Desperation Reef

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.

Back at the Barrel he preps the bar for happy hour. His two barbacks, Dylan and Diego, are already there, tending to the bottles and glasses, coolers, ice machines, building the garnishes from tiny umbrellas, nasturtium petals, and cubed melon.

Phone in his pocket, ring tone and vibrate turned up high, he chats with some local regulars — Janice, Aurora, Gaye, and Tessie. They’re pretty, reliably thirsty, cheerful. Not his type for a relationship but he likes them, and their attention.

Tessie recently bought one of his signature model surfboards at Hobie Sports here in town and he feels guilty for avoiding a promised lesson on the lavishly beautiful, expensive tri-fin. He feels her sincere, happy interest in him but he’s never been one to take something offered without genuine reciprocity, which he does not feel — has rarely felt — in a woman.

He can hardly keep up the small talk, waiting on word about Mae from Bette Wu.

Who walks into the bar just before happy hour with two male associates, hangs a silver clutch on the back of the barstool, and sits down in front of Casey.

At least he thinks it’s her.

This Bette is dressed in a seafoam-green leather pantsuit and matching rhinestone-studded sneakers. No blouse required. No pistol on her hip. Pearls around her neck. Hair up and lipstick on.

The men wear dark suits, solid-colored shirts and ties, and take stools on either side of her. They frown.

Casey’s locals have gone silent, four faces trained down the bar on Bette with full attention.

Jen passes by, menus clutched to her chest, followed by two customers. A sharp look at Bette Wu, then a questioning glance at Casey.

“Stonebreaker, make me a French 75,” Bette says. “Then we’ll talk. Beers for my crew. Kingstar if you have it. Tsingtao if you don’t.”

“You’re talking different now,” says Casey.

A look from her, possibly dismissive.

He makes and serves her the drink, Tsingtao for the men. Glances at Tessie and friends, isn’t sure what expression to offer. Bette lifts her drink to them, and sips.

One of the cocktail waitresses down the bar hoists a Scorpion-loaded tray to her shoulder, spikes Casey another order to fill near the far cash register.

Bette Wu relocates to a stool in front of it and sets down her drink.

Casey looks at her, not certain that this Bette was the Bette on Empress II.

“I want Mae back and twelve hundred for a phone,” he says.

“I don’t have Mae.”

“People at Oceanside Harbor saw you with her.”

“But I can tell you where she is when you take the videos down.”

“They’re down.”

“Good. But I will only direct you to her and the money when I see the proof. You post a lot. And all those YouTubes. I want it down. All of it. Every pixel.”

“I just told you they’re down. You better not hurt her.”

“I don’t have her.”

“God loves Mae and He’ll protect her.”

“I think that’s funny.”

“Some people think everything’s funny.”

Bette Wu drinks half of her French 75, sets the glass down, and fixes her skeptical brown eyes on Casey.

“You look like Bette from the Empress II,” he says. “But you don’t talk like her.”

“I’m Bette Wu. A fisher, actor, businesswoman, and graduate of UCLA. Business, with a minor in film.”

“I think that’s funny.”

“I was brought up on Hong Kong crime and action movies. Now I play my heroines in real life. Helps beat the boredom on the boat. I will make a pirate movie someday. A big hit. Have you seen the Chinese film The Pirate?”

He shakes his head. “I want my dog.”

“I’ll check your platforms and see if you’re lying or not. And when I’m satisfied, I will call.”

She smiles at Casey, then strides out of the bar, trailed by her escorts, who drop money on the counter and hustle to catch up.

Casey gets his mom and his barback to handle the rest of happy hour, and races up the outside stairs to the third-floor Barrel apartment/office to double ensure all his shark-finning posts and pictures and videos are in fact down. He can’t lose Mae on a technicality.

Five minutes later, he’s back on duty on the bar.

When his phone rings he almost fumbles a Lapu-Lapu on its way to a customer, then yanks out the device — vibrating ecstatically and playing the first notes of a Jack Johnson song.

“We have small wrinkle,” says Bette.

When he hears her pirate talk his heart speeds up in a bad way.

“There better not be!” blurts Casey, as adrenaline and anger burst through him. “It’s all down. Every clip, picture, post, and word.”

“We ask twenty-five thousand dollars to give back Mae. Twenty. Five. Thousand. Jacksons only. If you call police, Mae goes overboard at sea. Or maybe smuggle to a buyer far away.”

Casey feels his deepest fear for Mae landing on him like an avalanche. “I’ll get the money.”

“Call me tomorrow at this number at noon exactly. From your home in Laguna Beach. If you don’t, your dog will disappear.”

She gives him a number, which he writes on a Barrel napkin and slips into his wallet.

“Miss Wu, the second commandment says to love your neighbor as yourself. But I don’t love you. I’m closer to not liking you at all.”

“I’ll cry myself to sleep.”

Casey’s ear gets two kisses; then Bette rings off.

He calls Brock, who answers with an obscenity, sirens in the background.

“Mae got dognapped by pirates and they want twenty-five thousand dollars or they’ll throw her overboard. I’m calling them at noon tomorrow.”

Silence as the sirens whine. Casey can’t believe his own words: Would they really do that? The idea makes him queasy. Jelly kneed. Helpless. Like he’s being stranded in a leaking dinghy while Mae dogpaddles for some distant shore.

“Do you have the money, Case?”

“I can get it.”

“Mahina and I will be there tomorrow morning by six thirty.”

“I’m praying this works out,” says Casey.

“Prayer won’t do you one bit of good, brother.”

“No guns.”

“Don’t argue,” says Brock. “Don’t speak. See you soon.”