by Avery Duff
Once he hung up, he walked Gia to a tarred-over eucalyptus stump. The remains of the tree Big Worth hit on his last drive, ever. They stepped up onto a white wooden fence. Several hundred yards away, a truck rolled along, and workers tossed irrigation pipes off the back of it. A stocky woman his age followed behind on foot.
When she looked his way, Robert waved both arms overhead. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she recognized him and waved back. One-handed, quick, and to the point. After that, Rosalind went back to what she was doing.
“Civil, that’s all,” he said. “That’s me and Rosalind. Tears me up, still.”
“Her, too, I bet,” Gia said.
“I talk to her pictures sometimes. Alison thought I had a sister thing. Hard to blame her after that story I told her.”
Gazing out at Rosalind, he put his arm around Gia’s shoulder. “Seeing her now, even her pictures, reminds me of when we were kids, how simple it was. You wake up, do your work, grow things, eat fresh vegetables, and hope for the right weather. Then all the rest of it happened and I had to get away.”
It didn’t dawn on him fully till now how much Jack reminded him of his uncle. And Philip of a mythic father, kind and wise, the father he wanted and never had.
“Thanks for telling me,” Gia said.
“Good to get it off my chest.”
“You told me that you trusted me, Robert.”
“Funny thing, Gia. I do trust you.”
That was the first time they’d ever addressed each other by their given names. He liked the way it sounded, how it felt saying it, and hoped she felt the same way. Beside him, she smelled like roses and cinnamon, and he slipped his hand inside her shirt, cupping one of her firm breasts. She laid her hand top of his, outside her shirt, both gestures more intimate than sexual, then slipped her hand inside his shirt, too, and stroked his back.
She said, “No matter what, we wait a month before sleeping together. Deal?”
“With our track records?”
“All this farm mess? Nowhere else to go—you’re like Zack Mayo, aren’t you? That’s why you’re such a hard charger?”
“That’s me,” he said.
As they headed over to the car, he thought about what she’d said. A hard charger? She was right about that, but he wasn’t alone like Mayo had been. Not like Spartacus, either. Not the last fish in the tank that Philip warned him against becoming. Gia was standing right here with him.
“I promised you,” he said. “Do you want to go through the gate, meet the family?” he asked.
“Not unless you want to. Down that driveway, that’s who you used to be. Not who you are now.”
She smiled at him, so they left right then.
CHAPTER 56
“He killed that poor girl,” the black nurse observed at the hospital room door.
The Asian nurse looked up from checking Jack’s IV. “Down in Capitola, below the Seahorse, he slit her throat.”
“Who does that?” the black nurse said.
“I know, right?”
The black nurse came in the room for a closer look: Jack lying in bed, his blank eyes facing the wall-mounted TV where CNN Headline News looped every half hour on the hour.
“How old was she?”
“Young, thirty?” the Asian nurse said. “Hot, too, I heard.”
“Wow,” she said, leaning closer. “With him?”
“Some hot-shit lawyer down in LA. Was, anyway.”
“Why’d he kill her?” the black nurse asked.
“They don’t know yet, the Sentinel said. It’s even on the news-news,” nodding at the CNN loop. “After what he did to that poor girl? I’m not gonna bathe him.”
“You’ve been a very bad boy, Jack, so you will not get a sponge bath today. Maybe all week,” the black nurse said.
Both laughed.
“Anybody show up to visit?” the black nurse asked.
“That detective last night. He showed me his gun.”
“Was he wearing a uniform?”
The Asian nurse said, “A jacket, but he said he liked mine.”
“Your uniform? Did you tell him about us?”
“Didn’t come up.”
“You better have told him or I’ll kill you,” she said, smiling at her Asian lover, kidding around.
The pair finished up with Jack’s IV and started to leave.
“The TV? Leave it on?” the Asian nurse asked.
“Stimulus is supposed to do him good.”
“That news hardly ever changes. Maybe he’ll get so tired of it, he’ll kill himself.”
It was ten minutes later when a California segment of Headline News LA came back around. The same story Robert had watched in the Ferrari. Lionel Brightwell’s death now played out in front of Jack’s blank stare: Dorothy in the Maybach, driving out of the estate; the announcer saying Lionel’s daughter, Dorothy, was now the sole heir to the Brightwell fortune.
Impossible to say whether Jack could hear or see what was going on down in Bel-Air. Or if he was aware how close he came to running out the clock on Lionel’s grind-down. But on his haggard, unshaven face, maybe it was just a coincidence. His left eyelid twitched twice.
CHAPTER 57
On the last leg back to LA, Robert woke up in the Ferrari’s passenger seat, sweating from the antibiotics, the pain meds, and from his dream. Disoriented at first, he stirred, saw Gia driving and stared ahead into the xenon headlamp’s focused path.
The last thing he recalled before tapping out: Gia asking him what his plans were, mumbling back to her something about not having a clue.
“You awake?” she asked, reaching for his hand.
“Getting there,” he said.
Still coming to his senses, he didn’t mention his dream about the Venice Boardwalk. But it was still vivid, and he wondered if he should let go of it or not.
“Forgot to tell you,” Gia said. “Dougie called Leslie’s landline after you split for Capitola.”
“What’d he want?” he asked, stretching.
“Not much. All he said was, ‘Tomorrow, sunrise, Four Mile.’ No wait. First, he said, ‘Babe,’ meaning Leslie. Then he said his tomorrow, sunrise, Four-Mile bit and hung up.”
He came straight up in his seat and looked at her. “Wait a minute. Sunrise today would be tomorrow, sunrise.”
“Doesn’t make sense, right?”
“Four Mile, sunrise, today? That makes perfect sense.”
Then he told her about Four Mile, the surf destination north of Santa Cruz and the Seahorse Inn. “Leslie asked me about surfing Four Mile at the Bel-Air pool.”
“Four Mile, oh,” Gia said. “Think they were going to what? Kill Jack?”
“Kill Jack, I know they were. Dougie was waiting there—he’s probably still there waiting for Leslie to show. They planned to get Jack down to that beach at sunrise today. Kill him and take the money.”
They quickly decided Leslie would have known the password. Agreed, too, that Jack would have gotten off on giving it to her, knowing she would never use it.
“Would what Dougie did still be a crime?” she asked. “I mean, Jack’s a vegetable and Leslie’s dead? Dougie can’t pull it off now, no matter what.”
Gia had just covered a week’s worth of first-year criminal law with her single question. “I think it’s still conspiracy to commit murder,” he said.
He debated whether to tell DeGrasso about Dougie, let him pull Dougie in for questioning. Surely, Dougie would screw up somehow, might even wind up doing time. But Robert decided to leave well enough alone. If he started rattling DeGrasso’s cage, no telling what kind of beast might slip loose up in Santa Cruz and come after him. Gia, too, for all he knew.
More than that, it wasn’t his place to sit in judgment of Dougie. In his own heart last night, if only for a moment, he was going to let Jack Pierce drown in that tidal pool. Only the grace of God saved him—in the form of Officer Sedgwick coming down the beach stairs. Letting Jack die and doing nothing wouldn�
��t have been murder—Robert had no legal duty to save him. Far as he knew, that was a duty the law didn’t impose. But in his heart, Robert knew it was wrong and was familiar now with where his darkest heart resided.
Better let the Dougie situation lie, he was thinking as Santa Clarita’s lights ahead turned into LA.
“The beach lawyer,” he heard Gia say to him.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s who you are—beach lawyer.”
“Beach lawyer,” he repeated.
Sliding down the smooth-sloped interstate, the Ferrari purred in fourth, coiled beside the majestic, three-abreast power lines juicing the inevitable city ahead. Locus, he knew, of everything you could possibly want and every possible problem.
And he wondered, did he already tell her about his lawyer dream? Had it somehow slipped his mind? His dream of the Venice Boardwalk where he was out of place in a jacket and tie, sitting underneath a beach umbrella? A long oak table rested in front of him. Looked like a conference table at the firm. Fresh flowers in a clear vase were on the table, too: birds-of-paradise, if he remembered right. And sitting there on the boardwalk, he recalled, he’d been interviewing people. All sorts of people he didn’t know. Gia was there. Seemed like Erik showed up at some point, and wasn’t Reyes in the picture, too?
Had he forgotten telling Gia, or did she really read him that true? Maybe he was still asleep and about to come to his senses.
“Beach lawyer,” he said again, liking the sound of it more.
New ideas began to come at him fast and clear. Pieces of a puzzle. Ideas on how to make use of his legal skills and create momentum. His pulse quickened, the Ferrari whispering, and then he knew for sure: he wasn’t dreaming.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their early reads, research, and encouragement: Lawrie and Ben Smylie, Ana Shorr and Dr. Bobby, Ryan Gustafson, John Paoletti, Blackwell Smith, Wendy Gerrish, Happy Baker, Randall Batinkoff, Sensei Rooney, Avery Woods, Andrea Mattoon, Bret Carter, Christian Corado, T.J. Hall, John F. Henry, K.P. Fischer, and the staff of the Somerset, Thonglor.
And certainly: Darren Trattner.
For their patience and skill, copy editor Valerie Kalfrin and proofreader Jill Kramer.
Also, special thanks to my stoic, “brutal” manager, Chris George; and to my tireless, intrepid agent, Beth Davey. And finally to Liz Pearsons at Thomas & Mercer. I have two heartfelt words to send your way, Liz, for your instant and adamant belief in Beach Lawyer: Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avery Duff was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he attended Baylor School and graduated summa cum laude. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he earned a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. He then joined a prestigious Tennessee law firm, becoming a partner in five years before moving to Los Angeles. His screenwriting credits include the 2010 heist drama Takers, starring Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, Paul Walker, T.I., Jay Hernandez, Zoe Saldana, and Hayden Christensen. Duff lives at the beach in Los Angeles and spends his time writing fiction. Beach Lawyer is his first published novel.
