The next day was devoted to web research, but all I could think of was Hope – and the way my hand felt when it was on her hip. Or the way her hip felt when my hand was on it. And then, when her hand was on mine, for a second, and then for a few more. At noon I gave in and called her. The person at the shop told me she was out of town for a few days at a tattoo artist convention – Santa Cruz. I didn’t expect that. But I probably should have, which should have made me nervous, but I decided not to think about it. I skipped lunch, made a big pot of coffee and went on with my work. By 4:30, I was wired and hungry. And scared.

The truth is, there had been a number of suicides off the pier in O.B. in the last ten years, far too many for even this haunted little beach town, and a few more the last couple, and a number more of people mysteriously poisoning themselves. And one strange thing I had noticed, was that the landlord of the victims was quoted in more than one of the articles. But he didn’t seem sad. He seemed wounded, as if it had done him great injury to have had someone who lived in one of his buildings and had paid rent to him to be so “unstable.” His name was William Wilkes. His comments would have made you think he was the returning citizen-of-the-year for the past five, and runner up for archangel, but a little investigation proved him to be the worst landlord in O.B. He was loaded, sleezy, and cheap. A picture was beginning to take shape, and I didn’t like the way it was looking. If for some reason he wanted to, Mr. Wilkes had plenty of money to buy influence in the police department, and anywhere else, too.

I cracked a beer. I was in deep. Deep with Hope. Deep with this “group.” Deep. Gray was curled up on the coffee table nearby, giving me that quizzical look again, and again, I ignored him. There are times you should have paddled in but you stay for one more wave and you see it curling over you and you know you’re too tired, but it’s too late. It’s a good way to get hurt. I opened a second beer. The only thing left in the fridge were leftovers from Hope that she’d made me take home after we almost did but didn’t, and I didn’t want them. I threw on a clean shirt, began to strap on my revolver, but, stupidly, headed for what appeared to be a bender – at least for me – decided to leave it. Instead, I grabbed a hoodie and headed toward the beach.

Giving in to my hunger, I ducked into South Beach for fish tacos, but kept drinking. Four pints later, or was it five, I walked out along the seawall and up the stairs to the pier. Standing at the rail, about two thirds down, past the bait shack and looking south, I wondered at what it would take to push someone over, or maybe poison someone to death, sure I didn’t want to know, but now sure more than ever, that if I let this riptide pull me where it was going, I’d find out. Suddenly, I don’t know how long it was, five or ten minutes, I noticed that I had company. Without looking to see who it was, I felt for my gun, cursed, suppressed a flinch, then slowly turned to see my old partner.

“Seth, Jesus!”

“You should have your gun,” he said, glancing where my shoulder holster should have been. And then, “We need to talk.”

“I have a phone.”

“Apparently not with you.”

I felt in my pocket, then cursed again. I’d turned it off the night before when I was with Hope -- something I never did -- then forgot about it. I pulled it out and turned it on.

“We need to talk,” he repeated, now giving me a careful look up and down. “Let’s get some coffee.”

At this, as we were turning to go, the water now darkening in the fading light, me pulling my hoodie over my head, suddenly noticing it was starting to get chilly, someone screamed toward us, running.

“Someone went over! Someone went over!”

“Stay here,” gritted Seth through clenched teeth, and began sprinting toward the end of the pier, shedding his jacket as he ran, revealing his service revolver. I started to dial the O.B. lifeguard tower number which, even drunk, I still knew by heart, then realized that at this hour nobody would be there, and instead called 911, talking into the phone as I jogged in the direction Seth had just run. I saw him go over, and I saw five guys milling around and two lone fishermen standing nearby. As I got closer, I recognized one of the guys who had come to my door and two guys from the bar. The ones from the bar did a double take at me, then pretended not to notice. Seth came up in a moment with his arm around the neck of a choking, bedraggled man, and we all started walking back toward shore.

By the time a beach patrol had gotten there, Seth was most of the way in toward the shore pulling a dazed, light-skinned, gaunt man in his early to mid-thirties who I’d never seen before, and a patrol car had pulled out to the edge of the pier where we were standing. The goons didn’t look a bit concerned.

“He’s nuts,” said one of the two I didn’t know, as the cops got out of the black and white.

“He’s drunk,” said the other. “He jumped.”

The two fisherman, a weathered Hispanic man who could have been a worn out forty–eight, or a strapping sixty-five, and an even older Asian man, claimed not to have seen anything. The five thugs all identically claimed to be only “takin’ a walk.”

“We were takin’ a walk,” needlessly repeated the one who’d come to my door that night.

“Yeah,” added one that I’d seen at the bar.

“It makes you kinda sick,” said the other guy from the bar, chiming in like a member of a chorus from some ancient drama gone wrong, screwing his face up like he was speaking from a pedestal with a crown of thorns. “All these mixed up people in this town.” And then, after a pause, “Somebody should do somethin’ about it.”

“Yeah,” answered his buddy, solemnly, as if he also had the right. “Somebody should.” And they all nodded in agreement. They looked like a gang of bad guys from a “B” TV show, stupid and a little too well-dressed, with an affected coldness that had become more habit than affect. I shivered, repressed another one, then shivered again. The cops took names and statements from me, from the five guys, and the two fishermen. When they were finishing up, a beer-bellied old guy in a vest and t-shirt with a shaved head and tattoos up and down his arms approached from the shore end of the pier.

“What’s going on here?” he directed at no one in particular.

“Who are you?” said the one of the cops, who, at that time, was trying to get a working phone number from the older fisherman.

“I’m a respected member of this community,” he said, a bit too shrilly. “I know these boys,” he then added more calmly, nodding toward the thugs. “We work for William Wilkes.”

“The slumlord?” asked the other cop, a little more than a little incredulously.

“We’re respected members of this communi...” started in one of the goons from the bar again.

“Yeah. We heard you,” said the other cop, now walking over from the car. “Why don’t you boys move on. We’re done here.”

At this, they all stiffened a bit, then began to shuffle off toward the shore, squaring their shoulders as much as guys that crooked could, which wasn’t much, but as they passed me, one of the barflies from the other night looked my way, and said quietly, so the cop wouldn’t hear. “Heard you did pretty well with that witch. Maybe you should come by the bar tomorrow night.”

“No problem,” I answered flatly, but also quietly, feeling all kinds of things go dead inside me. “I’ll be there.”

“You too,” said the cop to me. “Let’s move along.” But I waited until the thugs were thirty seconds in front of me to take a step.

Seth was sitting on the tailgate of a yellow Beach Patrol truck with a blanket around him, shivering, sipping coffee.

”Who was the jumper?”

”I don’t really know. Somebody new in town. He was too afraid to talk,” he answered flatly, then added, “We still need to talk.”

“They invited me to come back to the bar.”

“I‘m coming.”

Chapter 10 coming July 1 (or so)!!!