A Man's Reach
Val Cameron
Published by Muse Creations Inc at Smashwords
Copyright 1999, Muse Creations Inc
Some cover art images Copyright © www.arttoday.com
Original
paperback first edition published in 1999
by Muse Creations Inc
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www.smashwords.com/profile/view/valcameron
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Dedication
for Brian, always
Chapter 1
Dale Welland left for Mexico the day after he testified against Barry Durheim. He took the stand, swore his oath and gave evidence while Durheim stared at him with hopeless, myopic eyes. Durheim, of course, was convicted. Welland Systems collected a big fee from the client.
Barry Durheim, guilty. Case closed.
Dale left the courtroom, walked into the street and wished he could simply keep walking. He was scheduled for a consultation with the directors of yet another bank the next day. He did not want to do another bank, to corner another Barry Durheim.
San Francisco’s streets were packed with people rushing, pushing, shopping. The air felt chilly from the fog blanketing the bay. Dale flagged a taxi and sat through twenty minutes of crawling traffic. In the foyer of his office building, he waited again for an elevator that seemed permanently lodged on the twentieth floor. Waiting, studying the travel posters in the travel agency’s window, the sailboat caught his eye.
The sleek, white yacht flew a brilliant red and white spinnaker, her lee rail buried in white water as she churned up blue-green foam. His sailing days had consisted of two summers at university, working on a wealthy student’s yacht. Sanding, varnishing, polishing brass, hauling lines. Wind and spray in his face. Hard physical work. Good summers.
He abandoned the elevator and strode into the agency.
"Caribbean?" suggested the girl behind the counter. She was pretty, blonde, impossibly young.
"No, thanks. Too many tourists."
"What about Alaska? A cruise." Her eyes narrowed as she assessed this potential customer. "Get away from it all."
"Sorry, too cold."
He had devoted fifteen years to building Welland Systems into a discreet, respected investigation service. Fifteen years. No wonder he felt stale.
He rejected the tourist havens of Acapulco and Mazatlan.
“Southern Baja?” she suggested. “Mexico, but not crowded. Mountains, deserts, and ranches. Beaches, of course. Fishing. Sailing. Skin diving.” She saw she had caught his interest. “We can arrange quality accommodations in either Cabo San Lucas or La Paz. Markets—Mexican markets are very colorful, the people friendly.”
“La Paz? What does that mean?”
“Peace. It means peace.”
The buildings of La Paz sprawled around a big bay opening onto the Gulf of California. Mexico: strange-sounding words in the streets, maniacal drivers, dangerously uneven sidewalks. Everywhere, metal air conditioning units protruded through walls at the perfect height to knock Dale senseless as he walked.
He ate hot, delicious meals in noisy restaurants. He learned that cerveza was the word for beer, that malecón meant sea-wall, that the yachting community—mostly Americans and Canadians—congregated in a bar on the malecón. He drifted there each afternoon, attracted by English-speaking voices and sailboats in the harbor.
Watching people had become a habit, the skill he used to make a living catching white-collar criminals. Here, he watched tourists drinking cerveza, Mexicans serving them, sailors beaching their dinghies.
He thought about buying a sailboat and casting off for foreign waters. He thought about flying home early and getting back to work.
He listened.
"… years since La Paz has been hit by a hurricane. All these boats that stay through summer are going to get creamed one of these years. You won’t catch me … … pitch-poled rounding the Cape. His back was broken. She strapped him to a table to keep him immobile, then she started bailing … probably down to Panama this spring. Got to wait for the Tehuantepecers to quit blowing, but then … bitch swung right into me! I was on a mooring, and he came in and anchored. Then he dragged and creamed my bow pulpit! If that bastard doesn’t come good for it … shot off flares and the steamer just chugged on by. So the next boat that came, she got out the shotgun and fired across the bows … My, God! I don’t believe it! You bastard! I haven’t seen you since Australia!… crewed to the Marquesas, but had a fight with the skipper and left him there."
Mid-September, but hot and sweaty in La Paz. Too hot.
Dale watched an inflatable dinghy fly along the flat water towards the beach. A half-nude, sun-browned man sat on one pontoon, his hand stretched back to control the motor.
Dale drained his beer and crossed the street to the beach. The soft sand absorbed his office walk, turning it awkward and slow, his polished city shoes kicking up sand. A few yards away, the sailor killed his outboard and stepped out in shallow water. He wore salt-encrusted leather sandals and a ragged pair of cutoff jeans, nothing else. He looked alive, vitally alive, his sun-darkened fingers closing on the painter to pull the dinghy up on the beach.
Brown back. Brown chest, dark hairs curling tightly.
Dale stopped in the shade of a beach palapa. The sailor had a hard face with dreamer’s eyes that had become cynical. Eyes narrowed against the sun. Mouth set against the world. A man of stone, until he saw Dale watching, and a smile flashed.
Or had he known Dale was there all along? Was the bronzed half-nude stranger a bit of a showman, playing to the gallery? Dale shook off the suspicion. This was vacation time. No criminals. No embezzlers, no forgers. Only a man sun-darkened in the style of one who did not need to worry about going to work, a man picking two plastic containers from his dinghy.
He stood erect and wandered towards Dale, smiling.
"Hot," said Dale. "It must be pushing a hundred degrees."
"Bloody uncomfortable, those clothes of yours."
"Your outfit looks more practical."
The stranger looked down at his own body with a grin. “Cuts down on laundry. It’s the humidity that gets you, you know, especially when you're not acclimatized.”
“You're acclimatized?” Obviously he was. “Do you live here in the harbor? On a boat?”
He wagged his hand back and forth in a Mexican gesture. “I go where the wind blows. Tahiti. Tonga. Mexico. I stay in the sunshine, move when I get restless.”
Dale thought of days among workers and computers in tall office buildings, of suspicion and embezzlers, of testifying against Barry Durheim.
“Sounds like a dream come true.”
“There’s nothing to beat the wind in my face and the sails full, Far Reacher churning up a foamy bow wave.”
“Far Reacher?” Dale pushed his hands into his lightweight slacks. They were thin, but too hot. His light shirt was the same. “That’s the name of your boat?”
“A ketch. She’s a beauty.” The empty plastic jugs swung in his hands. “Why don’t you give me a hand getting my water, then I’ll take you out for a cold beer.”
“Sounds good.” Sitting on the deck of one of those sailboats with a bottle of beer in his hand, the gentle motion of the water under him while he dreamed of a wild, free sail on a vast ocean.
“I’m Brent,” the sailor announced, handing Dale one of the plastic water jugs. He stopped at a tap near the sea wall, turned the faucet and began to fill one of the containers. A young Mexican boy dropped down on the beach and stared at the two gringos. Brent grinned at the boy and received a shy smile back.
“I’m Dale. Dale Welland.”
Brent crouched down on his heels in the sand, holding the container under the stream of water. “Down here on holiday? Where are you staying?”
“El Presidente.”
“Here, hand me that other jug. You're alone in Mexico? It shows, you know. My guess is you're an accountant, a workaholic.”
“Systems analyst,” Dale said, lying by habit.
“Huh?”
“Computer stuff.” Over Brent’s shoulder, Dale saw a car grow impatient with traffic and roar into high speed, passing a truck. A car coming the other way screamed to a stop with only inches to spare, its driver pounding angrily on the outside of the car door with his open palm.
Brent tightened the cap on the last jug. “My wife would know what you're talking about. Take your shoes off. You won’t get off this beach without getting your feet wet. System analyst? I bet you charge out at a couple hundred bucks an hour?”
Brent’s wife? Dale had an uncomfortable vision of himself sitting on Brent’s boat with a beer in his hand, watching them together—Brent, and the woman who made his voice turn from casual warmth to a tender caress.
“Look, Brent, why don’t I buy you a beer? Across the street.”
“I’m not dressed for it. Mexicans believe in dressing properly. Bare chests are only for the beach. Lots of tourists don’t care, but why should I offend these people? Come on, I’ll show you my boat.”
They sped across the calm harbor in the rubber dinghy until Brent cut the engine and the pontoon bumped up against a sleek, fiberglass sailboat. White. A ketch, wooden masts caressed by gleaming varnish. A red maple leaf flag streaming back from the stern.
Dale’s eyes got lost somewhere halfway up that gleaming main mast. “It’s gorgeous,” he said reverently.
He followed Brent up and stood on the deck, feeling a deep envy that bordered on passionate jealousy. It had been so long since he had felt anything that mattered. He covered the emotion with cool words.
“I used to crew on a big sloop back at university, but I haven’t been on a boat since then. You're Canadian?”
“I haven’t been home in years, but I fly the flag.”
Far Reacher. Magic, something from another world, where freedom and adventure blended into excitement.
Brent’s voice turned soft and he said, “She was a wet kit, fiberglass. You know, the hull and deck factory done, all ready to throw in the water, but hollow inside. We did the interior, Catherine and I.”
“Catherine?”
“My wife. She was an accountant.” He smiled. “Some accountant. Some woman. Suits and skirts in the daytime, telling businessmen how to arrange their taxes, talking to computers. Then, after five, jeans and sandpaper and power saws. God, she looked gorgeous in a pair of jeans! When we got home she'd shower and come out in a filmy black thing. She was ...”
“Was?”
“She’s dead. She died.” Brent shrugged his mood away. “Come on down below. See the boat. She’s beautiful, a dream of a ship.”
As Dale followed Brent down the steps from the cockpit, Brent tossed back, “You're on holiday? How long?”
“I don’t know.”
He had bought tickets for a month, but had been thinking of changing them and flying home tomorrow. Now, with Brent's glowing teak decks overhead, he wondered if he could wrangle an invitation for some sailing.
Dale grasped for handholds as he climbed down the stairs. Suddenly it was a deep hunger in him, an excitement that must be like falling in love. He had never risked falling in love, but he could risk this. The seas and a ship, wind and waves and a taste of nature’s wild power. He followed Brent past the double stateroom, through the galley and the dinette.
They sat in the salon with its white upholstery and small fireplace.
“I don’t need the fireplace down in these latitudes,” said Brent, lifting his cerveza and pouring a long, cool stream of beer down his throat. “The fireplace was Catherine’s idea, for chilly evenings up in Canada. She liked to sit where you are. She would curl her feet under her, lean back and half-close her eyes while the music flowed over us in the quiet waters of some deserted anchorage. Deserted except for Catherine and I, and Far Reacher.”
It was more than the words. Something in the motion, the movement of the ship under them, something in Brent’s almost dreamlike voice. Dale could feel the woman’s presence. Catherine … on the wind, in this beautiful boat, in this man who was half sailor and half dreamer.
Brent’s voice turned slow and reflective. “In the firelight, her hair gleamed copper and warm. Her eyes would be all soft brown and magic, watching me while I filled the lanterns with kerosene.”
Dale could feel Catherine’s presence, almost as if she were alive, as if her warm brown eyes followed him. Almost as if she were his magic sailing companion, his lover.
Brent stood, suddenly restless, and Dale heard his own voice ask, “Do you ever need crew?”
The other man stared at Dale, frowning. His words came slowly, with an odd deliberation. “I’m going up into the Sea of Cortez, to Partida anchorage, then Isla San Francisco. Good swimming there, a green, sandy bay. Good diving, looking down through green water, watching the colors, the life flowing. There’s a salt mine at San Francisco.”
Brent’s Mexican San Francisco contrasted vividly in Dale’s mind with his own, with city buildings and embezzlers. The only parallel was Dale’s own house overlooking the dark waters of San Francisco Bay.
Brent was saying, “... north to Puerto Escondido. Maybe across the Sea to the mainland, a night passage on a fresh northerly.” He paused, watching Dale, seeming to consider, then he said deliberately, “I don’t have crew right now. I’m single-handing. Why don’t you pack your suitcase and come along?”
Chapter 2
After five weeks exploring the Sea of Cortez on Far Reacher, Dale Welland and Brent Markesson anchored the sailboat at Santispac, some two hundred miles north of La Paz on the Gulf of California. From there, they flew together to Los Angeles, then changed to a San Francisco flight.
In San Francisco, Dale went to his stockbroker, then his bank. By the time he had liquidated enough to write the check and have it certified, he was left with none of the gilt-edged bonds his broker had raved about. He had three thousand in his checking account, but he drew out most of that in cash, for expenses. He had not touched Welland Systems operating funds, although he had used twenty thousand of the company’s short term deposits to repay some of his own shareholder’s loan. The company owed him and it was past time he took some personal benefit from success.
His lawyer glared across his desk through small, round eyes and demanded, “Why the hell do you have to do it in such a hurry? Why can’t you buy an American documented boat! Jesus, Dale! There must be a hundred—maybe a thousand boats for sale in the Bay area. Why pick one down in Mexico, fifteen hundred miles away!"
“Joe, just do the paperwork, would you?” The sooner the papers were signed, the sooner Dale would be back in Mexico ... back on board Far Reacher and sailing.
Joe frowned and shifted the belly that had been growing over the years. “The down payment’s too big. You realize eventually you’ll have to get the Canadians to de-register it, then you’ll have to document it in the States.”
Restlessly, Dale adjusted his jacket. He stared at his leather shoes and wondered how he had ever tolerated a life of sitting, of meetings, of waiting in lawyers offices, traffic lineups, boardrooms.
“Joe, that’s what I pay you for, to work out the details. Not to tie me up listening to the hassles.”
The next day, Dale signed. Brent signed. The certified check changed hands. Joe took charge of Brent’s Canadian Blue Book, frowned and cautioned, “What if the Mexicans want to see the Blue Book while I've got it tied up in red tape at the Canadian Ship’s Registry?”
Brent grinned and shrugged the problem away. Joe frowned at Brent’s tattered jeans and stared at the Spanish words on his T-shirt. Dale felt impatient to be gone. Then, finally, it was over. They left Joe, left his plastic-perfect secretary in the front office, got into the corridor and finally, into the elevator.
“I don’t think he understands,” said Brent as the elevator doors closed.
Dale pushed the ground floor button. “You're damn right he doesn’t understand. He’s wondering if I’m certifiable.”
He remembered how Joe had winced when Brent casually stuffed the check into his back pocket. Now the sailor pushed his hands into the pockets, probably crushing the check.
“Just think,” Brent said quietly. “There you’ll be, leaning back in the cockpit with the sun setting over the open Pacific Ocean. You’ll stare up at the skies, a million stars in a black sky, the Milky Way streaked across. You and Far Reacher.” The smile grew as the image of sail and sea grew strong inside the elevator. Then, his voice hardening, Brent said, “That’ll be you, but Joe will be back here, taking Maalox for his ulcer and wondering if he should buy a toupee.”
They walked out of the elevator, out of the building into the fast-moving crush of busy people. For a moment, Brent’s fantasy image remained very strong, then a sports car roared and Dale smelled the city.
They separated for a few hours, Dale going to a conference with Conrad at Welland Systems while Brent did some shopping. They met again for dinner in a Mexican restaurant. Both men laughed when the waitress did not understand Brent’s Spanish. The next morning, Dale went with Brent to the airport. Brent was flying back to Far Reacher.
“I’ll see you in a week,” Dale promised, feeling vaguely guilty. It was neither consistent or sane, but he was running back to check on his business before he tossed his hat over the windmill!
“No hay problema,” said Brent, pushing his hands into his jeans pockets, leaning back against a wall as he watched another passenger go through the security check.
“The rest of the money might be through by then.”
“No hurry,” Brent’s lips curved in the smile that seemed to say something else, something mysterious. He said, “I’ll head back and look after your boat. Don’t get caught in the rat race, my friend.”
His boat. Varnished masts stretching to the blue sky, sleek white hull slicing through the waves. A Blue Book had changed hands, signatures on paper, and now it was his. Well, almost. All but the red tape.
“I won’t,” Dale promised. “A week, then we're going to sea.”
He walked through the door of Welland Systems and the fingers of the business he had built curled around his limbs. The new bank investigation was heating up. A multinational had asked for a consultation on internal control systems to prevent a repeat of last year’s disaster. Conrad had it under control, but—
Five days. Six.
“I thought you were going back to Mexico,” Conrad said on the sixth day.
“Yes, but—”
“I bet you’ll still be here in a month.”
Dale realized that under the smile, Conrad was itching to get his fingers back on the reins. So why was Dale holding back? This was what he wanted, wasn't it? The freedom to go sailing.
Dale drove home and locked up his house again, did not let himself feel emptiness when he stood looking over the bay with an empty house at his back. He left his car in his own garage and took a taxi to the airport, then spent the flight to LAX sitting beside an elderly woman who was on her way to visit her daughter’s family. While she talked, Dale alternated between panic at the crazy thing he had done, and excitement at the dream.
No hay problema, he repeated softly to himself. Conrad would love the chance to stay in control of Welland Systems a few weeks longer, and the sailing would be fabulous. Out of the Sea of Cortez into the open Pacific, beating North from the tropics to San Francisco. Like the last five weeks on Far Reacher, but better, more exciting. It was his boat now, although Brent would stay on board as crew until they reached San Francisco.
“Why not?” Brent Markesson had said with a shrug. “I’m going that way in any case, back home to Canada.” He had grimaced and said ruefully, “Back to regular employment, damn it!”
Why not, Dale echoed in his mind. As for the money: what the hell was money, anyway? Lawyers made a profession of looking for problems, but the money was Dale’s to spend as he pleased. It was more than time he spent some of it on a luxury, chasing a dream. All those years of caution and where was he? Successful. Alone. Even Anne was gone now.
Anne, the week before Barry Durheim’s court case. They had been sharing morning coffee in his dining room. She had left her untouched coffee and moved to stand with her back to the window that looked out over San Francisco Bay.
“Dale, I’m leaving.”
He had been halfway through his cup of coffee. He had swallowed without tasting a drop. He had focused past her, on the violent surge of the ocean outside the window. Then he had put the cup down onto the polished surface of the dining table, had looked at her strained face. Somehow, her face had reminded him of Durheim sitting behind his desk, that blank look on his face as he listened to Dale telling him that there was evidence, dates and numbers and a clear trail of the money moving from where it belonged ... to Barry Durheim.
Dale hadn't wanted Durheim to be the one doing the embezzling. He had liked Durheim, although he had no business liking anyone when he was working.
“What did you say, Anne?” He had pushed his hair back from his forehead, that unruly lock that kept crawling down. Leaving, he thought as she stared at him, but the word had no meaning.
She turned away, looking toward the trees, the ocean. Blue slacks, he noted absently, wondering if they were new, if he had seen that lacy white blouse before. She looked good in frilly things. Frills and lace … he played with the words, but they wouldn't turn into poetry.
Anne. Blonde, pretty, wound up like a coil as she said, “I’m leaving, Dale. Now. This morning.”
He felt that crazy conviction that he was not there, that his voice was simply a mechanical wind-up toy, grinding out words without meaning.
“Sure," he said, deliberately misunderstanding her. "You may as well get away for a while. It’s been hellish humid.”
“I’m not talking about a trip.” She gulped, shook her long blonde hair back. “I'm moving out. Permanently.” The curve of her lips should have torn at his heart. “Dale, it’s a gorgeous house, and you're a gorgeous guy, but …”
He felt the barriers flow in around him, soft thick substance that insulated him from the rest of the world. She was walking out. There was no changing it, no reaching out to her. He couldn’t remember reaching, not ever.
“Why not stay?” he had invited casually that first night. They had met on the Tiburon ferry, gone on to dinner. Dancing. Then he had brought her to his home, to his bed. Two years ago. Stay, or go. It doesn't matter. He had issued an invitation that first night, not a request.
She had stared at him, her fingers spread on his naked shoulder. Then she had smiled. “Why not?”
Two years, then Anne standing in front of the window, her eyes haunted as she said, “Let’s not drag it out. We didn’t make any promises.”
“Is that what you wanted? Promises?”
Her eyes blinked, hard, and he knew he should reach out, but his hands were frozen as she whispered, “I wanted you to love me, Dale.”
Why not say the word she wanted? Love.
“Face it, Dale. When I walk out that door, it isn’t going to hurt you at all. Inconvenient, maybe, but not pain. You don’t feel pain. You're just pretending to be part of this world, hiding behind those blue eyes.”
Then she came very close, her body rising as her lips brushed his. “Tell me you can’t get by without me, Dale. Tell me.”
Her words crawled softly in his mind for weeks.
Anne, he thought now, staring out the window at a white bank of clouds. Five miles above California, and Anne was just a name, no more meaningful than the roar of the jets as they pushed him along the sky. Anne. A nice girl. Two years, and all he thought was that she was a nice girl.
He didn’t blame her for leaving.
Listening to the old woman in the seat next to him, to the quiet roar of the jets in level flight, Dale tried to shake the feeling of unreality. It all seemed artificial, a world stuffed with cotton wool. Was that why he had embarked on this crazy adventure? To try to touch something, feel something? Brent with his fantastic life, seductive life, seductive memories. Catherine.
Catherine, he whispered deep inside his mind, and he could feel what Brent had felt for Catherine. A dead woman, for God’s sake! A ghost! Was it really the boat Dale wanted? Or was he insane enough to think that he could trap the ghost of a dead woman by taking possession of Far Reacher?
“She named it,” Brent had said, leaning back against the mast with a cerveza in his hand and dreams in his eyes. “My dream, and she made it real. She quoted that thing from Browning. 'Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.'”
Tears had glistened in Brent’s eyes. “Far Reacher,” he had whispered. “Catherine. Reaching for her was like reaching for the moon, like touching heaven.”
Dale shivered in the fantasy. Where was rational thought? Analytical judgments, made coldly? Brent Markesson with his magic life. Sailing on the Sea of Cortez. On the charts the body of water inside the Baja peninsula was called the Gulf of California, but Brent called it by the old name—the Sea of Cortez. More exciting, Brent said. Cortez and Spanish galleons. Pirates. The pirates had made La Paz their base. Magic history. Magic Far Reacher, with wind in his face and warm water all around.
After five weeks sailing aboard Far Reacher, Dale wasn't sure where Brent’s dream ended, where his own began. Somewhere, tangled in the dream, was Catherine. Strong. Sensuous. Loyal.
Love.
Catherine, Brent’s wife, walked in Dale’s dreams. A psychiatrist would have fun with that. Dale, the man who would not let himself love, falling in love with a dead woman. Safe, the psychiatrist might decide. What commitment could a ghost ask of her lover?
Dale forced his thoughts away from the husky memory of Brent’s voice. Catherine was Brent’s dream. He repeated that to himself, feeling more like the logical man he was supposed to be. Watch. Evaluate. Don’t get involved. Even with the tragedy of Catherine’s death, Brent had more of love than Dale could ever touch. The woman was a ghost, part of Far Reacher.
He played with dreams of the wind in the sails, the challenge of pitting twenty tons of man-made monohull against the weather and the open ocean waves.
Would Far Reacher become trapped, a weekend sailor on San Francisco Bay once he and Brent had sailed her back to San Francisco.
Perhaps next spring he could take a few months away from the office again, set sail for Hawaii. He could venture around the world on Far Reacher, jetting back home to Welland Systems every few months.
Maybe, he thought, feeling that excitement again.
The jet changed tones. The woman beside him clutched his arm. “We're coming down,” she whispered with tension.
Dale was nowhere, suspended between worlds listening to an old, unhappy woman. Back in San Francisco it had seemed nobody gave a damn if he ever returned. Ahead was a magic fantasy he suddenly had difficulty believing in. It had seemed real enough while Brent was there, standing at his side, grinning at the careful, cautious things.
Fifty thousand dollars! Jesus! Joe was right. It was a hell of a lot of money for a down payment. A big angel like Far Reacher was easily worth the hundred fifty grand he had agreed to pay, but why had he made such a big down payment? What if something went wrong? What if—
No. Of course not.
Joe was right, it had been foolish, but the paperwork would go through and the boat would be his. But next time he decided to take a flier, he would dip his toes in a little more cautiously. He grinned, admitted that without Brent to give him reckless courage, his life would undoubtedly turn tame and dull again.
At LAX he changed to the commuter jet that would hopscotch across the border to Mexico, then down the Baja peninsula. The seat beside him was empty. After takeoff, he watched the patchwork of buildings that was San Diego, Chula Vista, National City, and San Ysidro. They all blended together and he missed where it changed into Tijuana.
Mexico. Mountains. More mountains. Small scatterings of people. The Baja peninsula of Mexico stretched southeast almost a thousand miles from the border with California. Between the peninsula and the Mexican mainland was the Sea of Cortez. He looked to his left, across the aisle, past the shoulder of the dark Hispanic man seated across from him, and saw the Sea, deep blue and magic. Though his own window, down below to the west of the mountains, he stared at the Pacific Ocean. Bigger. Wilder. It stretched on forever.
While Joe was arranging the ownership transfer at Ship’s Registry in Canada, Dale and Brent would set sail, would clear the southern tip of the Baja and escape to the open ocean.
From fifteen thousand feet up, Dale looked at the open ocean and felt a surge inside that was equal parts excitement and fear. It was one hell of a big ocean!
He was smiling when he got off the small jet at Mulege.
Instantly, he was aware of Mexico: hot sun, the smell of an animal carcass somewhere, the sight of buzzards circling a nearby hill. Three battered yellow taxis met the plane. Foreign sounds, voices. He knew a few polite sounds in Spanish, but the quick conversation surrounding him was nothing but gibberish.
A short, slight Mexican with a sleek mustache popped out of nowhere, grinned and announced, “Taxi, señor.” He did not allow Dale time to respond before he grasped his suitcase and headed for the trunk of the taxi. Dale watched as the driver pushed a big rusty screwdriver through the hole where a key had once fitted to unlock the trunk. The trunk popped open and the suitcase went in with a thud. The screwdriver went into the Mexican’s back pocket.
“Vamos!” announced the Mexican, gesturing to the taxi.
Dale got into the front seat. He felt hot, but mercifully there was none of the sweltering humidity he had experienced in September and early October. The driver leaped in behind the steering wheel and started the unmuffled engine with a roar.
“A Mulege?” the Mexican demanded as they lurched into motion. It was a typical Mexican taxi, the upholstery battered, the engine coughing.
“No, I want to go to Santispac.” Dale remembered his lessons on getting by in Mexico, courtesy of Brent. “How much?” he asked.
The driver didn’t answer, so Dale repeated the question in awkward Spanish. “Quánto cuesta?”
The driver frowned, then muttered, “A santispac? Es muy lejos.” A pause, then, “Twenty dollars.”
Too much, Dale thought. Then he shrugged. What the hell! So the driver would go home and give his family a good dinner. Or he would go out on a binge. “Okay,” he agreed and he saw the Mexican relax slightly in the seat.
Dale relaxed, too.
Ahead, a blonde woman, evidently a tourist, was walking across the street. Dale tensed slightly, his foot pushing the floor, psychological breaking. He had his hand out to brace himself against the dash because he knew the Mexican would slow down for the woman.
The uneven engine roared, throwing Dale back against the seat. He grabbed desperately for an anchor as the taxi accelerated and jerked to the right, screaming with angry power. Dale heard a shout or a scream as the woman’s stunned face whipped past his window. He got a grip on the open window and jerked his head back to locate the woman.
She was there, running towards the edge of the road. Jesus! He could have sworn she would be dead, her body meat for the buzzards.
The taxi left the narrow roads of the little town, passing a big transport truck on the wrong side of the road in the face of oncoming traffic and going full speed through a stop sign. Then up a hill, steep and winding and too narrow for this maniac taxi driver. Dale glanced at the face beside him, saw a wide grin, white teeth, and two hands gripping the wheel violently.
He didn’t know the Spanish word for careful!
Ahead of them, a Pepsi truck loaded with soft drinks was crawling slowly up the hill. Ahead of that, Dale saw a wall of rock, a blind corner. The taxi crawled up behind the back wheels of the Pepsi truck, hugging the big back axles. Dale heard the rattle of glass bottles as the truck ahead went over an uneven section of road. The taxi crawled closer.
Dale closed his eyes, opened them again to avoid a vision of the trailer ahead breaking free, of this taxi buried in two tons of broken Pepsi bottles.
Suddenly, the taxi roared into action.
“Jesus! Not on this corner!”
The driver grinned harder and spun the wheel. He leaned on his horn and emitted a loud wail as the ancient taxi passed the big truck with a shout and a gigantic puff of dirty exhaust fumes.
As they reached the front bumper of the big Pepsi tractor, Dale saw a reflected glint of sunlight from up ahead. He went rigid, his feet driving into the floor of the taxi uselessly, his hands clenching on nothing. Too late for action. To their left, nothing but a sheer rock drop of two hundred feet. To their right, the massive truck.
And ahead, a dirty green truck coming at them, fast.
Scream of metal. Smell of burning rubber. A lurch, a puff from the truck’s diesel exhaust. A hard swing to the right. Dale felt his heart start again as he heard the wind from the green truck scream past. He stared ahead at empty highway, his heart thundering louder than the engine of this old taxi.
Miraculously, he was alive. The taxi was still in motion.
The bastard at the wheel was still grinning.
Ahead, mercifully, he could see the blue-green of Santispac anchorage, could see the bare poles of sailboat masts standing out like thin match sticks. He could not identify individual boats yet, but he leaned forward, straining to see Far Reacher. Brent would be aboard, waiting for him, eager to weigh anchor and set sail.
At this distance, impossible to spot one boat among so many lying at anchor; but he couldn’t stop himself from trying as the taxi turned off the highway and drove on the sand towards the water.
“Twenty dollars,” Dale said, handing it over in exchange for his suitcase. “If you'd killed me, you'd have gotten nothing.”
The driver laughed.
“Understand English?”
“Little,” said the driver. He got back into his taxi and drove away along the beach towards an open-air beer stand a few hundred yards away. Dale watched the taxi stop outside the palm-thatched concession, saw the driver get out. A moment later he was back in the taxi, powering loudly towards the highway while he lifted the beer to his mouth and drank.
Dale rehearsed the story for Brent, anticipating the Canadian man’s laughter. He picked up his suitcase and walked the few steps closer to the water, stopped beside a palm shelter and stared out at the sailboats. He recognized a couple of the boats. He and Brent had sailed into Santispac and dropped anchor, then spent a relaxing few days swimming and talking with both the yachties and the campers on the beach before they flew north to the States.
The palm palapas that dotted the beach were rented out to campers on a daily basis during the winter tourist season, with a few fanatics living under them even in the hot summer. Anchorage in the bay was free to the visiting sailboats. The yachties often stayed longer than the campers.
Some of the boats he remembered were gone now. Others had taken their place. Dale left his suitcase in the sand while he walked along the shore, his eyes scanning the boats in the little anchorage. He counted thirteen sailboats: several sloops, two trimarans, three ketches. Two of the ketches were white. One was blue.
He strained his eyes and felt an impossible, frightening conviction that neither of the white ketches was Far Reacher.
He spotted a Mexican panga in front of one of the trimarans. “Hola! Hey, chico!”
The Mexican youth in the panga looked up, recognized a gringo and the chance to make a profit. The fiberglass boat rose up and planed in his direction, powered by a big Evenrude engine. There had been a time when the Mexican fishermen sailed to their fishing grounds with makeshift rigging and homemade boats, now the boats were fiberglass, powered by big outboards.
Dale pointed to the panga, then to himself, then out to the boats. The youth nodded and gunned the outboard without putting it back in gear.
“Wait a second,” said Dale. He held two fingers up, pressed together in the Mexican gesture he had learned from Brent, ran back and got his suitcase. Then he swung his suitcase into the boat, telling his panicked mind that once they got out there, Far Reacher would pop out from whatever obscurity was hiding it.
There were fourteen sailboats, not thirteen. As Dale had hoped, one boat had hidden somehow among the others. The trouble was, the fourteenth boat wasn't Far Reacher.
He gestured tensely and the youth powered once more around the boats lying at anchor. One of the sloops looked familiar and Dale signaled to the Mexican. The boy shrugged and pointed the panga at the sloop. They had passed this dirty white sailboat twice already and the boy’s expression announced plainly that the gringo was loco.
“Stop here!”
The captain of the sloop was lying semiconscious under an awning in the cockpit, a bottle of beer in his hand.
Dale called out, “Hi, there!” He searched for the man’s name and failed to come up with the memory. He had met him two nights before he and Brent left for the States, at a gathering of fifteen and twenty cases of beer. The man must have had a name.
Today, the nameless man hardly stirred, but his voice was friendly enough. “Hi, sailor. How’s things?”
Dale stood in the panga, balancing on the slow swell from a wind blowing out in the Sea of Cortez. “Not bad. I’m looking for Far Reacher. You seen her?”
A long stream of beer left the bottle and disappeared down the captain's throat. He was sensibly wearing nothing but a brief bathing suit and a couple of yards of very brown skin, and Dale became aware that his own light suit jacket had grown abruptly too hot. It was mid-afternoon, the sun blazing high in the sky. He grabbed the rail of the sailboat to keep his balance as a swell surged up around the panga.
“Yeah,” said the captain slowly. “Far Reacher. Sure. Brent was here a few days ago.”
The Mexican played with his throttle, making the engine roar, throwing Dale off balance. “Do you know where he went?”
Brown shoulders shrugged. “Left a couple of days ago.” His eyes closed as he absorbed more of the beer. “What day is it?”
“Friday.” Dale tensed against his own impatience. “It’s Friday. When did Brent leave? Where was he—”
“Guess he took off Monday.”
“Where? Where'd he go?”
“Who the hell knows? Who cares? I was asleep. Woke up and looked out and the bugger was gone. Ask the first mate on Risky Venture. She sees everything.”
A chubby arm raised an empty beer bottle, then bare feet thudded to the deck and the man disappeared inside his boat, probably searching for another bottle of beer. Dale turned back to the youthful panga driver.
“Over there,” he said, pointing in the direction the inebriated captain had indicated.
The Mexican shrugged. “Mucho tiempo. More dollars.”
“Yes. Sí, more dollars.” Jesus! Where the hell was Brent? Where was his boat? No, damn it! Not Brent’s boat. Fifty thousand bucks said it was not Brent Markesson’s boat to take away.
Where?
Risky Venture was a marginally-seaworthy trimaran flying a flag from somewhere in the British Commonwealth. Dale never could keep those ensigns straight, but he assumed that if the tri was Canadian, it would be flying the maple leaf flag.
The woman was dark-haired, dark-skinned from the sun. She was wearing a very brief bikini bottom and a couple of patches fastened over her breasts with what looked like string. She had great cleavage and looked as if she knew it.
“Hi, gringo! What can I do for you?”
He remembered her, not the name but the body. He could hardly forget all that smooth browned skin, even though he had consumed a large quantity of cerveza the night she appeared among the crowd on Far Reacher. As he had that night, he found his eyes searching for a trace of pale skin somewhere. There was none. When she sunbathed, she took the triangles off.
“I’m Dale,” he said.
The panga lurched as the Mexican boy gunned the outboard and jockeyed back into position beside the trimaran.
She shifted her hips and said seductively, “I do remember.”
She had been another nameless sailor at that party, until she stumbled against him and pressed those full round breasts against his chest. There had been a husband or a boyfriend—he was not sure which—on the other side of the boat, but she had clung to Dale for balance and her eyes had said she was available.
“Ron,” he said, grasping for the memory. “Is Ron here?” He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably inside the lightweight jacket. As soon as he had his hands free from hanging on while this kid jockeyed the panga around, he would take the bloody jacket off.
“Ron’s not here.” The smile reappeared, then slowly melted as she ran her tongue around full lips.
Dale said desperately, “I’m looking for Far Reacher.”
“Brent? He left Monday morning. Early.” Her eyes narrowed, moved down to inspect his hips, his thighs. “Come aboard.” Her eyes went to the suitcase and she smiled, her teeth white and even. “Looking for a berth? I can give you a bed for the night.”
“Ron—”
She shrugged. “Went up to San Diego. Come on, bring your suitcase. I've got cold beer.”
And a hot body. He felt the stirring of his own response to her blatant invitation, but he had no desire for her borrowed body to make him feel empty and tawdry.
He gripped the gunwales of the panga. “Look, do you know where Far Reacher went?” Then, abruptly, he forced his hands to relax, his face to assume a mask. Inside, he felt panic growing, but somehow, automatically, he was shifting gears, becoming the same man who searched for clues to embezzlers. He said casually, “I've got mail for him.”
She nodded, accepting that as he knew she would. A steady stream of mail traveled down from the States to the gringo boats in Mexico, mainly parcels from San Diego marine stores.
Where the hell was Brent? Why? Fifty thousand! Gone! Certified check, crushed into Brent’s jeans pocket.
No. No, it was all right. There would be an explanation. Dale could see Brent’s smile, the questioning look in his eyes, could feel his own embarrassment as he explained to Brent that no, of course he had not really believed Brent skipped out on him.
Dreams. Magic. Jesus! Had he fallen for it, cashed in all his liquid assets for title to a dream that would blow away like mist on the Golden Gate bridge?
Risky Venture’s first mate leaned towards him, her arms supported on the life rail, her breasts hanging forward, threatening to burst free of their frail enclosure.
He stared up at voluptuous curves, heard Brent’s voice echo in his mind. It had been night. They had lost wind, drifted to a gentle motion, becalmed in the middle of the Sea. Eyes closed, the warm night air, a bottle of Mexican beer in his hand. The voice drawing the kind of pictures only Brent Markesson could draw, Brent talking of Catherine.
… dressed in the most modest damned suit. Some kind of tweed. Covered from knees to throat. Her face was like that, too, covered, not letting anyone in. It made my fingers itch, hungry to get those zippers and buttons out of the way, find out what was hidden underneath. I’d never seen her before in my life, but every cell in my body knew she was going to change my life. She stood there on the deck of that damned ferry and when I looked in her eyes I could see that under it all she was nothing but damned woman. All wrapped up, locked in, waiting for me. No one had ever touched her before.
Dale cleared his throat, found himself staring straight at a deep, golden cleavage. “Come on,” said the woman. “Climb up.”
“I’ll check around, see if anyone else here knows where—”
“They don’t.” She snapped open the gate on the lifelines, invited him aboard with a gesture of her naked arm. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“How?” He stared at the curve of brown breasts, thought of Catherine’s white skin, the fantasy picture of Catherine in his dreams. Night and day, he thought, but he could feel tension in his groin alongside his distaste for what was in her eyes. He pushed away Catherine’s ghost.
“How are you going to find out? What can you find out?”
She shrugged and pushed at the shoestring strap. It slipped off her shoulder and her left breast dropped. The triangle shifted, revealing two more inches of swollen flesh, but no tan line. The Mexican boy’s hand jerked on the throttle.
She grinned, enjoying the Mexican’s eyes on her. “On the VHF radio. Maybe someone knows around the anchorage. I’ll call and check, but I don’t think so. Best bet is the short wave ham radio.”
“You're a ham? A radio amateur?” Messages were passed by ham radio all around the Sea—amateur radio was probably the surest way to find the location of Far Reacher.
“Yeah. Extra class, believe it or not.” She grinned and the hot breasts pushed against their soft cloth barriers. Her hand came to rest on his, a fleeting stroke, uneasy fire on his flesh. “Come on. You could use a cold beer.”
The Mexican boy wanted ten dollars. The woman threw out a stream of Spanish at the panga driver and they had a heated but incomprehensible conversation.
“Give him five,” she said finally. “Ten’s a rip-off and he knows it. He figures you for a tourist sucker.”
“That’s what I am,” said Dale. He handed the boy an American ten, then swung up onto the deck of the trimaran.
“Why the hell did you do that?”
Dale shrugged, watching the panga rising up on the water, then planing towards the shore. “If he’s got to put up with foreigners who don’t speak his language, don’t intend to learn, why shouldn’t he get paid extra?”
“He doesn’t make that in a day’s fishing. You pay like that, they’ll all start expecting it. Corona or Pacifico?”
“What?”
“Beer. Corona or Pacifico? What kind do you want? Throw your suitcase inside. If you don’t, you’ll cook your shaving cream. Haven’t you got a pair of shorts? A swimming suit?”
“A suit.”
“Get into it. I’m sweating just looking at you. I’ll get the beer.”
“What about the radio?”
“Keep your pants on! I’ll get to it!” Her voice warned that she would balk if he tried to hurry. He stared at the hatch she disappeared through, decided after a moment of frowning thought that she was his best bet for information on Brent at the moment.
He opened his suitcase and pulled his bathing suit out. He stripped off his suit jacket, his shirt, crammed them into the suitcase. He was standing in his under shorts when she came back out.
“I like those,” she said, grinning.
Anne had bought them, informing him that his underwear were too damned conventional. They were red and brief, revealing his arousal. He was not sure he liked this woman, but his body had no doubt.
“What about the radio? Far Reacher.”
“I’m getting to it.” She pushed the cold bottle up against his chest, laughing when he jerked away. “What’s your rush?”
He shrugged, then she went back down below and he got into his swimming suit. Anne had bought it, too, and it was not going to hide much. “What about Ron?” he called after her. “Your husband? What’s he doing in San Diego?”
Either she did not hear him, or did not choose to answer.
He needed a bed tonight, and Risky Venture was a better bet than the hotel back at Mulege. Risky Venture had ham radio.
He toyed with the idea that Brent might have left a message with the woman who ran the small open-air cafe on shore. Unlikely. The woman spoke no English. More likely that Brent would leave word with someone on one of these boats, someone like this woman, or Ron.
He wandered into the cockpit, leaned down and watched her as she turned the dial on a radio and picked up a microphone.
“Are you sure Brent didn’t tell you where—”
She shook her head.
He listened while she called another boat, but he learned nothing except that her name was Liz. Whoever she was talking to knew only that Brent had set sail from Santispac on Monday morning, early.
“What about the ham?” he asked as she came back topsides.
Like all the boats down here, Risky Venture had a big sun awning rigged on deck and Liz flopped onto a deck chair under the awning. “Tomorrow,” she said, closing her eyes, pressing her cold bottle of beer into the damp place between her breasts, letting out a little, sensual gasp as the cold touched. “I’ll get on the Chubasco Net, tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, cool it, sailor. Relax. Go for a swim.”
“What’s the Chubasco Net?”
She shrugged, raising the bottle to her lips, sending a little trickle into her mouth. She licked slowly, savoring the taste, before she answered. “Bunch of hams get on the radio every morning. It’s a scheduled get-together of ham radio stations. We all tune in at 7:30 in the morning. Chubasco Net handles emergency traffic for boats in the Sea of Cortez, mainly American boats, but anyone can call. They pass traffic, give a summary of the weather information for the Sea, pass health and welfare requests.”
“Health and welfare?”
She raised the bottle again, closed her eyes to sip. As she swallowed she shook her body slightly, sending the breasts swaying under their flimsy covering. “What you want, sailor, is a health and welfare on Far Reacher. I get on tomorrow morning, ask for a health and welfare. Anyone knows where Brent is, knows if he’s still floating, they answer.”
She opened her eyes and stared up without blinking. The silence stretched too long, then she said in a hard voice, “Tomorrow. Seven-thirty. Five minutes after that, you might have your answer. Until then, I don’t want to think about it. Now, gringo, let’s cool off.”
When he dove into the warm water, she dove in after him, swimming like a fish, coming up from below and sliding her wet body along his, wrapping her legs around his hips and riding him in the water, a slippery, twisting armful of eroticism. Somehow his arms made their own decision, but before he could pull the scrap of fabric away from her breasts, she was gone, laughing, climbing up on the deck of the trimaran.
Dark fell quickly here, so near the tropics. He came out of the water, found her waiting for him on a big thick quilt spread out under the awning. As he stood looking down at her the light faded to silhouette. The dark air on his wet back was faintly warm.
“It’s too hot down below,” she said huskily. “Come on, gringo.”
He sank down onto the quilt, found another cold bottle of beer pressed into his hand. Using the bottle in her hand, she pressed icy hardness against his thigh.
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, gringo?” Her question was a satisfied laugh on the night air.
Two months, more or less, since Anne.
“Long enough,” he said, reaching for the thin straps that held the teasing covering.
She twisted her body under his, laughing at what the moonlight showed in his face. He heard victory in her laughter, felt anger grow inside himself.
“You want me, don’t you, gringo? How much? Enough to beg?”
His fingers closed on the thin straps and he felt her gasp as the shoestrings bit into her shoulders, heard the angry snap as first one, then the other gave way.
Her breasts were dark, the mixture of salt water and perspiration gleaming in the moonlight. He stared down at them, then at her eyes gleaming in the dark.