Robbie had grown up in Laguna and graduated from Laguna Beach High back when their teams were still called the Artists, not the newly minted Breakers. After school, he’d been eager to get away from the domestic horror show at home, but he’d always assumed he’d stay local and figure out a way to coexist among the filthy rich and infamous who were determined to price him out of his hometown market. For somebody with no real sense of direction or ambition, Robbie quickly learned the score.
Influence, that’s what it was all about. And most of the locals didn’t really want to get their own hands dirty when it came to passing along “financial or psychological incentives” to make things work. Robbie was happy to do what he was told without leaving a trail. He thought of himself as smart enough to know better, pissed off enough to not give a shit, and savvy enough to get his assignments done without making the O.C. Register’s back pages.
Bottom line, between 2002 and 2007, if Michele and Jeff had a case in Laguna they didn’t want to go to trial, or a business dispute or vendetta that needed settling the old-fashioned way, Robbie had a hand in the “mediation.” And there were plenty of opportunities: planning commissioners trying to play both sides, hotshot developers eager to flip properties before the next landslide, mayors caught with their hands in the till, lawsuit-happy execs with a taste for the strange, or city council members laboring under the notion that they were appointed to think for themselves.
This was no longer the sleepy little coastal hideaway that had bored him to tears — not to mention various pharmaceutical diversions — during his teen years. No, now even a teardown shack a mile from the beach would run you a minimum of a million bucks. Face it, the only thing tennis pro Lindsay Davenport, the dude who played Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and the guy who made those Girls Gone Wild videos had in common was they all made the kind of “fuck you” money it now took to call Laguna Beach home.
Robbie had to laugh as he cruised past that BMW pulled over to the side of the 241 by a state trooper. Tickets on a toll road! He leaned back and shook his head. They know how to hit you where it hurts. In the fuckin’ wallet.
Next stop, the toll plaza for the 133 South. More coins in the basket for the privilege of heading west. Looking around, Robbie remembered when this area was all orange groves and strawberry fields, not corporate headquarters, industrial parks, and high-end playgrounds for shopaholics. What Robbie saw now was the reassurance of returning job security.
He’d learned his lesson: Don’t let it get personal. Never lose your cool. You’re a messenger, that’s all. He wasn’t about to forget these past six months of purgatory, going stir-crazy and watching his meager savings run out in the middle of nowhere. All because he got a little too rough and didn’t cover his tracks well enough after a job.
That wouldn’t happen again. And when Michele had finally called, Robbie knew he’d be on probation for a while, but that was okay. He wouldn’t let them down.
Just past the 405, the toll road portion of the 133 ended and he cruised into Laguna Canyon. After his “sabbatical,” it was like he was seeing the place with fresh eyes. When he was growing up, this was an eight-mile, funky two-lane road that twisted toward the Pacific like a sidewinder on peyote. Now there were four lanes most of the way and shuttles from the Act V parking lot a mile from downtown. But on an August day like this, it was still stop-and-go from El Toro Road on into town where finding a parking place for less than ten bucks still felt like winning the lottery.
So, the Corolla inched along that final mile, until, at last, he cruised past the grounds of the arts festivals — the Sawdust Festival and Art-A-Fair on the left, the Festival of Arts on the right — a mere six blocks from the “T” where the Pacific Coast Highway briefly parallels the Main Beach boardwalk and Laguna’s famous “window to the sea.” With its surf, sand, volleyball and basketball courts, and a relatively unobstructed view of the Pacific, Main Beach owed its existence to a movement to stop its development back in the 1960s. Its preservation was made possible by the Festival of Arts with funds skimmed off thirty years of ticket sales to the Pageant of the Masters. As always, money talked, and that only-in-Orange-County theatrical show with its “living pictures” still pulled in crowds from all over the world every summer. And as long as it did, the city made certain it got its cut.
Once, when he was nine, Robbie had volunteered as a cast member in the Pageant. As a porcelain figurine. As crazy as it sounded, that summer was just about his only decent childhood memory, a brief refuge from the endless fights, the drunken beatings and humiliations at home. Now, as he passed the front entrance of the Festival of Arts with its banners and gated grounds filled with artists’ displays, Robbie remembered how, back in high school, he’d thought about becoming an artist. Laguna certainly had enough of them. But even then he knew himself well enough to know it wasn’t in the cards. Instead, he’d just drifted after school, a loner with no real sense of direction.
Michele and her husband Jeff, lawyers and partners in their own two-person legal firm, had originally hired him to run errands and do odd jobs. They liked that Robbie didn’t ask too many questions and he paid attention to details. When had his work for them turned from just being a gofer to the more delicate tasks of money drops and eventually “enhanced mediation”? It had been a natural progression, with Robbie quickly developing a feel and taste for anonymous intimidation. Most of his targets were basically small-town cowards who were deathly afraid of having their dirty laundry aired in the pages of the Coastline Pilot. But Robbie didn’t really care why Jeff and Michele had him do what he did. As far as he was concerned, he got paid to turn “no” into “yes, of course, it’ll never happen again” by whatever means was necessary.
The Corolla angled into the left lane, and when the light changed, he turned onto Forest Avenue and cruised past the lumberyard parking lot, City Hall, and the fire station. There wasn’t much of a chance to build any momentum before climbing the steep “blind crest” hill up to Park Aveune, but he was pleased that the old Toyota managed it without much complaint. Turning left on Park, Robbie slowed just a bit as he drove past the high school. Was he kidding himself that his time there hadn’t been so bad after all? Is this what nostalgia feels like? If it is, it really sucks.
Park Avenue continued its winding ascent up through the canyons and steep turns that eventually led to Thurston Middle School and Top of the World, that elite enclave of homes with multimillion-dollar views overlooking Laguna Canyon. Everywhere he looked, Robbie saw new houses under construction. He’d watched most of the homes on these same hills burn to the ground in the Laguna Canyon fires in the fall of ’93, but you’d never know it now. Taking a left at the middle school, Robbie made his way through the maze of houses to Skyline Drive.
Parking on the street across from another mansion-in-progress construction site, Robbie walked to the front door of Michele and Jeff’s house, a California modern, split-level bunker of interlocking concrete and glass boxes. Checking his watch, Robbie rang the bell on the bronze and wood double doors. After a moment, a guy Robbie had never seen before, about six-two, 240, opened the door and peered down at him. Tan and ripped, the guy looked to be in his twenties. Robbie noted that he was barefoot and wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and shorts.