Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series)

by Avery Duff

  Then they all split. So Stanley split, too.

  Same night, he came back. The beach was deserted. He walked fifty yards out onto the sand to get comfortable with the situation. It was totally dark out here, so dark it gave him the creeps. Even so, he made himself sit in the sand for more than an hour.

  Waiting. This part was much easier when he wasn’t using. When he was? After five minutes, he’d be making a move for the building. Worried, mostly—not about occupants returning—but about whether Alonzo would wait with that chiva balloon like he said he would over in Oakwood.

  Waiting wasn’t a problem for his friend Jackie Boy. Jack never had a problem with it. Watching and waiting and staying three steps ahead. That was his strong suit—that and being a class-A cocksman. Even when they were kids, Jack was like that, and even when Jack messed up, he always landed on his feet.

  But him? He remembered breaking his arm, same summer Jack’s leg was in a cast. First time Stanley picked up a surfboard was at POP Venice, a surf spot a mile from where he sat now. As he paddled out through the break, a wave turned the board broadside, and when the board pinned itself into the hard-sand bottom, his body kept going. Snap went his arm—he could still hear that sound. Kids on shore saw it, too, saw him crying after his arm broke and called him a dumb-ass douche.

  But Jack’s broken leg? Jack told everybody he was skateboarding, skitching a metro bus, when a dog ran out in front of him. So he dumped his board, broke his leg, and saved Benji’s life, he told all the girls.

  “Aww,” the girls would say, hearing about the dog. Same time, Jack was winking at the guys, guys knowing the story was BS, and Jack scoring points both ways.

  Over the years, Stanley thought about their two casts and decided Jack would have made out great with the same surfboard accident Stanley had at POP.

  “Aww, does it hurt?” the girls would have asked Jack.

  Anything for Jackie Boy. But Jack’s family life was shit. Way worse than Stanley’s own, and Stanley came to believe that somehow, everything evened out in the end.

  Sitting on the dark beach, he checked his watch. Ninety minutes he’d been waiting out here. Fuckin’ A.

  The lovebirds’ corner condo unit was still dark. In fact, every unit in their building was dark. All dark this time of night? To its left and right, the other buildings were lit up, occupied. But nobody was inside this one. He got the picture now. Empty with no broker’s sign? For some reason, this was a problem building for Mr. White Navigator.

  Stanley stood, dusted off his jeans, and focused. The time was right. To hide his footprints, he walked a hundred yards up the beach before angling inland again. Once he reached the concrete beach sidewalk, he walked back to that corner unit.

  Telling himself all the while: You are a man coming home late from work, Stanley. That is exactly who you are. Do it like you own it, motherfucker.

  Slinging his knapsack seven feet up onto the patio, he grabbed the railing, pushed aside miniature palm fronds, dug his shoes into the building, and pulled himself up. Easy as pie, sliding now into the darkest patio corner. For five minutes, he listened. Just in case. Then he was sure. The lovebirds hadn’t moved in after talking to the Navigator. Movers would come tomorrow, next day—who knows?—but not yet.

  Standing, pick set in hand, he saw the patio door was halfway open. Makes sense, he was thinking as he slid it, took off his shoes, and eased inside. Nothing to steal yet, so the owner was airing it out for his new bootleg tenants.

  Nice pad, even in the dark. Narrow but a good-size living room and a pass-through from the kitchen. A full bath on this level off the hallway to downstairs. A mezzanine office. A master bed and bath upstairs with a master balcony overlooking half the living room. Past the master level, the stairway rose another half level to a roof deck.

  Three alarm pads in all. One was inside the garage by the interior door. Another at the top of the stairs on the second floor, and a third inside the door to the master bedroom. No red lights blinked anywhere. Not yet activated, but he bet that would change. Empty building, a little spooky, the girl sometimes alone? But even if they activated the system, the builder hadn’t bothered arming the roof-deck door, thirty-five feet above the sand.

  Good place to grab a smoke, he was already thinking.

  It took him another five minutes to decide how to go with surveillance. Too bad there was no DVR or alarm clock. Those would have been the easiest places to set up three pinhole cams and voice-activated recorders, the ones he carried in his knapsack.

  That same night, after rigging the corner unit, he climbed onto Unit 3’s balcony from the beach, using his pick set on that unit’s slider. And he was in.

  Once the lovers moved in, Stanley started listening in on them from his unit. Recorded them fucking and talking and eating and talking and fucking, making notes for Jack. Reception in the living room, kitchen, and master suite was good. The garage and roof deck, he hadn’t bothered with. Too much concrete echo in the garage, and too much wind up top.

  Once, he remembered, Jack called him on his burner and told him, “Don’t call me for a couple days. I’ll be unreachable.”

  “Cool,” Stanley told him. Wondering at the same time if Jack made that one up like he did the Benji story. Unreachable, like he was some kind of international man of mystery.

  Lighten up, Stanley, he told himself. So what if he made it up? Scoring this gig was great. Jack could have paid a high-profile pro to handle it. Then again, maybe Jack was thinking about top-gun PI Anthony Pellicano: popped by the Feds, and all the celebs who hired him had been running scared. Knowing that, Jack could have figured using a small fish was better than getting rolled up in a large scandal with a real player.

  Far as these two in the condo went? Jack hadn’t told him what intel he wanted, and Stanley knew why. After all, Jack could never be 100 percent sure Stanley wouldn’t start using again. And if he did slip up, the less he knew about Jack’s motives, the better for Jack.

  In fact, Stanley wasn’t sure he could show any concrete link at all between Jack and himself, even if he wanted to.

  My man Jack, he decided. He’s even three steps ahead of me.

  And the lovebirds, they seemed nice enough. Somehow they’d crossed the big man, and that’s not something you wanted to do. Whenever the time came, Stanley knew one of them, maybe both, would take a hard fall.

  He dug out his last Lark on Unit 3’s roof deck, lit one up, thinking about his verbal report tomorrow. He’d tell Jack how great this job was, finally getting to live at the beach, that kind of breezy rap.

  Only a couple new things to report, anyway. The lawyer and his girl still fucked a lot, talked about their families, binge-watched TV in the master. And outside the Brig last night, they ran into that banker girl they did business with the week before.

  Leslie DeRider. The business card he grabbed off her desk said so. At the Brig, the young guy with Leslie had gone back inside the bar. Ten minutes later, the muscle hauled him out. Either got himself dosed with la rocha, or he shot up in the bathroom and got a little carried away. Stanley’s money was on the junk.

  When Stanley crossed Abbot Kinney for a closer look, this pair was getting in her car. He heard the banker chick ask that loser, “Why do I love you so much, you fucking asshole?”

  “Because I’m lovable,” he heard the loser tell her.

  He had a feeling Jack might get a kick out of the exchange. Maybe he’d even spice up the story a little, be self-aware telling it, say something like: “One thing we can agree on, Jackie Boy. The whole world loves a junkie—am I right?”

  CHAPTER 32

  How much longer till their funds cleared? Three days?

  Robert was doing that mental math when his beach bike’s rear tire blew out on Speedway, and he skidded to a halt north of Washington. Saw the nail stuck in his tire and wondered if he should lock his bike to the stop sign and jog over to Gold’s, or call Alison for a lift home?

  He went with the Ali
son option and called her on his cell. His call went to voice mail. Then he texted her about his flat, hoisted his bike on his shoulder, and headed back to the condo, a fifteen-minute walk with this clunker biting into his shoulder. He hoped she would catch his text and swing by in her car, but she never did.

  As he reached their condo, he realized he’d left his keys inside. He rang their unit’s voice box on Speedway. No response from her. That started to bother him. When he’d left for the gym, she planned to hang out, clean the dishes, maybe go through her moving boxes still piled, like his, in the living room.

  He went around the ocean side of the building, lay his bike against it behind a row of newly planted palms. He didn’t spot her on the beach, so he pulled himself up onto the patio. The sliding door was open, same as when he left. He stepped inside the living room.

  “Alison?” he called out.

  Still no reply. All her boxes were where the movers left them, a slight obstacle course to weave through. He called her again and heard her phone vibrating on top of her nearby desk.

  Then his own phone rang: Strand Security Systems. This small, local outfit had taken longer than expected with the alarm setup given that they were a new account in new construction.

  He picked up her phone and answered. “Hello?”

  “Who’s this, please?” Strand asked him.

  Once he verified his ID to their satisfaction, they started to give him the new alarm code.

  “Hold up,” he said.

  He opened Alison’s desk drawer, reached in, and found a Sharpie. Alongside it: a revolver and a pair of handcuffs. Loose bullets rattled around the drawer beside them.

  “Go ahead,” he told Strand, staring at that handgun while they told him the initial password, a random string of numbers and symbols, reminding him to personalize it ASAP.

  After he hung up, he headed upstairs to the master. She wasn’t there, either. Then he thought about the roof deck they never used, so he took those five stairs up to its door. It was unlocked, and he swung it open. There she was.

  Wearing her ’Canes sweatshirt and shorts, she sat sweat-drenched on a beach towel, facing the ocean. Eyes closed, her index finger covered one nostril. Her diaphragm fluttered as she forced oxygen in and out of the free nostril into her lungs. As he came closer, he saw her belly rise and fall with her internal flow.

  “Alison,” he said softly.

  She didn’t reply. He repeated her name, but she was in another zone. He sat down and watched her, his back against the stairwell wall.

  A minute later, she emerged from that other place, and her eyes opened.

  “Whoa,” she said when she saw him.

  “Hi.”

  “Back?” she asked, inhaling deep. “Back already?” Now exhaling.

  “Picked up a nail. I called, texted, got a little worried.”

  “About what? Me?”

  “A little,” he said.

  “Come on, me?” She stretched her neck, cleared her head.

  “You all right?”

  “Think so, spaced out, probably not doing it right.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Kundalini breathing. Supposed to be great once you’re good at it. While you’re doing it, you’re supposed to think about . . . visualize . . . a coiled snake at the base of your spine, spreading its energy into your body.”

  “Does it work?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet, a little, I think. I want to work on my breathing, work on staying calm. You know, calm?”

  “Calm, sure, I know,” remembering their ambulance ride to the hospital.

  He crawled over beside her and kissed her cheek. Her face was warm, salted with sweat. He let her know about Strand Security calling, and after a few minutes, they decided to make their alarm code: A+R+lastcondonp in memory of Marlon Brando.

  Then he told her why he looked inside her desk and asked her, as casually as he could, why there was a handgun, bullets, and a pair of handcuffs inside it.

  “Oh, shit, I forgot,” she said. “I should have told you, I’m sorry. All that stuff was Brian’s, for his job. The gun was his already from Florida. He was a pretty good shot at the range, that’s what he said, anyway.”

  “Did he ever cut loose on anybody?”

  “No, but that warehouse where he worked, it was pretty scary at night. I went there once, out in the middle of nowhere.”

  She stood, stretching, back straight, reaching for the sky with both hands, inhaling. Leaning forward, exhaling till her palms went flat on the deck. “A Sun Salutation,” she told him.

  And there in the bright sunlight, he saw it: a light scar on her leg. Right near the top of the calf.

  He couldn’t help staring at it, remembering the day he’d followed Gia to Saddle Peak Lodge. That day came rushing back to him. Gary, the bartender, and the waiter joking about Tattoo Girl. “Was Tattoo Girl hot for him or what? . . . All over his ass . . . thought she was gonna go down on him at the table.”

  Jack’s waiter telling him that the unknown girl’s tattoo had been small, personal—located at the top of her calf.

  He reached out, touched her scar. “Thought I knew every inch of you?”

  She moved her body into an inverted v, butt in the air, her hands flat, facing her heels. “Downward-Facing Dog,” she said, almost losing her balance.

  “Freak yoga accident?” he asked, sticking with the scar.

  “No,” she said.

  Trying to hand-walk back to her feet, she lost her balance this time, toppled onto the deck, and rolled over next to him.

  “Dizzy, whew,” she said and told him about the scar. “It’s from canyon cruising on Brian’s Harley. Calabasas, maybe, somewhere way out in the mountains, and I burned it on his tailpipe.”

  “Calabasas? Are you the lost Kardashian?” he asked.

  “Hope not.” Then she asked, “Were you smoking just now?”

  “Weed?” he said.

  “I keep smelling cigarette smoke.”

  He stood up, walked over to the rail, and looked onto the beach side. A few sunbathers sat a hundred yards out on the sand. A few buildings over, workmen checked out a rooftop HVAC unit. One of them was grabbing a smoke.

  He pointed. “Must be them.”

  Now she saw them, too. “Guess so,” she said.

  He gave her a hand up, and she slipped underneath his arm. “When we talk about Brian being a security guard, it brings up all the bad stuff. That’s behind us, right?”

  “Old news,” he said.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore, don’t you think?”

  “It’s over; we won.”

  At the same time, he tried to remember something important from Brian Maxwell’s case file, stored in his filing cabinet. Something he wasn’t quite clear on: deposition testimony about a handgun.

  And as she moved ahead of him and opened the door, his eyes locked on her scar, staying on it until she stepped into the dark stairwell.

  Two units down, Stanley leaned into the five-foot parapet wall separating his unit’s roof deck from Unit 2. The girl had almost nailed him a half hour ago when she came onto her own deck. First time he knew of that either of the lovebirds had used it. Lucky for him, he heard her opening the door. That gave him a few seconds to drop down against this wall and hide.

  Waiting till the pair went inside, he wondered if he should tell Jack what he heard. That the girl used to ride motorcycles with her brother. Why not? But would it even matter to Jack? Stanley didn’t know. Because he still didn’t know why he was spying on them in the first place.

  It was almost midnight when Robert reached for his filing-cabinet key taped to the back of the cabinet in the living room. With it, he unlocked his case-file drawer.

  One minute earlier, upstairs, Alison reminded him that tomorrow she was picking up her final paycheck from the bookstore. As she stepped into the shower, he told her that his bike was still outside on the beach. That he’d be right back.

  I
n his case-file drawer, right behind their bank-receipts folder, rested a thick accordion folder: Alison’s legal file. The shower was still running upstairs when he opened the file and flipped through it. Several minutes later, he found what he wanted: the sixty-five-page deposition of a Consolidated employee, a guy who claimed to know Brian Maxwell.

  He started scanning pages, moving fast until—there it was. The employee stating for the record: Brian brought his own gun and handcuffs with him to work. A gun was a job requirement for security guards, I think.

  After slipping her file back in the top drawer, relieved, he ran down the interior stairs and through the door onto Speedway. Under a full moon, he rounded his building to the concrete beach walk and found his bike still resting against the building.

  As he was about to shoulder it, he noticed something behind those newly planted dwarf palms. Leaning down, moving the fronds aside, he saw scuff marks marring the building’s fresh paint job. Facing the beach now and looking for activity, he found it impossible to penetrate the darkness out there. The light was better along the line of beach units, but the beachfront was deserted in both directions.

  Still curious, he ditched his bike, headed up the concrete walk toward the other end of his own building. As he was passing Unit 3, the next-to-last condo, he stopped, leaned in, and saw scuff marks on that wall, too. Even more marks here than down at his unit.

  Stepping off the concrete onto the beach, he looked up. Unit 3 appeared totally dark, its slatted shades drawn, upstairs and down. Even so, he took a running jump, grabbed the balcony railing, and pulled himself onto its deck. Ten seconds later, his face pressed against its living room window. Nothing to see, even up close, due to those closed shades.

  Now he leaped over the railing, landed on the walk, and took off running, leaving his bike behind. Inside his unit, he quietly ran upstairs to the living room level. Thought about the gun in Alison’s desk, decided against getting it, and kept running upstairs till he reached the roof-deck door. He opened it, stepped outside, eased the door closed, and took off again. Up and over Unit 2’s shared parapet wall, then up and over the next wall till he was on top of Unit 3. Easing over to its roof-deck door, he pushed down the door handle. No go—it was locked from inside.