by Thierry La Noque
CHAPTER 3
Ray woke in a fog, chilled, to the keening of gulls. He led a large dog by the collar along a yellow chain-link fence. Wet streaked the windshield inside and out. He had been stepping up huge granite blocks. He drew his legs back towards the driver’s seat with a start. A woman posed at the top. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t get a fix on the woman’s face. The interior of the Civic smelled like bong water. He blinked again, the dream now a mere speck on the event horizon.
The passenger seat was empty. He flung open the driver’s door to let the outside rush in. It was a cold gray wet slap in the face. Supporting himself on the seat and the door, he straightened his legs and stood, fixing his gaze on the forest of masts and antennas.
Bottle Point Marina. Colin had jammed his truck and he’d needed a ride to Bodega Bay where his 38 foot converted tuna rig, The Black Manta, was moored.
Cissy was going to be pissed. Frightened, worried. But above all, pissed. Ray flipped open his phone. The screen had just enough juice to let him know the battery was dead before it went blank. Cissy didn’t like Colin. She’d told Ray that he should know enough to stay away from trouble. He never had. Might never.
He surveyed the tangle of mooring lines, rigging, radio antennas, and orange extension cords looped and stretched throughout the private marina. One of the empty slips was where The Black Manta had been tied up the night before. He sat back in his seat and glanced at the tequila bottle in the passenger footwell. It reminded him of the pain behind his eyes.
Colin operated a small sports fishing enterprise. A couple of friends he had made in Iraq had gone in on the boat with him, a money-making scheme that generated more debt than income. That Colin had taken off without so much as a ‘thank you’ or ‘see you later’ did not surprise him. It had always been ‘what can you do for me’ especially now that he had returned a combat hero. Why they were sitting out in the cold uncomfortable car smoking dope and telling lies instead of on board the Manta was because Mr. Blood-and-Guts-in-Iraq couldn’t stand the smell of dead fish. The tequila wasn’t exactly the kind of anti-freeze Ray had in mind but it was all Colin had.
Drunker, Colin got nostalgic first. The old days, carefree summer vacations spent at the coast. Spying on the teenage girls showering in the cabin next door. Shooting off fireworks left over from the Fourth. The time they started a fire in the dune grass and the park ranger had chewed Ray out while Colin hid in the men’s bathroom. Yeah, Pirates of Penny Island, that too.
The tequila had helped Ray appreciate it more than he might normally. He remembered that at the end of those two weeks each year, sun scarred and wind burned, he was lean brown leather. That Colin’s mother buried little trinkets and toys all over the overgrown sandbar they called an island. And that she made treasure maps to them. They were all pretty easy to find except for that one they had spent all day searching for, flashlights nicking the long shadows of the dunes, with no luck. They never did find it. Bridgette would tease them about it, saying it was the best treasure ever.
One thing that stayed with Ray about those days was Colin’s mother, sitting on the couch to one side of her while she read to them from children’s classics late into the evening. The smell of her perfume, the soft warmth of her closeness, that may have been the best treasure ever.
There was a little catch-all diner that served espresso on Bay Flat Road by the highway. He caught a look at himself in the glass door. Rumpled, tossed, and fricasseed, Cissy would say. Public phones had all but disappeared. He ordered a double shot in a large cup. But a phone call now would be beside the point. He would face the music without preview.
Into the murk at the bottom of the cup he emptied five packs of sugar and topped it off with mostly half and half. He took a chair at a table by the window overlooking the parking lot and the highway beyond and counted his fingers. The square plastic clock on the wall put the time pushing eight. Not enough sleep. Good thing it was Saturday. Cissy worked the garage sales on weekends. He could pull the blinds and bury himself under the covers.
A Sherriff’s unit hove into view in his lane just as he entered the downhill hairpin curve a little further on, passing too close for the comfort of his wearied reflexes.
The coffee trade was brisk, and the young girl in the green apron at the coffee bar wore a frown. A gaggle of campers from the nearby campground were crowding in the door. “Cruz! I’m gonna need a hand!” she yelled without looking up from the steamed milk she ladled into a paper cup.
Ever drunker, Colin got paranoid. It hadn’t stopped him from doing a line, and then a backup. Ray wasn’t interested. A little weed and the last of the tequila was all he needed to mellow. And once mellow, sleep would soon be along. Colin’s rant was one he’d heard before. How once you’ve killed, what’s to stop you from doing it again. Like jumping off the high board at the pool, once you’ve done it, it’s nothing the second time. Ray beginning to fade had nodded in agreement though not quite sure why. The Army trains you to do that. To kill and kill again. Which is why when soldiers come back home from the action some don’t exactly make the adjustment to not killing. And some are not very nice people, criminals even.
The black Escalade slid into the parking lot just as Ray got up to leave. Compared to the assortment of low mileage hybrids and outdoorsy station wagons sporting hard shells and bike racks, the SUV looked like a pit bull in a Jack Russel kennel. It parked parallel to the rear of several cars, one of them Ray’s, blocking him in. A short brown man in a hairnet and wife beater dropped to the pavement from the front passenger’s seat. He was taking last minute orders from the others behind the tinted glass. There was raucous laughter as someone said something in Spanish.
Ray walked around the front of the SUV and made eye contact with the driver, gave him a cursory nod. He passed behind the Civic to reach his driver’s side.
“Are we blocking your way?” It was said with a pleasant mocking tone. The window behind the driver had come down just enough to reveal the eyes, gorgeous shimmering long lashed ebony eyes. “We’ll only be a minute.”
Ray shook his head, “De nada. I’m not in a hurry.” He opened his door and dropped into the seat, leaving his legs to hang out. He was beat, and if he looked anything like he felt, he wasn’t a pretty picture. And in no hurry to face hurricane Cissy.
He caught the movement in his side view mirror, the Escalade slowly inching forward and leaving him room to back out.
Ray waved a hand, not sure if the gesture would even be seen, and pulled out onto the highway. A Sherriff’s unit hove into view in his lane just as he entered the downhill hairpin curve a little further on, passing too close for the comfort of his wearied reflexes. Not far behind, a white Crown Vic powered up the grade, and Ray, from habit, checked the plate. Exempt. That alone would not have merited more than a passing thought. It was the second Crown Vic followed by a canine unit that gave him pause. With the county dicks out in force like that, something had to be fishy.
CHAPTER 4
Cissy Marleau stood five seven, almost five nine on her tip toes. She put her arms around his neck and brought her lips up to his. “Oh Ray, I was so worried.” She kissed him hard. Ray brought his arm around to support her but she dropped back on her heels and, flatfooted, cracked a slap on the side of his face. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
Cissy was a blonde often a redhead very rarely a brunette. She beat on his chest crying “Damn you, damn you” until he held her wrists and she stopped. She hadn’t slept. Face puffy, mascara smeared making her big blue eyes appear bigger than they were. She had a fierce little way of holding her mouth when she was angry or distressed so that it was slightly askew to the trembling sharp chin struggling to hold its composure. Ray released the wrists and she attacked him again, this time catching him on the arm just below the shoulder.
“Ok, cut it out, that hurt!” Ray grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.
Cissy summoned all her intensity into a taut angry glare. “Now you know how I feel, Ray. How could you? After all we’ve been through. Out all night with. . .” She stepped closer with a sniff as Ray pulled back defensively. “. . .some tequila swilling whore!”
“Cissy, I wasn’t out with another woman.”
“I smell fish.”
Ray smelled at his clothes and then his hands. There was a very slight odor. “Musta been on the tequila bottle,” he said half to himself.
“I hope I’m not hearing what you just said. How did it get on the bottle?”
“Uh, Colin. . . . “
“. . .because I was not born yesterday. Was it that bitch, Charlene? Don’t. . . .”
“It was Colin, Colin had it on his boat. He’s a fisherman. Fishermen smell like fish. It was on his hands. We passed the bottle around. Some of it got on my hands.”
“Don’t, Ray.” Now she was disgusted. “Don’t lie to me.” She pulled the rose satin kimono tighter around her slender frame, shivering with nervous energy. “I can accept that it might be Charlene. She’s sniffing after you whenever you work the door at The Beast. She’d drop her panties for you at the snap of your fingers. It would be pathetic if you weren’t so good-looking.” Cissy regained her ironic composure and placed the flat of her hand on his chest. “What am I supposed to believe, Ray? This has happened before.”
“Believe me, baby, it’s not what you think.” It was the wrong thing to say. Ray looked down into her eyes and watched her go quietly crazy, an instantaneous insanity that would tolerate no excuse, no explanation, nothing but complete and absolute admission of guilt.
“Don’t you dare tell me what I think! I know what I think! I think you’re seeing some sleazy man-stealing bitch! I don’t believe this Colin story one bit. When was the last time you even saw that loser? A year or more, right? At that dive bar, the Double 40? He pulled a gun on you!” She had stepped back and fixed him with the look of someone whose mind was made up. “No, I’m not going accept that.”
“I told you, Colin. . .we go way back. I owe him.”
“Owe him for what, Ray? You never say what it is you owe him for. Every story you tell about him and you being buds in grammar school, you always end up holding the shitty end of the stick. I told you before, the guy is a waste of space.”
“He’s my friend.”
“Am I your friend, Ray?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Simple question. Yes or no.”
“Yeah, of course! Why do we even have to go there?”
“I find it hard to believe that I’m your friend and that he is also your friend because I could never be his friend or be a friend to any of his friends.”
Ray shrugged, weary, fed up. He had done nothing wrong. He had nothing to admit, nothing to confess. “You are way over the top, Cissy. You need to step off.”
“Step off, Ray? You think I need to step off!” Cissy’s hands shaped themselves into claws.
“Listen, baby, you don’t have to push me to the wall. I’m not thinking all that straight. I apologize for not calling but my phone is a piece of shit. I’m sorry you worried. I don’t like it when you worry. I’m beat and I need to crash. It’s not too late for you to hit the yard sales. We can talk about it when you get back and after I’ve had some sleep.”
Little Sister twisted her body in the way only an animal with a rotating backbone can, yet Cissy held her firm. “Tell me you didn’t forget the fucking cat food!”
Cissy inclined her head as if to appraise him from another angle. “You know I like to use the Civic when I go out to buy other people’s junk. If I drive up in my Mercedes the prices triple.” Then with a slightly bemused smile, “You really don’t like it when I worry?”
“Yeah, baby.” Ray pulled her toward him. “You know how I feel about you.”
Little Sister, Cissy’s ancient Black Persian, had been pacing back and forth in front of an empty food bowl during the little melodrama adding comments of her own, pitiful strangled yowls that worked as entreaties as well as demands for attention. Cissy scooped up the scraggly ball of fur and held her close to her face saying girlishly, “Is Little Sissy hungry? Yes? Is she hungry?” The cat turned its head and seemed to be staring at Ray accusingly. “Do you have the cat food?” Cissy asked, “Little Sister’s hungry.”
Ray looked at her blankly, “Cat food?”
“Don’t play dumb, Ray, I asked you to pick up some cat food. Before you left. Yesterday. I specifically said, don’t forget to get some cat food. And you said ‘yeah, the special expensive kind.’ And I said, ‘nothing’s too good for my baby.’ And you said, ‘I don’t like cat food’ because you think you’re funny.”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“You didn’t get the cat food.” The intensity of Cissy’s body language was transmitted to the cat. Little Sister twisted her body in the way only an animal with a rotating backbone can, yet Cissy held her firm. “Tell me you didn’t forget the fucking cat food!” Cissy’s eyes bugged like they were going to jump off her face. “You forgot the fucking cat food? You motherfucker!”
Little Sister, front paws flailing and hind legs quivering finally broke loose from Cissy’s hold and, with what looked like some help from her, landed just above Ray’s chest, catching a claw down the side of his unshaven jaw before dropping to the floor. Ray stepped back, pulled his hand from his face and stared at the blood on his fingertips. “What the fuck was that all about, Cissy? Shit! You are whack. I’m fuckin’ outta here!”
Cissy, her eyes the size of saucers, put a hand over her mouth to hold back the gigantic oops. “Oh, Ray, I’m sorry. . .I’m so. . .I didn’t. . .I mean. . . .”
Ray push back out the kitchen door. “Fuck you,” he intoned in a dismissive monotone. He strode past the Mercedes parked in the driveway alongside the house and punched the rear panel with the side of his fist. It was an older model C class, undaunted and undented by the ineffectual blow.
Dime Pulp 