Beach Lawyer (Beach Lawyer Series)

by Avery Duff

  Checking the inn’s office again, he saw a heavyset female guest walking out. Past her, Leslie was inside, talking to one of those Paki owners. He recalled that in all the times he’d stayed here with Gia, he’d never once spoken to them.

  He rested his head on the steering wheel, mulling over one of the things Stanley had reported to him a week ago. Leslie had been hanging with Dougie outside the Brig on the sidewalk. Reporting on it, Stanley had joked around about Dougie: “The whole world loves a junkie, right, Jackie Boy?”

  “Right you are, Stanley,” he’d answered.

  Dougie being Leslie’s first love, Jack got it that they still hung out. Still, he wondered why she’d lied to him about still seeing the guy. Even told him a week ago she was done with his skinny, loser ass forever. Lying to him twice about that waste of breath, Dougie? Go figure.

  She was coming back across the parking lot, holding their room key over her head, skipping as she came. He gave her a thumbs-up and smiled.

  Right before she opened the passenger-side door, he whispered: “You little heartbreaker.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Two hours later in Capitola, Robert parked on the shoulder past that convenience store running the Silver Bullet special. He got out of his car, opened the rear door, and pulled the revolver from his tire well. Slipping it in his waist, he crossed the road to the Seahorse Inn. With his head down, he strolled past the office. A low-watt hula-dancer lamp burned inside, the check-in counter deserted.

  Farther along the driveway, he saw NOTICE OF DEMOLITION posted on a cabin wall. Made sense. Nobody wanted to drop any coin keeping the place up. Why bother at this point?

  In the middle of the sixteen cabins, a wooden arch framed the drive-through. An ice machine sat inside the arch with a handwritten sign: OUT OF ORDER. GO ACROSS STREET FOR ICE. The soft-drink machine was unplugged and unlit, same as the snack machine.

  Ahead of him, the driveway split left and right, eight cabins on each side, and it was easy to spot the Healey. Only one car was parked on the right-hand side. The Healey. In front of the last cabin.

  He tried placing a call and picked up zero bars, like Gia’d said.

  Moving toward the parked car, thirty or forty yards away, he came to the last cabin. Edged past its peeling paint and rotting wooden porch, keeping low to sneak a look inside the large front window. The only light inside, a bedside lamp. A second quick look, he didn’t see them, and a longer look revealed an open bathroom door. The small cabin was unoccupied.

  Heading back the way he came, he walked out to the cliff onto a ten-by-ten-foot deck at the top of the beach stairs. A white towel was draped over the wood railing. A rusted sign at the stair top: SHOWER GUEST ONLY. DANGEROUS WATER. NO SWIMMING. STRONG CURRENT.

  As he looked down at the hundred rickety, switchback stairs, he caught movement beyond the surf line: two adults swimming. Wearing wetsuits it appeared from here, and not far beyond them loomed a heavy fog bank.

  Reaching for his gun, he started down the stairs, then he stopped and decided the smart move was the cabin. Once he ran back over to its front porch, he tried the front door. It was locked. Around the right side of the cabin, he found an unlocked bathroom window. Unlocked because there was no lock in the rotting frame. He forced the warped wooden window up, grabbed hold of the sill, and squeezed his body through.

  After he rolled onto the bathroom floor, he stood and looked around. A shaving kit lay on the edge of the sink. Inside it: a pair of handcuffs and four amyl-nitrite ampules. He headed into the bedroom.

  As he did, he missed a light flickering on in the next-to-last cabin. The shadow of that cabin’s occupant appeared at its window behind him.

  Inside the main room of the cabin. Gia’s description was on the money again: knotty pine, a cheap seahorse painting, an old-school TV set, and no landline. A small wooden table and two low-slung chairs over by the ocean-facing window. A double bed, rumpled, car keys on a bedside table. That was pretty much it.

  After he snagged the Healey’s keys, he hurried to the open closet. Patted Jack’s jacket and trousers and found nothing of interest. Did the same with Leslie’s hanging clothes and came up empty again. Then he spotted Jack’s briefcase under the bed. He knelt, slid it out, and tried to open it. It was locked.

  Craning his neck, he could make out the top of the beach stairs through that big front window. Still no sign of the swimmers. After banging and banging the butt of the handgun against the lock, he saw it finally giving way. With both hands, he muscled it open and laid it on the bed.

  First thing he saw inside: their passports. He pocketed both. That would slow them down, no matter what.

  Then a travel guide: Fodor’s Southeast Asia, and slipped inside its pages, a Singapore Airlines ticket folder. In the folder, a boarding pass for tomorrow: 1:12 p.m. A nonstop flight out of San Francisco International to Hong Kong.

  Last thing he found was another, thicker folder: Bank of Hong Kong. A custom, rectangular aluminum case was slotted inside the cover’s sleeve. Sliding open the custom case, he found a flash drive. Seeing it, he felt a much-needed jolt of adrenaline and slipped the drive into his shirt pocket.

  That was it. Except for two wads of paper in the briefcase’s corner.

  He glanced out the window. That fog bank had made its way onshore. Top of the beach stairs was barely visible and the lovebirds nowhere in sight.

  Once he undid the wadded-up paper, he saw L@L@918151413114L@L@. Staring at the handwritten numbers, he remembered the pocketed flash drive. Knew that he had it made. For the next thirty seconds, the series of capital letters, symbols, and numbers had his full attention. So much so, he didn’t notice that Jack had bounded to the top of those stairs, taking a breather on that wooden deck.

  Robert glanced up from what he was doing. Happened to catch movement through the front window. Saw that Jack was looking back down the stairs.

  Quickly, Robert slid the briefcase back under the bed and dropped to the floor. Slotted himself into a space between the bed and the wall farthest from the door. Face to the floor, he cocked the loaded gun. And he waited. His heart slammed against the frayed sea-foam-colored carpet, slammed blood hard into his neck, his bruised ribs, his punctured shoulder, all the way into his fingertips, and his head felt light.

  Five . . . ten . . . fifteen seconds later, the cabin door opened. Once he heard it close, Robert sprang from his position without a word, his gun pointed at Jack’s chest.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  That’s all Jack said as he fell back against the door. Robert stood twelve feet away from him, that revolver leveled.

  “Sit down,” Robert told him.

  He didn’t move. Robert knew that to Jack Pierce, Robert Worth finding him and standing in this small Capitola motel room was a physical impossibility. Robert headed toward him in the small area, knowing anything could happen in a tight space like this. Jack, still wet, probably cold and stiff, too, looked like he wasn’t planning to comply. Robert knew he had to seize control.

  “Where is she?”

  Robert closed on him, gun outstretched, glancing out the window. The fog had rolled in fast. Was that her, outside in the gloom? No—it was that white beach towel on the rail.

  “She’s across the road, getting ice, drinks. Why don’t you and me talk about—”

  That’s all he got out of his mouth. Robert tossed the gun on the bed. Moving fast, first thing he did was to strike Jack’s chin with a hard-swung left-elbow shot. Before Jack went down, Robert dug a right uppercut into his solar plexus, hard as he could.

  Like Luis always told him at the farm: “Guy doesn’t fold after that, Roberto, better run.”

  But Jack did fold and gagged, too, and Robert shoved him down into the closest chair, grabbed that revolver off the bed. That’s when his system decided to let his wounds hurt. His shoulder, his head, his ribs, and they hurt a lot.

  “You saw me at the courthouse,” Jack said. “Important friends, I got ’em all over t
own, Worth. Judges in my pocket. Whatever you got, I’ll beat it.”

  “Can you beat Stanley’s alive?

  “Stanley’s . . .”

  “Stanley Tifton. Alive and talking to the police—and all he’s talking about is you.”

  He was lying, sure. Stanley hadn’t broken, far as Robert knew, but he liked the expression that news put on Jack’s face. Then he asked, “Wonder how long Leslie keeps quiet about you, once she’s facing serious time back in LA?”

  “Long as I say—we love each other. Your receipts are in the wind, Worth. Let’s work something out now or we’ll never tell you where the money is.”

  “Bank of Hong Kong sound right?” Robert asked.

  Jack sagged farther into the chair, his face in his hands.

  “Let her go. Let her come back, find me gone. I talked her into it, all of it. She doesn’t deserve prison.”

  “Yeah,” Robert said, “she does.”

  He didn’t want to wind up in this room, not with these two. Not unless he wanted to start blazing, and he didn’t want that. And Leslie? If she came back, saw them, and took off? So what? Better, even. Keys to the Healey were in his pocket, so let her run. Girl in a wetsuit who looked like that, local cops would find her sooner than later.

  So he opened the front door. Grabbed the front of Jack’s neoprene wetsuit, jerked him to his feet, and shoved him outside. Going over that bank-account password in his head till it was locked in. That and keeping an eye on Jack in the rolling fog as it slowly swallowed up both of them.

  In the Seahorse Inn office, a corn-fed white woman in curlers pounded the counter bell, and that hula-dancer lamp shimmied from the vibration. “Hey. Back there. Yeah, you!” she was yelling.

  The motel owner padded out, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Pakistani, he looked about sixty and wore an eye patch over his right eye.

  “What is it? What is wrong?” he asked her.

  “Somebody just broke into Cabin 8!” Curlers screamed.

  The owner didn’t need to check the register. “Mrs. Jones’s cabin? You are sure of this?”

  “They climbed in the bathroom window, got it?”

  “Maybe lock self out, happen sometimes,” he said.

  Through the fog, a Santa Cruz County cruiser pulled into that convenience store.

  “It was a man breaking in. Not a woman, a man!”

  The owner came around the counter. “A man, okay, I hear, I hear.”

  But she wasn’t done with him. “Know how many times my bus stopped getting here?”

  “No care about you bus.”

  “Many times, Long John!” she screamed. “Coulda stayed in Modesto I wanted crap like this.”

  “I hear,” he said again as he opened the door and hurried toward that cruiser.

  Infused, misted air muffled the swelling surf below the cliff. Gun drawn, Robert followed Jack across the bluff, almost even with those wooden beach stairs.

  “You don’t know our password, Worth. Let’s put our heads together and work it out.”

  Robert’s eyes darted ahead, scanning for Leslie in case she showed up out of nowhere.

  “How about I give up half?” Jack asked. “That’s almost five million headed your way. We cut out your client and I guarantee you, Leslie goes along.”

  Five million? Jack was including Dorothy’s payment to him.

  Maybe it was hearing that big number or the fog or this being the longest day of his life. Whatever the reason, he never saw Jack’s free hand work that knife from his right wetsuit sleeve.

  He was about to tell Jack he was wrong—that he did know the account’s password, L@L@ and all the rest, when Jack ducked low and quick and whirled his knife arm around in an arc. The blade sunk deep into Robert’s right thigh, and he screamed in pain. Almost dropped the gun as Jack sprung at him and hit him chest high, driving him back till they broke through the railing, top of the stairs. Together, they started rolling, tumbling down them as the revolver clattered ahead and randomly thumped onto a sandy ledge.

  Jack recovered from their crash landing first and dove off the stairs for the gun. Robert leaped up and over the rail and landed on Jack’s back, the two of them struggling for the revolver on that sandy two-man slot. As Robert tried to choke him out from behind, Jack’s hand inched for the gun. Almost there. About to reach it when Robert gave up his hold, lunging for it, too. It skittered away from their hands, tumbling away into darkness.

  Robert rolled him over, smashed his face once, enraged, then again. “Gonna kill you, motherfucker!” he screamed.

  Jack reached down and ripped the knife out of Robert’s leg. When he did, a flash of light creased the inside of Robert’s head. He sagged, nearly passed out. Jack used that synapse to jump on top, the knife poised for a downward kill thrust.

  Robert grabbed Jack’s wrist with both hands. Jack bore down, the knifepoint inching toward Robert’s throat. That knife, touching skin now, drawing blood.

  “You took my life . . . everything I worked for . . .” Jack’s voice was hoarse, whispered rage.

  About to die, Robert found one last surge of strength. All at once, he kneed Jack in the groin, bucked his own body as hard as he could, and twisted Jack’s wrist.

  The upward force of his body bounced Jack off him. Losing his grip on Robert, he started sliding over that ledge. Desperate for a handhold, he grabbed Robert’s shirtfront.

  “You, too . . . ,” he whispered.

  Robert tried to pull away, his shirt ripping. Digging his knees into the sand, his palm heels, too, but there was little to no traction in the sand. Jack’s weight pulled him over the side, and they slid over the edge. Falling and twisting together, thirty more feet through the air until they splashed into a shallow tidal pool.

  At its deepest, the pool was two feet deep. Impossible to tell which man wound up on top. Not until Robert’s body rolled off Jack’s. He splashed onto his back, rolled over. Hacking saltwater on all fours, Robert made it onto the sandbar.

  It was just then that he realized he didn’t know his own name. That he’d been knocked out. For how long, he had no idea. A few seconds later, his name came to him . . . Robert . . . Worth. Then Logan, his middle name. Then his situation emerged, his problems in LA, and the ID of the man lying beside him.

  Best he could, he cleared his head, rose to his knees, and studied Jack in the tidal pool. His face rested beneath one inch of saltwater. Enough light down here so Robert could see Jack’s open eyes. Looked like they were pleading with him as air bubbles trickled from his mouth and cleared the saltwater’s surface.

  He stared at the helpless man, bitter. “Go ahead and die, you miserable prick.”

  No way in the world Robert would lift a finger to save him. He felt the two passports in his pocket. The flash drive, too. That wadded-up piece of password paper from the briefcase, though—it was gone. So was the memorized password to the Hong Kong account. He could not recall it.

  Before he could grapple with recollecting that series of letters, symbols, and numbers, movement tickled the corner of his eye. Something moving down the beach stairs. He looked up in time to see a uniformed cop headed down them.

  Jack’s air bubbles slowed to single file. Robert had no choice. Reaching down, he lifted Jack’s limp body from the water, lay him on the sand beside him.

  “Hey,” he shouted to the cop. “Help. Down here!”

  Up on the stairs, the cop drew his pistol and shouted: “Hands in the air. Don’t move.”

  “Down here!” Robert screamed. “I think he’s still alive.”

  Rising, hands raised, he turned toward the cop. As he moved closer to Robert, his silver name tag ID’d him as SEDGWICK, J.

  As he approached, Robert saw a faint black flicker at waterline. A wetsuit shimmered. Leslie DeRider was wearing it. The incoming tide rolled her dead body onto the sand, and even from here, Robert could see her throat gaping open from a deep-slicing knife wound.

  CHAPTER 52

  “Ready when y
ou are, Worth?” Detective DeGrasso asked Robert.

  He wasn’t on the dark beach anymore. He was handcuffed to a metal chair on Water Street in downtown Santa Cruz. DeGrasso was the man who’d been outside Robert’s cell five hours ago, the one who’d hard-eyed him from the freedom side of the bars.

  He’d asked Robert that one question, and without waiting for a reply, DeGrasso got busy away from his desk, trying to sweat his prisoner.

  When DeGrasso returned, Robert asked, “Where’s Officer Sedgwick?”

  “We don’t need Sedgwick. All we need is what Sedgwick wrote up last night after he took you in. Let’s see,” DeGrasso said, reading: “Two men on the beach, one murdered girl floating nearby. But it turns out one of the men was totally incapacitated at the time—drowning, in fact.”

  Incapacitated? At the time? He had to wonder what DeGrasso meant by that. If Jack was conscious and talking, he would have his own fabricated version of last night, but so far, it looked like DeGrasso was taking all his cues from Sedgwick’s report.

  “And the other gentleman on the beach, the one not drowning?” DeGrasso asked. “Uh-oh, he broke into the dead girl’s cabin fifteen minutes earlier—and I got an eyewitness on that.”

  An eyewitness. Robert could still hear that lady in curlers from the next cabin. She’d been screaming, “That’s him! That’s him!” once he and Sedgwick cleared the top of the stairs.

  Robert asked, “No communication from Venice PD about any of this?”

  “Not word one from Venice.”

  “Well,” was all Robert decided to say.

  He recalled his one allowed phone call before they locked him up. He had called Gia. Asked her to find Erik Jacobson and have him forward Robert’s signed police reports to the arresting officer. Sedgwick, J., he told her, was on the officer’s nameplate. Looked like the faxes hadn’t arrived. Worse yet, Robert had never signed the last two—the ones most likely to link Jack Pierce with the intruder who almost killed him.