Santa Cruz Noir

Wheels of Justice by Jon Bailiff

Steamer Lane

I’m not the kind of guy who goes around with wild, violent fantasies, like I got some shooter game playin’ in my head. So this or that guy’s got some beef. So what? I’m not out for confrontation.

But I’ve doled out plenty. ’Cause what are you gonna do? Nothing? Fuck that!

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had some issues here and there. Major issues with the Santa Cruz PD. Always fuckin’ with me. Like true-blue dickheads — like I’m the loser! But that ain’t me. Drunk and disorderly? Okay. Domestics? Maybe. But that assault charge? Total fuckin’ bullshit. It’s called self-defense!

I don’t look for trouble. But if some goddamn faggot, pardon my lack of political correctness, and fuck you very much, tries some shit out on me? Well, okay. Trouble’s in trouble now!

I surf Steamer Lane. It’s my home break — not yours. You’re not Westside Santa Cruz born and raised. Steamer’s is not for you. Go back to the Valley, or Cowell’s, or even Pacifica. We will not be tolerating any university inclusivity-diversity bullshit from outsider kooks, queers, and mud people. Stay behind the railing and watch.

So yeah, that incident at Steamer’s. Don’t act like you don’t know. Everybody saw that shit. It was all over the Sentinel. Of course, those assholes got it fuckin’ backward, ’cause I was totally in the right. You know I was.

Little-known fact: West Cliff, Lighthouse Field, even the Lane — after dark, it’s a major gay cruise. Oh yeah. Don’t believe me, fuckhead? Check Grindr. There’s so much fuckin’ action. You’ll be gettin’ it wet in MINUTES. It’s truly disgusting.

So it’s bar time and I’m all fucked up. I’m in the Carp lot, leaning on the railing, chilling, just checking out the swell for a dawn patrol. Minding my own business. This fat fuck comes wiggling up and sort of leans against the rail — and I know what’s going down. I know before he even opens his pussy mouth. I am instantly pissed! Just instantly mortally pissed! I say, “Eat shit, you fuckin’ faggot!”

I let him know who’s the boss out here — which is what you have to do in such situations. And yeah, maybe I did get a little too “defensive” on the guy. Grindr-ass motherfucker. He had it coming.

Anyway. The cops somehow manage to come to the conclusion that it was all me! I was amazed that guy could even ID me. It was pitch black. So I told the judge how it went down. That I was in fear for my life, what with how dangerous it is out there, so late at night.

He’s like, “What were you doing out there at that hour?”

“Just doing a surf check, Your Honor.”

But him and the DA didn’t get it. It was that ugly-ass faggot that made me go off! I had no choice. Am I right? You know I am.

They said I went over the line, as far as self-defense.

I was like, Fuck him! He deserves worse!

It was touch and go, they said. “The guy almost didn’t make it. But he’s gonna be okay.”

I thought, Oh really? Too bad. I shoulda put that faggot in a wheelchair.

Thought it. But I’m not stupid. I didn’t say it. Queers can be cops, or even judges now. They’re everywhere.

My trial was a joke. No one was on my side. No one but Ashley the bitch, my ex-GF. The DA wanted assault with intent. But I got away with aggravated assault, due to my saying I was “feeling very threatened, Your Honor, and it was not my intention.” Fuck ’em.

I’ll tell you this for free — County is a bitch. Nothing to do. Nada. And what is doubly fucked-up is that, when the surf is going off, you can hear it in the lockup, late at night, when all the losers are asleep and it’s halfway quiet. Those big breakers out there goin’ boom... boom... boom. Makes me feel so far down.

Did I mention there wasn’t shit-all to do in lockup? I tried not to go nuts. Some guys seem like they can just read through anything — sit there, nose in a book, all day, all night. Sometimes I kinda wish I’d given school a little more effort, back in the day. Looking back on it, I just... couldn’t. Couldn’t concentrate, you know? Couldn’t focus my mind. Even if I tried to really put something in my head, I’d hear my old man yelling. If I even looked at him wrong — bam! He’d start kickin’ the crap out of me. Yeah, but that motherfucker sure didn’t like being reminded of the shit he did like me for. He took what he wanted. Fucked for life. That’s me.

What I hate about County is dudes surrounding me, all day, every day, with their endless bullshit. Couldn’t sleep with all those brown faggoty motherfuckers waiting for me to let my guard down. But I wasn’t looking for trouble. I got twenty-four to thirty-six months. And with time off for being a good little bitch. I was out in thirty.

Yeah! I’m out, I’m headed to the Lane. Gotta get back in the lineup. It’s all I’ve been dreamin’ of for two and a half years. So fuckin’ stoked.

But I get no priority. The boys are about as welcoming as a twenty-mile-per-hour on-shore south. What the fuck? Everybody lookin’ at me all stink-eye. They don’t know shit!

Plus — it seems like I was gone for all of five minutes, and my home break’s all crowded with geezers, kooks, hippies, and bunches of chicks and faggots from up on the hill. UCSC cunts and their girlfriends think they have some kind of Pussy College hall pass to surf here. Like the Lane is just for anyone now.

Well, it fuckin’ isn’t. The Lane is not for you. Not for your girlfriend, not your boyfriend, not any of your friends. No way will this stand. No fuckin’ way!

This scene has me so fuckin’ aggro. I’m too amped — just sitting in my truck tryin’ not to go all school-shooter on these assholes. When I’m like this, crank can sometimes calm me down. Hit that pipa, burn a blunt, get some brews flowing, and whoa! I am better, motherfucker! Screw that punk-ass parole officer. I’m out and I’ll do what I please.

Oh yeah. That’s better. That’s more like it. Now I’m feelin’ it. My dick is hard as a rock! I’m thinkin’ about Ashley and how she gives me head exactly when I say to. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. But I keep seein’ that little chica maricon in County the whole time. Pumpin’ like a big fresh south. Goddamn! I’m so ripped!

I snap out of it and — fuck me — outside is going off. The inside is loaded with kooks. The boys are all over first peak. Schracking! Monster sets from a huge south are rolling through, with super-long lulls and a takeoff so narrow you gotta be the earliest, charging-est, deep-throatin’-est motherfucker, or fuck you, you are not getting’ anything. This shit is gnarly. This shit is mine!

Don’t remember suiting up. Don’t even remember paddling out. Just seems like I’m suddenly in the thick of it, raging. Yellin’ at every kook I see. “Fuck you, faggots!” Paddling in front of all the Barneys and thinkin’, Make room for me, boys; priority is mine!

But goddamn! I’m too amped! Pulse pounding. Can’t chill. Timing is off. The extra fifty I gained in jail, on top of my crank-’n’-beer cocktail, is messing me up, slowin’ me down.

“My wave, fuckhead! My wave!” But my fat-fucker pop-up is too slow — too late. No way am I gonna make it. I can feel my extra body weight dragging me down as I pearl my board and eat it, right into the bowl. Then I get sucked back up the face, feel the sick moment of weightlessness, then — over the falls, right onto the deck of my best board. Under water screaming, “FUCK!” It’s a major hold-down. Hitting bottom. Rag-dolled to shit. Donuts all the way.

I finally pop up on the inside, puking seawater. I paddle the bottom half of my board back in and smash the shit out of it on the railing. All eyes on me in the lot, as the assholes bear witness to the sketchiest, gnarliest, most-fucked sesh of all time. I go to get in my truck and — of course — the keys are still in the ignition. The door is locked.

My fist goes right through the window. Don’t even feel it. Like a GoPro slow-mo. Don’t remember driving home. Next thing I remember, I’m rammin’ that piece-of-shit truck right up onto the lawn at the bitch’s apartment. My goddamn hand is achin’ now, bleeding like a motherfucker! WHATEV!

Fuckin’ stairs. Dizzy. Leaning on Ashley’s doorbell and screaming bloody murder for her to LET ME IN, GODDAMNIT! The neighbors all peekin’ out, like a bunch of little bitches. Let ’em look. Fuck ’em. I need a shower, a blunt, a bump, and a brew! Gotta get my hand under control too. Blood’s all over the place.

Finally she opens up. Fuck. Ashley freaks: “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Goddamn bitch, let me in!” Man, she pisses me off.

In the shower and I’m almost passing out. I hear Ashley talking to somebody. What the fuck? I told her to never answer the door if I’m here.

I yell, “Who the fuck is it?” No answer. My hand is still bleeding and I gotta deal with that. I wrap my knuckles in a towel and lean out the door to get the bitch’s attention.

I can hear her now. She’s yelling out by the front door. Fuck. The cops. Why are they here? She’s sayin’, “Don’t come in! I’m fine! He’s got a problem with you guys, you know that. Please!”

The cops are yappin’, “Coming in, got a call, saw the blood, probable cause, prior domestic.” Yada, yada. Goddamn neighbors. All their bullshit! So yeah, the cops have been here before. They got me then, but not again. No fuckin’ way!

I go to grab my aluminum bat from high school. It feels like one of those giant medieval swords in my bloody hand. Those motherfuckers are gonna get the fuck out of here in a hurry. I haven’t done anything! They got no fuckin’ right coming into my house. Who do they think they are?

“Motherfuckers!” I’m charging, rushing into the front room. I swing and swing and swing. “GET THE FUCK OUT!” Boom.

Screaming. I hear screaming. I can’t hear me. I’m burning. My whole body’s on fire. On the floor, buck naked. It’s not me screaming. Ashley, far away. Can’t move. Smells like gunshots and like... shit. Can’t get up. Can’t feel anything but burning.

“Why did you have to come in?” she says. “You didn’t have to shoot him! He didn’t do anything!”

Five bullets fired. All hits. One lodged in my spine. T7. Sure, I got a lawyer. Fucker never calls anymore. Fuck him. Neither does Ashley. She didn’t want to wipe my shit — left me when I was down.

Legless, dickless, soulless motherfucker I am now, everyone just looks — then looks away. Fuck you, for lookin’ at me like some asshole crip. I blame you motherfuckers for all this shit. Westside forever, you fucks.

Now I’m just rolling. Rolling with the punches. Grinding up to Emeline Street and County Health. Then down to Pacific Avenue to hustle change. Back to the shelter. From the shelter back to Emeline. My chair’s gonna need new wheels from all this grinding. All this goddamn grinding.

Mischa and the Seal by Liza Monroy

Cowell’s

Every so often the rage creeps up, cresting like waves during a storm. I plan my revenge when I see him there, on the beach or walking down the steps with his board tucked beneath his arm. My eyes lose track of him, even his silver shock of hair, in that neoprene soup. I see clearly underwater, all those legs in all those black suits, false skins trying to look like mine, all the same out here on their little planks. If I could get to him, if I could be sure it was him, I would shred him.

Mischa moved to Santa Cruz as a graduate student in marine biology. Since she preferred being around seals and otters to other people, it was the logical choice. Over time, though, as with everything she attempted, her focus scattered. She couldn’t get it back. She dropped out and lived in her rented shack off the side of a surf shop. Her waitressing tips were enough to cover rent. She ate kitchen scraps and remnants of food on plates she collected. People were so wasteful. Mischa never left a trace.

The guy at the surf shop loaned her a board, blue and made of foam. She spent every day at sea, in the gentle waves at Cowell’s Beach. Even when it was flat as a pane of glass, she went. Every day she basked in the ocean, so close to the sea lions, seals, and otters. She didn’t want to study them, it turned out, she wanted to be among them. With her black eyes and skin so pale it took on a grayish tint in the water, it was like she’d been born one. Mischa could think of nothing she wanted, only things she didn’t: she didn’t want her once-promising marine biology career, she didn’t want any of her former boyfriends — her mother was right, they’d all been losers — and lastly, she didn’t want her mother, who had disappeared after taking too long of a swim.

On Mischa’s mother’s final visit, she’d entered a repetitive loop of conversation blaming Santa Cruz for her daughter’s loss of ambition. The small seaside city was a land of lotus-eaters and it sucked her in. The place was an opiate. The Mediterranean weather, perpetual sunshine, glare of light on the bay beneath the cliffs. How did anyone ever get anything done here, or leave to go anywhere else?

Her mother had been staying at the Dream Inn, the fanciest hotel in Santa Cruz, and its only tall building. It was trying to be sleek in a city that felt more as if it had been built into its surroundings. Unlike most of the city, the Dream Inn had been interior-designed — its retro furnishings and the font for the logo of its sign more a tribute to a 1950s motel in Palm Springs or LA than anything in Santa Cruz, save for the surfboards hanging from the ceiling in the lounge.

Mischa went to the hotel every day even though she knew it was going to get worse the longer her mother stayed — the delusions, the nagging. They lay in chaise longues, sipping mai tais and bronzing in the sun. As her mother grilled her on all her wrong choices, Mischa stared out into the bay, tuning her out.

She saw a seal just beyond the surf break. That seal doesn’t give a fuck that you failed, she thought.

On the morning of her mother’s last day, she stopped by her daughter’s shack and pulled one of the ubiquitous blue-and-white-striped Dream Inn towels from her St. Tropez beach bag. “I got you this,” she said, dropping the towel on Mischa’s futon.

“You stole a towel from the hotel?”

“So you can still go, even after I leave.”

“But you stole.”

“Anything to get you out of sitting in this crappy shack and doing nothing but surfing all day and serving drunk people burgers all night. Go sit up there instead, think about what you’re doing and what you really came here to do.” Her mother looked down. “I don’t know why I even bother. It’s not like you listen.”

Mischa considered returning the towel, but she really did like it there, the pool deck hovering over the beach like some cruise ship from space coming in for a landing in the snug little cove beneath the cliffs.

Mischa and her mother walked to the ocean to go for the last swim of her mother’s visit. Mischa watched her mother’s form from a distance. So many sea lions and seals streaming through the gray flatness. When Mischa looked back she realized she’d lost track of her — what she thought was her mother’s bobbing head turned out to be a nearby seal. She scanned the ocean, growing panicked. Her mother had been a distance swimmer once. She was nowhere to be seen.

A rip current must have pulled her far under, sending her out to sea, the rescuers said. The search was called off, her body never found.

The towel attained sentimental value as the last thing her mother gave her. Mischa used it to pass into the pool area at the Dream Inn. She drank two mimosas and pretended she was someone else. She made small talk with tourists, changing her story for every different person — she was a professional horseback rider from Kentucky, a Parisian pastry chef, a musician from Nashville. Forgetting herself more and more.

The more Mischa used the towel, the less guilty she felt about having it. She wandered up and down the hallways of the Dream Inn imagining herself some kind of a living ghost, invisible, stealing the little shampoos from the housekeeping carts by the handful. When she made eye contact with the housekeepers working in rooms with doors left ajar, Mischa smiled, offering a little wave, the stolen towel draped over her wrist.

One day, she made her way down to the pool. As usual, she slipped past the guard — no one seemed to be expecting someone with a stolen towel to come in, or if they did, their sympathy for someone who needed to do such a thing outweighed their desire to enforce hotel policy — ordered a mai tai, and spread the towel over one of the choice chaise longues facing Cowell’s. She lay there until the sun began to dip across the cliffs.

When she’d first set foot in Santa Cruz, she’d walked all the way out on the pier to watch the sun sink into the ocean. It would be spectacular, she’d imagined. But the sun did not set behind the water. It felt as if the sun set in the wrong direction here, to the north, as if she’d landed on some alternate planet that was otherwise just like earth. She still looked at maps to remind herself of the simple but disorienting fact that the Santa Cruz coast faced south.

A seal swam in the water, near the shore. She watched it playing in the waves. She loved the harbor seals the most, those spotted gray meat tubes, their black marble eyes and dog-mermaid bodies. They were so elegant. Almost human. Then the seal stopped, treaded water, and looked directly at her.

You haven’t failed. You haven’t been ready. Some just need more time to adjust to all the feelings.

Mischa rubbed her eyes. Had the seal spoken? Did even seals here spout New Age aphorisms? Had somebody slipped something in the mai tais? On the chaise longue facing the sea, Mischa slipped into the drifting sleep of the drunk. When she woke it was twilight and all the tourists had gone inside.

At least you hear me.

Mischa met James the same way she met everyone: while impersonating a hotel guest. He was standing by the railing looking out into the bay. She walked over to check the waves. He held binoculars up to his eyes and scanned the ocean. When he lowered them, she was right beside him. She guessed he was in his forties. He was noticeably attractive, built like an athlete, but slightly worn, like he’d been in the sun a little too long and worked out at CrossFit a little too hard.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Oh, seals and otters,” he said, “... and you.”

“So, endangered species?”

He smiled, the crow’s feet around his blue eyes crinkling. “You’re in danger?”

“Of not living up to my potential, maybe.”

“You here for one of those weird self-development seminars?”

“No, I just live here.”

“At the hotel?”

“Sort of.”

“Really?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’m James,” he said.

“Mischa,” she replied. It was the first time she’d given anyone at the Dream Inn her real name. “Where are you visiting from?”

“I live down the street.”

“You have a stolen towel too?”

“No, what kind of person steals a towel? I walked up from the beach. The door is sometimes just open and if I see that, I come in. This is the perfect spot for watching sea lions and otters and sometimes even a seal.”

She smiled as they stood, suddenly together, a crack forming in their private spaces, facing the waves.

“Have you been to the lounge?” she asked.

He suddenly seemed nervous.

“They just remodeled it,” she said. “It’s nice.”

“Does that mean you’ll let me buy you a drink? You’re old enough to drink, right?”

There was something lonely about James, as if he’d missed out on pet adoption and wanted to take care of someone. Mischa felt like a stray, eating other people’s leftover food scraps during her waitressing shifts, looking at other people’s lives from outside. This could be all right, she thought.

Their second date, they went surfing. It was a bigger day — five-foot swell, negative tide. James’s sexy, sculpted body looked even more outstanding in a wetsuit, like some kind of hot human-seal. She loved his blond sun-streaked mass of surfer hair. They caught the same wave, rode it all the way in to the beach. The sign, Mischa thought, because she always looked for signs, was the seal. The beady-eyed harbor seal rode the wave along with them, watching them, a silent witness.

That evening she went back to his house off West Cliff Drive, two sprawling stories and a separate garage large enough to be a second home. He showed her his office, his three-screen setup that faced the bay. Turned out Surfer James was also a multimillionaire day trader. Her mother would have been pleased.

After that, they were rarely apart, only when James worked or went out for solo fishing expeditions. He had a dirty old truck filled with fishing equipment. It was where he did his thinking, he said, his planning. Her skin prickled but she ignored this in favor of everything else he was: He shared her love of the bay and the creatures that inhabit it. He didn’t seem fazed by her lack of direction. He seemed to want to be her new one. Maybe she could do this, become a mom who walked back and forth on West Cliff rolling a baby all day, free of troubles. She loved strolling the pier, listening to the barks of sea lions, those little beacons of ursine aquatic fuzziness — the otters — and slick, observant harbor seals.

During the day, while James did things with stocks, Mischa returned to the Dream Inn with the stolen towel. James never asked where she went. Come to think of it, James was secretive himself. He sometimes wouldn’t call for a night or two, and sometimes he slipped out at odd hours, saying he had to be on East Coast time and didn’t want to wake her. They spent almost every free moment together but he never insinuated she should move in or that anything should change.

“Are you seeing other people?” she asked one night while they were grilling tofu steaks, veggie burgers, and onion-

and-pepper skewers on James’s porch. Her eyes fixed on the locked garage.

“I would never do that to you,” he said, and took a sip of sauvignon blanc.

She took him at his word. James was removed and solitary, tough to pin down, but so was she. “Why don’t you use your garage for something? It would be a great studio or something.” Like for me, she didn’t say.

“It’s just storage for my old surfboards and crap. Just crap I don’t want to deal with.”

“I can clean it out and organize it for you.” She sunk her teeth into some tofu.

“Nah,” he said, “not worth the trouble.”

While James holed up in his office, or went on boat trips to fish and think, Mischa surfed. After changing out of her wetsuit at the bathrooms and pulling the towel from her mother’s St. Tropez beach bag, she absconded to the pool and drank mai tais.

Were she and James growing apart? she asked herself one afternoon. Should she end it, legitimately become alone? Was he cheating on her? Why did the pier jutting out into the ocean sometimes look so sinister?

Then the seal popped up from the waves. She didn’t know how she knew this was the same one, but it was — this she knew as it rose and watched her back.

You need to find out. Dig into it. You’re practically a scientist. You need evidence. Take a closer look.

“You can’t communicate with me, telepathically or otherwise, seal. Sorry. What kind of rum do they put in these drinks?”

It’s Captain Morgan, love. But listen to me. Those mai tais are not the only thing that’s spiked. A look of intensity crossed the seal’s face before it dove under and disappeared.

Regretful of her dismissal, Mischa went to the pool every day and stood by the banister looking for the seal to resurface. She listened for it, becoming convinced that whatever its message, it was dreadfully important.

Mischa got her shift covered on a Wednesday night. She would follow James. He was still so aloof. They lived as if there was no future, and she had started wanting all of the false securities and illusions.

She borrowed a car from another waitress, and waited around the corner from James’s house. Hours passed. At almost eleven, she was about to give up when the lights of his truck went on and he pulled out onto West Cliff Drive, headed toward Natural Bridges. She hung back, then followed. He drove on. He parked near the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. If he was having an affair, this was a strange place for an encounter. Then she saw what he took out of the back of his truck: an Airbow, a lightweight rifle that precision-shot arrows. The downy fuzz on the backs of her arms and legs stood up. That was no fishing instrument. Hadn’t he said he threw them back? Or was that something she only wished was true?

She trailed him down to the cliff. He put on a high-beam headlamp, carried his Airbow down an opening to a trail to the ocean. He emitted a strange, low, hypnotic whistle. Mischa, lulled by the tone, resisted the urge to drift toward it. The moonlight rippled over the water. She plugged her ears as his whistling continued. And, as if he was a pied piper of marine life, animals began to surface: a pod of dolphins, some sea lions, a raft of otters, and a few seals. In the distance, under the moon, she saw the head of a solitary seal, keeping its distance. Even from there, she knew. It stared at her, caught her eye even from so far away.

You see? Now you know. What are you going to do about it?

The arrow struck. The pained howl of an animal rang out above the sound of the crashing waves. James cast a line, a wiry noose, and pulled it in. He covered the body with a tarp and dragged it back up to his truck, threw it in.

Was that her seal?

She followed him back to the house, her hands trembling in shock as they gripped the wheel. This was what he did when he went out by himself? She would have preferred if he were having an affair, because then at least he would be normal.

He unlocked the mysterious garage, pulled in the bloodied tarp, heavy with the body. Silently, she crept around the corner and watched.

It was no cluttered fisherman or surfer’s garage. It was as if a caveman’s home and a surgeon’s operating theater had merged into one. The walls were lined with James’s trophies: a baby otter, several sea lions, and a slew of seals among them. Some eyes seemed familiar. A light hung above a surgical steel table littered with scalpels, knives, hammers. A hot, bright rage consumed her. He was a criminal and a taxidermist. Addicted to his hobby like a drug. She fled back to the car and drove off.

A serial killer of otters and seals — if James could turn out to be that, anyone could be anything, really.

I know it’s hard. But you’re going to be all right.

“Oh my god, is it you? I was so worried I lost you.”

The head popped out of the water. Mischa wrapped her towel around herself and ran down the stairs to the shore. She dropped the towel and walked into the sea.

“You tried to warn me. I’m so sorry.”

Don’t apologize — stop your slacking.

“I’ll call the cops, they’ll search the garage—”

Nobody else can handle this for us.

“What do you mean? I couldn’t—”

You saw how many corpses line his shelves. But it’s not the same. Our lives are not of equal value, you see. Not according to his kind. You have to decide who you want to be. But I think you finally have.

Mischa had to pretend everything was normal with James until a ninth night with a swell and negative tide — a rare occurrence, even more so on the dark night of a new moon.

But eventually, the night did come.

They sat at his dining room table, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling glass. So close, but entirely separate. James was talking about some successful trade he’d made and how he was finally planning their surf vacation to his other home on the Big Island.

“I can’t wait to take you, honey,” he said.

“I can’t wait to go.” She feigned a sweet smile even as her mind flashed to the stuffed baby otter in the garage.

“You all right?” he asked. “You seem a little bit... distracted.”

“Oh no. I’m just daydreaming about these well-deserved plans—”

“Excited to finally do this?”

She nodded. “I think it’s more than time.” Him, cutting into the flesh of a dolphin. Sewing up a seal. Sawing. All those terrible instruments surgeons use to save lives, give new hearts, bring life into the world, he was using to maim and kill her innocent compatriots.

“Yeah, I know. I’m so sorry I haven’t planned a vacation for us yet. It’s just been a really busy time. But that is about to change!”

Damn fucking straight it is, seal murderer.

He looked giddy, like a young boy whose home run had just won his Little League baseball game. Mischa’s stomach turned. How could he be so happy about going to Hawaii when his hands had gutted a small family? She had nightmares of the forever-frozen, terrified faces of those marine animals on secret garage shelves.

Did he say he grew up hunting deer in Minnesota?

“You know what?” she said. “I actually have a surprise planned for you.” She took out the wetsuit, the glow sticks, and a bottle of champagne. “It’s perfect conditions right now.”

He smiled. “I’ll go get ready.”

It would take him ten minutes to get into his wetsuit. Mischa knew she had that long. She worked stealthily.

James paddled out ahead.

“I’m following you,” she said. “It’s hard to see in the dark. I’ll just stay as close as I can.”

She realized how little she’d ever known about James. The Airbow only weighed seven pounds. It wasn’t hard to paddle out with it. But she’d always had strong arms. As she watched him sitting atop his board with the little glow stick, waiting for the next set, she almost felt sorry for him. She set the Airbow on the end of her board and peered through the precision viewfinder at James. What an easy, elegant little weapon. No wonder he liked it so much. She saw her seal, keeping its distance. The stillness was interrupted by an oncoming wave. The set was arriving. She gripped the trigger as she watched him paddle. She felt the lift beneath her board.

Now.

The arrow departed with force. James pummeled forward, off the board. The seal moved. A slight splashing in the waves, then silence. What a perfect collaborator. Who else could disappear a body with such grace? She could already see the headlines: “Cold-Blooded Killer,” “St. Francis of the Seals.”

She went home and took a shower. Early-dawn light poured through the open windows, the thin, sheer curtains undulating like waves in the sea breeze. There wasn’t much time. If she didn’t go now she would have to wait another nine days, and by then it would be too late to go anywhere. She pulled her coat from its hanger and hurried to the beach.

When the detectives finally searched the house, he’d been missing for weeks. They broke the lock on the garage and turned on the light. Nothing but some power tools, old papers, and a dirty hotel towel. They would have questioned the girlfriend, but she was nowhere to be found, as if she, too, had slipped into the sea and vanished.

I am home again. I stayed too long, mesmerized by their world, avoiding my purpose until I forgot my identity. In the human terms, a slacker. A slacking selkie. But there are more like James, his kind, and even worse. Now we are just getting started.

First Peak by Peggy Townsend

Pleasure Point

Boone sat in the lineup, waiting.

The swell was chest high, out of the south.

He drew his hands through the water and felt the power of the storm that had given birth to the waves, the force that brought them to Pleasure Point. It was a heartbeat, an urgency, a gift from Tūtū Pele’s capricious womb.

He wondered if something would happen before the day was over. He was her servant.

Already, the two kooks were paddling out, both of them in wetsuits that were new and smooth and black. Their arms dipped in choppy strokes. Their feet kicked as if they needed to also propel themselves by air.

He watched them come toward him, felt the energy building behind him. He flattened himself on his board, dug three hard strokes into Mother Ocean, and stood in a single motion that was as natural to him as breathing. He was riding on her supple back, sailing on the force of her slick, wet power. He crouched, let his arms go loose, and knew what the two kooks would see: a bearded apparition in faded neoprene, with long hair that trailed his head like seaweed. He gauged speed and distance, turned slightly so he slowed and was aimed directly at the two men.

He could see the spark of fear in their eyes.

But what they could not see, what they would not see, was what had been left behind. What was now lying secret and powerful in the dirt next to a charcoal-gray monstrosity of a house.

That was what they should fear.

Not him on a board.

“What a dick,” Jonah said, coming out of the water, leaving damp footprints on the concrete steps as he climbed to the top of the cliff. “He could have killed me.”

“Asshole,” Nate agreed.

The September day had an unseasonably dark feel to it, as if winter were ready to pounce. At the top of the stairs, the two men turned back toward the pewter ocean, trying to pick out the man among the two dozen surfers at First Peak who had ruined their day.

“I should call the cops,” Jonah said. His chest rose and fell. Not from exertion but from the emotion of being assaulted by a guy who had looked like some watery Jesus coming at him on Judgment Day.

“You belong here as much as he does,” Nate said.

“Fuckin’-A,” Jonah replied.

Jonah had bought the house on the Point a year earlier, a single-story shack with a triangle peek of the ocean. It had been occupied by a long-haired woman and a young child who, he was told, was autistic. According to his realtor, the mother of the long-haired woman had purchased the place in 1998 for $325,000 and left it to her daughter after she died of metastatic breast cancer. Jonah had offered $1.5 million for the house a day after it went on the market and raised the price an additional $100,000 after another buyer had come on the scene.

He was twenty-nine years old and already worth $40 million.

“You’re doing her a favor,” the realtor had said.

The day after the longhaired woman accepted his offer, Jonah had driven by and seen her sitting in the front yard with her head in her hands. She hadn’t looked like anybody was doing her any favors, but that wasn’t his problem.

His contractor tore down the house to a single standing wall, then built it back up into a two-story modern contemporary with dark-gray stucco walls, a second-floor deck that now gave him a full view of the bay, and a red door that his interior designer said was a sign of good luck and prosperity.

But recently, his luck had gone to hell.

Boone watched the kooks climb the wide set of steps the county had set into a faux rock wall to foster access for the tourists or something. He remembered when Pleasure Point felt like a community instead of a destination resort, when a carpenter or a teacher could afford to rent or even buy a house because there weren’t vacation rentals on every corner — or giant paychecks that allowed people from over the hill to build giant houses only they could afford. He remembered when you had to walk a narrow dirt path and hang onto a knotted rope to get down the cliff to the water, which kept out the people who did not deserve the waves.

He blamed the seawall and its stairs for what had happened to the neighborhood, for drawing crowds into the water, for making it so you had to worship at the altar of money in order to live here.

Sometimes he thought about putting a piece of dynamite in that phony wall and blowing everything back to the way it was. But he was not a violent man. Not anymore.

In his younger days, his anger had driven him to break noses and smash car windows. He’d spent a year in the county jail for a beat-down he’d given to a guy outside the Corner Pocket bar. After that, he found a job at a local tree service, chain-sawing overhanging limbs and view-blocking branches. He tried to get sober but was having trouble because the Point held so many reminders of why he liked to drink. He saved just enough money to get him and his board to Oahu where he’d hitchhiked to the North Shore and lived under a kiawe tree for the next four months while he got clean.

His third week there, he’d awakened to find an old man standing over him with a rooster in his arms. The deep lines on the old man’s face reminded him of a lava field and the rooster looked as if someone had started to pluck him for dinner but quit halfway through the job.

“She talks to you, don’t she?” the old man said. He had bare feet and wore a faded T-shirt and ragged shorts. “She don’t talk to everybody, you know.”

Boone sat up and rubbed his sun-ravaged eyes. He’d pledged to buy himself a cheap pair of sunglasses the next time he was in town but always forgot — consequently, every morning was like having spent the night with sandpaper glued under his eyelids. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

“Heh-heh.” The old man set the half-naked chicken on the ground and they began to walk away. “Next time you have a beer for me, eh?”

It wasn’t that Boone had intended to buy the old man beer, but he’d trimmed a couple of palm trees for one of the landlords who owned a few houses on the beach and had a little money in his pocket. He hitchhiked into town and bought a ten-dollar pair of sunglasses and a six-pack of Miller High Life, along with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, his main source of nourishment.

The old man and the rooster came back that afternoon as if they’d known about his windfall. The ancient accepted a beer and Boone scooped out a bit of peanut butter and set it out for the chicken, who ended up with most of it stuck to his half-raw chest.

The old man leaned his back against the kiawe and began to tell Boone the story of Hawaii — the handsome men and women who had lived on the islands, the arrival of the Europeans, the stealing of the land, the fight for sovereignty.

After four beers the old man got up. “Better beer next time, man,” he said and walked off, the rooster following behind, a bit of peanut butter stuck on its breast.

Boone trimmed more bushes and mowed the landlord’s lawns, hitchhiked into town after a session at Rockpiles, and bought a six-pack of PBR and a package of sunflower seeds.

The old man and the chicken came back, nodding approval of the beer and the seeds, and the ancient told him about the proper way to enter and leave the sea, the way Mother Ocean sometimes allowed you back into her womb, and how you should never take that for granted because how often does a man get to return from where he came?

Over the next weeks, the old man and the rooster returned often, telling more stories of the gods that ruled the island, of Pele, and of what awaited those who did not pay respect to the ocean and the land.

Boone listened and felt something shift inside him. He felt the heartbeat of the soil on which he laid his head and the love of the ocean as she wrapped him in her waves. It was then he decided to never cut his hair.

One day, the old man arrived without the rooster, spit on the ground, and said, “Follow me.”

Boone got up and trailed him into the brush, asking where the chicken had gone. The old man rubbed his stomach, which Boone took to mean that either the man had eaten the flea-bitten bird or that it had succumbed to some kind of intestinal problem. He vowed to make an offering of peanut butter to a bird that had been noble, even in its suffering.

Boone followed the old man for more than an hour, over land that grew steep and rocky. When the rubber strap on one of his flip-flops broke, he tossed them into the brush, stepping in the exact places where the old man put his calloused bare feet. He was surprised at the lack of pain.

On a promontory that looked over the Pacific, the old man folded a small talisman into Boone’s hand and told him it had been given to him by Tūtū Pele — and that whoever held it and was pure would be blessed with peace and harmony. To those who were not pure, it would bring nothing but suffering and pain.

“That is all I have to say,” the old man concluded.

It wasn’t long after Jonah moved into the Pleasure Point house that trouble came. First, he lost his wallet and had to cancel all of his credit cards. Then his phone had fallen out of his back pocket on a bike ride. He bought a new phone but half of the numbers he transferred ended up without names attached.

The next day, he parked his BMW at Whole Foods and came back to find a grocery cart resting against its side. From the size of the dent in the rear passenger door, he figured someone must have let go of their cart the minute they walked out of the store and it had rolled unheeded down the entire slope of the parking lot until it swerved at the last minute and found his car.

No one left a note.

After that, he got a speeding ticket driving over Highway 17 and then a notice from the IRS that he was being audited. He was just telling himself that these were only blips in what had otherwise been a good life when a letter arrived from one of the big pharmaceutical companies. It threatened to sue him and his startup over software they’d written that used a simple blood test to determine, with 98 percent accuracy, if a drug would cause certain side effects without a patient having to experience the damage first. He thought of his sister who’d died at fourteen after a chemotherapy drug she took for her lymphoma caused her heart to fail, of how he believed the sale of his ridiculous dating app — four years before — would allow him to do something important with his life, like Bill Gates was doing.

And then there’d been this guy out in the water today.

He made himself a mug of coffee, plugged in his new phone to charge, and went out to the deck with a heaviness he hadn’t felt since his sister died. The wind was picking up.

Boone hunkered on the crushed-granite path and watched Jonah’s big gray house to see what Tūtū Pele would do. The first tendril of smoke came from an upstairs window an hour later.

He thought of Sandra and his son Nalu.

After she’d sold the house to the kook, Sandra had moved to Portland with their boy. By then, she and Boone hadn’t lived as man and woman for more than eighteen months. The first years were good, but then there had been too many arguments, too many times when she looked at him with pity. But they both loved the boy and so he had moved into the garage and built a small kitchen and a platform bed where he and Nalu watched The Lion King over and over while Sandra was at work.

Sometimes Boone could still hear that movie in his head.

Then Sandra told him a realtor said she could get more than a million dollars for the house. She said she had no choice but to sell and move to a place where she could afford a good school for Nalu and buy a decent car. She told him it was better if he didn’t come with them, that they each needed to get on with their lives.

They both cried, but not Nalu, who said, “Oh yes, the past can hurt,” which was from his favorite scene in The Lion King. Three months later, the kook’s contractor began tearing down every piece of wood and nail and pipe that held the memory of Sandra and his son.

Boone saw the smoke from the window grow heavier and then the kook jumping up from his chaise longue to run inside. The wind was stronger now. A few heartbeats later, the kook was on the front lawn yelling for help.

The wind whipped the fire into a fury in a way that let Boone know Pele had summoned it for her work. He watched the orange flames lick the sky, the house fall in on itself, wet and ugly. He felt the earth underneath heave a sigh of relief. He had not expected the depth of Pele’s unhappiness.

A week later, he heard firefighters had blamed the blaze on the kook’s phone, which had caught fire as it was being charged. But Boone knew better. That same night he retrieved the talisman from its spot in the dirt near where the gray house had stood.

He held it for a good five minutes, marveling over the truth of what the old man had said. He tucked the talisman back into his pocket. There was a house, down near the lagoon where he camped, that had just been turned into a vacation rental, with two surfboards in the backyard for its guests.

Safe Harbor by Seana Graham

Seabright

She was standing right at the bar the night Ray walked in — a hairbreadth from skinny and Ray tended to like his women with more meat on their bones. It’d been a long day at work; he’d only come to Brady’s for a drink before heading home.

Her tattoos intrigued him — that serpent that disappeared under her shirt. People had tattoos in Detroit, of course, but Californians seemed to embrace body art with an abandon he hadn’t seen back home. Milder weather? Sheer exhibitionism, the Midwesterner in him scoffed.

Skinny Girl must have felt his gaze, because she turned right around and began her own frank appraisal of him. If she wasn’t actually a prostitute, she wasn’t in this place for the conversation, either.

Ray stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink, offering one to the lady as well. She peered at him with huge green eyes — and accepted. She told him her name was Jazz and that she’d just come down from San Francisco.

Her tattoos might disguise the fact that she was from the South, but it didn’t take Ray long to grasp that she was a long way from home. Caught out, she admitted her real name was Jasmine, that she was escaping some trouble back in Memphis. Everything about her suggested she’d brought a lot of it with her. On that first night, Ray asked Jasmine if she’d come out to California to see the Pacific Ocean. She looked at him strangely, as though he wasn’t quite right in the head.

“No, sugar,” she said, “I came to California for the money.”

It seemed as good a line as any to start their negotiations.

For as long as Ray could remember, he’d wanted to live by the ocean. Where this idea had come from, he didn’t know — he’d grown up in the middle of Kansas. His parents were no-nonsense Methodist farmers, not given to encouraging flights of fancy or yearnings for anything but one’s hard-earned place in heaven. What they did give Ray, though, was the opportunity to work on tractors and other farm equipment, which developed not only his practical skills, but also his talent for innovation. After college, when the family farm had all but withered away, these aptitudes gave him a foothold in Detroit, where he found his niche in the more experimental foundation of the auto industry. Once Ray was established, he married, and bought a big house on the river, believing it would satisfy his need to be near water. Later, when he realized that it wouldn’t, he told himself it would have to do.

When Ray got the call five years ago from the headhunter about a job at one of the Silicon Valley firms, he believed God had heard his prayers. His wife Maureen objected to the move at first — they knew no one in California. But the money was too good for her to hold out long. So they put the three kids in their big SUV and drove out to San Jose.

San Jose proved disappointing. It was late summer and they’d left green lawns in Michigan. Here, the hills were brown and tired, relieved only here and there by small dark stands of stubborn live oak.

Once they’d settled into the hotel room his company provided for their transition, Ray wasted no time in packing the whole family up for a trip over the mountains to Santa Cruz. As he drove the winding road through the redwoods, he took in one deep breath after another. This was the life he had always wanted, right here for the taking. He tried to share it with Maureen, but the kids were feeling queasy from the twists and turns of Highway 17 and she’d turned around to comfort them. The moment passed.

They came down out of the mountains and got their first full view of the Monterey Bay. Ray caught his breath. Even from this distance, the water was dazzling. They drove straight down to the Boardwalk and plopped their towels on the beach. Ray was just as entranced as the kids. When evening came, they all walked out on the wharf for supper. “Supper” — he would soon learn that this was a word that marked him as a Midwesterner.

They ate at a family-style place called Gilda’s, watching the sun set on the Pacific, with huge pelicans lounging on the pier right outside the windows and sea lions barking under the wharf. Ray ate his calamari and thought, This is it. He would find them a house by the ocean and then they would all live happily ever after.

Ray kept Jazz in the dark at first. He didn’t want her to realize right off what a big fish she’d landed. He should hold something in reserve. She might be the type who would bleed you dry if you let her. She had an armband tattoo that circled her right bicep which read: Trust me... wait... Trust me... wait... Trust me... It seemed to flicker back and forth from being just her little joke to revealing some deeper truth. He didn’t know quite how he could think this and want to keep seeing her, but he did.

So for a while Ray wined and dined her, taking Jazz down to Monterey where no one was likely to know them. They had sex for the first time in a discreet hotel on Cannery Row. The sex was good but not great. Ray thought afterward that maybe Jazz was holding something back too. Those green eyes had to mean something.

Ray couldn’t get Jazz to talk much about herself, not at first. He was an affable guy when he wanted to be, and it came as a surprise to him that she had even less interest in being drawn out than he did. She used her lithe body to great effect, one moment beguiling and winsome, another sultry and seductive. It was like a costume she put on.

She mentioned a man several times in passing, someone back home, and Ray, after a few glasses of wine one night, was more persistent than usual in trying to get more out of her. It amused her to tease him, but when she saw that he was getting sulky, she leaned across the table and kissed him full on the lips, something she hadn’t done in public before.

“Darlin’, believe me when I tell you — you really don’t want to know.”

A boat was all he’d thought when he first visited the harbor in Santa Cruz. A small sailboat like the one he’d kept back on the Detroit River, or a catamaran with an engine to take him out a little farther. But then one afternoon the CFO took him out on his yacht and the scale of Ray’s dream began to change. He began to look at listings online, poring over the details as other men study catalogs of fine wine.

One day he saw an ad for a fifty-footer moored up in Sausalito. He took a surreptitious day trip up to see it, exactly as if he were going off to meet a paramour. When he saw the sleek, sexy vessel in person for the first time, Ray thought he finally knew what people meant when they talked about falling in love.

The yacht was the first thing he and Maureen really fought about in California — the first big thing. Everything in her upbringing — and in his, for that matter — suggested that this was just “showing off.” After a week or so, she saw it was pointless to resist and said no more about it. This wasn’t quite the same thing as accepting the idea, but good relations were restored.

Ray was learning about the nautical life. He named his new craft Departure and made improvements to the navigation system and other electronics, as only a man of his skills could. He forgot Brady’s bar for a time and began to hang out at the Crow’s Nest on the harbor, getting to know other boat owners. Maureen went with him the first couple of times but didn’t take to it. He continued going alone.

It took longer than one might think for a good Methodist boy to realize the yacht afforded him the chance to have women. He made discreet inquiries, both at work and here in town, about how to get exactly the kind of thing he wanted. It took Ray longer to figure out exactly what that was. At first he worried about what his wife might find out, or at least suspect. But with the long hours he kept at his job, the crazy commute, there was plenty of wiggle room. She resented the boat and Ray had to bribe her with doing household chores to even get her to even come aboard.

Ray was still trying to be a good family man. But he felt that there had been a divine dispensation that had allowed him to reach California, that somehow he’d been absolved of everything in advance. All the strict rules of childhood, the black-and-white way of seeing things that had followed him into adulthood, had simply dropped along the roadside on the way out west.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, his early childhood edicts would resurface and Ray would wake, sweating. But then he’d turn and see Maureen sleeping soundly beside him and tell himself everything was all right. If she was still here, it must be.

Ray didn’t take Jazz to the yacht right away. Yet there was only so much you could do with nice dinners and anonymous hotel rooms. Ray could tell, despite the money he regularly deposited in her bank account, Jazz was losing interest. She was the kind of woman who always had other offers. So one night he told her about the boat. She was not as impressed as Ray had hoped, but he thought she’d perk up when she actually saw it. He arranged to pick her up at Brady’s on a Wednesday night.

On a whim he couldn’t have explained, Ray decided to take his family out on the yacht the weekend before his date with Jazz. It had been a while since he’d done so and the kids were excited. The captain he’d hired to maintain the yacht lived in a considerably smaller boat in the harbor and was free to take them Sunday afternoon. When they were all on board and the kids had explored below deck a bit, he asked the captain to take them out on the open sea. Despite all his love of the ocean, he had rarely taken the boat out of the bay.

Maureen declined to come on deck, and stayed in the cabin, reading a novel. As the Departure picked up speed, Ray stood with his hands on the shoulders of his youngest son, looking over the bow at the Pacific horizon.

“What do you think, son?”

“It’s so big, Daddy. Bigger than I ever thought.”

“You got that right,” Ray said. Here I am on the edge of all of this, he thought, and I’ve barely ventured out. Despite everything, I’m still a landlubber at heart. Still just a farm boy from Kansas. He told himself that he would change that. He would risk bigger things.

He had expected Jazz to be impressed with the yacht but she wasn’t. Ray was surprised at how well he’d learned to see the world through her eyes. It was nice for a boat, but as a place for a rendezvous, it wasn’t all that much. His electronic gadgetry meant nothing to her. That was the kind of background stuff she took for granted.

She did notice the surveillance cameras and gave him a funny look — a sly look that said she knew exactly what he planned to do with those. In fact, he had gotten them so that he could keep his eye on the vessel when he was elsewhere — as innocent as that. But Jazz would never take a thing at face value when she could read a lewd meaning into it. Ray wondered briefly what had happened to Jazz that she always saw life like this. But he realized he, too, could now see prurient motives in everything. She’d shown him that.

They had a drink. Then another. Ray tried to kiss her, but she pulled away, dancing on the opposite side of the small cabin, as enticing and remote as ever. Ray thought, I have a large yacht, more money than I know what to do with, and yet I have nothing to offer this woman. So he had another drink, a strong one, and then he told Jazz that he loved her.

She looked at him strangely, as she had on that very first night at Brady’s, as though he didn’t really grasp anything about her. “Let me take you to the wild side, baby.”

What would that be? Bondage? Strange sex toys? They’d already done that. But when Jazz pulled the hypo out of her purse, he saw that he had misunderstood. Ray was disappointed. Ah, only that. He could get drugs on his own. He had been trying them recreationally for a while; it was part of the culture at work.

Maybe when this night was over, maybe he would go home and see what he could do about patching up things with Maureen. The affair with Jazz seemed to be reaching the end of the line. Well, at least he’d probably get some kind of sex out of this. Ray smiled gamely, like a kid offered his first cigarette by a popular girl in middle school. Bravado is sometimes everything.

“Sure,” he said. He watched her passively as she got out the rest of the gear and readied the rig. Her expertise shone through and he was reminded of nothing so much as going to the doctor’s office as a kid and gravely watching the nurse as she prepared the vaccination. Maybe that was the right way to look at this. A vaccination against the shortcomings of living.

“You done this before, babe?”

Ray shook his head. He’d been afraid of needles as a boy. She was half his age, he thought — and yet there was a way in which she seemed almost maternal now, as if she were guiding him through some rite of passage.

At the same time, watching Jazz be focused like this, not theatrical, not “on,” he could see how young she really was. He caught a glimpse.

She looked him in the eyes again, and he was reminded of the first night he’d seen her — the way their gaze had locked. There was something fated between them that went back a thousand years. He felt a chill go up his spine and shivered.

“Don’t be afraid, darlin’,” she said. “I’ve done this a hundred times.”

He was afraid, though. Until he wasn’t.

Ray remained aware of Jazz for quite a while before he died — the way she tried to rouse him, speaking to him quietly and then more urgently, before finally giving up. His eyes were no longer open, though he had a sense of her presence. He heard the quick glug glug of the wine as she poured herself another glass, then felt her moving around the room, stepping over him to pull the curtain down and gently drawing the door closed behind her. Don’t leave me, Ray thought, as he heard the clicking of her heels recede down the dock. Don’t leave. And then the ocean rushed in where she had been, the beautiful ocean, and swept him out to sea.

Miscalculation by Vinnie Hansen

Yacht Harbor

When the “Guitar Case Bandit” whipped open his case at the teller’s window, Molly’s mouth fell open. The black case on her counter was built for a ukulele, not a guitar! The media were such idiots — this had to be the fifth bank robbery in a month, and they still didn’t have the details right.

Two other tellers froze on command — Susanna and Amber — as well as the loan officer and branch manager. Molly forked over the bills, placing the final band of twenties in the uke case. “There you go, sir.”

Her heart hammered with the thrill of it all. The elusive bandit right in front of her!

“Thank you, Mo...”

Mo?

Maybe he was going to say “Ma’am.” The robber was noted for his politeness, or at least that’s what the Sentinel reported. Or maybe he read her name from her pin.

This guy gave every teller plenty of time to look him over: black Fedora, Bucci sunglasses, and a red ascot pulled over his lower face. Molly couldn’t help staring.

The Guitar Case Bandit had been holding up community banks and credit unions in Santa Cruz County for the last year and yet he’d strolled right in here unheeded, even with the sign on the door prohibiting caps and sunglasses.

“Aim those baby-blues somewhere else, dollface.” The man snapped his case shut.

A telltale mark on the case clasp caught her eye. She’d seen this ukulele case plenty of times. Her knees quivered like a jellyfish. She stared into the robber’s eyes. Dollface. She blushed.

He snapped his fingers like a six-shooter, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and strode out of the credit union.

Molly’s life of serving John Q. Public for fourteen dollars an hour walked right out the door with him.

Molly played her ukulele every Saturday morning with the Sons of the Beach at the harbor mouth. Her new favorite instrument was her Rick Turner Rose Compass C-Tenor. This weekend, she couldn’t wait.

Smoothing Friday’s Sentinel onto her kitchen counter, she reread its crime coverage. In his usual modus operandi, the Guitar Case Bandit had walked away casually from her branch. He’d crossed the street into a hedged parking lot where the police patrol never spotted him. No street camera picked up a departing car with a likely driver. Possibly he had an accomplice or had hidden inside a vehicle. Molly couldn’t tell if the speculation came from the police department or the paper.

The bandit had made off with an “undisclosed amount of money.” But Molly knew the figure. Through the grapevine, she’d heard the other sums too. A cool million total.

The police sought the person of interest shown in a grainy photograph, age about fifty, height about 5'10", weight 170. Gosh, that’s practically the same as me, Molly thought, I’m just two inches shorter.

“Everything about him was average,” the paper quoted the other teller, Susanna. Ha!

Susanna always dressed like the boat salesperson she used to be, before the recent downturn. But if Sue had been the least bit observant, she would’ve said something about the ukulele case. After all, Molly had introduced Sue to the instrument. Once Susanna spent a single morning playing at the Sons of the Beach group, she’d been hooked. Molly sniffed — not that Susanna had ever hired her for uke lessons.

Well, at least she’d kept her cool, Molly gave her that — better than Amber. Little drama queen had hyperventilated and required treatment from an EMT.

Still, Molly was miffed. She’d described the gun as a modern piece, no revolving chamber for the bullets. The reporter hadn’t bothered to quote her. The story didn’t mention the weapon at all.

The article ended with a hotline number.

They haven’t caught him yet and they aren’t about to — unless he decides not to cooperate with me. Molly packed her songbooks in her canvas tote bag and slipped on her wedged sandals and glass pendant that matched. Dress for success.

She strutted down the Harbor Beach breezeway, a bounce in her step. The Sons of the Beach congregated outside in front of the Kind Grind café, up to a hundred at a time.

Susanna stepped right in Molly’s path. Her glittery sandals sprayed sand and startled the seagull pecking up crumbs from her undoubtably gluten-free muffin. “You look like the cat who ate the canary.”

Leave it to Susanna to use a cliché.

Sue brushed off her low-cut Hawaiian sundress. There wasn’t that much to see. “Did you remember more from the bank robbery?”

“Nothing new to report.” Molly jammed her metal music stand into the sand.

Susanna inspected her. “Tangerine nail polish? What’s going on with that? A date?”

Molly glanced away toward one of the walkway benches. A bag overflowed with plastic leis, brought by the bandleader.

“Want a lei?” Molly asked.

“Sure.” Susanna frowned and tailed her.

Molly sighed. “Stop following me. I like privacy for my lays.”

“I swear you are in some kind of mood this morning.”

Molly threaded along the edge of the thickening crowd, mostly ukulele players, but also a keyboard, a mouth harp, and a bass. A black fabric case for the upright bass spilled over a cement bench. A ukulele case rested on the same, but its bright blue fabric sported a design of a topless woman cradling a strategically held uke. Molly lifted the bass case. Nothing buried.

She passed the drummers and the mandolin player, circling toward the harbor side of the beach where more experienced musicians grouped, the exclusive part of the ring where she never ventured. The guys over here sacrificed a view of the water for a view of the backsides of the women volleyball players.

She stopped in front of Rudy Carmona, and his agile fingers quit dancing along the frets of his koa wood instrument. Abalone shell gleamed around the sound hole.

“Well, hello there!”

In Levi’s and a muscle shirt, he looked anything but average. She’d never dreamed of talking to Rudy Carmona. Of course, in point of fact, she hadn’t yet spoken.

“You’re looking fine this a.m.” His dark eyes revealed nothing. Behind him, sailboats glided from the mouth of the harbor off on dolphin and whale adventures. Molly blinked nervously. Up close he even smelled good. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“So, you ditched your ukulele case?” she stammered.

He lifted his brows and strummed three quick C chords and then a B: Dah dah dah-duuuh.

Was he mocking her? Molly flushed again.

He dipped his cleft chin toward the bench. “Right there. Behind the bass.”

“The blue one?” she asked.

“You like it?”

“What happened to your usual case?”

Rudy sighed and scanned the crowd. He nodded to a hula dancer named Linda. She was possibly the Linda he’d had a fling with, although hard to tell — every other woman in the group was named Linda. “All those black cases look alike,” he said.

Molly pinned him with her eyes, the way she did with a customer bearing a questionable ID. “That’s why people mark them.” She could smell her own lavender essential oil, and she knew he must too.

He took hold of her arm. “We’ll discuss this at break.” He whispered in spite of the din of the others warming up. He leaned close to her ear. “On my boat.”

Her heart did a soft shoe to the tune of “(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China.”

The group had barely finished their opening song, “All of Me,” when Sue tapped Molly’s freckled arm. “What’s going on with you and Rudy Carmona?”

“I’m going on his boat at coffee break.”

“You?” Susanna’s eyes stretched wide. “And Rudy?”

“Want to chaperone?”

“You can’t be serious!”

“If we’re not back for the second set, call me.” Molly followed the band into “I’m in the Mood for Love,” but her friend could only stare.

Rudy’s sailboat, the Karma II, occupied a middle berth on N dock. The dock gate clanked shut behind them and they started down the slippery composite, which had replaced the old wood after the 2011 tsunami. The dock still creaked and swayed.

Rudy offered an arm to help her into his craft.

“Should we go below deck?” she asked. This was his secret lair, maybe all the money mounded on a table — his bed right next to it. She was shaking.

Rudy, who hadn’t said one word since they opened the gate, shook his head and led her to two beach chairs at the stern. Their brightly striped fiesta pattern surprised her.

“Sit.”

Molly settled into the low-slung canvas.

Rudy crossed his strong arms over his chest. He stared off at the view of the Crow’s Nest, a two-story watering hole on the side of the harbor mouth. A seal arced out of the water, took an airy breath, and swooshed back down, leaving a small ripple.

“So where’s your old case?” she asked.

“Gave it to Goodwill.”

“And a man ‘about fifty, height about 5'0", weight about 170,’ happened to buy it?”

“Get down to business,” he hissed.

She touched her lower lip. “We’d make a great team.”

“You better tell me what’s going on here.” Susanna had taken her chair and sounded even more bossy than usual.

Molly shook her curls.

“Where’s Rudy?”

“I left him winded.”

Sue’s thin eyebrows tried to fly up, but Botox froze them in place.

“Don’t get excited.” Molly smiled to know something Susanna didn’t — Susanna who strutted around the credit union like she intended to be branch manager before the year was out. “This has to stay very hush-hush.”

“Of course.”

Molly extracted her ukulele from her tote and began to tune. “I talked to him about a business deal.”

“Like something at the bank?” Susanna asked.

“Exactly.”

The Sons of the Beach wrapped up with their traditional morning finale, “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone.” Molly hustled into the thick coffee aroma of the Kind Grind. She never ordered a soy milk chai here without thinking of the employee who’d been raped and locked in the refrigerator. Or the killer of two local police officers who’d worked here. It didn’t make sense. How could two horrific crimes be connected to a quaint coffee shop? In Santa Cruz? At the ukulele beach?

She sat over to the side and peeked around the wall to watch Susanna looking for her. Eventually Sue gave up and strode off rolling her cart full of gear.

Molly rubbed her chin, wondering if she’d settled for too little with Rudy. She’d started at 50 percent.

“No can do.” Rudy had kept his gaze on the pilings as if watching a cormorant sunning. His playful manner had evaporated.

“Are you in a position to negotiate?” she’d asked.

“Thirty-three percent. And that’s it.” Rudy sliced his hands through the air.

As she sipped her chai, Molly divided the loot by three in her head — simple math, but amazing how many people resorted to a calculator. With the cash she could pay off her condo. Maybe take that trip to Paris.

Her job didn’t used to be so bad, but now the customers who came into the credit union were mostly seniors who distrusted computers and still used checks, or the lonely who sought free coffee and someone to talk to.

Her phone vibrated. Molly checked the text message. Rudy must have gotten her number from the SOB site where she advertised her uke lessons.

Come to boat tonight. Work out details.

She snorted. Fat chance. She wasn’t getting on a sailboat alone with Rudy Carmona in the dark. As nice as that might be. Her mind drifted a moment before she responded: Maybe TTYL.

Molly drained the last of her chai, packed up her compass rose, and walked out into the salty breeze. A volleyball hottie soared vertically and slammed a spike. Yes!

“Where did you disappear to at the end?” Susanna’s indignation blared over the phone.

Molly drummed her fingers on her kitchen table. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

“Right. We only walk to our cars together every single week.”

“Sorry.”

“I swear, since the holdup you’ve been acting like a prima donna.”

“Do you still own a gun?” Molly asked.

“Of course.” Impatience pinched Susanna’s husky voice. “Just went out to Markley’s Range last weekend.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“Why? Are you going to shoot Rudy Carmona?”

“I wouldn’t waste a bullet. He’s probably slept with twenty women in Sons of the Beach. I’m not that big of a fool.”

Quiet on the other end of the line.

“Do you even know how to hold one?” Susanna finally asked.

“It’s just for show.”

“What are you getting yourself into?”

“It’s nothing. Rudy wants to meet again on his boat and I don’t trust him.” Yeah, even if her body tingled at the prospect of meeting him again. Even in the light of day sitting on the boat with him, the smell of him... Maybe she could persuade Rudy to take her into the privacy of the cabin, suggest a little addition to the bargain.

“Are you still there?” Susanna asked.

“So what do you say?” Molly pressed.

“If I go along with this hare-brained scheme, I swear, you better cough up every sordid detail of what you and Rudy have going on.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

A stiff ten-knot wind in the harbor had every rigging chiming. Below the halo of a single dock light, Rudy unlocked the gate. It clanged behind them. He put his hand right on the small of Molly’s back.

“Pretty dark out here,” Molly murmured.

“There aren’t any other live-aboard’s on N dock.”

Molly snaked a hand into the pocket of her wrap. The butt of the gun steadied her nerves.

Rudy helped her over the boat’s edge.

She turned toward his locked cabin door. “It’s a bit chilly, right?”

“Romantic, though,” he said. “Out here with the sound of the sea.”

Romantic. Molly swiped a loose curl from her forehead. She took a seat again in his fiesta chair. Rudy crossed the deck holding two fishing rods she hadn’t seen before. He hovered by the outboard, adjusting a couple of levers.

“What are you doing?”

“Thought we might do a little night fishing.” Rudy yanked the starter. Molly struggled up from the chair. “I’d stay seated,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to lose your balance and fall over.” He yanked the rope again. When the engine caught, he adjusted the choke. “What’s the matter, dollface? Thought you liked fishing expeditions.”

Molly calculated her options — riding out to sea with this man or pulling the gun now. The stink of the engine fumes made her stomach churn.

“You know, two can keep a secret if one is dead,” Rudy whispered in her ear.

In spite of everything, his breath stirred Molly right down to her tangerine toenails. She pulled out the weapon from her wrap.

“What are you planning to do?” Rudy chuckled. “Shoot a gull?”

She leveled the barrel at his chest.

“Take your finger off that trigger,” Rudy said.

“Hey, I have the gun... I give the orders.”

In one move, Rudy twisted her wrist, took her gun, and knocked Molly out of the chair. She tumbled to the deck, scraping her bare legs. His full weight fell on top of her and an embarrassing sound squeezed from her body.

“Now I have the gun, sweetheart.”

Molly struggled to get up, and he allowed her that. Blood trickled down her calves. Rudy kept the gun trained on her as he eased the boat out of its slip.

They burbled out of the harbor, through the channel, past the riprap of the jetty, past the lighthouse, and into open water. Molly shivered. Her thin dress was meant for seduction not sailing. Although it didn’t seem like Rudy intended to hoist either her dress or the sails.

A pod of dolphins broke the surface of the open water off the bow. Molly swallowed. Dolphins are good luck, she told herself.

The boat slowed and bobbed in the swell. On the starboard side, the distant lights of the wharf and Boardwalk winked through the fog.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Molly said.

“Oh no you don’t.”

“So, here we are,” said a throaty voice.

Molly snapped her head toward the sound. “Susanna!”

“Hi, Molly.” Sue was elegantly coiffed even here. She wore latex gloves and held a gun that looked like the one Rudy had used at the bank.

Molly gulped.

Sue pointed the gun at Rudy first.

“Now wait a minute, dollface,” he said.

“Didn’t you call her that about two minutes ago?” Susanna waved the gun back at Molly. Molly shrieked and Sue snorted. Then she returned her aim toward Rudy. “You were going to negotiate with this pink-faced idiot? Thought you could charm her pants off, huh? Have her join our little venture?”

Rudy moved in toward Susanna. “Doll, in case you haven’t noticed, I have Molly’s gun in my hand.”

“It’s not loaded.”

The cold wind whipped hair into Molly’s eyes. “Sue, you gave me an unloaded gun?”

“Hey, you said yourself it was just a prop.”

Rudy pulled the trigger. An empty click.

Susanna fired her gun straight into his heart; he keeled over without another word.

Straddling his body, Sue shook her head. “So average. Like I said.”

Molly’s heart exploded. “You’re the accomplice?”

“A little hiccup happens to be lying here,” she said to Molly as she slipped the weapon into her waistband. “Let’s tie some weights on him and get him overboard.”

“Fifty percent?” Molly said.

“Of course.”

They pulled out fishing line and weight belts from a deck box. It took the two of them to wrap him tight and hoist his 170 pounds, plus the weight belts, over the side. He sank like a stone.

Cackling, Susanna launched into the first bars of “Octopus’s Garden.” “Wish I had my ukulele now.”

Molly shivered. “But we’re stuck out here.”

Susanna stopped singing about wanting to be under the sea. “Hah! I know this boat better than he did. Who do you think sold him this wreck?”

Molly shook her head. Of course.

“Now, about that deal...” Sue scratched behind her ear.

“Yes?” Molly’s teeth chattered.

“Here’s your 50/50, dollface.” Susanna drew the gun back out of her waistband. “You can either go overboard voluntarily, saving me some work, or I can shoot you first.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Seriously? Me, friends with someone who never advanced beyond teller?”

“You can keep all the money.”

Susanna laughed. “How very generous of you.” She gestured with the barrel toward the water where Rudy’s body had disappeared.

Dripping with misery, Molly looked at the waves roiling below. “But why, Sue?”

“Any woman stupid enough to trust Rudy Carmona deserves to die.”

A swift jab with the gun sent Molly flailing backward. Icy shock surrounded her. She gulped salt water and then bobbed to the surface.

Above her, Susanna waggled her fingers and launched into a deep-throated rendition of “Under the Boardwalk.”

Molly treaded water, her wet wrap tugging her down. The distant lights taunted her. Never much of a swimmer, she took a floundering stroke.

The boat turned and putted toward shore, wagging its stern at her. The water’s phosphorescence lit the scrolled lettering on the stern: Karma II.