Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

And there’s the marina itself. I grew up around boats, and a marina is a marina to me, no matter where it is, but Marina del Rey is not really a marina.

You might say there are boats, lots of them. Boats that would make anybody drool. But in the setting of Marina del Rey, they’re not boats so much as marks on a tally sheet for the big cribbage game of L.A.

Make no mistake. These are not really boats. In fact, there are no boats at all in Marina del Rey. They’re yachts, and that makes all the difference. A yacht is a boat with an attitude.

I didn’t care much for the attitude, but it was good to look at the yachts, and I could half-close my eyes and pretend they were only boats. Besides, when the smog has gone inland for the night, the area is pretty.

It’s also got some pretty good restaurants, and at eight o’clock that evening I found myself sitting in the bar of one of them, staring into Nancy Hoffman’s eyes over the rim of a margarita.

I have never read a whole lot of poetry, but the good stuff sticks with me, and I was trying to remember something about eyes being bottomless pools of light. I wasn’t having any luck remembering. Maybe it wasn’t really poetry. Maybe it was a cheap novel.

It didn’t seem to matter much since I was looking into the real thing. Nancy’s eyes were golden, unlike anything I had ever seen before, although the longer I looked the more sure I became that I had dreamed something similar many times.

We had been sitting for about twenty minutes and were on our second drinks. Through some horrible computer error, the management of the restaurant had somehow overlooked firing the bartender, who was over thirty, not particularly attractive, and knew how to make real margaritas instead of the canned kind you pour out of a blender.

The drinks tasted very good. They had a flavor of new love, old promise, and cool, elegant jazz. They were starting to remind me of all the things I had liked about Los Angeles before things got bad for me.

And it might have been the drinks, but Nancy Hoffman looked as good to me as anyone had ever looked. And she was making me remember what life had been like once upon a time.

I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with these feelings. But they felt so good, I didn’t care.

So I stared into Nancy’s bottomless pools of light—until she reminded me that just sitting and staring made me look like an idiot.

“Hello?” she said, and a moment later she repeated herself, “Hello?”

I shook my head and looked at her instead of through her. “What was that?”

“Echo,” she said. “I suddenly felt all alone.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You looked like you were pretty far away.”

“Um, actually, I was maybe a little too much right here.”

She raised a perfect eyebrow. “Then where was I?”

“I couldn’t see you at all,” I said. “There was this goddess in the way.”

She nodded. “You’re going to hurt your neck, looking up at pedestals like that.” And then she smiled. It was a very good smile.

“I was just thinking how good you look,” I said.

She fanned herself with a hand, all mock southern belle. “Oh, la,” she said. “All this before dinner. You’ll turn a girl’s head.”

“I mean it.”

She reached a cool hand over and put it on top of mine. “I know you mean it, Billy. But I think you’ve been out of L.A. too long. People here don’t say what they mean. It’s embarrassing.” She gave my hand a light squeeze. I turned my hand over and held onto hers. My whole body tingled.

“Besides,” she said, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

The headwaiter called my name right then to tell me my table was ready. I guess it was just as well. The bartender probably didn’t perform weddings anyway.

It was a popular restaurant, and I wasn’t a millionaire dentist, so our table wasn’t right at the window. But we were only a tier away, on a raised level, so we had a pretty good view of a row of people with great teeth. Beyond them, out the window, were the water and the moonlight.

I really didn’t spend much time looking at the view anyway. Nancy even had to remind me to look at the menu.

Looking at the menu was a waste of time. I don’t remember what we ate. What I remember is the way Nancy looked when she turned her head to the left and the soft light played over the hollows in her shoulders and neck.