By late afternoon I’d covered the county. The temp said no one except Kelly had called. I paid her to stay and monitor the phones, in case of a tipster. At seven I gave up, sent the temp home, and went downstairs to join the cheerful roar.
The Friday-night Mediterranean was packed and in full fling. I found an empty two-top in the back corner and waited for a waitress to find me.
Sacha Howells found me first, and he bore my signature drink, a Red Bomb: Carpano Antica, twist of lemon, rocks.
Sacha spun a napkin onto my table and set the drink down. I was surprised to see him. Sacha is on the day shift. He leaned in. “I was told to give you this.” He handed over another Mediterranean napkin. I could see the ink bleeding through from the middle.
I heard you’re looking for me.
Why don’t you join me on a voyage.
Aboard the SS Palo Alto.
I’m there now.
Joe
A little frost descended my spine. I swallowed my vermouth and headed for the door. I went upstairs for my peacoat. It was going to be cold out there on the boat. The SS Palo Alto was one of two cement ships built in 1919 at the US Navy shipyards in Oakland. The war ended before the ship went into service, so they mothballed her for a decade until the Seacliff Amusement Corporation bought her and towed her to Seacliff Beach, where they tethered her to a pier, built a dance hall, a swimming pool, and a café on board — and sank her. Probably a great entertainment idea, but not in 1929. They closed in ’31, stripped her, and left her as a fishing pier, the focal point of the new state park.
I spent a lot of time there fishing and watching the bay. The boat had split apart in ’58 and become a paradise for fishermen, an ideal reef, full of fish, mussels, crabs, and the birds that fed on them.
I was looking down on the pier and the ship from the cliffs. I put my watch cap on and started down the endless Seacliff stairs. With the wind chill, it was close to freezing.
I walked out onto the pier. It was a long way out. It was a clear, beautiful night, with a moon over the bay beating a silvery path toward me. There was a constant crash of waves on the broken bow of the ship, then the sough and sigh of the tide working back from the beach.
On the ship there was a solitary fisherman looking down into the dark water. A big bucket beside him. He grabbed a braided yellow nylon rope that was tied to the railing. As soon as I saw him start hauling on the rope, I knew exactly what he was doing: fishing for the rock crabs that congregated around the cement ship.
My first husband, my only husband, Elron, taught me how to fish for crabs. He grew up in Brooklyn and haunted the piers of Jamaica Bay. The only Jew-boy there, he said, and he learned from old Italians. Later, he would learn from the young heiresses he taught at Vassar another way to catch crabs, but I fucking digress.
The guy was really hauling on the line now, end over end, slack rope looping behind him. When you pull the trap up, a small hoop drops down, trapping the crabs, but you have to haul fast before the crabs scramble to the rim and drop back in the water.
As the trap came up into the moonlight, I could see that it was swarming with crabs, seven or eight in there, more than I ever caught in one pull. The guy yanked the hoop net over the rail and let it slap down on the deck. He moved fast, plucking them out of the netting and tossing them into his bucket. A few got out and scuttled toward the water. I ran and grabbed one, put my sneaker on the other, and then picked him up too. I dropped them in the bucket and glanced up to see the man peering at me.
He was decent-looking guy, wavy black hair, olive complexion, but there was something wrong in the eyes. There was nothing there — like looking into that rooster’s eyes.
“Sukenick,” he said.
“Yeah, Morielli?”
“Allegedly.”
“I have to ask,” I said. “What the hell are you using for bait?” There must’ve been thirty crabs in the bucket.
“Tonight? Liver.” He pulled a flashlight from his jacket and shined it on the hoop net. I was looking at liver, but not calf’s liver. What I saw, wired to the netting, looked like a slice of bad Spam hit with a blowtorch. The unmistakable cirrhotic liver of a drinking man.
He switched the light off. “I hear you’re looking for Leonard Wong.” I didn’t want to know how he knew that. “Well, you found him.”
Morielli tossed the hoop net over the side. I flinched at the splash.
“Yeah, Leonard’s paying his debt off in installments. Well, he’s just paying the vig. These crab dinners have been a big feature at my poker nights. And there’s kind of a neat side effect since I started serving the crab. A whole bunch of slow payers have sped up.”
I started to back away.
“When you talk to Kelly tomorrow, tell her I’ll be in touch. You could really help this whole process along for me.”
I threw up my hands, “Come on, man. That’s not on her.”
He seemed to swell, like his hackles had raised up. He said, very quietly, “People die. Debts don’t die.”
I walked away. About the time I cleared the ship, he called after me, “You tell Kelly, checks are just fine, and $499 a week sounds about right. We’ll be in touch.”
I picked up my pace. I figured I’d check into a no-tell motel for a few days. I would stop at home first, time for one phone call, to Corralitos. Mike Sandoval wanted to know the deal, and if I knew my man, he’d be ready and he would move fast.
The red flag was flapping. Now I understood why Kelly and Leobardo had ignored each other. Kelly knew who killed her father. She knew the scumbag would come after her inheritance, and she knew the only man, Don Miguel, who could stop him.
Kelly had played me, but she’d played it right. I would absolutely confirm to Mike Sandoval what he wanted to be true.
Joe Morielli might have time for a few more crab parties. But I expected Joe would be attending a lot more chicken dinners in his future.
Pinballs
by Beth Lisick
Corralitos
Living by the ocean had always been my plan — a third-act strategy. What a cool way to get old and wrinkled: go for long swims, walk in the sand, eat tacos every day, drink beer. When Dave freaked out on me again, I figured there was no time like the present. I ditched the mountains for lower ground. Under the cover of night, like you see in the movies.
Sure, I washed up on the beach a little earlier than I thought I would — only halfway old and halfway wrinkled — but what a relief to be on to my next chapter.
Now I’d be pedaling toward the white light at the end of the tunnel on one of those sparkly beach cruisers with the fat seats: sunburned and pleasantly buzzed. It was going to be a good few years.
The rent wasn’t cheap, even back then — especially if you wanted to live solo, like I did. But you know what worked? Driving south on Highway 1 and parking underneath a eucalyptus grove.
You get off the freeway on Riverside Drive, right where you see that abandoned Queen Anne. Go past the strawberry fields, the artichokes and brussels sprouts, and that’s where my spot was. You’re not going the wrong way, even when you start seeing signs for the condo development. Keep curving around. You can practically smell your way there, there’s so much eucalyptus. Chances are, the lot will be empty. It’s in between two private beaches, so it seems like you don’t belong there, but there’s no trick. Pull up, hike over the little path, and thar she blows: a mile of beach almost all to yourself.