Don Winslow: The winter of Frankie Machine

They hand it to Jill.

She takes it and smiles a tight smile.

Brave, Dave thinks. Like her old man.

There’s one last thing to be done.

It also came straight out of Frank’s will.

A second later, the recorded music comes out of the sound system:

“…ma quando vien lo sgelo il primo sole e mio, il primo bacio dell’aprile e mio! il primo sole e mio!…”

If Hanalei Pier isn’t the longest in Hawaii, it certainly is the prettiest, jutting out from a soft, palm-lined beach, with Bali Hai and the green mountains of the Na Pali coast rising in the background.

And early mornings are beautiful.

Soft and warm, year-round, even in the hour before the sun rises.

The hour when the bait guy arrives to get things set up in his little shack at the end of the pier, so that everything will be ready when even the earliest fishermen arrive to try their luck.

They know the bait shack is open, because they can smell it even before they see it-the smell of fresh roasting Kona coffee wafts down the pier and into their noses. If they’re regulars, or even if they’re nice and polite, Pete the Bait Guy will probably pour them a little cup, and make them listen to a little opera, and tell them a funny little story about how he had to fix the garbage disposal because hiswahini can’t remember not to shove mango peels downda kine.

“It’s a lot of work being me, bruddah, ” he’ll say.

What he won’t tell them is about how he had a heart attack on a different beach, and woke up in the ICU, and then in the Witness Protection Program. He won’t tell them that, and neither will his friend from the mainland who comes out about every year and surfs with him in the mornings during what is called, even in Kauai, the Gentlemen’s Hour.

No, Pete will just smile, share a joke and maybe an odd word from one of his crossword puzzles, and they’ll leave the bait shack with everything they need, and smiles on their faces, and a good feeling to start their day.

Everyone loves Pete the Bait Guy.