“You guys are in trouble.”
“But listen. The next day we take Herredia’s fishing boat out of Ensenada and speed southwest. It’s a twin-engine Bertram fifty-eight-footer with outriggers and bait tanks-tournament rigged and ready. The engines have just a few dozen hours, Herredia tells us, but that was about all he said. He’s angry and it shows.
“And my other problem is I don’t fish. Never did it as a boy, never did it as a man. I don’t care about fish unless it’s on a menu. But, as you remember, I’d sold Terry and myself to El Tigre with gifts of fishing gear, some of which I’d personally endorsed. You know, the international brotherhood of anglers. So, when I begin to see that Herredia will want to take us fishing someday, I go out a couple of times on a half-day boat out of Long Beach, try to learn something about it.
“Now I have to call upon all of my acting skills to play the part of a seasoned saltwater angler. The postures and language of the sport come easily to me, but it takes more than ’tude and lingo to select, tie on and work a lure well enough to fool a wild animal. I concentrate on the fishing like I’ve never concentrated on anything in my life, except maybe seducing women, and I stay within my capabilities and I start catching some smaller fish. I can’t believe it! Herredia, of course, he sees that I’m not really very good but that’s perfect for him-he ridicules me and puts me in my place, does the whole macho trip you’d expect from a guy like that. But the fish quit biting my lures, and I start to feel the first shivers of panic at being unmasked. What if Herredia sees how deeply I’d been lying when I gave him all the fishing tackle? My guts start to ache. I start messing up my casts, getting tangles and knots. My confidence vanishes. I dig a hook into my damned thumb and pry it out and try to fish through the pain, but I still can’t get so much as a sardine to bite. Even way down in the water, the fish sense my incompetence. I catch Herredia staring at my middle section and I wonder if he’s thinking shotgun or the fillet knife I saw Felipe sharpening early that morning. I’m fucked.
“Then? Well, then Terry Laws starts doing something that Terry Laws turns out to be very, very good at. He fishes. Terry is fast and fluent with the knots, he can cast hundreds of feet of line with the flick of a wrist, he’s a wizard with the squid jigs, and when it comes time to set a hook his big arms pull the rod back smoothly and quickly and not a single fish-not even a dorado weighing thirty pounds-breaks his line or rejects his hook. He’s all over the Bertram. Every time I look up, there’s Terry, hooked up, rod bent, line screaming out as a big fish takes it to the depths. Then he’s hustling along the high gunwale, trying to keep his line from tangling with the others and his fish from getting under the boat, sliding on the wet deck, slipping, righting himself. I know that if Terry goes over he’ll probably drown before we get him back up, but this fact doesn’t deter Laws one bit.
“So of course it’s Terry’s troll line that gets hit. He runs to the stern and grabs the rod and sets the hook and settles into the fighting chair. He braces his legs and draws back the rod into an acute bend, then bows to the fish, reels in a few feet of line, and pulls up tight to it again. I’m cheering while Laws fights this animal. After twenty minutes he’s sweating hard and his total line gain can’t be more than fifty yards. But after half an hour the fish starts to give up line and Terry reels his heart out and then, about seventy-five yards off the port side, the striped marlin launches itself skyward and his flanks buckle and flex in the sunlight and he crashes back into the ocean in a silver explosion. Fifteen minutes later Felipe gaffs the fish and drags it onto the deck where it flops and hammers and tries to get that sword into somebody, the comb on its back raising and lowering, gills gaping slower and shallower. When the fish is dead Terry hefts it in his arms for pictures, taken by Herredia himself. I’ve never seen him so just plain happy. The marlin weighs in at one hundred and seventy-nine pounds.”
“So Terry saves himself by fishing?”
“Don’t interrupt. That night back at El Dorado, Terry breaks his own alcohol ban and downs three double tequilas before dinner. He sways as we take our seats in the dining room, tries to blame it on the rolling of the boat. The women dine with us that night, a rarity in Herredia’s domain. They’re tastefully and expensively dressed and Terry compliments each one on her appearance. He says that Jesus loved prostitutes because they knew shame.
“After dinner, in the billiards room, we shoot no-slop eightball and we drink more. The stereo’s on and two of the women dance while the other two watch Under the Tuscan Sun. Terry pours a large glass of single malt and sits in a big leather armchair. It’s an old chair, seasoned by decades of use-Herredia’s use, of course-and Terry just plops right down in it and begins regaling the room with stories of the fishing day. He has to speak loudly to get above the stereo and the video. He talks about the faith necessary to believe that a fish will strike your lure. How it’s like making a woman fall in love with you. His next topic is what it’s like to kill a man, what it does to a soul. Ten minutes later his glass shatters on the tile after leaving a trail of liquid down his shirt and pants and Herredia’s good chair. He’s snoring.
“Oh yeah, I love the way this is shaping up. Herredia is leaning over the table to calculate a bank shot angle, and at the sound of the glass shattering he straightens and walks around the table to me. He taps my chest with the point of his cue stick, and it leaves a faint cloud of blue powder on my shirt. But his look surprises me. It isn’t the glower of boxed fury like the night before, but the soulful, sad expression that he had worn when he proposed the assassination of Hector and Camilla Avalos.
– It is over, he says quietly.
– Yes.
– Very dangerous.
– Carlos, you are correct in everything, but I ask you to give him one more chance.
– One more chance to do what?
– He’s not like this at home. But when he gets down here, he feels safe and brave and lucky. He thinks this is where he can fight his demons.
– Demons always win. He should not go where they are.
– I can guide him away from them.
– You said this before.
– Give the child a chance to be a man. Do it for our friendship.
– Coleman, you are not a fool, are you?
– No, sir.
– He was weak when you first came here. His hands were shaking when he tried to zip open the luggage on that very first night. Now all of him is shaking, not only his hands.
– You have my word. If I can’t get him to right himself, I know what has to be done.
– Consider: the desert all around us is waiting. He caught the best fish today. He is happy.
“I look over at the dancing women and the unconscious Terry and old Felipe sitting by the door with the shotgun leaned against the wall next to him. El Tigre has a stricken look, a look that tells me he already regrets what he’s about to do.
– He is yours.
– Thank you.
“I got Terry up early the next morning. I expected something-the sudden appearance of men I didn’t know, the racking of a slide, the metallic whisper of a blade clearing leather. But I made my muscles move and I loaded the car and I got Terry into the passenger seat and I drove away. We left El Dorado in the still darkness. There’s nothing darker than a Baja California night.”