two of the monthly visits to his grandfather at the old farm. It's just the way things are in this modern American, Southern California life. The Kodanis are just busy people-Beth puts in brutal hours at the hospital and Johnny works his files like a machine with no off switch. Then there's all the stuff with the kids-soccer games, Little League, karate, ballet, tutoring sessions-it's small wonder there's little room in the schedule for the old traditions.
Now the good detective opens the cheap, lightweight sliding door, which reveals a narrow closet. No clothes on the wire hangers, no shoes on the floor. A woman's suitcase-more of an overnight bag-is set on a free-standing rack, and now Johnny goes through it. A pair of jeans, a folded blouse, some underwear, the usual assortment of cosmetics.
Either Tammy Roddick wasn't planning on being gone long or she didn't have time to pack. But why would a woman contemplating suicide pack an overnight bag?
Johnny goes into the bathroom.
It hits him right away.
Two toothbrushes on the sink.
One of them is pink, and small.
Achild's.
25
The girl walks on the trodden dirt path on the side of the road.
Her skin is a rich brown, her hair black as freshly hewn coal. She trips over a brown beer bottle that was thrown out the window of a car the night before, but she keeps walking, and as she does, she fingers a small silver cross held by a thin chain around her neck. It gives her courage; it's her one tangible symbol of love in an unloving world.
In shock, not really sure where she's going, she keeps the ocean to her left because it's something she recognizes, and she knows that if she keeps the water to her left, she will eventually reach the strawberry fields. The fields are bad, but they are the only life she has known for the past two years, and her friends are there.
She needs her friends because she has nobody now. And if she can find the strawberry fields, she will find her friends, maybe even see the guero doctor, who was at least nice to her. So she keeps walking north, unnoticed by the drivers who rush past in their cars-just another Mexican girl on the side of the road.
A gust of wind blows dirt and garbage around her ankles.
26
Boone stops off at The Sundowner for a jolt of caffeine and a delay in trying to explain the inexplicable to Petra Hall, attorney-at-law and all-around pain in the ass.
High Tide's there, his bulk perched with surprising grace on a stool at the bar, his huge hands clutching a sandwich that should have its own area code. He wears the brown uniform of the San Diego Public Works Department, in which he's a foreman. Tide is basically in charge of the storm drains in this part of the city, and with the oncoming weather, he knows he could be in for a long day.
Boone sits down beside him as Sunny looks up from wiping some glasses, walks over to the coffeepot, pours him a cup, and slides it down the bar.
“Thanks,” Boone says.
“Don't mention it.” She turns back to wiping the glasses.
What's she torqued about? Boone wonders. He turns to Tide. “I just had a conversation with one of the more interesting members of the greater Oceania community.”
“How is Eddie?” Tide asks.
“Worked up,” Boone says. “I thought you island types were supposed to be all laid-back and chill and stuff.”
“We've picked up bad habits from you haole, ” Tide says. “Protestant work ethic, Calvinist predetermination, all that crap. What's got Eddie's balls up his curly orange short hairs?”
“Dan Silver.”
Tide takes a bite of his sandwich. Mustard, mayonnaise, and what Boone hopes is tomato juice squirt out the sides of the bread. “Don't make no sense. Eddie don't go to strip clubs. When he wants all that, the strip club comes to Eddie.”
“Says Dan owes him a big head of lettuce.”
Tide shakes his head. “I ain't ever heard that Eddie puts money on the street. Not to haoles anyway. Eddie will front to Pac Islanders, but that's about it.”
“Maybe he's expanding his customer base,” Boone says.
“Maybe,” Tide says, “but I doubt it. Way it works, you owe Eddie money and you don't pay, he don't take it up with you; he takes it up with your family back home. And it's a disgrace, Boone, a big shame, so the family back on the island usually takes care of the debt, one way or the other.”
“That's harsh.”
“Welcome to my world,” Tide says. It's hard to explain to a guy, even a friend like Boone, what it's like straddling the Pacific. Boone's literally lived his whole life within a few blocks of where they're sitting right now; there's no way he, or Dave, or even Johnny can understand that Tide, who was born and bred just up the road in Oceanside, is still answerable to a village in Samoa that he's never seen. And the same thing applies to most of the Oceania people living in California-they have living roots back in Samoa, Hawaii, Guam, Fiji, what have you.
So you start making some money, you send some of it “home” to help support relatives back in the ville. A cousin comes over, he stays on your couch until he makes enough scratch at the job you got him to maybe get his own place, where he'll have another cousin crash. You do something good, a whole village five thousand miles away celebrates with pride; you do something bad, the same village feels the shame.
All that's a burden, but… your kids have grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles, who love them like their own kids. Even in O'side, the children go back and forth between houses like they were huts in the village. If your wife gets sick, aunties you never knew you had show up with pots of soup, cooked meat, fish, and rice.
It's aiga — family.
And if you ever get in trouble, if someone outside the “community” takes you on, threatens your livelihood or your life, then the whole tribe shows up over your shoulder; you don't even have to ask. Just like The Dawn Patrol- you call the wolf, you get the pack.
Back in the day, Tide was a serious gang banger, a matai — chief-in the Samoan Lords. S'way it was, you grew up in Oceanside back then, especially in the Mesa Margarita neighborhood: You played football and you g'd up with your boys. Thank God for football, High Tide thinks now, remembering, because he loved the game and it kept him off the drugs. Tide wasn't your drive-by, gun-toting banger hooked on ma'a. No, Tide kept his body in good shape, and when he went to war with the other gangs, he went Polynesian-style-flesh-to-flesh.
High Tide was a legend in those O'side rumbles. He'd place his big body in front of his boys, stare down the other side, then yell “Fa'aumu!” — the ancient Samoan call to war. Then it was on, hamo, fists flying until it was the last man standing.
That was always High Tide.
Same thing on the football field. When High Tide came out of the womb, the doctor looked at him and said, “Defensive tackle.” Samoan men play football, period, and because O'side has more Samoans than anyplace but Samoa, its high school team is practically an NFL feeder squad.
High Tide was where running games went to die.
He'd just eat them up, throw off the pulling guard like a sandwich wrapper, then plow the ball carrier into the turf. Teams that played O'side would just give up on the ground game and start throwing the ball like the old Air Coryell Chargers.
Scouts noticed.
