“I know,” Casey says impatiently, “but where can I find Bette Wu and Empress II?”
A beat then, while Bob Temple decides whether or not to give up Sheriff Department information to a Laguna surfer who’s a virtual stranger.
“Slip 41-B, Pier 32 Marina, National City.”
9
Casey glasses Empress II at her slip at the National City Marina. Through the Leicas, he sees a man half reclining on a chaise lounge, smoking. Casey thinks he was one of the gunners aboard the Luhrs that day, but he’s not sure. Empress II’s tables and nets have been stowed, but she’s still just a peeling blue-and-red commercial trawler berthed way out at the end of a crowded landing, as if trying to hide within the gleaming motor yachts and elegant sailboats. Her boarding ramp is down.
Casey wonders how Bette Wu and her multinational, occasionally felonious crew can afford this big vessel, its slip fee here in National City, and the green Luhrs, the white Bayliner, and the swanky Dragon his mom told him about, all by supplying fish and shark fins to Southern California restaurants.
Just not feelin’ it, he thinks. Maybe they’re in some other business, too?
He stops at the ramp gate and the smoking man stands up. He’s short, with ropy arms and a scrawny torso. Filipino, Casey guesses.
“I came to get my dog,” says Casey.
“No dog.”
“Everybody at the harbor saw Bette stealing her.”
“No Bette. Not here.”
“Where, then?”
Smoker flips his cigarette butt into the bay and shakes his head.
“Fine, then,” says Casey. “Permission to come aboard requested. So I can look for Mae.”
“No. No dog here. No Bette here. Out selling to restaurants. All legal and good money so you go now.”
Casey throws the latch and knees open the ramp gate and Smoker meets him halfway up, crouching into a boxer’s stance, fists up. Casey—six feet, two inches tall, two hundred and twenty pounds of youthful muscle, plus years of immense waves pounding him around like a pool toy, years of gym workouts, and some truly evil Hapkido training with Brock—springs in and pushes Smoker hard, but not too hard, over the railing and into the bay.
“Sorry, sir. I’ll be just a minute!”
Which is less than it takes him to check belowdecks for Mae, or Bette, or whoever else might be aboard this fish-reeking, cigarette-smoke-steeped trawler. He scribbles his number onto a Tsingtao coaster.
“Mae! Mae!”
But no Mae, and back on deck Casey sees Smoker, fully drenched and lurching up the ramp toward the boarding gate.
“Tell Bette she owes me a chocolate Lab named Mae.”
“You should take down video. Going viral. Bad for business.”
“Soon as I get my dog back. And I want enough money for a good phone. You tell her that.”
He presses the coaster into the man’s cold wet hand. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. But I do expect her call.”
He’s at the Barrel an hour later, still midafternoon, transferring his hundred-plus-pound tuna fish from his cooler to the walk-in refrigerator in the restaurant kitchen.
In the Barrel’s third-story office/apartment, Casey showers quickly, balancing his phone on the aluminum shower top, just out of spray distance. When he’s done he posts another round of Mae pictures on all his socials, pleads for sightings, be-on-the-lookout fors, any clues no matter how tenuous as to where she might be. His Mae posts are going viral on more than one platform but the false sightings are everywhere and useless.
He sends out another CaseyGram with pictures of Mae and pleas for help.
Someone has seen something! he writes.
But what if Bette Wu doesn’t call?
His Woodland Street home is a small 1950s cottage surrounded by walls of purple bougainvillea, and yellow, red, and white hibiscus. Some of the blossoms are already folding in for the night.
He takes his laptop to the bistro table in his backyard, profuse with bird-of-paradise, potted plumeria, succulents, and a fragrant center-yard tangerine tree now heavy with fruit.
An hour later he’s removed his posts, blogs, and videos from every platform he uses. Goes through his accounts once more, to make sure. But he wonders what real good this is going to do for Bette Wu and her fellow pirates, considering how many thousands of them have already viewed, forwarded, liked, forwarded again, around the Internet, around the world. Hasn’t the damage been done?
While he’s at it he checks his brother Brock’s Breath of Life Rescue Mission feed, reads another vitriolic exchange between Brock and Kasper Aamon, the founder of Right Fight.
Brother Brock Stonebreaker, it was great to see you up in Mendocino.
My pleasure, Aamon-you looked more intelligent than you do on Fox.
You look like the same slimy dude who bores his congregation at the Breath of Life Rescue Mission for hours on end. I know that because some of my Right Fighters live practically right next door to you. They tell me it’s a squalid pit, your alleged church. A slum. A black hole, a barrio.
Why don’t you come by, slip a couple grand into the collection plate sometime?
So you can give it away to the pathetic, pregnant, drug-addicted minorities you love so much?
Sure! Be happy to.
