Winter Tides (25 page)

“I’ll be tlıere,” he said.

“Wait,” she said and turned around, disappearing toward the kitchen. In a moment she was back. She handed him a key. “Street door,” she said. “At least you can get up to my apartment now.” She smiled at him, winked, and shut the door.

He left, down the stairs and out the door to the street, turning right at the corner and heading home, the heaviness of the last half hour having fallen away with Anne’s wink. He nearly felt like whistling, but right then he realized that he hadn’t even asked her for her phone number, and for a second he was tempted to go back up and get it.

He heard a car start up around the corner behind him, and the car’s headlights switched on and illuminated the brick wall across the street when it swung around and started to accelerate. It slowed, though, when it drew abreast of him. He glanced over to see how many people were in it, ready to sprint back up to Main Street. He just wasn’t up to any crap. But the only person in the car was the driver, and as soon as Dave focused on him, he sped up, turning left at the corner a block up and heading down toward the Highway.

The car was Edmund’s Mercedes.

“I
’M NOT LISTENING,”
C
ASEY TOLD HIM.
“Y
OU CAN GO
ahead and talk, but I’m watching
Jeopardy
, so I’m not paying attention to anything you say. They’ve got South Pacific islands as a category, and I’m nailing it.”

“You don’t have a choice, Case. I’m not joking around now. I’ve got something serious to say, and I’d just as soon not say it over the phone. I was thinking of coming over. And how the hell are you watching
Jeopardy?
It’s eleven-thirty.”

“The marvels of videotape. I don’t watch TV until late. Nancy won’t watch it at all, so I wait until she goes to bed.”

“Well, I’ve got something I want to talk about.”

“How serious is it?”

“Veıy.”

“Can you turn it into a
Jeopardy
answer?”

“Look …”

“Then you can’t come over. I never talk serious this late at night. Okay, wait, wait … Man!
Fiji
, for God’s sake. I can’t believe how lame these people are. If I was on there tonight, I’d tear it up. South Pacific islands and basketball on the same damned slate. None of these bozos knew
any
thing about the Celtics back in the Larry Bird days.”

“Don’t put me off, Case. Am I coming over or not?”

“What for?”

“Because your brother …”

Casey began knocking against the phone now with some sort of metal object and whistling tunelessly. “I’m not listening,” he said, breaking in on all the noisemaking. He wasn’t drunk, either. He was perfectly sharp and coherent.

There was sudden silence. Dave could hear the
Jeopardy
music in the background. “Your brother …” he started to say again. The knocking started up along with the whistling. Dave waited it out.

“You want to talk?” Casey said finally.

“Yeah, I want to talk.”

“Then We’ll talk on the beach, in fact, it’s funny you called, because I’d already made up my mind that you were going out tomorrow morning. That’s the plan. No bullshit. Tomorrow the elusive Dave gets wet. The swell’s faded, but it’s still good, probably better than it’s been, if it’s shape you want instead of size. I’m bringing that board I bought from Bill. You’ll love it. You get your goddamn wetsuit off the back fence. You might want to bring it into the house if you want it dry.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What wetsuit?”

“Whoa! Don’t bother to lie to me and tell me you sold it at a yard sale. I broke into your lousy garage this afternoon and found it. It’s not hip any more, but it’ll keep you warm. The zippers work. The seams are tight except for the knee’s a little ragged. I hosed the sawdust off and hung it over your back fence, over by the lemon tree. You’re ready to ride, bro.”

“I don’t know …”

“Of course you don’t. That’s why I’m calling the shots. I was going to make it a surprise attack, but now that you’ve called, you might as well check it out right now. Here’s the game plan: I’m knocking at your door at half past five. You with me so far?”

“Go on,” Dave said.

“All right. If you’re not ready to go, I’m coming in after you. And you know what? I’ll break the front window if I have to, Dave. I’ll punch a fucking hole right through it. Try me if you think I won’t. Our little talk at the doughnut shop riled me up, man. I got home
pissed
off. I decided that you talk too much these days. You know why you talk so much? Because talking kills time. Talking makes mountains out of molehills. Pretty soon you don’t know the difference. You make a big scene out of nothing, and you lose track of what’s really worth dealing with—you know what I mean? Talking’s like snow; it covers things up so that you can’t make out their shape any more. You’re whistling in the dark, Dave, and it’s time you shut the hell up and faced your fears. So I’m going to cut you a deal. I’ll listen to you talk one more time if I can see you surf. And I mean tomorrow morning.”

Dave sat for a moment in stunned silence. Everything Casey said was true, of course. There was no way to deny any of it.

“I don’t want silence, Dave. I want your word on it right now. Either tell me yes or hang up and wait for the glass to break. We’ve got Double Jeopardy coming up here.”

“Five-thirty,” Dave said. He almost followed it up with something sentimental about the value of Casey’s friendship, but he stopped himself. He didn’t trust himself to say anything more.

“Hey, Dave.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m on the wagon. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I’ve got a few hours sober now. I’m sitting here drinking diet Cokes. I’m not telling Nancy anything about it. She’ll figure it out soon enough. You’re the one who started it off. That’s probably why I was so mad when I got home.”

“Good for me.”

“I owe you. And I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t have coffee going at five-thirty. Did you write that down?”

“I wrote it down.”

“Good. Sweet dreams.” He hung up the phone then. Dave listened until he heard the dial tone, and then hung his phone up and turned on the television, somehow thinking for one crazy moment that he could catch the rest of
Jeopardy.

A
T DAWN THE AIR WAS STILL AND THE OCEAN WAS
glassy, the dark waves rolling up out of the depths and breaking on the outer sandbars, long waves that lined up for fifty or sixty yards, the breaking section running smoothly down the clean wall, hissing shoreward, reforming, and breaking again inside in a small-size, quick-speed replica of the outside break. The moon still hung in the western sky, and in the east the horizon was layered with pink and gray that died into the blue darkness of night. Overhead there were two or three stars still visible, faded and nearly gone. The beach was empty except for a flock of seagulls, a hundred or so that stood facing the west on the ocean side of the fire pits as if they were waiting for the sun, or for some long-anticipated seagull god to crawl up from out of the ocean.

At the top of the beach were sections of low barrier walls built of concrete blocks along the edge of the empty parking lots—county park renovations of more recent years. Beach sand had drifted up against the walls in shallow dunes, spilling out from between the sections onto an asphalt access road that ran the length of the beach, from beyond Brookhurst Street all the way to the pier. In the summer the road would be full of tourists crossing the access road from the crowded parking lots, dodging a steady procession of in-line skaters and cyclists. The old wooden concession stands were long gone, along with the ice plant and the rusted chain link and the railroad flotsam, all of it bulldozed years ago, the concession stands replaced with concrete block buildings, with picnic tables and drinking fountains and showers.

The beach itself hadn’t changed. Ten million waves had broken along it in the past fifteen years, and those waves had shifted millions of tons of sand and seashells and rocks, scouring the ocean bottom, cutting channels and filling them in again, the sandbars drifting with the seasons and the changing swell, all of the movement and change hidden beneath a few feet of enigmatic ocean. By some trick of tide or of dawn light, the ocean seemed to be strangely elevated now, as if Dave were looking up at it from where he sat at the crest of the slope that angled down into the water, as if at any moment a wave might simply surge fonvard and inundate the beach.

Casey handed him the doughnut bag, and he took out a plain cake doughnut and dipped it into his coffee, watching as a lone surfer jumped to his feet at the top of a wave and dropped across the wave’s face. In his black wetsuit the surfer was nearly invisible against the dark ocean, although the front half of his white board traced a ghostly path along the wave, angling upward until it thrust through the crest of the wave and was silhouetted against the early-morning sky and then slashing downward and driving into the trough, where the surfer disappeared suddenly, hidden by a wave breaking farther inshore, and then reappeared down the beach, flying across a dark, dawn-lit section that seemed to defy gravity in its steep vertical rush.

“it’s not going to get any better than this,” Casey said, crumpling up the empty paper sack. “I hate to say it, but this spot hasn’t broken this good in I don’t know how long. So if this burning news of yours is
too
long and weird, how about saving it until we’re out in the water? It’s going to be serious daylight in about ten minutes.”

Dave looked at him for a long moment and then said, “Your brother’s stealing money from your father, basically. Stealing properties. I don’t know what he’s doing with them. Selling them, I guess.”

Casey nodded slowly. “Where’d you come up with this information?”

“From this old homeless guy named Mayhew. You’d recognize him if you saw him. I was working late and he came around looking for your brother who, this guy said, owed him money for some work. What he said was that he had posed as your father.”

“Posed as him?”

“At a notary public up Beach Boulevard near Talbert. Apparently Edmund brought this guy in carrying your father’s driver’s license. They look enough alike to fool somebody who’s not paying too much attention. Anyway, this old guy signed a quitclaim deed, then your brother gave him twenty bucks and sent him on his way.”

“For what? What was the deed?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“And this was when the Earl was out of town?”

“Might have been. I don’t know how long ago it was. I get the impression it was a couple of weeks ago, maybe less.”

“Well, probably it was just some routine business, and Edmund didn’t want to wait for the Earl to get home, so he managed it his own way. You’ve got to quit working this thing against my brother, man. Not that he doesn’t deserve it, but it’s not doing
you
any damned good at all. You’re getting obsessed.”

Dave stared at him. “Are you kidding, or just self-deluded in some amazing new way?”

“Why should I be either one?”

“Because what you just said is completely nuts.
Business?
Committing fraud just because it’s more convenient than waiting a day or two? Nobody would do that. This doesn’t look like business, Case, it looks like theft.”

“So this Mayhew character
told
you this, that he signed a quitclaim deed?”

“No, all he told me was that he ‘simulated’ your father. That was the way he put it. The quitclaim was my idea, since I couldn’t think of any other reason that Edmund would need a notary and a fake signature.”

“So this is speculation on your part?”

“No, I don’t think it is. I think I’m right.”

“And you
think
it’s a piece of property?”

“What else would it be? The Earl’s car’s a bigger joke than Collier’s was. What else has he got that your brother would want to put his hands on?”

“Nothing,” Casey said after a moment. “If you’re right, then it probably
is
a piece of property. He could shift a dozen of them into his name, and I’d never know anything about it. I’m easy that way.”

“You’re
too
easy that way.” Dave poured the rest of his coffee into the sand. It was gray daylight now, and there were half a dozen surfers in the water. The stars and the moon were gone, and the tip of the sun had risen above the mountains. Casey kneeled next to his surfboard and methodically rubbed wax across the deck. “I drove over to the notary,” Dave said.

“Why the hell did you do that?” Casey didn’t look up, but worked at the wax, layering it up. His voice was flat, as close as it came to anger.

“Curiosity.”

“I wish you would have called me first. You know what they say about the cat, man.”

“I didn’t tell him who I was or what I knew except for one thing—that there’s a brother in the picture, meaning you. This notary, as far as I can make out, had no idea that Edmund had a brother or that old Mayhew was a fake. Now he knows. The truth never hurt anybody, except maybe Edmund, in this case.”

“Now
that’s
a truly naive idea. The truth can do a hell of a lot of damage when it gets loose. I just wish you’d have told me first and let me take care of it.”

“What would you have done?”

“Done?” Casey stood up and looked toward the ocean. He turned around and shook his head. “I wouldn’t have done anything. But that’s my call, isn’t it?”

“You’d have let him go on with it?”

“That’s right. I just don’t care, bro. It just doesn’t compute.”

“It’s a
lot
of money.”

“I’ve
got
a lot of money. The Earl put a ton of it in trust years ago. I don’t have to work. I never will. I’m a privately financed derelict. Nancy works because she wants to. We traveled so much last year I got sick of it. We can eat out every night of the week, but we don’t want to. I can smoke Cuban cigars, except I don’t smoke. Now that I don’t drink, my only expensive vice is surfboards, and I don’t break that many. And speaking of surfing, now that you’ve had your say, I’m going to hold you to your part of the deal.” He tossed Dave the bar of wax and picked up his board.