The Last Annual Slugfest

by Susan Dunlap

  I started the engine and headed for the fish ranch.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE RUSSIAN RIVER FISH Ranch occupied a manmade island at the mouth of the river. A jetty protected a dock that ran well out into the deep water. The island had been constructed high enough to ride out floods, by a man who had planned to build a hotel overlooking the dock where the fishing fleet would unload. Building the jetty and the dock was as far as he had gotten. The main structure that housed the growing fish was a windowless pre-fab affair. It could as easily have been a giant chartreuse storage shed. About forty by a hundred, it stood with its shorter side so close to the Pacific that its doors opened onto the dock, and waves splashed against the sides of the building in stormy weather. Its only natural light came from the twenty skylights that virtually filled its roof space.

  Looking down from the Jenner hill, the Russian River Fish Ranch building sat like a blotchy green stomach in an anatomical drawing. From it fanned out the “intestines” in narrow cement ditches looping back and forth around its sides, ending in one long arc that circled back to the start. Now the ditches were just three-foot-deep ruts, but I understood they were to be given a bedding of pebbles and then the water from the river would channel through them. And when the fish fry were older, they would be moved from the incubators inside the building out into this tightly winding channel to swim through its endless loops for months until they were large enough to be released into the ocean. The whole island couldn’t have been more than two acres. But I recalled reading that if human intestines were stretched out, they would go on for something like a mile. So, although the ranch looked like a small operation, there was plenty of distance for an ambitious young fish to cover.

  At the far side of the property was an aluminum tool shed and an emergency generator. I had been surprised that the generator was there, rather than next to the main building. But the oddest things in the complex were the rosebushes that surrounded the main building. Anywhere else, those standing red roses would have been attractive, but here, between the green aluminum building and the cement ditches, they looked like another variety of clutter.

  A hurricane fence surrounded the complex on three sides. The ocean provided the remaining boundary. Outside the fence was the gatehouse and a two-lane drive that led to a small bridge and then to the main road.

  I drove down from Jenner and across the bridge. As always, the gate was closed. I pulled up by the gatehouse, rolled down my window, and took a deep breath of the salt air.

  I recognized the guard, Maxie Dawkins. He was a squat man, with thin carrot-colored hair faded by gray. His skin was rough but sallow, and his amber eyes hung back deep in their sockets. Each month he escorted me to the meter. But I wasn’t surprised he showed no recollection of me. To many people, meter readers were simply bodies that filled out the tan PG&E uniforms. He leaned on the windowsill and said, “Can I help you?” It was one of those “Can I help you?”s that could have been translated as “What are you doing here?” When I had been here to read the meter, Maxie was always friendly, eager to talk, if not to listen. Now his stiff, guardlike stance took me by surprise.

  I decided not to explain who I was. I said, “I’m looking for Angelina Rudd.”

  “Off.”

  “She’s not here?”

  “Nope.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Maybe Monday.”

  “Monday! It’s only Saturday morning.”

  “Might be”—he wheezed—“tomorrow night.” Getting his breath, he paused, then favored me with a nodding half-smile. “She’s got the weekend coming. Hell, she’s got a year of weekends coming, but she won’t take them. I didn’t believe she’d really go. A couple of times she said she was taking a day off, but she’s never done it. Never could bring herself to.” He wheezed again, as if the long pronouncement was too much for his lungs.

  “Allergies?” I asked, glancing at the rose bushes.

  “Who knows?” he said in disgust. “Allergies, asthma, bronchial distress, call it whatever you like. That’s what the doctors do. But the end’s the same: I can’t breathe worth a damn. I gotta use these nose drops—cost a fortune, twenty bucks for a tiny little squeeze bottle no bigger than a pair of dice. I gotta take them every four hours. I keep one bottle at home and one out in the shed so I think to take them when I make my rounds. Every hour I make my rounds, I turn the box around so the next side comes forward. Then, when the front panel, the one that says Estrin, is in front, I know to put a drop in, see?” he explained proudly.

  “Clever system.”

  “You gotta have a way to remember. I couldn’t do that out in the water. Couldn’t breathe enough even with those damned drops to fish.” He looked out at the Pacific beyond the dock. “That’s why I’m here babysitting the salmon fry instead of out there fighting fair.”

  “This isn’t fair?”

  “It’s like shooting deer in a game preserve. We hatch the cohos here. We’ll raise them for a year, imprint them with the smell of the fish ranch, then turn them out to sea to grow. And when they reach the end of their cycle, they’ll swim back, right up our chutes and into our pools. They might as well swim into the grocery trucks. Ain’t no sport in that.”

  “But a lot of profit?”

  “More than fishing with the fleet. But I’ll tell you, that profit, when and if it comes, won’t be trickling down to me. I’m a straight salary man. And for what she pays me, it hasn’t always been easy working here. I took a lot of heat from the guys when I signed on here.”

  I knew from experience how easy it was to keep Maxie Dawkins talking. I might be the only human being he saw all day. “The guys from the fleet?”

  “And how. When Angelina started this place, she made a big deal telling everyone how she was going to change the way the whole fishing industry worked. No more men against the sea, she said. She was going to turn fishing into a safe, reliable business. She said it would be like a Chevrolet plant, and you could count on one crop of salmon coming off the assembly line every fall.” He wheezed, caught his breath, and went on. “Even Angelina knows there have been fish ranches north of here that haven’t turned a profit, but she figures that was because the management wasn’t paying attention when they should have been, not that the system is wrong. And she plans to make this place work. She’s here every day, in the winter before light. And even when she’s off, I see her and her husband drive down at night just to check things out. I got a buzzer in here so I can buzz her house directly. If there’s a problem, don’t matter how small, or how big, she’s the one who’s going to handle it. If something happens and I don’t buzz her, there’s hell to pay.” He wheezed again. “But like I was saying, the guys gave me a hard time at first. They wanted to know if Angelina was going to build an assembly line out into the Pacific. They kept asking me if my car was a Salmon Impala. They gave Angelina a bad time too. The guys all know her because of her father. But she gave it right back. She didn’t back down. She really put her money where her mouth is. I’ll tell you, she’d lose plenty more than a job if this place went under.”

  “So this is really her baby, huh? She’s in charge?”

  “As much as anyone is when the place is run by Crestwood Industries.” He grinned, exposing a space where a lateral incisor once had been. “Drayton’s the big boss, out of Baltimore. He came through here a few months ago. You should have seen Angelina scuddle. You would have thought her mother-in-law was coming to stay for a week. I’ll tell you, this place got scrubbed inside and out. She sent me out to buy this uniform.” He fingered the dull brown wool jacket. “She even told me what to say, and more important, what not to let on.”

  I waited. But when he didn’t explain, I recalled what Chris Fortimiglio had been telling me about James Drayton last night—no liquor, sex, or dancing. “Pretty conservative, isn’t he?”

  Maxie snorted. “Conservative is a polite word. With him you better not admit nothing. He never has a beer, never smokes. D
on’t even say ‘damn’ when he’s up against it, and don’t let his workers neither. Angelina warned me not to let on that my daughter lives with a guy. She said Drayton’d fire me in a minute if he knew that.”

  “That was good thinking on Angelina’s part,” I said.

  Maxie nodded. “She’s a smart girl. I’ve known her since she was a kid. That’s how come I have this job. I used to fish with her father. She knew that no one knows salmon better than Maxie Dawkins.” He tapped his brown-coated chest. “I may not get around like I used to, but at least I’m not a hoodlum like the guy who works here nights. Angelina’s lucky he hasn’t been hauled in for brawling. Beat a guy senseless a couple years ago. They didn’t think the guy’d live.”

  “Was he another friend of her father?”

  Maxie nodded uncomfortably. “One of Mario’s crew. They were a tight bunch, those three. Even now Dutch—the night guy—is still friends with the other crewman. You know Bert Lucci?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice guy, Bert Lucci. He even let Dutch use him as a reference on his application form here. Needed two references. Angelina couldn’t get around that. And I’ll tell you, there aren’t many guys in this area who’d put their names on the line for Dutch. He was lucky to get two. And grateful. Nothing he wouldn’t do for them, so he says.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “The priest.” Maxie shrugged. “But how could he say no, huh? Dutch is Catholic.” Then, changing the subject, he said, “You’re a friend of Angelina’s, huh?” Not pausing for an answer, he said, “That’s good. She don’t have time for friends much. All the time I’ve been here I’ve only seen one girlfriend of hers come here. She said Angelina used to babysit her when she was a kid. Angelina wasn’t pleased to see her this time. No, sir. All pushed out of shape, and huffy. That’s no way to treat a friend. I was going to tell her …” He let the rest of that thought hang while he took a deep breath. “Angelina’s here every waking hour, though God knows why. As long as the water keeps running through the tanks and we’re on schedule with feeding, there’s not much to do. I’ll tell you, but don’t you tell her.” He winked. “I thought when I took a job from her, from little Angelina, that I would have myself an easy berth. I always thought of her as Mario’s kid. Didn’t realize she was a woman now, and a slavedriver at that.”

  “Really works you hard, huh?” I asked with a straight face. Sitting in the guard booth eight hours a day was not too taxing.

  “She don’t work me no harder than herself. I’ll tell you, I don’t know how she found time to get married, much less to get herself pregnant. But then, that don’t always take long.” He laughed.

  I would have liked to know about her family, but I couldn’t reveal my ignorance by asking. I said, “I thought she’d be here. I drove out from Henderson. Do you think she’s at home? I could stop by there.”

  “Fort Ross,” he said. “Whole family went up, camping. She wanted Gordon to see the old Russian fort.”

  I waited, hoping he would indicate whether Gordon was her husband or son. But he didn’t. “How is Gordon?”

  “Brightest little smolt you’d ever want to see.” He smiled.

  Were smolts one-year-old salmon or two-year-old salmon? They couldn’t be much more than that. Salmon didn’t live very long. “His first trip up to Fort Ross?”

  “Knowing Angelina, he’s lucky to be going now. I never thought she’d take the day off. But, like I say, she surprised me when she married. She kind of surprised everyone—don’t know why she bothered—if you know what I mean.”

  “After that affair.” I nodded. When Maxie didn’t pick up on that, I said, “The one she had in high school, or was it right after?” Leila had been in high school. Angelina was older than she. Angelina could have been home from college the summer of the affair.

  Maxie looked like he was trying to recall it.

  “I guess maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it after all these years,” I said. “I just assumed you’d know. It’s not really a secret anymore. The scandal died down years ago.”

  When he still didn’t say anything, I made my final stab. “I mean, it’s not such a big thing to be involved with another woman nowadays.”

  Now he did respond. His sallow skin turned bright red. He flung open the gatehouse door, banging it into the side of my truck. He grabbed hold of the window, and thrust his head inside. “I don’t want to hear that kind of trash about Angelina. No wonder she’s huffy, if you’re the kind of friend she has. You’re no friend of hers, carrying on with lies like that. Filth. Lies and filth. Now you just get yourself out of here before I do what I feel like doing. You hear me? Only ’cause I’m on duty, I’m holding myself back. But if you show up here again, I won’t. And don’t try coming round here when I’m not on duty, neither. I’m going to give Dutch the word. He’s just been waiting for the chance to smash ass. Now you get out.”

  I considered arguing, but a look at his crimson face and his fleshy fists pressed against the side of my window decided me otherwise. I wanted to get out of his sight before he realized he’d seen me before, or before my face seared a mark on his memory so that he recalled the incident the next time I came to read the meter. He pulled his head back out of the window. I made a U-turn and headed back for the road.

  I wished I could be sure the friend whose visit had pushed Angelina out of shape was Leila Katz. A girl she babysat certainly suggested Leila. Now that Angelina was married, did she want nothing to do with Leila, nothing to bring up the past?

  CHAPTER 11

  I DROVE BACK, PASSING the light green hillocks that rose from the river. Small flocks of sheep and cattle grazed, and the occasional bull, whose main interest in life was likely to be threatening meter readers. Driving by St. Agnes’s Roman Catholic Church, I glanced at Father Calloway’s vegetable beds. Unlike the flourishing rose bushes at the Russian River Fish Ranch, these beds were bare. Whatever Father Calloway had planted either had died a lingering death at the hands of the elements or a sudden one at the mouths of deer or raccoons. No plant in that garden made it to maturity; Father Calloway admitted that. His gardening taught him nonattachment, he said.

  Father Calloway would know about Angelina’s past. He had surprised me more than once by the extent of his awareness of the seamier side of Russian River life. But, alas, he was another person I couldn’t ask about Angelina. Not straight out. No, on a matter like this my chances were better with Rosa. Rosa would hate to think Angelina had seduced the girl she had once babysat. She wouldn’t want to believe that her daughter Katie’s high-school friend could be a poisoner. Rosa would be uncomfortable with it all, but she’d tell me.

  I drove on, pausing briefly to glance at the first two of the Nine Warriors. The giant redwoods stood a hundred yards apart. Once, when I had stood between them and looked up, they had appeared to be identical. “The Lord’s candles,” Father Calloway had called them.

  The fourth of the Warriors was opposite the Fortimiglios’ drive. I pulled into the driveway, parked next to the kitchen steps, and got out.

  But Rosa was not home. Rosa, Donny informed me, had gone to Steelhead Lodge.

  But when I got to Steelhead Lodge, she wasn’t there either. I was beginning to wonder if anyone was where they were supposed to be today.

  “You just missed her,” Bert Lucci told me. “I kind of hoped she’d come out to help me. I had the sheriff’s men here all morning, and they didn’t make things any better. Now I’ve got to do something with this place.” Bert leaned back against the veranda railing. He was dressed in his usual work clothes, but today they seemed too big, as if he had withered within them.

  “It must have been a hard night for you,” I said.

  “Worst I can remember. You know Edwina and I had our outs. But I would never have wanted her to die like that.”

  “Did the sheriff tell you what kind of poison it was?”

  “The sheriff didn’t tell me anything. He and his men just barged around like
I wasn’t even here. They looked over this; they eyeballed that. After all the dusting and picture taking they did last night, there was nothing in the whole place they didn’t get some kind of picture of.”

  “Well, what were they looking at today, then?”

  “They took everything in the kitchen for starts. I don’t know how they expect me to eat. The spices, I could see that. But the chopping board and the spatulas, and my own dishes that Edwina wouldn’t allow on the table! What are they going to do with those?” He pushed himself up and began to pace.

  “Then they went over the table on the stage like they were looking through a microscope. And they were just about to start on the podium when I told them that no one used it.” He swallowed. “Edwina didn’t live long enough to make her great pronouncement.”

  Edwina’s announcement! I forgot all about that. And that was the whole point of her bringing the Slugfest here. “Bert, what was she going to say?”

  “Damned if I know.” He continued to pace in a halfhearted way. It was obvious that the subject of Edwina’s announcement didn’t interest him at all. Her death and the lodge’s mess seemed about all he could deal with.

  “Surely they must have looked at the podium.” I couldn’t imagine Sheriff Wescott letting something like that pass unchecked.