Finnegan's week

CHAPTER 16

The first thing that Nell Salter did after arriving at work the next day was to take two aspirin with her coffee, her fifth cup of the morning and her fourth aspirin.

One of the other investigators passed her in the hallway and said, “You don’t look too good.”

“Too much caffeine,” Nell said. “I’m so amped I could jump-start Frankenstein’s monster.”

Nell kept going to the mirror to check for signs of life. Her tongue needed a shave. That goddamn little neurotic got her wasted!

Late in the morning when she felt better she phoned the office of the county medical examiner and spoke with a pathologist, a navy doctor who moonlighted at the morgue when he was not on duty with Uncle Sam.

“FedEx just arrived,” he told Nell. “The specialty lab worked at record speed. What did you tell them?”

“Only that the deceased had expired after a five-minute swim at La Jolla cove. That’s believable considering all the toxic spills around here.”

“Really?”

“No, I forget what I told him. Look, I got a headache today, Doctor. Can you give me the bottom line?”

“Well, it appears that you were right. Of course, we suspected you were, given the inhibiting of cholinesterase.”

“What?”

“Has to do with the nerve enzyme level. The pesticide destroys the enzyme.”

“What did the toxicology tests say? The bottom line.”

“That his death is consistent with organophosphate poisoning, specifically, azinphos methyl. I think we could give an opinion that the exposure to Guthion could’ve caused the behavior that contributed to his accident.”

“Indirectly led to his death, you mean.”

“I’m not a lawyer. You’ll have to talk to the district attorney about all that directly and indirectly stuff.”

“How long does it take that kind of insecticide to kill a person?”

“Depends on the exposure. One of the textbook cases tells about a preacher who decided to take a few gulps of malathion and read the Twenty-third Psalm to his flock. He got to ‘the shadow of death’ and fell into the collection plate. Another one concerns a woman who died in ten minutes after soaking her tampon in paraquat.”

Nell was silent for a second, then said, “Wait a minute! Why would anyone …”

“I know, I know,” the pathologist said. “They never say why anyone would.”

After talking to the body snatcher, Nell wasn’t sure whether she’d be better off trying to upchuck or work. With march-or-die grit, she opted for work and located a Spanish-speaking secretary to help with a call to the Hospital Civil in Tijuana, where any emergency case would be taken.

After three calls over a period of an hour, they were able to reach a Doctor Velásquez. He spoke excellent English and confirmed that there was not one but two patients, both young boys, who were brought into the hospital on Saturday, and who showed every symptom of pesticide poisoning.

After Nell explained the case she said, “Doctor, we know the truck was carrying Guthion. That’s an organophosphate.”

“I am familiar with it,” he said to Nell. “There are a great many insecticides still being used in our country, including some very dangerous ones that you have banned.”

“Could you send blood and tissue samples to our lab in San Diego? We could verify if it’s Guthion. And if possible, we’d like someone to talk to the boys and find out how they got contaminated.”

“As to talking with the boys it will not be possible,” Doctor Velásquez said. “One child is in a coma and the other one is very ill. Perhaps in a day or two he will be able to talk to us.”

“If you could get the samples to us as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.”

“We are perhaps not as primitive as you might think, Ms. Salter,” the doctor said. “We do have a somewhat reliable laboratory. And now that you have identified the substance I would wager that our people might even be able to verify it.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Nell said. “I didn’t mean to …”

“That is all right,” Doctor Velàsquez said. “I am grateful for your call. And I shall personally see to it that the laboratory work is done at once. Personally.”

After she hung up, Nell said to the secretary, “I just offended him. I’ll bet he does a real job on this one so he can show a thing or two to this patronizing gringa bitch.”

Shelby Pate was even more hung over than Nell Salter that morning, but he had ingested his drugs of choice in far greater quantities. During the lunch break, the ox was at last able to hold down his food, and was munching his second bag of Fritos when Abel suggested that they go rest in the shade by a stack of waste drums.

When they were sitting alone, Abel said, “Joo throw away paperwork?”

Shelby looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, “Oh, you mean the manifest? Tell the truth, I didn’t get home till two-thirty in the morning, and my old lady was seriously bummed. I couldn’ta chilled her out with tickets on a love-boat cruise. She says to me, she says, ‘Through your nasal canal has passed more white than they see at the Pillsbury Mills.’ And me, her sugar man, I says to her, ‘I’m on’y tryin to do my part fer local lab workers.’ She’s a hardworkin bitch though. I gotta give her credit fer that much.”

“Throw away papers, Buey.”

“Yeah, sure,” the ox said. “There ain’t nothin to worry about. Don’t let that little navy cop scare ya.”

“I don’ know, Buey,” Abel Durazo said. “Remember when joo get bad feeling? Now I got bad feeling about shoes. Bad.”

If the San Diego Yacht Club had lost its America’s Cup cachet, Jules Temple might’ve resigned his membership. He never would’ve had it in the first place were it not for the fact that his father had been a longtime member. However, keeping up the membership only cost $70 a month, and Jules always hoped that he could use club connections to help in business.

When he was a teenager, Jules used to steal snatch blocks from other members’ sailboats docked at the club marina, and sell them to weekend sailors. Other members’ sailboats were also good places to steal liquor, and even binoculars, since most boat owners kept a good pair on board.

The San Diego Yacht Club was perhaps an unlikely keeper of the America’s Cup. It was a laid-back club, far more egalitarian then the tony New York Yacht Club where the cup had resided for so long amid blazers and white ducks. In San Diego the cup lived with flipflops and Levi’s, and yachtsmen talked a lot more about prime rates than crime rates, as in New York.

The San Diego Yacht Club occupied several acres across from Shelter Island on the end of the channel. The members had a swimming pool and other amenities, but the main attraction was the large private marina where millions of dollars’ worth of pleasure craft floated, and no doubt distressed their owners during hard economic times. It was a square structure, two sides of which faced the marina. The building was functional but not unattractive, with a modified pagoda roof, and a crow’s nest on top that added a nautical touch.

San Diego Yacht Club member Dennis Conner had probably done more than anyone to put the esoteric gentleman’s sport onto America’s sports pages by the introduction of financial syndicates, corporate sponsors, television coverage, and greed. His successor, millionaire Bill Koch-the Donald Trump of yacht racing-showed promise of doing the same, proving that you could buy an America’s Cup if you were willing to scuttle more treasure than Hitler’s U-boats.

Occasionally, Jules would go out for a beer-can race on a sailboat owned by an old school friend, and once in a while he’d be invited for booze-cruises on large powerboats. Jules didn’t own a boat of his own and didn’t want one, using the club as a place to get a decent meal and some business gossip in a high-tech city that was feeling the ominous recession as much as anywhere. San Diego was overdeveloped, at least as far as hotels and office buildings were concerned, and in the California real estate-driven economy, people were nervous. What Jules often got from his visits was free legal advice from the many lawyers who were part of the yachting community.

Jules found that the club wasn’t particularly busy that weekday afternoon. There were a few visitors gawking at the old black-and-white photos of past commodores that lined one wall along the peg-and-groove corridor. And a few kids were pressing their noses to the glass case that housed the America’s Cup, at least until the next regatta, when a Japanese billionaire would probably be ready to take it.

Jules walked into the bar, acknowledging a few people at the cocktail tables. There was a fair-sized luncheon crowd out on the back deck seated at tables under blue umbrellas. A sixty-foot Bertram convertible sportfisher was side-tied to the dock just below the porch. Jules saw that her name, painted across the transom, was Peligrosa.

He knew that Peligrosa belonged to a middle-aged couple he’d met in August at the Jewel Ball in La Jolla, one of San Diego’s glitzier events. Jules had escorted a sixtyish widow named Barbara Gump whom he’d mistakenly thought would be easy pickings if he needed a willing investor in some future scheme, but she’d spent the evening knowledgeably discussing her blind trusts, and killed any hopes Jules may have had. She was a good friend of Willis and Lou Ross, owners of Peligrosa.

Jules had thought it wouldn’t be all that easy to find the right legal advice because he needed counseling on a potential criminal matter, and criminal law was not the specialty of most yachting attorneys. But Jules was aware that Willis Ross headed a law firm that had represented an investment group that bilked a thousand people out of $180 million in a Ponzi scheme by promising a thirty percent annual income from foreign investments. Moreover, the law firm had got the lucrative job of defending the corporate head of a savings and loan that had scammed another thousand or so people out of their savings, for many of them their life savings, so Willis Ross was more than qualified to advise.

The lawyer, like Jules Temple, had an eye for the ladies, young ladies. Jules discovered that on the night they’d met, when he and Willis Ross were not taking turns dancing with each other’s escorts. Since then, Jules and Willis had had a few discussions about Jules’s idea to open an up-market topless dancing club.

Jules waited at the bar for a few minutes, then headed down to the dock where Willis Ross was idling his twin 1400-horsepower diesels. Willis wore baggy knee-length shorts and Topsiders, and an America’s Cup Nautica jacket. He spotted Jules and waved.

“C’mon aboard!” he yelled from atop the fly bridge.

The big sportfisher had a marlin tower and outriggers for big fish. Jules had been told that the boat had cost 1.3 million dollars.

“Looks like you’re ready to cast off.”

“Waiting for Lou,” Willis Ross said. “That woman’s never on time.”

Willis Ross was sixty-three, and had scars from skin cancer surgeries all over his face and neck, and across his hairless scalp. He’d even lost a piece of his lip to the knife, but despite all this he’d never given up the sun and sea.

“Going fishing?” Jules asked.

“Naw. She just needs blown out and it’s a beautiful day. Who wants to bill clients on a day like this?”

“Any lawyer who ever lived,” Jules said, grinning.

“Actually I’ve been scrubbing down the hull,” Willis Ross said. “My boat cleaner’s been sick for the past month. I hate to let him go, but I’m looking around for a new one.”

“Buy you a drink?” Jules asked.

“C’mon aboard. I’ll supply the drinks,” Willis Ross said.

“Why not. Got a beer?”

Jules hopped aboard and sat in the fighting chair while Willis Ross headed to the wet bar inside the main saloon. When he returned with cocktails, Jules said, “Hey, I wanted a beer. It’s kinda early for heavy booze.”

“Try it,” Willis Ross said. “The best rum money can buy.”

The lawyer removed his white floppy hat and sat on a locker in the shade.

His bald scalp looked even worse than the last time Jules had seen it. The lawyer wore hats now, and ladled on the sunscreen, but it was too late. Crusty patches of white mingled with fiery splotches of red. The cumulative effect of all those years of harsh California sun had done its worst. His flesh was alive with skin cancers from the neck up. Even his hands and forearms were badly scarred from surgeries.

The lawyer said, “You still drive that yellow Miata, don’tcha, Jules? I been thinking about buying one for a … friend. She thinks they’re cute.”

“Yeah,” Jules said. “I had an auto security system installed in mine. It arms and disarms by remote control. It can even unlock the door. And get this: It can start the engine from a distance of three hundred feet! That way your car’s cooled off or warmed up before you get in it. That system set me back a thousand bucks.”

“Isn’t that overkill for a cheap little car?”

“Maybe,” Jules said, “but I won’t be driving a cheap little car much longer. I’ll be glad to show it to your friend if she’s interested.” Then he thought: cheap car. The nouveau shyster!

After the first rum, Jules didn’t have any trouble convincing himself to have another. When they were working on the second, Jules said, “I’m getting nearer to close-of-escrow, and when I close, I’ll be looking for that spot I told you about.”

“What spot?”

“The topless club, remember? With the most beautiful girls this town’s ever seen?”

“Oh yeah,” Willis Ross said, smacking his lips when he licked off the rum. “You gonna sell memberships like the place down on Midway?”

“That might be one way to set things up,” Jules said. “It keeps out the riffraff. I might decide to take a few investors, the right people, of course. Interested?”

“I’m interested in being a member,” the lawyer said.

“You’ll get membership-card number one,” Jules said. “Can I ask you a couple questions about the law?”

“For membership number one? Fire away.”

“Do you know anything about environmental law? You know, for dumping hazardous waste, that sort of thing?”

“Probably not as much as you know,” the lawyer said. “It’s a new field. There really isn’t much case law out there when it comes to environmental crimes.”

“You know about the penalties, don’t you? Like, a hundred grand a day and prison time for certain kinds of violations.”

“It can top two hundred thousand a day,” the lawyer said. “And there’s a provision for some big jail time. Why do you ask? I hope you’re not in trouble?”

“No, no,” Jules said. “It’s just that this guy that’s buying my business, he’s having some problems. I’m scared to death something could happen to him and make me lose my deal.”

“What problems?”

“Well, it seems that his employees might’ve dumped a load of very hazardous waste when they should’ve properly disposed of it. And somebody got sick from it. Very sick.”

Before Jules could continue, Lou Ross came flouncing along the dock shouting, “Ahoy, Jules!”

Jules didn’t like her but she liked him and she’d made it clear the first night they’d met at the ball in La Jolla. Every time he’d danced with her she’d done more pelvic thrusts than Michael Jackson in concert. But Lou Ross was getting on, and multiple face-lifts hadn’t worked, not as far as Jules was concerned. Her body was okay for her age, but unless she had more to offer by way of business, he wasn’t interested.

Every time Jules saw her at the club she never missed the opportunity to tell him when Willis was going on a fishing trip. Once she’d left a message at Green Earth saying she’d be having lunch at the club and begged him to be her guest. He’d declined, claiming that he had to go to L.A. to negotiate the purchase of two new bobtails. Still, he didn’t want to shut the door because her husband was important. And at this crucial time in Jules’s business life, Willis Ross could become very important, if any of Jules’s worst fears were realized.

He held out his hand to help Lou Ross aboard. She was wearing a glittery T-top decorated with red, white, and blue sequins that formed a small American flag and a large elephant. Her tinted henna hair said hot rollers and hairdressers, and she was ten pounds past looking good in red stirrup pants.

“It’s for George Bush,” she explained, indicating the T-shirt. “The Republican elephant? I had it made special when we met Mrs. Bush at the fund-raiser. You like?”

She thrust out her chest when she said it, and he had to admit she had pretty nice hooters. His eyes told her that, and she smiled, brushing the back of her hand against his fanny when she walked by him to the saloon.

“About time,” her husband complained. “I can’t just sit at the guest dock all day.”

“Tut tut,” she said. “Old grump wants his baby to look nice, doesn’t he?”

Lou Ross turned and winked at Jules, then disappeared inside the saloon to pour herself a generous noontime shot of rum on the rocks.

“It’s so good to see you, Jules,” she said, when she returned. “You are coming with us, aren’t you?”

Jules looked at Willis Ross and said, “Well, I hadn’t planned on a boat ride.”

“Might as well,” the lawyer said. “We can talk up on the fly bridge after we get out to the ocean.”

“The fly bridge is his refuge from women,” Lou Ross said, when her husband walked forward to untie the bow line.

“So glad you’re here, Jules,” she said. “Hurry and talk business, then come on down so we can have a nice chin-wag.”

“Sure,” Jules said, then started aft to untie the stern line. She put her hand on his bottom and boosted him when he hopped onto the dock.

Jules had the feeling he’d be paying one way or another for his free legal advice, but that’s how things work, he always said. Nothing was ever free, not advice, not even love, if there really was such a thing. Life was just one big whorehouse.

After Willis Ross eased the big boat out of the marina and they were powering slowly through the channel, Jules took a seat in the fighting chair, lifting his face to the sun. The lawyer’s steering station was high up on the fly bridge, so the wind, the rush of water, the growl of the twin diesels, all made it impossible for Willis Ross to hear anything but shouts from where Jules sat on the open deck.

In a few minutes, Lou Ross appeared wearing a wide-brimmed straw sun hat with a scarlet band. She handed Jules a long-billed fishing hat, along with a generous glass of rum.

“Put it on, handsome,” she said. “We don’t want skin cancers on that baby face, do we?”

Jules usually didn’t mind flirtations with older women. In fact, he’d thrived on them. Two of the investors his father had accused him of bilking were older divorcees, both of whom Jules had had to serve sexually in order to get their six-figure investments in a shopping mall that went belly-up.

He put the hat on and said, “Do I look like Papa Hemingway?”

Lou Ross laughed and said, “He was a notorious womanizer, Jules. Is the resemblance coincidental?”

Jules just grinned, and Lou Ross sashayed back into the saloon causing Jules to think: She’s way past stretch pants.

He put his feet up on the gunwales while they cruised out the channel, passing a Sturgeon-class submarine being demagnetized at the degaussing pier on Point Loma’s lee side. There was a Los Angeles-class nuclear sub in one of the huge dry docks, the same dry dock that caused a lot of jokes during the epic visit of the Soviet fleet in 1990. The dry dock had been completely blanketed to prevent the Soviets from taking a peek. This, when every Sunday of the year there were thousands of camera bugs in everything from cruise ships to rubber dinghies sailing past the dry docks, snapping away like at high school graduation.

When the Bertram rounded the lighthouse at Point Loma, Willis Ross pointed the boat out to sea in order to clear the vast kelp beds that every local yachtsman avoided. He got her cruising at thirty knots, and the engines almost obliterated Lou Ross’s voice when she said to Jules, “Why don’t you have lunch with me later this week?”

“I’d love to, Lou,” he said, “but I’m in the process of trying to sell my business and … you know how it is.”

“You’re getting out of that dreadful toxic waste thing? Good for you! Are you gonna retire?”

“I’d like to,” he said, smiling. “But I’m barely forty. I’m afraid I have a lotta years to work.”

“Barely forty,” she said, primping at her blowing hair, for fear the wind might reveal the cosmetic surgery scars. “You are a baby, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I need a mommy,” Jules said.

“Maybe you do,” she said peering coyly over the lip of the glass. “Come on, let’s go inside before the skipper-from-hell opens up both engines.”

Willis Ross steered the motor yacht northwest after they’d cleared the kelp. The seas were very calm, permitting him to cruise at thirty-eight knots without buffeting the passengers below.

The main saloon had air-conditioning, an elaborate sound system and a video entertainment center. The saloon was cabineted, draped and mirrored. Lou Ross stretched out on a peach settee and leaned her elbow on plum and persimmon pillows. Jules sat across the saloon in a barrel-backed chair done in tangerine and banana. When Lou Ross had replaced the factory decor everybody said she now had the world’s most expensive floating fruit salad.

“I don’t usually drink like this so early in the day,” she said.

“Of course not. Neither do I.”

“I think it’s because you’re here,” she said.

“Oh?”

“You make me feel …”

“What?”

“Dangerous.”

“I bet you are dangerous,” he said, taking her empty glass and refilling it.

When he handed the drink to her, she took it and his hand, saying, “And naughty. Jules, you always make me feel naughty and young.”

“You are …”

“Stop that,” she said. “You know very well that I’m, well, several years older than you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about several,” he said.

“Willis is going to Cabo San Lucas on a fishing trip next Thursday. He’ll be gone for ten days.”

“You’re not going with him?”

“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t spend more than a day on any boat smaller than the QE Two.”

“What’re you going to do for ten days?” He freshened his drink and sat down next to her on the settee.

“That depends,” she said, “on several things.”

He inched his hand closer to hers and said, “Such as?”

“Whether or not I’ll be alone. What’re you doing then?”

“Tying up the loose ends at my office.”

“If a few loose ends could wait, you might like to consider a trip to New York. I’ve got some good theater tickets, and a girlfriend I’d invited can’t come. I don’t wanna go alone. Won’t cost you a dime. Naturally, we don’t want Willis to know about it.”

“How many days?”

“Four. We can stay longer if you like. They take care of repeat clients at the Carlyle.”

“Is that the hotel the Kennedys always stayed at?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where Bobby Short sings in the café?”

“Uh huh, you’ve seen the Woody Allen movie. Interested?”

Jules was thinking about a lot of things. He did have plenty of work to do before the escrow closed, but maybe it could wait. There might be opportunity here. It was rumored that after Lou Ross’s father died, she’d inherited enough real and personal property to be worth twice as much as her husband, and he was worth a bundle. There was no telling where this could lead.

And then he studied her. She was showing him a provocative boozy smile. With the rum hot in his belly, he thought she really wasn’t too bad. He’d slept with a lot worse in his time, but only when it was advantageous to do so. He could manage Lou Ross quite nicely. Yeah, she wasn’t all that old, Jules was convincing himself.

“Okay, but I think you should be forewarned: I have a morbid fear of flying … coach.”

“First-class all the way. And I wanna see you tonight, Jules.” It wasn’t an invitation, it was a command.

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Where? Why tonight?”

“At my condo. And tonight because Willis is going to a boring retirement party for a superior court judge.”

“But is it wise if I come to your house?”

“I didn’t say to our house. I said come to my condo. I bought it for an investment after my father died. It’s mine, not ours.”

“Where is it?”

“At the Meridian. Ever been there?”

“I’ve been by there a number of times, of course.”

“Then you’ll enjoy seeing it from the inside,” she said. “Twenty-seven floors of good views and fabulous views. Mine’s fabulous. On the bay side, of course. It’s a getaway nest. Willis hates it. I love it. I have everything I want there, including lots of service and lots of protection. You could easily get used to it, Jules, if you’re like me.”

“I better go up topside and talk to Willis,” Jules said. “He’ll wonder what’s happened to me.”

“Eight o’clock, Jules,” she said. “I’ll have something for us. A light supper, maybe.”

“Sounds perfect,” Jules said.

When he climbed up to the fly bridge, he brought a fresh drink for Willis Ross. The lawyer looked surprised, as though he’d forgotten that Jules was aboard. As though he’d forgotten that anyone was aboard. Willis Ross was in his element, and Jules had no doubt that when the lawyer retired he’d set foot on land only when he had to.

They were well offshore by then, but the oceanfront homes along La Jolla’s Gold Coast were large enough to be clearly seen and admired, even from that distance. As a lad, Jules had attended many parties in that row of homes, where ocean breakers would explode against offshore rocks and hurl foam and spray fifty feet in the air. Where well-to-do young revelers drank punch laced with hidden bottles of gin, and the green sloping lawns and ocean surf were bathed in white light. When you could not help but believe that youth and summer would never end.

Perhaps because of Jules’s troubled look Willis Ross said to him, “Let’s just enjoy the ride for a little while. Lemme get her turned around and headed back into the bay; then I’ll put on my powdered wig and try to help you with your problem.”

With a toss of his head toward the saloon, Jules said, “Is Lou okay alone or should I …”

“Don’t worry about Lou,” the lawyer said. “She’ll be in the stateroom having her afternoon snooze any minute now. She can’t stay awake after her noon cocktails.”