by Don Winslow
At John Kodani.
She looks up from the stack of documents that he dropped on her desk, shakes her head again, sighs, and says, “You’ve been a busy boy, sergeant. First the arrest of Dan Nichols, then a raid that nets Cruz Iglesias, then this . . . dirty bomb. Anything else you want to drop on me today?”
“That ought to do it.”
“Oh, it ought to “do it,” all right.”
Johnny picked Mary Lou Baker to bring the records to because (a) she’d been busting his chops on the Blasingame case and (b) she was the one prosecutor he knew with the integrity and the stones to take this up and start filing charges.
“You do know you’re ruining my career, don’t you?” she asks him as she looks at the papers and winces.
“Or making it,” he says.
“Same for you, chum,” Mary Lou says. “Romero wanted you strung up by the cojones, but he can’t do that now that you’re the hero of a shoot-out, and Iglesias and all. But did you have to save a defense attorney, John? Bad taste.”
“She was the only lawyer in the room,” Johnny answers. “Besides, she pulled me out of the soup.”
“We should recruit her for the good guys team,” Mary Lou says.
“We could do worse,” Johnny says. “What about Corey Blasingame?”
“What about him?”
“What are you going to do?”
Her intercom buzzes. “
Alan Burke and partner here for you.”
“I’ll be right out,” Mary Lou says. Then, to Johnny, “I don’t know yet. Let’s go find out.”
Johnny follows her into the conference room.
161
Boone, Petra, and Alan are already seated at the table.
Mary Lou and Johnny sit down across from them.
Alan smiles and opens, “I’m taking it to trial.”
“You’ll lose,” Mary Lou says.
“The fuck I will,” Alan answers. “Your first three witnesses are garbage, the next two have recanted, which will make clowns of your investigating officers.”
Boone glances at Johnny. Face set in stone, but his cheeks turn red.
Boone looks away.
“We still have the confession,” Mary Lou says.
“Yeah, go with that,” Alan says. “I can’t wait to feed it piece by piece to Sergeant Kodani here. How do you like your crow, detective? A little salt and pepper?”
Johnny doesn’t say anything. Boone can’t look at him, and Petra stares at the table.
Mary Lou stands up. “If there’s nothing else . . .”
Johnny stands up too.
Looks at Boone with disgust.
“Come on, sit down, Mary Lou,” Alan says. “We don’t want it to end this way.”
Mary Lou sits back down. “Neither Harrington’s borderline subornation of perjury nor Kodani’s assertive interview of the defendants changes the fact that your client, at least partially motivated by racial hatred, at least participated in a beating that cost a human life.”
“Agreed.”
“He has to do some serious time for that, Alan.”
“Also agreed,” Alan says. “But he didn’t throw the fatal punch, Mary Lou. That was Bodin. And he wasn’t the ringleader. That was Bodin too.”
“There are practical reasons why I can’t go after Bodin.”
“That doesn’t mean you should single Corey out for special punishment,” Alan responds. “There’s an issue of justice here.”
“There’s an issue of justice for Kelly, too.”
“I share that view,” Alan says. “My client participated in a disgusting act with a tragic result, and he should face the consequences. I’ll go vol man.
“With max sentencing—eleven years.”
“Minimum—three.”
It’s kabuki theater—they both know the next step in this ritual.
“Fine,” Mary Lou says. “Medium-range. Six.”
“Done.”
They shake hands—Alan and Mary Lou, Alan and Johnny, Petra and Mary Lou, Petra and Johnny, Boone and Mary Lou, not Boone and Johnny.
They avoid each other.
162
Boone drives to La Jolla.
The Hole.
Rabbit and Echo are on duty in front of the house. Rabbit pats Boone down while Echo gets on the horn and then comes back and says it’s okay for Boone to go in. Or out.
Red Eddie’s lying on a floatie in the pool, sipping some fruity drink with an umbrella in it. His ankle bracelet is wrapped in a plastic Baggie. Dahmer’s stretched out on a floating cushion nearby. Eddie cranes his neck up, squints into the sun, and says, “Boonie, an unexpected pleasure! You could have just sent a card.”
Red Eddie’s pidgin Hawaiian comes in and out like the tide. It depends on his mood and intent. Today, he’s all Wharton Business.
“Fuck you, Eddie.”
“Not exactly the Hallmark sentiment I was expecting.” Eddie says, “but pithy, nevertheless.”
“Stay out of my life.”
“Even to save it, Boone?” Eddie asks. “It’s not just a past-tense question—the cartel is very upset with you, costing them all this money and trouble. They’re not so happy with me, either, wiping out two of their boys and one of their best interrogators. When things settle for them, they’ll be coming for both of us.”
“Look out for yourself,” Boone says. “Not me.”
Eddie paddles to the edge of the pool and sets his drink down. Then he rolls off the floatie into the water, dives down to cool himself, comes back up, and says, “This is the problem with that, Boone: I owe you. My son’s life. My life, too. How can I ever stop repaying that? I can’t. So you will just have to learn to accept my care and largesse—a little more graciously, please.”
“I just came to tell you that Corey Blasingame didn’t kill—”
“I already heard,” Eddie says. “Do you think that I’m without resources in the hallways of power? I am informed that it was Trevor Bodin who murdered my calabash cousin. Is that correct?”
Boone doesn’t answer, but says, “I suppose it’s useless to ask you to refrain from doing what you’re going to do.”
“Supposition correct.”
“Even if Kelly wouldn’t want you to do it?”
“I never respond to ‘even ifs,’” Eddie says. “Aloha, Boone.”
“Drown.”
Boone walks away.
“Nice,” Eddie says. He dives again, comes up, and yells at Rabbit, “What, you think my drink is going to swim over here by itself, da kine?”
Rabbit hustles for the drink.
163
Corey Blasingame goes before the judge that afternoon and pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
The judge accepts the plea and sets sentencing for two months down the road, but as preagreed he’s going to give Corey the medium-range sentence of seventy-two months, with credit for time served.
In the normal course of things, Corey will be out in fewer than three years.
The judge gives him a few minutes to say good-bye to people before the sheriffs take him away, but there really isn’t anyone to say good-bye to. Both parents are dead, he has no siblings, and no real friends. Boone notes that none of the surfers from Rockpile or the fighters from Team Domination bothered to show up.
Banzai is there, almost as if he wants to take responsibility for blowing the murder case.
A lot of surfers show up, too, as many as the gallery can hold, more outside the courthouse, a bunch of “human rights” groups holding signs reading “Justice for Kelly,” “Stop Hate Now,” and “Racism” with that diagonal line through it. Their disgust at the plea arrangement is palpable, and, inside the courtroom, Boone can feel their eyes burning through the back of his head.
So it’s just the defense team—Alan, Petra, and Boone—who’s there for Corey. If any of them was expecting gratitude, they’d have been disappointed. Corey just looks at them with his stupid, conflicted “I just got away with something”
smile.
Alan feels that he has to say something. “You’ll probably be out in three years, maybe less. You’ll have your whole life in front of you.”
Sort of, Boone thinks. Corey probably hasn’t figured out yet that his father’s estate will be tied up in litigation and then sold off to pay lawsuits. So Corey will get out of the hole without a home or a dime in the bank, with a felony sheet, in a city that hates him, and not a friend in the world. Boone doesn’t bother to enlighten him to that, nor to the fact that he saved the kid from a jailhouse shanking or worse.
Corey looks at Alan, then at Petra, then Boone, and mutters, “I have nothing to say.”
Me neither, Boone thinks.
Nothing at all.
5.
164
He doesn’t have anything to say, either, when he walks outside the courthouse through a mob of protesting surfers.
Some of whom shout his name and couple it with “Traitor” and “Sellout.”
He just puts a protective arm around Petra and helps her into the waiting car that takes them back to the law office.
165
They lie in bed at his place that night.
After a little while she asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? Because you seem sad.”
He thinks about it. “Yeah, kind of, I am.”
“Your friends?”
“That’s part of it,” he says. “But only part. It’s the whole thing, you know? It’s made me question . . . who I am. I never saw the ugliness until it was too late, until it killed someone like Kelly. Maybe I didn’t see it because I didn’t want to see it. I only wanted to see . . . paradise.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“No, I’m not,” Boone says. “If you don’t see something, you don’t have to do anything about it. And I didn’t do a damn thing.”
“You’re not responsible for the whole world.”
“Just my piece of it.”
Petra kisses his neck, then his shoulder and his chest, and slides down his body gently, because he’s bruised and sore and aching, but she does soft, loving things until he cries out. Much later, her head in the crook of his neck, she asks, “Have you had a chance to think about Alan’s offer?”
Boone smiles. “He told you about that?”
“Yes.”
“Before or after he made it?”
“Before,” she says. “Does that matter?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Ah. I see. I didn’t ask him, Boone. It was his idea.”
“But he ran it by you first.”
“I’m sure just to see if I’d be comfortable with the idea of you being around the office,” she says.
“Are you?” Boone asks. “ ‘Comfortable’?”
She rolls over and puts her head on his chest. “Much, much more than comfortable. I’m ecstatic.”
He holds her tight. “Why don’t you stay here until you’re ready to move back in to your place?”
“Yes?” she asks. “Yes, thank you, I’d love that, but it wasn’t an answer.”
“Yeah, Pete,” he says, “I think I’ll do it, the law school thing.”
She smiles and settles closer into him. A few minutes later Boone feels her breathing deepen and he looks down to see that she’s fallen asleep. He loves the smell of her, the feel of her, her hair splayed against his chest.
He doesn’t sleep.
Lies there and thinks.
166
Boone beats the sun out of bed.
He carefully disentangles himself from Petra, so as not to wake her, pulls the sheet back up around her neck, then throws on a sweatshirt, jeans, and sandals and walks into the kitchen to write her a note.
He steps outside into the still-dark morning, gets into the Deuce, and pulls off the pier onto the PCH. His route takes him right past the spot where the Dawn Patrol goes out, and in the faint light that is just now gathering, he can see their forms on the beach, performing the morning ritual of waxing and stretching and quiet conversation.
He doesn’t stop, but keeps driving north.
167
The lightness in the bed wakes Petra up.
She misses his weight and warmth, but she’s glad he’s going back out on the Dawn Patrol, and then she thinks how nice it would be to have a morning cup with him before he goes out, maybe look out the window and watch him surf before she goes in to work.
She gets up and goes into the kitchen, but he’s already gone.
A note is propped against a cup on the table.
Pete,
I’m sorry, I love you, but I can’t do it. The lawyer thing, I mean. It just isn’t who I am. I guess I’m just not a gentleman. I have something I have to take care of—my piece of the world—right now, but when I get back we’ll talk about it. There’s tea in the third cupboard to the right.
Boone
Of course you can’t do it, she thinks. The lawyer thing.
Of course you can’t, and of course it isn’t who you are. It’s not the man I love, nor the man who apparently loves me. My God, she thinks—a simple, uncomplicated declaration of love. Subject, verb, object. I love you. Something you’ve never had before in your life.
Well, I love you, too, Boone.
And don’t be sorry, please don’t be sorry. I wouldn’t change you, I was wrong to try, and as for not being a gentleman, you couldn’t be more wrong about that, and when you get back . . .
She looks at the note again.
“I have something I have to take care of—my piece of the world—right now.”
Feeling a horrible pang of alarm, Petra hurriedly dresses and rushes out.
She catches the Dawn Patrol just as they’re headed out.
Paddling in the shallow water.
Petra stands on the sand, waves her arms above her head, and hollers, “Help! I need you! Come back! Help!”
Dave the Love God is more used to distress calls coming from the opposite direction, but a lifeguard is a lifeguard, so he turns around and paddles back in. He’s not real thrilled to see that it’s the Brit.
“It’s about Boone,” she says.
“What about him?”
“I think he’s gone to do something stupid,” Petra says.
“I can almost guarantee that,” Dave answers.
She hands him the note.
168
Boone drives all the way up the PCH to Oceanside on that road he loves so much.
Up through Pacific Beach and La Jolla, then down along Shores, then up to Torrey Pines and back down again along that incredible stretch of open beach, then up the steep hill to Del Mar. He goes down past Jake’s, and the old train station, then drives up into Solana Beach, Leucadia, then down again past the long, open coast at Cardiff and Carlsbad.
When he reaches the power station at the south edge of O’Side, he turns around and drives the whole thing again.
This road of memories and dreams.
He pulls off the road at Rockpile.
169
Boone pulls into the little parking lot.
Hard to find a spot, because the boys are really out.
Or not quite—most are still on the beach, getting ready to hit the water. Ten or twelve guys, Boone estimates, all of them white.
One of them is Mike Boyd.
Boone gets out of the van, walks up to him, and says, “You’re gone.”
“What?”
“You filled those stupid kids with your garbage,” Boone says, “and pumped them full of your shit, and you’re guiltier than any of them. I don’t want you in my ocean or on my beach—here or anywhere, anytime. I don’t want you in my world. You and all your buddies, you’re gone.”
Boyd smirks, looks behind him at his crew, and then says, “You’re going to throw us all out, Daniels? Just you? You’re believing your own legend there, dude.”
“I’m going to start with you, Mike,” Boone says. “Then I’m going to work
my way through the rest of them.”
Boyd laughs. “Check yourself, Daniels. You’re a fucking mess. You won’t last five seconds against me, never mind the rest of the boys. Walk away while I still let you. You know what? Better yet, don’t. Stay right where you are so we can stomp the shit out of you.”
His crew has gathered around him, eager to back him up.
No compunction.
Boyd smiles at Boone again, then the smile disappears from his face and his eyes widen as he focuses over Boone’s shoulder at:
Dave, Johnny, High Tide, Hang Twelve, Petra, even Cheerful.
The Dawn Patrol.
170
The Battle of Rockpile becomes a legend among the surfing community of San Diego.
By that afternoon, the story gets told at The Sundowner and every other bar, burger place, taco joint, and hangout on the coast.
The Dawn Patrol
v.
The Rockpile Crew.
It was a beat-down.
An ass-kicking.
A balls-to-the-walls, all-out, no-mercy epic.
The tale gets told how the PB Dawn Patrol slashed through the Rockpile like a tsunami wave through a pier. How Boone freaking Daniels, Dave the Love and War God, Johnny Absolutely Banzai, High Rolling Tide, and Hang Tough Twelve threw down, fists and feet, until the beach looked like a Tijuana bullfight—blood in the sand, baby. Even the chick got into it, man—punching, kicking, clawing—while that crazy ancient dude went around keying cars and smashing in windshields and headlights.
Alarmed artists on the bluffs (concerned citizens they) dialed 911, but the kookiest thing happened—the cops rolled up, all right, but then they parked on the bluffs and never got out of their cruisers until it was time to buzz the EMTs to carry out the wounded.
Of which there were many, because DtLG went dervish, like that was the dude who once punched a shark, yeah, so he just went off on the Rockpile, and JB was all judo and shit so that Brazilian crap just couldn’t cut it, and Tide, he grabbed three of those Pilers and banged their melons together like, well, okay, coconuts, and the squirrely little soul surfer rasta dude totally foffed Energizer bunny, man, he just took the hits and kept on coming.