by Don Winslow
Now Trevor opened his piehole to say, “You don’t want to mess with us, man.”
It was all too predictable that Bodin would want to keep this flame burning. Unlike if he were in a UFC octagon, he was surrounded by his boys who could pull his nutsack out of the fire if he got in trouble, so Trevor was real brave and mouthy.
“What’s this have to do with you?” Dave asked him.
“What’s it have to do with you?” Trevor answered.
Which was, like, a mistake.
Dave stepped forward and just kept walking, moving the guy toward the door. Tide did the same with Corey and the two other Rockpile Crew, and not one of them, not Corey or Trevor or Billy or Dean Knowles, did a damn thing about it. They didn’t push back, they didn’t throw, they just let themselves get ushered out onto the sidewalk.
Which was good thinking for morons. They were looking at two Pacific Beach legends, and the legends wanted them out of there, and they were just smart enough to go. But not smart enough to keep their mouths shut. It was almost comical, Corey hopping so he could yell over Tide’s shoulder, “Rockpile Crew! Rockpile Crew!”
“Whatever,” Dave said. “Move along.”
“You don’t own the sidewalk,” Trevor said.
“You want to see what I own?” Dave asked.
Trevor didn’t. Neither did the rest of the crew. They strutted up Garnet, chanting, “Rockpile Crew! Rockpile Crew!”
Dave and Tide went back to the bar and laughed about it.
Nobody was laughing about it the next day.
Because Kelly Kuhio was in a coma.
13
Boone walks straight to the beach.
Where he always goes when he’s pissed off, sad, or confused. Looks to the ocean for an answer, or at least solace.
Pete’s full of shit, he thinks as he looks at the torpid sea. Classic defense attorney bullshit. It’s always somebody else’s fault, not the poor criminal’s. He’s just a victim of society. “Lynch mob” my aching ass. Four guys going to a man’s house and beating him to death, that’s a lynch mob.
Except Pete’s not some knee-jerk, NPR-addicted, Volvo-driving, crunchy granola, left-wing type. She enthuses about the Laffer curve, thinks litterers should get jail time, and owns a gun, for Chrissakes. Hell, if she wasn’t getting paid to do the opposite, she’d be out to hang little Corey from the yardarm.
The beach is crowded today, mostly with families. Lots of kids running around, and they don’t seem to care that there’s no surf. The mommies and daddies sure like it, they can relax and let the kiddies ride the boogie boards in the tiny whitewash. Other kids are tossing Frisbees, playing paddleball, making sand castles. A few women are asleep in beach chairs, paperback books lying open on their laps.
Up on Crystal Pier people are strolling around, enjoying the view, the sunshine, the blue water. A few fishermen cluster at the end of the pier, their lines stretched down into the water, pretty much just an excuse to be out there on a day when the fish aren’t biting. Below the pier a few lunchtime surfers are out, more from habit than hope that any decent wave is going to come along. Still, it’s better than sitting in the office cubicle waiting for the bell to sound again and summon them back to whatever shit is waiting on their desks.
Pete’s right about the lynching thing, Boone reluctantly concedes. The papers have been full of editorials and letters demanding strong reaction to the Kuhio murder, and the radio talk shows have been hammering the deterioration of Pacific Beach, the callers and hosts screaming for a “crackdown.”
So dumb-ass Corey takes some of that weight. Is that so unfair? He killed someone.
Case closed.
Or is it? Was it the punch that killed Kelly, or the sidewalk? You’ve been in a few scuffles yourself, thrown a couple of punches. What if the addressee of one of those had fallen backward, hit his head on something unforgiving that canceled his reservation? Would that have made you guilty of murder, justifiably put you in a box the rest of your life?
It depends.
On what?
On the very shit that Alan Burke wants you to look into. You know the game—a top-notch trial lawyer such as Alan is too smart to try for an acquittal, he’ll try to get the jury to go for a lesser charge, and he’ll angle his case toward the sentencing hearing. That’s if he takes it to trial at all—he’ll probably try to find some facts that might persuade the DA to cut the kid a deal instead.
Boone looks back out at the ocean, where a flock of pelicans skim over the surface. A weak breeze wafts a scent of salt air and suntan lotion.
Is Pete right? Boone wonders. Is that what has you so jacked up? That this murder confirmed something you’ve known for a long time but didn’t want to admit—that surfing isn’t the Utopia you always wanted it to be? Needed it to be?
He decides to see his priest.
14
Dave the Love God sits atop the lifeguard tower.
Boone walks to the base of the tower and asks, “Permission to come aboard?”
“Granted.”
Boone climbs up the ladder and sits down next to Dave, who doesn’t so much as turn his head to acknowledge his presence. Dave stares steadily out at the water, the shallows of which are packed with tourists, and doesn’t take his eyes off it. Sure, the ocean is placid, but Dave knows from experience how quickly tedium can turn to terror. While the running joke among the Dawn Patrol is that Dave uses the tower as a vantage point to scope turista women—which he does—the actual truth is that when Dave is on duty and people are in the water, he is deadly serious about his job.
It’s the rule that Boone’s dad drilled into him, the rule that they all grew up with:
Never turn your back on a wave.
Never turn your back on the absence of a wave, either, because the second you do, a real thundercrusher will rise out of nowhere and smack you down. The ocean may look like one thing on the surface, but there’s always something different happening underneath. That something could start a thousand miles away and then be headed toward you and you’ll never know about it until it happens.
Dave’s been on duty on a totally placid day when a freak rip comes in and takes a few swimmers out and then it’s on, and the few seconds it might have taken him to get over his surprise would have cost those people their lives. As it was, he wasn’t surprised, never surprised by the ocean, because, as much as we love her, she’s a treacherous bitch. Moody, mercurial, seductive, powerful, and deadly.
So Dave’s head never turns toward Boone as they talk. Both men look straight out at the water.
“Your take on something?” Boone asks.
“You come seeking wisdom, Grasshopper?”
“Do you think,” Boone says, “that we’re a smug, self-anointed elite that can’t see past our own zinc-oxide-covered noses?”
Dave touches the bridge of his nose to check that the zinc oxide is still fresh. Then he says, “Sounds about right.”
“What I thought,” Boone says, getting up.
“That’s it?”
“Yup.”
“’Bye.”
“Thanks.”
“Nada.”
Boone walks up the beach.
15
Boone only knows what happened that night from the newspaper accounts and the usual beach-bongo telegram system of rumors that went around PB.
But here’s how it went.
Kelly Kuhio walked out of The Sundowner a little after midnight, stone-cold sober, on his way to his car in a parking lot on the corner.
He never made it.
Corey Blasingame—drunk, stoned, high on whatever—stepped out of the alley, backed by his crew, walked up to Kelly, and punched him.
Kelly fell backward and hit his head on the curb.
He never regained consciousness.
They unplugged him from life support three days later.
16
Petra sits and sips her tea.
Very unlike her, to sit and do nothing, but she�
�s sort of enjoying it, sitting and musing about Boone.
An odd man, she thinks. Simplistic on the surface, but extraordinarily complicated below. A maelstrom of contradictions beneath a placid-seeming sea. A Tarzan-like surfer boy who reads Russian novels at night. A devoted glutton of junk food without an ounce of body fat who can grill fish to a turn over an open fire. A philistine who, when jollied into it, can talk quite intelligently about art. A disillusioned cynic with barely concealed idealism. A man who will desperately sprint away from anything that resembles emotion, but a deeply sensitive soul who might simply be the kindest and gentlest man you’ve ever met.
And attractive, damn it, she thinks. And frustrating. They’ve been sort of dating for some three months now and he’s attempted nothing more than a quick, virtually chaste brush on the lips.
No, he’s been terribly well behaved, a real gentleman. Just two nights ago she had dragged him to a charity event at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and he showed up wearing a smart summer khaki suit, with a blue Perry Ellis shirt he certainly couldn’t afford, and had actually had his hair cut. He’d been wonderfully tolerant of all the chitchat, and even wandered around the gallery with her and made some sharp observations about some of the pieces, though none of them was a depiction of breaking waves or a wood-sided station wagon from the 1950s. And, in truth, he’d been absolutely charming to the other guests and the hosts, displaying a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the charity in question, and Petra had quite bristled at a colleague’s ladies’ room remark that her “boy toy cleaned up nicely.”
But he stood at her doorway later that night as if his feet were planted in the concrete, gave her a polite hug and a perfunctory kiss, and that was it.
Do I want more? she asks herself. Certainly in this day and age, and as a modern, liberated woman, if I wanted more I could go after it. I’m perfectly capable of making the first move.
So why don’t you? she asks.
Are you feeling the same ambivalence that he is? Because clearly he’s attracted to you, else why would he ask you out repeatedly, but he seems hesitant to take it to the next level. As are you, to be honest. Why is that? Is it because we know that we’re so different and it would therefore never work? Or is it because we both know in our heart of hearts that he’s not yet over Sunny?
Is that a “yet,” she wonders, or an “ever”?
And do I want him or not?
This attitude about Corey Blasingame certainly argues against it. How an intelligent person could take such a knee-jerk, “law and order,” vengeful, Dirty Harry, unenlightened stance . . .
17
There were paddle-outs for Kelly Kuhio all over the world, timed to go off at the same moment.
The one in San Diego was especially poignant.
They went out just before dawn to wait for the sun, as Kelly had for his morning meditations. Everyone brought a flower lei and tossed it into the water. Someone played a tune on the uke while someone else sang a song in Hawaiian, then a Buddhist monk said a prayer. Then anyone who wanted shared a memory or a thought about Kelly—his kindness, his superb skill, what he taught, how he was, his gentle humor, his strong compassion. There was some laughter and a lot of crying.
Boone didn’t say anything; he just fought to hold back his tears.
What impressed him the most were the black and Mexican kids who paddled out even though most of them couldn’t swim and looked scared shitless. Boone kept an eye on them to make sure they made it back okay, which they did.
They just wanted to pay their respects to the man.
Now Boone looks out at the same piece of water and remembers that day. He also remembers something that Kelly said to him one Saturday afternoon. Boone had been helping him keep a bunch of inner-city kids from drowning themselves while body-boarding down at La Jolla Shores, and a tired Boone asked Kelly why he went to all this trouble.
In his famously soft voice, Kelly answered, “You and I were lucky. At a very early age we found something that we loved, something that made our lives worth living. And I can’t but believe that if you think your own life is worth living, you value other people’s lives as well. Not everyone is as lucky as us, Boone.”
Now Boone argues with Kelly Kuhio’s memory.
Yeah, but Kelly, the kids you worked with had nothing. The kid who killed you is a rich, spoiled little bastard who grew up with every advantage.
Then he hears Kelly’s dry, humorous voice.
Apparently not, Boone.
So you’re going to help Corey Blasingame, Boone tells himself. Stop flailing around like a barney, you know you’re going to do it.
Because Kelly Kuhio would want you to.
18
Boone walks back into The Sundowner and sits down at the booth.
Not Sunny sighs and turns to the cook.
“Got it,” the cook says.
“Why me?” Boone asks. “Why not some other PI?”
“Because you know the scene,” Petra answers. “Another PI would take God knows how much time just to catch up on a learning curve that you already know.”
“Why did Alan take this case?” Boone snaps.
“Corey’s father is an old fraternity brother,” Petra says.
“So I take it he can handle Alan’s bill.”
Petra nods.
“Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief?”
“Real estate developer.”
“I hate him already.”
This is true. Generally speaking, Boone would have every real estate developer in Southern California put on a bus and driven over a cliff if it wouldn’t kill the bus driver. If he can find a bus-driving real estate developer, though, it’s on.
Not Sunny sets Boone’s plate down. He takes a big bite of the reheated machaca, then says, “I won’t help you go for an acquittal.”
“We’re not asking that,” Petra says. “Just a sentence that reflects the facts, that a drunken teenager threw one punch with unfortunately tragic consequences, as opposed to the mob mentality that’s driving an inflated first-degree murder charge. We don’t want to go to trial, Boone. Just try to get enough leverage that we can make a deal that resembles justice.”
They want to knock it down to voluntary manslaughter. Boone knows that the State of California has mandatory sentencing guidelines—a vol man plea bargain could get Corey anywhere from 24 to 132 months in prison. Figure it somewhere in the middle range.
“Tell Alan I’ll take the case.”
“Actually, I already did.”
Because with all your contradictions you’re really a very simple man, she thinks.
You’ll do the right thing.
She reaches over to his plate, tears off a piece of tortilla, and says mildly, “There’s a slight problem.”
Actually, six slight problems.
Five eyewitnesses.
And Corey’s confession.
19
Since starting to date Pete, Boone has gained an appreciation of British understatement.
If she says she’s “a bit peckish,” it means she’s starving; if she’s “a tad annoyed,” she’s really approaching near homicidal rage; and little Corey’s having “a slight problem” means he’s totally screwed.
Calling Corey’s confession “a slight problem” is like tagging a tsunami “a little wave,” Boone thinks as he looks over the file. It could sweep Corey off the beach and carry him all the way to San Quentin, never to be seen again.
Here’s what stupid Corey wrote:
“We were outside the bar waiting because we were pissed that they threw us out of there earlier. So I saw the guy coming out of the bar and decided to mess him up. I walked up to him and hit him with a Superman Punch.”
A “Superman Punch”? Boone asks himself. What the hell is a “Superman Punch”?
“I saw his lights go out before he hit the ground. Other than that, I have nothing to say.”
“Other than that”? Boone wonders. Other than that, you moronic dwe
eb? Other than admitting to premeditation, then the premeditated act? Yeah. Other than that, good time to clam up, dim bulb. Efficient writing style, though—life without parole in five crisp sentences. Hemingway couldn’t have done it better.
Three of the witness statements are from his little friends.
Corey’s Rockpile crewmates threw him under the bus.
Typical of gangs, Boone thinks. It’s all “brothers forever” until they start doing the hard math of murder one vs. accessory to manslaughter vs. witness with immunity; then the brotherhood goes Cain and Abel.
Of course, the police were shaping the case that way from moment one. They had two other eyewitnesses who would testify to Corey throwing the fatal punch, so the cops went to work on the potential codefendants, making sure they had Corey sewn up tight in the net.
Technically, they could book all four for murder—doubtless that was their opening gambit—but in practice they could never make anything but an accessory charge stick so they put a bright light over the “Exit” door for three of them to find their way.
Trevor’s statement is priceless.
“We were hanging in the alley when we saw this guy come down the street. Corey said, ‘Check it out—I’m going to mess with him. I’m going to fuck him up.’ I tried to restrane him . . .”
“Tried to restrane him,” Boone thinks. Three years on the SDPD, Boone recognizes “copspeak” when he hears it.
Trevor was coached.
They just couldn’t coach him to spell.
A nice touch of authenticity, though.
And the “I’m going to fuck him up” is really bad news.
“ . . . but Corey shook me off, walked up, and hit the guy with a Superman Punch.”
This Superman Punch, Boone thinks, seems to be like a thing, whatever it is.
“Then I heard this really bad ‘crack’ sound when Mr. Kuhio’s head hit. I knew it was real bad then. I said to Corey, ‘What did you do, dude? What did you do?’
“I know we should have called 911 and stayed, but we got freeked out and scared and so we got back in the car and drove away. I was crying. Corey was yelling, ‘I got him! I got the motherfucker. Did you see me get him?’”