Pacific Beat

Chapter 1

The main thing here is the Pacific. In the long run, the land and the people on it amount to only that. In the short run, a lot can happen.

The Franciscans ruined the Indians, the Mexicans bounced the Spanish, the Anglos booted the Mexicans and named the town Newport Beach. Dredgers deepened the harbor, and the people lived off the sea. There was a commercial fleet, a good cannery, and men and women to work them. They were sturdy, independent people, uneducated but not stupid. Then the tuna disappeared, the nets rotted, and the fishermen succumbed to drink and lassitude. Two wars came and went. Tourists descended, John Wayne moved in, and property values went off the charts. Now there are more Porsches in Newport Beach than in the fatherland, and more cosmetic surgeons than in Beverly Hills. It is everything that Southern California is, in italics. There are 66,453 people here, and as in any other town, most of them are good.

Jim Weir grew up on the Balboa Peninsula of Newport, in a bayfront home that, in one form or another, had been in his family for ninety years. The first Weir male to make it to the new world had fallen off the Mayflower at what is now Provincetown and drowned. Descendants of his pregnant wife later came west during the gold rush. Jim’s great grandfather worked with the Newport Harbor tuna fleetand died in comfort, if such a thing is really possible. His grandfather fished the waters when they were still abundant. Success had gone skinny by the time it trickled down to Jim’s mother, Virginia, who, with an air of stubborn efficiency, ran the café at Poon’s Locker. Weir’s father — Poon himself — died ten years ago of a stroke. His older brother was shot in the heart by a sniper at Nhuan Due. His sister, Ann, operated a little day-care center two blocks from the home that the Weir kids grew up in, and slung cocktails at night.

Jim was a salvager by trade, a diver. He had worked ten years for the Sheriffs Department: one at the jail, two on the streets, five with the Harbor Patrol, two with Investigations. Then he quit to do local salvage work, and find an English pirate ship called the Black Pearl, which was sunk by Spanish warships off Mexico in 1781. So far as Jim knew, he hadn’t even come close. He had lived most of his adult life aboard Lady Luck, in slip B-420 of Newport Harbor.

From his father, he had inherited a deep brow and dark hair, a humorless face, a frame that carried weight without announcing it, and an outward calm that could be mistaken for dullness. He had his mother’s pale blue eyes, big hands that had always looked ten years older than the rest of him, and a temper that lived uneasily beneath the calm. He was reserved in the odd way that born Californians can be — a kind of knowing reticence that amuses Easterners, and has little to do with beach beer commercials or the common parodies of cool. To be cool is to be ready. Jim was thirty-seven, strongly built, never married, and occasionally employed. In the ways that matter, he was still looking for his first big score.

He stood on the ferry as it slid across the bay from Balboa Island to the peninsula. Lights wobbled on the black water and the bay rang with the pinging lanyards of sailboats. A May breeze came straight onshore, pressing its cool hands against Jim’s face. The Newport Beach police helicopter droned above, then banked away, trolling for crime by spotlight. Jim looked across to the houses clustered on the other side and almost smiled to himself: the old neighborhood. Awful good, he thought, to be home again.

Weir had spent the last six months in Mexico diving for the Black Pearl, and his last thirty-four days as a special guest of Mexican police in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. He had scratched the cell wall with his thumbnail each dawn when the roosters outside woke him in the stinking darkness. Jim had lost fifteen pounds, two thousand in cash, some very good dive and salvage gear, and his home, Lady Luck. The charges were drug-related, false, and, for reasons that Weir was not told — dropped. The policia clerks released him with his wristwatch, the clothes he was arrested in, and bus fare to San Diego. To the Zihuat cops, zero tolerance was a venerable tradition.

The ferry groaned, slowed, then settled against the ramp. Jim stepped off, his legs unsteady: Beans and bad water take their toll on muscle tone. He moved down the sidewalk and wound through the tourists, breathing deeply the salt air, the fumes of cars idling in the ferry line, the smell of beached seaweed. The Fun Zone cast pink lights onto the sidewalk and someone screamed from atop the Ferris wheel. The tourist girls looked pretty as ever. Were they all getting younger or what? He listened to the sound of his boots on the cement, felt the jarring of his weakened legs with each step, and again he almost smiled: Mom will be at the Whale’s Tale, having a glass of wine, and Ann will be there serving it to her. Raymond’s probably on patrol, working the night shift. Home, man, home.

He was right. His sister, clad in a dumb sailorette outfit that showed off her legs, was standing beside a window booth, yakking it up with Virginia. His mother was huddled in the pale yellow windbreaker that matched her hair. Ann had her back to him. Jim walked up quickly, wrapped his hands around her waist, buried his nose in her pretty blond waves, and snorted like a hog. She elbowed him sharply, turned, and threw her arms around him. He hugged her and looked down at Virginia, who sipped her wine and offered him a rare smile. Ann spun him around and pushed him into Virginia’s booth. “Two months and not even a postcard? Did you find it? Why didn’t you write? God, you’re skinny. You all right? Does Ray know you’re back?”

“Yes, no, jail, yes, no. Boy, I’m hungry.”

“Jail? My God, Jim.” Ann felt his forehead like the mother she would never be. Jim could see the three dark spots in the blue of her left eye, which he had always thought of as islands in a sea. She was two years older than he, but looked five younger.

Virginia placed one of her big gnarled hands against Jim’s ribs. “What happened, son?”

“First can I have some food?”

Ann’s jaw dropped in mock affront. “I spend six months worried sick about you, and you want some food. Here, eat this.” She dangled the navy blue napkin in front of him.

“Frisky tonight, aren’t we?”

“Oh gee, am I really? Then let me fulfill my life’s work and locate you some food.”

“You look good, Annie. Your skin is rosy.” Jim noted without comment that she had lost some weight, that the fret lines between her eyes had deepened.

“It’s just the Mop ’n Glow I use. But thank you ever so much. Excuse me, irritation calls from the corner four-top.”

Jim ate some bread and clam chowder, more bread, a swordfish dinner, cheesecake for dessert, and drank most of a liter of house red. He recounted his Mexican misadventure in installments, whenever Ann could come by the table. He left out the beating he received on the night he was arrested, because it had hurt too much then to talk about now. Weir long ago had discovered that words make some things worse, that silence confuses the devil, that dumping misfortunes on loved ones is akin to using the pot without shutting the bathroom door first. To Jim, the true heartbreak in Mexico was not in failing to find the Black Pearl, or the beating, or the rank sickness in the Zihuat jail, but the fact that his boat — his home, and everything on it — was gone. Only now, back stateside, did the loss seem actual. Until now, fear had hogged the emotional road, but Jim was starting to just get pissed. Fuentes was right: A gringo in Mexico is euthanasia. By the time Jim finished his story, he had avenged himself in a dozen half-plotted, violent imaginings, but he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open.

“You need some sleep, son. Stay with me in the big house. Your bed’s still made up and I ran your truck once a week like you wanted. Becky would like a call.”

Ann bent over and hugged him. “You stay right where you are until my surprise gets here. And guess what? Ray and I are having a party on Friday. Be nice and I’ll invite you.”

Jim asked about the occasion, but Ann was vague and coy, as she often was. A cup of coffee later, Jim looked up to see Ann’s husband, his oldest and finest friend, coming toward the table. Newport Beach Police Lieutenant Raymond Cruz walked across the floor with his usual graceful slowness, his gun, stick, radio, and assorted equipment neat around his waist, as systems-heavy as any cop on the beat. Jim felt a surge of happiness for which he wasn’t prepared. Ray smiled widely, threw open his arms — left hand low and right hand high — and caught Jim in a bear hug. Weir could feel the strength in Ray’s hands as they slapped against his back. It was an embrace of thankfulness. Raymond broke away first, and regarded Weir. “You look busted,” he said.

Jim nodded. “You were right. They took it all.”

A darkness passed through his eyes: Raymond’s first instinct would be to return there and take it all right back. He kissed Ann, bent down to peck Virginia, then turned again to Jim with a look of incomprehension. “How many times did I try to tell you?”

“Too many. I don’t want to hear it again.”

“You don’t want to listen, you don’t want to hear. My friend, dumb as a stick. How can it be so goddamned good to see you?” For a moment he stood there, reading Weir’s face with his bright, clear stare. Then he looked at Ann, who simply, for a moment, beamed.

“Tell him,” she said.

“You tell him, Ann.”

She stepped forward, reached down, and placed Jim’s hand against her stomach. “How’s Uncle Jim sound?”

For just a moment, Weir was speechless. Ann could not conceive. Armies of doctors had told her that, and twenty years of marriage had proven them right. And here, suddenly, what could not happen had happened — the simplicity of miracle showed plainly on her face.

Then she was racing along with the details, using words that once had curdled her with jealousy: seven months to term, a December baby, sick this morning, got to get the house ready, still haven’t picked names.

Jim saw that she already had entered that world where no man could follow, the parallel universe of motherhood. He had never seen such a thorough joy in her. Even Virginia had a sort of giddiness. Raymond’s posture had changed — head a little higher, neck a little straighter — and there was a new roundness to his trim Latin features.

“Annie,” said Jim, “you’ll be the best — uh — second-best mom in the world. It was worth getting skunked in Mexico to come home and hear this.” For as long as he could remember in his adult life, Ann had wanted a child. She had kept the faith.

Ann smiled freshly, as if realizing all over again the blessing that had befallen her. She caught herself, reigned in her joy and proposed breakfast in the morning at the big house, where Jim could “tell us what really happened” down in Mexico. This decided, Raymond kissed her lightly again, then checked his watch. “Back to the mean streets of Newport,” he said. “Glad you’re here, Jim. See you tomorrow.”

He walked across the floor with a final turn back, a smile that was aimed at Jim but strayed quickly to his wife.

Five minutes later, Weir felt the exhaustion hit him. He downed another half glass of wine and stood. “Don’t anybody wake me up before noon.”

He labored wearily down the stairs and into the moist peninsula darkness. The fog was gathering low in the sky and the spring chill still clung to his bones.

But Weir didn’t go to his mother’s house. Instead, he walked right past it, along the little bayfront homes and alleys that had comprised the geography of his youth. The neighborhood was quiet. Squat cottages conferred beneath overgrown hedges of oleander and bougainvillea; tiny yards sat with an air of preferred neglect. Half a block down was Poon’s Locker — the family business that had brought in enough money for Poon and Virginia to raise three kids. It sat solid and darkened, and Jim stopped for a moment to look through one of the double O’s of the neon sign that had hung in the window since 1963. He could see in bare outline the chairs and tables of the coffee shop, the postcard rack by the door — Wet Your Line at Poon’s Balboa! — the trophy fish hanging on the walls, the counter and cash register. With a little effort, he could have conjured Jake, running through the café on some obsessive mission, followed by the curses of Poon.

Half a block farther, he came to Ann’s Kids, the day-care center run by his sister — in lieu of her own family, Jim had long ago concluded. Would she close it by December? It was a small old house with a six-foot chain-link fence around the grounds to keep the tykes in. The yard was concrete and Jim could see the trikes and building blocks stowed neatly beside the front door. It had the look of something soon to become history.

Then past Ann and Raymond’s house — a dinky two-bedroom bungalow with a wooden porch. The veranda was strung over with fishnetting festooned with starfish, abalone shells, sand dollars and cork floats. From the sidewalk, the objects seemed to hang midair, unattached. Ann, he thought, the collector of small treasures.

He walked another three houses down, to where a tall hedge of white oleander formed a wall around the lot behind it. He stood for a minute, took a deep breath, and found the gate hidden in the foliage. He reached over the top, muted the brass bell with his hand, then slowly pushed it open. He stopped just inside. The yard was small and neatly kept, the air touched with the sweetness of the orange tree that blossomed near its center. Spring annuals nodded lazily from their pots. The walkway stones were even and swept. A cottage sat at the far end, lit from within. The wooden door was open but the screen door was shut and Jim could see her sitting in the dining room, back to him, her head tilting against her left hand, and her right holding a pencil to a notepad. Her light brown curls caught the light when she turned and looked in his direction, but the rest of her face remained in shadow. Jim became the oleander. He watched her stand and walk across the living room toward him, a pretty, full-bodied woman in a green silk robe. She stood at the screen door, hands on her hips, looking out. Weir’s desire was to step forward and say something, but he had no idea what it should be, and his legs refused to entertain the notion. From deep inside he breathed a sigh of relief, a sigh that he had not been able to muster for the six months he was in Mexico, a sigh that he had yearned for on each of the thirty-four days he had spent imagining this woman from his cell in the Zihuat jail. Then the porch light went out and the wooden door closed, and Jim could hear the dead bolt sliding into place.

The first call woke him up at one in the morning. Jim lay in his old room, tossing in the penumbra of half sleep, sweating and clammy, his stomach in knots. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out where he was. It was Ray.

“Jim, you and Ann catching up?”

“No.”

“You leave before she got off?”

“Yeah. Ten or so. What’s wrong?”

“She’s not home. She’s always home when I get here. I went by the restaurant again and they said she left at ten-thirty — half an hour early. She’s not here. So I thought—”

“Maybe she’s at the Locker, maybe she took a walk,” grumbled Jim, his stomach in revolt. Raymond was always worried too much about something. He seemed to need it.

“A two-hour walk around the peninsula in that outfit they make her wear? The fog’s in, too. I’ll try the Locker.”

“I don’t know, Ray.” What Weir did know is that the first time Becky Flynn had not come home to him, she was out with another man. She had actually gone on, after the breakup, to marry this third party, but Weir could never figure out whether that was a consolation or not. Jim said nothing, silently cursing himself for projecting his own romantic disappointments onto his sister and friend.

But there was a moment of silence when he sensed that Raymond was doing it, too. “Well, she’s never done this before.”

“Try the Locker, Ray.” Jim had always thought Raymond tried to keep too tight a leash on things, Annie included. It was typically cop, and understandable.

“Sorry. Get some sleep.”

“Night, Ray.”

Raymond called back an hour later, at 2:05 A.M. “Jim, she’s still not here. Not at the Locker, either. Her car’s gone. You sure she’s not with Virginia or something?”

Weir had been dreaming of his Zihuatanejo jail cell. He was so deep into it, he could smell the rotting walls, feel the roaches scratching across his feet. “Lemme check downstairs.”

Ann’s old room was empty. So was the living room, the den, Jake’s old room. Virginia slept heavily in the master, a rectangle of soft light from the streetlamp lying upon the floor. For a brief moment, he thought back to the old days, when Jake and his father were alive and the house always seemed so busy and disheveled and stuffed with life.

He even looked in the garage, but all he saw were his pickup truck, Virginia’s old VW, her collection of clutter. His stomach rumbled as he walked back upstairs to his room. “No. Not here.”

“It’s after two, Jim.”

“You call patrol?”

“Yes, nothing. I might cruise myself.”

“Just stay by the phone. She knows where you are, Ray; she’ll call.”

“I got a bad feeling.”

The same feeling lapped at Weir, then retreated. “Don’t feed it. She’ll be back.”

“Sorry.”

Weir couldn’t sleep. At 3:25, the phone rang again. “Still not here, Jim.”

“I’ll be over in five minutes.”

Jim dressed in the darkness and went downstairs. His mother was sitting in her favorite living room chair, both arms extended along the rests, her back straight, head erect. She looked like Lincoln. She asked Jim what was wrong and Weir told her Ann wasn’t home yet.

“Call the Whale’s Tale and the Locker,” she said.

“Ray did.”

“Try Sherry, from the restaurant.”

“She’d call if she was with a girlfriend.”

“Then call the watch commander.”

“He did that, too.”

Virginia was quiet a moment. “I don’t like this. It’s something your father would have done. Annie got more of Poon than you or Jake did, so if I taught her one thing, it was how to take care of herself.”

“That doesn’t make her home, Mom.”

“Go ahead. I’ll try Becky’s.”

Jim closed the door quietly behind him and walked north along the bayfront. He was passing Ann’s Kids when he saw that the door was cracked open. Weir stopped and looked at his watch: it was 3:37 A.M., Tuesday, May 16. He tried the gate, which was locked, then climbed the fence and landed heavily on the other side. The chain link chimed briefly, then settled. Six steps to the door, boot heels on concrete, no lights on. He poked the door with his finger and it swung easily on quiet hinges.

Weir stepped into the house and flipped on a light. This was the playroom, with clean hardwood floors and all manner of toys — plastic buckets and shovels, dolls and doll-houses, big blocks with letters on them — arranged along one wall. A rocking horse waited on its springs, frozen in gallop. A low case filled with picture books stood along another wall. There was a trash basket filled with tops, yo-yos and jump ropes, and a larger one that contained those big red balls that smell of rubber and ping beautifully when you bounce them.

The second room was for quiet time and videos. The kitchen was clean. Jim nudged open the door to Ann’s office with his toe: desk, three folding chairs, a typewriter, telephone, answering machine. An empty flower vase, half-filled with water, sat beside the phone. He smelled it — the water was fresh.

Looking out a window to the backyard, he saw the dark outlines of a playhouse, a rabbit cage, a sandbox.

He switched off the lights, locked the front door, and pulled it shut behind him. Climbing back over the fence, he wondered why the door had been left open and why there was a flower vase on Ann’s desk half-filled with clean water, but no flowers.

Four houses down the sidewalk, he went through a wrought-iron gate, up a short walkway, then onto a wooden deck that gave humidly beneath his feet. Ray opened the door before he knocked.

“The preschool door was open, Ray.”

“I know. I went there first, looked around, left it the way it was. Did you lock it?”

Jim nodded.

Raymond looked at him sharply. His forehead was shiny with sweat and the hair around his ears looked damp. “I hope you didn’t contaminate it.”

Jim understood now just how panicked Raymond really was. “It’s not a crime scene.”

“Something’s wrong. I can feel it. When you’re married for twenty years and something’s wrong, you know.”

Jim stood in the living room while Ray poured coffee. The house was a small two-bedroom, with low ceilings and knotty pine walls that seemed dark as walnut. They’d been renting it for ten years, and it was a step up from their old apartment. They both wanted to stay in the neighborhood, and rent wasn’t cheap anymore. The second room was the study, where Raymond labored over his books. Jim could see in the dim lamplight thick volumes stacked on a table, a legal pad lying beside them, a dozen pencil tops emerging from a green coffee can. Ray had been going to law school part-time since Jim had quit the Sheriffs, two years back. He had told Weir that compared to studying law, the streets were a vacation — he was more comfortable with crooks than books. To Jim, Ann and Ray seemed like a lot of other people from the neighborhood: blue-collar, hardworking, and not much to show for it. Ray’s JD was his ticket on the upward express. Virginia paid the tuition.

Weir understood Raymond’s struggle to break out — his own ticket was in his hand. The fact that he had quit a detective’s job to hunt treasure was something that everyone in the neighborhood seemed to approve, but Weir had always sensed a bit of contempt mixed with it, the insinuation — trailing along just behind the good wishes — that he had sold out. In one sense, he knew that he had, but it wasn’t the money he wanted, it was the liberty. No more cops, no time clocks, no oppressive county bureaucrats, no endless hours waiting in courthouse halls to put away the same people for the same dreary, vicious, stupid crimes. There had to be more than that.

Raymond understood. Raymond always had, although this was the least of what bound Weir to him. Deeper than this yearning for something more were layers of friendship that had endured nearly thirty years, trust that only time can build, years of competition and loyalty, years of honest confession and minor deceit, years of being boys together and men apart, years of Ann as the shared hypotenuse of their lives. Jim had long understood — with awe — that if Raymond had to, he would offer his life for him. Weir had first attributed it to the partnership in a job that can get people killed; later, to something sacrificial in the very blood that coursed through Raymond Cruz’s veins. Finally, he had seen it for what it was: a simple product of love. Weir believed that if the moment came to offer the same gift he would be able to give it in return, knowing, too, that it is not a question that can be answered ahead of time

The phone rang in the kitchen. Jim studied Ray’s face as he picked it up. Raymond stared at Weir and didn’t say a word until he put the handset back down. He drew a deep breath. “They found Ann.”