by Susie Bright
But how do you explain childhood friends not even looking at each other? That was a red flag that might stay up.
It took about three calls for me to connect the dots. What I said was, “Big-time, big-money poker games. Cross-category: cocaine access. Santa Cruz County.” The answer was the same each time: Joe Morielli.
It was a name I knew but a profile so low he’d never showed up on my screen. Joe Morielli was a black sheep, and perhaps the most successful member of the Watsonville apple cider vinegar clan.
I’d first heard about him at the public defender’s office, but even then he was a rumor. Joe, unlike the rest of the Moriellis, hated apples. He’d gone to work at local nightclubs, first as a busboy, then tending bar, then tending bar as a hobby while dealing cocaine. It was a fairly common progression. But Joe was smart and made a smart move. He started giving discounts to local law enforcement and from there moved up the food chain to the legal community: DAs, prosecutors, eventually judges. By then, he was midlevel and no longer had any contact with the buyers, but he knew who they were. They knew he knew.
Joe had never been busted, not even when some competitors disappeared and he took over the longest-running poker game in town. Then the man seemed to vanish. No one I knew could put me in touch with Joe. He was a ghost. No presence. More than that, he was an absence, which spoke to his layers of legal protection. The best intel I could manage was that his regular players were only informed the day of the card game where the game would be held.
I called it a night and trudged home—Campbell’s chicken noodle, sprawled on the couch, soothed by Perry Mason and the gentle happy din from downstairs.
* * *
Friday, I hired a temp to cover for me with Kelly and anyone else. The temp loved the script I gave her: “I get to say that? You’re tracking leads? That is so cool!”
I’d decided the only way to smoke Joe out was to tap into the ground from which he was raised. I hit every bar, lounge, and tavern in Santa Cruz County. I was depending on the loose confederacy of bartenders and cocktail waitresses to pass the word along. I pressed my card and the promise of cash.
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 woul
d 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.
In one day, my life went from flat zero to watching pelicans dive-bomb for their breakfast. Walking along the beach for hours. After what I’d been through, being all alone in my sleeping bag in the back of the square-back was a pleasure: a promising turnaround.
* * *
Marta knew all about beaches because her family had been in Watsonville before all those condos were a gleam in the developer’s eye.
The morning I met her, she showed up in her station wagon with a whole brood. I peeked out of the checked curtains I had sewn for some privacy, and there were all these kids, piling out, clown-car style. I knew they couldn’t be hers because there were at least ten of them. Little ones. They were bouncing around like pinballs! This was before they passed the seat belt laws, so it’s not like she was doing anything wrong. It was just how you did it back then. She wanted to take ten kids to the beach, so she squeezed them all together in the Olds.
It was cold out, and early, so the kids had their colorful little jackets and hats on, and they were yelling and goofing off. A couple were crying. Marta was the only one wrangling them and they all started heading up over the dunes. I wanted to see how this was going to pan out, so I followed. One little guy, he started lagging behind, and pretty soon he was running off the path.
There used to be real tall grass in the dunes; it was like a maze in there. You could easily lose a kid that way.
They were small. None of them over five. So I chased after the little guy and scooped him up and got him back on track. I brought him over to the group and Marta smiled at me, but she didn’t seem worried at all. She hadn’t even noticed he was missing. She had the kids all plopped in the sand and playing with their toys and I sat down. She spoke plenty of English and I spoke Spanish pretty well from my abuela, so we chitchatted the way you do: a mishmash. I didn’t tell her my whole situation, but I got the feeling she knew. She could tell I’d been places and seen some things. She told me my eyes reminded her of a turtle, which might not sound like the nicest thing to say, but I could tell she meant something good by it. She said it in Spanish, tortuga. I think she was telling me I was smart, or serious, or something.
I stayed and played with the kids all morning. We dug holes and got sand in everything and she offered me some food from her big paper grocery sack. She had these corn tortillas, wrapped in a cloth and still warm, that she’d roll around hunks of white cheese. A big jug of pineapple juice with Dixie cups. I never wanted kids of my own, but I loved the way these guys were climbing all over me from the get-go. It made me feel purposeful, like I was an animal assisting other animals.
When I helped her pile everyone back into the car, she asked me what I was doing the next morning—if I wanted to help her again, maybe at her house. She showed me on my map and I wrote down her address in the margin and all of a sudden I had a job! Just for the mornings, but it was a start. I didn’t need to have a degree, or a resume, or fill out any paperwork. I could go ahead and call myself a teacher if I wanted.
It’s funny because working at a day care turned out to be a lot closer to sex work than you’d think. You have to be present in your body and not overthink things. You have to trust that your body is being used for good. Also, it helped that my immune system was bulletproof from all those years dancing. I had developed a lot of patience too.
* * *
By the end of the week, Marta and I already had this mother/daughter thing going on. Nothing like what I had with my own mom, thank god. The house was warm and comfy, and with all the kids and cousins around, it felt like family real quick. I thought it was a blessing to find her so soon after moving, to be welcomed in like that. It was special. I tried not to talk about my past or that I was still sleeping in my car, but she worried. She packed me meals to bring back and gave me a whistle. When I made a crack about who would hear a whistle all the way out there—she opened her purse and tried to give me her knife.
One day, we were back at the beach with the kids and she said that Ricky might have a lead on a place for me. I think she called Ricky her brother or brother-in-law; but maybe Ricky was another cousin?
Hoo-boy, Ricky was hot. I’m going to be blunt about it because one thing that makes me nuts is when people can’t just call it for what it is. Ricky was a stone fox and no sane person would refute it. He wore these tight black jeans and boots all caked with mud, Western shirts with snaps. Mustache. You get the picture. He fixed stuff around Marta’s house, like the garbage disposal and the toilet, and he had a formality about him that turned me on. He passed me a tub of margarine one time at dinner and my hand touched his, and I thought I was gonna die.
Now this whole time I was assuming Ricky made his money as a fix-it guy and a fisherman. He had poles in his truck, and he was always unloading coolers into the backyard, hosing them out, filling them with fresh ice. There were a lot of fishermen around, selling cod or rockfish out of their coolers by the gas station or near St. Patrick’s.
If you pressed me, I guess I’d say it was illegal. Maybe you had to have a license? People sold a lot of stuff around Watsonville. Tortillas, tamales, churros, blankets, flags. And I’m sure there were drugs, like all places, but I didn’t see them. I was around a different crowd back then, mostly older Catholic people who worked hard and had one eye on la Migra.
Ricky came twice a week—sometimes with kids, sometimes not. He had an “office” that was a converted bathroom where he took the little ones. Marta said he was checking for lice, signs of chicken pox. The kids’ parents were too scared to take them to the public clinic. God, I remember hating my nits getting picked too; I would cry my head off, just like they did.
* * *
One morning I got to work—I usually showed up around six thirty and we’d eat and get everything set for the kids to arrive—and Marta hugged me so tight. She told me Ricky had a place I could live for cheap. A place just for me. It was out in Corralitos, where there wasn’t much except for a meat market and a lot of apple orchards. But it was sitting there empty. There had been a huge flood the winter before, the famous one that triggered all the landslides, thousands of them, and the cabin had gotten pretty well dumped on and waterlogged. It was going to be moldy, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t fix. Spring was coming, and we could open everything up and let it dry out.
We laid out the snacks for the kids and then Ricky showed up. He arrived with two little ones I hadn’t seen before, though
I don’t think they were his. The number of kids fluctuated daily, I think, because most of the parents worked in the fields, and not all the moms worked every day.
Marta never turned away anyone, even when kids were swinging from the curtain rods and diapers were running low. It was chaos, but it worked somehow. Some of them practically lived there. One set of twins, a boy and girl (named Albino and Blanca—White and White, if you can believe it), had been staying overnight every weekday for months. Their mom was deported after being pulled over for some traffic nonsense and it was impossible for their dad to take care of them and work at the same time. Marta was keeping them until they could fly down to Mexico with another relative to be reunited with their mom.
I thought those kids were lucky. In rich neighborhoods, you couldn’t have a group of more than three children in a home without the California Department of Social Services breathing down your neck, and here were all these babies getting loving care practically for free.
I should’ve taken my own car to see the cabin instead of riding with Ricky. I knew that the minute I started talking to him, my mouth would be leaking honey. I hated that about myself—used to be if there was an attractive man around, my whole everything changed. My voice got softer, I held my body differently, I said the stupidest shit. I had just learned to get ahold of myself and I didn’t want to ruin things.
Then Ricky opened the car door for me and Marta put a jade plant on my lap and I started to fall apart, ever so slightly.
The cab of his Chevy was tidy. I remember the carpet on the floor was freshly vacuumed in those long professional-detailer strokes, first one direction and then the next. He had a cup holder attached to a sandbag laid across the hump below the stick shift and an air freshener with la Virgen on it. He kept his eyes on the road, even when I couldn’t stop thanking him. I was so grateful to be given this fresh start, yet I was probably giving off a vibe of wild desperation.
