Flesh And Blood by Jonathan Kellerman

The air had chilled even further, and the sun hid behind a big, iron saucer of the same sooty hue as yesterday’s cloud bank. A tongue of wind whipped past me, rattling trees, twanging shrubs. The earth smelled of loam and iron. Not winter in any real sense, but in L.A. you learn to live with pretense.

On days like this, the ocean was still beautiful. I took Sunset to the coast highway, encountered no obstruction, and was speeding past Tony Duke’s copper octopus by twelve-thirty. No cars were parked on the shoulder, and all the gated estates looked forbidding. Continuing to the Paradise Cove intersection, I turned onto the speed-bumped asphalt that dips down past Ramirez Canyon and ends at the beachfront clearing where the Sand Dollar sits. As I passed the restaurant’s plastic sign, I noticed a rectangle of whitewashed plywood staked a few feet in, painted crudely in red.

The Dollar’s Renovation Continues.

Sorry, Folks. Please Remember Us

When We Re-open This Summer

I bumped my way past the oleander-planted berms that nearly concealed the trailer park on the north side of the cove. No chain had been slung across the blacktop, and the splintered placard warning that beach parking was twenty bucks a day if you weren’t eating at the restaurant appeared in its usual spot, bottomed by the halfhearted announcement

BOOGIE BOARD, SNORKEL, AND KAYAK RENTALS. So far, so good.

West of Spring Street, renovation usually means extinction. The Dollar was going the way of all L.A. landmarks, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.

It had been nearly three years since I’d tackled a fisherman’s breakfast from the red-vinyl cradle of a Sand Dollar window booth. Back in the days when Robin and I had rented a drafty beach house ten miles up the coast, as we waited out the reconstruction of our burned-out home. Then a patient’s childhood nightmares drew me into a long-unsolved abduction and murder, and the victim turned out to be a waitress at the Dollar. The questions I’d asked had overridden six months of generous tips. Some time later I’d dropped in for breakfast again, hoping all had been forgotten. It hadn’t, and I never returned.

I drove fifty more yards, and the shack that serves as the Paradise Cove guardhouse came into view. The lowered gate was more symbolic than functional—I could’ve lifted it by hand, squeezed the Seville through. I wondered if it would come to that. Then I saw movement through the shack’s window, and the attendant was ready for me when I drove up, shaking his head and pointing at yet another sign that reiterated thetwenty-dollar tariff. Older man—seventy-five or so—with blue eyes and a beef-jerky face shielded by a battered canvas hat. Big band music played from a tape deck in the shack.

“Closed,” he said.

Down below, through the twisting branches of giant sycamores, I could see ocean and what remained of the restaurant: The redwood facade and half of the shingle roof were in place, but empty holes gaped ulcerously where the windows had been, and through the wounds was a clear view of walls stripped to the studs and snarls of severed electrical conduit. What had once been the parking lot was now a table of raked brown dirt filled with backhoes, tractors, and trucks, sheets of plywood, stacks of two-by-fours. No workers in sight, no construction noise.

“Big project,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” said the old man, stepping out of the shack. He wore a khaki shirt and gray twill pants cinched tight by a skinny maroon vinyl belt. “Didn’t see the sign, huh? They should stick it right out front on the highway, so folks don’t bother to turn. I’ll raise the yardarm and you can swing a U-ey.”

“I saw the sign,” I said, and held out a twenty.

He stared at the bill. “There’s nothing to do down there, amigo.”

“There’s still the beach.”

“Not much of it. They got wood and cement blocks and all kinds of garbage piled all over the place. Haven’t even had a decent film shoot in months—only thing they could film right now would be a disaster movie. They might be hotshots, but someone’s not making money.”

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