She’s in a state of mild shock before and after, spending most of her hours in her Laguna Canyon apartment, staring out the windows and talking to her dog. She cries and sleeps a lot.
Gets calls and emails about her Coastal Eddy El Gordo story and video from agents and publishers, producers, studios, networks, cable, and streamers. One from a human resources executive from Los Angeles Times, implying a job offer and inviting her to lunch. And, disturbingly, an email from a San Diego Union columnist who says two witnesses told her they had recognized Bettina dining with a man — and her dog — at Mikey’s in the Gaslamp the night Dan Strickland was shot down. Did you know him?
She answers not one of them.
Her mother and father and brothers Nick and Connor come and go, as do Billy Ray Crumley and Jean Rose, and some of her Coastal Eddy coworkers, and the Biker Chicks. She realizes how alone she is — we all are — when it comes to being in our own skin, to putting one foot in front of the other.
She doesn’t work. Doesn’t ride. Doesn’t surf.
Can’t stay awake more than four hours at a time during day, can’t sleep at night. Felix is depleted, eating less and sleeping more, looking at her lugubriously.
Alejandro Godoy:
Dear Ms. Blazak,
I am sorry to learn of the death of the señor Strickland. I knew him as the señor Knowles. He was a friend, and he believed very highly in you. I am pleased with your story and show about me in Coastal Eddy. I assume that Joe was killed with Strickland. Is this true? That is very sad but without his master a dog is just a dog. But you should always be watchful of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Palma is a rabid animal.
Vaya con Dios,
She writes El Gordo back, confirming Joe’s death in the Gaslamp shoot-out.
Her life is an empty container.
The minutes take hours; the hours take days.
On her first day back at Coastal Eddy, Bettina meets Billy at Crescent Bay in Laguna. He’s on bike patrol today downtown, but he’s got his lunch hour free. He brings food from the French café on Forest that Bettina likes, and a couple of big gourmet treats for Felix. The plastic bag dangles from his hand as they walk across the beach. Felix bolts after a seagull, but Bettina calls him in. The tide is low and they choose flat rocks up by the sandstone berm.
Billy has been a rock of empathy and subdued good cheer these days since the Gaslamp. But today Bettina senses extra weight in him. The early spring day is cool and still, and they don’t have a lot to say.
“Bettina, I’m wanting to bring up something that may not be pleasant for you. And I want you to know that I’ll just cool it if you don’t want to hear me out. And I’m not saying that what I suspect is absolutely true, but I have to say it. Say what I think is true, I mean. And there I go, tangling up my words again.”
“Shoot, Billy.”
“Dan Strickland was the Roman — the dog handler and shooter that El Gordo and the DEA talked about.”
“No. Of course that can’t be, Billy,” she says. But her words sound weak. And it’s not the ocean breeze just carrying them away. Once upon a time, she had thought that was a distant but actual possibility. But the idea of Dan as the Roman had gradually receded with his protection of her and of Felix, and his unwavering affection for both of them. And hers for him.
But now, Billy’s words hit her heart with the heavy thud of truth.
“Prove it.”
“The Tijuana Police cooperated with DEA, which ran the brass from Calderón against the gun that Strickland died with. It took some time with all the shots fired, but the toolmarks from six casings matched. Dan Strickland’s gun was used to kill three men in Tijuana that night.”
“And how did DEA think to do that?”
Billy sighs, nods compliantly. “Because I showed them the similarities between Dan as a competition gunslinger, and Godoy’s photos of the shooter in the switching yard.”
“I’m processing. I’m processing.”
“He never told you?” asks Billy.
Bettina shakes her head, zips up her windbreaker, watches a couple of black-clad frogmen back into the surf. This kind of diving had never seemed scary to her, but now it does — disappearing into that dark black water with a bunch of lead strapped around your waist.
Everything seems scary since the Gaslamp.
Like when she’s here on Laguna’s beaches, looking at the waves, she imagines dropping into a Brooks Street barrel and feels cold fear.
Or in town, when she considers Coast Highway and imagines coursing down the asphalt into town with the cars whizzing past her, she feels fear.
And if she imagines guiding a big strong horse like Sawblade in a barrel race, she feels fear. Wonders how she ever did all those things in the first place.
Is this what Strickand meant when he said the first thing he’d teach her about survival was to learn when to back off?
She doesn’t think so. She thinks if anyone needed to know when to back off, it was him, not her. Which was part of why she came to like and love him. Because they were alike.
Which does nothing to address the fear. No matter how still and open-minded, or how fueled by bourbon she becomes, since the Gaslamp shoot-out, Bettina has felt no spark, no flame, no fire.
“Bettina, I’m very sorry that you lost your friend like that. I’ve never lost someone I loved, in that way. It must be a heavy burden. So I’ll do what I can to help you, be a shoulder to cry on, whatever you need. I won’t crowd you like I did before, won’t shadow or badger you. If what you need is less me, I’ll clear all the way out.”
“Don’t clear out.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Let’s do this again next week.”
“You got it.”
After Billy leaves, Bettina and Felix linger at Crescent Bay. Today is her birthday. And Keith’s. Keith’s ashes were scattered at sea up in Dana Point, so Bettina figures that, technically, any part of the Pacific is somewhere some tiny molecule of Keith might be. So Crescent Bay’s as good a place to think about him than any.
She strokes Felix’s perfect round head and behind his gull wing ears, and memories of Keith come flooding out, good ones, only the good ones, only the good.
Here’s looking at you, brother. Sorry the world wasn’t enough. Sorry I wasn’t.
Charley Gibbon holds open the Apex Self-Defense door, and Felix squeezes in first. Bettina nods at Gibbon on her way in. Charley has the same hardness, the same feral cool that Strickland had.
“Thanks for this, Charley,” she says.
“I got some pictures and video for you on the desktop. Some letters I found in a file cabinet. Something for you from Dan.”
“What do you know about his life as the Roman?”
Gibbon gives her a pained smile and a small shake of his head. “Let’s sit outside in the sun for that,” he says. “Beer? Bourbon?”
Gibbon’s expression is a confirmation that Billy Ray was absolutely right about Strickland. This hurts — her last crumb of hope for Dan the Good Guy melting away.
“Bourbon,” she says.
The April afternoon is sunny, neither warm nor cool, a representative San Diego day. Bettina sits on the deck exactly where she sat the night that Strickland cooked the dinner and told her about Sangin and later let her take him to his bed. The night she picked the short pale dog hair off the collar of Strickland’s coat while they walked in the rain.