Naomi Hirahara - Santa Cruz Noir

The big ranch had parking, public events, all legal and family friendly. Across the creek at the secluded arena, there was no traffic, no cars, and enough security precautions that if anyone came snooping, the high rollers would fade back across an uncrossable creek to join innocent crowds at the rodeo.

“Ridiculous, no?” Mike tugged on his mustache. “A rope bridge would have worked as well and cost nothing. This bridge is designed to impress. I showed it to you to give you an idea how much money is involved in these events.”

“I’m guessing a lot.”

“This ain’t Prunedale. Cops bust some flaky Filipinos and they think they’ve wrapped it up. Santa Cruz County has been the center of cockfighting in the US since the 1950s. The prize for our last tournament was fifty grand. More than a million dollars changes hands on side bets... So, now that I’ve told you this, do you want to ask me about Leonard Wong?”

“How did you know?”

“Leobardo saw Kelly on your stoop this morning. He’s known her since she was a little girl. She used to come to the cockfights with her dad. If you hadn’t asked, he would have told you to come see me.”

“Do you know where Leonard is?”

“I think I know who’s behind this, but I want you to finish your investigation. I have some prejudices, I don’t like the family. I want to have an independent eye on this.”

“What’s your interest?”

“Leonard Wong was my friend — and he taught me — me, un hombre de Michoacán — most of what I know about chickens. People forget, cockfighting started in China, before Jesús. We Mexicans have only been doing this a couple hundred years.

“Leonard was a genius with birds. He used to say, ‘I know how to cook them and I know how to pick ’em,’ and he was right. He never lost money betting on cockfighting. Just last week he made three hundred large, and he made me a lot of money. He helped me build my line of birds to where they are today, champions, just using his eye to pick mates. He taught me how to train, correct their faults.”

“So why is he in money trouble?”

“He was as bad at poker as he was good at cockfighting. He thought he could read gabachos the same way he read chickens.”

Mike closed the cover on the bridge button and went businessman on me: “I gotta go, I have a meeting. Do your digging. If you find out what happened, there’s a bonus in it for you. I don’t want to make a serious move without being sure. You have my number.”

I drove back to the office, a little dazed. There was one little red flag that flew up during that drive. Mike had said that Leobardo had seen Kelly Wong on my stoop. That he had known her since she was a little girl.

I’d watched Kelly walk down Center, past Manuel’s where Leobardo was sitting on the bench in front. He didn’t look at her, not even to study her schoolgirl ass. I thought at the time it was odd, but then I thought, well, maybe Socorro was over his shoulder, watching.

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.