by Don Winslow
He was a hero.
Maybe a saint.
Then Corey Blasingame killed him.
10
It happened outside The Sundowner.
Which makes what happened all the worse, because the restaurant-bar-hangout is an icon of the San Diego surf scene. Faded photos of great local surfers riding their waves decorate its walls; famous surfboards that have provided some of those rides hang from its ceilings.
It goes beyond memorabilia, though. The Sundowner stands for the brotherhood—and, increasingly, the sisterhood—of surfing. A hangout like The Sundowner stands for the surf ethic—peace, friendship, tolerance, individuality—an overall philosophy that people sharing a common passion are, indeed, a community. In short, everything that Kelly Kuhio taught by example.
In Pacific Beach, that community gathers in The Sundowner. To share a meal, a drink, some stories, some laughs. From time to time, a few tourists might come in and get overrefreshed, or some chucklehead from east of the 5 might walk in looking for trouble—which is where unofficial bouncers such as Boone, Dave, or Tide might be asked to intervene—but surfers never cause problems in The Sundowner. Sure, a surfer might have a few too many beers and get silly-stupid and have to be carried out by his buddies, a guy might yack on the floor (see Mai Tai Tuesdays), a boy might try to surf a table and end up in the e room for a few stitches, but violence just doesn’t happen.
Well, didn’t used to.
The ugly, painful truth is that violence has been seeping into the surf community for some time, really since the mid-eighties, when the drug-blissed hippie surfer era gave way to something a little edgier. Over the years, grass gave way to coke, and coke gave way to crack, crack to speed, speed to meth. And meth is a violent fucking drug.
The other thing was overpopulation—too many people wanting a place in the wave and not enough wave to accommodate them; too many cars looking for a place to park and not enough spaces.
A new word crept into surf jargon.
Localism.
Easy to understand—surfers who lived near a certain break and surfed it their whole lives wanted to defend their turf against newcomers who threatened to crowd them out of a piece of water they considered their home —but it was an ugly thing.
Locies started to put up warning signs: “If you don’t live here, don’t surf here.” Then they began to vandalize strangers’ cars—soap the bodies, slash the tires, shatter the windshields. Then it got directly physical, with the locies actually beating up the newcomers—in the parking places, on the beach, even in the water.
Which, to surfers such as Boone, was sacrilege.
You didn’t fight in the water. You didn’t threaten, throw punches, beat people up.
You surfed.
If a guy jumped your wave, you set him straight, but you didn’t foul a sacred place with violence.
“Fighting in the lineup,” Dave opined one Dawn Patrol, “would be like stealing in church.”
“You go to church?” Hang Twelve asked.
“No,” Dave answered.
“Have you ever been to church?” High Tide asked. He actually has—since he left his gangbanging days behind, Tide goes to church every Sunday.
“No,” Dave answered. “But I knew this nun once—”
“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Tide said.
“Well, she wasn’t still a nun when I knew her—”
“That I believe,” Boone said. “So what about her?”
“She used to talk about it.”
“She used to talk about stealing in church?” Johnny Banzai asked. “Christ, no wonder she was an ex-nun.”
“I’m just saying,” Dave persisted, “that fighting while surfing is . . . is . . .”
“‘Sacrilegious’ is the word you’re searching for,” Johnny said.
“You know,” Dave answered, “you really play into a lot of Asian stereotypes. Better vocabulary, better in school, higher SAT scores . . .”
“I do have a better vocabulary,” Johnny said, “I was better in school, and I did have higher SAT scores.”
“Than Dave?” Tide asked. “You didn’t have to be Asian, you just had to show up.”
“I had other priorities,” Dave said.
Codified in the List Of Things That Are Good, an inventory constantly under discussion and revision during the Dawn Patrol, and which conversely necessitated the List Of Things That Are Bad, which, as currently constituted, went:
1. No surf
2. Small surf
3. Crowded surf
4. Living east of the 5
5. Going east of the 5
6. Wet-suit rash
7. Sewage spills
8. Board racks on BMWs
9. Tourists on rented boards
10. Localism
Items 9 and 10 were controversial.
Everyone admitted to having mixed feelings about tourists on rented boards, especially the Styrofoam longboards. On the one hand, they were truly a pain in the ass, messing up the water with their inept wipeouts, ignorance, and lack of surf courtesy. On the other hand, they were an endless source of amusement, entertainment, and employment, seeing as how it was Hang’s job to rent them said boards, and Dave’s to jerk them out of the water when they attempted to drown themselves.
But it was item 10, localism, that sparked serious debate and discussion.
“I get localism,” Tide said. “I mean, we don’t like it when strangers intrude on the Dawn Patrol.”
“We don’t like it,” Johnny agreed, “but we don’t beat them up. We’re broly.”
“You can’t own the ocean,” Boone insisted, “or any part of it.”
But he had to admit that even in his lifetime he had witnessed the gradual crowding out of his beloved surf breaks, as the sport gained in popularity and became cultural currency. It seemed like everyone was a surfer these days, and the water was crowded. The weekends were freaking ridiculous, and Boone was tempted sometimes to take Saturdays and Sundays off, there were so many (mostly bad) surfers hitting the waves.
It didn’t matter, though; it was just something you had to tolerate. You couldn’t stake out a piece of water like it was land you’d bought. The great thing about the ocean was that it wasn’t for sale, you couldn’t buy it, own it, fence it off—hard as the new luxury hotels that were appearing on the waterside like skin lesions tried to block off paths to the beaches and keep them “private.” The ocean, in Boone’s opinion, was the last stand of pure democracy. Anyone—regardless of race, color, creed, economic status, or the lack thereof—could partake of it.
So he found localism understandable but ultimately wrong.
A bad thing.
A malignantly bad thing, because more and more often, over the past few years, Boone, Dave, Tide, and Johnny all found themselves playing peacemaker, intervening in disputes out on the water that threatened to break into fights. What had been a rare event became commonplace: preventing some locies from hammering an interloper.
There was that time right at PB. It wasn’t the Dawn Patrol, it was a Saturday afternoon so the water was crowded with locals and newcomers. It was tense out on the line, too many surfers trying to get in the same waves, and then one of the locals just went off. This newbie had cut him off on his line, forcing him to bail, and he sloshed through the whitewater and went after the guy. Worse, his buddies came in behind him.
It would have been serious, a bad beat-down, except Dave was on the tower and Johnny was in the shallows playing with his kids. Johnny got there first and got between the aggro locies and the dumb newbie and tried to talk some sense. But the locies weren’t having it, and it looked like it was on when Dave came up, and then Boone and Tide, and the Dawn Patrol combo plate got things settled down.
But Boone and the other sheriffs from the Dawn Patrol weren’t at every break, and the ugly face of localism started to scowl at a lot of places. You started to see bumper stickers proclaiming “This Is Protected Territory,” and the owners of those c
ars—too often fueled by meth and beer—felt entitled to enforce the edict. Certain breaks up and down the California coast became virtual “no go” zones—even the surf reports warned “foreigners” to stay clear of those breaks.
What evolved were virtual gangs claiming ocean turf.
It was ridiculous, Boone thought. Stupid. Everything that surfing isn’t. Yeah, but it was.
A scar on the body oceanic, even if Boone didn’t want to look at it.
But he never expected to see it in The Sundowner.
The Sundowner is old school. Go in there, you’ll find guys from the Dawn Patrol, from the Gentlemen’s Hour, surfers from the pro tour, out-of-towners on a pilgrimage to a surf mecca. Everyone is welcome at The Sundowner.
Maybe Boone should have seen it coming. The signs were all there, literally, because he started to see them in the windows of other joints in Pacific Beach, reading “No Caps. No Gang Colors.”
Gang colors?!
Freaking gang colors on Garnet Avenue?
Yeah, and it was a problem. The past few years, gangs started to come to PB. Gangs from Barrio Logan and City Heights, but also local gangs, surf gangs— surf freaking gangs —claimed clubs and whole blocks as their partying turf and defended them against other gangs. More and more bars began to hire full-time professional bouncers and security, and the streets of laid-back, surf-happy PB got sketchy at night.
But that couldn’t happen at The Sundowner.
Yeah, except it did.
11
Petra slides into the booth across from Boone.
He pretends to study the menu, which is ridiculous because Boone has had breakfast here almost every morning for the past ten years, and always orders the same thing.
The waitress, Not Sunny, is a tall blonde, leggy and pretty, and Petra wonders if there’s some sort of secret breeding facility in California where they just crank out these creatures, because there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. When the original Sunny left her job at The Sundowner to go off on the professional surfers’ tour, the new tall, blond, and leggy replacement appeared immediately, in a seamless progression of California Girls.
Nobody seems to know her real name, nor does she seem bothered that she has been tabbed Not Sunny, doomed to exist in Sunny’s shadow, as it were. Indeed, Not Sunny is a pale version of her namesake; on the surface as pretty, but lacking Sunny’s depth, intelligence, and genuine warmth.
Now Not Sunny stares at Boone and says, “Eggs machaca with jack cheese, corn and flour tortillas, split the black beans and home fries, coffee with two sugars.”
Boone pretends to study the menu for an alternative, then says, “Just flour.”
“Huh?”
“Just flour tortillas, not corn.”
Not Sunny takes a moment to digest this change in her world, then turns to Petra and asks, “And for you?”
“Do you have iced tea?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’ll have an iced tea, please,” Petra says. “Lemon, no sugar.”
“Lemonnnnn . . . no sugar,” Not Sunny says to herself as she walks away to place the order, which, in fact, the cook had thrown on the grill the second he saw Boone come through the door.
“Oh, put the menu down,” Petra says to Boone.
Boone puts the menu down and looks at her. It isn’t a nice look.
“Why are you so angry?” she asks.
“Kelly Kuhio was one of the finest people I ever knew,” Boone answers. “And your piece-of-shit client killed him.”
“He did,” Petra says. “I’m by no means convinced, however, that he’s guilty of first-degree murder.”
Boone shrugs. It’s a slam dunk—if the DA can put Corey on death row, good for her. Mary Lou Baker is a tougher-than-nails veteran prosecutor who doesn’t lose a lot of cases, and she is coming hard on this one.
Hell, yes, she is, because the community is outraged.
The killing made the headlines every day for two weeks. Every development in the case makes the paper. And the radio talk show jocks are all over it, demanding the max.
San Diego wants Blasingame in the hole.
“I’ll tell you what I am convinced of, though,” Petra says. “I’m convinced that this city has formed a collective lynch mob for Corey Blasingame because he’s bad for the tourist industry upon which the economy depends. San Diego wants families to come to Pacific Beach and spend money, which they’re not likely to do if the area gets a reputation for violence. So the city is going to make an example of him.”
“Yeah?” Boone asks. “You have any other kook theories?”
“Since you asked,” Petra says, “I think you’re so angry because this stupid tragedy has shattered your image of surfing as some sort of pristine moral universe of its own, removed from the rest of this imperfect world where people do horrible things to one another for no apparent reason. Poor, stupid Corey Blasingame has spray-painted his violent graffiti all over your cozy Utopia and you can’t deal with it.”
“You mind if I sit up, Doc?” Boone asks. “Or should I just lie down on the floor, seeing as how there’s no couch?”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will,” Boone says. He cranes his neck to see Not Sunny leaning against the bar and says, “Make that to go, please?”
Petra says, “Coward.”
Boone stands up, digs in his jeans pocket, and comes out with a couple of crumpled dollar bills that he tosses on the table as a tip. Chuck Halloran, the owner, won’t allow Boone to pay an actual tab.
“No, I mean it,” Petra says. “Not only are you afraid of taking a hard look at yourself, you’re also afraid that if you take this case, all your surfing buddies will think less of you and throw you out of the fraternity. I wouldn’t have thought it of you, but you leave me with no other choice.”
“On second thought,” Boone says to Not Sunny, “just cancel the order.”
He walks out the door. Not Sunny comes over to the table. “Do you still want the iced tea?”
Petra sighs. “Oh, why not?”
Not Sunny sets the glass on the table.
We have something in common, Petra thinks.
We’re both not Sunny.
12
The night that Kelly Kuhio was killed, PB was rolling with tourists and locals out for a good time. The bars were full and spilling out onto the sidewalks, the beer and wine were flowing, music was pulsing from the clubs and cruising cars with the bass turned up.
Dave and Tide were in The Sundowner, hogueing a platter full of fish tacos, just cooling it out after a day-long session. Dave was burned out from a double shift; Tide was bored from a week of supervising bone-dry storm drains. They were sitting at their table, speculating on where Sunny might be at that moment, somewhere in the world, when the aggro started.
Yelling coming from the bar.
Corey Blasingame was a local kid, nineteen or so, who usually surfed out at Rockpile. Corey could ride a wave, but that was about it—he had no flair, no skill that would distinguish him. Now he was sporting a shaved head and a hoodie in the middle of freaking summer, although the sleeves were cut off to reveal his tattoos.
He had three boys with him—domes also shaved, ripped T-shirts and hoodies, baggy cammie trunks over ankle-high Uggs—and there was some ridiculous crap going around about these guys glossing themselves the Rockpile Crew, how they charged themselves with keeping “law and order” at that La Jolla break, just up the road from Pacific Beach, how they kept the “foreigners” out of their water.
A surf gang in La Jolla. Totally goobed. You know, La Jolla? The richest place in America? Where grown men with silver hair shamelessly wear pink polo shirts? A gang? It was so funny you almost couldn’t laugh at it.
Tide did. When Boone brought up the ludicrous nature of a La Jolla gang during the Dawn Patrol, Tide said, “They got gangs in La Jolla. Doctor gangs, lawyer gangs, banker gangs. Those mean fuckers will rip you up, man, you don’t replace a divot.”
; “Art gallery gangs,” Dave added. “You don’t mess with them janes, you value your junk.”
Anyway, the Rockpile Crew was up front, demanding service that the bartender had refused because they were underage. They started yapping about it, arguing, chanting “Rockpile Crew,” and just generally being pains in the ass, disrupting the nice vibe of the evening. Chuck Halloran, the owner, looked out from behind the bar at Dave, like, can you give me a hand with this?
Kelly Kuhio was in a booth with some friends, and he started to get up. Dave saw this and waved him off, like, I got this. That was the thing, Boone thought later, after it all went south—Kelly wasn’t even involved in the hassle. He just sat in his booth drinking grapefruit juice and hitting some nachos. He had nothing to do with it.
For that matter, Boone had nothing to do with it, either. He was MIA from The Sundowner that night, on a date with Petra.
So it was Dave who got up from his chair and edged his way through the crowd to the bar and asked Corey, “What’s up?”
“What’s it to you?”
Dave looked at Corey’s eyes and he could see the kid was jacked up. Certainly on beers, but probably something more—meth or speed or something. The boy was hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, his fingers flexing. Still, Dave could also tell from the look in his eye that Corey didn’t really want a fight, that he was looking for a face-saving way to back down.
No problem, Dave thought. I’m all about the peace. Yeah, not really. Dave actually likes to go, but that’s not what Chuck needed at the moment, and anyway, K2 was in the house, and the man deplored violence. So Dave said, “Dude, you’re too cool to want to cost Chuck his license, right? And I don’t want to throw with you, you look tough, man.”
Corey smiled and it should have been over right there.
Except that one of Corey’s crew didn’t want it to be over.
Trevor Bodin was a punk. Unlike Corey, Trevor had the build to back it up. Trevor did his time in the gym and in the dojo, and he fancied himself some kind of mixed martial artist, always yapping about breaking into the Ultimate Fighting Championship.