Santa Cruz Noir

by Susie Bright

  “Then,” Kelly said, “this came yesterday, registered mail.” She handed me a nine-by-twelve envelope. The return address was an impressive San Francisco law firm. The sheaf of papers inside explained that a trust had been established in the name of Kelly Wong. On the last page was the full dollar amount, a little over a quarter-mil.

  Kelly had teared up. I pushed the tissues across. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I’d been calling him since Sunday and he wasn’t home and he wasn’t at the restaurant. Nobody knew where he was.”

  “Your mom?” I ventured.

  She teared up again. “I lost my mom two years ago. There were too many problems for her.” I let that one slide. “My dad has a lot of enemies,” she continued, “because of the restaurants, the investors. He likes to gamble. So, I’m worried. Can you please look for him?”

  I was still mulling. “How did you hear about me?”

  “That was kind of weird. I have finals starting Monday, so I went to my advisor to see if I could do a makeup. I told her the whole story. I didn’t want to go to the cops in case it turned out to be a ransom situation. She thought I needed legal advice and called a friend at the law school. He recommended you.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Brad Turner. You know him?”

  “We have some history. Do you have someplace to stay here? I don’t want you staying at your dad’s.”

  “I can stay with my dad’s cooks. They won’t say anything.”

  “Do that.” I told her what I’d need to get started. She didn’t blink. The only thing she asked was if she could pay the thousand-dollar retainer in two checks. Sure. She wrote two checks for $499 each and handed me two dollar bills. She explained that it was a condition of the trust. Any checks above $500 had to be approved by the trustee. “My dad told the lawyers he didn’t want me paying off his debts.”

  “Go get some rest,” I said. “Call me here tomorrow morning and I’ll give you an update.”

  “Don’t you want my phone number, or the address where I’m staying?”

  “I don’t want to be able to answer that question until I figure out what’s going on. As you said, your dad has enemies. You want me to call you a cab?”

  “No,” Kelly said, “I want to walk down the railroad tracks. I can catch the bus on Park. My dad’s first restaurant was in Capitola. It was just my mom and dad cooking and working the front. I helped out from the time I was five or six. A lot of customers couldn’t figure out who I was. I was my dad’s favorite joke. He’d say, ‘This is my daughter Kelly. She’s living proof that two Wongs can make a white!’”

  “He’s got a lot to answer for.”

  “Yeah, not many customers laughed, even back then.” She put on her pack and jammed the stocking cap over her curls. I watched her walk up Center.

  At Manuel’s, Leobardo, the head waiter, was lounging on the bench in front, reading the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Leobardo didn’t even look up as Kelly passed, which surprised me. Usually he checked out anything with a bounce and a pulse.

  Kelly crossed to State Park Drive, walked up to Moulton’s Union ’76, and headed north on the railroad tracks.

  So Kelly Wong had said Brad Turner recommended me. A blast from the past. I knew Brad for the same reason I knew Lars Guthrie and Carter Wilson: my shady academic past. I was a failed professor. I did my four-year stretch in Rubber City. When I was denied tenure at UCSC, I did what my role model Annie Steinhardt did when she was denied. I went over the hill and started dancing at Jolly’s, a topless bar in the pits of San Jose. Annie wrote a book about it, Thunder La Boom. There wasn’t a novel in my future, I wrote poetry—but I liked the idea and the money was good and immediate.

  About my third month at Jolly’s, I encountered a former student, Brad Turner. Or, should I say, Brad Turner looked me up, and looked me down. It’s a little hard, peering over your own bouncing breasts, to acknowledge a former student, but I nodded and we met in the parking lot.

  “Dr. Sukenick,” Brad said.

  I had to smile. “Call me Sukie.” It was my stage name, but it fit. “Did you graduate?”

  “Yeah,” Brad said with a grin, “my stepdad just about stroked out.” Brad was one of my salvage jobs.

  “I’m here to return the favor,” he said. “I’m working for the public defender’s office. They want smart people and I thought you might fit.” Brad came from a family of lawyers and he’d avoided that fate as long as he could, but the PD’s office had sniffed him out, and hired him as an investigator. He was off to Boalt and he thought I might be the ideal replacement.

  It worked out. More than worked out. Turned out that intuitive instinct I thought would lead to chapbooks and tenure was ideally suited to listening to liars. I spent six years learning the trade and, more valuably, getting to know every judge, prosecutor, public defender, and most of the cops in Santa Cruz County. My three-month stint, topless, had more cachet with them than my four years at the university.

  * * *

  I made the obligatory calls on Chef Wong. Leonard didn’t turn up much on the criminal front: two DUIs and an arrest without charge in a mass bust in Prunedale—one of a crowd of two hundred–plus at an alleged cockfight.

  Civil was a different matter. Leonard Wong had been, and was currently being, sued by investors, landlords, suppliers, contractors, and even a live seafood supplier from Korea who he’d stiffed. The investors came in clumps. It appeared that he had sold the restaurants at least four times to five groups of overseas investors. He hadn’t done the bankruptcy out, which was interesting. That meant he hoped for new investors. I checked with my sources in the DA’s office and learned there were more lawsuits pending. Then I checked my darker sources and learned that in addition to his drinking and money problems, Leonard also had a cocaine problem, and that was overtaking the rest. The profile was shaping.

  Estelle blew in around eleven thirty a.m., looking, as she was wont to say, rid hard and put away wet.

  “If you look in the dictionary under blowsy . . .” I said.

  “Stuff it.” Estelle reached for the Visine, tilted back, and shuddered as the drops hit her tender eyeballs. “Made the sale. At least I damn well better have made that sale. His wife would not like to see what my security camera saw.”

  “Leonard Wong?”

  Estelle sat up. “Interesting story, but I only know the parameters. He used to own the land his restaurants sit on. Three refi’s in three years. New case?”

  “Time for lunch.”

  “Gotcha.” Estelle turned on her desk lamp, put on her dark glasses, and spun her Rolodex.

  I walked over to Manny’s. It was pleasantly dark, as always, and quieter than usual. You could actually hear Manny’s favorite soundtrack, delicate jarocho harp music from Veracruz. Manuel Santana was an interesting man, successful restaurateur, and failed artist, according to him—and Chicano Centrál if you were involved in Democratic Party politics. He kept the lights low and stocked chardonnay, which kept the gringas of a certain age coming back.

  The head waiter’s wife, Socorro, was behind the cash register, comparing the tale of the tape to the handwritten bills, then stapling them together. I touched her on the shoulder as I went by. She lifted her head and smiled at me. Leobardo approached; he nodded and it was almost a genuflection—then, full smile. He leaned in attentively with his pad and we went through our ritual.

  “Para mi, poquito ensalada de Manuel,” I said. “Chile relleño combinacion, menos frijoles, solo arroz.”

  Leobardo didn’t write it down until I finished my recitation, and then he began his own: “One small Manny’s salad, one stuffed chile, no beans, only rice. And to drink?”

  “Una Bohemia, por favor.”

  Leobardo winked. “It’s December. We just got our shipment of Noche Buena. ”

  The Christmas beer, a joy, a dark beer with some sweetness but more body and a great aftertaste. The German braumeisters who came to Monterrey in the nineteenth century lived
on in this great beer, available once a year. “Noche Buena,” I agreed.

  Leobardo bowed and smiled again. At the cash register, Socorro cackled. As always, Leobardo ignored his wife and maintained his chivalrous flirtation. “Esta bién, señorita. Your accent is really improving.”

  As he set down the beer, I said, “Leobardo. A question, and this is professional.”

  “For your work?”

  “Yes. Do you know anyone who knows about cockfighting in South County?”

  He sat down across from me. “You need this?”

  “Yeah, it matters.”

  “Then you should talk to my uncle Mike. Miguel to me, but he’ll want you to call him Mike. Did you know about my family?”

  “No. Just a shot. Cockfighting’s been big in Watsonville since the sixties and I know your family has been here longer than that.”

  “My family is from Michoacán, and that’s the center of cockfighting in Mexico. We’ve bred champion roosters for more than a century.”

  At the cash register, Socorro spiked a sheaf of bills, rolled the tape around the spike, and punched the empty cash drawer closed. She stood with the bank bag and peered at us with some humor. “If I had a peso for every macho from Michoacán who claimed he raised the best cock in the country, I’d be a happier woman than I am today.”

  Leobardo rolled his eyes and blew a kiss in Socorro’s direction, “Besos y pesos, mi amor.” He tore off a page from his order pad, wrote furiously, and then handed it to me like a check. “That’s the address and phone number. I’ll go make the call.”

  The address was in Corralitos. Back at the office, Estelle looked up the parcel. It was a good-sized ranch for the area, 180 acres off Eureka Canyon Road. Miguel Sandoval was the owner.

  Estelle spotted something interesting, the parcel opposite Miguel’s, which fronted on Amesti Road. It was owned by another Sandoval, Benjamin. Corralitos Creek separated the properties.

  Estelle pointed out the window, “There’s your flag boy.”

  I looked out. Leobardo had stepped out the front door of Manny’s and was waving a red napkin. When he saw he had my attention, he jabbed a forefinger south. It was time to go.

  The day was too nice for the freeway. I took my Karmann Ghia through the apple orchards and Victorian farmhouses, then rolled down my window as I passed the Corralitos meat market to enjoy the scent of burning applewood and smoking linguiça.

  I found the address, an impressive stone gate with a bronze sign affixed, Rancho Sandoval. Uncle Mike was behind the gate, an older, sturdier version of Leobardo, on horseback, a beautiful roan that must have stood seventeen hands high. I waved, and he walked the gate open and then walked it closed behind me, a nice bit of horsemanship.

  I leaned out and looked up at him, “Don Miguel, cómo estás?”

  He laughed, “Yeah, Leobardo said you would try out your Spanish. He said not to encourage you. It’s Mike. Follow me.”

  He set out at a canter and then got up to speed, cutting through short grass and vetch that fronted the rows of apple trees. I followed on the concrete, which became well-graded dirt out of sight of the frontage road. It was almost three minutes to the house and outbuildings, clustered on a wide meadow, backed onto Corralitos Creek. It was as close to a hacienda as anything I’d seen on this side of the border.

  Off to one side was what looked like a full-sized rodeo arena, with metal stands. In back, a parking lot. Mike went inside and came out bearing two sweating bottles of Noche Buena. He handed one over. “Let’s walk and talk. Leobardo told me two things. He said you wanted to know about cockfighting and he said you were to be trusted.”

  I pointed to the arena. “Is that where they’re held? The cockfights?”

  He laughed. “No, we actually do hold rodeos here, once a month at least, both vaquero and American.”

  He took my elbow and guided me around an oak to a smaller path, which led to a pristine metal building with tiers of canted rows of windows, tilted to let in sunlight, but at an angle that made it impossible to see in from outside.

  Inside, I understood I was in the Taj Mahal of henhouses—climate-controlled with filtered air, sunlit apartments filled with happy chickens, if the slow contented clucking was any indicator. Chickens of all colors walked and scratched and sat asleep on fresh straw, in tiers stretching to the roof.

  “These are the hens,” Mike explained. “We sell some eggs at our roadside stand. About half of them are breeders, from long lines of fierce ancestors. Rockefeller couldn’t afford these eggs for breakfast.” Beyond the hens was a metal wall that had a metal door with a coded entry lock. Mike punched some numbers.

  Beyond was Fort Rooster. The walls resounded with roosters in full cry, roosters pacing back and forth on their sawdust runways, roosters pecking at whole corncobs and their reflections in small mirrors. Combs engorged, metallic feathers flashing, mindless bright eyes reflecting us. These birds, with their herky-jerky movements, seemed more reptilian than avian.

  I noticed metal bowls in a lot of the cages that seemed to have what looked like steak tartar, diced cubes of dark flesh. I pointed. “You feed them meat?”

  “Horse meat,” Mike said, “low fat, lots of protein.”

  “Chickens eat meat?”

  “In the wild,” Mike said, “chickens eat anything: bugs, lizards, snakes, rats, other chickens—people too, if they find a body.”

  At the end of the room was a deep pit; two young men were standing in it, holding what looked like younger roosters, one black, one red. They were thrusting the birds forward to excite them. They dropped the birds and there was a flurry of kicks, squawks, slashing beaks, kicking heels, and loose feathers flying. Until one bird, the red, turned away.

  The men stepped in and gathered the frantic birds up, turned in different directions, and calmed them, stroking and soothing.

  I looked at the confined space. “Is this where it all happens?”

  “No, no, no,” Mike said. “This is the practice palenque. Come on, I’ll show you the real deal.” As we went through the back door, he turned back and spoke to the men. One nodded, and wrung the neck of the red bird.

  We walked to a section of Corralitos Creek that was different from the small stream I knew. Here it was wider and deeper, twenty feet across at least. Mike pointed downstream and up: “Two check dams. We close the gates when we want to stop waders. Now, come round the corner.” There was a tall, dense eugenia hedge; on the other side was what looked like a boat landing. “I’m not actually going to show you the real palenque. It’s a quarter-mile walk on the other side.”

  “On your brother’s land?”

  Mike’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “I am going to show you how we get there.” He lifted the top of one of the pilings. Inside was a panel with four buttons. He pushed the top one. From beneath the deck, a metal rectangle emerged and kept emerging, like the ladder on a fire truck extending up the side of a building. The smoothness suggested hydraulics. The metal span crossed twenty feet of creek and locked into a slot on the other side. Mike pressed a second button, railings unfolded from the bed and swayed upright to lock into place. I was looking at a perfect bridge. The whole process had taken about a minute. Mike pressed the third button, the rails collapsed, and then the fourth. The return trip was less than thirty seconds.

  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.