The Next Right Thing (14 page)

These so-called “asset forfeiture” programs had begun even before I became a cop, and I’d been around to watch them grow. What most people didn’t realize was that the cops didn’t have to convict you in order to take your possessions. If they found illegal drugs in your car or house, your car or house now potentially belonged to law enforcement, whether or not you even got tried. They didn’t always exercise this right, but the right was always there. The abuses, though, were legendary: one drug cop I knew had such a thing for Jaguar XK-Es that the drug dealers in his jurisdiction stopped buying them. They found that they got busted less frequently in a Mercedes.

Of course, cops becoming more interested in cash and property than convictions had some problematic implications. If a suspect or his lawyers made it easier for the police to get to his bank accounts, might the cops be that much more inclined to give him a pass on the prison sentence? Or: what if the suspect made it easier for the cops to figure out how to take
other
people’s
bank accounts? Maybe then they would let him keep more of his own assets? To some agencies, this way of doing business just made good sense. I never liked it much myself—it sounded more like horse trading than justice.

But I wasn’t a cop anymore when Wade found himself in the soup. And so I was just glad that my friend didn’t have to go to jail.

“Simon Busansky owned that house,” Wade said to me over the phone. “That house was one of the places they grew and processed the pot.”

Simon Busansky: pornographer, boyfriend to crazy Emma, guy who freaked Troy out.

“I thought you didn’t know who Simon Busansky was,” I said.

Wade was quiet for a moment before he said, “I didn’t know him well. I don’t have strong opinions about him like Troy. He was just a guy who was near the top of the pot-growing food chain.”

“You explicitly told me that you didn’t know him.”

“Yeah,” Wade said.

“So you lied to me. What you’re saying is you lied to me.”

“I lied to you.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I walk around my life pretending that shit didn’t happen,” Wade said. “It’s weird to be reminded of it, especially like this. Terry was the one who totally saved my ass that time.”

“But you don’t know anything about Busansky?”

“I didn’t know that he was a pornographer,” Wade said.

“How did he avoid going to jail?”

“I assume he made a deal with them, too. I’m sure he lost everything. I gotta figure he lost that house.”

“How do you figure Colin now owns that house?” I said. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Not sure, man.”

“And why the fuck is Busansky hanging around Colin’s recovery houses? That doesn’t seem right to me. There’s no way Terry could be involved in this, is there?”

“I hope not.”

“How about fucking newcomers?” I said. “You still think he wasn’t fucking newcomers?”

“No way, man.
That
I’m sure about.”

“I need to find this guy Busansky. Can you help me?”

“Dude, it freaked me out to be anywhere near that house. I gotta steer clear of this, you understand?”

Uh-huh.

Before he hung up, Wade told me again how sorry he was for holding out on me. The funny thing was that I felt like he was still holding out on me.

When I went back into my house, I did what I sometimes do: stand at the threshold of our bedroom and watch MP sleep. She didn’t move. The soft gray light from the window crossed her back. She was twelve years younger than I was, but maybe that wasn’t the only reason she slept peacefully while I did not.

She’d found her way into A.A. the same as anyone—on a wave of more or less crushing despair—and yet I knew my sins were a lot worse than hers. Why did I inflict my bad dreams on
someone who didn’t have any? That’s what I thought about on that threshold between our bedroom and the rest of the house. When we first slept together, I would wake up from nightmares to find her happily reading a book. It took me the better part of six months to realize that it was my nightmares that had made her book necessary.

As my eyes got used to the light, I started to get interested in her bare back above the covers, in her neck and the way it flared around her shoulders into the softness above her breasts. Although I couldn’t see it from here, I imagined her skin, the way it smelled and tasted, as though no poison had ever poured through it. I knew that wasn’t the truth, but it always seemed that way.

I realized she was lying in bed staring at me. She didn’t say anything, but she looked at me as though the events of the morning were on her mind and she was trying like hell to hold them against me, but there was something about the softness of our bedroom and both of us needing not to talk about what had happened. I pushed off my shoes and undressed before I even entered the bedroom. It seemed right to walk through the doorway in nothing but my skin.

WHEN I REACHED FOR MY CELL PHONE
the next morning, MP was nestled beside me. But when I told her I was calling Manny, she moved away quietly, then headed for the bathroom, without a glance in my direction.

“You know any drug cops down here in Laguna?” I asked Manny. I had to speak with someone who could give me the scoop on whatever asset forfeiture deal might have led to Simon Busansky selling his house to Colin Alvarez.

“There’s a funny guy named Sean I met once. A surfer. We met at some kind of DEA junket in Palm Springs, and he was ready to give me a surfing lesson in the pool. He’s still Laguna PD, but I think he’s on some liaison with the DEA, too.”

After taking a second to think about cops who were surfers, I remembered that I knew the guy myself, though he hadn’t been
DEA when I used to run into him. Sean Wakefield came around A.A. a few years ago. He’d been going to secret meetings for police, but they weren’t working. When someone pushed him in my direction, I advised him to join the general population, and that worked for a while.

I called Sean’s cell, and as his voice mail picked up, I happened to be looking out my window at the Pacific. I reached for my binoculars. It wasn’t a great set of waves, but it wasn’t bad enough to keep a guy like Sean away. By the time I got down to Brook Street, he was peeling off his wetsuit at the top of the stairs.

Sean’s almost-cherry seventies El Camino was parked—illegally—at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. He sat down on his tailgate, and I gave him a latté from the Orange Inn. Sean had grown up in Atlanta, and he had some of that big, stupid southern sheriff thing going on. As he pulled on a T-shirt, I could see that he was in even better shape than he used to be. If he was drinking, it wasn’t beer.

“What’s this?” Sean said. “The sponsor patrol?”

“Was I your sponsor?”

“I never asked you to be, but … yeah.”

“That relationship works better when both parties know about it,” I said.

Sean tossed his wet suit into the truck and wrapped a towel around his shorts. “I heard about Terry.” He sipped some coffee. “Sorry.”

Over Sean’s shoulder, the ocean was gray like you never see unless you live in a beach town. Greasy gray like the bottom of a dead fish. Terry had been the one who pushed Sean in my direction.
Say hello to Sean. Sean’s the patient today
.

“Actually,” I said, “that’s why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out what his last few weeks were like. I might also have some information for you, you know, as a cop.”

“You’re not here to drag me back to meetings?” Sean smiled. “I’m disappointed.”

“What the hell do I care, Sean? If I thought I could get away with what you seem to be getting away with, I’d start surfing, too. And I fucking hate surfing.”

Sean took a last look at the sea as he stepped into his flip-flops. “A few times I thought about calling you.”

I told him about the guy I knew only as Mutt and gave him the license plate of the Suburban. I didn’t mention Simon Busansky’s name. I didn’t mention Colin Alvarez by name, either, though I did give him Colin’s address. Did that address ring any bells from his DEA work? I reminded myself that it could be a dangerous game, sharing information with someone who was hooked in to a federal agency.

“Yeah, I know this address,” Sean said. “This is old news, though. Didn’t Colin Alvarez buy that house?”

“Who?”

“Oh, don’t play games with me, Randy. He was the other guy they said I should have asked to be my sponsor. What are you up to? Is it some kind of A.A. girlfight? I thought that thing with Wade was ancient history. I bet you’re curious about Simon Busansky, too.”

“You know about Wade?” I said. “You know about Simon Busansky?”

“I know about everything,” Sean said. “Hanging out with the DEA guys is like being plugged in to the Matrix.”

I took back the piece of paper and wrote down the address of
Troy’s recovery home. “How about this address? You know if Colin bought this house from Simon, too?”

“This one I don’t know,” Sean said. “But I can find out. What does any of it have to do with Terry?”

“Can I leave out that part for now?”

“As long as it doesn’t hurt me,” he said. “Or make me look stupid.”

“I promise to do neither,” I said.

Sean smiled as he got into his El Camino.

I stopped by Jean Claude’s café, which is usually where I head when I’m waiting for things to happen. There was a lull between pastry purchases, so I got the full attention of the man himself. Because I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings from Frenchmen, my concern about Wade was the first thing that came out of my mouth when Jean Claude sat down at my table. Last night’s confession didn’t feel complete. It didn’t make sense, Wade not wanting to know more about Busansky. If Busansky had anything to do with Terry’s death, Wade should have wanted to know everything about Busansky.

“I’m worried that a friend of mine is lying to me,” I said. “And I don’t know how to make him stop.”

“Everyone lies,” Jean Claude said. “I usually let them alone. If I know they’re not telling the truth, well, that’s a kind of truth, too.”

“I hate it when you sound like a fucking sage European.”

“I mean it,” he said. “If you know he’s lying to you, maybe that’s all you need to know.”