The Dawn Patrol

by Don Winslow

  Life on Highway 101.

  This is the road that Boone takes, following Teddy north along the coast.

  46

  Boone needs to be on his game going through Del Mar, because there are plenty of side streets for Teddy to turn onto, but the doctor doesn’t turn off toward the beach or up into the hills; he stays on the main drag and heads north, across the old bridge over the San Dieguito River, on past the famous old racetrack, then up through Eden Gardens and Solana Beach.

  Now the road, old Highway 101, parallels the railroad track on its right, through the town of Solana Beach, and then onto the narrow open stretch of coastline at Cardiff, which is one of Boone’s favorite places in the world, where the highway edges the beach and you feel like you could reach out the car window and touch the water. The whitecaps are already peaking, tall, but nothing to what they’ll be this time tomorrow. Even from the van, he can hear the ocean getting ready to go off, the big swell starting to build, a heavy heartbeat that matches his own.

  The big swell.

  Sunny’s shot.

  One wave, one macker, and it changes her life.

  One great photo and she makes the net, the magazines. She gets the sponsorship she’s been working for and it’s her takeoff. She’ll be all over the world, making the tournaments and the big wave contests. She’ll surf Hawaii, Oz, Indo, you name it.

  “Where did you just go?” Petra asks.

  “Huh?”

  “Where were you? You looked like you were a million miles away just now.”

  “Nope. On the job.”

  But aware that they’re fast coming up on the funky old surf town of Encinitas and the great right break called Shrink’s, arguably the best wave in SoCal, maybe the place to be when the swell rolls in.

  If he weren’t on the job, he’d turn in at the small parking lot on the bluff and take a look at how it’s building out there. But I can’t, he thinks, because I have to follow Dr. D-Cup to locate a stripper.

  Teddy drives up through Leucadia, where the big eucalyptus trees line the road on the inland side and cheap motels, drive-thru burger/taco stands, and little shops take the ocean side.

  Ocean side, Boone thinks … Oceanside. Isn’t that where Mick Penner said that Teddy takes Tammy for their little matinees? Well, he thinks as he follows Teddy through Leucadia and across the bridge that spans the Batiquitos Lagoon into Carlsbad, we’re on our way to Oceanside.

  The road drops back down again and flanks the long stretch of open beach, with its promenade along the breakwater, then takes a right jog into the faux-Tudor village of Carlsbad, with its English shingled roofs. There’s a store here where you can buy all kinds of English food, and Boone thinks of mentioning this to her, but then he figures that she probably already knows about it, so he keeps his mouth shut.

  The route curves right again, then crosses Buena Vista Lagoon and takes them into Oceanside.

  Heads up, Boone thinks.

  Teddy takes a right, turning east onto Highway 76, drives all the way through town and out into the suburbs and developments that house a lot of the marines from Camp Pendleton, then takes a left into the countryside.

  Where the hell is he going? Boone wonders. Boone drops back a ways because the traffic has thinned out so much.

  Then Teddy takes a right and heads inland.

  What the hell? Boone thinks.

  There’s not much out here now. It’s one of the few even semi-rural spaces left in metro San Diego County, out here by the old Sakagawa strawberry fields.

  47

  They cling to the landscape, these pieces of old farms.

  They dot the local map like small, shrinking atolls in a roiling sea of real estate development.

  In housing-hungry San Diego, buildings are going up everywhere. Housing developments, condo complexes, and high-rise apartment buildings are taking the place of the old fields of flowers, tomatoes, and strawberries. With the residential developments come the strip malls, the high-end shopping complexes, the Starbucks, Java Juices, and Rubio’s, the Vons, Albertsons, and Stater Bros.

  Once a steady but slow tide, the building boom became a tsunami flooding the little islands of agricultural land. They’re still there, but harder to find, especially this close to the coast. Farther inland along Highway 76 are the avocado orchards of Fallbrook, then the vast orange groves among the hillsides and canyons. Farther south, in the flatlands of Carmel Valley and Rancho Peñasquitos, small fields fight a slow, losing war against development, surrounded now by new million-dollar “spec” homes built on the plateaus between the wooded canyons where the illegal workers live in camps of jerry-rigged tents and tin-roofed shacks.

  Up here in Oceanside, along the banks of the San Luis River, some of the old strawberry fields stubbornly hold out. Drought, insect infestations, depression, racism, voracious development—it doesn’t matter, the farmers hang on. They could easily sell the land for far more than they make farming it, but that doesn’t matter, either.

  It’s a way of life.

  Not that you could find a single Japanese-American, a Nisei, actually working these strawberry fields. They’re two generations removed from that, the kids and grandkids having moved into the city and the suburbs, where they’re now doctors, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs, and even cops.

  The old man who owns these particular fields wouldn’t have had it any other way. Upward mobility was always the idea, and now a different generation of immigrants, field hands from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador work his fields, and the kids come to visit for an “afternoon in the country.”

  Old man Sakagawa loves seeing his great-grandchildren. He knows that he’ll be leaving this world soon, and he knows that when he passes, this world, these fields, this way of life will pass with him. It makes him sad, but he also believes what the Buddha said, that the only constant is change.

  But it does make him wistful, that the Sakagawa fields will fade like morning mist under a blazing dawn.

  Now Boone follows Teddy east along North River Road, past a gas station and a food mart, then past an old church, and then …

  Son of a bitch, Boone thinks.

  Fucked-up, lovesick Mick Penner was right.

  The motel is one of those old 1940s places with an office and a line of little cottages in the back. Someone has tried to freshen the place up—the cottages have recently been painted a bright canary yellow, with royal blue trim—one of those attempts to make it so retro that it’s hip.

  Teddy pulls into the gravel parking lot and gets out. He doesn’t stop at the office but goes right toward the third cottage, like he knows just where he’s going.

  “We got her,” Boone says.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  He pulls into the parking lot and parks on the other end from Teddy’s car. “You have your subpoena?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let’s deliver it,” Boone says.

  Then I’ll call Johnny Banzai and let him know that we have a potentially important witness for him in his fresh murder case. Then I’ll go home, catch some sleep, and be fresh and ready when the big waves hit.

  He’s thinking these happy thoughts when Teddy suddenly walks back from the cabin, carrying a small black bag. He walks right past his car; then he crosses the road and walks up about fifty yards to a thick bed of reeds that stands between the San Luis River and the western edge of the old Sakagawa fields.

  “What’s he doing?” Petra asks.

  “I don’t know,” Boone says. He reaches behind and grabs a pair of binoculars and trains them on Teddy as the doctor walks to the edge of the reeds.

  Teddy looks around, then steps into the reeds. Inside of two seconds, he disappears from sight.

  Boone sets the binoculars down and jumps out of the van.

  “Go look in the cabin, see if she’s there,” he says to Petra, and then he crosses the road and jogs down to the edge of the reeds. Foot traffic has trampled down th
e front edge of the reed bed, and narrow paths cut into the standing reeds like tunnels. Soda cans, beer bottles, and fast-food wrappers lie among small white plastic garbage bags. Boone picks up one of the bags, unties the top, and then gags, fighting back the vomit.

  The bag is full of used condoms.

  He drops the bag and steps into one of the tunnels that lead through the reeds. It’s like being in another world—dark, narrow, and claustrophobic. The late-afternoon sunlight barely penetrates the tall reeds, and Boone can’t see five feet in front of him.

  So he doesn’t see the shotgun.

  48

  The curtains on the cabin windows are open, and Petra can see into the small front room, which has a sofa, a couple of chairs, a kitchenette area and a table.

  But no Tammy.

  Petra walks around to the side, where another window offers a view of the small bedroom, where there is likewise no Tammy.

  Maybe she’s in the bathroom, Petra thinks.

  She walks around to that side, puts her head against the thin wall, and listens. No sound of running water. She waits for a minute, hoping to hear the toilet flush, or the taps running, or anything, but it’s perfectly still.

  For one of the few times in her life, Petra doesn’t know what to do. Should she wait here, in case Tammy is inside? Should she go back to the van and wait, in case Tammy just hasn’t shown up yet but is on her way?

  And how does she know it’s even going to be Tammy, and not some other bimbo that Teddy is shagging in his Bang for Boobs program. And where was Teddy going? What could he possibly be doing in a bed of reeds, looking for the baby Moses, for God’s sake? And what, if anything, has Boone found? Should I follow him? she wonders.

  She decides to go back to the van and wait.

  Except waiting isn’t her best thing.

  She gives it a shot, she does, but it isn’t going to happen. What she really wants to do is go see what Boone is finding out. She makes it about three minutes, then bails.

  49

  Mick Penner should have.

  Bailed, that is.

  Should have taken Boone’s advice, thrown his shit into a bag, gotten into his beloved BMW, and hit the highway.

  He doesn’t, though.

  He intended to. One of those “road to hell” deals. He meant to get moving, but then he decided that one beer and a quick toke would help him get his shit together. He’s on his third Corona when the door comes in.

  Dan Silver’s first punch goes into Mick’s liver and crumples him. Mick’s on his knees, hunched over in agony, sucking for air, when the kick comes into his solar plexus and makes breathing an impossibility.

  Mick flops on the floor like a fish on the dock.

  Then they’re kicking him, shoes and boots smashing into his thighs, his shins, his ankles, his ribs. He rolls over on one side and pulls his arms over his head and manages to blurt out, “Not my face. Please, not my face.”

  His face is his living, and he knows it. Knows now in one of those stark moments of clarity that he’s never going to be “SCRNRITR,” no matter what his license plate reads, that the best he can hope for is a few more years of being a parking valet/male whore.

  But he doesn’t even get that if they fuck up his face.

  They pick him up and set him down on the sofa.

  “You don’t want your pretty face messed up?” Dan asks. “You better tell me what I want to know.”

  “Anything, man.”

  Except what he wants to know is how to find Tammy.

  Love is a powerful thing.

  Elusive, ephemeral, enigmatic—love can make you do some fucked-up shit. It can drive you to depths you never thought you’d go; it can lift you to heights you never knew you could climb. It will show you the worst and the best in yourself. Love can strip you down to bare shame; love can reveal pure nobility.

  Mick holds out a long time.

  He loves her, he knows that these guys want to hurt her, will hurt, maybe kill her, and he loves her. In the end, he gives them everything they want, but it takes them a while to get it. He gives them Teddy, gives them the motel in Oceanside, gives them Boone.

  He gives up everything and hates himself for it.

  Dan leaves almost admiring the dumb shit.

  Had to fuck him up real bad before he caved.

  50

  When he comes to, they start beating him, kicking him, cursing him.

  Barely conscious, Boone rolls into a fetal position and covers up his head as the boots, fists, and the shotgun butt rain down on him.

  And the words:

  Pendejo, lambioso, picaflor.

  A shotgun butt slams into his ankle. A few more of these, Boone thinks, and I’m never walking out of here. He opens his eyes, sees a pair of feet, grabs them, and lifts. The feet go flying, and Boone pushes himself up and topples over on the man. Boone’s real lucky, because this turns out to be the guy holding the shotgun, who doesn’t really know what he’s doing because the safety is still on, so Boone is able to rip the gun out of his hands.

  Boone rolls onto his back, points the shotgun up, and flips off the safety. It’s only a little .410, the kind farmworkers use to shoot crows, but at this range it would do the job.

  There are three men—campesinos—Mexican farmworkers.

  The man who was holding the shotgun looks about forty, maybe a little younger. Deep brown weather-worn face and a black mustache already flecked with silver. His black eyes glare at Boone as if to say, Go ahead and pull the trigger, pendejo. I’ve seen worse.

  The kid standing beside him looks scared. Eyes wide, long black hair stuffed under an old Yankees cap. Dirty long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and ancient, torn New Balance sneakers. He’s holding a machete, wondering what to do with it.

  The old man has his machete ready to strike, poised beside his white straw hat. He wears the old-style campesino shirt under overalls. And old cowboy boots—Boone felt the sharp pointed toes digging into his ribs.

  If they wanted to kill me, I’d be dead, Boone thinks as he struggles to his feet, holding the shotgun on them. They could have blown my head off, or chopped me to pieces with the machetes. But they didn’t. What they wanted to do was to give me a good beating, which they sure as hell did.

  Teach me a lesson.

  But what?

  Boone thrusts the shotgun out a little, like, I will shoot you, and backs his way to the clearing in front of the reed caves. A little girl sits there, her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking herself. Her legs are dirty under her cheap cotton dress. Her hair is long and stringy. She looks terrified, and fingers a small crucifix that hangs around her neck from a thin chain.

  “It’s okay,” Boone says.

  She scoots back deeper into the cave.

  “Don’t be scared,” Boone says. Fucking moron, he tells himself. You really think she’s not going to be scared by a güero holding a shotgun? He reaches his hand down for her.

  The teenage boy rushes in with the machete.

  I don’t want to shoot you, Boone thinks, backing off. But the boy keeps coming, the blade of the machete gleaming gold in the light of dusk. Boone takes another step back and raises the gun, then, at the last second, ducks under the blade and swings the gun butt into the boy’s stomach.

  The boy collapses onto his knees. Boone sees that the boy is sobbing, more in frustration than pain. He kicks the machete away from the kid’s hand, hauls the boy up, wraps a forearm lock around his throat, and sticks the shotgun barrel into the side of his head. “I’m leaving now. Take one step toward me, I’ll paint the air with him.”

  He turns around, puts the boy’s body between him and the two campesinos and backs out of the reeds. When he gets to the clearing, he shoves the boy away. The boy turns and stares at him. A look of pure hatred. The kid spits on the ground, then turns and walks back through the reeds. Boone watches him for a second.

  When he turns around, Petra is standing there.

  51

  “My God,
” she says, “what happened?”

  Blood drips from the corner of his mouth and from his nose, and he looks like he’s been rolled in the dirt.

  “You’re supposed to be watching the motel,” he says.

  “I was concerned about you,” she replies. “Apparently for good reason. Where did you get a shotgun?”

  “Someone gave it to me.”

  “Voluntarily?”

  “Sort of.”

  He walks back up the road to the motel.

  Teddy’s car is still there.

  “Did you find Teddy?” Petra asks.

  “No,” he says.

  “We should get you to a hospital.”

  “Not necessary.”

  He opens the side door of the van and digs around until he finds a small first-aid kit. He gets into the front seat, twists the rearview mirror, and looks into it as he cleans the cuts and scratches on his face, swabbing them with pads and then rubbing in antiseptic. Then he places a Band-Aid on the cut over his left eye.

  “Can I help?” Petra says.

  “I asked you for help,” Boone says. “You were supposed to be watching the motel.”

  “I already apologized for that.”

  He finishes applying the Band-Aid, then grabs a vial of pills, shakes one out, and swallows it.

  “What—”

  “Vicodin,” he says. “Karate candy. I didn’t find Teddy or Tammy. All I found was a mojado camp.”

  “A …”

  “Mojados,” Boone repeats. “ ‘Wetbacks.’ Illegals. They work the fields; some of them live in camps. Usually, the camps are tucked up in the canyons; this one was in the reeds along the river. I wasn’t exactly welcome.”

  But it’s weird, he thinks, that the mojados were so aggressive. Usually, they’ll do anything to avoid attention. The last thing in the world they want is trouble, and beating up a white guy is definitely trouble.