Liquid Smoke

TWO

I staked out a spot near the jetty, where the nice right break that sometimes appeared had failed to materialize. The imposing clouds to the west had yet to kick up the larger than normal swells that winter storms brought.

The woman was wearing a bright yellow rash guard and a pair of black bikini bottoms. She had her blond hair pulled back. The board was a little oversized for her, but she handled it okay, paddling into a couple of the small ripples she mistook for waves.

She pretended like she was watching the horizon, waiting for the water to rise up in more respectable swells, but I caught her looking in my direction twice before she finally turned parallel to the shore and paddled over.

“Not so good, huh?” she asked, as she glided up next to me. “I was hoping there’d be a little more going on out here.”

“Not in the middle of the day,” I said. “Usually just like this.”

“Really?” She wrinkled her nose. Her tone was overly friendly. “I was told South Mission was a pretty good spot.”

“It can be. Just gotta catch it at the right time.”

She nodded like that made sense to her.

“How long are we gonna make the stupid small talk?” I asked.

Her gray eyes shifted away from me, and she pushed a few wet strands of hair off her forehead. “What?”

“You practically camped out on my patio for the last hour,” I said. “I saw you walking the beach before you even got in the water.” I nodded at her board. “You rented that at Hamel’s. And you just told me you’ve never been out here before.”

Thin lines formed above her eyes as she thought about objecting. Then she shrugged. “Got me.” She held out a hand. “I’m Darcy Gill.”

I didn’t shake her hand. “What do you want, Darcy Gill?”

“Nice to meet you, too, Noah Braddock.” Her eyes flickered, and the polite friendliness she had brought over with her disappeared as she retracted her hand. “Everyone on the beach said you’d be pissed off if I bothered you on the water.”

“They were right.”

“But I wasn’t sure you’d speak to me if I just showed up at your door,” she said. “So I’m sorry for ambushing you like this.”

“Sorry enough to just paddle away?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Not that sorry.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Darcy said.

“Congratulations.”

“You’re a private investigator, correct?”

“Yep. But I’m not for hire.”

“Why not?”

I dipped my hands into the water and then ran them along my arms, goose bumps forming on my skin. I thought about throwing out all my reasons, but she hadn’t done anything to earn that knowledge. “Because I’m surfing at the moment.”

She stared hard at me for a moment, the intensity of her eyes matching the looming clouds above us. Then she made a face like she didn’t care. “That’s fine.”

“Now will you swim away?”

“In a minute,” Darcy said. “If you’ll answer one question for me.”

“One question and you’ll leave me alone?”

“One question.”

I didn’t believe her, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. “Alright.”

“How do you feel about the death penalty?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’d grown a dorsal fin. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

I squinted into the blue-gray sky to the west. “That’s your one question?”

“Yeah.”

I laughed, then shrugged. “Okay. I’m in favor of it. Goodbye, Darcy Gill.”

“Why are you in favor of it?” she asked.

“No, no. That’s two questions.”

“Come on,” she said. “You already told me you aren’t for hire. Just answer me.”

I resented her interrupting my quiet afternoon, but I wasn’t ready to get off the water yet. And drowning her would have been too obvious.

“Fine,” I said. “I support the death penalty because I believe that there are some people who simply don’t belong on the planet. They aren’t here to do anything other than damage the world.”

“I agree that some people aren’t fit for this world,” she said, “but it doesn’t mean killing a person is correct.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But that’s the way the world works, and that’s my opinion.”

“I have a client on death row,” she said. “His execution date is in a month.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, watching the water spill off the jetty. “But I’m gonna assume that your client may have done something that justified his current position.”

“He did,” she said. “He killed two other men.”

“There you go.”

“The problem for me, Mr. Braddock, is that my client won’t talk to me,” she said. “He’s willing to accept the punishment. But I’m not.”

“Isn’t that his choice?” I said.

“Maybe,” she answered. “But I don’t believe in the death penalty, and it’s my job to see if I can change his sentence.”

I sat there, the last of the sun beating down on my shoulders, knowing there was more to this conversation.

“You said you didn’t care that I wasn’t for hire,” I said.

“I lied,” she said, smiling, exposing a slight gap between her two front teeth.

“Then you’ve wasted your time,” I said as I lay down on the board.

“I think I can change your mind,” she said.

I started paddling in. “Then you’re wrong.”

I heard her thrashing in the water behind me, her small arms working furiously to catch up to me. I stroked hard until my fingers grazed the sand below the water.

“You haven’t asked me about my client,” she said, catching me sooner than I’d anticipated.

“Sharp observation, Darcy.” I stopped paddling, slid off the board, and stood next to it, maybe twenty yards from the sand, the water just below my knees. “I’m not interested.”

She pushed off her board, fell awkwardly into the water, then bounced up to her feet. She shoved her rental angrily toward the shore and put her hands on her hips. “Ask me who my client is.”

I put a finger to my chin like I was thinking, then pulled it away. “No.”

“I’m not going away until you ask,” she said.

She had the feel of someone who would back that statement up, nipping at my heels as I tried to kick her away.

“Christ,” I said, reaching down to my ankle and unstrapping the leash. “If I ask, will you go the fuck away?”

“Yeah.”

“Even when I tell you that I’m still not interested? You’ll go away and no more of this shit?”

“I promise,” she said.

“I heard that once already.”

“This time I mean it,” she said. “If you want me to go away, I’ll go away.”

There was something in her demeanor that suddenly made me realize I didn’t want to ask the question. She seemed supremely confident.

But I was stuck.

“Who is your client?” I asked.

“My client is Russell Simington,” she said.

The name meant absolutely nothing to me. “So?”

Darcy Gill folded her arms across her chest, casting a long, thin shadow across the shallow water. “Russell Simington is your father.”