Desperation Reef

42

Late that afternoon Casey and Bette sit in the backyard of his Dodge City cottage on Woodland. Mae lies at their feet under the bistro table near the tangerine tree.

The waning day is clear but cool. Even this far into fall, the tangerine tree blossoms sweetly and the plumeria throws off a spicy scent. The birds-of-paradise stand proudly orange and blue, and the bougainvillea is a purple wall.

He shoots some pictures of the flowers, posts them as a CaseyGram along with a haiku that just popped into his mind:

Bougainvillea bracts

White stars in the middle, like,

A purple riot

Ms. Paige up at Thurston Middle School taught his class the 5–7–5 formula, and Casey really dug how cool the rhythm was, though the best he could get out of seventh-grade English was a C-plus because he was such a slow reader and spent class time sketching waves.

This is the sixth afternoon in a row they’ve been here. Bette wears Casey’s heavy Navajo-print robe and fleece slippers, as she has all week. That first day back from Mavericks, she slept for twenty-plus hours in the guest room, aided by a space heater and her pain pills. Casey sat bedside, guzzling coffee, waking her up every few hours to Bette’s woozy annoyance.

Of these six days, Detective Pittman has been here four long mornings, with his questions and voice recorder and video camera. He’s methodical and patient, asking the same questions again and again, checking dates and times, exact locations, exact words spoken, expressions, tones of voice, background, background, and more background.

Casey waits on them like good customers in his bar, checking on their coffees and drinks, making them snacks, eavesdropping. In between Bette’s recorded conversations with her father, Mr. Fang, and other principals in King Jim Seafood, Casey overhears “unindicted coconspirator,” “plea bargain,” “immunity from prosecution,” “testimony,” and “court time.” He also hears Bette tell the detective that she’s thinking of “getting as far away from him as I can get when this is over.”

“He’ll be in prison when this is over,” said the detective.

Now in the dimming light Casey considers the stitches in Bette Wu’s eyebrow. And the plum-purple bruises around her eyes, fading to orange. The bruises on her cheeks are lighter, too. The two small stitches keeping the edges of her lips aligned as they heal — taken by Casey’s surfing doctor friend in Half Moon Bay — should be ready to remove in two days.

They sit side by side to view the sunset. Bette drinks wine through a straw; Casey a virgin version of the Barrel Scorpion, heavy on his seedless tangerine juice, which he uses instead of orange juice. Her phone is on the table and she keeps looking at it.

He refills her glass.

“I like to drink wine more than I used to,” she says.

“It’s good for you, Pop.”

“I love that scene.”

They’ve watched a lot of movies this past week.

“I’ll cut back the wine when my face doesn’t hurt.”

“Hang in there.”

“I have a question for you, Casey. I believe that Brock and Mahina and the Go Dogs set our boats on fire. I’m almost certain that you did not. Am I right?”

Casey feels that big ugly surge of confusion/anxiety/stupidity rack his brain as he contemplates his answer. Lie or not? Simple but so... complex.

“I didn’t set the fires because I didn’t think it was right.”

Casey studies her eyes, the black pupils set in garnet orange and bruise purple, like the pendant around his neck. It hurts him just to look at them. How do you let them do this to your own girl?

“And I’ve got a question for you,” he says. “How did you frame Monterey 9 for the Barrel?”

She studies him blankly, finally nods. Takes another drink.

“Early morning, after we set the fire, we broke into an Imperial Fresh Seafood Sprinter in their Monterey Park lot. Loaded in some canisters of gasoline, and the cell signal timers, the wires, batteries, everything. And a detailed plot drawing of the Barrel, small x’s where the bombs had been planted. Fang placed the anonymous tip to LA police, who patrol Monterey, named two of the Imperial Fresh Seafood pirates we’ve been fighting with for decades. We’d put the bomb stuff in their garages. The frame might not have been strong enough to fool a good defense, but it was enough for the cops to make the arrests and get them off our backs.”

“What about the Sierra Sports Sprinter?”

“Our van. Our people. Forged plates. A Sierra Sports emblem one of our people found in a thrift store.”

Casey tries to follow the consequences. Tries to think like Brock would think.

“So, if you hadn’t told Detective Pittman about all that, the two framed suspects might have been convicted. And the people who torched the Barrel would be free.”

“Yes.”

In his mind’s eye, he sees the flames lashing the walls of the Barrel, melting the surfboards, eating the paintings and the furnishings and the hardwood floor.

And the Empress II boiling over with flames. And Bushmaster and Stallion and the panga...

Which is when Casey admits to himself who set Jimmy Wu’s boats on fire.

“Who are the real Barrel fire setters?” he asks.

“Fang and Danilo.”

Casey tries to reconcile their faces with the security camera video. Can’t make firm connections, and wonders how a jury could. Again, it’s Bette who can identify them. Convict them.

“You’ve sacrificed a lot for us. Turned in your father. His business. Your coworkers.”

Your face, he thinks.

She shakes her head and looks up at him, a quizzical smile on that battered face.

“And I did it for me, too, Casey.”

His heart swelling for her, he takes off his surfboard pendant with the orange Mandarin Spessartite garnet embedded on the deck. It’s the orange of his father’s famous big-wave gun, and the orange of his mother’s hair.

Years ago, he hired the aunt of one of the Barrel waiters to make this pendant. She was a well-known Taxco jewelry maker. Sent her pictures, dozens of them, so she could get the shape of the gun right, especially that wicked narrow tail. This was before he had any money. So he borrowed from his mom against his busboy wages: two thousand dollars, because the Mandarin Spessartite was so rare. It took him a year to pay her back.

Bette eyes it. Casey likes that he can’t tell what she’s thinking.

Now he stands before her and spreads the heavy silver chain, setting the necklace over Bette Wu’s head and onto her fine pale neck.

“Thank you,” he says.

She stands and lifts a lock of hair off Casey’s forehead, managing a half smile. Softly runs a finger along his reef-cut scab.

Casey gets that funny little jolt he gets when she touches him.

Mae looks up at him like she’s felt it, too.

The phone buzzes and Bette checks the caller.

“I’ve got something for you, too,” she says.

Accepts the call and walks out of earshot to the sliding glass door. Then raises a stop-sign palm to Casey, turns, and goes into the house. Mae sits and watches.

Bette talks a thousand times a day, quietly, almost always from somewhere Casey can’t quite hear.

Through the slider screen he watches Bette, now heading out the front door. He sidles up to the fence, pokes an opening through the thorny purple bougainvillea, and peers through it as a matte-black Tesla glides to the curb.

Bette gets in, sweeping the belt of his robe inside as she shuts the door.

The car doesn’t move.

Casey doesn’t like this one bit. Knows that Bette is in no shape physically or mentally to defend herself. What is she doing? She’s not running away, is she?

He can’t see inside through the blackout window glass.

A moment later she steps out, holding a Tiffany’s shopping bag with black tissue paper waving out the top.

He strides back to where he was so she won’t catch him spying.

She comes through the house, kneeling a moment to pet Mae’s ear.

She gives Casey a pained half smile and sets the bag on the table. Lifts the tissue paper with a magician’s flourish and Casey looks inside.

At the neat stacks of twenties bundled with bright yellow rubber bands.

“My eight grand from the sportsbook. For betting on you, mister! Half for you, and I’m going to bank the rest and maybe get myself some new clothes.”

“I don’t want half. It’s yours. Buy the stuff you need!”

Which, Casey knows, as an eyewitness, is quite a lot.

A few nights back, he helped pack up her furnished San Gabriel apartment, and was much surprised to see how little she had: a portable turntable and amp with detachable speakers and some vinyl. Some college textbooks and a few novels, a dated collection of DVDs — mostly Chinese action movies. She had bulk Costco toiletries, health and beauty products, cosmetics. Only a few really sweet rags: the black knit suit with the brass buttons she wore the day she bombed into his house in Dodge City, the white linen outfit she wore on Sunset Boulevard. The seafoam-green leather outfit she’d worn to the Barrel months ago and, later, to the Monsters awards banquet, was by then at the Canyon Cleaners in Laguna, where Mr. Kim had told Casey he’d do his best to remove the bloodstains and restore the leather. Bette had a few hats and pairs of shoes. Some jeans, sweatshirts, and T-shirts. Her ocean-going “pirate couture” as she called it was lost in the Empress II fire. As was her pistol, which she confessed to having never once fired. When she stopped a moment to study her framed UCLA diploma — but left it hanging — Casey asked why.

“I didn’t quite graduate,” she’d told him. “Didn’t get the algebra at all, and I liked being a pirate better. That’s a fake I had made, just like the check I gave your mother.”

Now here in Laguna Canyon with her $8,000 on the table, she sits again and takes a long, slow sip of the wine. Sets a hand on Casey’s.

“I’ve been talking to your studio people,” she says. “Introduced myself as a friend and business associate, then called bullshit on their biopic purchase price. Told them this year’s winner of the Monsters of Mavericks will not grant an option renewal next month.”

“But those guys are cool.”

“Yeah, so cool they’re going to up the purchase price by four hundred thousand dollars. More important, they’ve got a writer interested. A-list, Oscar nominee, hot dude — or so they say.”

“So if they make it—”

“You get half a million dollars and genuine back end. No Hollywood accounting, I told them.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“You’re the best in the world, Casey. You deserve it.”

“You’re a good partner.”

“When I’m not getting beat up!”

“You look better, Bette. Get the stitches out and let the bruises heal. You’ll be pretty again. Extra pretty.”

She squeezes his hand. “I’m not pretty now?”

“No, I meant—”

She cuts him off with a soft laugh. “I know what you meant.”

Casey’s embarrassed, of course. Always ready to say something dumb, he thinks. Should get a trophy for that, too.

She lets go of his hand and takes a sip from the straw, studying him. Beautiful eyes in a wounded face, he thinks. Wonders if he and Brock should beat up Jimmy like his people did to her.

“You’ll be all the way pretty again real soon, is what I actually meant.”

“You’re sweet, Casey.”

He thinks of something to say but it sounds stupid, even to him. But, sometimes he can’t...

“Bette, I like you a lot. As much as I like Mae.”

Who sits up and looks at him.

Bette reaches out and scratches Mae behind the ears, which she loves.

But Bette is looking at Casey.

“We’re ready, Casey.”

“What for?”

“Let’s go inside. I’ll show you.”

Late that night Casey wanders his little clapboard house in Laguna Canyon, flip-flops around his backyard, checking the closed-for-the-night hibiscus, the abundant sage, the tangerines, and the roses. He’s got on his Muhammad Ali robe and a cup of herbal tea in one hand. Bette is hard asleep.

He’s taken to this routine since Bette got here, his ears tuned to the cars out on Woodland. Not many this time of night. But he’s out here for Bette, because he doesn’t trust Jimmy or his people no matter how headed for prison they are. Any guy who’d have his own daughter beat up is capable of a whole lot more than that.

Not on my watch, thinks Casey. I’m dumb but not that dumb.

Finally he knows that he should make the call. It’s time. It’s past time. It’s not in time. Fudge... who knows what it is or isn’t?

“Yo, bro,” Brock answers. “’Sup?”

“I know you burned the boats.”

“Had you for a minute, didn’t I? Thank you for believing I didn’t, at least for a while. You kept me out of jail.”

“I wish you hadn’t lied to me.”

“It was for your own good, Case. I’m not sorry I did.”

“I am. Hey, Brock, there’s a great big magenta ball out in the Atlantic. They’re calling it the Hell Swell. Headed for Nazaré.”

“I’ve been tracking it.”

“Interested?”

“I’m in. The mission is broke. I have to win some dough. You?”

“Bette and me are going if it holds.”

“You’re the man, Case. You’re the greatest big-wave surfer in the world.”

“Well, for now.”

“Everything’s just for now, bro. See you tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain.”