Kind of Blue (16 page)

“Your understanding is incorrect. She’s inexperienced in the ways of finance. I’m an advisor. That’s all.”

“At this point, as I told Ms. Licata, I’m not interested in the business—whoever
owns it. I’m only interested in the murder of Pete Relovich.”

“I extend my condolences. I understand he was a former member of the LAPD—one of your brothers in arms.”

“You ever meet him?”

“I can’t say as I’ve ever had the pleasure.”

“Did you know he was working for your business, or should I say, the business that you’re an advisor for?”

“I didn’t know that until Ann told me when I talked to her yesterday.”

“You sure you never met Pete Relovich.”

“I’m sure.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“You probably heard something from Jane Granger. Am I right?”

I stared at him without acknowledging his question.

“We used to go out, but when I ended the relationship she became very angry, very vindictive. I heard she started to date Mr. Relovich. It would be just like her to try to claim I was a jealous ex-suitor.”

“Do you own a gun?”

He smiled. “Of course not. Why would I need a gun?”

I stared at him thinking that this interview was a complete waste of time. Everything he’d said after “hello” was a lie, and if someone could lie saying “hello,” it would be him.

“Can you recall what you were doing on Thursday night?” I asked.

“I can. I was playing poker at the Kismet Casino in the city of Commerce.”

“How many hours did you play?”

“I got there about eight and played until well after midnight.”

“What game?”

“I used to play a lot of stud and draw. But I’ve recently become intrigued by the game of Texas Hold’em.”

“Do you remember what table?”

“The high-limit table.”

“What are the stakes?”

“One hundred-two hundred. Four bet cap.”

If he lied about what he was doing on Thursday night when Relovich was killed, I might have enough to arrest him, or at the very
least, to get a warrant to search his house and look for the murder weapon.

I stood up and said, “I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

He smiled broadly. “I hope not.”

I navigated several freeways until I hit the 710 South, exited in Commerce, and parked in front of the Kismet Casino. I showed the doorman my badge and asked him to take me to the head of security. We walked through the club, a cavernous vault of stale air dotted with dozens of round tables. The only sounds were the click of chips and the raises and calls of tired men with poker pallors who murmured over their cards.

The doorman led me to a large room in the back of the club filled with video screens tracking the action at every table. He knocked and a wiry man in his fifties with a military-style buzz cut shook my hand and said, “Dickie Jenkins, head of security. Retired Torrance P.D.”

He led me into the room and we chatted for a few minutes about the cops he knew at the LAPD and a few Torrance homicide detectives I worked with on a case years ago.

When I told him I was investigating the murder of an ex-cop, he narrowed his eyes and said, “Whatever you need, you’ll get from me.”

I handed him the DMV photo of Abazeda. I told him that Abazeda claimed that on Thursday night he was playing at the high-limit Texas Hold’em table. “Can you roll back the video and see if you can spot him there between seven and closing?”

“Sure I can. We’ve got a camera trained on that table all night.” He pointed to one of the video screens, and I could see a half dozen men crowded around a table gripping their cards. “But that’s a lot of hours of tape, and I’ve got to examine it frame by frame. Might take me a while.”

“How long?”

“Since this is a homicide case, I’ll hunker down and get it done as fast as I can. But it still might take me a few days to go through it all.”

“Any chance I can get the tape and go through it myself?”

“I wish I could. But the club won’t release it. That’s
their
policy, not mine. I could lose my job if I give it up to you. You’ll either have to get a warrant or wait for me. I’m truly sorry.”

“Then I’ll wait.”

“And I’ll get it done as soon as I can.”

• • •

I heard the ringing phone as I unlocked the door to my loft and picked it up on the fifth ring.

“Hey, brah. Meet me tomorrow morning at Point Dume.”

It was Razor Reed.

I was a young patrolman answering hotshot calls on the Pacific Division p.m. shift when I met Razor. On a warm summer night he had just left a Venice restaurant when two Sho’line Crips jumped out of the shadows and pistol-whipped him after he refused to turn over his watch. My partner and I just happened to be driving by the restaurant. I jumped out of the car, drew down on the Crips, hooked them up, and called an ambulance.

I stopped off at the hospital that night and questioned Razor, who had suffered a concussion and a fractured jaw. When I asked why he had refused to give up the watch, Razor lifted it off the end table and showed me the engraved back: First Place Huntington Beach Open.

“My first win in a surf contest,” Razor had told me. “Got the watch and fifteen thousand dollars. Sentimental value, brah.”

Razor had been a professional surfer, and when he retired from the circuit more than a decade ago, he had opened a surf shop in Santa Monica. A few weeks after the beating, he stopped by the station with a gift: a custom surfboard he had shaped for me. “You’re wound pretty tight,” Razor had told me. “This’ll mellow you out.”

The board was beautiful: a sleek expanse of foam and fiberglass with a Canadian poplar stringer flanked by two swirling turquoise panels. In the center, Razor had played off my first name and airbrushed a custom insignia: a fiery wave raining smoldering ashes on the pale green water.

Razor had designed a hybrid for me, a board that was long enough, wide enough, and stable enough so a beginner could easily paddle, catch waves, and build up some speed, but streamlined enough so he would be able to maneuver a bit once he knew what he was doing. The tri-fin was eight-feet long with a full nose for flotation, slightly kicked up for steep drops, a rounded pintail, hard rails at the bottom, and softer edges in the middle.

At the time, I was in my mid-twenties, living in a one-room studio a few blocks from Venice Beach. I was still reeling from my army service,
still confused and aimless, still unsure I wanted to be a cop, still struggling to occupy my days until it was time to start my four o’clock shift. I figured I might as well try surfing; I had nothing better to do.

I started out in the early mornings near the Venice breakwater riding the bumpy white water straight into shore. The other surfers razzed me, shouting, “Straight off, Adolph.” But I always had pretty good balance, and I soon felt comfortable on the board. I started to paddle farther out and give real waves a try, but for a week I continually misjudged the breaks and pearled, catching the nose of the board during my descent and tumbling into the water. To avoid the other surfers, who cut me off and cursed at me, called me a kook and a barney, I surfed at dawn, beating the crowds. Occasionally, I would judge it just right, catch the wave as it was breaking and angle across the face. The exhilaration was exquisite.

I soon found that surfing in the early morning was the perfect antidote to the insanity at night. I spent my shift lurching from crisis to crisis, breaking up fights between coked-out men and doleful women with Southern Comfort on their breath, jamming street corner junkies, cuffing fractious drunks, speeding to drive-bys, barroom shootings, alley stabbings. Waking at dawn, driving up the coast, slipping on my wet suit, and paddling out into the glassy surf, helped me unwind, washed away the tension of the previous night. Since I returned from Israel, I had trouble sleeping and often awoke during nightmares, sweating and shouting. Knowing I would be surfing the next morning calmed me, helped me fall back asleep as I envisioned gentle swells peeling off a point.

A few months after Razor had dropped the board by the station, I called him at the shop, told him I had been using the board every day, and thanked him. Razor said there was a nice northwest swell and asked me if I wanted to go surfing. The next morning, Razor picked me up and drove up the coast to Silverstrand beach in Oxnard. I had trouble with the hard-breaking waves, which were overhead with paper-thin walls; I continually tumbled off the board and ended up in the surf with my leash tangled around my legs. Razor showed me how I was taking off a fraction too late. “Commit yourself fully to the wave,” Razor had said. “If you hesitate, you’re lost.” I knew he was right. During my next few rides, for the first time that day, I stayed with the waves all the way and
finished off with flourishing kick outs. Since then, we surfed together a few times a year. I still had the board with the fiery wave in the center.

During the past year, Razor had called a number of times, but I always put him off. I wasn’t interested in surfing or seeing anyone connected to my days as a cop.

Now, Razor was trying to lure me out again. “A south swell just rolled in. The outer reef by Little Dume is cranking.”

I had surfed the outer reef with Razor in the past. But only in the summer and fall. South swells in the spring were rare. A hurricane from Baja must be blowing up the coast, I figured.

“I got a case, Razor. I don’t think I can break away.”

“Dude, I’ve been worried about you. You’ve got to get out of your own head.”

I thought about what Dr. Blau had said:
You have to learn when to let go and leave the job behind—”

“Okay, Razor, you’ve worn me down. What time tomorrow morning?”

“Six. And get your stoke on.”

My alarm woke me at four fifteen. I grabbed my wet suit and board and tossed them into the back of my station wagon, which I had bought when I started surfing. Now I was glad I hadn’t sold the Saturn.

By four thirty, I was on the freeway, speeding by the first morning commuters.

When I emerged onto the Pacific Coast Highway from the Santa Monica tunnel it was still dark, but I could see the iridescent spray of the white water crashing against the shore. The moon was full, casting milky shards of light farther out at sea.

I cruised up the serpentine highway, hard by the rocky cliffs, past Sunset, Topanga, and a few other surf spots that caught the swell and were jacking good-sized waves near the shore. After I passed Malibu and Paradise Cove, I dropped down the hill to Zuma, pulled into the lot, drove down a frontage road, and parked next to Razor’s van. I could hear the waves of the Zuma shore break before I saw them: a thunderous roar that pounded the sand.

I banged on the window of the van and Razor emerged, naked, wearing only sheepskin-lined Ugg boots, rubbing sleep from his eyes. From the neck down, Razor looked like a teenager: he had a washboard stomach, wide shoulders, arms and chest corded with muscle from a lifetime of paddling. But his shoulder-length hair was as silver as a chrome pistol, and his bushy mustache and soul chip beneath his lower lip were bleached white from the sun.

“Surf naked, brah,” Razor said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, pulling my wet suit out of my trunk.

“Just kidding. Some of these waves are double overhead. Good way to lose your crank in the drink.”

After we slipped on our wet suits and grabbed our boards, we climbed the steep bluff that separated Point Dume from Zuma. The
morning dew raised the pungent smell of sage and sumac. Flowering white yucca as tall as a surfboard—called Our Lord’s Candle—bordered the path. At the top of the bluff, we stopped for a moment. In the smoky early morning light, I could see the entire sweep of the Santa Monica Bay, from Point Dume below me, to the tip of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the distance.

Little Dume, a short, rocky point, was a half mile down the coast. About six hundred feet from shore, just beyond a kelp bed, I could see the waves breaking off the outer reef. The faces were huge, slowly rising from the deep water, pausing for a moment as they caught the reef, frozen in time, glassy and deep green in the faint light, before crashing and crumbling into a mountain of white water.

We climbed down the bluff and set our boards on the wet sand. Razor lovingly ran his hands along the rail of my board and said, “That’s one sweet stick.”

We dropped to our knees and began waxing our boards, the bubble gum smell filling the air. The presurfing ritual—climb into the wet suit; check out the surf, tide, and wind; wax the board; pick the right spot to paddle out—reminded me of my old prepatrol routine. Clean the Galil. Slip on the flak jacket and helmet. Fill the canteen. Hook on the grenades. Then get going and look for moving shadows.

“Wake up, Ash,” Razor said. “It’s thumping out there.”

I waded out to my waist, board under my arm, the cold water chilling me as it seeped into my wet suit. Then Razor and I hopped on our boards and began paddling out at an angle to avoid the turbulent water. We circled around the outer reef and pulled up just beyond the break. Pale bands of orange and pink streaked the eastern horizon; the sky overhead was neon blue. There was not even a hint of mist or wind, and first wave of the set that rose from the reef was a velvety wall of water. Razor took off and I saw him disappear down the huge face, spotted the top of his head a few seconds later, and then lost him again as he ripped up and down the wave, the lip feathering, catching rainbows of light.

I paddled for the last wave of the set, looked down, and felt as if I was standing atop a skyscraper staring at the street below. I quickly pulled out and swiveled around. When Razor paddled back he said, “Don’t be such a puss.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve been out,” I said sheepishly.

When the next set broke, bigger than the last, Razor pointed at me. I paddled for the first wave. When I saw the steep drop, I felt like pulling out again, but I muttered, “Fuck it” to myself and soared down the face as I climbed to my feet, carved a clean turn, and jetted through the silky face, just ahead of the roaring white water. I could see the wave beginning to close out, so I crouched slightly, grabbed the outside rail for balance and powered through the tube; for a moment I was completely engulfed in water, locked in, unable to see anything but a flash of green and a cloud of foam, the hiss of the surf in my ears, then I rocketed out of the wave into the sunlight, and just as the breaker began to peter out, I caught another good-sized wave, skimming along the shallow water until I ended up near the shore and caught my fin on a rock. I couldn’t help grinning as I paddled back out.