by Don Winslow
“It's fascinating,” Petra says. “Sort of the car crash phenomenon-you don't want to look, but you can't look away.”
Yeah, you can, Boone thinks, feeling his thirty-second curiosity clock running down.
The girl twisted on the pole is your stereotypical blond knockout with big hair and bigger boobs. She's too attractive for the day shift and she knows it. But she must have done something to piss the manager off- shorted him on his kickback, refused to give him a blow job, or maybe she was just getting uppity and talking about moving to a better club downtown-and now she's being punished by having to slog it out for the low-money losers in the afternoons. Now she's working the salesman hard, hoping that he's drunk enough to spring a hundred for a trip to the VIP Room so she can start earning her way back to nights.
The other girl is strictly day shift. She's petite, her face really isn't pretty, and she's small-chested. Her best feature is her long brown hair, and she's working it hard to make up for her other deficiencies. She has that look of a girl who's been told by everyone everywhere that she just isn't good enough, so she works her ass off making up for it. She works harder at being a better lay; she gets up early to make her latest boyfriend his breakfast; she bails him out of jail after he's beaten her up. She's the kind of girl who'll end up doing bottom-of-the-barrel porn videos because some producer tells her she's pretty.
She's looking down at the stage, in her own world, grinding her hips to the music-but in reality, she's moving to a private sound track of her own. She glances up and sees Boone, then looks right back down again as she turns, flinging her long hair across her back like a flogger, then looks over her shoulder at him again.
Sure enough, when the song ends and a new one begins, she dances off the stage, down onto the floor, and over to his booth.
“I'm Amber,” she says. “Would you like a lap dance?”
“Would you like a lap dance?” Boone asks Petra, aware that she probably thinks a lap dance is something they do in Lapland.
Amber turns her attention to Petra. “I find girls so sensual,” she says. It's a rehearsed line and comes off that way.
“No, thank you,” Petra says, and Boone can tell she's actually trying not to hurt the girl's feelings.
Which is nice, Boone thinks.
“How about you?” Amber asks Boone. “Would you like a lap dance?
Or, for a hundred, we can go into the VIP Room. Wouldn't you like to have some private time with me?”
“Yeah, I would,” Boone says.
“You what?” says Petra.
“I'll make you happy,” Amber says.
“Give me two hundred,” Boone says to Petra.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Give me two hundred dollars,” Boone repeats. “I want to go into the VIP Room.”
“Twice?”
“Just shut up and give me the money.”
Amber doesn't react to any of this. She totally gets digging into her purse and giving her boyfriend money.
“It's going on your expense account,” Petra says, slapping two bills into Boone's outstretched palm. “ Youcan explain to Alan Burke why you-”
“No worries.”
He takes the two hundred and follows Amber through the beaded curtain into the VIP Room.
35
The VIP Room has a line of easy chairs against one wall, kind of like an old shoe-shine shop.
Amber sits Boone down in one of them as the waitress comes in with a glass of cheap champagne. She hands it to Amber, who, in turn, hands it to Boone as she says, “You can feel my tits, but no kissing, and no touching below the belt.”
The belt? Boone wonders.
She starts to climb on his lap.
“You feel good, ” she says.
Boone lifts her up by the arms and puts her back on the floor.
“Forget about the dance,” he says. “I want to ask you some questions.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, I wasn't molested as a child. No, I'm not a victim of incest. No, I'm not putting myself through college. No, I don't-”
“Do you know Tammy Roddick?”
Amber says, “I'm not supposed to talk about her.”
“Who told you that?”
“I don't want to get in trouble,” she says. “Look, I need this job. I have a kid at home…”
Of course you do, Boone thinks. Of fucking course.
“A hundred for the dance,” Boone says. “Another hundred for anything you can tell me.”
“I can't tell you anything.”
“Can't or won't?”
“Both.” She glances through the curtain to see if the bouncer is there.
He isn't.
“Did you know Angela Hart?”
“What do you mean, ‘did’?”
“She's dead,” Boone says. “They threw her off a motel balcony. It'll be on the news tonight.”
“Oh my God.”
“They'll do the same to Tammy,” Boone says. “I'm trying to find her before they do. If you know anything that can help me, you'll be helping her.”
He keeps an eye on the curtain and an eye on her while she tries to make up her mind. Then she says, “I don't want the money. Angela used to watch my kid sometimes when I couldn't find a sitter.”
“What's your kid look like?”
“What's it to you?”
“It might help.”
“He's-”
“Never mind.”
“All I know about Tammy,” she says, “is that she has a boyfriend.”
“Who?”
“His name is Mick,” Amber says. “He hangs out here a lot.”
“Does Mick have a last name?”
“Penner?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I'm pretty sure,” Amber says.
Boone asks, “Has he been in today?”
“I haven't seen him in a while,” Amber says; then she looks over Boone's shoulder.
Boone turns and recognizes Tweety.
He's a PB local, hanging around the gym, the GNC store, the bars. Tweety is a juiced-up roid freak with a head even bigger than his huge body. Big flat face with small blue eyes. And he's gigantic-six-six and large-framed already, and whatever shit he's shooting into himself, it's working. He wears a Gold's Gym muscle shirt on the “if you got it, flaunt it” fashion theory. Gray sweatpants over Doc Martens. Tweety sports short-cropped yellow hair: not blond-bright yellow.
Hence the “Tweety” tag.
“Out,” he says to Boone.
“I didn't kiss her or touch her below the figurative belt,” Boone says.
“Out. Now.”
Boone hands Amber a hundred-dollar bill. “Thanks for nothing, bitch. Way to help your friend.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
Tweety grabs Boone by the elbow. “You don't understand ‘out’?”
“Yeah, I do,” Boone says. “For example, are you out of the closet yet? Is your skull going to pop out of your skin? Has your dick shrunk out of sight yet? Oh, here's another one: Have you thrown a girl out of a building lately?”
Tweety would be the perfect candidate for the job. He could easily have “pressed” Angela and heaved her off the balcony.
Tweety's face turns red.
Guilt, roid rage, or both? Boone wonders.
“Well, have you,” Boone asks, adding, “Tweety?”
Tweety pops a beautiful right cross, plenty of leverage in the hips, weight balanced and coming forward.
Boone isn't there to take it.
He steps to the left, feels the air whoosh by his nose as the heavy fist comes through, then smashes the blade of his foot down into the side of Tweety's kneecap, which dislocates with a sickening pop. Tweety crashes to the floor, rolls into a fetal position, grabs his knee, and howls in pain.
Boone's not exactly eaten up with sympathy. He reaches down, gets his middle and index fingers into Tweety's nostrils, and pulls, because:
1. There are no weights you
can pump to strengthen your nose.
2. Steroids might make your head big, but they don't make your nostrils any stronger.
3. It hurts like crazy.
4. And where the nose goes, the head and neck are bound to follow; however, if they don't, your nose is coming off.
So basically, Boone tries to rip Tweety's nose off his face, presenting him with a choice-suffer rhinoplasty or talk.
“Do you have her?”
“Who?”
“You know who, Tweety,” Boone says. “I'm going to ask you one more time. Do you have Tammy Roddick?”
“No!”
Boone lets him go.
Tweety makes a valiant effort to get up. It works okay on the one leg, but when he tries to put weight on the dislocated knee, it gives out under him and he falls forward onto the floor.
But Boone backs up, just in case.
He's tempted to give Tweety another kick in the knee, but it would probably be bad karma, something Sunny's always talking about since deciding to become a Buddhist. Boone doesn't totally get the whole karma thing, but he decides that kicking a guy in his dislocated knee would probably compel Sunny to chant a few thousand more mantras, another concept he's not totally with.
“You should have a mantra,” Sunny told him.
“I have one,” Boone replied.
“‘Everything tastes better on a tortilla’?” Sunny said. “It's a start.”
Anyway, Boone doesn't kick Tweety in the knee and further decides he should get out of there before the bouncer decides to check out what's happening in the old VIP Room.
But Tweety says, “Daniels? I'll be seeing you again. And when I do-”
Boone comes back and kicks him in the knee.
What Sunny doesn't know…
Boone walks out of the VIP Room.
“That was quick,” Petra says. “Sated?”
“Our absence has been requested,” Boone explains.
“I've been thrown out of better places,” Petra says. She follows him out the door.
36
Dave the Love God looks out at the burgeoning ocean and thinks about George Freeth.
George freaking Freeth.
Freeth was a legend. A god. “The Hawaiian Wonder” was the father of San Diego surfing and the first-ever San Diego lifeguard.
If you don't know about Freeth, Dave thinks, you don't know your own heritage, where you came from. You don't know about Freeth, you can't sit in this lifeguard tower and pretend to know who you even are.
It goes back to Jack London.
At the turn of the last century, London was in Honolulu, trying to surf, and he saw this “brown-skinned god” go flying past him. Turned out it was Freeth, son of an English father and a Hawaiian mother. He taught London to surf. London talked Freeth into coming to California.
Around the same time, Henry Huntington built a pier at his eponymous beach and was trying to promote it, so he hired Freeth to come give surfing demonstrations. He billed Freeth as “The Man Who Can Walk On Water.” Thousands of people went down to the pier to see him do just that. It was a smash, and pretty soon Freeth was going up and down the coast, teaching young guys how to ride a wave.
He was a prophet, a missionary, making the reverse journey from Hawaii.
The Man Who Could Walk On Water.
Hell, Freeth could do anything in or on the water. One day in 1908, a Japanese fishing skiff capsized in heavy surf off Santa Monica Bay. Freeth swam out there, righted the skiff, and, standing up in it, surfed it back to shore, saving the seven Japanese on board. Congress gave him a Medal of Honor.
It was the only gold medal he'd receive, though. He tried to get into the Olympics but couldn't because he had taken Huntington's money to walk on water. Buster Crabbe went, became a movie star, and got rich. Not George Freeth. He was quiet, shy, unassuming. He just did his thing and kept his mouth shut about it.
People in California were really starting to get into the ocean. But there was a problem with that: They were also starting to drown in the ocean. Freeth had some of the answers. He created the crawl stroke, which lifeguards still use; he invented the torpedo-shaped life float that they still use.
Eventually, he migrated down to San Diego and became the swim coach of the San Diego Rowing Club. Then, one day in May of 1918, thirteen swimmers drowned in a single riptide off Ocean Beach. Freeth started the San Diego lifeguard corps.
He lived less than a year after that. In April of 1919, after rescuing another group off Ocean Beach, Freeth got a respiratory infection and died in a flophouse in the Gaslamp District.
Broke.
He had saved seventy-eight people from drowning.
So now Dave's thinking about George Freeth. In his thirties now, Dave is wondering if he's headed for the same fate.
Alone and broke.
It's all good when you're in your twenties-hanging out, picking up tourist chicks, slamming beers at The Sundowner, jerking people out of the soup. The summer days are long and you think you're going to live forever.
Then suddenly you're in your thirties and you realize that you aren't immortal, and you also realize that you have nothing. No money in the bank, no house, no wife, no real girlfriend, no family.
And every day, you're out there rescuing people who have all that.
So that time back at Red Eddie's hilarious housewarming party, Eddie made the offer. A little night work. “Use your skills,” Eddie said, “to make yourself some money, some real money, brah.”
Easy money, easy work. Just drive a Zodiac out there, pick up the product, bring it in. Or go down to Rosarito, bring a boat back up. Where's the harm? What's the bad? Not like it's heroin, or meth, or coke.
“I dunno, Eddie,” Dave said.
“Nothin' to know or not to know,” Eddie replied. “When you're ready, just say the word.”
Just say the word.
Later that same week, he went out into a riptide to pull in a turista who'd let herself get sucked out. The woman, not small, was so hysterical that she damned near pulled Dave under with her. She grabbed on to his neck and wouldn't let go, and he damned near had to knock her out to get her under control and onto the sled.
When he got her back to the beach, all she could say was, “He hit me.”
He watched her and her indignant hubby get into their Mercedes and drive away. No thank you, just “He hit me.”
Dave thought about George Freeth.
Brought surfing to California.
Saved seventy-eight lives.
Died broke at thirty-five.
Dave called Eddie and said the word.
37
There are thousands of Mick Penners.
A stripper's boyfriend who hangs around strip clubs is not exactly a unique profile. He's a definite type, this guy, and you can see him everywhere. He's that weird dude who gets his rocks off watching his girlfriend take her clothes off for a roomful of guys, and he's alternately turned on and repulsed by it. On the one hand, he thinks he's a stud because he has a hot chick that other guys want; on the other hand, he's jealous that other guys want her. So when the girl comes home-and a Mick Penner usually lives with her while she pays the rent-he works out his ambivalence by slapping her around and then taking her to bed.
You can see a Mick Penner hovering in the back of any strip club, keeping an eye on his girl, chatting up the other dancers, bothering the bartender, generally being a pain in the ass. The more benign Mick Penners leave it at that; the worse ones mooch off the girl, taking her tip money as soon as she makes it. The worse ones yet use her to get to other girls. The very worst pimp her out.
The Mick Penners of the world always have something cooking, always have something on the stove, always are running some scam or the other. And it's always the next big thing, financed by the stripper girlfriend until the ship comes in. A real estate investment, a start-up tech company waiting for the bust-out IPO, a screenplay that Spielberg's people have expressed interest in, a Web site. It'
s always going to bring in a million bucks and it never does. Something always happens somewhere along the way to the big payoff, but no worries-by that time, a Mick Penner is on to the next big thing.
“How do we find this Mick Penner?” Petra asks.
“You're in luck,” Boone says. “I know the dude.”
“You do?”
“Yup,” Boone says.
On the way to the Hotel Milano, he tells her how he knows Mick Penner.
38
Mick Penner parks cars.
This is how Boone knows him. If you're a private investigator in a resort town like San Diego, you know the parking valets at the major hotels and restaurants. If you're a more financially successful private investigator than Boone Daniels, you go around at Christmastime handing out twenty-dollar bills to the parking valets at the major hotels and restaurants.
Not that Boone hasn't handed out a few bills in his day. He has, lots of times, and more than once to Mick Penner, who is a daytime valet at the Hotel Milano in La Jolla.
You do this because nobody in California goes anywhere except in their cars. You want to track somebody in Cali, you track their vehicle, and vehicles have to park somewhere. And when they park at a hotel, you have a good idea about what they're doing there.
You want to know who's having lunch with whom, who's laying out big bucks for a dinner party to make a deal, who's banging somebody they shouldn't be, you stroke the parking valet. You want to stake out someone at a hotel and you don't want to be seen, you lay off a couple of blocks and let the valet call you when the person rings for his car. You need video of a husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend getting in or out of a car in a hotel parking lot, you pay one of the valets to let you park in there. You're looking for some high-rolling scam artist, you want a parking valet to give you a jingle when your guy checks into his hotel.
Parking valets, concierges, desk clerks, room-service waiters-their base salaries are just that, a base; the smart ones make their real money from tips and tip- offs.
And Mick Penner is one of the smart ones.
Mick is a good-looking guy. Slim but built, about six-one, with black hair, deep blue eyes, and white teeth. He has what you might call movie star good looks.
