by Avery Duff
PRAISE FOR AVERY DUFF
“There are still books being written that you cannot put down . . . Beach Lawyer . . . is just that kind of read.”
—American Bar Association Journal
“A page-turner.”
—Bloomberg Law
“A fast moving, interesting, exciting ride . . . This book is hard to put down.”
—Portland Book Review
“Beach Lawyer is a multilayered tale of backstabbing, greed, and manipulation that continually surprises readers with where Duff’s mind takes them.”
—Chattanooga Times Free Press
“A roller-coaster ride with twists and turns and unexpected happenings . . . great read.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Great legal suspense.”
—Great Thoughts
“So tense . . . I found myself holding my breath . . . A great summer read!”
—Nancie Claire, Speaking of Mysteries
ALSO BY AVERY DUFF
Beach Lawyer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by C. Avery Duff Living Trust
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542046909
ISBN-10: 1542046904
Cover design by Jae Song
This book is dedicated to my friend West Oehmig.
The most delightful fellow that ever was.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
San Bernardino County, California
As he slowed the SUV in the deep sand that grabbed it from out of nowhere, he fought the shuddering steering wheel; his armed passenger braced against the door.
Behind him, the pursuing Mercedes started slowing in the same sand. Doors opened, and two men he’d never met jumped out with pistols.
He found the four-wheel-drive button, left of the steering wheel, and hit the accelerator. The tires grabbed traction, the car moving away from the Mercedes, the two gunmen hesitating, unsure, as he put precious yards between them.
What was it—twenty-four hours ago?—he’d been chased across another expanse of sand, where the storm-darkened sky spewed electric and sluiced water down on him? Death by garrote, knife, or blunt-force trauma had been out there somewhere, the dread and danger of that other moment once again vivid, the taste of blood and death again coppering his tongue.
Now, in his rearview, the armed men scrambled back into their Mercedes.
Screw ’em, he was thinking. We’re outta here!
But speeding across the sand, Robert Worth, attorney-at-law, saw other armed figures pouring from hillside scrub and knew from their slickers that they were the last people he wanted to see right then: the FBI.
Northern California, Six Weeks Earlier
The girl slipped farther into her cocoon sleeping bag, not because of forest frost but because the men’s voices grew louder out by the fire. Through the tent’s flap, she saw them passing a bottle, same as they did every night, and until lately, she had joined them and the other women they sometimes brought in. The women laughed at her, she was pretty sure, made fun of her small breasts and slender legs, and spoke the same language as her new boyfriend.
She wondered: Any of you bitches ever runway models in San Francisco’s TECH Fashion Week?
By now, it dawned on her they’d moved camp so many times, she didn’t know the way out. But when she’d asked about it, she’d been told not to ask again. What had started as a lark, driving up from Los Gatos, had now turned scary-serious. Her friend Xavier had dropped by her parents’ house, said he was writing a paper on the pot-growing scene up in Northern California’s Emerald Triangle. He would drive them, then they’d get picked up by his contacts and taken to a modest grow, about one hundred plants. He’d work on his report, get loaded, and make decent money if he was a good enough trimmer. He’d warned her, though, the work was hard, focused, and boring.
But the experience? This wasn’t Paris abroad where a “team of dedicated students will create fashion designs to eventually change the world!” This was very cool, edgy. Who else at school could say they’d been a dope trimmer her semester off? Rubbing elbows with real people, criminals, probably. An adventure designed to grab that real-world experience her father always talked up. The same real world her mother assured her was overrated as long as you had the right looks. And admittedly, she and her mother did.
On top of that, this was the first secret she could recall keeping from her family. Something they would forbid her to do. Sex in her bedroom at thirteen? Use a condom. Smoking dope at fourteen? Yes, but at home and no driving. Cocaine?
“We’re certain, darling, you’ll make the right choice.”
Her parents sure had—their stash was the best she and her friends had ever tried.
Now, though, she found herself inside a tight sleeping bag, knees shaking, teeth chattering, remembering her trip from down in Los Gatos up to this forest.
Right after Xavier had picked her up, he had insisted they were just friends and insisted they have sex their first night on the road. After she’d convinced him she was gay, he’d backed off. Next, Xavier’s growers had sold out. Once Xavier had met up with the new owners, a couple of hippies, he’d said they looked okay, so they’d started work in the trimming tents of this bigger operation.
That was the one thing Xavier got right—the work was hard and boring, but if she put on her tunes and took a few tokes, the days went by.
You did what? her friends would ask. The thought of it made her smile until the hippies had disappeared. Other men appeared who spoke little, their accents sounding, best she could tell, Russian. The men would move quietly through the w
ork tent and occasionally stop behind her. One man in particular.
“Back your ass off,” she’d told him, tough-sounding, she’d thought.
He’d smiled at her. “You are very beautiful girl.”
She’d noticed his deep-set eyes, accent, and thick features and decided he was dangerous-looking and hot. Especially now that it looked like Xavier had split. So had those hippie owners. One week later, she’d slept with the new man under the stars and towering spruce, and he’d told her about his country’s raw beauty, how one day they would travel there. She wasn’t in love. That, she knew. Still, she’d always have this memory tucked away no matter what direction her real life took.
Looking outside the tent now, she saw him toss a bottle away and come toward her. Slipping inside the tent, he sat beside her, knees drawn. He reached out and stroked her hair. She trembled because the sex had gone from intense to perverse. He’d started choking her, tying open the tent flap so the others could watch them. Exposing her body to the others, playing to them.
Two days ago, he had no longer been able to get hard, and that’s where they’d stood when he came inside the tent tonight. He began by telling her she would leave for the road in the morning. A car would take her to the Eureka airport, and he’d already bought her ticket.
“I will never forget you as long as I live,” he said.
In the dark, she saw his body shaking, his head between his legs, rocking back and forth. Reaching out, she touched his arm.
“I’ll never forget you, Penko,” she said, with tears of relief.
“You are cold,” he said, and tucked her arms back inside the cocoon, zipping it up.
Then his powerful hand gripped her long hair, twisting until she cried out. Now she saw a small baseball bat in his other hand. She tried to roll away, but he’d zipped her in, and as he raised the bat against her thrashing and screams, the firelight caught his face. He’d been laughing, not crying, and he was still laughing when the bat crashed into her skull and ended her world.
CHAPTER 1
Two Weeks Ago
The case had started out easy enough. Robert Worth was pretty sure the little girl sitting with her father across Venice Boardwalk had been eyeing him, off and on, for the last half hour. Lounging beside him, at Robert’s faux-bamboo conference table, just-retired LAPD cop Erik Jacobson thought the same thing.
At the moment, though, Robert had his hands full with a prospective client.
“You call yourself a beach lawyer?” the prospect was telling him. “Beach lawyer, my ass. I can see you not giving full props to what I’m sayin’.”
Whatever that means, Robert was thinking.
But the prospect across the table from him had it right. He’d lost interest once the guy wormed the interview away from his initial beef—a neighbor’s barking dog—to his recent divorce, despite Robert’s laminated placard clearly stating: No Divorces! ¡No Hay Divorcios!
“Man’s right,” Erik said. “You’re no beach lawyer.”
That was Erik’s two cents from a sturdy beach chair. Kicking back, reaching into the Igloo for another Gatorade, a half tube of SPF 50 slathered on his massive, ever-pale frame. The other half tube had found a haphazard home on his forty-year-old face. Protected by both a beach umbrella and a cowboy hat, he was enjoying his role as court jester.
“Maybe you could tell me,” Robert asked his silver-haired hipster prospect, “why public picnic tables at Venice Pier belonged to you . . .” Checking his notes. “To you and Sweetie before she split?”
“’Cause it was me’n Sweetie’s spot, dude, is why.” Looking around at a nonexistent audience, bobbing his head in appreciation of their support.
“Your spot’s what I’m asking about.”
“Me and Sweetie’s, yeah. Where we always got our groove on, did our thing, got greasy,” the prospect said.
Got greasy on one of those tables? Erik and his two sons picnicked on them, and Erik had a light gag reflex. Fortunately, he’d slipped on earbuds and missed the exchange. Another two minutes of Sweetie-talk followed, and the free fifteen-minute consult ended. Robert stood, photographed the prospect’s signed release, and sent him on his way.
At this point, no one was waiting to see him. Six weeks ago, the situation had been different after Yo! Venice published an article during a Santa Ana winds–induced heat wave.
“Is This the Hottest Lawyer in LA?” the headline asked.
After that, he had been jammed with prospects and gawkers. So much so that when the spirit moved her, mail carrier Sharon hand-delivered postcards addressed only: Beach Lawyer, Venice CA, 90291. Two hotshot producers even planned to make a movie about him, but only if Robert signed over his life rights and wrote a screenplay about himself gratis.
With Sweetie’s ex now gone, Robert caught the young girl squinting at him from across the boardwalk. Best guess, she was eight or nine, sitting with her father, about forty, who squatted beside her. Then Robert waved; she looked away.
Actually, the pair was familiar. He and Erik had run into them a half mile south of here behind Muscle Beach. That’s where an upright steel beam with a hook had been sunk into concrete and where Erik liked hanging his heavy punching bag. Working it, Erik reminded him of George Foreman’s big-bag workout—Robert almost felt sorry for the bag as it jumped away from body shots and skirted sideways from the follow-up hook to the head.
Erik had given the girl’s father—Matteo but called Teo, he’d told them—a turn. Once he’d started, Robert and Erik had exchanged a look: Damn. Looked like Teo had spent time in the ring, and a stretch in prison wasn’t out of the question. In and out, up and down the bag, his footwork and torso creating different angles of attack. Feinting, slipping counters, his punches messengered energy from the soles of his feet through his roped calves and torqued body till the punches hit home. Bam. Bam. Bam.
The girl—Delfina, he’d learned later—watched and read books in the nearby Joe Weider Stadium bleachers. No matter what, every thirty seconds or so, Teo stopped banging and looked her way, making sure she was safe. Robert liked that about him; as a father of two, Erik loved it.
So far, hanging his shingle on the boardwalk wasn’t a decision Robert regretted. Several recent prospects promised to blossom into clients. Situations that called for a strong push outside of court for a client getting the short end of the legal stick. The courtroom, he still believed, was where both sides of a dispute went to lose.
Top of his list: an employee overtime situation. The prospect had full documentation of her hours worked and was due $150,000 once her damages were trebled under the state statute. A big plus: her employer was as solvent as he was unethical. A hard letter to her boss, hinting that other employees could well surface if he didn’t settle quick, might net a winner.
Working an ultraflex schedule—whenever he wanted—and taking only the cases he liked suited him fine. His parking-place-size alfresco office slot was on the First Amendment side of the boardwalk—the ocean side—in one of 205 rent-free spaces. Landward, brick-and-mortar stores facing him paid rent and sold their wares.
Boardwalk regs and the First Amendment allowed him to communicate with the public on legal matters if he didn’t charge a fee. Gia, now in first-year law at Loyola, once joked that, because boardwalk regs also okayed giving away items of nominal value, his advice already qualified.
Passersby could ask for a free consult, and after they’d signed his release, he’d give it his best shot. As long as he claimed a spot early enough, he never had a problem except on holiday weekends, when the boardwalk became a landlocked sluice of families in matching T-shirts and spandex; of skateboarders, fat-tire bike renters, and in-line skaters; of drunks, stoners, unwelcome nudity, dope smoking, fistfights, knifings, and just plain fun.
Where his slot sat, there was less in-your-face boardwalk activity. In fact, the entire area, once 100 percent seedy, had become seedy with a splash of hip. Argentine and Peruvian cuisine, poke bowls, gourmet coffees,
and panini alongside boardwalk staples: Twinkies, Oreos, and Ding Dongs, all deep fried and a stoner’s throw from the medical-marijuana green cross and the well-located candy store IT’SUGAR.
He and Gia were still together six easy months after their rental Ferrari ride back from Santa Cruz, a city where he’d been jailed as a murder suspect until he’d bent the truth enough to set himself free. Now, he was living at her place in Brentwood and paying rent. Still, he held on to his rear over-the-garage apartment on Ozone Court, a few beach blocks away. On his tax return, he called it his office. Gia called it their Love Shack, and they both thought that her nickname, alluding to its most frequent use, would be much easier to defend in a tax audit.
On their southbound drive, they’d agreed to wait at least a month before making love. To their credit, he thought, they’d waited an hour after reaching the LA County line. Meaning, they were in her bed moments after crossing her threshold.
He and Gia had a history—not of dating and dinner and weekend flights to Cabo or Napa Valley. Their history dealt less with what they wanted to do and more with the type of people they wanted to become. She’d blown her twenties following her destructive urges with a dangerous man, then a senior partner at Robert’s law firm. Robert had been fired and decided to quit burning himself out to make partner. No doubt, his decision to chill out as the Beach Lawyer, and to be selective about cases, had been boosted by the $1.8 million settlement he’d banked for his first solo client by going after his old firm. An ongoing negotiation involving Gia’s former lover, Jack Pierce, could bring as much as another $1 million his way.
Erik stood up, stretched, and asked, “Want me to transport a few steaks over to Gia’s tonight?”
“Chicken and shrimp, grilled vegetables. We got dinner covered.”
“You know, in some cultures, steak’s considered a vegetable. And tonight, don’t forget to bring up my new investigator gig with Priya.”
“Got you covered, too, Erik, when the time’s right.”
Erik announced he was going to hit the public restroom before heading home.
“If I’m late,” he liked saying to Robert, “they’ll slaughter me.”