Dawn Patrol

by Don Winslow

  Exhausted, heartbroken.

  Rain turns to him and smiles.

  Says, This isn't your wave.

  Her smile turns to sunshine and she's gone.

  Over the break.

  151

  “Where did you go?” Johnny asks.

  “I was just out surfing,” Boone says. “I saw the girl… Did she…”

  “She made it,” Johnny says.

  Boone smiles and lays his head back on the pillow. The pain in his melon is amazing, an evil combo plate of a vicious hangover and a board bounce off the skull.

  “The doctors weren't so sure about you, B,” Johnny says. “Whether you were going to come home from the Enchanted Forest. I thought I was going to have to do that paddle-out for you after all.”

  It had been a hell of a scene out there.

  Boone out on the ground.

  The little girl in shock.

  Tammy Roddick bleeding from a bullet wound. She had saved the girl's life, absorbing most of the bullet's force before it passed through her into Luce. Now Tammy's in a bed down the hallway, not far from the little girl, and they're both going to be all right.

  They weren't the only wounded. A couple of mojados went seriously John Woo on the snakeheads with a shotgun and a machete, though Terry Gilman didn't think she had enough evidence to make an arrest for that, and, in all the confusion, the mojados managed to drift away from the scene.

  Also on the plus side, Dan Silver with a hole in his chest you could push your fist through. Which was a temptation, except he was already DOA.

  Grandfather, Johnny thinks.

  I should have known Grandfather wouldn't allow the family honor to be stained without doing something about it. And, boy, he did.

  Harrington fixed the scene. Put the pistol in Dan Silver's hand and asked Grandfather questions that would elicit only answers that pointed to self-defense. Which, in a roundabout way, it was. You take an old man's honor, it's as good as killing him.

  “Hey,” Johnny says now.

  “What?” Boone asks.

  “Don't go back to sleep,” Johnny says. “You have to stay awake.”

  Boone opens his eyes and looks around the room. It's crowded. Dave, Sunny, Hang, Tide, Cheerful. Pete's there, too. The nurses had objected, of course, tried to get them all out of there. But Tide had plopped himself down in a chair and asked, “You gonna move me?”

  “Not without a derrick,” the nurse said.

  So the crew stayed. All through the long hours when it was touch-and-go, when Beth came in, took a look at Boone's chart, and told Johnny not to get his hopes up, and one of the other doctors took Cheerful aside and asked him if Boone had a living will.

  “A living will?” Cheerful asked. “He doesn't have a checkbook.”

  Hang was inconsolable. Sat in a chair with his head down, staring at the floor. Dave squatted next to him and said, “Boone's too stupid to die from a few blows to the head. If Silver had clubbed his ass, then we'd have something to worry about.”

  “I was mad at him,” Hang said. “He waved at me, but I blew him off.”

  “He knows you love him,” Sunny said. “He loves you, too.”

  Hang put his face into her shoulder and sobbed.

  A few seconds later, Tide said, “Hey, not so loud-you wanna wake him up?”

  Which at least made them all laugh. At some point, Sunny had left the room to go out and get coffee for people, when she saw Petra in the hallway. Petra saw her, started to walk away, but Sunny caught up with her. “Where are you going?”

  “I don't want to intrude.”

  “You're not,” Sunny said. “Come on, I could use some help.”

  So the two of them went to the cafeteria, got some coffee and some junk food, and went back together to the room and waited together through the small hours, until Boone woke up and asked about the little girl.

  Now he looks over at Sunny and asks, “You ride your wave?”

  “You bet.”

  “You're a big star now.”

  “I am,” Sunny says. “I'm surprised I'm even talking to you.”

  Boone sees Petra. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  She looks him in the eye for a second, then looks away, afraid she might start to cry, or show a sudden shyness she's never felt before.

  Dave the Love God rescues her. He gets up, walks over to the bed, takes Boone's hand, and says, “Hey, bro.”

  “Hey.”

  “You look like hammered shit.”

  “That good?” Boone says. Then he adds something that convinces everyone but Dave that he still has one foot in the fun house. “Hey, Dave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Eddie never saw The Searchers. ”

  152

  Dave's still there that afternoon when Boone says, “I have to get up.”

  “You have to lie down,” Petra says. “You have a major concussion.

  They want you to stay here at least two more days for observation. They're going to run some tests, see if you have brain damage. Although, how'd they tell…”

  “There's something I have to do,” Boone says. He forces himself to sit up, then swings his legs out and puts his feet on the floor. It's sketchy, but he manages to get his legs underneath him and stand up.

  “Boone…”

  He's not listening. He gets dressed and walks down the hall toward the lobby. The nurses ignore him-they have their hands full with people who want help and have no time for people who don't. Johnny follows him in case he falls, but Boone doesn't.

  Petra's out in the hallway. “Dave, don't let him be an idiot,” she says. “Bring him back.”

  Dave opens the door for Boone and follows him out.

  153

  They drive south on the 101.

  Boone sits in the passenger seat and looks out the window.

  Beautiful, beautiful day.

  Deep blue ocean.

  Deep blue sky.

  The big swell is almost over.

  “So?” Boone asks.

  They've been friends forever. They've ridden a thousand waves together. They're going to tell each other nothing but the truth. Dave tells him all about his work for Red Eddie.

  “Did you know?” Boone asks. “About the kids?”

  “Not until that night,” Dave says. “I called Johnny. I didn't know what else to do.”

  Boone nods.

  They both know what to do now.

  154

  Boone paddles out.

  Eddie's on the line on the inside shore break.

  “Yo, Boone Dawg!” Eddie yells. Then he sees Boone's head. “What happened to you, my bruddah?”

  “A little aggro.” Boone juts his chin to the outside reef. The waves aren't giant anymore, but they're big, and they're breaking outside. “Let's go outside, Eddie! You got the balls?”

  “ Dangling, brah!”

  They paddle out, side by side, then pull up along the shoulder beside the break.

  “We need to talk, Eddie.”

  “Talk.”

  “The girls,” Boone said. “That was your operation.”

  “No, brah.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Boone says. “The whole story about Dan owing you money was bullshit. You were just trying to cover your pathetic ass.”

  Eddie's not used to being talked to like that. His eyes get hard. “Watch yourself, Boone.”

  “You broke your word to me, Eddie,” says Boone. “You told me you'd leave Tammy Roddick alone.”

  “Hey, that was Dan, not me,” Eddie says. “I didn't promise anything about Dan.”

  “You're dirty,” Boone says. “And you make everything and everyone around you dirty. I brought you into The Dawn Patrol and you made it ugly. You destroy everything around you, Eddie, just like you took those little kids and destroyed them. I'm sorry I met you. I'm sorry I pulled your son out of the water, if he grows up to be anything like you.”

  “ Youever going to grow up, Boone?”

  “Y
eah,” Boone says. “I am.”

  He shoots out his leg and kicks Eddie off his board.

  Eddie falls into the water.

  Boone wraps Eddie's leash around his own ankle and watches as Eddie tries to sit up and let himself loose. But Eddie can't reach the Velcro strap around his ankle. He turns and tries to swim, tries to bust to the surface, but Boone back-paddles like a cowboy on a pony with a calf on his rope.

  Eddie flips over again and tries to reach Boone. He reaches up, desperately grabbing, first at Boone's foot, then at his own. But Boone just keeps pressing down on the leash, and looks into Eddie's widening eyes.

  They say drowning is a peaceful death.

  I hope they're wrong, Boone thinks.

  He watches Eddie struggle. Watches him suffer.

  Then he takes his foot off the leash. Not because he cares about Eddie's life, but because he cares about his own. Eddie grabs for his board, but Boone kicks his hand off. Choking and gasping for air, Eddie asks, “What the-”

  “Here's the deal, Julius,” says Boone. “I let you back on my board and tow you in to Johnny Banzai. He's already waiting with a warrant. You're looking at thirty to life. Or you go back in the water, and this time you don't come back up. And we'll throw a hell of a fucking party.”

  He starts to press down on the leash again. “Personally? I hope you take door number two.”

  But Eddie says, “Take me in.”

  Boone lets up on the leash and hauls the exhausted Eddie onto his board, then tows him to shore. Johnny's standing on the beach. Slaps the cuffs on Eddie, does the ritual reading of the rights, and shoves him into his car.

  Eddie doesn't have one fucking thing to say.

  “Are we good?” Dave asks Boone.

  “We're good.”

  It's over.

  155

  Three weeks later.

  Dusk on Pacific Beach.

  It's cool, sweatshirt weather, as the mist is starting to move in as if the sun were pulling a curtain around its bed before going to sleep.

  Boone stands in front of a grill, carefully turning pieces of yellowtail over the low fire. You have to be gentle with yellowtail. You have to cook it slowly or it dries out and loses its juice.

  Johnny Banzai stands beside him, supervising.

  Johnny lifts a Corona to his lips, takes a swallow, then says, “Harrington is really pissed he can't crank you on this thing.”

  Boone is too big a hero for anyone to mess with right now. The bust of the child-sex operation is all over the talk-radio stations. There's talk of medals, civic awards. Harrington mumbled to Johnny, “Tell that shitbag this doesn't change anything.”

  It doesn't, Boone thinks. Not really.

  Angela Hart is dead.

  And Rain Sweeny, if she's alive, is still in the wind.

  “Anyway,” Johnny says. “The DA arm-wrestled him into dropping the assault charges against you.”

  “That,” Boone says, “makes the List of Things That Are Good.”

  “Yes,” Johnny says. “But in what position?”

  “The eternal question,” Boone says.

  “Fifth,” Hang Twelve suggests.

  “In front of free stuff?” High Tide asks. “You're lolo. ”

  “Free stuff is very, very good,” Dave says.

  “You could use some free stuff,” Cheerful says to Boone. “I've finished your books and free stuff would come in very handy.”

  “I have a paycheck coming in,” Boone says. He gently removes the fish from the grill and sets the pieces on a plate. Then he lays some tortillas on the grill until they are just warm, but not burned.

  “How's it coming?” he asks Petra, who sits on the sand with her legs crossed and a cutting board on her lap. She's just finishing slicing up the mango and red onion, and she's staring out at the sun just dipping on the horizon.

  They'd talked after he got back from confronting Red Eddie.

  “Right, I'll be the one to take the leap,” Petra said. “Are we going to see each other again? I mean, outside of our professional relationship.”

  “Is that what we have?”

  “So far.”

  “I dunno,” Boone said. “What do you think?”

  “I don't know, either,” Petra said. “I mean, I don't know where it could go. We want such different things from life.”

  “Truth.”

  “But maybe that's not a bad thing,” Petra said.

  He knew what the smart thing would be. Walk away now. Because they are so different, because they do want different things from life. But there's something about those eyes you don't walk away from. And something about her.

  A lot about her.

  She's smart, tough, funny, hot, brave, cool.

  She's a good person.

  They decided to just take things as they come.

  And Sunny?

  Sunny's out there, he thinks as he watches the sun going down. What a future-all the places she'll go now, all the oceans she'll see, the waves she'll ride. It's her world now, all of it, and who knows if one of those waves will ever bring them together again.

  “Here,” Petra says. She gets up and hands him the cutting board. Boone slides the chopped mango and onion into a bowl, then adds some lime juice, a little jalapeсo, and a handful of cilantro and mixes it all up.

  Then he takes the tortillas off the grill, lays a piece of fish on each one, then spoons a generous dollop of the fresh mango salsa over the fish.

  “Dinner's ready, guys!” he says.

  He hands a taco to Petra.

  “God, that's won derful,” she says.

  Boone serves the tacos, then takes a moment to look at the ocean, the setting sun, the long beach.

  This is his beach, his world.

  His friends.

  His family.

  “As I've always said…” he pronounces.

  Everything tastes better on a tortilla.

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