by Don Winslow
“Why do you think I’m having a turkey burger,” Lou asks, “instead of a real burger?”
“A salad,” the waitress says. “What kind of—”
Lou is staring at her.
“No dressing, right?”
Lou nods, and the waitress walks away to put in the order.
A hockey game drones on a TV above the bar, and Lou wonders who watches hockey in October.
The guy is going to hit up north, he decides.
His next job.
That’s his pattern.
Then Angie comes in, sits down across from him and says, “I’m guessing you ordered already.”
Lou shrugs. “You’re late.”
“At least you didn’t order for me,” she says, scanning the menu.
He didn’t, but he could have, because he knows what she’s going to have—a Caesar salad with shrimp, no dressing. Lou’s tempted to tell her this, but he doesn’t want to piss her off so he keeps his mouth shut.
But she sees the look on his face when she orders a Caesar salad with shrimp and no dressing. “We’ve been married too long.”
“Apparently that is your opinion.”
“So who’s going to move out?” Angie asks. “You or me?”
“Me.”
“It should be me,” Angie says. “I’m the adulteress.”
“Hester Prynne.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Lou says. “No, I’ll go. I could use a change. I think I’m in kind of a rut.”
“Sure, now,” she says. “Is that what it took, Lou, me having an affair? I wish I’d known that sooner.”
“Is this your first?” Lou asks.
“Would you believe me if I said it was?”
“Sure,” Lou says. “I mean, what do you have to lose?”
“Such a cop.”
Lou shrugs again. To annoy her this time, because she has taken to saying lately that his shrugs are both very “cop” and very “Jewish.” He wonders if the lawyer shrugs.
“I mean, am I in the room now?” Angie asks. “All your cop buddies tell me you’re very good ‘in the room.’ I guess they didn’t mean the bedroom.”
“I’ll move out,” Lou says.
“Where will you go?”
“As if you care?”
“I care, Lou.”
“I’m thinking the beach.”
She actually laughs. Off his look she says, “I can’t picture you at the beach, Lou. You’re maybe the least beach person that I know.”
Which is maybe why I should go, he thinks.
* * *
Davis rubs freshly cracked black pepper on the fish, then walks out onto the deck and checks the heat on the grill.
Satisfied that the temp is perfect, he lays the fillets on the grill and goes back inside. He pours a thin layer of lemon-infused olive oil into a pan, snaps the asparagus stems in half, washes the top halves, then sets them into the hot oil.
Traci watches all this.
“You’re going to make someone a wonderful wife one day,” she says.
Davis scorches the asparagus stems, takes them off the heat, dumps them into a colander, and puts a few ice cubes on top of them to stop them from cooking in their own heat. Then he walks back out onto the deck and turns the fillets.
Looks across the 101 and sees the guy standing in the park by the Main Beach basketball courts.
Short guy with the weird yellow hair.
Davis doesn’t like it because he saw the guy earlier in the afternoon in Huntington Beach. When he sees someone he doesn’t know more than once in the same day—especially in two different locations—he wants to know why.
Crime 101: There’s a word for a man who believes in coincidence: the defendant.
Then he sees the guy glance up at his balcony.
Is it Money? Has he flipped on me?
Or did I make a mistake somewhere?
Could he be a cop? Davis asks himself. He mentally retraces his steps since the Del Mar robbery, checking to see if he possibly could have been followed.
He doesn’t think so, but who is this guy?
You can’t take a chance, he tells himself.
You have to move.
Going back into the condo, Davis says, “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“I’m starving.”
He pulls a bottle of Drouhin Chablis out of the ice bucket, opens it, and pours them each a glass.
Davis takes the chocolate mousse out of the refrigerator, puts a small spoonful of whipped cream on each one, and then places raspberries on the cream.
“You made this?” Traci asks when he sets them on the table. “From scratch?”
“It’s not hard,” Davis says.
Her spoon poised over the bowl, she says, “I shouldn’t.”
“Dark chocolate,” Davis says. “Very good for you—full of antioxidants.”
“Well, in that case.” She takes a bite. “OMG, Michael. An orgasm on a spoon.”
Later, in bed, he says, “I have to leave again soon.”
Feels her stiffen in his arms. “How soon is soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You just got here,” Traci says. “I thought you’d stay longer.”
“So did I,” Davis says.
Until I spotted surveillance on me.
Then Traci asks, “Where are we going with this?”
“Not every trip needs a destination,” Davis answers.
You drive the road to drive the road.
“But it’s nice to have a direction,” Traci suggests. She’s not asking for a ring and a date, just an idea if this is headed somewhere. They’ve been seeing each other on and off for coming on two years, and she just wants to know which it’s going to be.
Davis is a player, but he plays straight. One of his rules is never to lie to a woman. So he says, “You’re looking for gold on a beach, Traci.”
“Are you calling me a gold digger?” she asks, eyes flaring.
“That was a poor analogy,” Davis admits, feeling bad that he hurt her feelings. “What I was trying to say is that you’re looking for something where it doesn’t exist.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“That I have a lot of ‘like’ in me,” Davis says. “I don’t have a lot of ‘love.’”
“Got it,” she says. “Nice twist on the ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”
“I like you very much,” Davis says.
“Quit while you’re behind,” she says. And later, “I’m thinking the next time you come back, maybe you don’t look me up, okay?”
Okay.
It’s too bad, but it’s okay.
It’s the 101.
Not the 102.
* * *
The complex is called Seaside Chateau, but as the metal gate of the underground parking structure slides open, Lou thinks it looks more like the Solana Beach Federal Corrections Facility.
It’s grim in there.
Gray walls, dark.
Then again it’s an underground parking lot, Lou thinks as he pulls in. What’s it supposed to look like, Shangri-la?
He finds his slot, #18. Actually, the rental comes with two parking slots, but he’s only going to need one because he doubts that Angie is going to come for overnights.
What do they call them in the joint?
Conjugal visits?
Lou pulls in next to a black 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 that looks like it’s in cherry condition. He’s careful not to open his door too wide and scratch it. Taking his suitcase and shoulder bag out of the car, he walks to the entrance of the complex, guarded by another metal screen door.
It’s depressing, and he wonders what he got himself into. He’d rented the place sight unseen, just off some pictures on the management company’s website. The condo itself looked pretty nice from the pictures, but they always do, don’t they?
McGuire flat-out laughed when told Lou was renting a place on the beach. “Middle-aged divorced guys, they always think
they’re going to move to the beach, score some young surfer chick.”
“I’m not divorced, and I don’t think that.”
“Part of you thinks that.”
“My brain knows better.”
Lou has seen those guys. They start going to the gym, they get their teeth whitened, they buy new clothes, maybe a sports car, and the young women look at them like just what they are.
Pathetic.
He has no such illusions. He just thought it would be a nice change—kind of a treat, if you will—to live on the beach for a while, until he sees how all this works out.
Or doesn’t.
Lou has lived in San Diego all his life and has never had a place by the beach, so if this is the extent of his midlife crisis, so be it.
Yeah, and okay, if he meets some woman—not some hot twenty-something but an attractive forty-something who happens to take a shine to him—well, okay.
“You can’t swing a dead cat in Solana Beach without hitting a yoga studio,” Lou says, “so maybe the odds aren’t all that bad.”
“Yeah, they are,” McGuire said. “Why do you think the hot forty- and fifty-somethings torture themselves in the first place? Those yoga pants are only sliding down those tight butts for twenty-three-year-old guys with six-packs.”
“Leave a man his illusions,” Lou said.
They can’t all be trophy wives cheating on their husbands with young studs. There have to be one or two maybe divorced and lonely, looking for a nice guy, maybe a nice dinner out, maybe a roll in the hay.
“Roll in the hay”? Lou thinks as he pushes the door open with his hip. Christ, I’m going to get a hot eighty-year-old.
A set of steps lead up to a common area—the standard pool-and-hot-tub combo behind yet another gate, a community grill, a few tables under a roof for the odd occasions when it rains.
He walks past the pool and finds Unit 18—actually, “Chateau 18”—up a flight of stairs on the second floor. A pedant like Lou would have thought “Seaside Chateau” linguistically impossible, especially in Southern California. He’s never seen a less French-looking place in his entire life.
He fumbles for the key and opens the door.
And instantly gets it.
Why people do this. Why they spend a fortune—Lou is really splurging on the rent—to get a “whitewater view”—because the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the condo look out at the ocean and the beach. It’s like a wall of blue—the sky, the water, and then the aforementioned white foam breaking onto the sand.
Just the view is worth it all.
The kitchen is small but looks recently remodeled, there’s a small sitting room with a flat-screen TV and a sofa. Lou walks into the bedroom—again small, but with an optimistic king-size bed and an en suite bathroom with a shower and . . . a Jacuzzi tub? Really?
He plops his bags down and feels . . .
Utterly depressed.
Two suitcases on the floor and a cardboard box of books on the backseat of the car.
That’s my life now, Lou thinks.
I’m the pathetic middle-aged about-to-be-divorced guy moving into a rented condo on the beach.
* * *
Ormon meets Money on Newport Beach Pier.
“I can understand how you lost him,” Money says, gazing out at the blue water. “What I can’t understand is why you think it’s my problem.”
Ormon has an answer to this. “Because you want to make money, and that guy isn’t going to make you any more money. Not in the long run. For that you need me. And I need him.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Money says truthfully.
“You’ve worked with the man for fifteen years,” Ormon says. “You must know something.”
Money digs deep.
He doesn’t like Ormon, who’s a violent, impulsive, greedy little creep. Money prefers the steadier, older guys who don’t enjoy hurting people. But they’re not making them like that anymore. And the violent, impulsive, greedy little creep is right—Davis has come to his sell-by date.
Money gives him a name.
* * *
Sharon Coombs is totally SoCal.
Blond hair, cut short, with highlights.
Trim late-thirties body, honed with yoga, barre classes and Peloton. High, surgically enhanced rack, toned butt, literally sculpted nose. Thin lips she’s thinking about making fuller the next time she has some spare cash.
She has a towel wrapped around her neck as she comes down the stairs from yoga, walks into the Solana Beach Coffee Company, orders a latte with soy milk and goes outside to sit down.
Seeing Lou sitting alone at a table, she instantly sums him up as neither a potential customer or a lover and moves on. Sharon is efficient—in her work, her exercise, her sex life. She’s not going to waste a second on anything or anyone that doesn’t have potential.
And she has business here.
So she walks up to a chair at a table where another man is sitting and asks, “Is this chair available? Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Davis says.
Like, what guy would?
She sits down, looks out at the PCH and says, “I just wrote a new policy. Five and a half million.”
Sharon is an insurance broker to companies that write high-limit “excess liability” policies.
If you have a five-bedroom house on a bluff over La Jolla Cove, a garage full of Lambos and Maseratis, some diamonds worth more than a cul-de-sac of suburban homes, you don’t call a gecko, you don’t call Flo, you don’t call a guy who’s seen it all because he’s covered it all—none of those guys will underwrite that level of risk.
You call Sharon Coombs, who will speed-dial the high-risk, high-roller insurance companies with elite clientele that will write insurance against megabuck losses and charge you a huge premium to do it. But if you can afford the seaside palace, the Lamborghini, the rocks, you can afford to insure them.
Sometimes these companies, like mob bookies, will lay off part of the risk to other high-roller companies, and this is what Sharon helps to arrange. Sometimes she’ll put together three or four insurers to cover a risk.
To do that she has to verify the value of the property being insured. She has to know its actual worth, its venue, its provenance. She has to make sure you’re not getting her to write three mil of insurance on a two-million stone, because then, shit, you’d steal it yourself, throw it in the ocean and make a cool mil.
She has to know that you’re taking reasonable precautions to protect the property. If you don’t have a security system on the mansion (or you’re in the habit of grilling burgers in the living room), you park the Maserati on the street (or you think it’s fun to enter it into demolition derbies), or you keep the diamonds in a candy dish on the kitchen counter (or you wear them while getting falling-down drunk slumming in an after-hours club), even Sharon is going to have a tough time getting you insurance.
And she checks on these things—her business depends on it. So Sharon knows what you have, what it’s worth and where it is.
And how you protect it.
Sharon makes good money on commissions.
But on the 101, good money isn’t always good enough.
It takes money to live here, and it takes more money to live well here, and Sharon likes to live well. And she knows that for Southern California, she’s coming up on her sell-by date.
She’s a thirty-eight-year-old ten, but that’s not the same as being a twenty-eight-year-old ten, or even a twenty-eight-year-old nine. And there are some twenty-four-year-olds out there who don’t mind hunting in the forty to fifty-five reserve either.
And the men on that reserve? If they have enough money and haven’t let their looks go completely to hell, they can hunt anywhere they want. The men are hitting the gym, too, going to yoga, watching their nutrition, even hitting the Botox. Fifty-seven-year-old stockbrokers are now comparing exfoliants.
Sharon needs a big score.
They met at an art-ga
llery opening five years ago over plastic cups of middling wine and hors d’oeuvres. He was charming, she accepted his invitation to dinner, and he opened the door to his Shelby Mustang for her and took her to the Top of the Cove, and after dessert she took him to her place and was going to fuck him except he said no.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Davis said. “It’s just that I have a rule about mixing business and pleasure.”
Crime 101: Don’t stick your dick where it doesn’t belong.
“I’m sorry?” Sharon asked.
“You’re an excess-liability broker, right?” Davis said. “I think we could do some business together. You can get sex from anyone, but I can make you money.”
He explained how.
She’s given him three tips in the five years. Any more, someone would put the pattern together and plant her in the middle of it.
The first one bought her new boobs. The second was bigger, a down payment on her condo. The third was her Lexus.
Now she wants to do one more.
The biggest.
And the last.
She makes this clear to Davis. “I give you this and I’m out.”
He doesn’t tell her he’s doing the same thing. Crime 101: Never tell anyone anything they don’t need to know.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Arman Shahbazi, an Iranian billionaire, is coming in from Tehran,” she says, “for his niece’s wedding. He’s buying presents for the bride, the groom, the whole family. Watches, diamond necklaces, a diamond ring for the bride.”
“Insured value?”
“Five and a half mil.”
That would put me over, Davis thinks. Even with her cut, Money’s, the discount to the buyer . . . I still clear two million.
Walkaway money.
“The courier is flying in from New York,” Sharon says, “and they’re going to make the transfer at L’Auberge, where the wedding is.”
The luxury hotel in Del Mar, Davis thinks.
Not good.
It would mean consecutive jobs in San Diego, in the same jurisdiction, and that would violate one of his cardinal rules.
Crime 101: The second trip through the buffet line ends in the prison cafeteria.
Especially when you consider this San Diego cop—what’s his name?—Lubesnick—who has his sights on you.
But five million . . .
“The carrier has insisted on an armed guard to escort the courier to the transfer,” Sharon says. “They’ll use a local who’ll pick him up at the airport, drive him to L’Auberge and stay until the sale is concluded.”
