Well, I thought, Jesse certainly looks and sounds like many SEALs I’d known during my 16 years in the Teams. But I’d never known or even heard of him. Was Jesse for real or was he one of those politicians who sometimes fudge their military affiliation with elite units? I mean, maybe he’d only worked on a staff or been aboard a ship that once participated in an exercise with SEALs.
“I grew up in a beachside home. September was always the best month because all the tourists would be gone, and you’d have the beach to yourself. In the ’60s, there were only about 10,000 to 12,000 people in La Jolla. Everybody knew each other. You didn’t have to lock your doors. People were a lot friendlier. Scuba divers would leave their gear at the side of our house.
How much blood was spilled to build La Costa? So many bodies piled up over the years it's hard to keep track. The godfather of the place was Moe Dalitz, a mobster from Cleveland who got his start back in Prohibition days with Detroit's "Little Jewish Navy," running booze across the Detroit River from Canada. He traveled with Detroit's brutal "Purple Gang," until the Zerilli brothers arrived in town and things got too hot.
A lot of the socializing at these affairs takes place on two 220-foot-long concrete strips laid out in a brush-free quadrant of the property. Members back their vehicles up to the concrete and set up their equipment. On summer nights, when the stars are so bright they cast shadows, it’s not uncommon to find as many as 50 telescopes, says Laborde. Their owners usually stay awake until dawn.
In Coronado one day, after lunch with a friend, he went into a CD shop while his friend waited outside on a bench. When Crooks came out, he noticed his friend staring at an apartment house across the street. “Don’t bother me,” the other said, “I’m having a California moment.” Before them was Portico, bathed in a glowing, hyper real light. Crooks returned at the same hour the next day to photograph it. Perfect, he thought: One door is partially open.
The evening began a little after eight in the bar at Sanborn’s on Revolución where eight poets gathered for drinks and chisme (gossip). Around midnight one of them suggested we move on to El Lugar del Nopal, a café near Guerrero Park. When we arrived, the poets waded into the crowded, smoky room where, on a small stage surrounded by candles, a ponytailed folksinger strummed his guitar and sang in a throaty voice about love.
He’s a short, lean man who looks to be in his mid-60s, and God knows there are plenty of those around this town, fit retirees clad in running shoes and exercise shorts. Kasch, however, is 86. And he says when he first moved to San Diego in 1948, “I was the first and only person who was running here. In the whole town!”
When Vulgar Favors, Maureen Orth's book about the murderous saga of Andrew Cunanan, hit the best-seller lists last month, a national audience was offered a sinister portrait of San Diego, far different from the image of dumb and innocent All-American beach town concocted by the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The wealthiest and most celebrated men in San Diego would not even go into a gay bar," Orth writes.
Turn south off of Grand onto Lamont Street. Park along Lamont. Wander over to the gas station. The gas station on your right, as you face away from the traffic along Grand. Back in 1977, a pay telephone stood along the side of the station. It was an Arco station then. Frank Bompensiero made his last telephone call here. “Dialed,” someone told me, and then laughed a high-pitched crazy laugh, “his last number.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give any information.” Speaking from his Coronado Cays home, Miguel Crespo sounds tired and shaken. His wife, Georgina, was kidnapped over a month ago. “All the family are concerned about this,” says Crespo, “but we are being completely silent. Nobody talks about anything. I think we’re going to begin to know things next week. Maybe next week, if you call us.”