Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean Read online

  “I hear she hired an assistant,” I said, wiping my mouth on a napkin. Admitting that she couldn’t do it all herself during one of her twenty-hour days must have been difficult for my mother, who, as far as I was concerned, was obsessed by her restaurant. “That surprised the hell out of me. I didn’t think she could stand to have another chef on her turf.”

  “I told Marie she was wearing herself out,” Nick said, returning from the fish market “She’s at that restaurant eighteen, twenty hours a day. Getting dark circles under her eyes. I said she’d better get somebody in there to help her and quit trying to do it all herself. She’s my age, neither of us getting any younger. She interviewed a bunch of people before she hired this guy. But she’s still putting in those eighteen-hour days. I think she’s working the assistant just as hard as she works herself. You oughta talk to her, Jeri.”

  “Sure,” I said, trading looks with Donna. As if I could talk to Mother about anything. Well, I could talk, but she probably wouldn’t listen.

  “Summer’s such a busy time, for all of us,” Tina commented. “I know it’s nearly October, but as long as the weather’s good it’s tourist season.”

  As if to underscore her words, a man and a woman stepped up to the deli counter. The man had a camera bag draped over his shoulder and both customers wore Monterey Bay Aquarium T-shirts over their cotton shorts. They inspected the menu board above Tina’s head and ordered. Nick spotted a customer inspecting the fish spread out on the ice, so he moved back over to the fish-market side of Ravella’s.

  “I hope the assistant chef is young, strong, and patient.” I took a long drink of my mineral water.

  Donna laughed and rolled her eyes. “Have you seen him?”

  “No. I haven’t been near the place. I just got here yesterday, remember?” I reached for one of Donna’s fried squid tentacles and dipped it into a puddle of ketchup. She retaliated by filching a chunk of smoked salmon from my sandwich. “So tell me about this assistant. Judging from the glint in your baby blues, there’s a story here.”

  “Heathcliff, all dark and brooding and compelling, with dozens of peninsula females longing to be his Cathy.” Donna snorted derisively and waggled her bottle of mineral water for emphasis.

  “Been reading the Brontës again? Just what is this fellow’s name? Is he a refugee from the Yorkshire moors or somewhere else?”

  “Julian Surtees. He’s a refugee from Los Angeles.”

  I repeated the name. “Sounds like he made it up. Maybe he’s an unemployed actor. Of course, you know he had to have impeccable credentials before my mother would let him into her kitchen. You don’t suppose he’s charmed Mother?”

  “Oh, Marie’s been dating someone.”

  “Indeed,” I said, picking up my sandwich again. This was news to me. But I’d barely seen my mother since arriving the afternoon before. When I parked my car along the curb outside her two-bedroom house on Larkin Street, she’d been on her way to the restaurant. She had greeted me with a quick distracted peck on the cheek and her extra key before departing. I rustled up my own dinner from her refrigerator and cupboards, which were as minimally stocked as my own. You’d think a woman who runs a classy restaurant would have some food in the house.

  Donna didn’t elaborate on my mother’s social life. She occupied the ensuing gap in the conversation by reducing the pile of squid on her plate. I whitded down my sandwich and watched the two customers file past us, drinks in hand. They took a table at the big picture window that looked out on the harbor. The woman pointed at something. The man barely glanced in the direction of her hand as he busied himself with his camera. I looked toward the front of Ravella’s and saw Tina busy behind the counter as Nick rang up a purchase on the cash register. Then he rejoined us.

  “Your mom tell you about what’s been going on at the restaurant?” he asked.

  I finished chewing my mouthful of salmon and washed it down with mineral water. Everyone seemed to think that on my arrival in Monterey for my long-delayed visit, Mother and I had immediately launched into a long motherly-daughterly talk. That was rarely the case. I don’t get along with my mother. She doesn’t get along with me. On those few occasions when we do converse, we don’t veer into dangerous subjects, like my choice of profession or her walking out on my father. If we tread on that ground, the conversation becomes an argument.

  “I didn’t talk to Mother at all last night, Nick. She was on her way to work when I drove in. I was in bed before she got home.” I picked up my mineral water, wondering if Mother had been planning to tell me about the man she’d been dating, or what Nick just brought up. It was typical that I’d hear it from someone else first. “What’s been happening at the restaurant?”

  Nick and Donna looked at each other, then Nick shrugged and plunged right in. “Well, accidents, I guess you’d call it.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Donna said, squirting more ketchup on her remaining french fries. “At first it looked like accidents. But the last, those had to be deliberate.”

  I waited for them to explain but they didn’t get the chance. Nick looked past me and I followed the direction of his eyes. A man approached us from the wharf. He wore faded blue jeans, a stained ocher T-shirt, and thick-soled shoes. He looked tired as he walked slowly past a middle-aged woman who stared intently at a fish on the iced counter. He had a slender wiry frame, muscles visible along his shoulders and forearms, and a head of thick black curls. His olive skin had been burned even darker by the sun and chapped by the ocean spray, making him look older than his years. His shoulders were slumped and his head was down. He moved as though he were on automatic pilot and he didn’t look up until he was about six feet from the table where Donna and I sat. Then he saw us and the smile that broke out dissipated whatever cloud lowered on his face.

  “Look who’s here,” Bobby said, hands on the hips of his Levi’s. “My good-lookin’ cuz from Oakland. Give me a kiss.”

  I wiped my hands on a napkin and rose to meet him. Bobby was about five-ten, just a couple of inches taller than me. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, then put his strong arms around my waist and squeezed. He smelled of fish and sweat and salt spray. As we embraced, Donna leaned back in her chair and surveyed us both. “What about me?” Her voice held a bantering tone. “Don’t I get a kiss?”

  “I see you all the time,” Bobby said. He released me and leaned over, brushing Donna’s forehead with his lips. Then he gave his father a companionable slap on the shoulder. “Hey, Pop. How’s business?”

  “Pretty good,” Nick said. “How about you? You have a good day? How many tons?” Bobby shrugged and named a figure. Nick frowned. “That’s not a full load.”

  Bobby grinned and shrugged again. “The squid seem to be vacationing elsewhere, ladies. Down in Morro Bay, maybe. We’re having to go out farther and longer. Pop, it looks like I’m gonna have to overhaul that fish pump.”

  He was referring to a vital piece of equipment used to move all those tons of squid from the nets into the hold. My cousin’s boat is a purse seiner called the Nicky II, named for his son. It was a successor to the Nicky I, which was Uncle Dom’s boat back in the early days. Bobby fishes for squid, mackerel, anchovies, and sardines, though at the moment it seemed he was concentrating on squid.

  I knew the squid fishery was regulated and Monterey’s fishermen could catch the tentacled delicacies from midnight to noon. That means the boats go out at ten or ten-thirty in order to be in position by midnight. Then they come back around noon to unload their holds. Even then, there were other things to occupy the crew, such as cleaning up the boat, repairing a torn net, seeing to machinery that needed maintenance or repair. That’s why Bobby looked exhausted. It was past one in the afternoon. He’d been working fourteen hours. From here, he’d go back to his apartment, shower, and try to get some sleep before starting all over again this evening.

  Bobby stepped past Nick and gave Tina a brief kiss as she bustled out of the deli to the dining room, carryin
g two plates with sandwiches to the customers who sat next to the window. He opened the refrigerated case behind the counter. Immediately in front of him were several bottles of beer. His hand hovered near one, then he reached past it and pulled out a soda. He popped the top, tilted the can, and drank a good portion of its contents before setting it on the counter and wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  Tina looked at him severely as she returned to her station behind the deli counter. “You had anything to eat?” Bobby shook his head. “I’ll fix you a sandwich. What do you want?”

  “Pastrami,” he told her.

  “Okay. Get out of my way. Go talk to Jeri and Donna.”

  Banished from behind the counter, Bobby joined Nick, who stood near our table. “Say, Jeri,” he said, with a wicked sparkle in his brown eyes. “I’m short a man. You want to go squid fishing?”

  I groaned. “Not a chance.” My chronic seasickness was a long-standing source of family merriment. How could a child with so many fishermen in her lineage get seasick? But I much prefer to admire the ocean from the shore. I’d gone out on the boat now and then. The memory makes me queasy.

  “Why are you shorthanded?” Donna asked.

  “I fired Frank in June. Then the guy I hired to take his place quit. Haven’t been able to find anyone to replace him. Not as many fishermen around as there used to be.”

  What Bobby said about not being able to find another crewman surprised me. Monterey’s fishing fleet is still a vital local industry, employing about two thousand people in its various aspects, not just fishing but processing.

  “I keep hearing that fishing is in a decline,” I said, “but the harbor looks just as busy as ever.”

  “According to Grandpa Dom, we’re an endangered species, like the spotted owl.” Bobby took another sip from his soda can. “He says the days of the independent operator are numbered.”

  Nick shook his head. “Pop and I disagree on that. Not here, not in Monterey. Besides, it depends on what kind of fish you’re after. It’s just the warm current this year. That’s why the squid aren’t coming into the bay.”

  “The salmon fishery is way down,” Donna said. “Salmon depend on freshwater runoff. We had seven years of drought. Add to that all the problems from pollution, logging, agriculture. Clear-cutting of lumber silts up the streams and most of the freshwater flow goes to farmers and the cities. Not much left for fish.”

  “I hear there’s a move afoot to put the coho salmon on the endangered list,” I said, “for just those reasons.”

  “To hear the salmon fishermen tell it,” Bobby said, “there’s too much government regulation.”

  Donna shook her head and put on her Fish-and-Game persona. “If we didn’t put quotas on salmon, they’d harvest as many as they could. If they overfish they’ll kill the whole fishery. Remember the sardines.”

  How could anyone in Monterey forget the sardines? The little silver fish had fueled the canneries for nearly half a century. Then, in the early fifties, the sardines vanished from Monterey Bay. No one is sure why. Overfishing had much to do with it. Both fishermen and biologists speculate that it was due to a naturally occurring cycle that spans many years. Both theories may be correct. In recent years the sardines have come back to the bay, but in smaller numbers.

  “How long you gonna be in town?” Bobby asked me.

  “A week. We should get together and catch up.”

  “Sure thing,” he told me. “Wait’ll you see Nicky. The kid’s growing like a weed.”

  Tina brought Bobby a loaded plate. He sat at the table opposite me and Donna, picked up his sandwich, and dug into it as though he hadn’t eaten in a week. He was halfway through it when someone entered Ravella’s. Donna spotted the new arrival before I did, her eyes narrowing as she looked over my shoulder. I turned in my seat and examined the newcomer.

  Law enforcement, I thought, looking him over with a practiced eye. He was a tall man, big shoulders crowding the jacket of his lightweight gray suit. He appeared to be in his forties, with a craggy lined face and a lot of gray in his short sandy hair. His bushy eyebrows fanned over a pair of flinty gray eyes that swiveled around Ravella’s and finally settled on Bobby.

  “Bobby Ravella?” he asked.

  Bobby put down his sandwich and wiped mustard from the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I’m Bobby Ravella.”

  “Sergeant Mike Magruder, Monterey County Sheriff’s Department.” The man in the gray suit pulled out a folder and showed Bobby his badge. “I’d like to talk with you, Mr. Ravella.”

  “What about?” Bobby asked slowly, his brown eyes troubled.

  “About a friend of yours who’s been reported missing. A woman named Ariel Logan.”

  “I haven’t seen her since Friday.” Bobby stared past the sergeant at nothing in particular.

  “That’s what I hear,” Magruder said.

  “Any news?” Donna asked.

  Magruder didn’t answer right away. When he did, his eyes were glued on Bobby’s face. So were mine. As the sergeant spoke Bobby’s right hand tightened on the can he held. His jaw muscles tensed and he looked as if anyone touched him he would shatter like glass.

  “County dive-and-rescue unit just went out,” Magruder said, his voice even. “We got a report late this morning. A woman’s body washed up on a beach near Rocky Creek Bridge. We think it’s Ariel Logan.”

  Four

  UNTIL SERGEANT MAGRUDER MENTIONED THE BODY, I think everyone who knew her hoped that Ariel Logan had simply gone somewhere, anywhere, for a few days. Ariel was just cooling off after her argument with Bobby. Soon she would surface and things would get back to normal.

  When I glanced at Donna, who had expressed the fear that Ariel had gone into the water, I knew that even she had clung to that hope. I looked at Bobby, slumped in his chair. His dark face had gone white around his mouth, now tensed into a line as he compressed his lips.

  “How long will it take to identify that body?” I asked.

  “Depends on how long it’s been in the water.” Magruder scanned me carefully, as though wondering who I was. His face revealed nothing. “And how difficult it is for the rescue team to retrieve it. We’ve asked Miss Logan’s parents for her dental records, just in case. I’m not saying it’s her, but Miss Logan’s car was found in the lot at the Rocky Point Restaurant. That’s close enough to Rocky Creek to make it a possibility.”

  The sergeant’s eyes were like chips of stone in his rough-hewn face. After giving me a thorough once-over, he turned those eyes back to Bobby. “You say you hadn’t seen Miss Logan since Friday.”

  “That’s what I said.” Bobby’s voice was curt As the sergeant continued to probe I looked past him at Nick and Tina Ravella. They both looked stunned, just now realizing that the sergeant was questioning their son as though Bobby was suspected of having something to do with Ariel Logan’s death.

  Sergeant Magruder wasn’t getting much from Bobby. No, he hadn’t seen Ariel Logan since they’d parted on the sidewalk outside the Rose and Crown Friday afternoon. How many times did he have to say it? What he and Ariel had argued about was private, he told Magruder, and he wouldn’t say anything more. Finally Bobby stood up, his movements abrupt and jerky. He walked out of Ravella’s without a backward glance at his parents or the sergeant.

  Magruder’s flinty eyes followed my cousin as he walked up the wharf and finally disappeared from view. Then he excused himself and left what had been, until now, a pleasant waterfront café.

  Donna had to get back to work. Before we left Ravella’s I fought down my own feelings of disquiet and tried to reassure Nick and Tina that everything would be all right. But even as I said the words I wasn’t sure. From the way Sergeant Magruder examined Bobby, he seemed to be fitting my cousin for a pair of handcuffs.

  “I’m going say hello to Uncle Dom,” I told Donna when we reached the entrance of Fisherman’s Wharf, where the monkey capered in front of the organ grinder.

  “Okay. I’ll see you at four
, at the SPCA.” She waved and set off along the Rec Trail.

  I walked past the Old Custom House, once the port of entry for Monterey Harbor, now a museum of Monterey’s past, the rock-and-adobe walls filled with trade goods typical of those that came round the Horn in the 1830s. Across the sunny plaza I saw two sand-and-concrete courts where bocce was played.

  I’ve never quite been able to understand the rules of this old Italian game, which involves bowling balls at other balls. Uncle Dom says my lack of knowledge is because my Italian blood has been diluted. According to him, that’s also why I get seasick.

  I spotted Uncle Dom at the end of one of the courts, his compact body attired in brown slacks and a checked shirt. Ball in hand, he prepared his shot, squinting down the court. This is how Bobby will look in fifty years, I thought, black hair silvered, olive face lined, muscles gone flaccid with age. Uncle Dom drew back his right hand and let go the ball, which found its mark, to murmurs of approval. The language here was Italian, all the players were men, and most of them were older, though I spotted a couple of youngsters my age. As another man readied his shot my great-uncle saw me and walked over to greet me. He threw his arms wide, enveloping me in an embrace.

  “About time you came to see us,” he boomed. He’d been born right here in Monterey but still his voice held the flavor of his parents’ Sicilian tongue, the language spoken at home while he was growing up. “Why you stay away for so long?”

  My protestations of being busy didn’t cut any fish with Uncle Dom. He was of a generation and a culture where women stayed home and cared for husband and children. Even if he accepted the fact that things weren’t like that today, family was still important. I should check in with them more often.