It’s a mostly unpleasant drive down the 405 and then the 5 to get to the greater San Diego area. Long stretches of bleak gray concrete, car dealerships on both sides, weird highway-bordering office buildings housing people doing who knows what. And then, as you get near the towns north of San Diego—Carlsbad, Oceanside, Encinitas—the drive starts to take on a different feel. You begin to see glimpses of ocean, of trees, of beautiful cliffs standing tall above a beautiful beach.
And then when you turn off the highway and head due west to enter one of those little seaside towns—that’s when the California magic really hits you. That’s when you can smell the salt in the air, see the white sand and the big green sea, roll the window down and feel cool air and hot sun simultaneously.
And that’s what I did. Off the 5, into Oceanside, and then into Marlon the Marlin’s marina. The Oceanside Marina. Before I got out of the Focus I called Dave Treadway, nobody home, left a message on his cell saying I was in the area and to please call me.
Here I was at another marina. Two marinas in four days. Was I in danger of becoming a boat person? Holy smokes, that’s frightening. I walked through the lot, then wound my way through the marina toward Marlon’s sailboat. I knew my way, had been many times. Right before I got to Marlon’s slip, I ran into another marina dweller I’d met a few times while visiting. Hunter Clavana, an Aussie.
“The Darv? How you doing, mate?”
How convenient, he’s got two reasons to say “mate.”
“Hey, Hunter. What’s happening?” I looked at him. I had literally never seen a white man that color. He wasn’t tan. He wasn’t brown. He was a deep, disturbing, almost charcoal gray. His skin had literally been cooked.
He said, “Oh, all’s good. I’ve felt better, though. Birthday was yesterday. Had too much of that.”
He pointed at the half gallon I had in my hand.
“Right,” I said. “How old?”
“Thirty-seven.”
He looked a hundred. He did. Maybe a hundred and ten.
“Well,” I said, moving on, “happy belated.”
When I got to Marlon’s sailboat, he was on the deck, asleep. Or at least it looked that way—he had his eyes closed. I stepped aboard, walked over, and sat in a chair that was built into the side of the boat. A nice blue cushion. A sly smile appeared on Marlon’s face, his eyes still closed, and he said, “How you doing, John?”
“I’m great, Marlon. How are you?”
He opened his eyes and said, “Look at me. I’m fucking wonderful.”
I did look at him. Lean and strong into his sixties. With ropy arms, bird legs, and a little old-man gut. A charming shark smile set against dark, suspicious eyes. He was wearing shorts, deck shoes, and an open Hawaiian shirt. And of course, he was tan. Too tan.
I pointed to the silver aviators I was wearing and said, “How do you not wear sunglasses out here, Marlon? It’s bright. I mean, the sun bouncing off the water, it’s bright.”
“Fucks with my tan,” he said. “If it gets too bright, I just close my eyes. Like I was doing just now when you showed up. I wasn’t sleeping. I was sitting, resting, with my eyes closed. And tanning my lids.”
“When’s Fran coming back?”
“Soon, I hope. Back when I used to play around, I’d love it when my old lady would leave. Shit, back in Jersey, when Fran would go visit her mom, her sister, I’d be looking out the blinds as she left in the cab. And the second that cab left, the second that fucking cab left, I’d run to my car and go to a strip joint. It didn’t matter if it was 9 a.m. I’d find one that was open. And I’d have my face buried in some dancer’s tits before Fran got to the airport. But now? I don’t play around. I don’t do that stuff. So I just get bored and lonely. Shit, I’m even glad to see you.”
I gave him a smile and handed him the jug of booze.
Marlon said, “You want a rum drink?”
“Yeah, I’ll have one. Not too strong.”
“I’ll make it how I make it.”
He had everything he needed right next to him on a little table. He made two drinks at once, going through a careful, meticulous process. Drop the ice in, squeeze the lime, squeeze in the liquid sugar, top it all off with booze. He stirred both drinks up and handed one to me. It was cold, just a little sweet, delicious. And after one sip, one sip, I felt a tiny buzz. I looked around the marina, rum drink in hand, felt the soft breeze coming in off the Pacific, the boats tilting just slightly back and forth, a little sway to the whole world, a little sway to the reality of life.
“I get it,” I said.
“Yeah, you do,” Marlon returned, taking a big sip. And then, “What can I do you for?”
“You know anything about the tropical fish business?”
“Sure. That’s one of the stops people make when they’re looking around for a way to get rich without having to do much. You know, think they can get their hands on some really rare fish, sell a few, and make a bunch of coin. Black pearl business is similar. Gold rush mentality. Lottery players. There’s this mystery to those trades, like you are going to find some rare fucking gem. Truth is, it’s just like most businesses. Like all businesses. A few people do it right, do it well, make money. Most people don’t do it very well. Get lazy real quick. Get flaky. Fail.”
He closed his eyes and pointed his face to the sun. “Flaky, just like the food they feed those goddamn things.”
He laughed at his own joke.
“See,” he continued, opening his eyes back up and looking at me. “Above all, like everything, it’s competitive. Unless you work hard, work really hard, know what you are fucking doing, commit to doing it for a long time, or have a scam running, you’ll lose.”
“What do you mean, a scam running?”
He gave me his hard, dark eyes. “I mean like running a business the way we used to sometimes, back East. Where you said to people: Buy this thing from us—whatever the fuck the thing is—or get shot.”
I laughed. “Right. That kind of scam.”
Marlon took a big sip of his drink, two, three swallows. “Why do you ask, Johnny?”
“Case I’m on. Murder case. One of the many trails I’m following took me to a high-end tropical fish broker called Prestige Fish. In the Valley, Thousand Oaks. The guy who runs it finds rare, expensive tropical fish for people. Guy by the name of Lee Graves. No idea if this guy’s up to something or not. I don’t like him. And I’ve got a bad feeling. But I’m not sure. I don’t have anything on him. Yet. But, Marlon, you know how much some of these fish sell for?”
“Oh, yeah. Twenty, thirty large. Sometimes more. Especially when two, three of those crazy fucks who buy them want the same fish and there’s only one available.”
“Yeah. It’s crazy. Imagine if you bought one, got it home, and it died?”
“They have insurance for them. That’s a whole other business.”
Marlon just knows shit. It’s that simple.
A nice breeze came through, rocking the boats and making the little bells hanging off the tops of some of the sails ring, at just the right volume, randomly throughout the marina. I took another sip of my stiff rum drink. The bells, the buzz. It was pleasant.
My cell rang, breaking the moment. Not going to answer it. Not going to take a call while in a conversation with Marlon the Marlin.
He said, “It’s okay. You’re on a case. I get it.”
I sent the call to voice mail anyway.
“That’s nice,” he said. “People and their phones these days. Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Back in my day, when I was working in Jersey, New York, working for some serious fucking people—you behave the way people do now? Taking calls when you are already talking to someone else? Looking down at the goddamn screen right in the middle of somebody’s goddamn sentence? You might get whacked. I’m not kidding. You might seriously get whacked for that.”
I laughed. “Might not be a terrible way to handle the problem. It’s pretty horrible.”
Marlon nodded. “Let me look around for you, put my ear to the ground, see what I can find out about Lee Graves and Prestige Fish.”
That’s the thing. Marlon had trained himself to listen, to zero in on and remember important information. Sipping his drink, half asleep and half shitcanned on his boat, but he got the name and the company just right.
“Thanks, Marlon.”
“Come down sometime just for fun, why don’t you. Fran would love to see you. We’ll make some dinner, eat it right out here. After the sun goes down, nice and cool, you can see all the lights on the boats.”
“That sounds really nice, Marlon. I will.”
He said, “Let me show you my new tattoo before you leave.”
He held out his right forearm. There was an anchor tattooed on it. I’d seen it before, many times.
“You already know I have that one,” he said. He then stood up, took off his Hawaiian shirt, and turned to show me his left side. “Now I got this one too.”
It was an octopus, about six inches in height, wearing a captain’s hat. I laughed. The choices people make when it comes to their tattoos never cease to amaze me. This girl who lived down the street from me growing up, Lucy Farina. Nice, friendly girl with this big, friendly smile. Always sweet. So sweet. She got a tattoo on her back of a massive flying pterodactyl with blood dripping out of its huge beak. And now? A former mob guy, a former—and still—tough guy, a guy who has killed people, has a googly-eyed, captain’s-hat-wearing octopus on his side.
“How’d you choose that?” I said carefully.
“I always wanted an octopus with a fucking sailor hat on my body.”
“Yeah?”
“No. Fran and I went into town and got shit-faced, fucking blotto, and I made a mistake. But now he’s my friend and I like him.”
“There’s a lesson in there somewhere.”
“I’ll call you when I got something, Johnny.”
I shook Marlon’s hand, hopped off the boat, and started back toward the parking lot. I called my voice mail on the way. Mr. Dave Treadway getting back to me. How nice.