Riptide Read Online Free PDF Page B

the eye of a hurricane.
    She put these thoughts out of her mind. It was best to be alert. She was entering Dogtown.
    In the 1970s, when Venice had been a sprawling seaside ghetto with redevelopment still decades away, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods was the no-man’s-land straddling the district’s border with the city of Santa Monica. Some quirk of the law had left the jurisdiction of the area north of Navy Street and south of Pier Avenue undecided. Since neither the Santa Monica Police Department nor the LAPD could confidently claim authority there, the narrow slice of coastal land had gone largely unpatrolled.
    Some of Dogtown had been reclaimed by the developers, but not all. The Oakwood neighborhood, in particular, was a nest of blight where tenacious gangbangers hung on in rent-controlled apartments while new buildings went up around them. The new arrivals lived behind locked doors, protected by security fences and dogs—like her new neighbors, she realized. Maybe Richard’s neighborhood wasn’t so different from hers, after all.
    She parked outside the Oakwood Chateau, a ridiculously misnamed Art Deco pile, three stories of peeling paint and rusted fire escapes. The building had a security door and an intercom system, but both were broken, as usual. She entered the sour-smelling lobby and found an out of order sign tacked to the elevator. She didn’t want to ride the elevator, anyway. Being trapped in a confined space wasn’t the safest strategy in the Oakwood Chateau, and not just because of aftershocks.
    She took the stairs. In the past she had sometimes encountered people sleeping on the landings, but today the stairwell was empty, any sleepers presumably having been roused by the quake. Weak bulbs screened by wire cages cast a dull yellowish glow over the concrete steps and graffiti-covered walls.
    On the third floor she exited into the hallway. Most of the apartments had their doors open for a cross breeze. The screams of crying infants and the blare of television sets in many languages assaulted her.
    The door to apartment 32 was closed. She gave the door a single sharp rap.
    From inside came a low, suspicious growl. “Yeah?”
    “It’s me,” she said.
    “Who?”
    “Jennifer. Your sister.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Just seeing if you’re okay.”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “There was an earthquake, Richard. Open the door, please.”
    She wondered if he would just ignore her. Then she heard a tread of footsteps on creaky floorboards.
    The door opened, just wide enough to pull the security chain taut. Richard stared at her through the gap. Though he was only five foot eight, he had the lanky build of a taller man—long bones, thin wrists and ankles, a narrow neck perched on coat-hanger shoulders. His chestnut hair was prematurely thinning on top, making him look older than twenty-eight.
    “I’m fine. See?”
    The door began to close. Jennifer jammed one sneaker against it. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
    “Why?”
    “I came over here to see you.”
    “You’ve seen me.”
    “To visit , Richard.”
    Grudgingly he unhooked the chain and walked away, leaving her to push the door open and enter.
    His apartment was a sad, dusty hole. No paintings on the walls. Minimal furnishings. An old portable TV on a battered stand. The windows looked out on a rusty fire escape above an alley lined with trash bins. There was a bedroom and a tiny kitchen, but the whole place was scarcely bigger than a closet. At night vagrants gathered in the alley, yelling drunkenly and peeing against the wall.
    She felt the familiar ache in her heart. She hated being here. Hated seeing him like this. She couldn’t help remembering how he used to be. It was impossible to make sense of a world where something like this could happen to her baby brother.
    At least the place was intact. She saw no cracked plaster, no broken glass.
    “How are you doing?” she asked.
    “Hanging in there.”
    “Taking