“We didn’t burn their boats,” says Casey. “They torched the Barrel but we didn’t burn the boats.”
“Wu denies burning the Barrel,” says Temple.
“I’m sure they did it, Detective Temple,” says Casey. “But we didn’t burn up their boats.”
Temple looks at Casey with amusement.
“And Brock, how do you weigh in on Empress II?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t waste a good match on that piece of shit. And I haven’t seen it in over a week. None of those other boats, either.”
Temple nods, consults his phone, then sets it down. “I’m sure you have tight alibis for the afternoon the Empress II exploded. I mean, you can lawyer up if you want, but if you give me some straight answers here we can save a lot of time. No recording. No notes.”
Casey tells Temple the simple truth as alibi: he was helping his mom rebuild the Barrel.
Brock and Mahina claim to have been way out in Aguanga the last few days, and they’ve got half a dozen “rescue missionaries” to corroborate.
“So that’s not you up in the crow’s nest with the flare gun?”
Brock gives the cop a derisive shake of his head.
“Do you have another witness, Casey?” asks Temple. “Someone not family?”
“Just me and Mom and Grandma, and sometimes Grandpa Don,” says Casey. “We’ve been there for, like, weeks. The air in the Barrel is totally foul; Mom bought some new KN95s for us but I still had a headache every day.”
Temple nods, dubiously. “Did you make or receive any calls or messages while you were there?”
“Sure,” says Casey. “I’m always doing that.”
A beat of silence then while Casey tries to gauge how much the detective suspects his alibi, which is fundamentally true. And that of his brother and Mahina, which, technically, Casey can neither confirm nor dispute.
A tough face to read, he thinks. Cops must practice that.
“Did you shoot any pictures or video that afternoon at the Barrel?” Temple asks. “A time-and-date stamp would be nice.”
“None those three days,” says Casey. “But lots before. We just worked and went outside every half hour for fresh air.”
Temple nods.
“Mr. Temple,” says Casey. “I’d like to know if you guys are going to nail the Wus for torching the Barrel.”
“Not my jurisdiction. Laguna PD is in charge of that.”
“Why don’t they arrest them?”
Brock gives Casey another sharp look. Casey looks down at his hands, rubs the pinpoint burn scabs.
“Casey, these people are hiding on or near the world’s second largest ocean. The Empress II was a speck. The Cigarette boats, the Luhrs, and the Bayliner are specks. Even to choppers and search planes, specks. Laguna Police don’t even have a patrol boat. Orange County Sheriffs has six single-engine patrol boats for harbor and shallow-water work. And some helicopters. A lot of Wu’s organization lives up in San Gabriel. You’re lucky to have found them at all, if in fact...”
“Exactly,” says Brock. “We didn’t.”
“I wish I could believe your brother on that.”
Casey hears the condescension in the detective’s voice. Hates it. Has always hated it when people talk to him like he’s a child, or a moron.
“Plus,” says Temple. “There are fifty public marinas between Ensenada and San Francisco. Dry docks, too. Hell, Wu and his flotilla can stay on the high seas — if they’re outside the twenty-four-mile line — only the military can touch them.”
“DEA can find anybody,” says Casey.
“Too busy with big-time fentanyl at the border,” says Temple. “Jimmy’s small-time.”
“They aren’t even going to look?” asks Casey.
“Eventually,” says Temple. “You guys found Empress II, Stallion, and Bushmaster. According to Jimmy, that is.”
“I told you we didn’t do anything to those boats,” says Casey.
“You don’t have to tell him again,” says Brock. “He gets it by now.”
Casey knows that lots of people think he’s dumb, but Brock was the first. The only people who have ever told him right to his face that he’s smart are his mother and, weirdly enough, Bette Wu.
“Casey, Brock? I’d understand it if you guys blew up those boats. Because of what you say Jimmy Wu did to the Barrel. I’ve eaten at the Barrel. I know what a great place it was.”
“We didn’t blow up those boats, Detective,” Casey says firmly.
“I’m just saying I could understand it, if you felt like it.”
“Well, sure, I felt like it.”
“Please shut up, Casey,” says Brock.
“Let’s talk again soon,” says Temple. He finishes his coffee, stands, and drops a twenty on the Marine Room counter. “I’d like you three down San Diego way.”
“Yeah, sure,” says Casey.
“Just one of you at a time, though. Like to start with you, Casey.”
“I know a good lawyer,” says Brock.
Outside, Casey, Brock, and Mahina walk up Ocean toward Casey’s place in Dodge City.
Casey’s guts are tight and he can’t figure out why he feels like he’s just lied to the detective.
“Brock?” says Casey. “Did you burn those boats?”
Brock stops and sets his dark, strong hands on Casey’s square shoulders.
“I already told you we wouldn’t. And you just about convinced the cops that you didn’t. Good job, Case. You are awesome.”
27
A day later, Casey’s shaping a board in his backyard on Woodland.
He’s trying to relax, go with the flow of karma, but the heat is on and the heat wants answers.
Detective Temple grilled his mom earlier today, trying to poke holes in his alibi, she said. Then went ahead and set up an interview with Casey at the Oceanside Sheriffs’ substation for tomorrow morning. No Brock this time. Casey’s bringing a lawyer.
Not only that, but state Fish and Wildlife senior investigators have arrived, all the way from Sacramento.
Even Coast Guard lieutenant Kopf, who has opened his own investigation of the fire aboard Empress II, says that “new witnesses” have reported seeing a five- or six-boat flotilla motoring toward the old trawler just an hour before arsonists set her on fire. He’s got digital images that don’t show much, but he says one of the boats looks like it could be Moondance.
Casey feels like the whole world is after him. But he feels safe here in his backyard in Dodge City in his yellow hibiscus shorts and flip-flops, surrounded by all his bushes and plants and trees, his surfboards, and Jack Johnson on his Dot.
Casey’s house is clapboard, small and uninsulated, built in the 1950s when this then-poor Laguna Canyon neighborhood was home to artists and musicians, many of them Black, and a growing cadre of weird young surfers.
The neighborhood of narrow streets and dirt walkways was nicknamed Dodge City in the late sixties for the shoot-’em-up busts of the drug dealers, artists, and surfers who congregated there for the cheap rent, plentiful drugs, and a sense of security against the invading cops, narcs, even the FBI.
Dodge was peace and love, psychedelic music and weed smoke in the air, surfboards leaned up against the houses and decks. Kids and dogs everywhere you looked.
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love founder, John Griggs, lived here, his home the unofficial BEL headquarters for their worldwide hash- and LSD-smuggling network.
Tim Leary dropped by now and then. Got himself busted here.
Casey likes the lore and vibe of Dodge. Thinks its outlaw reputation gives him street cred, even though he himself is a non-doping, barely drinking, health-food-eating, body-building, Bible-reading environmentalist. And, a semi-ashamed virgin except for the woman his friends embarrassingly rented for him at his twenty-first birthday party. He regretted it before he even did it. Apologized. What a downer. But it was hard in his always-looking-for-answers mind to say exactly why.