Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

“Yes, I'm sure,” she says. “I interviewed her half a dozen times, for God's sake.”

“Okay.”

“And I didn't have to vomit,” she says. “I was just trying to get you away from the police officers so I could tell you.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were a flesh-and-blood human being,” he says. But she does look paler, if that's possible. “Look, you want my advice?”

“No.”

“We should go back right now and tell them they've got a wrong ID,” Boone says. “You're an officer of the court, and if you withhold information that's material to the investigation of an unattended death-”

“Hello?” she says, waving her hand. “ I'mthe attorney? Stanford Law? Top of my class?”

“And if I withhold information, they could yank my license.”

“Then forget I told you,” she says. “Look, I'll swear that I didn't tell you, all right?”

“How did you do in ethics class?” Boone asks.

“An A, ” she says. Like, What else?

“What, did you cheat on the final?”

“When did you become such a Goody Two-sandals?” she asks. “I thought you were so laid-back.”

“I need my PI license to eke out a meager living,” Boone says, realizing as it comes out of his mouth that it makes him sound totally lame. The rules were not made to be broken, but they were made to be bent, and any PI who doesn't bend them into pretzels isn't going to be in business for long.

Besides, Boone thinks, there's a solid reason for not telling the SDPD that the dead woman at the Crest Motel isn't Tammy Roddick. The deceased checked into the motel, pretending for some reason to be Tammy. It's possible that someone bought the act and killed her because of it. So the real Tammy, out there somewhere, is safe until the truth gets out.

The problem is to find her before the killer realizes his mistake.

Petra is saying something about “… could put her in danger.”

“I'm there already,” Boone says.

Which, to his surprise, shuts her up.

Must be the shock, he thinks. Seeing as how he's ahead of her in the wave, he decides to ride it out. “Then the first step is to find out, if the dead woman isn't Tammy-”

“She isn't.”

“I got that,” Boone says, thinking, Well, it was nice while it lasted. Then: “Who was she?”

“I don't know.”

Boone shakes his head to make sure he heard her say that she didn't know something, then he says, “We'd better find out.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“ We'renot,” Boone says. “ Iam.”

Because Boone knows:

You want to find out about physics, you go to Stephen Hawking; you want to learn about basketball, you go to Phil Jackson; you want to know about women who take their clothes off for a living, you go to

Dave the Love God sits on his lifeguard tower at Pacific Beach and intently scopes two young women making their way up the beach.

“Visible tan lines, fresh,” Dave tells Boone, who's sitting beside him on the tower, in violation of God knows how many rules. The two women, one a slightly overweight blonde with a big rack, the other a taller, skinnier brunette, are walking past now. “Definitely Flatland Barbies. I say Minnesota or Wisconsin, secro-receptionists, sharing a double room. Which makes for a challenge, but not one without its rewards.”

“Dave…”

“I have needs, Boone. I'm not ashamed of them.” He smiles. “Well, I am ashamed of them, but-”

“It doesn't stop you.”

“No.”

Dave is a living legend, both as a lifeguard and a lover. In the latter category, Dave's a tenth-level black belt of the horizontal kata. He's been spread over more tourist flesh than Bain de Soleil. Johnny Banzai insists that Dave is actually listed in Chamber of Commerce brochures as an attraction, right alongside SeaWorld.

“No, really,” Johnny has said. “They go see the Shamu show, they check out the pandas at the zoo, and they fuck Dave.”

“You know what I love about tourist women?” Dave now asks Boone.

The list of possible answers is staggering, so Boone simply says, “What?”

“They leave.”

It's the truth. They come for a good time, Dave gives them one, and then they go home, usually thousands of miles away. They go away, but they don't go away mad. They like Dave every bit as much when they go to bed with him as when he doesn't drive them to the airport.

They even give him references.

Truly, they go home and tell their girlfriends, “You're going to San Diego? You have to look up Dave.”

And they do.

“Doesn't it make you feel cheap and used?” Sunny asked him one morning out in the lineup.

“Yes,” Dave said. “But there are drawbacks, too.”

Although he couldn't think of any at the moment.

It was Dave the Love God who actually coined the term betty, and this is how it happened.

The Dawn Patrol was out one glassy morning, and there were long waits between sets, so there was ample time for a now-infamous and admittedly sick conversation to kick up about which cartoon character they'd most like to have sex with.

Jessica Rabbit got a lot of run, although Johnny Banzai went with Snow White, and Hang Twelve admitted to having a thing for both the girls in Scooby-Doo. Sunny was torn between Batman and Superman (“mystery versus stamina”), and while she was trying to make up her mind, Dave made himself an immortal in surf culture by chiming in, “Betty Rubble.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Then Boone said, “That's sick.”

“Why is that sick?” Dave asked.

“Because it is.”

“But why?” Johnny Banzai asked Dave. “Why Betty Rubble?”

“She'd be great in the sack,” Dave replied calmly, and it was chillingly clear to everyone that he had given this considerable thought. “I'm telling you, those petite sexual hysterics, once they cut loose…”

“How do you know she's a sexual hysteric?” Sunny asked, already having forgotten they were discussing a literally one-dimensional character that existed only in the fictional prehistoric town of, uh, Bedrock.

“Barney's not getting the job done,” Dave replied with supreme confidence.

Anyway, it was just about a half hour later when a petite black-haired woman came down the beach and Johnny Banzai scoped her, grinned at Dave, and pointed.

Dave nodded.

“A real betty,” he said.

It was done.

Dave's specific figment of perverted imagination entered the surfing lexicon and any desirable woman, regardless of hair color or stature, became a “betty.”

But Dave is also legendary as a lifeguard, and for good reason.

Kids in San Diego talk about lifeguards the way NYC kids discuss baseball players. They're role models, heroes, guys you look up to and want to be like. A great lifeguard, male or female, is simply the best waterman around, and Dave is one of the greats.

Take the time that riptide hit-on a weekend, like they always seem to do, when there are a lot of people in the water-and swept eleven people out with it. They all made it back in because Dave was out there almost before it happened. He was already running for the water as it started, and he commanded his crew with such cool efficiency that they got a line out beyond the tide and netted the whole eleven in.

Or the time that snorkler got caught up underwater in the kelp bed that had drifted unusually close to shore. Dave read it by the color of the water, got out there with a knife, dived down, and cut the guy loose. Got him back to shore and did CPR, and the snorkler, who would have drowned or at least suffered brain damage if Dave hadn't been such a powerful swimmer, was just freaked out instead.

Or take the famous tale of Dave's shark.