Don Winslow: Dawn Patrol

For an accountant and businessman, Boone Daniels is Mount Everest.

“As your accountant,” he tells Boone now, “I strongly advise you to take the case.”

“How about as my landlord?”

“I strongly advise you to take the case.”

“Are you going to evict me?”

“You have negative cash flow,” Cheerful says. “Do you know what that means?”

“It means I have more money going out than I have coming in.”

“No,” Cheerful says. “If you were paying your bills, you'd have more money going out than coming in.”

Boone performs the complicated maneuver of putting on jeans while still keeping the towel wrapped around him as he moans, “Twelve to twenty feet… double overheads…”

“Oh, stop whinging,” Petra says. Whinge is one of her favorite Brit words-a combination between a whine and a cringe. “If you're as good as your reputation, you'll find my witness before your swelling goes down.”

She proffers a file folder.

Boone pulls a North Shore T-shirt over his head, followed by a hooded Killer Dana sweatshirt, slips into a pair of Reef sandals, takes the file, and walks downstairs.

“Where are you going?” Petra calls after him.

“Breakfast.”

“Now?”

“It's the most important meal of the day.”

Despite his name, Dan Silver always wears black.

For one thing, he'd look pretty stupid dressed in silver. He knows this for a fact, because back when he was a professional wrestler, he dressed all in silver and he looked pretty stupid. But what the hell else was a wrestler named Dan Silver going to wear? He started off as a good guy, but soon found out that the wrestling fans didn't buy him as a hero. So he traded the silver for black and became a villain by the name of “Vile Danny Silver,” which the fans did buy.

And, anyway, bad guys made more money than good guys.

A life lesson for Danny.

He did about five years in the WWE, then decided that it was easier dealing with strippers than getting the shit kicked out of you three nights a week, so he cashed out and opened his first club.

Now Dan has five clubs, and he still dresses in black because he thinks the black makes him look sexy and dangerous. And slim, because Dan is starting to get that fifties tire around his waist, some heavy jowls, and a second chin, and he doesn't like it. He also doesn't like that his rust red hair is starting to thin and black clothes can't do a thing about it. But he still wears a black shirt, black jeans, and a thick black belt with a wide silver buckle, as well as black cowboy boots with walking heels.

It's his trademark look.

He looks like a trademark asshole.

Now he goes to meet the guy down on Ocean Beach near the pier.

The sea is kicking up like a nervous Thoroughbred in the starting gate. Dan could give a shit. He's lived by the water all his life, never been in it above his ankles. The ocean is full of nasty stuff like jellyfish, sharks, and waves, so Dan's more of a Jacuzzi man.

“You ever hear of anyone drowning in a hot tub?” he asked Red Eddie when the subject of getting into the ocean came up.

Actually, Red Eddie had, but that's another story.

Now Dan walks up the beach and meets Tweety.

“You take care of it?” Dan asks.

Dan is a big guy, six-four and pushing 275, but he looks small standing face-to-face with Tweety. Fucking guy is built like an industrial-size refrigerator and he's just as cold.

“Yeah,” Tweety says.

“Any trouble?” Dan asks.

“Not for me. ”

Dan nods.

He already has the cash, twenty one-hundred-dollar bills, rolled into one of his thick hands.

Two grand to pitch a woman off a motel balcony.

Whoever said life is cheap overpaid.

It's too bad, Dan thinks, because that was one hot chick, and a little freak to boot. But she'd seen something she shouldn't have seen, and if there's one thing Dan's learned about strippers after twenty-plus years of trying to manage them is that they can't keep their legs or their mouths shut.

So the girl had to go.

It's no time for taking chances.

There's another shipment due in, and the merchandise is worth a lot of money, and that kind of money you don't let some dancer jeopardize, even if she is a freak.

Dan slips Tweety the money and keeps walking, making sure to stay far away from the water.

Boone usually eats breakfast at The Sundowner.

For one thing, it's next door to his office. It also serves the best eggs machaca this side of… well, nowhere. Warm flour tortillas come on the side, and, as we've already established, everything…

Although mobbed with tourists in the afternoon and at night, The Sundowner is usually inhabited by locals in the morning, and it has a congenial decor-wood-paneled walls covered with surfing photos, surfing posters, surfboards, broken surfboards, and a television monitor that runs a continuous loop of surf videos.

Plus, Sunny works the morning shift, and the owner, Chuck Halloran, is a cool guy who comps Boone's breakfast. Not that Boone is a free-loader; it's just that he deals largely in the barter economy. The arrangement with Chuck has never been formalized, negotiated, or even discussed, but Boone provides sort of de facto security for The Sundowner.

See, in the morning it's a restaurant full of locals, so there is never a problem. But at night it's more of a bar and tends to get jammed up with tourists who've come to PB for the raucous nightlife and to provoke the occasional hassle.

Boone is often in The Sundowner at night anyway, and even if he isn't, he lives only two blocks away, and it just sort of evolved that he deals with problems. Boone is a big guy and a former cop and he can take care of business. He also hates to fight, so more often than not he uses his laid-back manner to smooth the rough alcoholic waters, and the hassles rarely escalate to physical confrontations.

Chuck Halloran believes that this is the best kind of problem solving, taking care of a situation before it becomes a problem, before damage is done, before the cops get involved, before the Liquor Licensing Board gets to know your name.

So one night a few years back, Chuck's eyeballing a situation where a crew of guys from somewhere east of the 5 (doesn't matter specifically where-once you're east of Interstate 5, it's all the same) are about to leave with a young turista who's about three sips from unconscious. Chuck overhears the word train.

So, apparently, does Boone, because he gets up from his seat at the bar and sits down at the booth with the guys. He looks at the one who is clearly the alpha male, smiles, and says, “Dude, it's not cool.”

“What isn't?” The guy is big; he puts his time in at the gym, takes his supplements. One of those barrel-chested chuckleheads, his shirt opened to his chest and a chain with a crucifix nestled into his fur. He's got enough brew down him to think it's a good idea to get hostile.

“What you have in mind,” Boone says, jutting his chin at the young lady, who is now taking a brief nap with her head on the table. “It's not cool.”

“I dunno,” Bench Press says, grinning at his crew. “I think it's cool.”

Boone nods and smiles. “Bro, I'm tellin' ya, it's not on. We don't do that kind of thing here.”

So Bench Press says, “Who are you, like the sheriff here?”

“No,” Boone says. “But she's not leaving with you.”

Bench Press stands up. “ Yougonna stop me?”

Boone shakes his head, like he can't believe this walking clichй.

“That's what I thought, bitch,” Bench Press says, mistaking Boone's gesture. He reaches down and grabs the turista by the elbow and shakes her awake. “Come on, babe, we're all gonna party.”