Desperation Reef

39

After the awards dinner, Casey and Bette Wu walk the quiet streets to Pillar Point Harbor. It’s cold and still, the moon a distant egg in a nest of fog.

They pass Mavericks Surf Company, owned by Jeff Clark, a local who surfed Mavericks for nearly fifteen years before it was “discovered” back in the early nineties. The first guy to really ride it. Alone, because nobody else would dare. Clark is one of Casey’s idols, and the coolest of dudes, too. Tight with his dad. Introduced Casey around Half Moon Bay. Took him out at Mavericks when Casey was fourteen, on a medium-wicked, paddle-in day. Warned him that Mavericks has no conscience.

Casey looks through a window at the handsome Clark boards racked along one wall. Simple and clean, no adorning colors. Above the cash register hangs a blown-up photo of their maker, carving a bottom turn on a fifty-foot face.

“You are him now,” says Bette.

“No, just me.”

“You’re better. I’ve studied all the films and videos. Yours and his.”

“He did it first. I just watched and learned.”

“You’re faster and stronger and more intuitive. A better wave reader. You showed yesterday what you are. You have the royal blood of your mother and father. You are a king. We need to inflate your ego, Casey. We need to make you proud to be the best in the world. Better than Laird. Better than Garrett. Better than all of them.”

“I’m only the best for now. Just at Mavericks. But somebody else will be here next year. Maybe looking through this window. I’m chill with that. It’s all good.”

“More famous. More rich. The best. When they say the best big-wave surfer in the world, ever — it is going to be you.”

Casey turns and smiles at her. “That would be pretty choice, Bette.”

“It is your choice, Mr. Stonebreaker.”

She smiles back. She’s got a seafoam-green beanie pulled over her ears, and matching duster against the cold. Does a funny little skip, ducks a shoulder under his, and presses an arm to his back. They walk on, passing the rental bikes and paddleboards chained up for the night, and the commercial fishing boats cut into planes and shadows by the dock lights. The bait boat crews are already arriving in this early morning dark. A lanyard pings on a sailboat mast.

“You don’t feel so tense when I touch you,” says Bette.

“I’m getting used to you. I’m liking on you.”

He feels her arm tightening against his back and a gloved hand squeezing his elbow. Feels her head on his shoulder and smells that perfume she wore on Sunset, the one that feels sweet and warm in his lungs, puts his sex drive in gear.

“We will be very good, Casey.”

“Totally.”

Bette’s grip goes tight on his arm as a big silver SUV eases into the harbor from Pillar Point Harbor Boulevard. He senses her attention as she slows their walk.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She rubs his back as if in encouragement, resuming their pace.

“Nothing.”

But as the SUV comes toward them, she firmly adjusts their direction away from it and toward the boulevard. Her hand tightens on his arm again.

The Yukon’s headlights go off and it comes forward and stops, pointed right at them, fifty feet away. No front plate.

Bette stops.

Casey watches all four doors open and four people get out. In the meek interior light he recognizes two of the shark-finning women from his first brush with Empress II — one white, the other Mexican. The other two are Asian women, one big and husky, the other smaller and slender.

“Not in the script,” says Bette. “I have to go.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Back to your room, Casey. I’ll call.”

“These are pirates.”

“I know who they are. This shouldn’t take long.”

“What shouldn’t? What are you going to do? What are they going to do?”

Bette walks briskly to the big woman and gives her a brief look before climbing into the middle row of seats.

Casey watches the doors slam, hears the pirates arguing inside. He’s thumbing on his video when the Yukon lights blast on, and the vehicle charges right at him. He dives, hits, and rolls.

“Fudge!”

Up on one knee he tries to vid the rear plates but they’re blacked out with something, tape, maybe; he can’t tell.

So he runs with all his strength for the Yukon, which bumps from the marina onto the empty boulevard, speeding for downtown and the exits from Half Moon Bay.

Casey races down the middle of the empty boulevard after Bette, but in shearling boots and a goose-down tube jacket and the slim-fit Dream Coast jeans he’s contracted to wear to all World Surf Federation — sanctioned events, racing isn’t easy.

He catches a toe on an orange reflector, goes down, rolls, and is back up again as the Yukon bends south along the beach and out of sight.

He sits in his room, eating the snack basket crackers, the sliding-door curtain open so he can see the Oceano entrance. He’s got the little fireplace pegged against the chill.

He thinks about waking up Brock, because Brock’s down with the dark side. Like aboard Empress II that day, when he handled Jimmy Wu and his pirates like they were kooks. Because Brock is an eighth-dan hapkido black belt. And a volunteer fighter in Ukraine. And a former Riverside County pot grower with violent competitors. And a big-wave surfer, drowned in a three-wave hold-down at Nazaré until Mahina blew the breath of life back into him. Or God did, thinks Casey: there’s different ways to look at that.

A loud lowrider rumbles along Capistrano, then a couple of Harleys. No silver Yukon.

Casey takes the elevator up to Bette’s room, knocks on her door, and gets the welcome he’s expecting: none.

He goes into the ice and vending alcove, where he can see her door, scans the offerings in the machines, gets a two-dollar bag of spicy shelled peanuts. He’s always hungry because that’s what the ocean does to you, but the day after a big-wave contest he’s always fully starved.

The dinner tonight was good but fairly skimpy and you didn’t get seconds, so Casey buys more nuts and some Funyuns and a raspberry smoothie.

Watches Bette’s door, checks his phone every few minutes, then heads back.

Three minutes after three, and a knock on his door. Pulls it open without checking the peephole.

Bette steps in, holding the beanie to her face.

Bloody everything: hands, seafoam duster, jacket. Splatters on her boots.

She lowers the beanie and looks up at him, eyes roaming his face. Lips puffed up, the upper split. Chin and neck streaked red. Cheeks scraped from blows, eye sockets purpling. Her left eyebrow is cross-cut and meaty at the edges.

Bette hangs her head. Casey holds her gently so as not to hurt her, like when Mae got hit by the car and he set her in his bed. He feels Bette’s sobs. Feels love.

And anger. The angriest he’s ever been.

“No police,” she blubbers through the swollen lips.

“Did you steal the money for Mom’s check from Jimmy?”

“No. The check is a forgery. I knew she wouldn’t take it. It was just to show her — show everyone — how good a friend I am. To you. This, Jimmy did for joining up with you. For being here with you. For disrespecting family. Me against the other girls.”

“I can’t believe he would let them do this to you.”

She gives Casey a broken look.

“He destroys what he can’t own and control,” she says. “Always been that way. My mother. My sister. His friends. Anyone he touches.”

“Now you.”

“This isn’t destruction. It’s a warning.”

He destroys what he cannot own and control, thinks Casey, his mind’s eye bright with windblown flames and melting surfboards.

“I know a doctor in Half Moon Bay,” he says.

“I make a call first. I want you to hear every word I say.”

Bette sits on the couch across from the fire, puts her phone on speaker, and touches a contact with a shaking finger.

Casey sits next to her, sees her bloody fingerprint on the phone screen, hears the quick pickup:

“You have reached Brian Pittman, Laguna PD. Please leave a detailed message. Speak clearly.”

Bette holds up the phone so she can look at Casey as she talks.

Casey’s anger stirs again, and his pity. Should he have seen this coming? Should he have protected her? Brock would sure as heck have never let this happen.

“Hello, Detective Pittman. This is Bette Wu. You remember me. I am calling to tell you that my father, Jimmy Wu, and his associates hired the arsonists who set the Barrel Restaurant fires and framed Monterey 9. I will tell you all details of how and why this happened. I have recordings. I am an eyewitness.”

She thumbs off the call and sets her phone on the coffee table.

For a moment, Casey feels like he’s atop a huge Mavericks right, about to drop into the chaos below.

“He’ll destroy you now,” he says.

She stares at him, a battered woman in a red-smeared seafoam-green ensemble.

Looks down.

“Sorry. So sorry. I did everything I could to talk them out of it. Dad laughed and threatened to disown me for disloyalty. So, I lied to you. Again.”

Casey feels betrayed and foolish, but most of all, battered by his failure to protect her, and by the angry sympathy within.

“Let’s get you to that doctor,” he says, placing a big arm softly across Bette’s shoulders, dialing his phone.

He thinks of getting Brock’s help here but Brock and Mahina left Half Moon Bay right after the awards dinner, bound for Hurricane Yvette, category three but building, and aimed directly at New Orleans.