Dawn Patrol (32 page)

Yeah, as a matter of fact.

Ten minutes later he walks out of the building with Petra. She tries to put a brave face on things. “At least now,” she says, “you can catch your ‘big swell.’ ”

“Doesn’t matter,” Boone says.

It doesn’t? Petra thinks. Because it certainly seemed to matter a great deal just a day ago. My God, could it have been just a day?

Boone asks, “Can I borrow your car?”

To go to the beach? she wonders. She starts to ask, but there’s an energy to him that makes her stop. It’s a man she hasn’t seen before—intense, focused. It’s admirable, but also a little frightening.

“You’re not going to push it off a cliff, are you?” she asks.

“Not planning on it.”

She digs into her purse and hands him the keys.

“Thanks,” Boone says. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“I’m taking that to mean,” Petra says, “that you don’t want me to go with you.”

He looks at her with seriousness that, again, she hasn’t seen in him before, and again, that simultaneously scares and excites her.

“Look,” he says, “there are some things you have to do alone. Can you dig that?”

“I can.”

“I’m going to make this all right.”

“I know you are.”

He leans down and kisses her lightly on the cheek, then turns and walks away with a stride that she can only describe to herself as “purposeful.”

She gets it.

Thinks, You have a few things to make right, yourself.

Petra calls a cab and tells the driver to take her to The Sundowner.

Boone drives to Tammy’s place.

She won’t be home—Danny will have whisked her away somewhere by now. He parks Petra’s car right out front, takes the stairs up to Tammy’s place, and picks the lock.

The apartment’s the usual usual. He heads right for the bedroom because that’s where people keep their secrets, there or in the bathroom. Tammy’s bedroom looks a lot like Angela’s, right down to the same framed picture of the two of them on top of the bureau.

And you’re an idiot, Boone thinks. You look at her in those pictures, she hasn’t changed a bit. Teddy didn’t do any work on her, so what’s up between them?

He goes into the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet. Nothing on the shelves of any interest, but a small wallet-size photo is carefully wedged into the seam between the glass and the frame on the lower left corner of the inside of the cabinet door.

It’s a face shot of a young girl. The picture was taken outdoors, but the background is indistinct due to low light and the close-up on the face, but—

The girl from the strawberry fields, the reeds.

The girl in the motel room with Teddy.

Probably Latina, judging from the brown skin, long, straight black hair, and dark eyes. But she could be Native American, hard to tell. What she definitely is, is a very pretty, sweet-looking little girl with a shy, hesitant smile, wearing a cross on a thin silver chain.

The same cross and chain that Dan Silver took out of his pocket just before Tammy flipped on her testimony.

So it was no setup, Boone thinks, at least not on Tammy’s part. She was
responding to a threat. Silver has the girl, whoever she is, and he was letting Tammy know that the right words had better come out of her mouth.

Boone takes the picture out and looks on the back. A child’s handwriting.

Well, at least we have a name now, Boone thinks. At least the kid has a name.

But who is she? Boone wonders. And why is her picture on the inside of a medicine cabinet door? Why do you hide a picture but want to be reminded of it every day? How does a stripper meet a
mojada
girl? And why does she care?

Think, think, he tells himself, trying to fight through the fatigue that’s smacking at him as the adrenaline drains. Tammy left Mick and went to Teddy. Why?

Go back to your cop days, he thinks. Chronology. Do the time line. Tammy leaves Mick just after the fire at Danny’s warehouse. She becomes obsessed with making money; she spends her time with Angela; she goes to Teddy.

Teddy and she start going up to Oceanside. But if they’re not having sex, what are they doing? Teddy knew right where to go to find the girl. Right down into the reeds by the old Sakagawa strawberry fields. Obviously, he’d been there before … with Tammy.

And not just once, but lots of times between the fire and … the arson trial.

At which Tammy does a 180.

If you’d seen what I’ve seen
.

What, Tammy, what did you see?

Sunny takes a moment to watch the sun go down.

A bright red ball today, painting the sea a carmine red. Beautiful, dramatic,
but somehow a little ominous. Tonight is the last night of your old life sort of thing. Indeed, the ocean’s kicking it up. Getting it into gear. She can feel it in the air, in her blood. It makes her heart pound.

She watches it for a few moments and then starts to walk to her house. Chuck wanted her to work a double, but she wants to go home and get some rest before the big day tomorrow. She’s walking home along the boardwalk when Petra catches up with her.

“Could I have a word with you?”

“Depends on the word,” Sunny says without stopping or even slowing down. Petra has to struggle to keep up with her long-legged stride.

“Please?”

“That always worked when I was a kid,” Sunny says. She stops and turns to look at Petra. “What do you want?”

Her subtext is clear to Petra: What do you want now? You already have the man I love. Sunny Day is a beautiful woman, Petra thinks, even more beautiful in the soft dusk that casts a glow on her face. Even clad in old jeans and a thick sweatshirt, and not wearing a bit of makeup, the woman is simply lovely.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Petra says, “that what you saw at Boone’s cottage wasn’t truly indicative of the reality of the situation.”

“In English?”

“Boone and I haven’t been together. Sexually.”

“Well, yippee for you, Girl Scout,” Sunny says. “But don’t let me stop you.”

She starts to walk away again.

Petra reaches out and grabs her elbow.

“If you want to keep that hand …” Sunny says.

“Oh, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“The tough-girl act.”

“You’re going to find out it’s no act,” Sunny says, “if you don’t let go of my arm.”

Petra gives up. She drops her hand and says, “I just came to tell you something about Boone.”

She turns away. She’s a few steps down the boardwalk when she hears Sunny call after her, “Hey, flatland babe? You don’t have anything to tell me about Boone.”

“No, I suppose not,” Petra says. “My apologies.”

Sunny blows out a stream of air, then says, “Look, I’ve been slinging plates to a restaurant full of testosterone cases all day. I guess I’m a little aggro.”

“Aggravated.”

“Right,” Sunny says. “So what did you want to say about Boone?”

Petra tells her about Boone attacking Harrington.

“I’m not surprised,” Sunny says. “That’s where it all started.”

“Where what all started?”

“Boone’s …” She searches for words. “Boone going adrift, I guess.”

Petra asks, “What is his story, anyway?”

“What’s his
story
?”

“I mean, I don’t understand him,” Petra says. “Why he’s so … underemployed … beneath his abilities. Why he left the police department …”

Sunny says, “It didn’t work out.”

“What happened?”

Sunny gives a long sigh, thinks about it, and says, “Rain.”

“His daughter.”

“What?” Sunny says.

“Doesn’t Boone have a daughter named Rain?” Petra asks. “I mean, I thought he had her with
you
, actually.”

“Where did you get
that
?” Sunny asks.

“I saw some pictures at his place.”

Sunny tells her the story of Rain Sweeny.

“I understand,” Petra says.

“No, you don’t,” Sunny replies. “Boone still works that case. He never stops trying to find her. It eats him up.”

“But surely the poor girl is dead.”

“Yes, but Boone won’t let it go.”

“Closure,” Petra says.

“Well,” Sunny replies, “Boone wouldn’t know that word, or he’d
pretend
not to. But between you and me? Yeah, I guess ‘closure’ gets it done. Anyway, that’s Boone’s ‘story.’ As for you and him … Boone and me? We don’t own each other. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a wave to catch.”

Petra watches her walk away.

A golden girl on a golden beach.

Wonders how, and if, Boone could ever let her go.

Sunny wonders the same thing.

She gets back to her place, peels off her sweatshirt, and flings it against the wall. Is it really
over
over with Boone and me? Can he just let me go like this?

I guess so, she thinks, recalling the image of the little Brit curled up on Boone’s couch. Even if what she said about not having sex with Boone was true, it’s only a matter of time. The woman is pretty, Sunny thinks. A total betty. Of course Boone would want her.

Yeah, but it’s more than sex, isn’t it? Sunny thinks as she goes to her computer to log on to the surf report. She’s so different, this chick, and maybe that’s the point. Maybe Boone wants something totally different for his life, and that’s fair.

So do I.

And it’s coming. She sees it on the screen. A big whirling splash of red spinning its way toward her, bringing the hope of a different life.

The hope and the
threat
, she thinks.

Am I ready for this?

Ready for change?

I guess that’s what Boone wants.

Is it what
I
want?

She sits down in front of her little statue of Kuan Yin—the female personification of the Buddha and the Chinese goddess of compassion—and tries to meditate, clear all this relationship shit out of her head. There’s no room for it right now. The big swell is coming, it will be here tonight, and she’ll be in the water at first light and will need every ounce of concentration and focus she possesses to ride those waves.

So breathe, girl, she tells herself.

Push out the confusion.

Breathe in the clarity.

It’s coming.

Dave the Love God tries to tell Red Eddie the same thing.

He sits on the deck of the new lifeguard station at PB, looking out at an ocean that is getting sketchier by the second, and tries to tell Eddie that, basically, it’s not a fit night for man or beast, or boatloads of boo.

Eddie’s not buying it. He thinks it’s shaping up to be a
perfect
night to do this—black, foggy, and the Coast Guard sticking close to shore. “You are Dave the motherfucking Love God!” he says. “You’re a freaking legend. If anyone can do this …”

Dave’s not so sure. Freaking legend or no, he’s going to have all he can handle tomorrow, and more. The water is going to be a freaking zoo, with every big-name surfer and a few dozen wannabes out there in surf that should be black-flagged anyway, trying to ride waves that are genuinely dangerous. People are going to go into the trough, get trapped in the impact zone under the crushing weight of the big waves, and someone is going to have to go in there and pull them out, and that someone is probably going to be Dave. So being out all night and then coming into a situation where he needs to be absolutely on top of his game is not a good idea.

He doesn’t want to lose anyone tomorrow.

Dave the Love God lives his life by the proposition that you can save everybody. He couldn’t get up in the morning if he didn’t think that, all evidence and personal experience notwithstanding.

The truth is that he has lost people, has dragged their blue and swollen bodies in from the ocean and stood watching the EMTs trying to bring them back, knowing that their best efforts will be futile. That sometimes the ocean takes and doesn’t give back.

He doesn’t sleep those nights. Despite what he teaches his young
charges—that you do your best and then let it go—Dave doesn’t let it go. Maybe it’s ego, maybe it’s his sense of omnipotence in the water, but Dave feels in his heart that he should save everybody, get there in time every time, that he can always snatch a victim out of the ocean’s clutches, never mind what the
moana
wants.

He’s lost four people in his career: a teenager who got sucked out on a boogie board and panicked; an old man who had a heart attack outside the break and went under; a young woman distance swimmer who was doing her daily swim from Shores over to La Jolla Cove and just got tired; a child.

The child, a little boy, was the worst.

Of course he was.

The screaming mother, the stoic father.

At the funeral, the mother thanked Dave for finding her son’s body.

Dave remembered diving for him, grabbing him, knowing the instant he touched the limp arm that the boy was never going home. Remembered carrying him to shore, seeing the mother’s hopeful face, watching the hope dissolve into heartbreak.

The night of the funeral, Boone came by with a bottle of vodka and they got good and drunk. Boone just sat there and poured as Dave cried. Boone put him to bed that night, slept on the floor beside him, made coffee in the morning before they went to The Sundowner for breakfast.

Never talked about it again.

Never forgot it, either.

Some things you don’t forget.

You just wish you could.

And the chances of losing another one tomorrow are very real, Dave thinks, running through his mind the list of highly skilled, experienced surfers who have died in recent years trying to ride big waves. There were lifeguards out there those days, too, great watermen who did everything they could, but everything wasn’t enough.

What the ocean wants, it takes.

So now he interrupts Eddie’s stream-of-consciousness, polyglot rap and says, “Sorry, bro, it’s not on for tonight.”

“Gots to be tonight,” Eddie says.

“Get someone else, then.”

“I want
you
.”

He mentions the price—three months of Dave’s salary for plucking people out of the current. Three freaking months of sitting on the tower looking out for other people who go home to their houses, their families, their bank accounts, their trust funds.