NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST Kem Nunn’s “surf noir” classic is a thrilling plunge into the seedy underbelly of a Southern California beach town—the inspiration for the film Point Break . People go to Huntington Beach in search of the endless parties, the ultimate highs, and the perfect waves. Ike Tucker has come to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her. In that place of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blonds, Ike’s search takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers. He looks into the shadows and finds parties that drift toward pointless violence, joyless vacations, and highs you may never come down from...and a sea of old hatreds and dreams gone bad. And if he’s not careful, his is a journey from which he will never return. “Kem Nunn is one of a rare breed, a novelist who knows how to plot and tell a story. There is amazing energy here.” —Elmore Leonard Kem Nunn is a third-generation Californian whose previous novels include The Dogs of Winter , Pomona Queen , Unassigned Territory , and Tapping the Source , which was made in to the film Point Break . Tijuana Straits won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Southern California, where he also writes screenplays for television and film. Tapping the Source 1   Ike Tucker was adjusting the Knuckle’s chain the day the stranger came asking for him. It was a sunny day and the patch of dirt in back of the Texaco was hot beneath his feet. The sun was straight overhead and dancing in the polished metal. “Got a visitor,” Gordon told him. Ike put down the wrench and looked at his uncle. Gordon was wearing a greasy pair of coveralls and a Giants baseball cap. He was leaning on a doorjamb and staring across the dirt from the back porch. “Gone deaf on me now too?” he asked. He meant deaf as well as dumb. “I said you got a visitor, somebody wants to talk about Ellen.” Ike brushed his hands on his pants and went up the step, past Gordon and into the building, which was both a gas station and a small market. He could feel Gordon behind him, tall and round, hard as a stump, following past the shelves of canned goods and the counter where half a dozen old men twisted on their stools to stare after him, and he knew that when he was gone they would still be watching, their sorry faces turned toward the screen doors and the cool sagging porch where the flies found shelter from the heat. •   •   • There was a kid waiting for him in the gravel drive that circled the pumps, leaning against the side of a white Camaro. Ike guessed the kid was close to his own age, maybe seventeen, or eighteen. Ike was eighteen. He would be nineteen before the summer ended, but people often took him for being younger. He was not tall, maybe five eight, and skinny. Only a month before, a highway patrolman had stopped him on the way into King City and asked to see his driver’s license. He had not been out of the desert since he was a boy and outsiders generally made him self-conscious. The kid in the drive was an outsider. He wore a pair of pale blue cord jeans and a white shirt. A pair of expensive-looking dark glasses had been pushed back to rest above his brow in a mass of blond curls. There were two surfboards strapped to the roof of the Camaro. Ike picked a rag off the stack of newspapers by the front door and finished wiping his hands. The stranger had already managed to draw a small crowd. There were a couple of young boys, Hank’s kids from across the street, looking over the car, together with Gordon’s two dogs, a pair of large rust-colored mongrels that had come to sniff the tires. Some of the old men from the counter had followed Ike outside and were lining up on the porch behind him, staring into the heat. The kid did not look comfortable. He stepped away from the car as Ike came down the steps, Gordon following. “I’m looking for Ellen Tucker’s family,” he said. “You found it. Here he is, the whole shootin’ match.” It was Gordon who spoke. Ike could hear a couple of the old men behind him chuckle. Someone else cleared his throat and spat into the gravel lot. Ike and the kid stared at one another. The kid had a bit of a blond mustache and there was a thin gold chain around his neck. “Ellen said something about a brother.” “I’m her brother.” Ike still held the rag. He was aware that his palms had begun to sweat. Ellen had been gone for nearly two years now and Ike had not heard from her or seen her since the day she left. It was not the first time she had run away, but she was of age now, a year older than Ike; it had not figured that she would return to San Arco. The kid stared at Ike as if he was confused about something. “She said that her brother was into bikes, that he owned a chopper.” Gordon laughed out loud at that. “He’s got a bike,” he said. “Right out there in back; shiniest damn bike in the county.” He paused to c