I woke up at about noon. And hungover. I’d poured the last of my fifth beer in the kitchen sink at about 3am, deciding that it was best not to finish it, but plenty drunk by then, and stumbling a bit. My second cup of coffee mostly down, and sure it wasn’t going to come back up, I picked up the phone to call Seth.  A plan was beginning to form in my head.

I wondered as the phone started to ring, if it was wrong to get him any more mixed up in this.  He’s a big boy, I thought as I heard the phone ring a second time, He knows what he’s doing, I thought, on the third ring.  On the fourth ring, he picked up.

“Hold on,” he said, and in a moment the background noise from the station house went silent.  “What’s going on?”

“I’m going out for a beer in O.B. tonight and wondered if you’d like to join me.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“Lots of things.  Why don’t we meet up on the roof of the Sunshine?  9:00 work for you?”

There was a pause, then an answer.  “I’ll be there.”

“Plan on a long night.”

“Let’s talk first,” he said seriously, then continued, “We’ll see where we go from there.”

“OK,” I submitted, reluctantly, to the wisdom of my old friend’s words. And after a moment, “Thanks, Seth.”

“That’s what friends are for,” he answered.

“Yeah,” I said, “See you tonight.”

“See you tonight.”

I hung up the phone and pondered what was ahead for the evening.  Those goons wouldn’t be happy to see me.  What would they do?  It was an interesting question.  As far as they were concerned, they were in the clear.  Nothing to fear from me, or Seth. My job was to bother them, but how would they react? Would they fight?  Or would they just assume I’m not worth the bother?  Anyone in their right mind, or anything remotely close to it, would just think I'm nuts.  But maybe that was it.  I needed to make them think I was irrelevant.  Not worth their bother – a drunken fool. Until it was too late. Making an ass of myself in their local haunt might be just what the doctor – or Agent Torres – called for.

One more cup of coffee, black with sugar, soothing my stomach, I got in the shower. It was just two when I was toweling myself off, and I thought about the hitting the diner, but decided against it, thinking it would be better to lay low until the evening.   I put on water for pasta, threw some frozen ground meat into the microwave to defrost, and thought about the evening ahead. As I poured the dregs out of the pot of coffee I’d made a couple of hours before, I started playing the night out in my mind: 1) Meeting Seth, 2) Convincing him of the validity of my plan, 3) Convincing those goons that I had given up and had become a dumb drunk.  Probably not such a stretch up to that point, including the drunk part. But here’s what I really wanted to know – How to get alone with one of those “girls”? If I could draw attention to what Wilkes was doing to those young women, that might be just the leverage that Agent Torres needed. Money, I supposed, might be a good answer for that.  Too bad the FBI wasn’t flushing me with cash.  I’d have to keep working my day job -- that much was clear.  At that, I made a mental note to get the credentials to Bill the next morning for my temporary license, which now I realized I was really going to need.  And then there was another question: Even if I got alone with one of those girls, there was no guarantee they’d talk.  I could cause a commotion that would bring the cops, but after what happened last night, that might be useless, or even dangerous. Seth might be able to help me there, or maybe it would just screw him, too.  And I didn’t want to seem too obvious, not yet, anyway.  It would have to seem like an accident.  An accident that would shine a bright light on the filth that the government was covering up.

I got up and took the meat out of the beeping microwave.  It hit the frying pan with a clank and sizzled. I threw the spaghetti in the water and stirred it. When the spaghetti was done, I dumped a jar of sauce in with the now browned hamburger and turned it down to a simmer. Standing there, I suddenly had the urge for something fresh, but all I found in the crisper was some wilting lettuce and an old half an onion, which both went in the trash.  The pasta would have to do.

I ate hungrily, the wheels in my head humming, thankful for the still half-full grated cheese canister I found in the back of the fridge. Two bowls of pasta later, it was still hours before I had to meet Seth, and I cracked a beer, wondering if my Mike Hammer impersonation was trending toward Nick Charles, and laughing, which I probably shouldn’t have. But two beers later, and it only five in the afternoon, I lay down for a nap. When my alarm went off at 7, I was dreaming of surfing side-by-side with Hope, a long slow wave drifting us across the ocean away from the shore.

I got to the Sunshine about 45 minutes before I was supposed to meet Seth, bought a pint and found an empty table up on the roof patio in the far corner.  The mid-week September crowd was light, and I was thankful for it.  I took a long gulp and closed my eyes, for a moment imagining I was on the cliffs watching the waves do their rhythmic crushing dance, wringing the violence out of the world. The thought then came into my head, unbidden, how isolating my current situation had become. I pushed it back out with a shove, took another long swig of beer and let myself enjoy the simple beauty of the place I was in.  The winds were still, and the charred tinge from the fires out East was just a back note to the fresh, salted, tingling ocean air.  I had just started on my second pint when Seth arrived.

“Hey, Bud,” I heard, awakened from my reverie by a slap on my shoulder.

“Hey,” I answered, turning and realizing, with a bit of wonder, and a bit of fear, that I’d been sitting with my back to the entrance.  “Thanks for coming.”

“Not a problem,” he answered, giving me a smile that can only come from an old friend. A smile that washed away all the fear and doubt, that brought me right back to our innocent days when we were kids who lived on the beach with no greater ambitions than lifeguarding, catching waves, and chasing girls.  “I’ll be right back.”

In a moment, he returned with a beer, which he nursed for the entire hour we were there, while I polished off my second and started on a third.  “The word is out on the force to watch out for you,” he said, taking a careful sip.

“Yeah, I know,” I responded, my sip bigger than his. “I had a visit yesterday.”

“Be careful,” he answered, scowling a little bit. “You could lose that license.”

“As a matter of fact...” I remarked, then proceeded to tell him about the letter from Sacramento and the details of my visit from the friendly neighborhood detective.  “Bill thinks he can get me a temp,” I added, seeing the growing concern in Seth’s eyes.  “I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“You should, but in that case, maybe we should put this off, whatever it is you have in mind, until he does.”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about it…this might work to our advantage.”

“How do you figure?”  he said, narrowing his eyes at me, and I went on to detail my plans for the evening.

When Seth and I walked into the goons regular bar – a dive on the strip half a block up on the same side as the Sunshine, Seth went immediately into action, flashing his badge, saying to Carlos and Keele, who were standing in the middle of a crowd of the goons in the back, that he’d heard about what the deal was, and that he’d brought me there to apologize.  They were skeptical at first, but when he’d bought them and their friends a few rounds, they softened.  Fortunately, they weren’t that bright.  Not that they softened toward me, though, but that didn’t matter. They talked to Seth, but as far as they were concerned, I wasn’t even there. One of them, while I was only one stool away, actually called someone who appeared to be on the police force. I got the name and made a mental note, thinking it might come in handy later on. And, at one point, I heard Keele invite Seth to go see some “girls.”  He declined, saying he was married.  Keele pushed it for a minute, but then let it drop, with a snarl on his face.

By the time Seth was ready to leave, it was about 12:30, and I was well on my way to drunk. Mission accomplished.  He tried to drag me out with him, but I still had half a pint left.  He wouldn’t leave without me, so I downed it and ordered one more and a shot for effect. Half an hour later, now hammered, I got off my barstool, and one of the goons stuck out his foot to trip me. I stumbled for effect, then tottered out of the bar, not even trying to pretend I was sober.   As we left the dive, I heard a couple of them laughing about “that stupid drunk.”  Good.

Outside, Seth wanted to give me a lift the three blocks to my house, but I declined.  I needed to walk on the cliffs.  He didn’t think it was such a good idea, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t, but at that point, I didn’t care.

“Be careful, Jay,’ he said, as he started his engine.

“No problem,” I answered.  But it was probably going to be.

I turned and made for the seawall, then left toward the cliffs.  And there it was again, that pale sidewalk, glistening with salt and sand, sparkling in the glow of the gently pulsing fluorescent amber lights above, jeweled with the pearled refuse of the ocean, just like I’d seen it that first night I met with Hope.  I wondered again, as I did the first time I’d seen it, that pale sidewalk, the dimly lit squares of cement, if I was taking a step I would never come back from. As I reached the edge of the lights at the end of the parking lot, I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone was following me, and caught several of Wilkes goons headed north on Abbot, in the opposite direction.  A gull called, and it sounded to me like a warning, “Jay!! Jay!!” I ignored it, as I stepped on to the smoothed rocks of the cliffs to the soft, rhythmic crash of a slowly rising tide.

Chapter 22 coming 7/1 (or so…)!!!