by Don Winslow
Josiah Pamavatuu is a good man, no doubt about it. Now he drives his truck with two wet and shivering women at his side and his best friend in the back, a man who is like family to him.
But like ain't is.
Is is is.
70
Johnny Banzai finds a shaken Teddy D-Cup drinking an “organic martini” in the Lotus Cottage.
“Where's Tammy Roddick?” Johnny asks him.
Teddy points his thumb in the general direction of the beach.
From whence comes an explosion and a ball of flame.
71
Hang Twelve runs.
Pushing off on all twelve toes, he hoofs it as hard as he can toward Sunny's house. Like he's trying to pump the fear through his bloodstream and out of his body.
It ain't working.
Hang is terrified.
Word traveled down to Pacific Beach with the speed of rumor itself. The Boonemobile went off the bluff at Sea Cliff Park and burst into flames. Boone Daniels hasn't been found. The firemen are there now. There's already talk of a paddle-out and a memorial service after the big swell is over.
Hang doesn't know what to do with his fear, so he takes it to Sunny.
You gotta understand where he's coming from.
Where he came from.
Father a tweeker, mother a drunk, Brian Brousseau's home life, if you want to call it that, was a bad dream during a nightmare. Brian got about as much care and attention as the cat, and you don't want to see the cat. He was about eight when he started picking up the leftover roaches lying around the crappy little house.
Brian liked the feeling he got from smoking the roaches. It eased his fear, muffled the fights between his mom and dad, helped him get to sleep. By the time he was in junior high, he was toking up every day, before and after school. When school was finally over, he'd wander down to the beach, smoke up, and watch the surfers. One day, he was sitting in the sand, just toasted, when this surfer came out of the water, walked up to him, and said, “I see you here every day, grom.”
Brian said, “Uh-huh.”
“How come you just watch?” Boone asked. “How come you don't surf?”
“Don't know how,” Brian said. “Don't have a board.”
Boone nodded, thought about it a second, looked down at the skinny little kid, and said, “You want to learn? I'll show you.”
Brian wasn't so sure. “You a fag, man?”
“You want to ride or not, dude?”
Brian wanted.
Scared as shit, but he wanted.
“I can't swim,” he said.
“Then don't fall off,” Boone said. He looked down at Brian's feet. “Dude. Do you have six toes?”
“Twelve.”
Boone chuckled. “That's your new name, gremmie-‘Hang Twelve.’”
“Okay.”
“Stand with your feet about shoulder width,” Boone said.
Hang got up. Boone shoved him in the chest. Hang stepped back with his right foot to keep his balance. “What-”
“You're a goofy-foot,” Boone said. “Left-footed. Lie down on the board.”
Hang did.
“On your stomach, ” Boone said. “Jesus.”
Hang turned over.
“Now, jump up on your knees,” Boone said. “Good. Now into a squat. Good. Now stand.”
Boone made him do it twenty times. By the time Hang finished, he was sweating and breathing hard-it was the most exercise he'd done maybe in his life-but he was totally into it. “This is fun, dude!”
“It's even more fun in the water,” Boone said. He led Hang out to where some small waves were coming in shallow, had him lie down on the board, and pushed him into a wave. Hang rode it in like a boogie board.
Insta-love.
Hang kept Boone out there all frigging afternoon, until the sun set and after. On his third ride, he tried to stand. He fell off on that wave and the next thirty-seven. The sun was a bright orange ball on the horizon when Hang stood up on the board and rode it all the way to shore.
First thing he'd ever achieved.
The next day was Saturday, and Hang was out there first thing in the morning, standing on the beach and staring out at The Dawn Patrol.
“Who's the grem?” Dave asked from the lineup.
“A stoner kid,” Boone said. “I dunno, he looked lost, so I took him out.”
“A stray puppy?” Sunny said.
“I guess,” Boone said. “He took to it, though.”
“Grems are a pain in the ass,” Dave warned.
“We were all grems once,” Sunny said.
“Not me,” Dave said. “I was born cool.”
Anyway, it was tacit permission to go bring the kid in. Boone got off the board on his next ride and went up to Hang. “You wanna surf?”
Hang nodded.
“Yeah, okay,” Boone said. “I have an old stick in my quiver over there. It's a piece of shit, a log basically, but it will ride. Get it out, wax it; then I'll show you how to paddle out. You stay close to me, out of other people's way, try not to be a total kook, okay?”
“Okay.”
Hang waxed the board, paddled out, and got in everyone's way. But that's what grems do-it's their job. The Dawn Patrol ran interference for him, both with the ocean and the other surfers. No one messed with the kid because it was clear that he was under The Dawn Patrol's collective wing.
Hang took the board home that night.
Leaned it against the wall next to his bed.
Hang might have been invisible at home, he might have been a nothing at school, but now he had an identity.
He was surfer.
He was Dawn Patrol.
Now he runs toward Sunny's house, gets to her door, and pounds on it. A few minutes later, a sleepy Sunny comes to the door.
“Hang, what-”
“It's Boone.”
He tells her about Boone.
72
Cheerful sits at the hovel that is Boone's desk, trying to balance the books.
Boone Daniels is a perpetual pain in the ass. Immature, irresponsible, a hopeless businessman.
But what were you, Cheerful asks himself, before Boone came into your life?
A lonely old man.
Boone once saved him several million dollars in alimony when the businessman uncharacteristically fell head over heels in love with a twenty-five-year-old Hooters waitress, for whom he bought a new rack and fuller lips to heighten her low self-esteem. Her self-image lifted, she promptly felt herself attractive enough to screw a twenty-five-year-old wannabe rock star and begin a television career that she intended to finance with California community property.
Boone felt bad for the lovesick old guy and took the case, took the pix, made the video, and never showed either of them to Cheerful. He did show them to the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Cheerful and told her to take her big tits, full lips, guitar-stroking boyfriend, and a $100K alimony settlement, get out of San Dog, and leave Cheerful the hell alone.
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Because he's a nice old man and you fucked him over.”
“He got his money's worth,” she said. Then she looked at him with an expression of lust she no doubt learned from porn videos and asked, “You want proof?”
“Look,” Boone replied, “you're hotter than hell, and I'm sure you're the whole barrel of monkeys in bed, but, one, I like your husband; two, I'd cut my junk off with a jagged, shit-encrusted tin can lid before I'd ever stick it anywhere near you; and three, I'll not only take your home movies and photo album into court, but I'll put them on the Net, and then we'll see what that does for your television career.”
She took the walk-away deal.
And made it big on TV playing the second lead, the sassy best friend, on a sitcom that's been draining viewer IQs for years.
“What do I owe you?” Cheerful asked him afterward.
“Just my hourly.”
“But that's a few hundred,” Cheerful said. “You saved me milli
ons. You should take a percentage. I'm offering.”
“Just my hourly,” Boone said. “That was the deal.”
Cheerful decided that Boone Daniels was a man of honor but a crap businessman, and therefore he made it his hobby to try to get Boone on some sort of sound financial footing, which is something like trying to balance a three-legged elephant on a greased golf ball, but Cheerful persists anyway.
You had money, sure, he tells himself now, but nothing else. You'd do your books, count your money, and sit around your condo eating microwave meals, watching television, cussing out the Padres' middle relief, and thinking about how miserable you were.
Ben Carruthers-multimillionaire, real estate genius, total personal failure. No wife, no kids, no grandkids, no friends.
Boone opened up the windows, let some air and sunshine in.
The Dawn Patrol brought youth into your life. Hell, it brought life into your life. Much as you grouse about them-watching these kids, getting to be a part of their lives, sticking your beak into Boone's cases, playing the curmudgeon-they make it worth getting up in the morning.
Boone, Dave, Johnny, High Tide, Sunny, even Hang Twelve-they're precious to you, admit it. You can't imagine life without them.
Without Boone.
The kid Hang Twelve sits staring at the phone, willing it to ring.
Cheerful thinks he needs to say something to the kid. “He's okay.”
“I know.”
But he doesn't.
Neither of them do.
“You hungry?” he asks Hang.
“No.”
“You have to eat,” Cheerful says. He takes a twenty from his wallet, hands it to Hang. “Go over to The Sundowner, get us a couple of burgers, bring them back.”
“I don't really feel like it,” Hang says.
“Did I ask you what you felt like?” Cheerful says. “Go on, now. Do what I tell you.”
Hang takes the money and leaves.
Cheerful goes to the Yellow Pages, gets the number of Silver Dan's, and calls it. “Let me speak to Dan Silver,” he says. “Tell him Ben Carruthers is on the line.”
He waits impatiently for Silver to get to the phone.
73
Dan takes his time getting to the phone.
He's a little uneasy about what Ben Carruthers might have to say to him. The real estate mogul is asshole buddies with Boone Daniels.
Or the late Boone Daniels, if the word on the street is right.
Dan had sent one of his guys over to The Sundowner to keep his eyes and ears open, to find out if anyone had seen or heard from Daniels after he did his Houdini on the beach. Daniels is a major fucking pain in the ass, and now he has Tammy Roddick. Except, the word came in that Daniels drove his piece of shit vehicle off the cliff and went out in flames.
So Dan has constructed a hopeful scenario: He hit Daniels with one of his shots. The dumb fuck made it up to his van somehow, but, weak with loss of blood, put the car in drive instead of reverse and went airborne.
Crash and burn.
The even more optimistic version is that Tammy Roddick and her big fucking mouth went over the cliff with him and the fire guys are going to scrape out two crispy critters instead of one. And then there's the mouthy British broad, the one that would rather fuck a pig. Well, maybe her stuck-up twat is melted to the seat springs, too.
Now this old man is calling. What's up with that?
He picks up the phone.
“Dan Silver?”
“Yeah?”
“You know who I am,” Carruthers says. “I'm going to give you my accountant's number; he'll tell you exactly how much I'm worth. I'll pay off your debt to Red Eddie. Cash, interest, I'll put it to bed.”
“Why would you do that?”
“So you call the dogs off Boone Daniels,” Carruthers says.
The fuck? Dan asks himself. Is Daniels alive? He decides to check it out. “I heard he had an accident.”
“I heard that, too,” Carruthers says. “That's the other reason I want you to know how much I'm worth. It's in the eight figures somewhere, and, Dan Silver, if Boone is dead, I'll spend every cent of it to have you tracked down and killed.”
Dial tone.
74
Cheerful had bought the Crystal Pier back in the day when it was pretty run-down. He renovated it and flipped it, with the proviso that he retain the last cottage on the north side of the pier.
He gave the cottage to Boone.
Boone didn't want to take it.
“It's too much, Cheerful,” he said. “Way too much.”
“You saved me millions from that gold-digging little bitch,” Cheerful responded. “Take the cottage. Then you'll always have a place to live.”
Boone didn't take the cottage, not ownership anyway. What he took was a long-term lease at a lower-than-market rent.
So Boone became a permanent resident of the Crystal Pier Hotel. He lives literally over the ocean. He can, and does, hang a fishing pole outside his bedroom window, right into the water. The cottage itself is made up of a small living room with a kitchenette, a bedroom off to one side, and a bathroom off to the other.
Now High Tide drives up to the gate at the base of the pier, kills his headlights, and punches in the code he knows by heart. The gate slides open and High Tide drives the van down the pier all the way to the end, and into a little parking spot, now vacated by the late Boonemobile, next to Boone's cottage.
Boone has been lying down in the back. He gets up, quickly slips over the side, and walks around to the driver's door as the women slide out the passenger side.
“Thanks, bro.”
Tide shakes his head and touches his fist to Boone's.
“Dawn Patrol.”
Tide turns the truck around and drives off the pier. Turns left and parks the truck just behind the new lifeguard station that Dave rules like a feudal warlord. He sits and juggles the phone in his hand, thinking about what he needs to do.
Then he does it.
“Boone wasn't in the van,” he says into the phone. “He's at his place.”
Then Josiah Pamavatuu-former gang banger, football star, surfing stud-lays his head on the steering wheel and sobs.
75
Boone lowers all the window shades and turns on one lamp by the side of the sofa. Then he goes into his bedroom, opens the drawer of his night-stand, and takes out the. 38 that he's saving to shoot Russ Rasmussen.
“You guys need to take hot showers,” he says. Then he runs water into a kettle and puts it on the stovetop. “I'll make something hot to drink.”
Petra is surprised that the place is so neat and clean.
Everything stored in its place-the efficiency of small spaces. A surprisingly good collection of pots and pans hangs from a rack above a small but good-quality butcher's block, on which two expensive Global knives are set on magnetized strips.
The man likes to cook, Petra thinks.
Who would know?
Unsurprisingly, the white walls of the living room are decorated with framed photos of waves, which give Petra an involuntary shudder after what they've just been through. She can't know it, but the pictures are of local breaks-Black's, Shores, D Street, Bird Rock, and Shrink's.
“I'll get you guys something to change into,” Boone says, walking into his bedroom.
Tammy jumps when a big wave goes off like a cannon, sounding like it's crashed right on the cottage.
“Are you all right?” Petra asks.
“I want to talk to Teddy.”
“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Petra says.
Boone emerges from the bedroom carrying a stack of sweatshirts, sweatpants, and socks. “They'll be big for you,” he says, “but they'll keep you warm anyway.”
“Warm is good,” Tammy says. She takes a blue hooded La Jolla Surf Systems sweatshirt and a pair of black sweatpants and goes into the bathroom. Boone and Petra hear the shower running.
“God, that sounds good,” Petra says.
&nbs
p; “Yeah, it does.”
“I still have salt water running from my nose,” she says. “I must look a fright.”
“You look nice,” Boone says, meaning it. “Listen… you did good out there. In the water. I mean, you were great. You didn't panic.”
“Thanks,” she says.
Boone says, “Would you like some tea?”
“That would be lovely.”
“I have herbal or Earl Grey.”
“Earl Grey is perfect.”
“Just plain, right?” Boone asks. “No milk or sugar.”
“Actually, lots of both, please,” she says. “Perhaps it's the near-death experience, but I feel greedy.”
“Nothing like almost dying to let you know how good life is,” Boone says.
Yeah. How good life is, with her full lips and warm neck and sea gray eyes there for the reaching out and her looking in his eyes, her mouth already tasting his, and then the pot whistles like an alarm and their lips don't touch.
“Life imitating bad art,” she says.
“Yeah.” Boone pours the water into a mug and hands it to her.
“Thanks.”
“You're welcome.”
“How about you?” she asks.
“I'll make some coffee.”
Tammy comes out of the bedroom.
It's the first time Boone has really seen her.
She's tall. Not Sunny tall, but tall, with long, lean legs. Her face has clean, strong, natural lines and her eyes, although they look smaller without makeup, are still catlike. But it's a different breed of cat-wild, feral, but somehow calm. She's a striking woman, and it's easy to see why Mick Penner and Teddy fell hard for her. She sits down on the small couch in the middle of the living room and puts her feet up on the coffee table.
Boone says, “Have something hot to drink first. Warm you up inside.”
“Go change,” Petra says. “I can take care of her.”
