“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.”
“I know.”
“I’m saying stand up for your family.”
“And don’t ask what people can do for me?” asks Casey. He’s paraphrasing his brother’s paraphrase of John F. Kennedy from last week’s Breath of Life sermon. Kasper Aamon had gone viral by saying that Kennedy was a dark-state socialist president shot down by his own operatives, and that Brock was a “lice-ridden dope fiend running a fake church.”
“Exactly, Casey. Stand up for your family and anyone else who needs help.”
“See, there’s that old-fashioned Bible stuff sneaking in past your defense,” Casey says.
“Grandpa’s fault. I can’t help it sometimes.”
Casey smiles. He likes it when Brock drops his hard-guy act and shows that he’s, like, good.
“After all, Gramps inspired you to start a new church with a new God.”
“He made me start a new church.”
Both brothers raise their binoculars when a windowless white Sprinter parks out front of King Jim. It’s got the King Jim Seafood logo along the sides: a stylized, bright red lobster with a bib around its neck, eyes bulging, pinchers raised, clamping a fork and knife.
