Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

Dave's not so sure. Freaking legend or no, he's going to have all he can handle tomorrow, and more. The water is going to be a freaking zoo, with every big-name surfer and a few dozen wannabes out there in surf that should be black-flagged anyway, trying to ride waves that are genuinely dangerous. People are going to go into the trough, get trapped in the impact zone under the crushing weight of the big waves, and someone is going to have to go in there and pull them out, and that someone is probably going to be Dave. So being out all night and then coming into a situation where he needs to be absolutely on top of his game is not a good idea.

He doesn't want to lose anyone tomorrow.

Dave the Love God lives his life by the proposition that you can save everybody. He couldn't get up in the morning if he didn't think that, all evidence and personal experience notwithstanding.

The truth is that he has lost people, has dragged their blue and swollen bodies in from the ocean and stood watching the EMTs trying to bring them back, knowing that their best efforts will be futile. That sometimes the ocean takes and doesn't give back.

He doesn't sleep those nights. Despite what he teaches his young charges-that you do your best and then let it go-Dave doesn't let it go. Maybe it's ego, maybe it's his sense of omnipotence in the water, but Dave feels in his heart that he should save everybody, get there in time every time, that he can always snatch a victim out of the ocean's clutches, never mind what the moana wants.

He's lost four people in his career: a teenager who got sucked out on a boogie board and panicked; an old man who had a heart attack outside the break and went under; a young woman distance swimmer who was doing her daily swim from Shores over to La Jolla Cove and just got tired; a child.

The child, a little boy, was the worst.

Of course he was.

The screaming mother, the stoic father.

At the funeral, the mother thanked Dave for finding her son's body.

Dave remembered diving for him, grabbing him, knowing the instant he touched the limp arm that the boy was never going home. Remembered carrying him to shore, seeing the mother's hopeful face, watching the hope dissolve into heartbreak.

The night of the funeral, Boone came by with a bottle of vodka and they got good and drunk. Boone just sat there and poured as Dave cried. Boone put him to bed that night, slept on the floor beside him, made coffee in the morning before they went to The Sundowner for breakfast.

Never talked about it again.

Never forgot it, either.

Some things you don't forget.

You just wish you could.

And the chances of losing another one tomorrow are very real, Dave thinks, running through his mind the list of highly skilled, experienced surfers who have died in recent years trying to ride big waves. There were lifeguards out there those days, too, great watermen who did everything they could, but everything wasn't enough.

What the ocean wants, it takes.

So now he interrupts Eddie's stream-of-consciousness, polyglot rap and says, “Sorry, bro, it's not on for tonight.”

“Gots to be tonight,” Eddie says.

“Get someone else, then.”

“I want you. ”

He mentions the price-three months of Dave's salary for plucking people out of the current. Three freaking months of sitting on the tower looking out for other people who go home to their houses, their families, their bank accounts, their trust funds.

Then he says, “You take a walk on me tonight, David, you keep walking. You retire on a lifeguard's pension, take a job delivering the mail or flipping burgers, bruddah. ”

Fuck it, Dave thinks.

I ain't no George Freeth.

There's a world out there you know nothing about.

Boone's thinking about this as he leaves Tammy's apartment, gets back in the BMW, and starts to drive. It's getting dark and the streetlights are coming on; the ocean is going slate gray and headed toward black.

What were you trying to say, Tammy? Boone thinks.

Okay, back it up again.

Tammy has a picture of a girl named Luce in her apartment. Teddy goes into the reed beds by the strawberry fields and, protected by a bunch of armed mojados, comes out a little while later with the same girl. He takes her to a motel room, feeds her drugs, and is about to rape her, when you bust in. You put Teddy into the wall.

The girl runs, Danny's muscle comes in. They grab Teddy and he leads them right to where he's stored Tammy at Shrink's. You get there first. They try to shoot her, but it doesn't work. You get her back to your place, tell her about Angela, and…

She's not surprised.

Tammy knew already.

She didn't send Angela to the Crest Motel to switch places; she went with her. She was in the motel the night Angela was murdered. Was it a jealousy thing? Did Tammy set Angela up? Did she kill her herself? Tammy's a big, strong girl; she could have pitched Angela off that balcony.

That would be crazy, because when she left the motel, she went to Angela's place. She took a shower; she lay down. Made coffee she didn't drink, toast she didn't eat. Then she called Teddy, who hid her out at Shrink's. You put some heat on him and he ran, not to Tammy but to…

The strawberry fields, looking for the girl.

And Teddy knew right where to look for her because he'd been there before. He drove right to the strawberry fields, and when I tried to follow him, I got the shit beat out of me by a trio of very angry mojados kicking and punching me and calling me a Pendejo, lambioso…

Bastard, ass-licker…

… picaflor.

Child molester.

So they were used to guys coming to the reeds to look for little girls. That's what they thought I was doing there, so that must be a place where pedophiles go. And the guy with the shotgun, the kid with the machete, the old man, they were fed up with it. They saw a chance to do something about it and they did it, except…

It was okay for Teddy to go to the strawberry fields to find a little girl, but not me. They let him through, but they stopped me, so

… You're a moron, Daniels, he tells himself. The mojados weren't selling the kid; they were protecting her. But they let Teddy take her to the motel room.

He pulls onto Crystal Pier, gets out of the car, and goes into his place. Walks into the bedroom, goes to the desk, and opens the drawer.

Rain Sweeny looks up at him.

She has a silver chain with a cross around her neck.

“Talk to me,” Boone says. “Please, honey, talk to me.”

There's a world out there you know nothing about…

… If you'd seen what I've seen.

Boone sets the picture of Rain down and gets the pistol from his night-stand. Sticks it in the waistband of his jeans and heads back out.

He's going to make this right, but he has one place to stop first.

Make that right, too.

Sunny goes over to the wall to inspect her quiver of boards.

Her quiver is her toolbox, her fortune, her biggest investment. Every spare dollar left after food and rent has gone into boards-short boards, long ones of different shapes and designs for different kinds of surf. Now she selects her big gun, pulls it off the rack, takes it from its bag, and lays it on the floor.

It's a real rhino chaser-ten feet long, custom-shaped for her, it cost twelve hundred dollars, a lot of tips at The Sundowner. She examines it for nicks or hairline cracks; then, finding none, she checks the fins to make sure they're in solidly. She'll wait until morning to wax it, so she puts it back in its bag and up on the rack. Then she takes down her other big gun, a spare, because waves like this could easily snap a board in half and, if that happens, she wants to have another ready to go so she can get right back out there.