Trujillo is like, what, a shark fin kingpin? And his fishermen provide him the fins?”
“ Way to make it sound street,” I said. “But yeah.”
“ Street makes sense to me,” said Sanchez. “Shark fins don’t. There any money in fins?”
“ Enough to kill,” I said.
Sanchez stood and stretched and generally looked like a peacock parading around. He showed me his tan bicep. “See, no blotching. It’s brown and beautiful.”
“ And sweaty,” I said.
Sanchez shook his head, careful not to look at the women looking at him. He was afraid of his wife, too. As we all should be.
He said, “And they really use dogs?”
“ Some do. Not all of them.”
“ Ain’t right.”
“ Nope.”
We were silent as we caught our breaths. The gym wasn’t so silent. Music pumped. Machines clattered. People grunted.
Sanchez looked around. “Lots of splotchy people here.”
“ It’s Newport,” I said.
He looked at me. “You can’t save all the dogs, Knighthorse.”
“ I know.”
“ Or the damn sharks.”
“ I know that, too,” I said.
“ But you’re going to try, aren’t you?”
“ I’m going to do something.”
“ What about finding Mitch Golden’s murderer?”
“ That too,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
I was driving south along Seal Beach Boulevard, and when I made a right turn, I literally left behind Orange County and entered a whole new world.
Leisure World.
Before me was a massive, revolving globe, which was kind of fitting. I waited in line behind some shuttle buses, and when my turn came to approach the security gate, the world’s oldest security guard came out sporting a clipboard and a frown.
“ Who’re you here to see?” he asked.
“ Poppie,” I said.
“ Poppie who?”
“ Just Poppie.”
“ You don’t have a last name?”
“ That’s all she gave me.”
“ What’s your business here?”
“ I’m going to apprehend a flasher.”
“ A what?”
“ A flasher. A man who reveals his genitalia to women. Or a woman who reveals herself to men, although I’ve never been so lucky.”