by Avery Duff
“Whoa, there he goes,” Gia said, heading over to join the Jacobsons.
Erik’s boys had pulled him to the ground, swarming him with Muay Thai elbows, and were now bouncing on him like he was their own private bounce house. It wasn’t unusual for Priya to join them, but she was laughing with Gia at the moment, uncorking wine bottles and waving at him. Robert waved back and saw both of Gia’s next-door neighbors—she called them Brady Bunch and Full House—still at the party, even after making a point of telling Gia they could stay only a few minutes.
He guessed that was because earlier, Gia had let slip to each couple: “I’m really going to miss living in this house. Hope you like grilled sausages?”
Miss this house? You could see the wheels turning. The house will be for sale?
Gia actually was thinking about selling her house into this red-hot market, but with no rear-alley access for parking—street parking only—it was a hard sell. What an unknown third-party buyer might do with the lot, as Robert liked to say, you never know, so that made the house most valuable to her neighbors as a teardown. With the miss-this-house trap baited, Gia would wait and see what might happen.
As he grilled, Robert watched Gia stroll around the get-together and wondered how a first-year law school student pulled off staying so calm. His own first year at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco? He’d have been grinding all weekend. He guessed that Gia’s decade-long experience managing a law firm made much of law school seem impractical. Her reaction to the Peerless case in first-year contracts came to mind.
In Peerless, one party agreed to sell cotton shipped on the ship named Peerless, leaving Bombay, as it was then called, for London. Another party agreed to buy the cotton from the Peerless, also leaving Bombay for London. The problem? Two ships named Peerless each left from Bombay for London, one in October, the other in December. The buyer refused to accept the cotton because it was not on the December Peerless. The court agreed, voiding the contract because there was no mutual agreement as to what Peerless meant.
Gia had understood the case right away, but she’d jumped past the facts.
“Why are they even in court? Cotton is cotton, and they agreed on the price, didn’t they?”
She’d guessed the buyer found a better price and used the Peerless coincidence to weasel out of the deal.
Probably right. But back in his own first year, Robert’s study group spent more time arguing about how to pronounce demurrer than wondering about who was weaseling whom.
His advice to her on Peerless: “A mutual mistake of fact about an ambiguous, major contract term equals no contract. And the professors like it when you act interested.”
Giving him a Marilyn Monroe pout, she said, “Like this?”
No doubt, her teachers were interested in her, even though she dressed down for school. For her, that was an effort. On the boardwalk, he’d watch her coming toward him, covered head to toe in a sarong, long-sleeved shirt, and wide-brimmed hat. Even then, single men had stared, and husbands endured wifely arm-jerks in her wake. Gia’s looks were a problem, Robert decided. A problem he could endure.
The party broke up around 10:00 p.m., after Gia had chased out her new-best-friend neighbors. At this point, Robert and Erik’s plan about Erik’s employment status came into play.
Even though Erik had sold his novelty flatulence-device company (a.k.a. Natural Gas) for a significant chunk of change and had his pension from the force, Priya believed her husband was happier when he was productive.
Robert liked reminding Erik of that fact when they were banging the bag, throwing baseballs into their high school gloves, or running the Venice Beach soft sand, the Santa Monica Canyon stairs or the Los Liones Trail, just up the coast.
Even so, Erik was no layabout. Robert had seen that firsthand with the sale of Natural Gas. Erik knew at least one thing in life would always be true: all men think passing gas is funny; replicating each variety of that sound with a handheld device was a winner.
“Not a trend,” Erik liked to say. “We’re dealing with scientific fact.”
Gia told Erik her own scientific corollary: “Even though women find no humor in passing wind, women do think it’s funny that men can’t get enough of it.”
Scientific or not, Erik had been right. His company had been bought by the largest novelty company in the western United States. Robert had negotiated the sale, but Erik had been very savvy up to that point.
At their first and only meeting, he’d showed the other side an order from the police union for five thousand units at $4.99 a unit. His manufacturer in Rosemead could make each packaged device for less than twenty cents. The retail price, the novelty people believed, was closer to $9.99. A profit margin to kill for, and off that single order, the novelty guys had thrown a real number at Erik, and he’d grabbed it—even agreed to a three-year noncompetition clause for any flatulence-related novelty products.
On Gia’s front porch, Robert told Priya that Erik would now be working as his investigator.
She often spoke “Thai-sty”—Thai-American shorthand. “What mean, inwestigatah?” she asked.
Erik said, “Means I find out things for him, ask questions he’s not smart enough to ask.”
“Means he gets a paycheck when he’s working for me,” Robert told her.
“Oh, you have client now?” Priya asked Robert.
“Signed a new client today,” he said, catching Gia’s when-were-you-going-to-tell-me look.
Priya said, “So Erik files W-2 form? Files 1099?” Priya was a fast learner and, Erik liked saying, smarter than he was about everything important.
“A 1099,” Robert said.
Priya gave Erik a long hug. “Working now for beach lawyah. Okay, na,” she added, Thai-sty for okay, okay.
Erik slung a son under each arm and walked with Priya down the walkway to his flex-fuel Prius. Somehow the entire Jacobson family piled inside, screaming what sounded to Robert like: The Beach! The Beach! Whatever they were saying, Robert was gratified Erik had followed his advice: Do not buy a hot new car for one year after your deal closes. One year, dude.
Later, while cleaning up the after-party backyard mess, Robert caught Gia’s image through the kitchen window, hitting the books for tomorrow’s class.
They’d been going out less than a month when she revealed she’d been accepted to law school. Walking arm in arm down the boardwalk, from Ozone to Dudley Court, for an early dinner at Osteria Venice West. Robert was telling her about the garganelle with truffles, pretty sure he was pronouncing it correctly, when she said: “I visited Dorothy today. Up at her house.”
“Dorothy.” He left it at that.
“We talked about Jack. I thought about telling you beforehand—if I did, I probably would’ve listened to you, done the sensible thing, and let it lie.”
She was right about what he would have advised. “How’d it go?”
“Well, I told her I was sorry about my affair with her husband. That I’d been angry and hurt and stupid—mostly stupid. I told her I wasn’t raised to do the things I did, that I felt like both my parents had turned their backs on me, and I was ashamed.”
Both her parents had died when she was sixteen. Speaking of their ghosts in that way wasn’t something he’d ever heard from other Americans and had probably originated with her Chinese mother.
“How’d that go down with Dorothy?”
“She said she knew what it was like, doing stupid things on account of him. Jack stupid, she said, and then she made me lunch in the coolest kitchen I’ve ever seen. Oh—and I got into law school.”
Turned out she’d taken the boards and applied before they’d ever started going out. That moment on the boardwalk—seeing her setting serious priorities—that was when he knew it was just a matter of time before he fell in love with Gia Marquez.
In bed after the barbecue, Gia snuggled into Robert, one arm across his chest. She was scented with roses and, for some reason, lavender.
�
��Tell me about your new client.”
“Didn’t already?” he asked.
“Don’t think so.”
“My bad. She’s female,” he said, messing with her. “Exotic. Quite stunning, really.”
“Didn’t you learn your lesson about stunning?” she asked, referring to his previous client and girlfriend for a month, Alison Maxwell. A stunning woman, sure, but to describe Alison as a serial liar would be generous.
Robert felt his earlobe between Gia’s teeth; the bite wasn’t at all sexual.
“How exotic?” she asked, without losing her grip.
“Quite. I let her stay over at Ozone,” he said.
“You what?”
Her fingernails dug into his rib cage. That wasn’t sexual, either.
“Ow—she’s a nine-year-old,” he said. “With her father.”
Gia sat up in bed. “Nine years old? What’s she going to do over there?”
“I have cable and . . .”
“Disney Channel?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, but—”
That was followed by: Did you change the sheets? Was the kitchen clean? Was there anything in the refrigerator? What was she doing when you left?
A little to his surprise, Gia wanted to meet Teo and Delfina the next day.
“Long as you finish your homework, baby, you can meet her tomorrow,” he said.
“Already done.”
With that, his hand slipped between her legs.
CHAPTER 3
Fifty miles north of San Francisco, Kiril Dragonov opened his motel room’s curtains, eased onto his small second-floor balcony, stood at the metal railing, and looked down on the parking lot. Two sedans—a white Ford and a blue Chevy—were visible from here. He dropped the bedding on the balcony and eased to the floor, his back to the wall.
Driving through San Francisco tonight, all the way down to LA—that would’ve been his preference. But when you were hauling contraband, blending with tomorrow morning’s San Francisco rush-hour crush was the smartest way to go.
Across the motel parking lot, Penko hid in a dark landscaped area, standing guard over the money, too. Then again, he might be with the teenage night clerk who’d clocked out as Kiril had checked in. Penko’s accent was catnip to women in America, and Penko knew how to use it. Men, though, always saw him for what he was: the most dangerous man in any room.
Kiril’s thoughts returned to the Emerald Triangle, by now two hundred miles north. Their marijuana extraction from the national forest had gone well, no thanks to Penko. After beating the girl to death in the tent, he’d bashed out her teeth and snipped off her fingers with her own trimming shears.
Why not dig a hole in the woods? Kiril had wondered at the time. Lure her there first? Quick and quiet without your theater of cruelty in camp.
In spite of being top dog, Kiril knew not to question Penko’s judgment in front of others if he valued his life.
Once their forest extraction was under way, though, Penko’s aggression turned into an asset; he moved through those mountains like he owned them, an OverBoard waterproof bag over each shoulder, another strapped to his chest.
Behind their fast-moving group, far upstream on the Salmon River shore, Kiril’s men had half-assed hidden two inflatable kayaks. By now, those decoys would have drawn the attention of Agent Pascoe and the other federal agents who’d infiltrated the area to root out interstate transport of contraband. Alongside the two kayaks they would find a single bag of second-rate product, enough to convince Agent Pascoe to wait there so that she could link grower to product at the time of arrest.
Once Kiril, Penko, and the others had reached their true entry point on the Salmon River, the men surged into the fifty-five-degree water, floating the swift current downstream. Cold, yes, but warm compared to glacier-fed Dreadful Lake where he’d swum as a child.
In the old country, smuggling had run in his family’s blood, no matter who’d been on top. In World War II, the Nazis came first, then the Communists. After them, the Allies, then the Communists again, but through it all, smugglers, drug dealers, extortionists, and killers like his family remained in strong demand.
As the sun rose that morning, Kiril’s men floated till they were far outside the federal perimeter and had reached a deserted RV park. There, prearranged buyers waited in a cargo van; Kiril traded their harvest for two large bags of cash, and the cargo van left immediately. The cash bags had gone into the false-bottomed trunks of the Ford and Chevy that currently sat below Kiril in the motel’s parking lot.
After the exchange, two just-washed Lexus decoys—two women inside each—headed out of the RV park, well before the money cars.
For the drive down to LA, Kiril had bet on Highway 101—right through the Garberville corridor. It was an open secret that Garberville was the pot-growing mecca of Northern California. Hardware stores in town sold weed trimmers and turkey-basting bags by the hundreds, and the local football team, the joke went, had a sealable Baggie for a mascot. No surprise, then, that in and around Garberville’s freeway exit, police presence was a constant.
Both Lexuses had LA tags, new paint jobs, and lightly tinted windows, and stood out in this depressed, mostly rural area, so it was no surprise when the second Lexus was pulled over. Immediately, a prearranged text went to a burner phone in Kiril’s Ford, seven miles back. That was his go-ahead. Less than ten minutes later, his car and Penko’s Chevy passed the pulled-over Lexus, Kiril eyeing the five police cars already gathered for the feast, lights strobing.
Perfect, Kiril thought as he’d rolled by.
When they searched the Lexus, the cops would find a folder of twenty prepaid money cards under the passenger seat. The cops’ ERAD machines would scan the cards and siphon funds from each account. What the cops would quickly learn: each account held only $100, and each was, the women would explain, a gift for extended family in LA County.
Later, back at Garberville, the pair would be released on a bullshit misdemeanor, if that. Total risk of the operation had been $50,000, if both cars were confiscated. That plus attorney’s fees, if an attorney was called for, and Kiril had just moved $2 million cash straight through the belly of the Garberville beast.
Below Kiril in the parking lot, that young motel clerk—skin and bones like the dead girl—appeared with Penko. She must’ve gotten sweet on Penko because she skipped across the lot. Now Penko stepped from the shadows, looked up at him, and grabbed his crotch, mouthing the word penko. It meant “stone” in their native tongue, but to Kiril, penko described the other man’s head, not his cock.
Kiril rose from his seated perch on the balcony. It was after 2:00 a.m. Given the move toward legalization and shrinking profit margins, those two money bags from the Emerald Triangle would be the family’s last-ever dope grown on public land. Already, more than $20 million cash had been hidden somewhere down south—cash the Draganovs would use for new business ventures, depending on what Gospodar, the master, decided. But no matter what direction the Draganovs’ business went, to Kiril, America was still “Eye of the Tiger,” blasted from Burmester speakers in a Porsche Turbo, pedal to the floor, burning doughnuts in a Tiffany’s parking lot.
Eye of the Tiger, Kiril was thinking. Then, once I’ve dropped off the money, I’ll be hitting the beach and clubs in LA . . .
CHAPTER 4
“Ever see a movie being made, Delfina?” Gia asked the little girl.
“No . . . not really.”
“Want to? It’s not far.”
“If it’s okay with Daddy.”
When Gia and Robert had reached the Ozone apartment late that morning, Delfina sat at the top of his exterior stairs, eating cereal from a bowl. Teo had already hit an AA meeting on the beach and mashed out God knows how many crunches, bottom of Robert’s stairs. By noon, Robert, Gia, and the two Famosas had started down the boardwalk toward Hinano Cafe, a mile south on Washington Boulevard, where Robert’s buddy, Reyes, was acting in a scene being filmed for Street Cred 6.
> On their way to Hinano’s, Erik checked in with Robert. He’d dropped off his family at Bradley International Terminal at 6:00 a.m., and five hours later, Robert suspected, was already at loose ends. At Windward Plaza, Delfina pulled Gia over to the enclosed public showers and bathroom. The building’s exterior design suggested concrete waves, its surface embedded with glazed ocean-themed tiles, hand-painted by local schoolkids.
Delfina showed Gia her favorite tile: a white dolphin skimming the blue ocean beneath a smiling yellow sun. “Look, that’s me.”
“Delfina, sí, comprendo,” Gia said.
Robert and Teo watched Gia and Delfina, the pair now whispering and laughing. Then Delfina looked at them and waved. Even from ten feet away, Robert had no choice—he waved back.
Robert said, “She’s a happy little girl.”
Teo nodded. “Even with her mom and me messed up all the time, she was always loved, but never loved all the time like . . . la palabra correcta?”
Robert tried picturing Delfina’s chaotic family life.
“Consistent?” Robert asked.
“Not consistent, yes. We were high on alcohol and drugs and filled with our own selves.”
“Where’s her mom?”
“Money ran out, and she ran off. Looked all over for her—Manchester Square, Arroyo Seco, Skid Row—but nobody’d seen her, so I’m guessin’ she’s back up in Bakersfield with her people, or, well . . . gone-gone. But that ain’t right, me speakin’ ill of her. Turns out, we’re just bad for each other.”
Outside Hinano’s, a stone’s throw from the Venice Pier, Erik joined them.
“Lonesome already, big boy?” Gia asked.
“Hell—” He noticed Delfina and toned down his language. “Heck no, Gia, I’m a free man, and I do as I want.”
“Lonesome for who?” Delfina asked.
Erik knelt down and told her about his family flying out that morning. “I don’t miss them at all. I’m glad they’re gone.” Then he screwed up his face like he was crying.
Delfina got a kick out of Erik.
