by Don Winslow
It takes her two minutes to come to the door, and Neal wonders if she’s used the time to rouse Terry. Which would be fine, because in that case he’s on his way out the bathroom window and into the waiting arms of Boone’s guys, who looked as if they’re entirely capable of handling a fugitive.
Sandra’s dressed, though, in a sweatshirt and jeans, and doesn’t look sleepy. She’s pretty, a spray of freckles across an aquiline nose and strong, dark eyebrows. She has a cup of coffee in her left hand and tries to look and sound surprised at someone being at her door at this hour. “Yes?”
“Ms. Sartini,” Neal says, “is Terry Maddux inside?”
“Who?”
“Let’s not play this,” Neal says. “Last night you drove Terry Maddux to a heroin dealer’s apartment so he could score.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
“Can we come in?” Neal asks.
“No,” she says. “Now, get out of here or I’ll call the police.”
“Yeah, do that,” Neal says. “We can all talk about you harboring a fugitive. And if Terry’s in there and he’s holding, you’ll lose your nurse’s license. Or you can just let us come in, we’ll take a quick look, and if he’s not here, we’ll be out of your hair. And we won’t see anything that’s not Terry.”
She steps aide and lets them in.
It’s a small one-bedroom. A bar divides the narrow kitchen from the living room. The bedroom door is open.
“Can we go in?” Boone asks.
Sandra shrugs. “You’re here.”
Neal edges to the side of the door, and Boone stands a few feet behind because Terry’s other play would be to wait until Neal steps through the door, smash into him and try to run over him and out the front door.
But Neal doesn’t think that Boone is going to let anyone run over him, and they’ve already agreed that Neal would do most of the talking and Boone would handle the physical stuff, if it came to that.
Neal hopes it doesn’t.
He’s never liked the physical stuff.
“Terry, if you’re in there, just come out,” Neal says. “I mean, let’s not do this, it’s freakin’ demeaning.”
No answer.
Neal steps into the bedroom.
Terry’s not there.
Not in the bed or under it, not in the small closet.
He’s not in the bathroom either, not in the shower.
Coming back into the bedroom, Neal sees that the window is closed and locked, but Sandra could have done that after Terry went out. If that were the case, though, Tide would have called already.
Neal goes back into the living room.
“Happy now?” Sandra asks. She’s sitting on the couch.
“There’s nothing happy about any of this,” Neal says. “When did you last see him? When you got scared and drove out of the parking lot up in Carlsbad? Or did he call you to pick him up and take him someplace?”
“I don’t have to answer any of your questions,” she says.
Neal sits down next to her and says, “Please tell me you haven’t taken drugs from the hospital for him.”
“I wouldn’t do something like that.”
“But he asked you to,” Neal says.
Sandra shrugs. Of course he did, he’s a junkie.
“Did Terry do that to you?” Neal asks.
“Do what?” she asks, reflectively touching her neck.
“Those bruises under your hair,” Neal says. “When you told him no, he lost his shit and choked you. Then he got all sorry, begged forgiveness and said if you loved him, the least you could do was give him a ride to his dealer’s. He promised it would be his last fix before he turned himself in and got clean.”
“How did you know?” she asked.
“My mother was a junkie,” Neal says. “I’ve known junkies my whole life. The more interesting question, Sandra, is what you do now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you have choices,” Neal says. “You can keep your mouth shut and let him stay out there until he overdoses, or you can tell me where you dropped him so maybe we can find him alive instead of cold and dead with a needle in his arm.”
Neal doesn’t say another word while she thinks it over. He just looks at her.
It takes a minute, but then she says, “I dropped him off at the Longboard.”
Neal looks at Boone, who says, “It’s a surf bar in Pacific Beach.”
“Why did he want to go there?”
“He said a friend owned it.”
“Brad Schaeffer,” Boone says. “‘Shafe.’ He and Terry go back.”
Neal hands Sandra one of Duke’s personal cards. “If Terry gets hold of you, will you call this number?”
She says, “I love him.”
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Neal asks, standing up. “If you ever have a problem, Duke Kasmajian owes you a solid.”
Then he hands her another card. “This is a police lieutenant named Lubesnick. He’s in a different unit, but he’ll get you to the right person so you can file charges for assault.”
“I won’t do that.”
“He beat up another woman,” Neal says. “He choked you. Does someone have to die before one of you does the right thing? Think about that, huh?”
In the courtyard Boone says, “You were really good in there.”
“I read a lot of books,” Neal says.
They drive over to the Longboard, just a block and a half inland from the beach on Thomas Avenue.
Your basic surfer hangout—beer by the pitcher, shots, nachos, tacos, wings, a decent burger. Lately Shafe has reluctantly given in and taken on the craftbeer craze. Boone has been to the Longboard maybe a thousand times.
It’s closed now, at seven-thirty in the morning, no signs of life at all.
“Tell me about Shafe and Terry,” Neal says.
“Early on, they rode a lot of big waves together,” Boone says. “Todos Santos, Cortes Bank, Mavericks. Terry made a career of it, traveled the world with industry sponsorships, made all the magazine covers, the videos. Shafe didn’t.”
“Why was that?”
“No one is as talented as Terry was,” Boone says. “And Shafe is a California guy. Wanted to stay close to his bar business and his local breaks. And he was a devoted father. He had four sons and didn’t want to miss their surf tournaments and Little League games. So Terry went on to be a star, Shafe stayed here as a local legend.”
“Is he bitter?”
“Not about that.”
“About what?” Neal asks.
“His oldest son, Travis,” Boone says, “died of a heroin overdose three years ago. Shafe never got over it.”
“Who would?” Neal asks.
Boone went to the funeral.
It was brutal.
“With that background,” Neal says, “why would Maddux think that Schaeffer would put him up?”
Boone tells him the story—back at Mavericks, years ago, Shafe took a head-first wipeout off a thirty-foot face. Shafe was out of it, dazed, disoriented, tumbling in the cold black water, unable to figure out which end was up or climb his leash to the surface. And the wave was speeding him toward a sunken reef where the impact would kill him if he didn’t drown first.
Terry drove his Jet Ski right into the impact zone. With the wave looming above him like a heavy blade poised to crush him, he rode in and scooped Shafe up as the wave crashed over them. Then Terry reappeared, riding out of the tube with Shafe on the sled behind him.
An absolutely classic, epic Terry Maddux move.
“So Schaeffer thinks he owes Maddux his life,” Neal says.
“He doesn’t think it,” Boone says. “He does.”
“Where does Schaeffer live?” Neal asks.
“Over on Cass,” Boone says. “But I don’t think Terry is there. Ellen—Shafe’s wife—banned him from the house. She didn’t want a drug user around her kids.”
“Ouch.”
“Yup.�
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“So either Terry’s in the bar,” Neal says. “Or . . . would Schaeffer drive him to Mexico?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Neal sighs. “If Maddux got money from the jewelry theft, he’s gone. We lost him.”
They sit outside the bar anyway, just in case Terry is still in there and pops his head out.
But if Boone knows Terry, he’s already on a beach in Rosarita, sipping on a margarita and grinning about what assholes we are.
Terry always comes out the other side of the tube.
Duke gets a phone call.
Sam Kassem owns one of the largest jewelry stores in San Diego, and now he says, “Those pieces you red-flagged. A guy came in this morning trying to sell them. My clerk told him to hold on, went into the back room and called the police. When he came back, the guy was gone.”
“What did the police say?”
“Nothing they can do, because the items haven’t been reported stolen.”
“Was it Terry Maddux?” Duke asks.
“I don’t know who that is,” Kassem says. “We got him on the surveillance camera, though.”
“Hey, Sam, thanks, huh?” Duke says. “I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Duke looks at the video that Kassem sends. It shows a white male around six-one, in his late forties or early fifties, closely cropped black hair, wearing a black denim shirt and jeans.
It’s not Terry.
But it’s still good news, because it means that Maddux hasn’t turned the merch into the cash he needs to get far away.
Duke sends the vid-clip to Boone’s phone.
Because it’s a winter morning, Boone can find a parking spot in the small lot on Neptune Place at the bluffs above Windansea Beach.
It’s an iconic place, one of those rare locales with a pedigree both in literature and in surf lore. Tom Wolfe made it famous in his book, The Pump House Gang, but long before he did, the old-school guys made it known as a center of surfing in San Diego.
The old pump house is long gone, many of the old-schoolers have passed, but the reputation remains.
Terry Maddux surfed here.
Some of his old friends still do.
Only the hard-core are out today.
It’s cold, the wind out of the northwest, with a large swell building. The ocean is a dark, slate gray, just a shade darker than the cloudy sky. The surfers who are out are in heavy winter wet suits with booties, some wearing hoods.
Others don’t go at all. Some of the old-timers are content to watch the youngbloods and just stand around and talk story. It’s axiomatic that the older you are, the colder the water gets. Old men remember summers, not winters.
Boone doesn’t get a board out of the van.
He pulls his hood up over his head and walks down the dirt path to the beach, where, as he expected, a gaggle of old-timers are standing around. Some are geared up and have boards, as if they’re about to go in. Others haven’t bothered with the pretense.
Boone gets a gruff but friendly greeting.
He’s from the next generation down, but he has a good rep, so they show him some respect. Everyone on this coast knows that Boone Daniels can flat-out surf, he’s made his bones, so they don’t give him the hard time they can give to a stranger.
One of them who has a rep for giving newbies a hard time is Brad Schaeffer.
Shafe is old-school. His black hair, shorn close to his head, has a lot of silver in it now, but the man is muscled, like taut rope, and tattooed. If you’re looking for a sheriff at Windansea, Schaeffer is your guy. He keeps the interlopers away and the locals in line.
He’s not going out today, but Boone is damn sure he’ll be going out tomorrow.
When it’s bigger.
“You shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing,” Shafe says. “Selling out a brother for money.”
“He’s jamming Duke for three hundred thou,” Boone says.
Duke has bailed Shafe out more than once. When Shafe drinks, he can get aggro. Hell, when Shafe doesn’t drink, he can get aggro. He’s gotten into fights in his own bar, he’s gotten into fights just a few feet from where they’re standing, when he thought a newcomer was overstepping his bounds. You don’t want to fight with Brad Schaeffer, Boone knows. It usually doesn’t end well.
Shafe says, “Duke can take the hit.”
“Do you know where Terry is?” Boone asks.
“No,” Shafe says. “And if I did, I sure as shit wouldn’t tell you.”
They stand quietly for a few seconds, and Boone can feel Shafe seething. Then Boone says, “Shafe, there’s video of you trying to lay off shit that Terry stole.”
“Maybe he didn’t steal it, maybe it was a gift.”
“If you thought that was true,” Boone says, “you wouldn’t have bugged out of the store. Your good friend Terry is putting you in the way of a felony beef. He’ll leave you in the soup to save his own ass.”
“He pulled me out of the soup.” Shafe’s eyes go dark. “So get the fuck out of here before you get yourself in a jam.”
Boone doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t move, either. If you back away from Shafe, you only provoke a charge. But now Shafe’s buddies, loyal members of his crew, start to slide over, standing at the edge of the conversation, ready to jump in if Shafe needs them.
So they all can hear, Shafe says loudly, “Terry is a good guy.”
Boone asks, “Do you know that he beats women?”
Maybe you do know, Boone thinks. Maybe you know and don’t care.
Maybe they all know.
It pisses him off.
“You’re hiding him in your bar,” Boone says. “Did you score for him, too?”
“You’re pushing it, Daniels.”
“You of all people know what heroin is,” Boone says. “Give him up, maybe he can get the help he needs.”
“In prison?” Shafe asks.
“He’ll be alive anyway.”
He regrets it the second he says it, because he didn’t mean it the way it came out, like a reference to Shafe’s son.
Shafe swings, a big looping right at Boone’s jaw. Boone easily blocks it, but the left lands hard into his stomach. The next right hits him in the left shoulder and numbs his arm so he’s late blocking the same right fist crashing into the side of his face. Boone reels back and tries to stay upright, but Shafe sweeps his right ankle and Boone goes down.
They’re on him like a pack.
Kicking, stomping, cursing.
Boone brings his forearms up to cover his head and kicks up with both legs to keep them at bay, but he can’t cover 360 degrees, so he’s taking some damage. He tries to get to his feet, but kicks drive him back down, and then Shafe, standing over him, lurches down with a right punch with the intent to cave his face in. Boone turns his head, and the fist lands in the sand beside his face. Boone grabs the arm and pulls Shafe close to him so he can’t get leverage for a heavy punch and so he can be used as a shield, but kicks still come into his ribs under Shafe.
Then it stops, and Boone feels the weight coming off him and looks up to see Tide lifting Shafe like a derrick and Dave standing there with his hands out in front of him as though he’s asking if any of them want to go.
None of them do.
They back away.
Dave helps Boone to his feet. “You okay?”
“Better now.”
Shafe looks at Boone with sheer hatred. “I didn’t buy him dope.”
“Tell him to turn himself in,” Boone says.
Dave helps him back up to the parking lot.
Adriana presses a washcloth filled with ice cubes up to Boone’s swollen cheek.
Boone feels like . . . well, like he had the shit beaten out of him. It could have been worse, a lot worse, if Dave and Tide hadn’t come along. Neal Carey, who was watching the Longboard until they came to relieve him, told them where Boone had gone, and they thought they’d better get up there in case he’d gotten himself into
trouble.
Carey had stayed by the bar.
“Yeah?” Dave had asked. “You’ll be okay?”
“I have a book,” Carey said.
They left him in Dave’s car parked across the street from the bar.
Now Duke looks at Boone’s face and says, “They did a real number on you.”
“I sort of had it coming,” Boone says. “I said something I shouldn’t have.”
“I’ll call the police,” Adriana says. “You should press charges.”
Boone tells her not to.
“It might put some pressure on Schaeffer,” Adriana says, “to give Terry up.”
“If he’s not going to do it for fencing stolen property, he won’t do it for this,” Duke says. “Anyway, Boone’s not going to violate some weird surfer code of honor.”
“No, Boone isn’t,” Boone says.
“So now what?” Dave asks.
“Call the police,” Adriana says again. “Have them get a warrant, go into the Longboard and get him.”
“I want to get him,” Duke says. He takes a cold cigar from his shirt pocket and chomps on it. “I don’t like having one of my people beaten up.”
“I’m okay,” Boone says.
“That’s your opinion,” Duke says. “You’re going to the E-Room, get yourself checked out.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are if you want to get paid,” Duke says. He looks at Dave. “Can you drive him over there?”
“Sure thing.”
They all stand there.
“Like maybe now?” Duke asks.
San Diego, he thinks.
A city where virtually no one honks a horn.
On his way out, Boone asks, “What are you going to do about Maddux?”
“Find him,” Duke says.
Terry Maddux is in that bar, he thinks. Forty years in this business, I can feel it. He’s in there, he’s jonesing and getting more and more desperate. The train station, the bus depot and the airport are blocked. The San Diego surf community is tight, and the word of Boone’s stomping will get out. A few people will approve of it, but most won’t, because Boone Daniels is loved here. So a lot of doors that might have been open to Terry will be closed in his face.
Terry is trapped, and he knows it.
And now he also knows that we know where he is. The thing now is to keep putting pressure on him so he feels forced to run.