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“How romantic.”

“They were apprehended in a joint investigation of illegal narcotics activity by the Mariposa County Sheriff’s office back in 2016. Didn’t stick, but the California State Bureau of Investigation charged the lovely couple with felony possession with intent to sell a Schedule I controlled substance—also in possession of drug paraphernalia.”

“Gotta have paraphernalia,” I said, “otherwise, what’s the point.”

“Right? This database also says Sanderson’s got four Crime Stoppers’ reports.”

“You mean like…finks?”

“I’m thinking maybe…call-in tips from junkies he burned.”

“Wow,” I said, “the Lazerbeam dude I talked to called it lead singer complex. But this guy sounds like a serious asshole.”

“Sure does. But…if he’s doing hard time at Banning, it’s hard to say how helpful he’ll be anyway. We’ll have to ring up a visitation officer, and there’ll probably be a ninety-day wait.” Then, he closed his laptop and said, “This band was cursed.”

“And I’m beat. Blankets in the trunk?”

Fry killed his port and started digging through the trunk. “Blankets, pillows—I’m Conrad Hilton of the marina.” He was a goof, my old friend, a lawyer without a firm who made his living as a paparazzi, but I was damn grateful for him at this moment. There was something comforting in Fry’s big Cossack face, his black eyes, and mouth of crooked teeth, half-smiling as if about to share a bad pun. Funny thing is, it was a tragic-looking face—in another epoch he could have been some snow-blinded pogrom survivor—but here on the boat, shaking a fresh blue sheet across the cot in his Bermuda swim trunks and flip-flops with early fog creeping up over the horizon, he was just California mellow.

I thanked him, sounding a little sheepish.

“Addy,” he said, stuffing a pillow, “it’s gonna be okay. You stay here, you clear your head and cool out. You see what you can find for Mr. Elkaim, but you do it straight and narrow.”

When he tossed me the pillow, I said, “Should I tell him about tonight?”

“Elkaim? You have to, it’s your ethical obligation.”

I groaned. “Charles Elkaim thought this guy was like the return of the Messiah or something.”

“Yeah, well, Hawley can’t help him now.”

We exchanged a look.

Fry said, “You gotta tell him.”

I said, “Fun.”

I got into my cot and lay there in the dark.

“Fry,” I said, “they were just, like, some crappy garage band.”

“Yeah?”

“So—why were they cursed? Who wants to kill off some hinky-dinky little band?”

He shook his head and made for the cabin, lights out. Now there was nothing but me and the sound of the night tide and the rocking boats and the fog passing under lonely, glistening stars.

Memories came in lurches.

The old neighborhood, the Fairfax District—Uncle Hersch called it The Big Matzo Cracker—Melrose to Pico, Highland to Doheny.

The Elkaims—first Israelis on our block. But they weren’t just Israeli, they were North Africans, Moroccans, as different from us schleppy American Jews as the local cholos, Crips, surfers, and new Armenian immigrants. They brought gravity, the tides of war.

Mr. Elkaim, Charles Elkaim—back then he must’ve been fifty-something—regal, too wise for the hood. Tough, diffident, suited. Even talking power steering with Hersch, he carried himself with the quiet discerning air of a foreign ambassador in a crisis.

The mom, Dvorah—dark-eyed, chatty, a voluptuous presence. Gone almost ten years now—but even before the tragedy she seemed to be in hesitation mode, watering the wildflowers, eyeballing passing cars as if she was not yet sure the move to America had been a smart one.

Then…Emil. Sixteen. Shoeless. Cutoff jeans and a Hang Ten tee. Wisecracker, daredevil—Emil was just…rock and roll, its swift and natural all-consuming fire.

The Elkaims—father and son up front, me and Maya in the back, headed for a drive-through McDonald’s. Charles Elkaim’s used ’74 navy blue Dodge Dart Swinger had a toy-like plasticky interior, the smell of cigarettes and vinyl and hot metal and gasoline, with loose black seatbelts nobody used. The single band AM radio played oldies but goodies in a funnel-like mono—“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine.” Charles Elkaim hummed at the wheel, coasting through the Melrose-Fairfax intersection. Then—to Emil: “What does she say?”

Emil, funny smile, slight head shake—he talked euphemistically to protect us kids. “Well, Aba,”—the Hebrew word for father—“you know, a man and a woman meet, shake hands. They, uh, go into a tent together. And then everybody goes his way.”

His father said something admonishing in Hebrew, glanced back at us, and Emil burst out laughing.

But even at eight, nine, I got the gist, and Mr. Elkaim’s curious displacement: even the spirit of sex, it seemed, was different in the New World—no shades drawn, no melancholy desire, no sin. How could the thousand-year-old man find his way in the land of pink bunny ears and brightly lit gas station pit stops? How would he survive this brave new bubblegum world?

Flashes now, on the cusp of sleep—

Emil on the bleachers at Fairfax High, strumming Beatles on a scratched-up acoustic, neighborhood teens singing around him. “You say goodbye, and I say hello.”

Emil on his red-and-black Duane Peters board, sidewalk-surfing past Sam and Ruby’s Kosher Butcher and the Judaica gift shop with its gold-plated menorahs and wind-up Fiddler on the Roof music boxes…flying by.

Emil dancing with Mickey Mouse in the rain to the music of Cinnamon’s glittering laughter.

Herschel’s whisper, riding on the cool marine layer—“Don’t jump ship.”








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