Wild Card by Michael Brandman

Author:Michael Brandman [Brandman, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: police procedural, crime, mystery, small town
ISBN: 9781464211614
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-03-12T07:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FIVE

Something my father told me stuck in my craw. In defining my role in the Petrov affair, he’d dropped the bombshell, “You’re a wild card. It’s your deal. You own it.”

It hadn’t quite occurred to me in that manner. Not that I mind owning it; it’s that it appears I came to own it without having had any say in the matter.

This whole coastal issue, public access versus private ownership, had been in my consciousness since I was a boy. A teenaged boy who experienced the issue firsthand.

My boyhood pal, Petey Brigham, had moved with his family from Freedom to Point Dume, an exclusive enclave of elegant, costly single-family houses located on a promontory overlooking the Pacific on the Malibu coast.

I had been invited to spend a weekend with the Brighams. Once unpacked and ensconced, Petey and I embarked on an exploratory adventure. We skittered down the promontory to the parking area below and set off for Paradise Cove, arguably the finest beach in the area.

We were ninth-graders, fourteen, our hormones raging, our bodies filling out. Both of us were athletes, a pair of gym rats and body-builders, each destined to make at least two varsities once we entered our respective high schools.

Paradise Cove featured a pristine stretch of sand that was shielded by a wooden pier to the south and a windswept breakwater to the north. Its centerpiece was a popular beachfront café just steps away from the surf.

There had been conflicts regarding beach access and parking by those other than café clientele, which caused a number of demonstrations wherein protesters railed that access was as much their right as it was the café crowd’s.

Despite Coastal Commission rulings in favor of the protesters, the café owners demurred. They hired attendants who were little more than hooligans, whose job it was to deny access to the parking area by anyone other than café customers. And even more problematic, the job appeared to include denying non-café customers access to the beach as well.

It was an unseasonably warm spring day when Petey Brigham and I sauntered into Paradise Cove. Our intention was to plop ourselves down on the beach and catch some serious rays. A swim or two was also in our plan.

We slipped into the parking lot and lagged behind a quartet of adults who were headed for the café. As we neared the beach, we kicked off our shoes and walked barefoot onto the sand.

I felt the hand grab the back of my shirt before I realized the assailant was one of the parking attendants, a burly young man in his late teens, mean-looking and angry.

“Fuck you think you’re going?” he spit out as he whirled me around.

I shook myself free. “What business is it of yours?”

“This here is private property. Scram.”

I made eye contact with Petey Brigham, then turned away from the attendant and headed for the shore.

This time the goon tripped me and I fell heavily to the sand. “I guess you don’t hear so good,” he bellowed. “I said fuck off.

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