J. Rain - Hail Mary

“ Fine,” I said. “So what’s next?”

“ We wait.”

“ Wait where?”

“ There’s a bar outside.”

“ Now that sounds like a plan.”

We waited upstairs in a next-door dive bar called Tacos Luceros. Our seats were near the railing, which overlooked the fish market and some of downtown Ensenada.

Even from here, the stink of fish was heavy. I suspected I was going to smell like it for some days to come. A prospect I wasn’t looking forward to.

Just to mix things up a little, we were drinking Tecate. We had already crushed a bowl of chips, and soon, the cute waitress was bringing us more. As she set the bowl down, along with more salsa, she smiled shyly at me. As she left, I decided her curved hips might just have been perfect.

“ Too skinny,” said Sanchez, wrinkling his nose.

“ If she had smiled at you, she would have been perfect.”

“ If she smiled at me, Danielle would have come down here and tear apart her restaurant.”

“ Your wife scares me,” I said.

“ Me, too.”

“ But I admire her…passion,” I said.

“ Me, too,” said Sanchez. “So, do we have a plan, muchacho?”

“ A plan for what?”

“ In case we come across La Bonita?”

We had a nice view of the parking lot leading up to the fish market. I also had a nice view of the nearby harbor and a lot of Spanish-style architecture with pale yellow and red walls. The sun was shining nearly straight down and, other than the strong fish stink, I could have been chillaxing on my balcony in Huntington Beach. I idly wondered what Jack was up to. Probably busy putting out some fires.

“ Well?” said Sanchez.

I drank more Tecate and finally shrugged. “No clue.”

A leggy young lady strolled beneath us. Her legs, I saw, had a bruise or two. Her shorts were too short, and her top was too tight.

“ Prostitute?” I said to Sanchez.

He nodded. “Would be my guess.”

“ Are we generalizing?”

“ And stereotyping,” he said.

“ We’re on a roll,” I said.

Sanchez drank more beer. “So what do you hope to accomplish by coming here, kemosabe?”

I thought about that. Sanchez had a way of focusing my thoughts, which was a good thing. “I would like to convince certain parties to give up their nefarious ways.”

“ And what are their nefarious ways?”

“ The practice of using live dogs as bait, and, perhaps to convince said parties that cutting up live sharks is a shitty thing to do.”

“ We can’t shut them all down, Knighthorse,” said Sanchez.

“ One’s enough,” I said. “For now.”

“ You do realize that by shutting one down you might be eliminating the sole source of income for an entire family? Perhaps many families. An ethical paradox.”

I nodded. “By saving innocent creatures, I could hurt an innocent family.”

“ So how do you come to terms with it, Knighthorse?”

“ Because it’s not really a paradox, since the innocent creatures have no choice.”

“ And the family does?”

“ The hunters do. The hunter does not have to mistreat the kill.”

Sanchez drank some more beer and watched the scene below us. Without looking at me, he said. “You do realize we might be running for the border after this with the Federales on our asses?”

I grinned. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“ Shit,” he said.

A few minutes later, with the second batch of chips nearly finished, a young man in a tank top came over to our table. The smell of rotting fish preceded him.

I looked at Sanchez. “I think our escort has arrived.”

As far as black markets go, this wasn’t much.

It was coming on evening, and a broad swath of gold rippled over the ocean. The golden swath led all the way to the setting sun. Beautiful. Except I wasn’t here for beauty.

The rooftop market was high above prying eyes.

Here, after being led away from the shinier streets of Ensenada, we found ourselves in a much dingier marina, in an area clearly not meant for tourists. Sanchez and I were next led up an exterior flight of stairs. And there, on the rooftop, I could appreciate the true decimation of our oceans. Lying on blankets, presumably to dry, were hundreds, if not thousands, of shark fins.

The blankets were arranged in sections. Behind the blankets were men and women, all looking at Sanchez and I suspiciously. The stink up here was strong. But it wasn’t a fish stink. It was a meat stink. A flesh stink. Shark fins, apparently, did not smell much like rotting fish.

Our young guide went over and spoke to a handful of people who had sort of shifted in our direction. He spoke urgently, nodding towards us, and finally one of the men nodded. Guards? Custodians of the fins? Perhaps the owners of the building? I didn’t know.

Apparently we had been accepted, because he returned, smiling. Then he stood by our side and waited. Sanchez looked at me. Slow on the uptake, I finally fetched my wallet and slipped the man a twenty-dollar bill. He blinked at it, shrugged, and turned and left.

Sanchez and I strolled the many rows of shark fins. Some of the fins were laid out on blankets. Others, I saw, were spread over wide tables. Most were dried, and others were drying.

I understand there’s no love lost between man and sharks. We have a natural fear of the toothy bastards. But right is right, and wrong is wrong. Chopping up a living creature and letting it die an agonizing death is fucked up. Plain and simple.

“ You’re getting that look again,” Sanchez.

“ What look?”

“ Like you want to turn over these tables and start bashing skulls.”

“ Not a bad idea.”

“ Except most of these dudes are armed and they’re operating outside the law, and they would kill you before you moved on to the next table, or even bashed your first skull. Then, for sport, they’d probably plug me.”

“ You’re no fun anymore.”

“ Just stay here and try not to look like you’re gonna go nuclear on someone. Just relax and let me ask around about the La Bonita. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

I liked our odds. According to Joe Fossil of the California Fish and Game, Ensenada was the hot-bed for shark fin trafficking in this area. The Gulf of Mexico had an even bigger market, which was hard for me to fathom as I looked upon the rows and rows of inexpertly chopped-up fins.

The La Bonita had to sell its fins somewhere, and this was the closest place to do it. Perhaps there was another shark market in town, but it was hard to imagine a bigger one than this.

Like I said, I liked our odds.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sanchez talking with some people. He then moved on and talked to someone else. I stopped in front of a handsome young man who was watching me suspiciously. I pointed to the fins and asked him how much. He said something in Spanish. I know a little Spanish. And I know how to count fairly high in Spanish, too. The number he quoted me sounded suspiciously in the thousands and thousands of dollars.

Sweet Jesus.

The sharks didn’t stand a chance. Not with numbers that high.

No wonder these guards are packing heat. There was a fucking fortune up here.

Sanchez came back. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t ask any questions. When one is undercover in a highly illegal environment and one’s partner says “let’s go,” you go. No questions asked.

We were down the stairs and moving quickly toward the nearby docks when Sanchez finally spoke. “It was getting dicey up there.”

“ Too many questions?”

He nodded. “That’s right. But I did learn one thing.”

“ And what’s that?”