I could feel that big swell out there, headed for Half Moon Bay, building speed. The same as I’d felt that baby trying to land inside me.

21

Three days after the burning of the Barrel, Brock and Casey cruise King Jim Seafood in the Port of Long Beach in Casey’s pickup, surfboards bagged in the bed.

The main reason they’re here is to case King Jim Seafood with an eye for action.

An eye for an eye, Brock calls it. But Casey’s not so sure.

Jimmy Wu’s HQ is a low brick building huddled among others in a small business park beneath towering container ships, and rows of terminal cranes swinging containers through the sky to the docks and trucks below. The port is in constant motion, a heaving jungle of steel and concrete, chain link and railroad tracks. Skinny palms sway.

“What a place for smugglers,” says Brock. “A port that handles the entire Pacific Ocean and every country near it. And once the goods are here, thousands of trucks and trains to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. After that, you refill your containers with what the Eastern Hemisphere needs, crane them onto those freighters, and send them back.”

“Like they could have done to Mae,” says Casey. “Bette Wu is a liar. She said they wouldn’t have done that. Then she comes up to LA and tries to buy the Barrel out from under Mom and chats me up while they, like, burn it down. I could slap her for that. Not literally, I mean.”

Brock marvels, again, at his minutes-older brother’s gullibility and general innocence. A trusting heart is a liability on Earth, Brock believes. And very strongly does not believe in turning the other cheek, and most of the other Bible babble that the world—led by ministers like grandpa Pastor Mike Stonebreaker who, bless his heart—takes as, well, the gospel truth. Don’t tell the victims of fire, flood, cold, heat, starvation, war, betrayal, and disease to turn their cheeks. Help them not to turn their cheeks. Help them fight back. Help them win.

“I shouldn’t have conked in Mom’s apartment, Brock. It’s my bad and I own it. It was two o’clock by the time I locked the Barrel and went upstairs. I had some tea but still fell asleep.”

“You did what you could, Casey. You fought. You’ve got the burns that prove it.”

Brock looks at his brother’s face and arms, the backs of his hands. Small, painful, slow-to-heal burns.

“I can’t believe they put the fire bombs in Amazon Prime boxes,” says Casey. “With the logos and the black tape with the smiling whatever it is on them. You know, that squiggly, wormy thing? I guess it’s supposed to be a smile but it reminds me of an axolotl. The Japanese love axolotls. They have whole stores dedicated to axolotls. I did a Seiko shoot in Tokyo and went in one.”

“It was smart and simple,” says Brock. “A driver and a delivery guy in those matching golf shirts. A black Sprinter that any shipper might use. Easy to rent. Amazon boxes that everybody’s used to seeing. Delivered to the Barrel on a late, dark night, long after it’s closed and empty. Boxes filled with plastic bottles of gasoline, gunpowder, and cell signal detonators.”

“But I might have recognized the delivery guy from the security tape. Even with his cap pulled down low. He looked like one of the shark finners that was on the Empress II.”

“Might doesn’t count, Casey.”

Brock—with his teenage experience growing and smuggling pot in Riverside and Laguna, and later, his months as a volunteer fighter in Ukraine—is impressed by Jimmy Wu’s crafty arson.

“Then they set them off by phone,” he says. “Waited a minute to enjoy the show. That’s when you saw them scream off.”

“Sergeant Bickle said it was one of the ballsiest arsons he’d ever seen,” says Casey.

Brock agrees. “Nobody can ID them from the security video, including you, Case. It’s what security video almost always is—too fucked up to tell anything for sure. Smeared and jerky and useless.”

“Like me, falling asleep at Mom’s.”

“Let it go, bro. Fight again.”

Casey parks his truck in a cracked and weed-sprung parking zone, as far from King Jim Seafood as he can get.

Brock raises his Nikon binoculars, and Casey the trusty Leicas he uses to spot fish from Moondance.

To Casey, King Jim Seafood looks quiet today. There are no lights on behind the security screen door or wrought-iron window rods, no cars parked out front. Beyond the King Jim building, huge blue cranes lower Maersk and Hanjin and Cosco containers to the docks.

“It would be hard to burn down a brick building,” says Casey. “Wouldn’t it?”

“Right. They’ve got iron window screens so you can’t throw anything through. You’d need to get inside and use a lot of accelerant. But you’d probably get caught. Look at all the people here on this dock, twenty-four, seven. More law enforcement and fire and rescue than you can count. A pro could pull it off. Maybe.”

“They have pro arsonists now?”

“They always have. They’re generally insane.”

“Rad you know all this stuff.”

“Most of it’s just common sense.”

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Kick their asses out of business like they did to us? You bet I do. If you’re not up for it, Case, okay. Stay in Laguna and let me handle it. In my world, no one does what these people did to Mom and doesn’t pay a whopping price.”

“That other-cheek thing you’re always haranguing about.”

“That very thing.”

“I don’t agree with the philosophy behind this,” says Casey. “It’s, like, revenge for material things. But in this case, because of Mom, I’m going to bend my rules.”

“Thank you.”

“But it seems like we need a better way to do this.”

“Give me your thoughts, Casey.”

“Well, if the purpose is to put the Wus out of business like they did to us, and their brick building is a fortress in plain sight, then maybe we should go after something else. Like, what they use for business. Same as they went after the Barrel. How about their boats? The Empress II, the red Cigarettes, the Luhrs, and the Bayliner?”

Casey lowers his binoculars to find Brock staring at him point-blank. “What.”

“I like it, Casey. But the Wu boats aren’t worth what the Barrel was, especially with Mom being way underinsured.”

“Might be enough to run them out of business, Brock.”

“I want more.”

“You maybe should consult your Breath of Life God on that.”

“It’s nothing to do with God, Casey. It’s a thing in the human heart.”

“You can’t remask justice into vengeance and call it justice.”

“‘Remask’ isn’t a fucking word, Casey. Maybe you’d be singing a different song if they’d dropped Mae into the Pacific.”

“You’re not saying I love Mae more than Momster, are you?”

“You’re so dumb.”