Desperation Reef

27

A day later, Casey’s shaping a board in his backyard on Woodland.

He’s trying to relax, go with the flow of karma, but the heat is on and the heat wants answers.

Detective Temple grilled his mom earlier today, trying to poke holes in his alibi, she said. Then went ahead and set up an interview with Casey at the Oceanside Sheriffs’ substation for tomorrow morning. No Brock this time. Casey’s bringing a lawyer.

Not only that, but state Fish and Wildlife senior investigators have arrived, all the way from Sacramento.

Even Coast Guard lieutenant Kopf, who has opened his own investigation of the fire aboard Empress II, says that “new witnesses” have reported seeing a five- or six-boat flotilla motoring toward the old trawler just an hour before arsonists set her on fire. He’s got digital images that don’t show much, but he says one of the boats looks like it could be Moondance.

Casey feels like the whole world is after him. But he feels safe here in his backyard in Dodge City in his yellow hibiscus shorts and flip-flops, surrounded by all his bushes and plants and trees, his surfboards, and Jack Johnson on his Dot.

Casey’s house is clapboard, small and uninsulated, built in the 1950s when this then-poor Laguna Canyon neighborhood was home to artists and musicians, many of them Black, and a growing cadre of weird young surfers.

The neighborhood of narrow streets and dirt walkways was nicknamed Dodge City in the late sixties for the shoot-’em-up busts of the drug dealers, artists, and surfers who congregated there for the cheap rent, plentiful drugs, and a sense of security against the invading cops, narcs, even the FBI.

Dodge was peace and love, psychedelic music and weed smoke in the air, surfboards leaned up against the houses and decks. Kids and dogs everywhere you looked.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love founder, John Griggs, lived here, his home the unofficial BEL headquarters for their worldwide hash- and LSD-smuggling network.

Tim Leary dropped by now and then. Got himself busted here.

Casey likes the lore and vibe of Dodge. Thinks its outlaw reputation gives him street cred, even though he himself is a non-doping, barely drinking, health-food-eating, body-building, Bible-reading environmentalist. And, a semi-ashamed virgin except for the woman his friends embarrassingly rented for him at his twenty-first birthday party. He regretted it before he even did it. Apologized. What a downer. But it was hard in his always-looking-for-answers mind to say exactly why.

Casey prays at least three times a day — before getting out of bed, before his afternoon siesta, and after lights-out at night — but often prays for special requests, too.

He’s a man who has never really cussed, fought, or said uncool things about people even behind their backs.

So, living in Dodge makes him feel his part in the surf-outlaw tradition that started in Hawaii and spread to California and Australia, then the world. Part of something old and wild and dangerous. Something that makes you feel like nothing else makes you feel: real, authentic surfing. Not commercialized surfing, though he does love the excitement of the contests. Here in his Dodge City living room he’s got a really cool picture of the old surf star David Nuuhiwa in Dodge in 1968 — just a couple of houses down from here — talking with BEL heavyweight Johnny Gale, surrounded by surfboards.

Grandpa Don had stories about Dodge in the late sixties when he was one of the Laguna cops chasing around the drug dealers and the “general no-good-niks,” as he called them.

But with affection. Casey always thought Grandpa Don was too nice to be a cop. Too permissive. Grandpa Don let him surf when Casey was five. Grandpa Don let him and Brock keep a baby alligator they’d bought from a reptile store in Huntington Beach. In their extra bathroom’s tub ’til Grandma said no. Let them have chocolate milk with their meals when they visited.

For sure, Grandpa Don saw some crazy things in Dodge back then, some funny and others not. Casey remembers hearing about the time that Grandpa was one of the officers raiding a South Laguna home back in ’67 and one of the cops — not Grandpa Don — shot, in the back, and to death, a suspected Brotherhood of Eternal Love drug dealer, Pete Amaranthus. That name stuck in Casey’s head because it seemed wondrous and beautiful. And tragic. Pete was twenty-two. He was well-liked, and Grandpa Don knew the family. Casey’s mom told him that Grandpa stayed up alone late the night they killed Pete, got himself drunk on bourbon. Grandpa Don was not a drinker.

Now Casey leans down and gets his cheek against the rail of the board, gauging the rocker it will require to handle Mavericks’ four-story waves moving as fast as freight trains. Too much upsweep in the rocker and the board will slow, trying to displace water; too little rocker and you dig a rail and it’s wipeout time.

Down you go.

Hard.

Escorted by fifty tons of fifty-degree water, which is quite a bit harder than warmer water. It’s like the difference between hitting the surface of a warm lake, or a frozen interstate. Then the tumble cycle and the hold-down that just might be your last.

Mae rises from her shady spot under a brightly blooming yellow hibiscus and lumbers through the open slider into the house. Probably hears the mail lady, who always has treats.

Casey straightens and takes a moment to appreciate his dog, and another to note with gratitude all the plants and shrubs and trees on his lot, from the fruit on the tangerine tree, to the pink trumpet vine, to the purple bougainvillea smothering the old grape stake fence in scintillant violet bracts. And the birds-of-paradise with all their orange-blue plumage, the white-flowered plumeria, and the red lantana alive with butterflies and moths.

Pretty awesome.

Now from the house here comes Mae, head up and tail wagging, trotting ahead of Bette Wu as if showing her to her table.

Casey’s heart bucks.

She strides midway into his little backyard, then stops and stands there, looking at him as if she’s just walked onstage in scene one. Mae licks her free hand. Bette’s dressed in a black knit suit with gold buttons. Black-and-gold pumps, plum lipstick and nails. Hair up, bangs down, and a brushed aluminum Halliburton briefcase in one hand.

She steps up and sets it on the blue-tiled, wave-patterned bistro table. Leans forward on both hands, right into Casey’s grill. Up this close her face is the size of a billboard.

“My family had nothing to do with the Barrel,” she whispers. “I swear it. And I have proof.”

“Jimmy made a threat that day on Empress II. I heard it with my own ears.”

“My father is a clown. Sometimes worse. I expect to be free from him soon.”

“But who else would set the fire? I got burned, you know.”

She softly touches the back of his free hand. “I do know. It hurts me.”

Then she straightens, looking down at him with a hard expression.

“I’ll tell you exactly who set the Barrel on fire. The same people who burned our boats. Monterey 9 — a criminal tong spin-off settled in Los Angeles County. They’ve been enemies of the Wus going back fifty years. They were ruthless then and ruthless now. We were just fishermen and — women. One of their businesses is Imperial Fresh Seafood. They knew of our offer to buy the Barrel. They want rich Orange County to themselves. So, destroying our fleet was the next logical step toward ruining us completely. Luckily, we have a paid informant in Monterey 9.”

Casey less than half believes this story, but wonders if it could be true. Remembers the black Sprinter with the logo speeding off from the Barrel. Why not Monterey 9, destroying Jimmy Wu’s future assets? And maybe — just maybe — Brock and Mahina and the Go Dogs declined to torch the Wu family fleet after all. Just as Brock had said he would.

“Excuse me,” he says to Bette, as he googles “Imperial Fresh Seafood” and finds pictures of their delivery fleet. Yep, he sees: Sprinters. The same as Laguna Detective Brian Pittman’s, gray, not black, and their logo is a smiling great white shark wearing a red robe, dancing on the ocean on its tail. Like Imperial Fresh is trying to out-logo King Jim, Casey thinks. What kooks.

But it’s not much like the logo he saw that night.

Which he tells Bette and shows her his screen. She shrugs and fixes him with a who-gives-a-shit look.

Casey remembers the pirates that first day, bloody knives and dying sharks, their rusty guns and eagerness to use them. Like, if they’d do that, why wouldn’t their enemies do likewise? Destroy assets? Like a chess game but the moves are sudden and violent, and there’s lots of money at stake.

“See?” Bette says. “Mae likes me. She’s forgiven my little prank. I hope you do.”

“Get lost, Ms. Wu.”

“Where are your manners?”

“They’ve left the building. So you leave, too. I get nothing but bad actions and bad karma from you.”

“Not so fast, Casey. I have gifts for you and Mae. Who I would never hurt in any way.”

“Yeah, well, what about throwing her overboard or smuggling her somewhere far away?”

“A joke. An ugly little joke. I apologize. And Casey?”

Again she leans into seated Casey, face to face. Up this close her eyes look like black lakes and within the scents of plumeria and tangerine he smells that smell from Sunset.

“Do not blame my family for the Barrel,” says Bette. “Do not blame me.”

Knowing Bette Wu as he thinks he does, everything she says sounds like a threat. Or an excuse.

But what if she’s telling the truth?

She sits across from him at the bistro table. Gives him a softened expression, then looks down.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “What do you want?”

“An Arnold Palmer, thank you.”

“I’m asking you to go. Mae is asking you to go.”

“But why?”

“We don’t trust you.”

“Someday you will.”

Bette gets into her Halliburton, pulls out a colorful foil pouch, and hands a salmon-and-pumpkin treat to Mae. One of her favorites from a boutique pet store.

“I have some ideas for you,” says Bette. “Please make me that drink. I’m very thirsty.”

Arnold Palmers are one of Casey’s favorite drinks, and fun to make. Here at home, he uses mint from his garden and lemons from his tree.

Through his kitchen window he watches Bette and Mae in the backyard, Bette giving his dog another treat from the briefcase, Mae sitting at attention with her usual food lust. Feels wrong to leave them together and alone. So he keeps an eye on both of them.

He cuts the lemons and dices the mint, his emotions writhing inside like eels. Bette Wu is his enemy. She’s kidnapped his dog, tried to swindle his family, and almost certainly helped burn down his mother’s restaurant. He has never felt hatred for another person but Bette Wu is near the top of his don’t-like list. Maybe even at the top, considering the Barrel, which he swears he can smell now, gutted by fire, stronger than the mint he’s using.

But part of him is attracted to her, fully against his will, but attractions don’t wait for invites — they just barge in. He’s especially attracted to her non-pirate side. He likes her general attitude, energy, and her blunt language. Her manner. Her poise, her clothes, her sophistication and looks. She’s really pretty. And let’s face it, he thinks: I like the way she kissed my ear on Sunset Boulevard. He thinks her mystery might be the best part of Bette Wu. Like, how can a shark-finning pirate sit out there in my backyard in a suit and feed my dog treats from a Halliburton? Who, really, actually, is this chick, anyway?

He has a brief thought of being in bed with her, or better yet, on a beach blanket just after dark in a private cove he knows near Sunset on Oahu. Such notions he has rarely followed up. When he has, they’ve proven disappointing, and screwed up friendships, and led to misunderstandings and frustrations.

Right now, frankly, his desires aren’t bothering him, though other things are:

Such as betraying his mother with a woman whose family probably destroyed her restaurant.

Such as Mae, whom Bette has threatened to dump overboard at sea. Jokingly?

And the $25,000 she tried to get in ransom.

The eels writhe as he looks at her through the window.

It’s hard not to be attracted to a pretty woman who has given him probably the most bitchin’ compliment he’s ever received from anyone except from his mom and Grandpa Don: Bette called him smart.

Still at the kitchen window, he chops and drops the mint leaves, quickly and deftly as he would in the Barrel, his domain since he was a thirteen-year-old dishwasher. He takes a bartender’s pride in his drinks.

Be very careful, Casey thinks.

He sets down the glasses and sits across from her.

“This is like the Garden of Eden,” says Bette. “The flowers and the smells. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would be the tangerine. Right?”

“It’s not like the Garden of Eden,” says Casey. He’s always thought his yard is his Eden. Always took extra good care of it to make it perfect and sinless. Tangerine juice is his favorite thing to drink in the whole world, and he’s had gallons of it, right from this tree. Hard to attribute any evil to it at all.

“I was raised Christian,” says Bette. “My dad is an atheist but Mom was converted by LA Methodists. So, every Sunday off to church. Bible school in summer. Such terrible boredom. At church school I tried to read Dad’s action comics, but they took them away. So I’d look out the window and imagine scenes from the Chinese action movies he always watched. I loved the boat and ocean scenes the most. Casey, I think you understand more about what you see than you let on.”

Casey shrugs and looks away. Lets that observation sit warmly inside. Wonders if she’s just stroking him now. And why.

“Just hours ago, my father retracted his statement against you and your brother and his wife, accusing you of destroying our boats,” she says. “He knows you didn’t do it, but he’s still furious at you for the postings. Humiliated.”

“I removed them.”

“But the world saw his pirates finning sharks.”

“Well, that’s what they were doing.”

Bette sighs, cuts Casey a hard look. “Monterey 9 are violent people. Make us look like Girl Scouts. The cops are familiar with them. We’ve talked to Los Angeles County investigators and filed this new report.”

“Well, we didn’t burn your boats,” says Casey, feeling the flush of truth on his cheeks. “We did not.”

He’s inwardly proud that this is at least partially because of him. Causing Brock’s dream of him as a tiger by not condoning his brother’s violence. By turning his other cheek — and Brock’s, too.

“I know you didn’t!” says Bette. “I know, Casey. From now on, let’s believe each other. Maybe even trust each other, even if only a little, so we can proceed honestly.”

Bette pulls a set of stapled papers from the briefcase. Smiles at Mae and gives her another dog treat. Hands the papers to Casey.

“This is a copy of our statement regarding Monterey 9, to the San Diego and Los Angeles County Sheriffs. Jimmy has admitted his misguided assumptions about who did what to our ships. It’s a peace pipe, Casey. So the Stonebreakers and the Wus can work together, not against each other.”

“I doubt that, Bette,” he says quietly.

She looks disappointed. “That’s the first time you’ve used my name.”

Casey wonders again if she’s just stroking him. Thinks of the manipulating women he’s known, or known of.

“I always thought Bette Davis was scary,” he says. “Those old movies where she’s the insane bad woman.”

“My dad’s kind of woman,” says Bette. “He asked me to apologize to you for him falsely accusing you and Brock and Mahina. Do you accept?”

Casey considers this. Sees that it might well be an apology based on a convenience.

“An apology? Okay, I guess.”

“Thank goodness! You can keep this copy, as a reminder, you know. Something in writing.”

Casey leafs through it. Lots of names, companies, addresses, excerpted courtroom documents, police reports, several newspaper accounts focusing on a tong offshoot called Monterey 9. Also a Los Angeles Times story on the competitive world of fish and seafood fishermen supplying high-end Southern California restaurants. A smiling Jimmy Wu is pictured, wearing a Kings windbreaker at what appears to be a Kings game.

“I’d like to have something comparable from you, of course.”

“You mean something written?”

“Yes, just saying you don’t think we burned down the Barrel. Because, Casey — we did not.”

“I’d have to talk to Mom and Brock.”

“I’m asking you because you’re the most reasonable.”

“But they would have to agree.”

“Will you try, Casey?”

“Why do you ask for this? Are the Laguna cops closing in on you for the Barrel?”

“Do not say that! Absolutely not. They’ve been respectful. Maybe a little frustrated that there’s not one speck of evidence against us. Everything points to the Monterey 9 and Imperial Fresh Seafoods.”

Casey takes a long moment to consider. Bette’s tale of the Monterey 9 sounds possibly believable.

Laguna PD detective Pittman has asked about them, indicated that they are of interest to his investigation of the Barrel arson. He’s already sent Casey a useless photograph of an Imperial Fresh delivery van with the dancing shark on it.

Pittman has also asked Casey about the infamous Laguna arsonist Timothy Stanton Orchard, who Casey’s mom wrote an article about years ago. Shown him pictures.

But Casey hasn’t even thought about — let alone seen this weirdo — in years.

“I’ll talk to my family is all I can say. About something written.”

“Wonderful, Casey. Totally rad, as you might say.”

She pats the back of his hand lightly with hers. Which pricks his burns but also sends a zing of pleasure through him. Same as when she kissed his ear on Sunset.

“I brought something to make you respect me more,” she says.

Bette gives Mae another treat, then pulls a small trophy from the Halliburton and hands it to Casey. It’s a brass surfer girl on a wooden stand, a brass wave behind her. Nice little two-footer, Casey sees.

“I got third in the under-twelves at Huntington one year,” she says. “The waves were big, and Bethany Hamilton gave this trophy to me.”

“Sweet,” says Casey.

“You can have it to put with yours.”

“No, you should keep it.”

He sets it back in the briefcase and he sees the hurt on her face. Remembers that Bette told him she was an actor and film school graduate, too. Out here in the cool autumn sun, Bette’s face looks pale and luminescent as a pearl. And her hair black and shiny as obsidian.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” says Casey.

“You can’t. The other reason I came is because I want to talk to you about a business arrangement. I want to help manage you.”

“Manage me?”

“Your business, your money, your happiness, your life.”

“But I’m already doing that.”

“Casey? Let me be honest and caring. You’re not doing a very good job of it.”

“In exactly what way?”

“Hear me out.”