Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

Boone says, “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be lovely.”

“I have herbal or Earl Grey.”

“Earl Grey is perfect.”

“Just plain, right?” Boone asks. “No milk or sugar.”

“Actually, lots of both, please,” she says. “Perhaps it's the near-death experience, but I feel greedy.”

“Nothing like almost dying to let you know how good life is,” Boone says.

Yeah. How good life is, with her full lips and warm neck and sea gray eyes there for the reaching out and her looking in his eyes, her mouth already tasting his, and then the pot whistles like an alarm and their lips don't touch.

“Life imitating bad art,” she says.

“Yeah.” Boone pours the water into a mug and hands it to her.

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

“How about you?” she asks.

“I'll make some coffee.”

Tammy comes out of the bedroom.

It's the first time Boone has really seen her.

She's tall. Not Sunny tall, but tall, with long, lean legs. Her face has clean, strong, natural lines and her eyes, although they look smaller without makeup, are still catlike. But it's a different breed of cat-wild, feral, but somehow calm. She's a striking woman, and it's easy to see why Mick Penner and Teddy fell hard for her. She sits down on the small couch in the middle of the living room and puts her feet up on the coffee table.

Boone says, “Have something hot to drink first. Warm you up inside.”

“Go change,” Petra says. “I can take care of her.”

“She can take care of herself,” Tammy says, getting up. She goes into the kitchen, chooses the herbal tea, and makes a cup. “Go get some dry clothes on, Tarzan. I'll make the coffee.”

Boone goes into his room to change.

“I need to talk with Teddy,” Tammy says.

Petra's gobsmacked. Certainly Tammy realizes that Teddy revealed her hiding place to Dan Silver-in fact, served her up on a plate to save himself. She says, “I'm sure Dr. Cole is fine.”

After all, he did what Dan wanted.

“I want to talk with him.”

“Let's check with Boone about that,” Petra says.

“You're going to do him,” Tammy says to Petra.

“I beg your pardon.”

“If I wasn't here? You'd jump him in the shower.”

“We have a professional relationship.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He's a barbarian.”

“Whatever.”

Whatever, Petra thinks. But is it possible? Am I really feeling something for Daniels? Is it some sort of animal attraction, or perhaps just a residue of the gratitude I'm feeling for him for not letting me die on the beach? Of course, he put me on the beach in the first place. The incompetent boob.

But he was pretty damn competent when the bullets were flying, wasn't he? He was pretty damn competent in the freezing water in the dark, wasn't he?

Boone comes back into the room.

“I'll think I'll have that shower,” she says.

“Yeah, get warm,” Boone says.

She takes some clothes from the stack and goes into the bathroom.

First words out of Tammy's mouth?

“I want to talk to Teddy.”

“Your boyfriend is a pedophile,” Boone says. He tells her about what he saw at the motel up near the strawberry fields. Her face doesn't register any of the possible reactions-shock, anger, indignation, disgust, betrayal…

“I want to talk to Teddy,” she says. “I need to talk to Teddy.”

Boone sighs and runs it down for her. First, they don't know where Teddy is. Second, Teddy already gave her up once; if she calls him now, he'll give her up again. Third, at least for a little while, Dan and the rest of the world have good reason to believe that she's dead, and if she talks to Teddy, they'll have good reason to believe she's alive and try to do something about it.

She's real impressed by the argument. “Where's my phone?”

“Soaked in cold salt water,” Boone says. “I don't think you're going to get a lot of bars.”

“Let me use yours.”

“I was in the water beside you.”

“You don't have a phone in your house?” she asks.

“No.”

“What if people want to get hold of you?”

“That's why I don't have a phone in my house,” Boone says. He doesn't tell her about the three other cellies he has in a kitchen drawer. He's blown away. The woman hasn't said one word or asked one question about her friend Angela, who took her rap for her. All she cares about is a slick boob butcher who likes to do little migrant girls. A guy who gave her up in a heartbeat to save his own worthless ass.

Nice.

“Do you think he's all right?” she asks.

“Couldn't care less.”

“I want to see him.”

“You're not going anywhere.”

“You can't keep me here against my will,” she says.

He's had it. “That's true. Go out there, Tammy. Go find Dr. Short Eyes, see what happens. But don't expect me to come to your funeral.”

“Fuck you,” Tammy says. “I'm a payday to you, that's all. You need me alive so you can pick up your check. It doesn't give you the right to moral judgments, cowboy.”

“You're right.”

“And I don't need you to tell me that,” Tammy says. “I know what you think of me. I'm a stripper-a dumb piece of meat. Either I have a drug problem or I'm fucked up because my daddy didn't pay me enough attention, or else I'm just too lazy to get a real job. I'm a skank. But it doesn't stop you from coming in with your dollar bills, does it?”

True, Boone thinks. And it doesn't stop me wanting to keep you alive. Or is it that I just need to deliver you to the courtroom?

“Stay away from the windows,” Boone says. “Keep your head down. In fact, you might be better off in the bedroom.”

“You think you're the first guy to tell me that?” she asks, eyes hard as emeralds.

“I'll make you a deal,” Boone says. “I don't judge you and you don't judge you.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah.”

She sneers. “What would you know about it, surfer dude?”

“You don't have a monopoly on regrets, Tammy.”

Boone can feel the ocean swell, literally under his feet. The waves push against the pilings, wash through, and then pull on their way out. The big swell is coming, and when it goes out again, it will take with it the life he knew. He can feel it, and it scares the hell out of him. He wants to hold on, but he knows there's no holding on against the sea.

When a tsunami comes in, it hits with incredibly destructive force, crushing lives and homes. But it's almost worse when it recedes, dragging lives out into the endless sea that is the irredeemable past.

Petra gets out of the shower, then wanders into Boone's bedroom, telling herself she's going to catch a quick nap, but really to snoop.

No, not snoop, she thinks.

Simply to find out a little more about the man.

Like the rest of the place, the bedroom is neat and clean. Nothing remarkable about it, save for the fishing pole sticking out of the window, except…

Books.

Used paperbacks on a bedside table and in a small bookcase in the corner. Some stacked by the bed. And not just the sports books or crime novels that she might have expected if she thought that he actually read, but genuine literature-Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Gorky. Over in the corner is a stack of-Can it be? she thinks-Trollope. Our oceangoing nature boy is a crypto-Phineas Finn?

She thinks of all the little jibes she's given him all day about being an uneducated philistine, then thinks about the books that are stacked on her bedside table-trashy romance novels and bodice rippers that she doesn't have to read anyway. And he's been having me on all day, his private little joke.