by Don Winslow
“That's why Eddie only deals with the ohana, bro,” Tide says. “He knows if he goes to a haole family with a debt, they say, ‘What's it got to do with us?’ Family's a different concept on this side of the pond, Boone.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Yes, it is.”
Boone eyes Sunny, who's very deliberately not eyeing him back.
“What's her problem?” he asks Tide.
Tide has heard all about the British betty from Dave. He slides off his stool, shoves the last bite of the sandwich into his mouth, and pats Boone on the shoulder. “I got work to do. For a smart man, Boone, you're a fucking idiot. You need any more anthropological insights, give me a ring.”
He pulls his brown wool beanie onto his head, slips on his gloves, and goes out the door.
Boone looks at Sunny. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What's up?”
“Not much,” Sunny says, not looking at him. “What's up with you?”
“Come on, Sunny.”
She walks over to him. “Okay, are you sleeping with her?”
“Who?”
“Bye, Boone.” She turns away.
“No, she's a client, that's all.”
“All of a sudden you know who I'm talking about,” Sunny says, turning toward him again.
“I guess it's obvious.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“She's a client,” Boone repeats. Then he starts getting a little pissed that he has to explain. “And, by the way, what's it to you? It's not like we're…”
“No, it's not like we're anything,” Sunny says.
“You see other guys,” Boone says.
“You bet I do,” Sunny shot back. And she has, but nobody even close to serious since she and Boone split up.
“So?”
“So nothing,” Sunny says. “I just think that, as friends, we should be honest with each other.”
“I'm being honest.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She walks away and goes back to wiping glasses.
Boone doesn't finish his coffee.
27
Dan Silver and Red Eddie are also having an unhappy conversation.
“What did you do, Danny?” Eddie asks.
“Nothing.”
“Killing a woman is ‘nothing’?”
Well, apparently.
Danny drops his head, which is a mistake because Eddie shoots a wicked slap across his cheek. “Did you think I wouldn't find out? I have to hear this from Boone when I go to him with an ask for you? You let me do that, not tell me you went ahead like some kind of cowboy you dress up like?”
“She was going to talk, Eddie.” Dan can still feel the burn on his cheek, and for a nanosecond he considers doing something about it-he's about twice Eddie's size and could toss him against the wall like a Ping-Pong ball-then decides against it because Eddie's hui boys linger on the edge of the conversation like sharks.
“That's why you were going to take her out of town, wasn't it?” Eddie asks. “Nobody ever said nothin' 'bout killing nobody.”
“Things got a little out of hand,” Dan says.
Eddie looks at him incredulously. “They hook her to you, they hook you to me, I'm gonna cut you loose like tangled fish line, Danny boy.”
Dan's getting a little tired of Eddie's superior shit. So the tattooed little freak went to Harvard, so fucking what? There's a lot of things you can't learn at Harvard. So he decides to educate Eddie a little. “A stripper takes a walk off a motel balcony. How long you think that's going to occupy the cops? An hour? Hour and a half? Nobody gives a crap, Eddie.”
“Daniels does.”
“Is he going to back off?”
“Probably not,” Eddie says. “Backing off ain't Boone's best thing.”
Dan shrugs. “Daniels is a low-rent surf bum who couldn't cut it with the real cops. He's fine for a skip trace or throwing a drunk out of The Sundowner, but he's in over his head here. I wouldn't worry about it, I were you.”
“Well, you ain't me,” Eddie says. “You're you, and you better fucking worry about it. Let me tell you something about that surf bum-”
Dan's cell phone rings.
“What?”
He listens. It's a cop from downtown, a sergeant who drinks free at Silver Dan's and gets a lap dance comped every once in a while. He wants to let Dan know that one of his girls has been positively ID'd, DOA from a jump at a Pacific Beach motel.
Her name is Angela Hart.
Dan thanks the guy and clicks off.
“What was that?” Eddie asks.
“Nothing.”
But it's a big freaking nothing. Dan's head is whirling, his stomach doing trampoline routines.
Tweety killed the wrong piece of ass.
28
Petra starts to ask something, then changes her mind.
“What?” Cheerful asks.
As pretty as the woman is, Cheerful's getting tired of her sitting around the office waiting for Boone to get back. It's a bad idea, clients involving themselves in the minute-by-minute of a case. They should pay the bill, back off, and wait for results. He mumbles something to that effect.
“Sorry?” Petra asks.
“If you have something on your mind,” Cheerful says, “get it off.”
“Boone used to be a police officer?” Petra asks.
“You already knew that,” Cheerful says. This girl does her homework, Cheerful thinks. She'd have done due diligence on Boone.
“What happened?” Petra asks.
“Why do you think that's any of your business?” Cheerful asks.
“Well… I don't…”
Cheerful looks up from the adding machine. It's the first time he's seen this girl nonplussed. “What I mean is,” he says, “are you asking as a client, or as a friend?”
Because there's a difference.
“I'm not asking as a client,” Petra says.
“Boone pulled his own pin,” Cheerful says. “He wasn't thrown out. It wasn't for taking money or anything like that.”
“I didn't think that,” Petra says. She saw the interaction between Boone and the detective at the motel. She didn't hear what was said, but she saw that Boone had to be restrained. It was rather intense. “Money doesn't seem to be a priority for him.”
“Boone's too lazy to steal?” Cheerful says.
“I'm not trying to pick a fight. I was just wondering.”
“It had to do with a girl,” Cheerful snaps.
Of course, Petra thinks. Of course it did. She looks at Cheerful as if to say, Go on, but Cheerful leaves it at that.
She seems like a good person, but it's early.
Some stories have to be earned.
29
Rain Sweeny was six years old when she disappeared from the front yard of her house.
Just like that.
Gone.
Her mother had been out there with her, heard the phone ring, and went in to answer it. She was only gone a minute, she'd say between sobs at the inevitable press conferences later. A beautiful summer day, a little girl playing out in her yard in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Mira Mesa, and then Tragedy.
It didn't take long for the cops to get a lead on who did it. Russ Rasmussen, a two-time loser with a “short eyes” sheet, was renting a room in a house just down the street. When the detectives went to interview him, he was gone, and the neighbors said that they hadn't seen his green '86 Corolla parked on the street since the afternoon that Rain went missing.
Coincidence, maybe, but no one believes in that kind of coincidence.
An APB went out on Russ Rasmussen.
Boone had been on the force for three years. He loved his job; he loved it. It was just perfect for him-active, physical, something new happening every night. He'd come off his shift and go straight to the beach in time for The Dawn Patrol, then get some breakfast at The Sundowner and go home to his little apartment to grab some sleep.
>
Then get up and do it all over again.
It was perfection.
He had his job, he had Sunny, and he had the ocean.
Never turn your back on the ocean.
That's what Boone's dad always taught him: Never get relaxed and turn your back on the ocean, because the second you do, that big wave is going to come out of nowhere and smack you down.
A week after Rain Sweeny was kidnapped, Boone was cruising one night with his partner, Steve Harrington, who had just tested out and was headed to the Detective Division. It had been a quiet night, and they were taking a spin down through the east part of the Gaslamp District, over near the warehouses that the tweekers liked to break into, when they spotted a green '86 Corolla parked in an alley.
“Did you see that?” Boone asked Harrington.
“See what?”
Boone pointed it out.
Harrington pulled over to the entrance to the alley and flashed a lamp on the car's license plate.
“Holy shit,” Harrington said.
It was Rasmussen's car.
The man was sound asleep in the front seat.
“I'd have thought he'd be far away by now,” Harrington said.
“Should I call it in?” Boone asked.
“Fuck that,” Harrington said. He got out of the cruiser, pulled his weapon, and approached the car. Boone got out on the passenger side and walked behind him and to the side, covering him. Harrington holstered his weapon, jerked the Corolla door open, and yanked Rasmussen out of the car. Before Rasmussen could wake up and start screaming, Harrington dropped a knee on his neck, twisted his arm behind his back, and cuffed him.
Boone slipped his revolver back into its holster as Harrington hauled Rasmussen to his feet and pushed him against the car. Rasmussen was a big man, over two and a half bills, but Harrington lifted him like he weighed nothing. The cop's adrenaline was screeching.
So was Boone's as he walked back to the cruiser.
“Stay off that fucking radio,” Harrington snapped.
Boone stopped in his tracks.
“Help me get him in the car,” Harrington said.
Boone grabbed one of Rasmussen's elbows and helped Harrington drag him to the black-and-white, then held Rasmussen's head down as Harrington pushed him into the seat. Harrington slammed the door shut and looked at Boone.
“What?” Harrington asked.
“Nothing,” Boone said. “Let's just get him to the house.”
“We're not going to the house.”
“The orders are-”
“Yeah, I know what the orders are,” Harrington said. “And I know what the orders mean. The orders mean under no circumstances do you bring him in until he's told you what he did with the girl.”
“I don't know, Steve.”
“I do,” Harrington said. “Look, Boone, if we take him to the house, he'll lawyer up and we'll never find out where that little girl is.”
“So-”
“So we take him down to the water,” Harrington said. “We hold his head under until he decides to tell us what he did with the girl. No bruises, no marks, no nothing.”
“You can't just torture a man.”
“Maybe you can't,” Harrington said. “I can. Watch me.”
“Jesus, Steve.”
“Jesus nothing, Boone,” Harrington said. “What if the girl is still alive? What if the sick fuck has her buried somewhere and the air is running out? You really want to wait to go through ‘the process,’ Boone? I don't think the kid has the time for your moral scruples. Now get in the fucking car; we're going to the beach.”
Boone got in.
Sat there in silence while Harrington headed the car toward Ocean Beach and started in on Rasmussen. “You want to save yourself some pain, short eyes, you'll tell us right now what you did with that little girl.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Keep it up,” Harrington said. “Go ahead, make us madder.”
“I don't know anything about any little girl,” Rasmussen said. Boone turned to look at him. The man was terrified-sweating, his eyes popping out of his head.
“You know what we have in mind for you?” Harrington asked, peeking into the rearview mirror. “You know what it's like to drown? When we pull you out after a couple of minutes breathing water, you'll be begging to tell us. What did you do with her? Is she alive? Did you kill her?”
“I don't know-”
“Okay,” Harrington said, pushing down on the gas pedal. “We're going to the submarine races!”
Rasmussen started to shake. His knees knocked together involuntarily.
“You piss your pants in my cruiser,” Harrington told him, “I'm going to get really mad, Russ. I'm going to hurt you even worse.”
Rasmussen started screaming and kicking his feet against the door.
Harrington laughed. It didn't matter-Rasmussen wasn't going anywhere and nobody was going to hear him. After a couple of minutes, he stopped screaming, sat back in the seat, and just whimpered.
Boone felt like he was going to throw up.
“Easy, surfer boy,” Harrington said.
“This isn't right.”
“There's a kid involved,” Harrington said. “Suck it up.”
It didn't take long to get to Ocean Beach. Harrington pulled the car over by the pier, turned around, looked at Rasmussen, and said, “Last chance.”
Rasmussen shook his head.
“All right,” Harrington said. He opened the car door and started to get out.
Boone reached for the radio. “Unit 9152. We have suspect Russell Rasmussen. We're coming in.”
“You cunt,” Harrington said. “You weak fucking cunt.”
Rasmussen never told what he did with the girl.
The SDPD held him for as long as they could, but without evidence they couldn't do anything and had to kick him. Every cop on the force looked for the girl's body for weeks, but they finally gave up.
Rasmussen, he went off the radar.
And life got bad for Boone.
He became a pariah on the force.
Harrington moved to Detective Division, and it was hard to find another uniform who wanted to ride with Boone Daniels. The ones who would were bottom-of-the-barrel types, cops whom other cops didn't want to ride with-the drunks, the losers, the guys with one foot out the door anyway-and none of the pairings lasted longer than a couple of weeks.
When Boone would call for backup, the other cops would be a little slow in responding; when he went into the locker room, no one spoke to him and backs were turned; when he'd go to leave, he'd pick up mumbled comments-“weak unit,” “child killer,” “traitor.”
He had one friend on the force-Johnny Banzai.
“You shouldn't be seen with me,” Boone told him one day. “I'm poison.”
“Knock off the self-pity,” Johnny told him.
“Seriously,” Boone said. “They won't like you being friends with me.”
“I don't give a shit what they like,” Johnny said. “My friends are my friends.”
And that was that.
One day, Boone was leaving the locker room when he heard a cop named Kocera mutter, “Fucking pussy.”
Boone came back in, grabbed him, and put his brother cop into a wall. Punches were thrown, and Boone ended up with a month's unpaid suspension and mandatory appointments with a department counselor who talked to him about anger management.
The subject of Rain Sweeny didn't come up.
Boone spent most of the month on Sunny's couch.
He'd get up by eleven in the morning, drain a couple of beers, and lie there watching television, looking out the window, or just sleeping. It drove Sunny nuts. This was a Boone she'd never seen-passive, morose, angry.
One day when she gently suggested that he might want to go out for a surf session, he replied, “Don't handle me, okay, Sunny? I don't need handling. ”
“I wasn't handling you.”
“Fuck.”
He got up off the couch and went back to bed.
She was hoping things would get better when he went back to work.
They didn't. They got worse.
The department took him off the street altogether and put him behind a desk, filing arrest reports. It was a prescription to drive an active, outdoor man crazy, and it did the trick. Eight to five, five days a week, he sat alone in a cubicle, entering data. He'd come home bored, edgy, and angry.
He was miserable.
“Quit,” Dave the Love God told him.
“I'm not a quitter,” Boone replied.
But three months into this bullshit, he did quit. Pulled his papers, turned in his badge and gun, and walked away. No one tried to talk him out of it. The only word he heard was from Harrington, who literally opened the door for him on the way out.
The word was “Good.”
Two hours later, Boone was back on Sunny's couch.
Surfing was out. Boone went AWOL from The Dawn Patrol. He never showed up anymore. He didn't go out at all.
One night, Sunny came home from a long shift at The Sundowner, found him stretched out on the sofa in the sweatpants and T-shirt that he'd had on for a week, and said, “We have to talk about this.”
“Which really means you have to talk about this.”
“You're clinically depressed.”
“‘Clinically depressed’?” Boone asked. “You're a shrink now?”
“I talked to one.”
“Fuck, Sunny.”
It got him off the couch anyway. He went out to her little porch and plopped down on one of the folding beach chairs. She followed him out there.
“I know you're angry,” she said. “I don't blame you.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“I do,” Boone repeated, staring out toward the ocean. She could see tears running down his face as he said, “I should have done what Harrington said. I should have helped him hold that guy under the water… beat him… hurt him… whatever it took to make him give up what he did with Rain Sweeny. I was wrong, and that girl is dead because of me.”
Sunny thought that this was a cathartic moment, that he'd start to heal after this, that things would get better.
She was wrong.
