numbers were exchanged. He studied the side of her truck. “What does this say?” he asked, pointing.
Aurora translated her logo into the appropriate Spanish.
“I dive, too,” Roberto said proudly. “With tanks, without tanks. I dive for lobster, crab, shellfish. You need help on your boat?”
You don’t know the half of it, Roberto. Aurora shrugged, the noncommittal Mexican response.
“I help you find this man, you hire me? Take me to San Diego? Sponsor my carta verde? Be my sponsor for citizenship?”
Green card? Sponsor? Since she was a business owner, that was theoretically possible, but Aurora already had enough on her hands. She couldn’t possibly take the time to get a Mexican citizen a work permit, let alone sponsor him for American citizenship. The boy didn’t even look eighteen! She shook her head.
“Please, I get this man out of jail for you, you hire me?”
Out of jail? Aurora paused. She’d planned to bribe the guards, not the self-appointed parking-lot attendant. The boy—no, he was a man, despite his youth—made her reconsider. “How old are you?”
“Diez y siete.”
Seventeen. So young. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said in Spanish.
Roberto nodded. “La inmigración, la policía, no trouble if you know which ones like extra dinero. I will see. I will soon be eighteen. With a carta verde, I can apply for California residence for my familia..”
She hesitated. Mexico’s immigration and police departments were nothing like her country’s organizations. And she knew virtually nothing about the young man before her. “I don’t know you well enough to hire you. I only hire skilled workers,” she said. “People I can trust.”
Roberto flushed an angry red. “You don’t believe I am skilled? Or I can dive?” He pointed to her black plastic dive watch. “Watch.” Roberto took in a deep breath, and held it. And held it. And held it.
In amazement, Aurora watched the digital seconds go higher and higher and higher. When Roberto finally gasped for breath almost four minutes later, lifting his chin high in triumph, Aurora blinked at the numbers on her watch.
“I dive deep. Like dolphins. Like whales,” he said. “I catch plenty lobsters.”
Aurora whistled. Even she couldn’t hold her breath that long. “I believe you.”
“Then—believe this. I will help you get your familia out of jail. When I do, you hire me. I come to California with them and you sponsor my green card.” Roberto pulled out a worn work rag from his pocket, carefully wiped his right hand, then thrust it out. “We shake. Deal?”
Aurora shook his hand. “Deal,” she said. “For now, you help me find Gerald Atwell. And then…we’ll see what I can do.”
WHEN SHE’D DRIVEN BACK to San Diego, she made her second stop of the day, at the office of a good friend. “Donna Diamond, Private Investigator” was also Donna Padierezsky, a Navy veteran who’d left Naval Intelligence Services for a private career in San Diego.
Donna’s office was modern, her tools were high-tech and her sense of humor, so necessary in a job like hers, showed in her pseudonym.
“Hey, I can’t have clients calling me at home or knowing where I live,” she explained once. “Plus, I want something clients can spell when they write out my check. Even the bank messes up on Padierezsky.”
Donna was presently searching for Jordan’s attackers—and would-be murderers. The women were old dive buddies, and Donna insisted on working for free. She’d asked Aurora to swing by the office after her prison visit. Donna’s very feminine looks—black curls, attractive face and petite body—led many to overlook her keen mind, a fact she often turned to her advantage. She had drinks and take-out food waiting as Aurora entered.
“Come and take a load off. Chow’s here too, Rory,” Donna said without preamble, her manner as brisk and no-nonsense as it had been in the Navy. “How’s Dorian?”
“She looks terrible. Tanya’s still full of herself,” Aurora said.
“Figures. Here.” Donna passed Rory a set of finely designed, jade-inlaid lacquered chopsticks she’d picked up while on duty in Japan, and a box of Chinese takeout. “You can fill me in while we eat. I want to hear everything.”
Aurora did as requested, describing her time at the prison.
“And you actually told Tanya you’d leave her there?” Donna asked as Aurora finished her story.
“Yeah. Not that I would—but I needed to get through to her somehow. So much for tough love. I guess scare tactics weren’t the best solution. She doesn’t scare. And Dorian didn’t approve of me threatening her baby chick.”
“Baby chick, my Aunt Fanny. You should send that child off to boot camp. If she ever gets out of Mexico,” Donna said bluntly. “Her parents can’t handle her, that’s for sure. Why don’t you take her in?”
“I’ve offered, but Dorian won’t hear of it and Gerald doesn’t want to admit failure.”
“They’d both better admit it, now,” Donna replied. “Speaking of Gerald, I haven’t been able to get a message to him at all. If only he’d been arrested for theft, or pimping…even murder—”
“Donna, please.”
“—I’d have a chance. But drugs…” Donna shook her head. “Makes it difficult when it comes to cooperation across the border.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve given up on the lawyers. As far as I can tell, bribery is the only way to help Dorian and Gerald.”
“If you get the money off Castillo,” Donna murmured.
“But you said he was solvent!”
“Solvent, yes. Able to fund a salvage operation based on his record and using his own boat as collateral, yes. But as for coming up with hard cash right now…I don’t know. Are you running low on funds?”
“Rock-bottom low.”
“I don’t know, Rory,” Donna said again. “You may be throwing good money after bad, and you can’t spare it.” Donna knew that Aurora had been financing the Atwell Computer Company’s staff salaries.
“What else can I do? Tanya certainly isn’t going to confess.”
“Even if she does, it’s probably too late now.”
Rory nodded. “So we’re back to bribery. And that’s why I need to strike a bargain with Jordan. I know where the San Rafael is. Jordan doesn’t. But—as I happen to know from your research—he has the money to salvage. I don’t. This could be a match made in heaven. I’m guessing it shouldn’t be difficult to come to an agreement.”
Donna’s eyes narrowed. “It will be, Rory, if someone ends up killing him. I’ve checked with the police. I know you cooperated fully with the investigation, but they’ve got nada. Jordan didn’t have
