Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

“Boone Dawg!” he hollers. “What brings you to my crib?”

“Sorry it's so late.”

“The aloha mat is always out for you,” Eddie says, proffering a joint. “A taste?”

“I'm good.”

“I am surprised to see you, Boone Dawg,” Eddie says. He lights the joint again and takes a hit.

“You mean you're surprised to see me alive, ” Boone says.

“If I wanted you dead,” Eddie says, “you'd be dead. In fact, I laid down very specific rules of engagement to our friend Danny; to wit, Boone Daniels is to be considered a civilian, a big red cross flying over his head, not to be touched.”

“I was shot at,” Boone says.

“And missed,” Eddie replies. “You want some Cap'n Crunch?”

“Yeah.”

“Crunch!” Eddie yells. “Two bowls! And open some fresh fucking milk!”

He looks at Boone and shakes his head. “Entourages these days, you have to tell them every thing.”

He gestures for Boone to sit down in a chair shaped like a palm frond in front of an enormous flat-screen plasma TV showing The Searchers. A minute later, a hui guy comes in with two bowls of cereal and hands one to Boone. Eddie digs in like he hasn't eaten since he was in seventh grade.

“This is good,” Boone says.

“It's Crunch,” Eddie says, putting the DVD on pause. “So, Boone-baba-doone, what do you want?”

“Anything in this world.”

“That's a little vague, bruddah. ”

“‘Anything in this world,’” Boone repeats. “Remember?”

“Riiiiight,”Eddie says. He sets the bowl in his lap and opens his hands wide. “Anything in this world. What is it you want?”

“Tammy Roddick's life.”

“Oh, Boone.”

“She testifies and she walks,” Boone says. He has a spoonful of the cereal, then wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “She gets a lifetime pass.”

“I take you to Cartier,” Eddie says, “and you choose a Timex. I offer you any car on the lot, you pick out a Hyundai. I sit you down at Lutиce, you order a burger and fries. You're selling yourself cheap, Dawgie Boo, cashing in this chip for a stripper.”

“It's my chip,” Boone says.

“It is, it is,” Eddie says. “You sure about this, bro?”

Boone nods.

“Because you are my friend, Boone,” Eddie says. “You gave me back the most precious thing in my life and you are my friend. I'd give you anything. You want the house next door? Yours. You want this house? I move out to night; you move in. So as your friend, Boone, I'm begging you, don't waste this gift. Please, brah, don't throw my generosity away on some cheap gash.”

“It's what I want.”

Eddie shrugs. “Done. I won't lay a hand on the bitch.”

“Thank you,” Boone says. “Mahalo.”

“You know this is going to cost me.”

“I know,” Boone says.

“And it means I'm throwing Danny to the sharks.”

“You leave him to his own karma,” Boone says.

“One way of looking at it.”

Boone asks, “Did you have that woman killed, Eddie?”

“No.”

“Truth?”

Eddie looks him square in the eye. “On the life of my son.”

“Okay.”

“We good?”

“We're good.”

“More Crunch?”

“No, I'd better get going,” Boone says. Then: “I dunno, what the hell, why not.”

“More Crunch!”Eddie yells. “You ever see The Searchers in high-def?”

“No.”

“Me, neither,” Eddie says. “I mean, I've never seen it all.”

Eddie hits some buttons on the remote and the DVD comes back on. The image is so good, it almost feels like John Wayne is real.

Danny comes back into the room when Boone leaves.

“You sold me out?” he asks Eddie.

Eddie shakes his head. “Mo bettuh you think for once before you open your poi hole,” Eddie says. “What did I promise him? I promised him that the bitch gets to waste more air. So fucking what?”

“So she'll testify,” Danny says. “She'll tell what she saw, what she knows-”

“Then we had better provide her with some motivation to the contrary,” Eddie says. “What does she want?”

Two years at Wharton, you can sum up what he learned in four words:

Everybody

Has

A

Price.

The girl Luce lies on a bare, dirty mattress.

She's sad and scared, but somewhat comforted by the presence of the other girls, who lie around her like a litter of puppies. She can feel the warmth of their skin, hear their breathing, smell their bodies, the sour but familiar smell of sweat and dirt.

In the background, a shower nozzle drips with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat.

Luce tries to sleep, but when she closes her eyes, she sees the same thing-a man's feet as seen from under the hotel bed. She hears Angela's muffled cry, sees her feet being lifted. Feels again her own terror and shame as she cowered under the bed as the feet walked out again. Remembers lying there in an agony of indecision-to stay hidden or run. Recalls the nerve it took to get up, go to the balcony, and look over the edge. Sees again the hideous sight-Angela's broken body. Like a doll tossed on a trash pile back in Guanajuato.

Now she hears footsteps again. She pulls the thin blanket tightly over her shoulders and clamps her eyes shut-if she cannot see, perhaps she cannot be seen.

Then she hears a man's rough voice.

“Which one is she?”

Heavy footsteps as men walk around the mattresses, stop, and walk again. She pulls the blanket tighter, squeezes her eyes shut until they hurt. But it does no good. She feels the feet stop above her, then hears a man say:

“This one.”

She doesn't open her eyes when she feels the big hand on her shoulder. She risks moving her hand to grab the cross on her neck and squeeze it, as if it could prevent what she knows is going to happen. Hears the man say, “It's all right, nena. No one is going to hurt you.”

Then she feels herself being lifted.

Dawn comes to Pacific Beach.

A pale yellow light that infiltrates the morning fog like a faint, unsteady glimpse of hope.

Alone surfer sits on his board on the burgeoning sea.

It isn't Boone Daniels.

Nor is it Dave the Love God, or Sunny Day, or High Tide, or Johnny Banzai.

Only Hang Twelve has come out this morning. Now he sits alone, waiting for people who are not going to show up.

The Dawn Patrol is missing.

The girls emerge from the tree line that edges the strawberry fields.

Walk like soldiers on patrol toward the bed of reeds.

Teddy Cole watches them come.

He's slept rough in the reeds, his body aches with cold, and he shivers as he tries to focus on the girls' forms, peers through the mist, trying to make out individual faces. He smells the acrid smoke of a cook fire behind him, tortillas heating on a flat pan set on the open flame.

Teddy watches as the girls become distinct forms and now he sees the subtle differences in their stature and gait. He knows each of these girls- their arms and legs, the texture of their skin, their shy smiles. His heart starts to pound with anxiety and hope as distinct faces come into focus.

But hers is not one of them.

He looks again, fighting against disappointment and an ineffable sense of loss, but she isn't there.

Luce is gone from The Dawn Patrol.

Sunny sits at her computer with her herbal tea and checks on the swell.

Not that she needs a sophisticated computer program to tell her that the big swell is coming like Christmas, tomorrow morning. She can feel it burgeoning out there. A heavy, pregnant sea. She can feel her heartbeat matching the intensity of the coming waves-a heavy bass drumbeat in her chest.