Valley of the Templars by Paul Christopher

Arango is a disgusting pig and a criminal,” answered Eddie, smiling broadly. “He stinks like an old fish—he drinks too much
ron
and smokes very cheap cigars. He is the true
viejo hombre del mar
, this man.” The Cuban paused and winked. “But he has a boat.”
    They found both the man and the boat at the far end of the shipyard, closest to the mouth of the river. In the distance Holliday could see half a dozen men fishing from the stony beach with hand lines and rods. According to Eddie, under Cuban law what they were doing was a crime for which they could be sent to prison, the arrest and imprisonment deferred if they handed over half their catch to the policeman who caught them.
    “
Buenas tardes
, Montalvo,” said Eddie. The man looked up from what he was doing. He could have been anything from seventy to a hundred and seventy. His eyelids drooped in folds over watery brown eyes and his mahogany-tanned narrow face was seamed and cut by wrinkles as deep as scars. The skin of his cheeks drooped over a bristly chin, and his neck had as many wattles as a turkey. The parts of his face not cracked and slashed by wrinkles were sprinkled with dark moles and warts from being in the bright sun for most of his life. The butt of a cigar hung wetly from his thin pursed lips. From what Holliday could see of his sideburns and the foliage sprouting from hisflat, saucerlike ears, his hair was white. The top of his head was covered by a stained and ragged fedora that looked as if it came out of a thirties gangster movie.
    “Buenas tardes, Capitaine Cabrera,”
said Arango. He took the cigar stub out of his mouth and hawked a dark, mucousy mass off the side of the wharf and into the water. It was the first time Holliday had ever heard Eddie being called by his military rank.
    “Qué pasa?”
Eddie asked, although it was obvious what the old man was doing. Kneeling on the concrete boardwalk with a worn blade in his gnarled hand, he was gutting a fish that had to be five feet long, thick tendrils as long as eels hanging from its wide, rubbery mouth. Holliday had seen a documentary about this kind of creature—it was a wels catfish, probably introduced by some well-meaning Russian aquaculturist as a food source years before. At thirty pounds, they were a good source of protein, but let them get into the food chain and they could live for thirty years and reach lengths of nine feet and weights of over three hundred pounds. They were cannibals, happy to eat their own kind and also the occasional fisherman or swimmer who got too close.
    “Estoy limpieza de las tripas de este grande barbo repugnante ahora,”
said the old man. His sun-bleached cotton pants and ancient, laceless sneakers were covered with blood and bits of flesh and hiswifebeater undershirt was streaked like a butcher’s apron.
    He glanced at Holliday, his eyes squinting upward. “I catch at the river mouth this morning, when I am coming in from the sea,” he said in English. His voice was as rough as his cigar and his mouth was missing a few teeth here and there. He turned to Eddie.
“Su amigo pirata hablaba nada de español?”
    “His pirate friend speaks enough Spanish to get by,” said Holliday.
    “Then we get along okay,” said the old man, and spit into the water again. As he gutted the fish he tossed the already flyblown trails of slimy offal into the water and then began cutting the giant fish into large fist-sized pieces and throwing them into a pair of old foam coolers beside him. “
Cebo,
” he grunted. “Bait.” He nodded toward the boat clewed to the wharf a few yards behind him.
    The boat looked almost as old as Arango. Once upon a time the hull had been white with a light blue superstructure, but sometime in its life it had been painted deep blue fading up to gray. On the horizon she would disappear against the sea and the sky, and Holliday had a fairly good idea why.
    She was filthy, paint peeling everywhere. The stem was battered with its