by Don Winslow
She wraps her arms around her knees and waits for the sun to rise again.
57
Dan Silver sits beside Teddy Cole in the backseat of the Explorer.
He grabs Teddy’s right index finger and says, “Your hands are your life, aren’t they, Doc?”
Teddy’s chin-sculpted, Botoxed, nose-jobbed, skin-peeled, hair-transplanted, eye-tightened, face-lifted, tummy-tucked, dental-worked, lasered, and tanned face turns absolutely white with fear. He tries to speak, but the words get jammed in his throat. All he can manage is a weak, shaky nod.
“Hands of a surgeon, right?” Dan asks. “That’s what you are, cosmetic surgeon to the stars? Nip/Tuck? So, what if I start breaking your fingers, one by one, starting with your thumbs? It’s going to hurt like you wouldn’t believe, Doc, and, afterward, no more strippers, starlets, and trophy wives for you.”
Teddy tries to hold out.
For Luce’s sake, for Tammy’s sake, for the sake of his own soul—if that isn’t a hopeless, antiquated concept. He holds out until Dan starts counting down from ten.
He makes it to six.
“I’m only going to ask you once,” Dan says, “and I’m really hoping I don’t have to ask you ten times. Where is Tammy Roddick?”
58
The Boonemobile rests on its front bumper, like a wounded bull on its front knees, exhausted in the ring.
Its front right tire is flat.
Boone looks at the van. “Goddamnit.”
“I thought they shot Teddy,” Petra says. She goes into the front seat and roots around in her purse. “They took my phone.”
“Mine, too,” Boone says. “It’s a good thing I took Teddy’s.”
He pulls Teddy’s RAZR out of his pants pocket and scrolls through Teddy’s call history. Seventeen calls in the past two days made to the same number. He punches it in.
Tammy picks it up right away, like she’s been waiting for the call.
“Teddy?” Tammy asks.
Her voice sounds anxious, worried, scared.
“Where are you, Tammy?”
“Who is this?”
“Wherever you are,” Boone says, “get out now.”
“What are you—”
“Teddy is on his way,” Boone says, “with Dan and some of his thugs. He gave you up, Tammy.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“He wouldn’t want to,” Boone says, “but I guarantee you, if he hasn’t already, he will. Get out. Let me meet you somewhere. I can help you.”
“Who are you?”
“Petra Hall is here with me.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“You want to talk with her?”
“No,” Tammy says.
“Look,” Boone says, “you have no reason to trust me, but you have to get out. Now.”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me meet you somewhere,” Boone says. “I’ll pick you up, take you somewhere safe.”
She clicks off.
“Damn it!” Boone says. He gets on the horn to Hang Twelve while he goes into the back of the van, pulls out a spare tire and a jack, then goes to work on the car.
“I could do that for you,” Petra says.
“I’ll bet you could,” Boone says, fitting the tire on. “But I don’t want you to wreck your clothes.”
Boone gets the tire on, tightens down the lugs, and releases the jack. He’s putting it back into the van when Hang calls back.
He has the number traced.
59
The Institute of Self Awareness was founded back in the 1960s.
Of course.
If there was any single word that typified that decade, it was self.
Some shrink came down from Esalen with a head full of acid and a trust fund and bought the old Episcopalian retreat that had been founded on a bluff above one of the best right breaks on the entire West Coast.
The shrink didn’t surf but didn’t mind those who did using the stairs on the south side of his property to go out and hit that marvelous break. To honor that generous man, and because The Institute of Self Awareness was too cumbersome to pronounce all the time, the beach below the retreat simply became known as “Shrink’s.”
The Institute of Self Awareness became first a hippie, and later a New Age retreat where people could check into a room, eat vegetarian meals, take meditation seminars, yoga classes, and otherwise become aware of themselves.
“What does that mean?” Dave the Love God asked Boone one day while they were sitting in the lineup at Shrink’s waiting for the next set and looking up at the retreat’s cottages.
“It has nothing to do with masturbation,” Sunny told Hang Twelve.
“I don’t know,” Boone said. “I guess you just do it.”
“Yeah, but do what?” Dave asked.
“Whatever it is.”
Then the set came in and they forgot about the question.
Boone had only been vaguely aware that the place was even called The Institute of Self Awareness anyway. He had always known it as Shrink’s, had carried his board down those wooden steps probably hundreds of times, and there was no way he was ever going to check into a room, eat vegetarian meals, take meditation seminars, yoga classes, and otherwise become self-aware.
For one thing, he couldn’t afford the steep room rate. For another thing, he wasn’t introspectively inclined. For a third and final thing, he was already pretty aware of who he was.
“If there is one thing that can be said about Boone,” Sunny Day proclaimed during a reasonably drunken session at The Sundowner after closing time, “it is that he knows who he is.”
“That’s true,” Boone said. “I surf, I eat, I sleep, I work—”
“Sometimes,” High Tide said.
“Sometimes,” Boone said, “and, every now and then—more then than now—I make love. And that’s about it.”
But now he wishes that he had gone to the place at least once, so he’d know the lay of the land, because now he’s pretty sure that’s where Tammy is.
The Institute of Self Awareness has developed a specialized and lucrative clientele.
To wit, people—especially famous people—who have become aware that their real selves might need a little cosmetic surgery, need a place where they can hide from the prying eyes of the public while the swelling goes down, the black eyes fade, and time passes before they reemerge into the world with their new noses, breasts, faces, lips, stomachs, butts, or all of the above. So the ISA now makes a lot of its income by providing a cocoon in which celebrities can hide until they fully morph into their new selves.
And the institute zealously guards its clientele against the paparazzi, the tabloids, and the just plain curious. The founding shrink may not have thrown up any fences against the surfers, but the new management has built high walls to shield its guests against even the longest lenses of the paparazzi. The walls are topped with strands of barbed wire and motion sensors, lest anyone should try to climb in. Beefy security guards patrol the perimeter and man the front gate of the reception room, barring entrance to everyone but expected visitors and attending physicians.
So while tourists and local visitors can walk around the gardens all they want, to get into the private part of the retreat itself is akin to entering the gates of Troy.
Teddy can walk right in.
Theodore Cole, M.D., is a cash cow for The Institute of Self Awareness. Teddy not only has strippers in there recovering from boob jobs; he has Hollywood stars and starlets, Orange County trophy wives who want a little distance from their home turf, and San Diego society matrons from La Jolla who have coincidentally discovered their need for spirituality along with their face-lifts.
So if Teddy wants to store a girlfriend inside the walls for a night or two, the welcome mat is out. And if Teddy says that no one is going to get in there to look for her, then no one is going to get in there to look for her.
60
When the Explorer pulls into the parking lot of The Inst
itute of Self Awareness, the driver rolls down the window and Teddy, now in the front passenger seat, leans across and waves to the guard.
“Good evening, Dr. Cole,” the guard says, giving a slight stink eye to the car full of guys who don’t look like they’re seeking any kind of awareness, self or otherwise.
“I’m just going in to check on a client,” Teddy says, feeling Dan’s pistol jammed into the back of the seat against his spine.
“Should I call ahead?” the guard asks.
“No,” Dan murmurs.
“No,” Teddy says.
The gate swings open, the Explorer goes through, and the gate swings shut behind it. Teddy directs the driver to a small parking lot.
“Now take us to where she is,” Dan says. “And, Doc, if you mess with me, I’m going to put one in your spine.”
Teddy leads them along the curving walkways lit by the little solarpowered lamps. Most of the guests are in their cottages, but a few are out taking a stroll around the grounds. One in particular, a tall redheaded woman in a white terry-cloth robe, attracts Dan’s attention.
“Hey, is that …” Dan says, then names a famous movie actress.
“Could be,” Teddy says.
“What’s she getting, a boob job?”
“Nose,” Teddy says. She wanted her nose shaved down. A tuck around the eyes. A little something to hold off the day when she has to play the bitch mother or the eccentric aunt. But Teddy’s mind isn’t really on that. He’s thinking about some way that he can tip Tammy off, get her out of there before … He doesn’t even want to think about what happens after the “before.”
As they approach Tammy’s cottage, he can see lights on through the curtain of the front window.
“You got a key?” Dan asks him.
“Well, it’s a card.”
“What the fuck ever,” Dan says. “You let yourself in, you leave the door open behind you. Got it, Doc?”
“Yeah.”
“Doc?”
“What?”
“If you’re thinking about trying to be a hero,” Dan says, “stop thinking. You may be boss hog in the operating room, but this ain’t your world, hoss. It will just get you in the wheelchair basketball league. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Open the door.”
Teddy walks up to the Lotus Cottage. It’s always been one of his favorites, redolent with memories. Teddy has put some serious talent in the Lotus Cottage and has gotten some head in there that you wouldn’t believe. Hand shaking, he fumbles with the card and eventually manages to insert it into the lock. The little green light comes on, followed by the soft click of the lock opening. Teddy gently pushes the door open a crack and says, “Tammy? It’s me.”
Dan shoves him out of the way and steps into the cottage.
The living room is all done in white. Bone white walls, with black-and-white photographs of lotuses in silver frames and a flat-screen plasma television set. A white sofa, white chairs. The wood floor is painted black, but the carpet’s white.
Tammy isn’t in the living room.
Dan moves toward the closed bedroom door. He nudges it open with the toe of his boot and then steps through, pistol up and ready to shoot.
She’s not in the bedroom, which is similarly decorated. White walls, black-and-white photos, white bedspread on the double bed, and a flat-screen television, smaller than the one in the living room. The guests must watch a fuck of a lot of TV while they’re self-actualizing, Dan thinks as he moves to the bathroom door and listens.
The shower is running.
One of them fancy new “rain showers” by the sound of it.
He leans into the bathroom door.
It’s locked.
Women always lock the door when they’re taking a shower, Dan thinks. He blames it on Psycho.
Dan leans back and launches a kick into the door. The jamb splinters with a crash. Dan steps into the bathroom and points the gun to his left, toward the shower.
But she ain’t in it.
And the window is open.
61
A steep set of stairs runs down to the beach from the back of Shrink’s.
It cuts through a berm of red clay planted with succulent ankle-high ground cover that blossoms red in the spring but now looks silver and glossy under motion-activated lamps set in the ground every twenty feet.
Dan negotiates the stairs with surprising grace for a big man. He holds the pistol in one hand; the other glides along the pipe railing as he calls, “Tammy? I just want to talk with you, baby!”
If she’s out there, she doesn’t answer.
The night fog is coming in fast, already obscuring the water and the beach. Dan pauses on a landing and listens.
“Tammy!” Dan yells. “There’s nothing to be afraid of! We can work this out, girl!”
He waits for an answer, the pistol poised to shoot in the direction of a voice. No response comes, but then he hears footsteps, running down the stairs below him.
Dan chases her down the stairs.
Onto the beach, into the fog.
62
Boone and Petra run down the stairs at Sea Cliff Park, just south of Shrink’s, Boone trying to hear Tammy as she whispers into her phone, “He’s coming. I can hear him.”
“Keep coming this way,” Boone says. “We’re almost there.”
He makes it down to the beach and looks north, the direction Tammy should be coming from. But it’s tough to see anything—the fog has moved in and set up housekeeping for the night, and the moon hasn’t thought about getting up yet.
“Tammy?” Boone says. “Can you see me?”
“No.”
Boone peers into the fog.
Then he sees her.
Dressed only in a white robe, she looks like a ghost. Or maybe an escapee from a mental hospital, her long red hair disheveled and wild in the moist night air. She’s running, as much as she can run in the heavy sand, her long legs working against her, struggling for balance. She’s not even sure what she’s running toward, just a voice on the other end of a telephone, saying he was going to help her. At first, she didn’t believe him, but there was something in the voice that changed her mind.
She sees him and tries to run faster.
Boone trots toward her, grabs her as she falls into his arms, gasping for breath.
“He’s behind me,” she says.
“Dan?”
She nods and gulps some air. Petra comes up and helps Boone lift Tammy to her feet. Tammy looks at her. “I’ll testify. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” Boone says.
The shot comes out of the fog.
63
Johnny Banzai hears the shot.
You don’t hear a lot of gunshots in Encinitas, especially not west of the PCH, and certainly not in the proximity of The Institute of Self Awareness, where people do not tend to “find themselves” at the wrong end of a gun. No, the guns around Shrink’s tend to be surfboards, not firearms.
Gunshots are going to grab any cop’s attention, but these shots really reach out and grab Johnny’s head, because they’re coming from the direction of his destination, the aforementioned ISA, and Johnny’s aware that he’s getting there in the wake of Boone Daniels.
Boone caught this wave first and Johnny jumped in, and now they’re both pumping it to get to the real Tammy Roddick first. Johnny has some very pointed questions to ask her, he has some equally sharp queries for Boone, and he wants to know from both of them what they have to do with the Jane Doe lying beside the motel pool.
It didn’t take all that long to find out that the Jane Doe wasn’t Tammy. Then he went to Roddick’s place of employment, Totally Nude Girls, and found out that (a) Tammy’s boyfriend had been Mick Penner; (b) she dumped him for Teddy D-Cup; and (c) Boone was a step ahead of him. A quick visit to Teddy’s La Jolla office and the flash of a badge got Teddy’s recept
ionist to give up that the good doctor was on his way to make a house call at Shrink’s after getting a phone call from a man who claimed that he was Tammy Roddick.
Classic Boone.
Goddamn him.
Except now Johnny hears shots, and he hopes to hell that he gets to arrest Boone and not do an investigation on his killing.
He opens his window, attaches the flasher unit to the roof of the car, and hits the siren. Then he gets on the radio and calls for uniformed backup. “Shots fired. Plainclothes officer approaching the scene.” It’s dark and rainy out and he doesn’t want to be standing there with a gun in his hand when nervous uniforms show up. They might see the gun before they see the badge.
Then he pushes the pedal to the floor.
Banzai.
64
Chess with guns in the night and fog.
Cool game in theory, scarier than shit in practice.
Adrenaline-pumping, ass-clenching, heart-racing scary. A paintball freak’s wet dream, but these bullets aren’t loaded with paint; they’re lead. And if you fuck up, you’re not going to get splattered; you’re going to get splattered.
Boone tries to move himself and the two women through the muted fireworks display without getting shot. Which isn’t easy because the beach is narrow at high tide, and Dan and his two boys keep closing off the space. Boone can’t make a break toward the bluffs because they have that covered, and he can’t get them up or down the beach because they have that sealed off.
Dan shoots and makes his target move, shoots and makes them move again—and each time they move, he directs his guys and closes off the space. Just like in the ring, he’s patiently walking them down, working them into the corner for the kill.
Boone hears sirens in the distance. Cops are coming, but are they going to come in time? In the dark and fog, the shooters will take more chances than they otherwise would, knowing they can probably get away in the mist and confusion.
