“I know,” I said.
And then we could hear a helicopter approaching.
“That’s my ride,” Jeffries said. “You guys need a lift?”
“We’re good,” I said.
The chopper banked in, its rotor wash rippling the dry grass and pounding up plumes of sand and dirt. Agent Jeffries covered his eyes and nearly disappeared.
“Let’s go,” I said, and nodded to José.
We turned our backs to the turbulence and headed home.
63
We took the rest of the day to wind our way back to Sabanita. It was smart to stay out of sight. There weren’t a lot of gringos in paradise this time of year, and I was probably the only one who’d just shot and killed a proud member of the policía secreta.
“Nobody is going to give a shit,” José said. “He was just another motherfucker—you had to do it.”
“What if we get recognized?”
“By who? Unless you put that estúpido patch back on.”
I was following José through knee-deep canals of muddy water that irrigated a dozen hectares of rotting mangoes. He kept telling me to watch for water snakes.
“What about you?” I asked.
“The big shots don’t give a shit about me.”
About an hour after sunset, we’d made it back to my Suburban. I was surprised to see that my Red Fin was still locked inside, but then I remembered that today was just supposed to be another surf day in my new life as a family man.
“Just take me back to my boat,” José said.
We climbed into the Suburban and rode back to Sabanita in silence. I kept wondering if we needed to make some kind of a promise—but it was clear that José didn’t have anything he wanted to say. He jumped out at the edge of the beach, and I drove home.
Tilly was sprawled in my casita’s doorway. She wagged her tail—just once—to make sure I wouldn’t step on her, and then closed her eyes. Jade was asleep on the porch couch. Meagan was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table.
“Did something bad happen?” she asked.
I turned on the tap and let it run until the water cooled. Then I cupped my hands and took a mouthful, spitting out some mud and sand and then finally swallowing.
“Nope,” I lied. “Just good waves.”
I moved to Meagan and kissed her deeply. I was shivering, and she squeezed me in her arms.
“Are you lying?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are we okay?” she asked.
“We are now,” I said.
I kissed her again and then stepped into the boys’ bedroom. Marshall was on the top bunk. Obsidian was stretched out below. I put my hand on my son’s chest to make sure he was breathing.
“You still do that?” he whispered.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“I was worried,” he said.
“I’m okay.”
“Was it big?”
“Giant,” I said, “but makeable.”
“That’s good,” Obsidian said from the bunk below. “As long as you can make them and you have a chance, that’s all you want, right?”
“It’s all I want,” I said.
The pale boy was lying under the higuera. He’d been asleep for hours. His dad crouched next to him, quietly drawing circles in the hard dirt with a shard of adobe. The dad had removed his bush hat, and what remained of the zinc sunblock had left his face streaked and ghostlike. It was hard to tell if he’d been sweating or crying. But I knew he had been listening.
“Jesus,” he said finally, tossing the jagged tejas into a collage of similar bits scattered on the ground. The kitchen corner of my casa had been knocked off, and its brilliant naranja roof was now just a skeleton of wooden vigas. “Sounds like a hell of a monsoon season,” he continued.
“That’s why it’s called tormenta,” I said, half seriously.
The dad reached for my hand, and I yanked him to his feet. He whacked the dust off his hat on his thigh and then regarded the beer box next to a pile of empty bottles.
“Did I drink all those?”
“Most of them,” I said.
“Jesus,” he said again.
“It’s Mexico.”
He nodded as if he understood what I meant, but he probably hadn’t been down here long enough to get the full meaning. I began to arrange the empties back into the box. I came across one that was half-full and handed it to him. He took a long drink and then flipped it back to me.
“What happened to the boys?” he asked.
I slipped the last empty into its cardboard slot.
“Jade’s running a gallery up in Vallarta,” I said. “Obsidian is on a hotshot crew in Oregon. When it’s not fire season, he chases the winter swell.”
“What about the Marshman?” He looked back at his own son for a second, and we could see that the boy was starting to wake up.
“He’s in school up in Santa Barbara,” I said, trying to balance relief with pride and hoping to avoid the next question.
“And Meagan?”
“She comes and goes,” I said.
It looked like he thought that was a pretty good deal. “Dude, you’re living the dream.”
“Just pieces of it,” I said, trying not to blow up his Monday-morning fantasy.
He picked up the TC Pang and held it out in a way that made me have to take it or let it fall to the ground.
“I can’t let you give me this board,” he said.
His boy was watching us.
“Your son will be disappointed.”
“Probably. But it needs to be hanging on your wall.”
He nodded at my casa as if he had more to say, but then figured he probably didn’t know me well enough. The boy had moved closer to us, and then took his father’s hand. It was pretty clear he knew what was going on, but he looked like he was okay with it. His dad probably wasn’t the kook I’d first figured him to be.
“I’m going to get you exactly the board you need,” the dad said as they navigated down the deep ruts of my dirt driveway, “I promise.”
“I know you will, Dad,” his son said, and then they disappeared around the corner at Calle Coral.
I squinted into the sunset, and its accompanying gold rush filled in the missing pieces of my casa and made it look whole again—like the past version of a future that was no longer just close but actually here, and one that I was somehow standing in the middle of.
I whistled for Tilly, and then imagined Meagan walking up barefoot on the path from Palmitos. But Tilly was long gone, and I hadn’t heard from Meagan in months. This moment was mine, and I was alone in it. Acutely present, if not complete.
I looked down at the TC Pang and ran my hand up its slow curve, over the chips and dings and the once-brilliant white deck that was now sunburned brown from a lifetime on the beach. I walked the board over to the casa and delicately placed it inside what was left of my front door.
The gangbangers were trying to jump-start the backhoe with what was left of the juice in the Suburban’s battery. The backhoe’s maestro was sitting in its rear bucket, alternately taking deep drags from a cigarette and futzing with his watch. He was paid by the job, not the hour, and I could see that he wanted to knock down the rest of my casa before dark.
But it was too late.
“Alto, amigos,” I said and jogged over to the Suburban.
I reached through the driver’s-side window, turned off the motor, and retrieved the key. One of the bangers made one last attempt to turn over the backhoe’s diesel, but it wound down to a couple of tired clicks and then went quiet. The three of them looked at me.
“Lo siento,” I said. “No más.”
“¿Qué?” the maestro asked.
“Estoy guardando mi casita,” I said. “Vete a casa.”
The LA cholos laughed at my accent.
“What does that mean?” one of them asked.
“I’m keeping my house,” I said. “Go home.”
> Acknowledgments
Many thanks to David Gernert for his wise guidance and steady support, and the same to Hannah Robinson for her light touch and tireless input. Annie Hodgson’s contributions to Pirata are immeasurable, and without Jake Epstein cheering me on and holding my hand I wouldn’t have made it past page 20. I also owe a great debt to David Greenblatt, and I would like to thank the following people for their early reads and candid feedback as Pirata evolved into the book it needed to be; Richard Christian Matheson, Nancy Dittmann, Sally Preyer LaVenture, Nick Sherman, Mike Nunn, John James, Sergio Gonzales, John Wilder, Detta Kissel, Gabriel Gallegos, Ted Mann, Bill Nuss, Russ Landau, Alma Nereida Lorenzo Enciso, Gena Hasburgh, Jo Swerling, Jr., Tom Szollosi, Will Terrell, Andy Cattermole, Susanne M. Van Cleave, Mark Allison, Amie Johnson, Rachel Martinez, Eira Carranza, Mark Sharp, Beau Clark, Kevin Murphy, Breene Murphy, Reyn Murphy, Nazario Carranza, Chuy Venegas, Kerry Kirkpatrick, Ron Pentz, Kathy Nicoleti, Peter Trigg, EJ Foerster, Mark Shaw, Robert Treta, Rick VanDeWeghe, Meagen Svendsen, Ron Parsell, Bruce Johnson, Jose Lorenzo, Stacy Raviv, Barry Golson, Michael Part, Mike McDaniel, Mark Rubenstein, Cory McLernon, Evan Miranda, Jill Bianchini, Virginia Rankin, Andy Hanson, Georgia H. T. Hanson, Terry Meyer, Ian Ingram, Mari Rainer, Jason Smith, Margarito Castillon, Larry Hertzog, Steve Cannell, Bob Jensen, Jean Hasburgh, and Big Jim.
About the Author
PATRICK HASBURGH was born in Buffalo, New York. He moved to Aspen as a young man to work as a ski instructor and then to Los Angeles, where he wrote and produced television for the next two decades. In 2000 Patrick married Cheri Jensen and moved to Mexico to surf and write fiction. The Hasburghs have two children. Patrick is best known for creating the television series 21 Jump Street and writing and directing the feature film Aspen Extreme. Pirata is his second novel.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
pirata. Copyright © 2018 by Patrick Hasburgh. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Joanne O’Neill
Cover photograph © Kjell Linder/Getty Images
Title page photograph by iFerol / Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hasburgh, Patrick, author.
Title: Pirata : a novel / Patrick Hasburgh.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, 2018.
| "HarperPerennial."
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047890 (print) | LCCN 2017049782 (ebook) | ISBN
9780062742780 (E-book) | ISBN 9780062742773 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Americans—Mexico—Fiction. | Surfers—Fiction. |
Murder—Fiction. | Witnesses—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. |
Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.A7897 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.A7897 P57 2018 (print)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047890
Digital Edition JUNE 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274278-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-274277-3
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