“So I went after her. I had to wait five minutes for the set to end just to paddle out. The Whitewater was high enough to keep the goons from going in. There were photographers and a crowd there, just to watch. I got outside and looked back to shore. It felt like I was a mile out, the houses looked like something on a Monopoly board. It was twelve feet. I’d never seen it like that. Corky Caroll was out, and Rolf Arness — Matt Dillon’s son. They still got pictures of that day up in some of the surf shops in Newport. Every place has its Big Wednesday, and that was ours.”
“Big as Rockpile two mornings back?”
“It made Rockpile look like a swimming pool.”
Frye shuddered. “I was thirteen. I’d been surfing the point since I was six. And I’ll tell you, when I got out, I was scared. Debbie was thirty yards away, and I could see how white she was. I told her to go back in, so she paddled away further. The more I yelled, the less she paid any attention. Finally I got sick of screaming and missing waves, so I got my hair up and dropped in. It was second wave of the set, ten feet and I shredded that sucker all the way to shore. It’s the kind of ride you don’t forget. I still haven’t. It was the first time I ever made Surfer magazine.”
“Not the last.”
Frye looked up at the ceiling. Cristobel slipped her hand inside his shirt and ran it over his chest.
“When I got back out, Debbie was still there. She was grinning like an idiot. My heart was doing back-flips. Then I looked outside and the next set was lining up. Biggest of the day so far. We had to paddle like hell just to make it over the lead wave. Then two more. I looked across from me and watched the other guys paddling too — they looked like an army of ants riding sticks. Deb got outside faster. The next thing I knew she was dropping in on the cleanup wave. It was just too goddamned big. She stroked a couple of times. She looked at me, like, watch this.
“It lifted her up and she tried to stand, but she was going too fast and she pitched. It had her. It drove her down. She just kept falling, but she wasn’t free of the thing, she was imbedded in it, this little girl in a black wetsuit stuck in the curl, trapped like a fly in amber. The board spiraled down after her. I sat there and waited. When you look at a big wave from the back, all you see are these big muscles of water bearing down, then you hear the boom, then you feel the world tremble, then you see the whitewater shooting up like a geyser. I kept waiting for it to bring her up. Five seconds? Ten? I don’t know. What I do know is I was there in the middle of it, diving down with my eyes open and not seeing a thing except a green swirl everywhere I looked. Then coming up and screaming for help. Back down again. Then up. Then a bunch of guys diving down too, and lifeguards, and a few minutes later the rescue boat roaring up and almost capsizing when the next set hit.”
Frye closed his eyes and saw it all again, clearly as the morning it had happened. He could feel the burn of the saltwater, the ache in this throat as he screamed and went down again, the cold sludge of sand under his fingertips as he clawed along the unyielding, treasure-less bottom.
“They found her twenty minutes later, wrapped around the last piling of the pier.”
They lay still. Frye listened to the cars below. He could hear Denise’s stereo throbbing away down the hill. The curtains floated with the breeze.
“It wasn’t your fault, Chuck.”
“Maybe, Maybe not. But I was the last one with a chance to do something, and I didn’t take it. I could have stopped her before she left home. I could have taken her board. I could have just chased her down and dragged her in. There were a million little things that might have prevented what happened. It never got said that way, but that’s what mom and pop thought too. I could see it in their faces. After it happened, nothing was quite the same.”
“You’ve never talked about it.”
“Tried to a couple of times. Didn’t want to grovel.”
“That’s not groveling, it’s wrestling. You have to wrestle it until you pin it down and it leaves you alone. Is that why the water gets to you now? The dizzy spells you told me about?”
“I don’t know. I thought it started when I banged my head a few months ago. I thought it was that, but the doctor says I’m fine. Now, under the water, or in a cave or tunnel. Even in my bed sometimes, when the covers are pulled up too tight — I just can’t handle it.”
“Sometimes, it just takes a long while to heal. Believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“I love you, Chuck Frye. I want to spend some time with you. Get under that skin of yours.”
He looked at her, touched her face, looked into her dark brown eyes. “Those words sound good to me.”
She led him to the bedroom and shut the door.
They were dozing when the phone rang. It was Shelly from Elite Management, who had stopped by the office to get a couple of “rilly good joints” she’d left in her desk. As she had driven away, Rollie Dean Mack had driven in. “He didn’t see me, so I thought I’d call you. You still, like, wanna see him?”
Frye considered. “Sure I do. What kind of car does he drive?”
“Black Jaguar. Totally rad.”
“Totally. Thanks, Shelly.”
Cristobel pulled the blanket up, and snuggled close. “Who was that?”
Frye explained. Cristobel seemed to shrink away a little. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“No.”
“Want to come with me?”
She checked her watch, then looked at Frye for a long moment. “I should go. I’ve got an early shift at the towers tomorrow.”
“Suit yourself. You okay, Cris?”
She dressed quickly, slung her purse over her shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Can’t you just get a job somewhere else? Quit screwing with this Mack character?”
“I liked my job. I liked the Ledger. And everybody else wants five years experience. I got one and a half. Besides, there’s something strange going on at Elite. I’d like to know what. I could use another set of eyes and ears.”
“No. But good luck.”
The black Jaguar was out front, parked beside a long white Cadillac. The lights of Elite Management were on. Frye sat for a moment in his car, composing his story to Mack: I saw it as a dive, but I might have been wrong. I gave your fighters better coverage than anybody else did. Let’s forget the piece on the welterweight. You reinstate your ads, and I’ll get my job back.
What I might not ask, just yet, is why Lucia Parsons has the keys to your suite at the Sherrington, or why you never come to work.
He climbed the stairs and went to the door. He could hear a voice inside, drawling away. Something about it was familiar. He stopped his fist just short of knocking, then moved to a side window. The blinds were cracked open just enough to see inside.
The lobby was empty. But through the open door he could see Burke Parsons, phone to his ear. Behind him sat General Dien, arms crossed.
But no Rollie Dean Mack.
Parsons hung up. The phone rang a second later. He answered, checked his watch, slammed down the phone, and stood. “Come on, General.”
Frye flew down the stairs as fast and as lightly as he could. He realized he’d parked three cars away from the Jaguar.
He dodged around a corner and ran along the first-level suites. He pressed into a dark doorway, flattening against it as best he could.
Parsons and Dien moved quickly toward the lot. The General stopped beside Frye’s car and said something. Burke got into the Jaguar and started it up. His voice echoed across the lot. “Come on, Dien. We don’t have all fuckin’ night, now do we?”