by Dan Barden
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess it was my idea to start growing pot under recovery houses and then bury my partner.”
That shut him up for a moment. “They found Simon?” he finally said.
“I found Simon,” I said. So it was Busansky under the house. “What were you idiots thinking? What happened? Were you the one who buried him?”
“I’ll tell you about that when I see you. Right now I need your help. I’ve got a Mexican passport, and I need to get across the border while it’s still good to me.”
“Fuck you, Colin. I don’t know how you managed to suck Terry into this, but if you think I’m going to—”
It was just then that my life got worse than even worse. The phone was jostled, as though Colin were struggling with someone. I heard a voice I recognized say, “Don’t you fucking dare touch me, you fake fucking Mexican bastard.”
“Colin?” I said carefully. “Why is Emma with you?”
“Why is she with me? Three or four agencies can’t fucking find me, but she shows up this afternoon with crazy to spare. Get as much money as you can and get your ass over here, Randy. Before this girl wears me down to nothing but my desire to shoot her.”
He gave me an address and hung up. I gave Wade back his phone.
There were three surfboards leaning in a corner of Wade’s apartment—one long board that angled out into the room at nearly forty-five degrees and two short boards that were almost vertical. I threw a folding chair at them all, and the fiberglass made a thunderous clatter as it fell to the floor, sounding like the inside of my head. The tip of one of the short boards broke clean off.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Wade said.
“Thinking.” I told them what Colin had said.
“Where are you supposed to meet him?” Wade asked.
I looked at the address scribbled on my palm. “He’s got a house in Emerald Bay?”
“I heard about that,” Wade said. “His new idea. Colin was going to bring folks down from Hollywood, start a celebrity recovery house. He was going to call it the River Phoenix Recovery Home.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I glanced at Troy, who was looking wild with this new information, angry at me or himself, I wasn’t sure. “How come the feds don’t know about this place?”
“I guess his plans got sidetracked,” Wade said, “by the dead fucking body under his house. Maybe he doesn’t even own it yet. Colin must have killed Mutt, too. At least the cops won’t be looking at you anymore, Randy.”
“All I’m thinking about is Emma,” I said. “I gotta get her out of there.”
I grabbed the keys to Wade’s BMW. Wade inserted himself between me and the front door. “Take a deep breath,” he said. “You keep making the same mistake. You have to chill for a minute.”
“Troy’s right,” I said. “I’m the reason Emma’s been wandering the county trying to find Simon. She was imitating me. She bought in to the idea that we could figure this out. I got my rocks off playing detective, and she’s the one who’s going to pay.”
“I’m not signing on to that,” Wade said. “You gotta call Manny, at least. You gotta call Manny or someone. You can’t do it by yourself.”
I had to admire my friend: he was willing to go to the mat, but it wasn’t going to be a big mat, and it wouldn’t take long to get there. I shoved him hard, maybe even harder than I had intended.
I was about to discover, though, that my cop instincts had slowed to a crawl. How often had Manny and I walked into a domestic disturbance where we knew that the biggest threat in the house wouldn’t be the drunken husband but the ready-to-defend-him wife? Or the ten-year-old son who’d found a gun or a baseball bat to protect his family? A dog was a detail you couldn’t afford to miss. How many times had I sat at the bar after a shift, smugly telling younger cops: the one thing you don’t pay attention to will be the one thing that kills you.
In this case, I didn’t pay attention to Troy Padilla. Before I knew it, he had his arms up around me in some crazy maneuver that felt like a full nelson but didn’t respond to anything I knew about getting out from one. I flopped around like a fish in a gill net.
“You know what Krav Maga is?” Troy spoke quietly into my ear.
I grunted. “A sort of martial art?”
“A retired Israeli hit man taught me. Let me know when you’re ready to calm the fuck down.”
“I was expressing frustration.” I struggled against his arms. Even I could hear how feeble my excuse sounded.
“Wade and I are tired of your frustration. Isn’t that right, Wade?”
“That’s right, Troy.”
“We love you,” Troy said, “but no more frustration.”
“If you knew Israeli kung fu”—I gave up and relaxed into the hold—“why didn’t you use it when I threw you up against the truck?”
“Back then,” Troy said, “I thought you were some kind of A.A. legend. I was intimidated.”
“I guess I’ve cured you of that delusion.”
I didn’t think I had been about to hurt Wade, but—Troy was right—once you’re on that train, you can’t say where it stops. Waiting as Troy tried to gauge my spiritual fitness, I didn’t notice at first as his hold loosened and then disappeared.
I turned around to face him. “Thank you.”
I don’t think Troy quite knew how to handle gratitude coming from me. He managed to nod.
Turning back to Wade: “I’m sorry, Wade. I’ll replace the surfboard.”
“With a better one,” Wade said. “First, go find our girl.”
I CONVINCED WADE TO HOLD OFF on calling Manny until I got the cash Colin needed and headed up there. Just let me separate Emma from the situation, I told him, and then the cavalry would be welcome. I had about ten grand in a safe under the floor of my home office, and I called Yegua to get it for me. As I waited for the money to arrive, I told Troy that he could kick my ass later if he wanted, but he wasn’t coming. I wasn’t going to put another kid in jeopardy, and Wade seemed willing to babysit Troy.
As I drove north in Wade’s BMW, I reminded myself that Colin was desperate enough to kill Emma. He was officially a bad actor and capable of anything. Including the murders of Simon and Mutt. Maybe I was wrong about Simon being the trouble. Maybe it was Colin all along who had been the business partner whom Terry regretted getting involved with.
None of that mattered, except to the extent that it kept me focused on what did matter: getting that twisted little sweetheart out of harm’s way.
Hopefully, ten thousand dollars and the promise of some misdirection to help Colin escape to Mexico would do the trick. I was going to tell him whatever he wanted to hear if it helped me separate him from Emma. He wanted me to lie to the cops, I was his man. He wanted Wade’s car, he could have that, too.
Ten K. Promise him anything. Get the girl.
The local constabulary, however, were not as stupid as I had hoped. As I drove past the Pavilions supermarket that adjoined Jean Claude’s café, I noticed a conspicuous group of windbreakered and clean-cut men and women passing around pieces of paper over the hood of a Crown Victoria. Even as I slowed to get a better look, a Laguna Beach PD squad car joined the party. As I proceeded past the shopping center toward Emerald Bay, there was nothing in my mind but Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Maybe these guys had been setting up the caravan to arrest all those pot smokers near the basketball courts on main beach, but in this age of decriminalized possession, it seemed more likely that it was a second federal operation based on information gathered at all the other Colin Alvarez houses they had busted today.
Nothing substantial had changed, I reminded myself. Ten K. Promise him anything. Get the girl. But faster.
The wall that separates Emerald Bay from Pacific Coast Highway and the rest of Laguna Beach is cheerful enough, all earth tones and without any barbed wire that I could see. As I drove up beside it I was in many ways still the boy who had grown up ten miles inland and un
derstood—accurately—that the wall was meant to keep me out: from Emerald Bay beaches, from Emerald Bay homes, from Emerald Bay lives.
If more evidence of Colin’s insanity were needed, the idea that rich folks living in one of the most controlled neighborhoods in the United States would welcome a houseful of alcoholics and addicts from Hollywood was more than a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
There were some spectacular homes in there, though, and sometimes they required my attention to keep them spectacular. As a result, I thought I knew exactly where Colin’s digs were. I figured I had as much as a half hour and as little as five minutes before the cop caravan arrived from the supermarket. There was a little stucco booth at the entrance to Emerald Bay where you told them your business or got turned back, and after I’d told Mike Sullivan (retired LAPD) that I’d come to check some work I’d done on Hector Domenico’s house, he waved me through. Once I was inside Emerald Bay proper, I parked immediately and called Colin from Wade’s phone.
I could see most of the beach from my spot on the street. Also, the Emerald Bay Clubhouse and fire station. There were plenty of people out on this mild afternoon. A lot fewer, though, on the north end, in the shadow of the cliffs, where I figured Colin’s house must be. The sun was glistening off the water, which I told myself to remember as I could be thrown in jail at any moment.
Colin’s life was over, one way or the other. He was either on the run to Mexico or he was in jail for a long time. If he’d already killed Simon Busansky and Mutt Kelly—and somehow I wanted to believe he had been responsible for Terry’s death, too—he’d kill Emma. She was my priority here. I had to wonder, though, if Colin had help. Had that baldy hipster Joachin signed on for the adventure, too?
When Colin picked up the phone, I said, “I’m in Emerald Bay right now. The cops are assembling a caravan at the shopping center down the street. Let Emma go right now, and I’ll be there in two minutes with ten thousand dollars.”
“Fuck you, Randy. I’m not giving her up until you get here. Bring me the money.”
I checked the rearview mirror and saw a couple of black Crown Vics coming up the narrow road behind my parked BMW. Also a Laguna Beach PD squad car to secure the perimeter behind them. I waited to see another squad car to secure the beach behind the houses, but none was forthcoming. Maybe that mistake would give us the time we needed.
“They’re here now, Colin,” I said into the phone. “Get that girl out the back onto the fucking beach. Those guys are going to be through your front door in under a minute.”
There was nothing between Colin and the battering ram but me. I decided against heading up the beach toward the cliffs on the north end. Too long out in the open when I wasn’t dressed for sun and fun. How easy would it be for a Fed to recognize me and wonder what I was doing once again in the middle of their operation? Instead, I drove up toward the remodel I’d done for the former head of the U.S. Olympic Committee. This was the Hector Domenico whose name had gotten me through the front gate. Hector had the last house on the beach before the cliffs.
I did have more business with Hector, which was how I knew that he was in Iraq this week, helping to rebuild their telecom infrastructure. As I parked in the driveway and strolled calmly toward the front door, I could almost feel those Crown Vics whipping past me.
Brute force wasn’t my first choice to gain entry. Fortunately, Hector hadn’t locked the front door, which made me happy until I realized why: he wasn’t in Iraq. He was home, having an afternoon snack with the owner of my favorite café, Jean Claude Vigneron. They were wearing navy blue bathrobes, but Jean Claude’s didn’t fit as well, because they both seemed to belong to Hector.
I took a moment to notice how the two-seat island we’d placed in the middle of Hector’s nearly industrial-sized kitchen was as intimate as we had hoped. The two of them didn’t look lonely among all those stainless-steel appliances so much as the appliances looked accessible. Good job, Randy.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “I’m going to stop by Jean Claude’s for a few double espressos, and I’m going to explain everything. In the meantime, you’re both going to trust me. Okay?”
Hector was flabbergasted, but as I continued through the house toward the French doors, Jean Claude smiled. He knew me well enough, I’m sure, to encourage Hector to stay indoors. Maybe take cover. They might have been planning that anyway.
Trying to project Hector’s wealth and power, I strode onto the beach. If you had to negotiate a hostage release, the north end of Emerald Bay Beach wasn’t the worst place. The very rich people who had exclusive access to this half-moon of sand seemed to be mostly near the clubhouse. I didn’t yet see any police officers, and there were only two couples on the north end of the beach.
One of the couples turned out to be Colin and Emma. With some difficulty, Colin guided Emma toward me across the sand. She strained fiercely against him, but his fingers dug deeply into her arm. Colin had a gun, covered with a sweater, pushed into her ribs. He looked about a decade older than the last time I’d seen him. He was unshaved, and that didn’t suit him. Emma’s expression couldn’t seem to settle between rage or terror. She was either about to take a bite out of Colin’s head, or in about a minute, he would have to carry her.
As I checked the houses beside us and the beach beyond us, I opened a manila envelope for Colin. “Here’s ten grand. This is the most I could get on a Saturday evening. Give me the girl.”
“Do you have any idea what a pain in the ass she is?”
“Let’s do this,” I said, “before those nimrods check the beach.”
“I asked you a question, Randy. Maybe you could treat me like a human being this one last time.”
“I know acutely,” I said, “what a pain in the ass she is.”
When I was a cop, I’d had maybe ten minutes of training for a hostage situation. My body was nearly liquid with anxiety.
“That’s good,” Colin said. “I’m feeling the love now. How come you’ve got so much compassion for a freak like this but none for me?”
“Toss that gun into the ocean, and I’ll give you as much compassion as you want.”
“You know whose gun this is?” Colin asked. “Hers. She found me at the new house. Then she tried to shoot me without taking the safety off.”
Emma said, “Randy, I think this prick killed my boyfriend, and if he wants me to shut up about it, he’s going to have to kill me, too.”
“See what I mean?” Colin said.
“He didn’t kill Simon,” I said. “Simon killed himself. I mean, it was an accident, but it was Simon’s fault.” The way I was starting to see it, Simon must have been fucking around with the power bite and gotten himself electrocuted. It was the most dangerous part of this marijuana business. He must have been buried right where he died.
If I was right, I figured that I’d see it in Colin’s face. He looked grateful, like a falsely accused child who had received the sudden and unexpected understanding of an adult. “How do you know that?” he asked.
“Don’t ask.”
“What are you talking about?” Emma said.
“Listen,” I said, “there’s plenty of stupidity to go around. Simon convinced himself that he knew enough about electricity to unhook a six-hundred-amp feed. That was stupid. On top of that, it was stupid to bury Simon next to the bite. It was really stupid of you to pull a gun. So can we all just please, you know, calm the fuck down?”
“What do you mean you buried him?” Emma cried.
Colin dug his fingers deeper into her arm and pushed the gun harder into her ribs. Emma began to weep.
“I mean it,” I said. “Let her walk away from here, and you’ve got my full attention. We’ll figure out a way to make this better. Maybe you don’t have to run to Mexico. I’m seeing it from your point of view—Simon put you in a tough spot.”
“Is Mutt dead?” Colin asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Mutt’s dead.”
“So you figure that with tw
o murder charges and the reality-TV star here accusing me of kidnapping, I’ll be able to have a nice talk with the cops?”
I was plenty terrified already when I began to notice men who weren’t dressed for the beach coming around the sides of house. They were in the backyard of Colin’s property, and one of them had come around Hector’s house. I kept my eyes on Colin as that cop crouched behind a short fence. He had a rifle, too. Had he seen us yet? I had at least five armed men to worry about, give or take a sharpshooter.
“That depends on what happened,” I said. “With Mutt, was it self-defense?”
“The guy was boiling over. He helped me clean up this mess with Simon, but it was intense for all of us. And he couldn’t hack it after Terry died.”
“Just tell me what happened,” I said.
“Simon had no business being down there trying to deal with the power, but he was tired of waiting for Mutt. Terry brought Mutt into the deal because we needed someone to hook up the juice, but he didn’t show up half the time we needed him. Simon got himself killed because of it. Mutt was the one who found him down there, but he couldn’t handle it. I mean, it fucked up Terry and me, too, but Mutt was losing it. Terry was babysitting him all the time, walking him through his guilt, trying to get him clean. And then Terry was gone, and it got so much worse. I had no idea how to keep Mutt in line. When you showed up at my door and said he was sitting outside your house, I knew I had to straighten him out. I was going to talk with him. He hit me, Randy, and I totally lost it. I don’t know what happened: it was like the old days. I blacked out. He stopped breathing. I took off.”
It was me—I was the one who had pushed Colin over the edge. I delivered Mutt right to the door of Colin’s cluelessness. And got Mutt fucking killed. “Terry was involved in this shit from the start?”
“Of course Terry was involved,” Colin said. “It was Terry’s idea. Him and Simon. The last place the DEA will look! Under a recovery house! I was balancing five different mortgages, and the real estate market was hurting everyone. We were going to make something good out of something not good. Terry kept saying how it’s all going to be legal soon anyway, and they both thought they knew the DEA better than the DEA. I needed to keep my houses going. I wanted to help people. But we fucked up. We really fucked up.”
