The Dawn Patrol

by Don Winslow

  Amber is scared. She looks small and pale and weak next to him, which she is, all of those three things. He has her sitting in a plain wooden-back chair in the VIP Room and he stands over her, staring down.

  “I didn’t tell him anything,” Amber says.

  “Didn’t say you did,” Dan says in his best calming voice. “What I’m asking you is, where is Tammy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you like working here?” Dan asks.

  “Yes.”

  “They treat you good, don’t they?”

  Amber nods. “Uh-huh.”

  “So you don’t want to get fired.”

  “I need this job.”

  “I know,” Dan says. “You have a kid, right?”

  “Yeah,” Amber says. “And, you know, food, rent, day care …”

  “I feel you,” Dan says. He slowly walks behind her, then hauls off and hits her with a lazy punch to the kidneys. Lazy for him, but with his strength, it’s enough to knock her off the chair and send her sprawling on the floor, gasping in pain. “Now you feel me.”

  He picks her up with one hand and sets her back down again, very gently. Squatting in front of her, he says, “If I hit you in the kidneys one more time, you don’t dance for a month or two. It hurts you just to try to get up off the couch, don’t even think about going to the bathroom.”

  Amber drops her face into her hands and starts to cry. “She baby-sat my kid for me so I could go to a movie sometimes.”

  “That’s nice.” He walks behind her and raises his fist.

  “All I know is that she has a boyfriend,” Amber says quickly. “His name is Mick Penner.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I don’t know,” Amber says. “I swear.”

  “I believe you, Amber,” Dan says. He takes a roll of bills out of his jeans pocket, hands her a hundred-dollar bill, and says, “You buy something nice for that kid of yours.”

  “Let’s go get Tweety taken care of,” Dan says back in the main room.

  40

  Boone makes the short drive down to La Jolla Shores.

  It might be the prettiest beach in San Diego, Boone thinks. A gentle two-mile curve from the bluffs of beautiful-people La Jolla Village to the south all the way to the Scripps Pier in the north, with the pale sienna cliffs of Torrey Pines in the background.

  Just off to his left, to the south, are the twin hotels—the La Jolla Shores and the La Jolla Tennis and Beach Club—that sit right on the beach. And the Tennis and Beach Club houses the famous Marine Room restaurant, where on a stormy night you can sit and eat shrimp and lobster with the waves hitting right against the window.

  Boone likes Shores, as the locals simply call it, even though the surf usually isn’t very challenging, because it’s calm and pretty and people always seem to be having a good time there, whether they’re in the water, playing on the sand, strolling the boardwalk, or having a cookout in the little park that edges the beach. At night, people come down and make bonfires and sit and talk, or play guitars, or dance to the radio, and you can hear all kinds of music down here at night, from rasta to retro folk to the exotic, twisting chants that the groups of Muslim students like.

  Boone likes to come down here for that reason, because he thinks it’s what a beach is supposed to be—a lot of different kinds of people just hanging out having a good time.

  He thinks that’s what life’s supposed to be, too.

  Mick’s car is parked in the narrow alley behind his building.

  A silver Beemer with the hopeful vanity plate that reads SCRNRITR.

  “I’ll be a son of a gun,” Boone says.

  “They’re here?” Petra asks, her voice a little high and excited.

  “Well, his car’s here,” Boone says, trying to lower her expectations. But the truth is, he’s pretty hopeful that they’re in there, too.

  “Wait in the van,” he says.

  “No way.”

  “Way,” Boone says. “If I go in the front, they might come out the back?”

  “Oh. All right, then.”

  It’s total bullshit, Boone thinks as he gets out of the van, but it will keep her out of my way. He walks up the stairs to Mick’s door and listens.

  Faint voices.

  Coming from the television.

  Other than that, nothing.

  Boone tries the door.

  It’s locked.

  There are two windows on this side of the apartment. The venetian blinds are closed on both, but even through the glass, Boone can smell the dope. Mick and Tammy must be having a hell of a party.

  Boone raps on the door. “Mick?”

  Nothing.

  “Yo, Mick.”

  No response.

  So either they’re in there hiding or in the bedroom, stoned, and can’t hear anything. Well, Boone thinks, if they can’t hear anything … He kicks the glass in, reaches through the hole, unlocks the window, and slides it open. Then he climbs through.

  Mick Penner is asleep on the sofa.

  Passed out is more like it. He’s lying facedown, one arm dangling to the floor, his right hand still holding a bottle of Grey Goose.

  Boone walks right past him into the bedroom.

  No Tammy.

  He opens the bathroom door.

  No Tammy.

  He looks at the back door. Still locked from the inside.

  Tammy isn’t here and she didn’t just go out the back. There are no women’s clothes, no makeup in the bathroom, no smell of perfume, moisturizer, hair spray, nail polish, nail polish remover.

  It smells like a guy’s place.

  A guy on a steep downhill slide.

  Stale sweat, old beer, unchanged linens, garbage, a trace of eau de vomit. Mick himself reeks. When Boone steps back into the living room, it’s instantly apparent that the guy hasn’t hauled himself into a shower for a few days.

  Mick isn’t cute or pretty right now. If his trophy wives could see him passed out on this couch—his dirty hair disheveled, his teeth green with grime, dried grunge caked around his lips—they wouldn’t be slipping between the clean, crisp sheets of the Milano with him. If they were in a good mood, they might, might, drop a quarter into his hand and keep moving.

  “Mick.” Boone gently slaps him across the face. “Mick.”

  He slaps him again, a little harder.

  Mick opens one jaundiced eye. “What?”

  “It’s Boone. Boone Daniels. Wake up.”

  Mick closes his eye.

  “I need you to wake up, dude.” Boone grabs him by the shoulders and sits him up.

  “The fuck you doing here?” Mick asks.

  “You want some coffee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got any?”

  Boone walks into the kitchen area.

  Dirty dishes are piled in the sink or strewn over the counter. Empty boxes of microwave meals overflow the garbage can or have just been tossed on the floor. Boone opens the fridge and finds an opened bag of Starbucks espresso on the door shelf. He dumps the grounds out of the filter in the coffeemaker, washes the carafe, finds a new filter, puts the coffee on, and scrubs out a cup while he listens to Mick puking in the bathroom.

  Mick emerges, his face dripping with water where he splashed it on himself.

  “Fuck, dude,” Mick says.

  “You’ve been slamming it,” Boone says.

  “Hard.” Mick sniffs his armpits. “God, I stink.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No worries.” Boone hands Mick a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s hot, bro. Don’t toss it.”

  Mick nods and takes a sip of coffee.

  Boone sees his hand quiver.

  “Tammy Roddick.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Mick says.

  Something in Mick’s face—a little tension along the jawline, the blue eyes going hard. The look is unmistakable—it’s the look of a guy who’s in love
with a woman who’s dumped him.

  “Does this ring a bell?” Boone asks. “A burglary at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Hedigan in Torrey Pines about three months ago. Maybe I should go over and ring the Hedigans’ bell, ask them if your name—”

  “Nice, Boone. Real nice,” Mick says. “I thought we were friends.”

  “Not really,” Boone says. I don’t slip my friends twenties to answer questions. My friends aren’t sleazy matinee call boys. “Have you seen Tammy lately? Like today, for instance?”

  Mick shakes his head. “I wish I had.”

  Yeah, Boone thinks. So much for the unrung bell. “What do you mean?”

  Mick’s face gets all soft and serious. “I loved her, Boone. I mean, I loved that fucking bitch. Really loved her, you know?”

  He met her at Silver Dan’s. Watched her dance and was, like, mesmerized. Got a lap dance from her and asked her out, like on a real date. To his surprise, she accepted. He met her at Denny’s after her shift and bought her breakfast. Then they went to her place.

  “I thought I knew what good sex was,” Mick says. “Not even close.”

  He loved just being with her, just looking at her. She had these green cat eyes, man, that you couldn’t take your own eyes off of. They were hanging out watching TV one night. They had the Animal Channel on, and it was a documentary about leopards, and Mick looked at her and said, “Those are your eyes, babe. You have leopard eyes.”

  Yeah, but it wasn’t just the sex, and it wasn’t just her eyes—he loved just being with her, man. All that corny, romantic, chick-flick bullshit he never believed in? Mick started doing it, man. Walks on the freaking beach, breakfast in bed, holding hands, talking.

  “She was smart, man,” Mick says. “She was funny. She was …”

  Mick actually looks like he’s going to cry. He looks down into his coffee cup like it has memories at the bottom.

  “So what happened?”

  “She dumped me.”

  “When?”

  “Three months ago?” Mick says. “At first, I was all like, you know, fuck the bitch, but then it really started to eat at me, you know? I even fucking called her, man, left messages on her machine. She never called me back.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I tried to go see her at her new club,” Mick says. “She had the bouncers toss me. I’m PNG at TNG.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three, four days ago?” Mick says. “I dunno. How long have I been drinking?”

  “What happened?” Boone asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if you guys were so in love and everything,” Boone says. “What happened?”

  He’s not ready for the answer that Mick gives him.

  “Teddy D-Cup.”

  Teddy D-Cup is what happened.

  41

  Teddy D-Cup.

  Aka Teddy Cole.

  Dr. Theodore Cole, M.D., board-certified cosmetic surgeon.

  Teddy D-Cup does boobs.

  Yeah, well, he does noses and chins, too, liposuctions, face-lifts, and tummy tucks, but boobs are Teddy’s profit center, hence the moniker.

  Teddy is the Michelangelo of bosoms. His work is displayed at society functions, beaches, runways, movies, television shows, and, of course, strip clubs, wherever finer breasts are seen. They are status symbols, prestige items. It’s gotten to the point where women actually boast that their “tits are by Teddy.”

  Strippers will work for years to save up the cash to get a pair by Teddy, although the word is that good Dr. Cole does have a scholarship program for girls he considers especially … uh … promising.

  Like Tammy, according to Mick.

  “She wanted a bigger rack,” Mick says. “I told her she didn’t need one, that she was gorgeous, but you know chicks.”

  Not really, Boone thinks, but he goes along with it.

  “I told her if she was going to do it, she had to go to the best,” Mick says.

  “Teddy D-Cup.”

  “Sure,” Mick says. “I knew all about him from the hotel. Believe me, I know Teddy’s work, up close and personal. Women who go to the Milano can afford Teddy.”

  “But Tammy couldn’t.”

  “She saved up,” Mick says. “You don’t know her—she’s single-minded, man. Once she sets her sights on something. I mean, it was like work, work, work. Money, money, money.”

  “So?”

  Mick shakes his head. “I drove her to him, bro. I literally drove her to the first consultation. She comes out, we’re in the car, we’re not two blocks away, and she tells me maybe we should stop seeing each other. Do you believe that? She traded me in for a new set of tits.”

  “So she’s seeing Teddy now.”

  “She’s with him all the fucking time, man.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve followed them,” Mick says. “Is that pathetic, or what? I’ve banged half the hot rich babes in this town, and I’m sneaking around following this fucking mercenary cunt stripper, sitting in my car like some doof—That cheap fuck takes her to this little motel up around Oceanside—do you believe that, a guy with his kind of money?”

  Boone gets this sinking feeling. “Hey, Mick?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t do anything to her, did you?”

  “No,” Mick says. “I thought about it.”

  Then he asks, “Is she okay, Boone? Is she in some kind of trouble? Why are you looking for her?”

  “She ever talk about Dan Silver?” Boone asks. “The fire at his warehouse?”

  “She mentioned it happened.” He’s alarmed now. All geeked. “Is she okay? Is she hooked up with Dan again?”

  “I don’t know,” Boone says, “but as your friend, I’m going to strongly suggest you get out of town for a while. Some people are looking for her who are going to be looking for you. You don’t want them to find you. They’re going to ask the same questions I did, but they may not believe your first answers.”

  “She’s in trouble,” Mick says.

  “Throw some shit in a bag,” Boone says. “Put some serious distance between you and here.”

  “I have to find her. I have to help her.”

  “You gonna rescue her?” Boone asks. “Then she’ll take you back?”

  “I just want her to be okay,” Mick says. “Is that fucked up, or what?”

  Actually, Boone thinks, it might be the least fucked-up thing he’s heard all day. He warns Mick to get out of town again, and then he leaves to go see Dr. Theodore Cole.

  42

  Tweety sits in the office of TNG, looking at his swollen knee. It looks bad; it looks like it’s going to keep him out of the weight room for a while.

  “We better get you to the hospital,” Dan says.

  Tweety looks sad. “I don’t have health insurance.”

  “Not a problem,” Dan says. “I got you covered. Come on.”

  Dan and the bouncer lift Tweety to his feet—well, foot-carry him outside—and squeeze him into the front seat of a Ford Explorer. The bouncer gets behind the wheel. Dan gently swings Tweety’s legs in, then gets in the backseat.

  Tweety says, “I’m gonna kill that fucking Daniels.”

  “We’ll do it for you,” Dan says. He tells the bouncer to head south on the 15, down to Sharp Hospital, the nearest urgent-care facility.

  “Oh, man,” Tweety says, “anybody got any Vike or Oxy or something? I need something to kill the pain.”

  Dan sticks a .22 pistol in the back of Tweety’s head and pulls the trigger twice.

  “Oughta do it,” he says.

  You roid-shooting, wrong woman–killing, stupid son of a bitch.

  43

  “Did you take a nap?” Petra asks when Boone gets back to the van.

  “I call them ‘siestas,’ ” Boone says. “It sounds better.”

  He fills her in on his conversation with Mick.

  “So now we think that Tammy’s with this Teddy
person?” Petra asks.

  “Or at least he knows where she is,” Boone says. Not that this is necessarily good news. If Tammy went to Teddy and asked him for help, he could have bought her a first-class ticket to Tahiti. For all they know, she’s sitting on a beach with a mai tai resting on her new chest.

  Laughing at everybody.

  “Where’s this doctor’s office?” Petra asks.

  “Right back in La Jolla Village,” Boone replies. Within sight of the Milano. It’s been that kind of back-and-forth day. “But first, we’re going to fuel up.”

  She leans over and looks at the fuel gauge. “The tank is three-quarters full.”

  “I meant me,” Boone says. “You, too, if you want.”

  It’s just a couple of blocks to Jeff’s Burger. It’s a matter of near-religious devotion to Boone never to enter the vicinity of Jeff’s Burger without having one of his burgers. Luckily, there’s a parking spot right out front. Boone pulls the van in, turns off the engine, and asks, “You want something?”

  “Actually, a Caesar salad with dressing on the side would be nice.”

  “You got it.”

  He goes in and orders two cheeseburgers with everything. When the burgers arrive, he dissects one, puts the meat into his own burger, then scrapes the lettuce, tomato, and onions into the lid of the plastic go-plate and goes back to the van.

  “What’s this?” Petra asks when he hands her the plate.

  “Caesar salad, dressing on the side.”

  “In what country, may I ask?”

  “Mine,” Boone says. “If you don’t want it, the seagulls will.”

  She closes the plate and tosses it over her shoulder into the back of the van. He shrugs and eats as he drives back up to La Jolla Village. The burger tastes great and makes the drive back there go quickly. As they pull into the parking lot of Teddy’s building, Boone calls information and gets Teddy’s number.

  “You’re phoning?” Petra asks.

  “Hard to put one over on you, Pete.”

  “Why not just march in there and demand to speak with him?”

  The receptionist has the perfect cultured voice, and Boone guesses that she has the perfect chiseled face to match. As the first face you’d see when you walk into a cosmetic surgeon’s office, she has to be perfect.