CHAPTER 14

.14.

We hit the San Pedro breakwater twelve hours late. The Malolo made port groaning like a gut-shot beast. The storm had chased us halfway across the Pacific, and the California coast didn't offer much of a welcome. There was a gray, oily shroud covering it, smelling of fishmeal and diesel. I'm pretty sure my mother would have said the Matson terminal looked almost like a charcoal sketch of a city that hadn't yet found a reason to wake up.

Customs was a headache of clipboards and Coast Guard uniforms; every last one of them looking for a bottle of pineapple rum that wasn't there. When we finally cleared the gates, the "Royal Danish" kingdom of Los Angeles was waiting for us in the form of a black Cadillac Fleetwood. It looked long enough to have its own address.

Standing beside the car was a man about our age, looking like he’d been assembled from a kit labeled High Society. He was short and lean, dressed in a suit that was too smart for the damp morning. His expression still carried the price tag of a practiced, affected boredom.

“Mr. Karlsen,” he said, his voice a thin, nasal reed. “I’m Edmund Riccard. Your uncle’s private secretary. He sends his deepest... Well, you know. He sent me to pick you up.”

I glanced at Riccard. He was trying hard to play the part of the sophisticated man, but beneath the pomade and the tailored suit, I could see the ghost of a hungry kid from the sticks. He looked like a man on a stage, performing a role he’d learned by watching too many silent movies. If I were writing a retelling of Hamlet, he’d be Osric with a paycheck.

“Where’s Uncle Ole?” Jimmy asked. His voice was flat; some of the calmness he’d found in Waikiki still held him together.

“At the house, sir,” Riccard said, gesturing toward the open door of the Cadillac. “If you’ll step inside? The damp is quite dreadful for the upholstery.”

We slid into the back. Riccard sat next to the driver. The car smelled like a brand-new glove and old secrets. 

As the chauffeur eased the beast into the San Pedro traffic, Jimmy leaned forward. “When’s the service, Riccard? I need to know how much time I have to get decent before the funeral.”

Riccard adjusted his cuffs. For a moment, his eyes darted to the window where a forest of oil derricks was blurring into the fog. “Ah. Yes. About that. Your uncle thought it best to proceed. Efficiency in the face of tragedy, you understand? The storm... Well, the schedules were quite impossible.”

Jimmy went still. Too still. “Proceed with what?”

“The cremation was handled on Tuesday. The memorial service and the reception were yesterday afternoon. At the Pacific Crest. It was a lovely tribute, really. Very modern.”

The silence that followed was heavy enough to break the car’s suspension. Jimmy didn't move, didn't blink. He just stared at the back of the chauffeur’s head as the realization hit us both: he’d been sidelined. His father had been turned to ash and tucked into a hole in a wall while we were still fighting the swells off the coast of Baja.

History books are full of kings who died while their heirs were at sea, but this wasn't 14th-century Denmark. This was 1929 Hollywood. Yet, something in my bones told me that betting on Uncle Ole as the architect of this little "modern" efficiency wouldn't be a miss.

I looked at Jimmy. “To the house. Now,” he told Riccard, in a tone that could cut glass.

The Cadillac turned north, leaving the salt and the fog of the harbor behind. We were heading for the Hollywood Hills, climbing away from the sea toward a mansion that was about to become a battlefield. I sat back and watched the palm trees flicker by. The salt tang of the harbor was gone. The air now tasted dry, dusty. It smelled of money and the exhaust of a thousand cars. Out here, the stars were hidden behind a different fog, and the rhythm of the waves had been replaced by the predatory hum of a thousand engines. This was their ocean. I was definitely out of my depth.