Dead in the Water (6 page)

I must have done a double-take.

“What?” he asked looking at me. “When I said my name, you seemed to recognize it. Do we know each other?”

“No…I…ah…knew a Justin Rosen in high school…the names are similar.”

He was a medium-sized man and the afro from his high school team photo was long gone. His head was shaved. He had a short well-trimmed goatee, broad face, pale eyebrows above light blue eyes—eyes that sometimes looked surprisingly vacant. His nose had been broken a time or two. By the time we reached the other side of the pier, the lead swimmers were heading for the finish line and the beach.

“This race is over before it begins,” I said. I pulled out the camera and walked over to the finish chute, ready to snap the first swimmers approaching the beach. Justin followed me.

“You the official photog?” he asked.

“No. I’m the evaluator for the swim.”

“All right. Good for you. Hey, what happened last week? With Waddell? Was it a heart attack?”

I shrugged my shoulders. The water was now covered with swimmers heading this way.

“I knew him.”

So I’ve heard, I thought.

“Right,” I said, peering through the viewfinder of the camera.

“No, I mean I knew him before.”

“Before what?” I put the camera down and looked at Justin.

“Before he came to California. Before he went to college in Texas. When he was growing up in Nevada. Hey, gotta go. Here comes my swimmer.”

He just confirmed what Pamela and Spencer had said. With that, he walked to the end of the finish chute, to wait for his teammate, probably a human popsicle by now.

Swimmers started piling out of the water and swarming up the beach. I walked through the crowd taking photos and ended up at one of the booths giving out free drinks guaranteed to replenish, refuel, and reload the depleted swimmers. Behind the counter were Menton’s daughter, Daisy, and the nerd. They were getting ready to pass out samples of the revitalizing drink.

“Hi again,” I said to Daisy.

“Hey,” she mumbled and moved out among the swimmers, grateful for some nourishment.

Once the results were up and the awards distributed, the warm sun finally pierced through the fog. I saw Mike Menton again. This time his arm was around the small woman with the dark hair from the Lake Joseph swim. The black tight fitting wetsuit that hugged her curves was pulled down to her waist, exposing a purple bikini top. I thought she was connected with Dick Waddell. Now it was Menton. Quite a looker. Rubenesque. Not your typical long lean swimmer’s build.

Her damp hair clung to her forehead and neck. With wide, deep dark eyes and a sultry smile, she looked more like a potential Playboy of the Month than a swimmer. She and Mike were posing for photos for a friend, each holding up their medals.

Maybe he’d be more open to a conversation since the swim was over. I waved and tried to get his attention. He looked over in my direction but didn’t see me. I inched a little closer and snapped a picture. Maybe he’d talk to me if I offered him a photo.

“Hey, Mike,” I called and waved again. With that, a smile froze on his face and he walked over to me, took my elbow and forcibly pulled me down the beach.

“Look, I’m not going to talk to you.”

“But, I….”

“No, listen to me. I don’t want the attention. You want to ask me questions about Waddell; so does everyone else. I wasn’t involved. Understand? The guy died; I’m sorry about that. But I had nothing to do with it. So leave me alone and don’t take any more pictures of me.”

With that he gave my elbow a tight squeeze and then let go, turning to walk back toward the raven-haired swimmer, now surrounded by a number of men.

My camera dangled from the strap on my wrist.

“Welcome to the world of Mike Menton,” said Justin from right behind me. I jumped at the sound of his voice. I almost dropped the evaluation folder.

“What was that all about? All I wanted to do was talk to him?”

“He’s a turf specialist type of guy.”

“A what?”

“Turf specialist. His turf. You’re not special enough…get it?

“Okay. Who’s the woman?”

“Jacqueline…Jackie for short…Gibson.”

“Lovely, isn’t she?” I said glancing at her as Menton now took hold of her arm.

“Yes. The Cleopatra of the swim set,” Justin said.

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s just say, she bestows her favors on the fastest swimmers.”

“You are not talking about swimming tips, are you?”

“Nope. She was the apex of the Waddell/Menton triangle.”

“Really? Didn’t know there was a triangle. Guess there is a lot I don’t know. Ah…would you be able to talk with me before you leave? I won’t take much of your time. I’ve been around open water swimming before, but not like this. It is different. I have to finish up the evaluation first. Could we talk in about a half hour?”

Justin agreed to stay around. He suggested we meet at a small Mexican restaurant about two blocks away.

The swimmers were beginning to leave the beach and head for their cars, maybe to a restaurant or even to the rides on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. My evaluation sheet was filled with checks and detailed notes about the swim. I’d taken a lot of photographs of the swimmers following the race: sitting on the sand, at the refreshment booths, getting awards. A successful first outing, I thought as I walked over to the event director, introduced myself and congratulated him out loud and me—to myself—on a job well done.

I watched Mike Menton and Jackie move across the sand toward the beach boardwalk. The daughter and weirdo boyfriend were nowhere to be seen.

.

7

“Lucky, that’s what Waddell’s
dad used to be called,” said Justin. “Although the way I see it, most people nicknamed Lucky rarely are.”

Justin and I were sitting in La Casa de las Playas, not far from the beach. The Giants game was on the television over the bar and we were working our way through a bowl of tortilla chips and eye-watering salsa.

“I worked on his family’s ranch growing up and Dick and I were on the high school swim team. He rarely talked to me when he moved here. Putting the past behind him, I guess.”

“What kind of past are you talking about?” I asked.

“His dad was something else. Always in trouble. Involved with some bad people. Once, he and a buddy stole some guns, held up a convenience store and took a highway patrolman hostage. Not the brightest thing to do. He spent a lot of years in prison after that. Dick told me he would send out Christmas cards saying ‘Wish you were here.’ It didn’t matter what Lucky did, Waddell idolized him. But when he left Nevada for college in Texas, he never looked back.”

“What about his mother?” I asked.

“A quiet lady. Had enough inner strength to manage the ranch when Lucky went to prison. She put up with a lot. Not sure if Dick kept in touch with her. She passed a few years ago.”

A cheer erupted from the crowd around the bar and then settled into a groan. The new Giants shortstop, Ricky Ferguson, had just thrown a bullet to home plate. But it was high. “Safe,” Justin and I said simultaneously.

We looked at each other and laughed.

“Baseball fan?” Justin asked.

“Giants fan,” I said. “The new shortstop isn’t bad for a rookie.”

Justin smiled. “We have a lot to talk about.”

The waitress started to put down a wood bowl of mixed nuts. I touched her arm.

“Please don’t. I’m allergic.”

“Consider them gone,” she said and took them away.

“Hope you don’t mind. Everyone in my family has some sort of nut allergy, some worse than others.”

“No worries,” said Justin.

I picked up my bottle of cold beer and started to peel off the label, strip by strip.

“So tell me more about Nevada. I’ve never been there.”

“Well, it gets real cold in the winter, real cold. Lots of snow. Too difficult to get to school. Waddell’s family had an apartment in town during the school year and he and his sister would live there with their mom.”

“Is that unusual?”

“No, not really. There wasn’t much other way to get an education. My mom lived in town, so that wasn’t a real concern for me. Our high school had an Olympic size indoor pool. So while it was minus 15° outside with snow up to your eyeballs, we were working up a sweat in 80° chlorine-filled water.”

“What was Dick like?”

“A real pain in the ass. No one could touch him in the water. But no one wanted to talk to him out of the water. Except the girls. He had it all figured out. Each week—or so it seems—there was a different girl. It started out with him giving the week’s winner—that’s what the rest of us guys called them—a rose. A week or so later, that girl was walking through the halls of our high school, head down, crying her eyes out. And he was on to the next one, and the next one and the next one. Kind of like a conveyor belt Casanova.”

“Not a very sensitive guy.”

“About as sensitive as a can of paint.”

“So, he eventually moved to the Bay area?”

“Yeah, not that long ago.”

“And made a name for himself locally in the open water world.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand why winning these swims or being named overall winner is so important. There’s no money involved. Or endorsements. They don’t become worldwide celebrities, right?”

“Yes and no. You won’t find a Masters swimmer on the Wheaties box if that’s what you’re asking. I take that back. Some of the swimmers on past Olympic teams have swum at Masters meets so that could be a possibility. The most well-known swimmers are sponsored by companies. That means they get free swimsuits. They show up at an open water event in one of those suits and other swimmers pay attention. And they really are celebrities within the open water swim community. Big celebrities.”

Justin glanced down at his watch. “Hey, I gotta go. Things to do. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk again.”

“Thanks. Good information. One more thing,” I said as he stood up.

Justin turned around. “Yeah?”

“Back to Dick Waddell. Did you two swim against each other?”

Justin nodded. “Yeah, we did. But he was always too fast for me. It didn’t matter. He was older by a little, so I had my chance to shine when he graduated.”

After Justin left, I sat there for a while in the restaurant and slowly drank my beer. The Giants game droned on over the bar. Richard Waddell was an interesting character. Swimming seemed to be his whole life. He was good at it, but lacked social skills big time. Sounds like he might have been dragging a number of enemies behind him. From Nevada to Texas to the San Francisco Bay area. His death, as the email had suggested earlier this week, might be questionable. There were probably plenty of people around who would have liked to remove him from this planet, as well as any body of water.

And this guy, Mike Menton. Justin didn’t have much nice to say about him. Or his dopey daughter. Don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to me. I wasn’t going to accuse him of anything. Yet. All I wanted was some simple conversation—ask a couple of questions.

I switched on my digital camera and previewed the pictures from the swim. There it all was. Shots of the swimmers galloping down the beach to the ocean. Galloping out of the ocean at the finish line. Menton and Jackie were in the last few photos. He looked happy. She looked bored. Next photo was the drink booth behind them. There was Justin. And there was Daisy Menton and her boyfriend. Justin was handing something to Jackie. Daisy and friend were handing out white paper cups filled with the replenishment drink Justin told me about. The rest of the pictures documented the work of the lifeguards paddling the course, and the awards ceremony—good background material I could use to supplement my evaluation.

Grabbing my backpack, I walked through the dark bar, now filled with many swimmers from the Cold Water Clash. I headed into the glaring noontime sunshine for the car. A quiet sense of satisfaction drifted over me. Out of nowhere, I had an almost fulltime job. Okay, the job was temporary and it wasn’t exactly what I planned to do (I didn’t really know what I planned to do), but it would bring in money. And this swim evaluation part was more than interesting. It was a rare chance to go behind the scenes to see how events like this were put on.

Justin seemed like a nice guy, even if he didn’t come highly recommended by Pamela or Spencer. There are always two sides to a story. And I’d find out his. Anyway, he was someone I could tap for the background info on swims and swimmers. And he liked baseball.

.

8

I decided to take
the coast route back to the San Francisco Bay area. Sure, it might add about 15 – 20 minutes to the trip, but driving next to the ocean, seeing the coastline, the Montara lighthouse, the waves crashing into the rocks sounded more enjoyable than a mad dash up the freeway.

I pointed the car north, enjoying the brashness of the Northern California coast. Not far from the small coastal community of Casitas Cove, I could see many flashing red, yellow, white, and blue lights. Up ahead were one, two, maybe even three emergency vehicles. Traffic slowed down and then stopped. I rolled down the window. The wind had picked up, blowing off the ocean. Long wispy strands of fog were drifting in. It was already 10 to 15 degrees cooler than Santa Cruz. The air smelled of salt—salt and waves that had flowed over long distances to reach the shores of Northern California.

Slowly, traffic began to move along the narrow two-lane road. On one side was a sheer granite cliff with almost no shoulder where a car could stop; on the other side, the ocean side, was a sharp 30-foot drop to the beach. Sandwiched between the two, I inched along, past fire trucks, an ambulance, police cars and a tow truck. It looked like someone or something had driven off the edge of the cliff. Glancing down at the ocean, I could see a car upsidedown on its smashed roof in the shallow cold water.

Tragic. Whoever it was was probably out for a nice afternoon drive along the ocean and lost control of the car.

After a quick look at the emergency personnel down on the sand surrounding the car, I knew I had to stop, turn around and go back to the parking lot for the beach. Even from a hundred yards away, I could identify Mike Menton standing next to the overturned car.

By the time I pulled into the long narrow parking lot, the crowds gawking at the accident from both the road above and the beach had doubled. How did Mike manage to drive off the road? I grabbed my phone, my camera, climbed down the rocky path and ran toward him.

Normally, the explosion of the surf crashing at the water’s edge and the whistle of the wind off the ocean dampens any beach noise. But not today. In between the crash of the shore waves, for a brief second, each sound was crystal clear. I heard the crackle and scratchy echo of the radios on the emergency vehicles. The wind blew the loud voices of the rescue personnel toward me. One voice didn’t have the controlled calm of the others. It was Mike’s.

“Jackie, Jackie…get her out of the car,” he yelled.

He lunged toward the overturned car again and again, only to be held back by a standing brick wall, a San Mateo County deputy sheriff, from the Moss Beach substation.

“Step back, sir. We’ll get her out.”

I grabbed Mike’s arm. “What happened?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He pushed my arm away. “I was driving home and saw you on the beach. Were you in the car?”

“No. It’s Jackie.”

He moved closer to the deputy sheriff again. Once again he was told to move back.

The grey fog was now a thick impenetrable wall only a hundred yards off shore. It inched toward the beach. Above, the gloomy threads of vapor intertwined and completely blocked out the sun. Rescue personnel had little time to get Jackie out of the car and on her way to a hospital before the weather became another factor in the rescue.

The damp air was raw. Was it from the smothering fog and the chilling breeze off the ocean or was it the sight of Jackie that caused me to shiver? I moved toward the automobile and started to take some pictures.

She was upside down, sandwiched between the airbag, her seat and the collapsed roof of the car. The driver’s side door was caved in. The windshield was cracked into thousands of tiny pieces. Jackie was conscious, but barely. There was blood, a lot of blood on her face. Ocean water was moving in and out of her window.

“My god, if the impact didn’t kill her, she could drown,” I said.

“Ma’am, please step back,” said an officer blocking my view of the wreck. I walked back to Mike who was now talking to a different deputy sheriff.

“She was behind me most of the way. But her driving seemed erratic, slowing down, pulling off to the side, weaving across the solid yellow line.”

“Had she been drinking?” asked the deputy sheriff.

“No, we just came from an open water swim in Santa Cruz. She had something to drink after the swim, but no alcohol. We were going to have lunch here,” said Mike, looking out at the ocean, the same flat dull grey as the horizon and the sky above it.

While Mike continued talking, I stood to the side, close enough to hear what he was saying but with a good view of the overturned car. Seven firefighters moved around the vehicle, assessing the damage. Soon Mike was beside me. The firefighters, sometimes up to their knees in water, stabilized the car with thick metal struts.

“Got the tool,” said one firefighter, referring to the large hydraulic rescue spreaders, commonly called the Jaws of Life. It was wedged into a collapsed corner of the door near the roof. Watching intently, I saw the dark green metal of the automobile separate against the pressure of the spreaders.

A firefighter climbed into the opening of the car and placed a white cervical collar around Jackie’s neck. He eased her out of the car and helped secure her to a blue spineboard. Jackie’s eyes flickered slowly to the men working around her.

Mike’s face was ashen and his eyes large and glassy. He still wore the blue tee shirt given out to swimmers of the Cold Water Clash. He seemed unaware of the chilling wind blowing off the ocean and the drizzling fog, but his arms had goose bumps.

“Something was wrong with either her car or her driving,” he said as he looked at Jackie, now lying still on the spine board. “She couldn’t keep up with me. Once, I pulled over to the side and called her to see if she was having car problems. She made a comment about the car being hot and the windows steaming up. Then, she said she was feeling dizzy and sick to her stomach.

“I pulled into the parking lot and expected her to do the same. Except that she drove past. I saw her look back over her shoulder at me. Then she slowed down even more and tried to make a U turn. I thought for sure another car would be coming from the other direction around the corner by the cliff and hit her. But instead, she accelerated and drove right off the cliff. A swan dive. The bumper hit the sand and the car flipped over on its roof, then flipped again onto its side, her side, the driver’s side. It skidded along the beach and when it hit the water, it was pushed back on its roof again. Then it slipped into the ocean.”

I could hear the deep ‘thup, thup, thup’ of a helicopter moving toward the accident scene. It was an air ambulance and it had found a very wide stretch of beach not far from the parking lot. Jackie was quickly transported away from her twisted and crumpled car to the medical copter.

“Where are they taking her?” Mike asked one of the EMTs standing close to him.

“SF Memorial.”

“There’s no place closer?” he asked.

“Sure, but some of the hospitals don’t have helipads or don’t specialize in trauma victims, people who have been seriously hurt, like this. SF Memorial has both.”

With that he joined a firefighter and an EMT and they jogged toward the copter. Police had stopped traffic in both directions and had cordoned off much of the beach. The helicopter started up again. The noise was deafening and the power of the rotors tossed the beach sand in every direction. It lifted straight up into the sky through the fog and disappeared.

It was an eerie sight.

Up on the cliff, near Highway 1, the onlookers were starting to get back in their cars. In less than fifteen minutes, the fog would erase everything around us.

“Are you okay?” I said to Mike.

“I’m going home,” was all he said.

Not me, I thought. I’m going to San Francisco Memorial.