Desperation Reef

Casey knows the Barrel will turn this fish into food for people, and approximately ten thousand dollars of revenue for the restaurant’s owners and workers. Bluefin tuna — kuro maguro in Japanese — is not only the world’s largest and most delicious tuna fish, it’s the most expensive by far. Casey as a child was astonished to be told by his mother that a bluefin tuna weighing 489 pounds had been recently caught and sold for $1.8 million in Japan’s Tsukiji fish market. In that instant young Casey — a good Laguna shore angler for bass and halibut — decided to hunt kuro maguro in his own backyard ocean, which was getting to be a real possibility down off San Clemente Island and its nearby Desperation Reef. Catch a fish. Make a million dollars.

When he backs down the ramp Casey swings his right arm over his seat back and turns for a full view of his target.

Moondance is fast to her ties, but Mae is not keeping vigil atop the ice-cooled hold as usual.

Which of course happens occasionally, sociable Lab that Mae is.

Casey cleans the magnificent fish at one of the marina basins, drawing a crowd.

“Come to the Barrel in Laguna, people,” he tells them. “This’ll be some of the best sashimi you’ve ever had.”

“My dad caught one bigger,” says a boy.

“Your dad is a great fisherman,” says Casey.

“I saw you surf giant waves on YouTube. You didn’t look scared.”

“I’m not scared. I’m hardcore, brah. Core doesn’t scare.”

By the time he’s gotten the slabs on ice and locked the big Yeti cooler in the king cab, Mae is still MIA.

She’s not at any of the cleaning stations, or hanging around the fish market, or begging for food off the patio diners at the Harbor Café, as she sometimes does.

Not casing birds at the Bait Barge.

Or begging from tourists at the parking lot Clapping Circle, where Casey positions himself, and claps and hears not a clap but a squeaking sound like a dolphin. Since he was a kid, Casey has been drawn to this mystery, as is almost everyone. He’s tried for years to link this audio anomaly to God himself but hasn’t found a way. Why should God turn a clap into dolphin speak? Still in the Clapping Circle, Casey calls out Mae’s name, loudly.

No Mae.

Lynda, who runs the mini-mart, tells Casey she saw Mae trotting along with that chick from the Empress II and some of her crew. They had bags of deli food.

Casey’s gut drops to his feet.

“Headed into parking lot eleven,” she says.

Casey sees no sign of Mae, or Bette, on or about parking lot eleven, or any of the others, or the river, or the beach. He cups both hands to his face and yells out. A pit bull tugs on its leash and looks at him, ears perked.

Nerves bristling and his heart loping, Casey gets his binoculars from Moondance and makes the rounds again, hitting every place he’s seen Mae.

He covers Oceanside Harbor in long strides, stopping to glass the scores of boats moored in the marina, the half-day morning anglers disembarking Lucky 7, and the afternoon anglers boarding the Orca.

No Mae.

Some rough-looking hombres landing at a tie-up dock, but no Bette.

Fudge, man. Casey feels his pulse speeding up. He might be core and fearless on waves, as he bragged to the kid, but not when it comes to Mae hanging out with sharp-knifed finners.

Lieutenant Tim Kopf at the Coast Guard station is a buzz-cut guardsman in a spanking-white uniform. The diss at the harbor is Tim never leaves his office because his shirt will get dirty, but Casey has always found him polite and helpful. The gleaming cutter Point Tamarack sits at berth.

Kopf tells Casey he hasn’t seen Mae today, or Empress II since last week. The big ugly trawler moves around a lot, he says. Here today, gone tomorrow.

“But I did see some of her crew here this morning,” he says. “Early, coming through lot eleven.”

“Bette?”

“Yeah, Bette Wu.”

“Toward the marina, or from it?” Casey asks.

“Toward the marina,” says the lieutenant.

Arriving early, thinks Casey, and departing at lunch, with Mae in tow?

“Why not arrest her, Tim? Or call the sheriffs? You saw my posts.”

“On the seas it’s up to Fish and Wildlife. Coast Guard has bigger fish to fry. But those videos of yours sure got everybody’s attention. I didn’t expect those people to show their faces around here for a while. They’re probably lying low off San Clemente Island, or maybe they went home.”

“Where’s she berthed, Empress II?” Casey asks, his impatience and his spirits both rising.

“My whole point, Casey, I don’t know. But she’s supplying restaurants up and down the coast. Why?”

“Because she shows up here the same time Mae disappears, that’s why. She threatened me that day.”

The ugly thought that some people kidnap dogs for ransom descends on Casey like a cold wave. Mostly those funny-looking Hollywood dogs, but why not a beautiful Lab like Mae? He reminds himself that Mae has a locator chip. That she has a tag with his phone number on it. And he reminds himself that Mae will follow almost anyone who offers her food.