Chapter 12. Safe Harbor

If there’s a place for the sunset, it’s at sea. I idled at the pyramid to the display of crimson and golden light sinking behind the silhouette of the mesa above the shoreline. I circled back, dropped anchor at East Beach as soon as the marine layer came in, doused the cabin lights and waited for the double cover of the night.

Ryan was up to some dark shit and I kicked myself for not asking more questions. I began wondering about this Yuri too; thinking he might already be looking for me, or the Sherlock, at the Harbor. I lifted the seat on the stern where the outboard was stored and pulled out the case. The case held a Browning semi-automatic pistol and a shoulder holster with several boxes of 9mm ammo for it. The Browning’s holster fit nicely. I smiled. I hadn’t a sidearm strapped on me in a decade and it felt good. Ryan’s and Anna’s shenanigans were taking me on an adventure that could be deadly and, if anyone asked, I wouldn’t have admitted I missed that kind of action since Saigon fell.  Thank God, not all GI’s baptized in the blood and gore of combat felt the way I did about it.

*****

Most sailors keep a few books in their cabins. In one cupboard was a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Some of the best read folks, though not always academically bred, are those in prisons and the military. I’d even read it before I got dinged but I must have skipped over some of these stanzas. Shades pulled, and under the soft glow of the desk lamp of the chart table, I opened it to a page and read. I could hear Krishna speak to Arjuna as the hypnotic sea gently rolled under the deck. I read between the lines of the stanzas regarding the castes, “The Priests, the Warriors, the fuckin’ regular people with homes, families, and careers. Krishna advises Arjuna that he can’t help to be anything but what he was born to be. Who’s to say my fate wasn’t to be condemned to an asylum or prison, an outcast. Arjuna was told to accept that his place in life arose from his own nature.

I took a deep breath and sighed the sorrow of resignation. So, we are born the way we are. I had been granted a part in the universe I’d denied. I tried to find peace back “in the world” where no peace for my kind could be found. No, it wasn’t just the cluster-fuck we called Vietnam. It was as though Krishna’s voice broke through the fog, “Strap on your Browning Arjuna and get back into the mix.”

“Hearing voices?” I questioned this bout of narcissism and anyone else would say I was more screwed up than Casey. He was, at least, harmless in a way that I was most certainly not.

Sure, I’d witnessed several of these guys talk about guilt from their experiences and adjusting to coming home as if they were reciting what they figured the shrink or their fellows in Group wanted to hear. But, when they talked about combat, their tenor changed… sometimes ever so slightly… but it changed. Any good therapist could spot it. Before anything else… the hardest thing to admit, in those circles at the VA, was the fact that some of us loved the action… feared it… were trained for it… but loved it and nothing… nothing could replace what happened to our spirits when death was at the door and we fuckin’ blew it away. It was the immortality of the moment. Ryan salved it positively by becoming a cop. Casey and I found solace in the bottle. But we had that in common. Once the lab rats map out the hi-way of our DNA, I’m certain that the warrior gene will be found on one of its off-ramps. We could never go back to being plain old civilians, even if Vietnam never happened. It was a double helix screw that bore into us like a worm and ate us from the inside out. The thought occurred to me that maybe… just maybe, Anna had it too by virtue of her birth in a nasty place.

*****

I took out the Channel chart to familiarize myself with the Island’s rocks and shoals. I had been to all the Channel Islands. Images of the coastline came back. The chart refreshed my memory as well as the seascape, going over it to happier times of sailing with Ryan and scuba diving in the various sea-caves and inlets with Elaine. But even these pleasant thoughts turned sour. I had to reverse the downward spiral of morose memories with the task at hand.

There were a few beers in the cabin’s small fridge but I craved the sugar sweetness of a soda instead. I realized I hadn’t the DTs I’d feared since my last drink. I should’ve. I always did when I dried out a few days. I had nothing more than the usual hangover, and some shakes, but it was remarkably easy to quit this time. It had never been this easy for me whenever I tried previously. Shit, it had been a couple years of hard daily drinking. I’d heard others say the same thing happened to them when they’d gone bat-shit religious. They always attributed it to a miracle… an act of God or any one of a hundred ambiguous Kahunas. It made believers of them. I hadn’t any such an apparition or transcendent experience. I’ve heard it said that a dramatic… or traumatic… conversion experience, changes the brain chemistry but that wasn’t quite enough of an explanation for me. I could have been driven into further depression but it was as though my friends on the Wall had called me to a mission. Maybe Earhart’s spirit was my version of a Higher Power.

I approached the SB harbor rowing the skiff between the pilings under the Harbor Restaurant as the fog set-in thick as snot. That helped to make the shortcut under the wharf harder for the eyes of the nightshift rent-a-cops to see. I knew they usually smoked a cigarette, or something stronger, at the end of the pier after each round.

Sports-fishing and whale watching excursion boats tie up on the interior side of a small jetty inside the entrance to the harbor. Along its spine of boulders, under a walkway to a navigation light, a narrow strip of sand made for a small spit on the outside of the harbor.

Almost to the jetty, a go-fast cigarette boat, appeared off my port bow. A search light radiated a halo in the fog, furtively side to side, scanned the marinas. She’d been coming directly towards me. I beached the skiff and leaned back, digging my heels into the wet sand, and tugged it to the boulders where I ducked in their shadow. Just in time, she turned her beam away to check out the slips behind the breakwater. I wouldn’t use a light to search at night… especially in fog. Two things happen; it effectively blinds the eye to any movement outside of its scope of light and even a light mist spreads it out and throws it back at ya cutting visibility to a few yards.

Adrenaline stood my senses at the relief of going unseen. I crouched and made for a space between a couple of rocks while I took a breath and looked for an escape route, or some kind of package, stashed there. As though a boulder had risen, a dark form that had been squatting in the shadows of the rocks only a few yards from me came out. The mission already compromised, I readied myself, gripping the Browning from inside my coat.

The form got closer and I let my breath out. It was Anna tossing a sea bag over her shoulder. She passed me on the way to the skiff and whispered, “C’mon.” She dropped the sea-bag over the gunnels. I expected that to be all there would be to it and she would turn away.

Instead she helped me push off the skiff from the beach.

“What’s in the bag?”

“My clothes,” ankle deep she jumped in. Then, commanding in a low voice, “No time for small talk, let’s get out of here.”

“So, you’re the package?”

 “I said, no time to chat.”

*****

The cigarette boat roared up to the outer jetty’s sand-spit buoys and turned back towards the harbor. the search light scoured everything like a wand, swinging side to side. I could make out the name on its starboard bow when it turned nearer to us. It was The Doctor’s Dream. That figured. His was one of the few cigarette boats in the harbor. She got close enough to illuminate the skiff in its beam and give the jetty rocks a look over. Thankfully, he was too lazy to get off his boat to check out a beached skiff. He had to be looking for the Sherlock solo. If Yuri was with him was the pro I thought he was, he would have preferred using a night vision device.

We took the chance to row over to Stern’s Wharf as it cruised further into the harbor and cut is motors.

I took the chance on making a little noise once we were a hundred yards on the other side of the Wharf and started the outboard on the first pull. We put up aside the Sherlock without further incident and boarded while I watched for the cigarette boat. I passed the light outboard motor and sea bag up to Anna and climbed back aboard. She slung the sea bag over her shoulder, one hand on the rail, swung up deftly on the runner going forward, dropped her bag down the forward hatch, came around and jumped down on the deck behind me.

Anna was cheerful, “Aye Mate. Been knockin’ the hats off strangers lately?”

I put a finger to my lips, “Shush. Help me pull in the skiff.”

My hands weren’t used to ropes and rigs and I could figure, neither were hers. Regardless, hand over hand, we lifted it over the side in unison like old salts before I asked, “Knocking off hats?”

I put the small outboard in its ventilated locker. Working together gingerly, we strapped the skiff, keel up, in its place across the stern. She shouted against the deep growl of the engine, “You know… feeling grim? November of the soul?”

Oh, its Melville. I did the finger quote thing, “Then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” I felt a little pride I remembered it.

The deep grumble of the 1946 straight-eight marine engine made enough noise to bother me for one moment. The Sherlock was painted a dark blue. Without running lights in the fog, it would be hard for anyone to see us. Still, we had to get some distance from the harbor because there was no way we would be able to outrun the go-fast at our fifteen knots top speed. Anna huddled next to me, holding herself, in hoody and sweats… might have been warm enough for Santa Barbara winters ashore but not where we were sailing.

“Speaking of November, it’s colder than day-old dog shit out here!”

“You’re underdressed for going down to sea.”

I don’t like surprises and it was a surprise that she was aboard but, more surprisingly, I was glad to see her. I patted her behind to step into the cabin, “There’s foul weather gear in the fo’rd hold. Help yourself.”

She yelled back on her way down cheerfully, “I know this boat better than you do.”

She came out of the cabin presenting a cute picture standing on deck fully dressed in oversized Macs looking like a Norman Rockwell child playing in her dad’s New England lobstermen’s slicks. She asked, “Ryan said something that I had no idea of... you know. What do you think he meant ‘by full circle’?”

“Don’t ask me. He doesn’t waste words. Has to be something he wants us to think about.” I was smiling. We were far enough past the buoys by then so I took her up to 10 knots. She wasn’t made to plane but for plowing through the swells instead of slapping and banging over them as any faster boats her size would.

I looked back from the helm at Anna sitting on the transom and watching the wake roll out into the dark behind us in the inky deep. Full circle indeed. The words came out without me thinking as it dawned on me, “To the sky gods. I’ll be fuckin’ goddamned!” Fatigue must have been getting to me because my belly rolled out a laugh in the wake of the possibility, “April fuckin thirtieth!”

“What’s so funny ‘bout my birthday?”

I don’t know why I hadn’t suspected before. That the girl I gave to the Sky Gods might as well had been Anna.

Trying to conceal this troubling revelation from her, I asked, “What did Ryan tell you about this trip besides you being the package I was picking up?”

Mizz Sherlock began cutting through the gently rolling seas that were growing. She held on, standing next to me at the helm, under the overhang of the cabin.

Ryan’s package comment stuck. I had to ask, “Do you remember anything about Saigon?” Anna didn’t answer. She was turning green. I knew the signs and pointed to the port side of the deck, “There’s a bucket in that locker. Go over the side or in the can but don’t use the head.”

She sat at the gateleg table in the cabin with the bucket on deck next to her. I hollered into the hatch, “Open the windows a crack ‘cause, if you’re staying in there, the cabin makes it worse. Fresh air out here’s better. Not much, but better.”

“I don’t give a shit,” she answered while opening the windows within reach before the sound of ralphing came back out at me. She moaned, “I’ve never been sea-sick before!”

“Anyone can get it if it hits you right.” I turned the navigation lights on when we entered the shipping lanes to reduce the chances of a tanker running us down. It’s best to give out tasks to sea-sick sailors and I knew it would get a bit rougher soon enough. I hollered into the cabin, “Anna, make sure the forward hatch is battened down. And then come back here and make sure the skiff is secured good.

The currents in the channel are jokesters and they could easily take us off-course over two miles. A warm stream runs northward along the Santa Barbara side of the coast but the prevailing cold stream from the Gulf of Alaska runs further out and part of it turns between the north flowing current on the coast and the Islands. This makes for a confusing drift to amateur sailors and, with the winds adding to this, the seas churn up like a mad dog at the most unexpected times. I expected it and enjoyed how Mizz Sherlock handled the white capped swells. For the fun of it I had her full throttle over the top of one wave and plunging down the trough and into the next, sending spray radiating from her prow high and wide, before I cut back for Anna’s sake and to maintain her into the seas.

We made only about three knots progress for about an hour but it was safer at this speed. The seas calmed into gentle rolling a mile south of the shipping lanes in the shelter of the island. This did little to relieve Anna’s seasickness. By the time we came in sight of the lights at Prisoner Harbor, the marine layer lifted. The pier was ninety degrees dead ahead from three miles out when I snuffed the running lights. I set my direction but couldn’t see much of anything but shadow of the Island on the radar screen. I turned Mizz Sherlock’s bearing forty degrees to the starboard side hoping the reverse current would take us less than twenty degrees north. We were only a couple hundred yards off the coast when I spotted the entrance to Lady’s Harbor by the glow of the surf churning up a soft bio-luminescence on the shoals at each side. We got lucky going down the coast in the dark even with radar especially passing the shoals. Once safe in the harbor by midnight, we dropped anchor where it was only a couple fathoms deep. I’d been in Lady’s Harbor before and always thought it was the best of all the anchorages for its privacy. It had the extra assurance of no hiking trails above the surrounding cliffs.

Anna came out of the cabin and emptied her bucket over the side. “Sorry, I never get sea-sick.” And putting her fingers on chart, said, “It’s a Peace Sign.”

I knew she was still green in the gills but it was good she was trying to be nonchalant so I asked for distraction’s sake, “What’s a peace sign?”

She held two fingers to my face in a V, “Yeah, look… the chart, the harbor’s shape’s a peace sign,”

Hanoi Jane and the anti-war movement sickened my spleen so I countered, “I prefer Winston Churchill’s Victory Sign for us.”

Her eyes bore through me, “No, my friend, we need peace.”

Chapter 11. Casey at the Pumps

...imagining the quays and stays... the haunts
of pirates  and smugglers... of Jack London's time.

Mizz Sherlock rounded the sand spit buoys, past the sea landing jetty, and into its slip at Marina One. I dropped the bumpers, jumped off, and set the bow line to the cleats when Ryan stopped me. “Don’t tie up the stern. You’re not staying.”

I knew this hadn’t been a mere fishing trip, though I didn’t know what he’d been fishing for. I sensed he might have been checking me out the whole time to see if I was up to it… whatever It was.

 “What’re you talking about, Ryan?”

“I’m making arrangements for a package you’re going to pick up. In case you haven’t figured it out, you’ve got to disappear…” he took off his wool cap and stepped onto the dock. Handing me a wad of cash, he gave these directions, “Top it off with Casey at the pumps. Shouldn’t take much. In case he doesn’t ask, be sure to tell Casey you’re taking it to Ventura Harbor.”

“Yeh, sure. In case he doesn’t ask. Where am I going if not there?” I laughed because it would be rare if Casey didn’t put his nose in everybody’s business, Questions whirled around in my mind but I was honored. Ryan never let anyone else take out Mizz Sherlock.

 “Take her out of the harbor towards Ventura as far as the Pyramid.”

The Sahlberg Pyramid. I knew of the story. A couple goldminers hit it big in Mexico around the turn of the century. They never lived in Santa Barbara but they built the mausoleum in the Santa Barbara Cemetery overlooking the Channel. It must have seemed to them to be a good place to lay down their bones.

“A marine layer’s supposed to be coming around sunset. Wait for its cover and circle back to East Beach moorings after dark. Take the skiff from there to the Sea Landing Jetty. I’ll have a package for you there”

The sea landing jetty juts out a couple hundred feet out into the harbor from the shore behind the breakwater. It helps form the wide beach the tourists enjoy by catching the sand that drifts west from Sterns Wharf with the current.

“What kind of package?”

It would be fair at this point to wonder why I went in the Army instead of the Navy like Ryan. After all, I’d been sailing since I was a kid, exploring every inlet of San Francisco Bay. At first it was in an 8-foot Sabot sail until I graduated on my 16^th birthday to a 22-foot sloop I named the Holy Terror that I could sail outside the bay. My father would have been called an unpublished beat poet that lived on a houseboat in Sausalito back when Boho’s could afford to live there. He OD’ed on heroin before I turned seventeen. The sloop was the last thing dad gave me before he checked out. As far back as I can remember I’d been on the water, sailing around most of the sloughs of the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay on adventures, imagining the quays and stays… the haunts of pirates and smugglers… of Jack London’s time. The Navy’s new PCFs, commonly known as Swift Boats, trained in the sloughs of the Napa and Sacramento Rivers and, after seeing them roaring through the sloughs at top speed, I fantasized piloting one of them too… in exotic far-away places in Southeast Asia I’d only read about in the papers. At that time a few Special Forces were the only ones in Nam. I knew little or nothing of that. But I saw those boats and it was love at first sight.

Mom took dad’s death hard and left me to her mother in Benicia. Grandma loved me and if I could say what love is I would say I loved her too. But she was too old to handle me… a troubled youth… a petty criminal, and a high school drop-out. To this day I have no idea what became of mom. She’d disappeared into Berkeley with a radical boyfriend and later joined a commune in Northern California.

 Never had a felony; however, I found myself in court several times before this last one. I’d temporarily traded the sabot, for a joy ride on a power-boat to go upriver to Rio Vista. I figured whoever owned it wouldn’t miss it overnight. Evidently, he did. Police were waiting for my arrival.

It’s a long enough story for now. I tried to convince the Judge that I was more suited for the US Navy since I had been on the Bay my whole life. Suffice it to say that the US Navy wasn’t taking high-school dropouts and juvenile delinquents in 1964. The Army was always there with the help of the courts to replenish its ranks with naïve young men and the Big Dog, President Johnson, would be asking for five hundred thousand more before the next year. I was cynical at best but I figured three years in the Army was better than a year in gladiator school.

At first I considered the Army a punishment. I’d always pictured myself in the Navy with clean sheets and on the water instead of fox holes in the dirt. But, later on, when I was ferried from place to place by the Riverine, Brown Water Navy in PBRs and PCFs, I found I would not have enjoyed being a sitting duck on the Mekong Delta as much as these crazy fuckers, the River Rats on Swift Boats, did. We all had our niche. From boot camp on I sent a check to pay the monthly fee of the Holy Terror’s slip to my only friend, Jimbo, while I was away. I eventually gave her to him after a couple years. While I was on leave in ’68, before the Tet, we had a wedding of sorts. I gave her away to Jimbo and we Christened her with one hell of a good drunk.

Ryan’s voice broke through my reverie, “You remember Santa Cruz Island, Lady’s Harbor?”

“Sure do.”

“That’s where you’ll be taking this package until I contact you.”

Lady’s Harbor is a snug hideaway that only hikers can access about eleven or twelve nautical miles west of the pier at Prisoners Harbor on Santa Cruz Island.

“You should be safe there. I’ll call at twenty-two hundred. Don’t give away locations over the air.”

“What, you running an amateur spy agency or something?” I was joking, though it did seem odd, “Why the hell are we so secretive? Whoever they are they can’t have lookouts everywhere.”

“No, they don’t have lookouts everywhere. But they know how to ask questions. You know the game… or don’t you remember?”

It was a dig but I didn’t mind. I knew he was still probing. So many years I’d been out of the game. Was I able to execute the mission? I had no answer for that either.

“When you cross the channel, whatever you do, don’t let yourselves get sighted from the pier at Prisoners Harbor.”

“Roger that.”

Prisoners Harbor has a pier and is occupied by a Ranger’s Office year around. I knew better than to question Ryan’s judgment and caught on to what he was implying about how thorough the mess was that Anna had gotten us into… that someone powerful enough to fear was behind it. It wouldn’t take much to monitor us with a regular police scanner. The fewer people who might know my whereabouts, the better. I hadn’t thought about Anna. Ryan knew that, because of Anna, someone would be looking for me and that somebody would be more sinister than Doc and Bob.

Ryan stepped off onto the dock to his storage locker. He unlocked it and handed me a sea bag with a smaller gym bag, “You shouldn’t need these. The gig’s up if you do. Put ‘em under the seat back there, in the outboard locker. If you have to use them…Uh, just know I’m doing all I can to keep it from coming to that.”

“So, what do I do if the gig’s up?”

There was no answer. The sadness in Ryan’s silence was palpable. He had no plan beyond the finality of failure behind the mask of command.

I realized the answer was to simply get out any way I could, “I see. It’s Saigon all over again.”

*****

Casey had tangled, sun-bleached, shoulder length dreds, and a scraggly Fu Man Chu that cascaded willy-nilly to mid-chest. His clothes hung loose over a wiry frame, belt tightened to the last notch. The rest of his face got a shave about once a month when his compensation check came in.  He’d been a machinist-mate on a PBR up and down the Lon Tai shipping lane to Saigon, which was all I needed to know. I liked his chatter sometimes. Besides that, he was a good fisherman… a certified outboard repairman. And a few of us knew he was also certified by the US Navy… a dinky-dau, section eight nut case, … half his skull was plastic because of an RPG… still carried a couple ounces of shrapnel elsewhere. It got him a Purple Heart and a bunch of stories he never told anyone except when he was drunk. I liked him well enough to go to his cluttered boat to down a few shots of whatever he had. Clutter is too kind of a word for Casey’s boat. It was an old sport-fishing boat, but long overdue for a field day and paint job. The cabin was a refuse dump of empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, plastic laundry bags, and oily rags.

The marina was a community like a village. Casey, besides playing the part of the village drunk, was the community newspaper, working at the pumps, and repairing outboard motors for the folks. He loved to gossip and talk about everything, from the comings and goings of everyone, to who was catching what and where. Most people liked him and a few snobs hated him. But even the Harbor Patrol tolerated him when he got caught tearing around the harbor drunk as a skunk in his skiff. They simply hauled him back to his boat and lectured him to no avail about how he could lose his drivers’ license the next time. Auto or boat, it didn’t matter. Casey didn’t sweat the warnings because he had no drivers’ license to have taken away.

As Ryan suggested, Casey wasn’t to be trusted with secrets. He was just so dinged in the head that he was happy to know any item to tell anyone asking him about anything. It never occurred to him to wonder whether the asking could be sinister or benign.

I flipped the marlin’s head by its spear hoping it would stick into the dock. It almost did but fell on its side; one dead eye staring up at the sky. Casey almost tripped stepping over it while passing the nozzle and hose down to me, “Crash, don’t fuckin’ do that… shit… What the fuck? Looks like it was bit off by a real big shark… you been out there? Goin’ back out to get that son of a bitch, aren’t you?” All the while we were filling the tank he was itching for me to say something about it or what I was up to.

He put the nozzle back in its place in the pump and continued to rattle on non-stop, “Only ten gallons? Round it off to fifteen bucks after that shit,” he nodded towards the marlin, “Sherlock’s a nicer boat than mine but I’d rather let a man screw my wife than take my boat out.”

“You never had a wife, Casey.”

“Never wanted one either. He must be trying to sell it to you, eh? I can tell ya’ halibut’s striking just off the pier and anywhere on East Beach. Caught two illegals yesterday… eighteen inchers. You know Harvey?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Well, he was with a guy I don’t know… Yuri somethin’… we threw one back but barbied the other at my boat right away. Yep, low tide yesterday morning. That Yuri guy was weird… I mean cold… I seen a few snipers, you know, Seal’s and Lurp’s like him… accent like a Ruskie… hardly said a word… weird… come to think of it, he was like you… no, not sayin’ you’re weird…’cept when you get those eyes… you both got those eyes… did I say cold? Yeh, cold… stared towards Sherlock’s slip most of the time. Say, ya know, yellowtail are running too. Even a few marlins got caught out there. Can yah believe that? Not as big as this one but…”

Casey stopped his chatter long enough to give the marlin’s head on the deck a good looking over like he hadn’t noticed it before, “Wish I had my polaroid for a picture. Can you wait for me to run and get it?”

“No. I’ve to get going to the Ventura Marina before it gets dark. Ryan wants it there… maybe he wants to have the bottom scraped and painted.”

“You’d better git goin’ then. Why not do it in the yard here?” he went on without skipping a beat, “He sure keeps her up. She a fine lady… wooden boats are. That Sherlock though… She’s sure sweet ta look at. Say, ya know, speakin’ of sweet ladies, whew, Ryan’s got this Dink chick he’s been with lately… I saw her head once. Butch cut, ya know… but, I don’t think she’s a dyke… maybe. Naw, but why would Ryan, what, ‘go’ fishing’ at midnight with a dyke? Bald or not, I seen her with hair once too… got a good eye for chicks. She’s a fine catch for a geezer like him. Maybe he’s payin’ her. Left ‘fore… ah, just before midnight, yeh. I was on the Wanderer havin’ a nightcap. Must’ve been fer a quickie ‘cause I saw the Sherlock in its slip within an hour.”

Casey called the Vietnamese, Zippers, Dinks, Gooks, Slants and Slopes. He meant no harm by it. That’s what everyone in Nam called them. I didn’t like it, but he couldn’t help it. The kids that were sent to Nam were from Iowa, Arkansas, and even California, and they knew nothing of the ancestry and heritage of these people. As far as Casey was concerned they were all Doo Mommies, mother-fuckers. I knew I’d be wasting my time if I corrected every GI that used these terms.

I played along with Casey, “Oh, yeah, nice. Ryan’s an old man but he’s pretty slick... doesn’t have to pay for pussy.”

“Oh yeh? saw them anyway… late. Busy man ‘cause he took you out this morning. Must’ve been for a quickie. With her, I mean. Say, Crash, I got some good shit from that Yuri guy. He gave me a bindle and a bottle of Jack. I ain’t done all of it yet. When you get back, c’mon down to the boat… do a few lines like old times, eh?”

I thought, why not throw off Yuri, or whoever. I gestured to Casey to give me an ear up close, “Yeh, sure Casey, if anyone asks, especially this Yuri guy, don’t tell ‘em where I’m going.”

I knew that, if Yuri was a pro, he would get it out of Casey no matter how hard Casey tried to keep it a secret.

I never saw Casey so happy. He had someone’s confidence and an item to keep secret. He shouted as he walked away down the dock, “You got it Crash… I don’t know yer goin to Ventura.” Then he stopped and spun around and hushed, he whispered loud, running a finger across his lips, “Say, did I tell you? That Yuri guy told me the same thing.”

“That he’s going to Ventura?”

“No, not to tell anyone he’s askin’ ‘bout you.”

“Me? Thanks Casey. I owe you one.”

“Yeh, Mum’s the word, you can trust me.”

Chapter 10. A Fishing Trip

I had to leave the sanctuary of Anna’s studio to pick up my VA check at the Virginia. Spiderman was at the desk holding up a foldout to the light. I slammed the ringer to get his attention. He damned near fell out of his chair. Recovering his composure, he said, “I see you Crash, but I’d rather look at this. What do you think, is she a ten?”

I glanced at it a second but asked, “You got my check yet?”

“Say, you been takin’ vitamins or something?”

“I didn’t come here for a date, sweetheart, I just want my check.”

He put the magazine aside, pulled the government envelope out of my old pigeonhole, and slipped it across the counter, “You ain’t drinkin’ are you?”

“It’s only been a week. You think it shows?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“I just have to keep my head clear for a while. At least ‘til a few things get straightened out.”

“I gotta tell you. Some kind of detective was here and he was lookin’ for you. What kind of shit did you get yourself into, Crash?”

“Was he alone?” I couldn’t be too careful or I’d end up like Perry.

“Yeh, why? What difference does that make?”

It had to be Ryan because, when it’s official business, detectives come with back-up. “Not sure, what did he say?”

“He just asked if you were stayin’ with that Anna chick. You’re a lucky man, Crazhinski, I sure do wish I was stayin’ with her.”

“Hey, you’re starting to drool.” I stepped back to walk away. “But thanks Spiderman. You don’t have to tell him I was here.” The thought came to me that Ryan didn’t know where I was hiding out. Anna hadn’t let him know. I supposed there was no reason to let him know.

*****

I went to the corner to cash my check. John had been doing that since I first moved into the Virginia. I always paid up on the first of the month. I had him stop my tab at fifty bucks so that I wouldn’t use up my reserves. That was my way of budgeting my VA check.

John cashed my check… counted it out and passed it to me. I peeled off fifty bucks

“No Crash. You can get me later… when you’re back on your feet.”

I looked at my feet, “I’m on my feet John. Here, take this. I’m okay, really.”

John took the money, “You know; that cop friend of yours? Detective Ryan. He was here first thing this morning… banged on my door before I opened. He says it’s urgent.”

“I know. I’d appreciate you don’t know anything… right.” I passed three quarters over the counter and he passed back a pack of generic smokes.

“I can’t lie to a cop, Crash.”

“You’re an honest man, John. You don’t have to lie for me.”

*****

I was at the State Street traffic lights on 101 before I realized I hadn’t bought a pint from John. It felt good. The walk-light changed and two steps into it I had a vague urge to turn around. I didn’t have to struggle much though. It felt like a big hand was on my shoulder guiding me away. It wasn’t long before I was on the breakwater enjoying the surge of the surf pounding away under me. I sat on the concrete bench to take in the morning sun. I knew what the big hand was and the feeling was vivid… like the way I felt helpless while watching Adrian’s birth… how she came out into this oh-so-fucked-up world fighting. Like Anna, she wouldn’t be beaten by the perversity of adults. It was a feeling of awe, fear, and beauty. That’s when I saw Ryan coming towards me from the Yacht Club.

Ryan stood before me with stout legs planted apart, hammer fists at his waist, day old carrot colored stubble on ruddy cheeks below piercing blue eyes. A wool watch-cap covering bristled butch-cut on a neckless block of a head that was welded on broad shoulders above a barrel chest under a Navy blue cable-knit sweater. He had ten years on me and was a head shorter, but I wouldn’t take him on. Hell, I’d rather stand naked without a cape in a bull ring against el Toro than go toe-to-toe with the man.

I patted my hand on the wet spot where the spraying surf from the night before left a puddle, “Don’t sit here unless you want to get your butt wet.”

“Walk with me to Mizz Sherlock, Crash. You in the mood for some fishing?”

“Depends on what we’re fishin’ for, my friend.”

“I’m not asking.”

*****

Mizz Sherlock was a clean boat of about forty-five feet… nothing fancy of about her… a modified Main Lobster Yacht. Called a yacht but was a pretty modest one. The old straight-eight marine engine that powered her could be pushed to twelve knots max… cruised at eight and could plow through just about any seas. The cabin was big enough to tuck a gateleg table that dropped down for a third berth and, on the other side, a chart table for plotting a course. The most modern features in the cabin were a marine radio, a scanner and a 1950’s radar screen otherwise, a compass, sextant, and clock, were good enough for him. Forward of, and two steps below the cabin, it featured a shower next to the head and, under the bow, two more berths.

We boarded and cruised out of the harbor. I knew he was going to fish for something more than marlin and that he would be patient. The sea-air away from the harbor was different… just as fresh and all… but there was something about it.

We baited our lines, set up our poles, and took turns at the helm. Ryan opened a cooler and pulled out two cans… a beer for himself and offered me one.

“You got a soda or something?”

“I heard you quit drinking.”

“No. Just laying off a bit. Who told you that?”

“A little sparrow… ‘sides, you don’t look so shitty,” he laughed a deep roar. I wondered whether I’d ever heard Ryan laugh.

Not knowing how to drink a soda, I gulped it down and tossed the can off the stern. It was a funny thing but I was embarrassed enough to think I needed to make an excuse for my abstinence. I said, “I didn’t really quit. I’m just putting some time between drinks, if you know what I mean.”

Ryan pushed an empty five-gallon paint bucket next to me and scowled, “Put ‘em in here next time.”

He cut the motor and we just drifted with the current. He continued to look at me with a scrunched rusty brow.

A weight pressed my chest and caught in my craw, so I let it out, “Anna’s in trouble.”

“I know,” he dropped his empty in the bucket as his line went taut and his pole bent some. He yanked the pole from its rod holder and hollered, “It’s fishin’ ya know.”

“You got nothing there, pal,” the pole went back to its previous arc.

“Sometimes the little ones fight harder than the big ones. You don’t know what you’ve got until you pull it in,” he said.

“And, like I said, you got nothing,” Anna hadn’t told me enough to know how much Ryan knew or how much I should let him know. I wasn’t comfortable between these two loyalties. I pounded a cigarette out of the pack but didn’t light it.

 Ryan was staring at my cigarette, “Fortuitous subject though… let’s talk about that.”

“Let me guess, it’s not this smoke? It’s about Anna.”

“You tell me. Anna’s too smart to get big headed. She’s in a trap she got into as a small fry and now the ante has been upped on her.”

Ryan’s eyes were still on my smoke, “Your old boss is into some pretty sick shit. Worse than that, he took that bimbo with him and now it’s starting to cave in on all of them.”

“Yes, there’s Jenny, but I’m not sure who else you mean.”

“I mean Perry. Bloody murder and more.”

“Anna told me. You do know I was in jail at the time…?”

“You probably don’t know what’s been going on. I don’t think you even cared until a week ago. Am I right?”

“That I care? Yeah, I suppose I do. Ryan, I think I’m coming alive. I feel it. I just didn’t give a shit.” I patted my shirt pocket. Assured that I had a full pack, I took the helm.

“And now you do?”

I began cruising just fast enough to create a froth. I watched the foam churning up the ocean astern and, out of a strange compulsion, I tossed the new pack of smokes over Ryan’s head into the roiling wake. I don’t know why I did it but it felt right. It was letting go of another big chunk of the past.

I looked back in time to see Ryan smile and a Marlin clear the water. It came back down, missing the bait on my line. It was a majestic loop and a good sign the day would be a good one. I shouted over the throbbing motors, “So, Anna’s the live bait? Why are we fishing if you already have a bead on Doc?”

Ryan reeled the squid towards the boat in front of where we saw the jumper and, as an aside, he shouted, “Did you know great whites have some sort of instinct. A marine biologist told me. If you kill one… well, the old ones… the big ones… they skedaddle and don’t come back for a long-assed time. Maybe they discuss us. All you’ve got to do is kill one. Folks don’t know that.”

“You aren’t going to let me know more?” I knew there had to be more. There’s a marlin out there and Ryan’s talking shit about great whites.

“About fishing? Crash Crazhinski, you’ll know more when I know more. Try to remember, this crap will take time and patience. I don’t trust her but stay close to Anna; she can help us out but we don’t want to scare off the big ones. Her story has some holes in it. Her heart is good but she’s a compulsive liar and is covering her sweet ass… for good reason,” he said.

“Okay, I get it now old man. Are you in love?” If there was a truth I knew up to this point, it was that I hadn’t been paying attention before the other day. “She’s kind of young for you. I take it that you’re not going by the book this time?”

“I am. But the book we’re going by hasn’t been written. Circumstances always warrant an exception. I have to tell you, something smells bad at the station. Might go up near the top of the chain of command in the DA’s office. Someone’s stepped on my earliest attempts to investigate.”

“So, Ryan,” I was intrigued now. Ryan was going rogue. That wasn’t his style. I had to probe, “I need to know what we’re getting into.” Still not sure what anything he said was about, I added, “I’ve never liked working with the Embassy back then either. Too much like catch and release.”

Ryan’s rod dipped a couple of times, “Sometimes they tease the crap out of ya.”

I cut the engines as soon as I heard the reel’s shrill r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r’s. He grabbed the pole out of its holder and planted the butt of the rod under his belly. The fight was on. I could see why Hemmingway loved Marlin fishing so much. It could be compared to a fifteen round boxing match. And it looked like I had a ringside seat for this bout. The line went straight down, pole bent… keeping the line taught, Ryan reeled and released it… brought it closer and let it go out forever further and reeled it back. The damned thing took a dive down at least sixty feet. The line changed directions a dozen times before the fish breached in a graceful leap coming back down as sure as a fencer’s parry and lunge. Ryan and that leviathan had been at it at least an hour as I stood by with the gaff.  Several times that fish got almost close enough to gaff but wasn’t tired enough to give up.

I was ecstatic even though I’d been at ready for so long. “What do you figure, six hundred pounds?”

“Maybe more. But look, there’s a great white’s fin… just disappeared out there.”

Another half hour the Marlin had been tiring but found the reserves to turn away as though fleeing. It mustered enough strength to make one more leap when, in mid-air, it happened. That fucking great white breached and sailed in a perfect trajectory to grasp the fish in its teeth at midsection and dove back down into the deep.

“You see that! Fucking robbed us!” I cursed, still holding the gaff at ready to haul in our prize.

Ryan pulled up his line with only the head of that huge Marlin on it. That was all there was left of it. I swear he was off the charts giddy, “Yeah, but didn’t that give you a rush better than any of your damned drugs?”

Chapter 9. The Spiders' Web

Anna’s occupation made her very good at concealing her feelings. But my former profession trained my eye to read people. The mortar blast hadn’t taken that away. It’s a trick that can be taught by the Army in places like Huachuca Arizona, though any professional poker player will insist deception is more of an art than a science. She usually held her cards close to her chest. Anna paused, and continued, “A twenty-two revolver was on the floorboards. The coroner ruled it a suicide. Perry didn’t have family and the body was cremated two days later. The day you got out of jail.”

“I didn’t know he owned a gun. Did they get any prints off it?”

“No. It was wiped clean.”

I played the sleuth, “How do you know that?”

“I have my sources.”

 I see what you mean though. Not too many folks wipe their prints after they blow their brains out. How were you involved?”

She looked around the room as if checking to see whether anyone was listening. She took a deep breath, lowered her voice and began telling me about the whole sordid business, “See, Doc liked to throw what he called, costume parties. It wasn’t unusual to me. He knew some pretty powerful folks around town and… where it stands now… it’s grown… some people as far away as Washington and New York… lawyers and judges. I don’t know. If there was a marquee I would have had top billing. But I dropped out of my role as the star of the show a year ago when you…”

“Yes, that night you were crying?”

She lit two cigarettes and passed one to me like Bogart would have done for Bacall. Smoke billowed up between us as she continued, “The Professor used his church for recruiting gullible young things like Jenny. He plied his Hollywood good looks to help them with their problems… spiritual ones, you know? Girls, especially young ones, go for preachers. I don’t know what it is but some of us are attracted to authority figures and you do know how smooth of a talker he is.”

“You talk as though he might have reeled you in too.”

“Yes, I’m ashamed to admit I fell for him when I was a kid… he was handsome and well to do… he played up his sugar-daddy role and had me for a while. But ours became a business affair and he took his affections to Jenny.”

“Why? she’s not jailbait.” I thought about how far back I’d been Anna’s cabbie.

“Yeah, I used to wear school girl fetish gear. Round-eyes like Jenny played the big mama. We had a whole dramatic scene goin’ on for his pals in that fuckin’ basement.”

I watched her closely and could see that she looked as if she enjoyed recalling it before she turned dead serious, “Now Doc’s trying to cash in on those connections and go big time. It’s image. He probably figured these pigs have more respect for pimps with endowed blonds than oriental school girls.”

My investigator mind knew that Doc must have gotten on Anna’s bad side for that but wonder aloud, “Jenny? We all know Doc’s banging her but not anything as kinky as this.”

A day ago I hadn’t heard Perry was dead. My biggest problem was getting my job back and now Anna’s weaving a web of conspiracy, murder and child molestation beyond my imagination. The more I heard the more I wanted to be alert and sober. Anna relit the joint and passed it to me. I raised my hand palm out and, a little annoyed and declined, “Calm down girl, you’re making me nervous. What do you mean, big time?”

“I hit him up as much as I could for this place before he was gonna make a bid for Mayor. What happened in that wine cellar was an accident but Perry’s murder let me know Doc doesn’t need me, or you, around?”

“Hah, mayor? This is a small pond. It isn’t LA, dear. Shit, mayor of this town doesn’t pay enough to rent a lily pad here. Not enough to go around murdering people for it.”

She fired back like I was an idiot, “You think I don’t know that? Can’t you see the sharks circling? There are deals goin’ on here that make the cab business petty cash. Mr. Mayor wants to be in the center of every one of ‘em.”

I saw what she meant. At that time, it was small time construction contracts… extortion via building permits. It’s called Revitalization whenever they want to kill a neighborhood for a cartoon image of the old Spanish Days.

The whole county was run by matrons and socialites married to billionaire boys needing a hobby. There have always been small time ambitious ones too; hanging around the perimeters and picking up the scraps that fall from the table, schemers and scammers, bribing, manipulating whoever they can. I grudgingly admired Doc’s ambitions. He came up to their level as a cab driver. How could I fault him if he wanted more than a seat at the big table? Hell, now it looked like he wanted to own the room the table was in. But the fact that Perry was dead should have convinced me Doc was now swimming with great whites.

“And how much did you sap Doc for anyway?”

“Three-hundred grand. I needed it for the down-payment. When I first saw this place I wanted it. The banker eyed me up real good too. You know, while we were checking out the place. I could tell we could make a deal. I got it for only six-hundred. You know, these places in this neighborhood go for over eight. I paid off the rest with cash money… you know?”

“Damn girl, you did that?”

“Sure did. For several years, even when I was doin’ drugs, I made sure I put a grand in my account a couple times a month.”

“Tell me more about that accident in the basement, and how come Doc doesn’t put a hit on you like he did Perry?”

“I’m tight with one of the detectives at the P.D. Ryan’s his name. I’m sure Doc’s trying to figure out a way.”

“You know Ryan? He’s the reason I came to Santa Barbara after…” I must have drifted off into the past because she waved a hand in my face.

She asked, “How do you two know each other?”

“Oh, sorry. We did some shit together in Vietnam. What’s he got to do with you in any of this?”

“Doc’s already gotten by with murder. Perry had no family and neither do I. But I have Ryan and, now that I know, so do you.”

“How so?”

“You worked together in Vietnam, okay?” She smiled, “I didn’t know you were a cop, Crazhinski. What else don’t I know about you?”

“I’ve got some secrets I keep but, apparently, not as many as you.”

“Once a cop, always a cop,” she grinned, “then you must know that any good cop’s in touch with the seedier side of town. My business has given me opportunities to…”

“So, you’re an informant too?”

“Not a snitch in the normal sense of the term. Not petty gangsters and dope dealers. When Ryan scoops out stuff in Hope Ranch and Montecito… not just your vice squad stuff… but financial swindles. I can give him leads.”

“And Doc’s on his radar?”

“Yeah, and Doc knows I’m his link. He’s protected by some high powered attorneys who were involved in his S&M masquerades but Ryan wasn’t on to it until too late. I was already cut out of the action.”

“You mean child molestation. Why aren’t you telling him about that? Isn’t that all the more reason your ass is on the line?”

“I’m walking a tightrope for sure. Doc’s hoping the money he gave me will hold me off at least until he accumulates a little more influence… enough to turn suspicion away from him. Maybe until Ryan retires anyway.”

“If I know Ryan, retirement won’t stop him if something as sleazy as this gets his attention.”

“All I can say to you now is that there are bigger fish than Doc to fry and he knows we can’t go to the law to protect us.”

The fog of confusion was coming back. My ears rang. It happened whenever I was facing a problem this complicated, whether it was in analytical logic or shopping lists. Until she said that bit about bigger fish I was thinking it would have been best had Anna put her place on the market, got out of Dodge, and if she could, take me with her.

I looked around the studio and caught sight of a web on the window pane with a fly trapped in it. The fly struggled to the bitter end. That was when I first noticed it was happening. The fog came and went and, after each time, little by little, I was no longer indifferent and was getting involved in something other than the oblivion of the bottle.

*****

It was in the early evening and Ryan sat at a strategically located booth, facing the entrance and both sides of the L shaped restaurant’s interior. Lopez sauntered by the register and flirted with the young waitress before sitting across from him. Ryan waited. It was Lopez that would have to start the conversation. It was his idea to meet and Ryan knew it wasn’t to talk about the Lakers.

Crazy Shirley filled both cups as soon as Lopez sat. She was a nice looking middle-aged woman, hair streaked with silver, and lines on her face that spoke of years pouring bottomless cups of coffee to anyone with a buck or two and a quarter tip from harbor bums to cops. Sambos on the beach was the last of the chain that once dominated the off-ramps of highways from Santa Barbara to Miami Florida. The bottomless cups of coffee were gone too. Shirley still poured them though. She had worked there through two marriages and divorces since she was eighteen years young when the grand-pa of the chain, Sam Battistone, stepped in behind the counter and flipped a pancake or two once for old times sake.  As soon as he passed on, his kids ran the chain into the ground. At least, that’s the idea everyone in town took away from watching its demise. Ryan preferred a mature woman to the starry-eyed teens that Lopez always failed to impress. She was his kind of woman but the restaurant was no longer his kind of place since it tried to become a Chic shadow of itself.

“Good to see you strangers. You want a menu?”

“Naw, Shirley, I’ll just have an S.O.S.”

“Shit on a Shingle hasn’t been on the menu since the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ryan.”

“I’d still have Mary Tyler Moore though,” Ryan teased.

“Me too,” she smiled.

After Shirley left the booth, Lopez finally breached the subject, “We have a problem, Ryan. The scuttlebutt around the Barn says that you’ve gone over the edge on this case. I said it already, you ought best take some leave. You have it coming to you.”

His tone, without revealing the rage he was stuffing, Ryan asked, “And if I slump off, who’s going to cool his jets? What sewer is this coming from, Lopez?”

“You know how it is Ryan. This shit doesn’t come out of nowhere. You’ve been a loose cannon and I know you know it. This ain’t like you, buddy.”

“Buddy my ass. You’re changing the subject. What’s goin’ on up there that you aren’t telling me? Is it somebody in the DA’s office?”

“The DA? What’s next Ryan, a UFO cover-up… contrails… The JFK assassination? You’re going on leave… paid vacation.”

Ryan did everything he knew to do to suppress his anger telling himself, Stay objective. Don’t let your emotions get to you. He said, “Okay. I’m good with that. I’m thinking of taking the Sherlock to Mexico anyway. Maybe Cabo.”

They were cordial and Ryan tried not to rush. He been wanting to get some pics of the tire treads on Doc’s Jag all day. He knew where Doc lived and drove up Eucalyptus Rd, parking down the street where he had to walk a quarter mile on a lane lined with bougainvillea. The property was on a hill surrounded by an adobe wall within several acres of Eucalyptus and Sycamore trees on undeveloped land.

The wall had security cameras that were easily spotted. Ryan had paused near a side gate where he squatted while thinking of a ruse or tactic to get inside. Fortune graced is patience as he heard voices arguing… approaching the gate.

A calm deliberate Slavic accent said, “There can’t be witness. That bitch is no asset. Why did you fire that cab driver… we might have gotten the right one but you don’t know.  Do you?”

His question was met with silence. He demanded once more, “Do you.”

“I fired him to get him out of the way.”

Ryan clicked on his cassette hoping to catch what the conversation. It was loud enough. He could see them once they stepped out of the gate. The Slav grabbed Doc by the collar and put what Ryan knew so well to be a Marakov automatic pistol to the side of Doc’s head, “This is the best way to get someone out of way. You should have done that.”

Ryan could only imagine Doc sweating blood… “I know. I will. I couldn’t right there in my office. We looked for him… couldn’t find him.”

Yuri slipped the pistol back inside is jacket, “He’s with whore. Where’s she?”

Doc’s body breathed relief, “I thought she left town. I don’t know where she is.”

Ryan thought, well shit, neither do I.

“Amateurs… damned amateurs.” Yuri snarled, “She’s in town and going to city college under another name. Anadel Bonnaire. Her old place is on her registration. Don’t you know how easy it is to get something like that?”

“We looked at some places she wanted to buy… several. But I thought she took the money and split.”

‘You want to be a gangster, Mr. Spawn. You shit. You idiyote! How much you give her, eh?”

“A couple thousand grand…”

“And places you look at… eh, what they cost?” I go to county. I look up purchases… I look and see who bought. What houses you look at? What sold to Anadel Bonnaire. You see? I find before you know. You go in house and give me a list before I go. Now we have nice dinner, okay. Relax, I find her.”

This was better than Ryan could have hoped for. If only he could find where Anna was tucked away. He’d lost track of Craszhinski too. He took Yuri’s advice and called county records as soon as he got back in town. The clerks there are quick to follow through with police requests. Favors curry favors and you never know when a DUI might need to be dealt with. Ryan felt relieved almost as much as he was frustrated that there was no sign of a Bonnaire anywhere in the files. She must have used someone else’s name. He wished he had Yuri’s list.