Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

“Either of them do anything for you?” Boone asks.

“It's fascinating,” Petra says. “Sort of the car crash phenomenon-you don't want to look, but you can't look away.”

Yeah, you can, Boone thinks, feeling his thirty-second curiosity clock running down.

The girl twisted on the pole is your stereotypical blond knockout with big hair and bigger boobs. She's too attractive for the day shift and she knows it. But she must have done something to piss the manager off- shorted him on his kickback, refused to give him a blow job, or maybe she was just getting uppity and talking about moving to a better club downtown-and now she's being punished by having to slog it out for the low-money losers in the afternoons. Now she's working the salesman hard, hoping that he's drunk enough to spring a hundred for a trip to the VIP Room so she can start earning her way back to nights.

The other girl is strictly day shift. She's petite, her face really isn't pretty, and she's small-chested. Her best feature is her long brown hair, and she's working it hard to make up for her other deficiencies. She has that look of a girl who's been told by everyone everywhere that she just isn't good enough, so she works her ass off making up for it. She works harder at being a better lay; she gets up early to make her latest boyfriend his breakfast; she bails him out of jail after he's beaten her up. She's the kind of girl who'll end up doing bottom-of-the-barrel porn videos because some producer tells her she's pretty.

She's looking down at the stage, in her own world, grinding her hips to the music-but in reality, she's moving to a private sound track of her own. She glances up and sees Boone, then looks right back down again as she turns, flinging her long hair across her back like a flogger, then looks over her shoulder at him again.

Sure enough, when the song ends and a new one begins, she dances off the stage, down onto the floor, and over to his booth.

“I'm Amber,” she says. “Would you like a lap dance?”

“Would you like a lap dance?” Boone asks Petra, aware that she probably thinks a lap dance is something they do in Lapland.

Amber turns her attention to Petra. “I find girls so sensual,” she says. It's a rehearsed line and comes off that way.

“No, thank you,” Petra says, and Boone can tell she's actually trying not to hurt the girl's feelings.

Which is nice, Boone thinks.

“How about you?” Amber asks Boone. “Would you like a lap dance?

Or, for a hundred, we can go into the VIP Room. Wouldn't you like to have some private time with me?”

“Yeah, I would,” Boone says.

“You what?” says Petra.

“I'll make you happy,” Amber says.

“Give me two hundred,” Boone says to Petra.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Give me two hundred dollars,” Boone repeats. “I want to go into the VIP Room.”

“Twice?”

“Just shut up and give me the money.”

Amber doesn't react to any of this. She totally gets digging into her purse and giving her boyfriend money.

“It's going on your expense account,” Petra says, slapping two bills into Boone's outstretched palm. “ Youcan explain to Alan Burke why you-”

“No worries.”

He takes the two hundred and follows Amber through the beaded curtain into the VIP Room.

The VIP Room has a line of easy chairs against one wall, kind of like an old shoe-shine shop.

Amber sits Boone down in one of them as the waitress comes in with a glass of cheap champagne. She hands it to Amber, who, in turn, hands it to Boone as she says, “You can feel my tits, but no kissing, and no touching below the belt.”

The belt? Boone wonders.

She starts to climb on his lap.

“You feel good, ” she says.

Boone lifts her up by the arms and puts her back on the floor.

“Forget about the dance,” he says. “I want to ask you some questions.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, I wasn't molested as a child. No, I'm not a victim of incest. No, I'm not putting myself through college. No, I don't-”

“Do you know Tammy Roddick?”

Amber says, “I'm not supposed to talk about her.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don't want to get in trouble,” she says. “Look, I need this job. I have a kid at home…”

Of course you do, Boone thinks. Of fucking course.

“A hundred for the dance,” Boone says. “Another hundred for anything you can tell me.”

“I can't tell you anything.”

“Can't or won't?”

“Both.” She glances through the curtain to see if the bouncer is there.

He isn't.

“Did you know Angela Hart?”

“What do you mean, ‘did’?”

“She's dead,” Boone says. “They threw her off a motel balcony. It'll be on the news tonight.”

“Oh my God.”

“They'll do the same to Tammy,” Boone says. “I'm trying to find her before they do. If you know anything that can help me, you'll be helping her.”

He keeps an eye on the curtain and an eye on her while she tries to make up her mind. Then she says, “I don't want the money. Angela used to watch my kid sometimes when I couldn't find a sitter.”

“What's your kid look like?”

“What's it to you?”

“It might help.”

“He's-”

“Never mind.”

“All I know about Tammy,” she says, “is that she has a boyfriend.”

“Who?”

“His name is Mick,” Amber says. “He hangs out here a lot.”

“Does Mick have a last name?”

“Penner?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“I'm pretty sure,” Amber says.

Boone asks, “Has he been in today?”

“I haven't seen him in a while,” Amber says; then she looks over Boone's shoulder.

Boone turns and recognizes Tweety.

He's a PB local, hanging around the gym, the GNC store, the bars. Tweety is a juiced-up roid freak with a head even bigger than his huge body. Big flat face with small blue eyes. And he's gigantic-six-six and large-framed already, and whatever shit he's shooting into himself, it's working. He wears a Gold's Gym muscle shirt on the “if you got it, flaunt it” fashion theory. Gray sweatpants over Doc Martens. Tweety sports short-cropped yellow hair: not blond-bright yellow.

Hence the “Tweety” tag.

“Out,” he says to Boone.

“I didn't kiss her or touch her below the figurative belt,” Boone says.

“Out. Now.”

Boone hands Amber a hundred-dollar bill. “Thanks for nothing, bitch. Way to help your friend.”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

Tweety grabs Boone by the elbow. “You don't understand ‘out’?”

“Yeah, I do,” Boone says. “For example, are you out of the closet yet? Is your skull going to pop out of your skin? Has your dick shrunk out of sight yet? Oh, here's another one: Have you thrown a girl out of a building lately?”

Tweety would be the perfect candidate for the job. He could easily have “pressed” Angela and heaved her off the balcony.

Tweety's face turns red.

Guilt, roid rage, or both? Boone wonders.

“Well, have you,” Boone asks, adding, “Tweety?”

Tweety pops a beautiful right cross, plenty of leverage in the hips, weight balanced and coming forward.

Boone isn't there to take it.

He steps to the left, feels the air whoosh by his nose as the heavy fist comes through, then smashes the blade of his foot down into the side of Tweety's kneecap, which dislocates with a sickening pop. Tweety crashes to the floor, rolls into a fetal position, grabs his knee, and howls in pain.

Boone's not exactly eaten up with sympathy. He reaches down, gets his middle and index fingers into Tweety's nostrils, and pulls, because:

1. There are no weights you can pump to strengthen your nose.