Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

“And we'll hold up ours,” Eddie replies. “Just not yet. You have to develop a little patience, tita. It's a virtue.”

“When?”

“When what?” Eddie asks, taking a huge bite of the taco. The salsa drips from the side of his mouth.

“When do you hold up your end of the deal?”

“Some things have to happen first,” Eddie says. “Things go as planned, you keep that sexy mouth shut… tomorrow morning.”

“Where?”

Eddie smiles, wipes the salsa from his lips, and sings, “‘Let me take you down, cos I'm going to…’”

Boone can't let go of Teddy D-Cup.

Lying there on the metal bench, his mind keeps going back to Teddy in the motel room with the little mojada girl. Natch you can't let go of it, he tells himself. Face it, you have a serious jones going for pedophiles. Don't let it twist your thinking on this.

Yeah, but it's not, Boone thinks. There's something there, something about the Teddy-Tammy connection that doesn't jive.

Work through it.

Tammy leaves Mick Penner for Teddy. No surprise there-she's trading up, except most of Teddy's strippers work him for some cosmetic work, and Tammy hasn't had a stitch of plastic surgery. Okay, maybe she just didn't want any or they haven't gotten around to it yet.

Mick knows his girl is doing Teddy because he followed them to the cheap motel up near the strawberry fields. Which doesn't make any sense, because Teddy could do his matinees at any upscale hotel in La Jolla, or even at Shrink's, and a girl like Tammy would expect-in fact, insist on- a little luxury.

So why does he take her to the cheap joint all the way up in O'side?

Because it's near the strawberry field where he picks up a little mojada girl. But that doesn't make any sense. You'd think that's the last place he'd take Tammy; you'd think the good doctor would want to keep that little assignation way deep on the down low.

It doesn't make sense on another level: Pedophiles are pedophiles because they like little girls, not grown women. But Teddy is notorious for banging fully grown strippers and got his nickname for giving them big, fully grown, triple-X adult boobs.

Teddy D-Cup likes women.

Yeah, except, you saw him in the room with the child, so…

A guy's staring at him from across the cell. Big guy who looks like he hits the weight room pretty regularly.

“What?” Boone asks.

“You remember me?”

The whole cell is quiet, watching this develop, hoping for a little relief from the mind-numbing monotony of jail.

“No,” Boone says. “Should I?”

“You tossed me out of The Sundowner once.”

“Okay.” Like, big freaking deal, Boone thinks. I've thrown a lot of idiots out of The Sundowner.

The guy gets up and stands over Boone. “But you ain't got your big Samoan buddy or that other guy with you now, do you?”

Boone sort of remembers him now. East County guy who got a turista drunk and was going to take her somewhere for a gang bang. He makes a point of looking around the cell, then says, “No, I don't see either of them here. So?”

“So, I'm going to beat the shit out of you.”

“I don't want any trouble.”

The guy sneers. “I don't give a fuck what you want.”

A biker sitting against the wall asks Boone, “You want us to take care of this?”

“No, but thanks,” Boone says. He's had a bad day, a really bad day that's not going to get any better. He hasn't had any sleep, he's aching and tired and irritable, and now this pumped-up kook is trying to make his day even worse.

“Get up,” the guy says.

“I don't want to.”

“Pussy.”

“Okay, I'm a pussy,” Boone says.

“You're my bitch.”

“If you say so,” Boone says, folding his arms across his chest and closing his eyes. He feels the guy reach out to grab him, flicks his hands out to separate the guy's arms, then knife-edges both his own hands into the guy's neck.

The guy is done now; he just doesn't know it yet. Stunned from the double strike to the carotids, he can't react quickly enough as Boone slides his hands around the back of his neck, holds his head, and brings his knee up three times into his chin. Boone lets go, pushes, and the guy slides to the floor unconscious, blood trickling from his mouth.

Boone lies back down.

There's a short pause; then the tweeker who had offered Boone a bologna sandwich and a blow job scoots over to rob the unconscious man. He reaches inside his shirt and yanks out a small chain with a little crucifix on it, holds it up to Boone, and asks, “You want this?”

Because jailhouse law says it belongs to Boone by right of conquest.

Boone shakes his head.

Thinking, You're an idiot, Daniels.

A total barney.

He gets up from the bench, steps over a few guys to get to the bars, and calls out to the jailer. “Yo, bro! Any word on me getting out of here?”

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.