Dawn Patrol (17 page)

The ladies don’t give him cash—that would make him a prostitute, and Mick doesn’t see himself that way. They give him gifts—clothes, jewelry, watches—but that’s not where the money is.

The money is in their homes.

When Mick gets tired of banging a woman, or she gets tired of him, or the gifts get thin, Mick cashes out. He’s very careful about which women he picks to give him his severance pay—they have to be married, have to have signed a prenup, have to have a real, rooting interest in keeping their marriages intact.

But if a woman qualifies, then Mick puts in a call to a friend who does high-level house burglaries. Mick has her keys, right? He gets them copied, and he knows for a fact when she’s not going to be in the house. So
the woman is snuggled up with Mick in bed in a room overlooking the ocean while Mick’s pal is in her house, taking the jewelry she decided not to wear that day. And maybe her silverware, crystal, artworks, loose cash, anything portable.

Even if the woman figures out that sweet Mick fucked her over, she isn’t going to tell the cops where she was; she’s not going to tell them who might have access and knowledge. She’s going to keep her mouth shut, because, at the end of the day, it’s the insurance company’s problem.

It’s not that Mick does this a lot, just enough to help finance the next big thing.

Mick’s a screenwriter. He hasn’t written a word in about three months, but he has an idea that’s drawn some attention from the assistant to a senior VP at Paramount. It’s a sure thing, just a matter of time, just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

But Mick’s been too busy.

Boone pulls the van up to the valet stand at the Milano, an exclusive, bucks-up hotel in the heart of La Jolla Village.

Calling La Jolla Village a village is like calling the
Queen Mary
a rowboat.

Boone’s always thought of a village as a place with grass huts and chickens running around, or a quiet row of thatch-roofed cottages in one of those English movies that a girl made him go to.

So he’s always been amused at the folksy pretentiousness of calling some of the most expensive real estate on earth a village. The Village occupies a bluff overlooking the ocean, with a magnificent sweep of a view, a cove that features some of the best diving in California, and a small but tasty reef break. There are no grass huts, running chickens, or thatch-roofed cottages. No, this village features platinum-card boutiques, exclusive hotels, art galleries, and froufrou restaurants that cater to the beautiful people.

The Boonemobile looks distinctly out of place in the Village, among the Rollses, Mercedeses, BMWs, Porsches, and Lexuses. Boone thinks that the locals might figure that he’s a cleaner or something, but the house-cleaners in the Village drive better cars than the Boonemobile.

Anyway, he pulls it up to the valet stand at the Milano. A valet ambles over, ready to tell whoever this is that he has the wrong address. Boone thinks he might have the wrong place, too. Several parking valets are standing around, none of them Mick.

Boone rolls down his window. “Hey.”

“Hey, it’s you,” the valet says. He and Boone touch fists. “What brings?”

“Alex, right?”

“Right.”

“Mick around?”

“It’s his day off,” Alex says.

“His day off?” Boone asks. “Or he just didn’t show?”

“Okay, door number two,” Alex says, glancing at Petra. He lowers his voice and adds, “You need a room, I can probably hook you up.”

Boone shakes his head. “I’m good.”

Alex shrugs. “Dude didn’t show today, didn’t show yesterday. He’s gonna lose the gig, he doesn’t straighten up.”

“D’you cover for him?”

“I made up some bullshit story. I dunno, the flu.”

Boone asks, “Where does he lay his head these days?”

“He was crashing with this stripper chick,” Alex says. “In PB.”

“I tried,” Boone says. “He’s not there.”

“Oh, you know her.”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking Mick, huh?” Alex says with a smile of envious admiration.

“Fucking Mick,” Boone agrees. “Anyway, you have his phone number, right?”

“It’s in the shack. I can get it.”

“It would be a help, man. I’d appreciate it.”

“Be right back.”

Alex trots away.

“She’s with this Mick person,” Petra says.

“That’s how I read it,” Boone says.

“Do you think they’re still in town?”

“Not if they’re smart.”

If they’re smart, they’re two days’ drive away, maybe up the coast in Oregon or even Washington. Or they drove out to Vegas, where Tammy could get work easily. Hell, they could be anywhere.

Alex comes back and hands Boone a slip of paper with Mick’s number on it.

“Thanks, bro.”

“No worries.”

“Mick still drive that little silver BMW?” Boone asks.

“Oh yeah. He loves that car.”

“Well, late, man.”

He slips Alex a ten.

“Late.”

Parking valets driving Beemers, Boone thinks. The trophy-wife business must be booming.

He backs out into the street and drives down to the cove and finds a parking spot overlooking the beach where the seals gather. A couple of big males are lying out on the rocks, with tourists standing above them snapping pictures.

“So we think that Mick and Tammy have disguised themselves as sea lions?” Petra asks.

Boone ignores her. He grabs his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Petra asks.

“I’m calling Mick to tell him we’re on our way over.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Yeah.”

“Yo. I mean, Pacific Surf,” Hang says when he picks up.

“Hang?”

“Boone?”

“Get off whatever porn site you’re on and run a reverse for me,” Boone says. He gives him Mick’s phone number.

“That’s a cell phone, Boone.”

“I know.”

“Gonna take a minute.”

Boone knows this, too. Hang will use the number to go on the service provider’s Web site, get a new password for the one he “lost,” then access the billing record to get a home address.

It’s going to take at least five minutes.

Hang’s back on in three.

“Two-seven-eight-two Vista del Playa. Apartment B.”

“Down in Shores?” Boone asks.

“Hold on a sec.”

Boone hears him tapping at some keys, then Hang says, “Yup. You take—”

“No, I got it, thanks.”

Boone pulls out of the slot and heads back up to the Village, then heads north for La Jolla Shores. Mick’s place is only ten minutes away, and Boone already knows what he’s going to find there.

No Mick.

No Mick’s Beemer.

No Tammy.

Dan Silver is already irritable.

And concerned.

What had Eddie said? “Open mike night at Ha Ha’s is over, big man. It’s time you got serious, you feel me?”

Yeah, Dan felt him. Felt him like a rock lodged in his belly. Felt what Red Eddie was telling him, too. Clean up your mess. And what a fucking mess it is. That dumb goddamn roid case Tweety going out and killing the wrong gash.

Amber is scared. She looks small and pale and weak next to him, which she is, all of those three things. He has her sitting in a plain wooden-back chair in the VIP Room and he stands over her, staring down.

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Amber says.

“Didn’t say you did,” Dan says in his best calming voice. “What I’m asking you is, where is Tammy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you like working here?” Dan asks.

“Yes.”

“They treat you good, don’t they?”

Amber nods. “Uh-huh.”

“So you don’t want to get fired.”

“I need this job.”

“I know,” Dan says. “You have a kid, right?”

“Yeah,” Amber says. “And, you know, food, rent, day care …”

“I feel you,” Dan says. He slowly walks behind her, then hauls off and hits her with a lazy punch to the kidneys. Lazy for him, but with his strength, it’s enough to knock her off the chair and send her sprawling on the floor, gasping in pain. “Now you feel
me
.”

He picks her up with one hand and sets her back down again, very gently. Squatting in front of her, he says, “If I hit you in the kidneys one more time, you don’t dance for a month or two. It hurts you just to try to get up off the couch, don’t even think about going to the bathroom.”

Amber drops her face into her hands and starts to cry. “She baby-sat my kid for me so I could go to a movie sometimes.”

“That’s nice.” He walks behind her and raises his fist.

“All I know is that she has a boyfriend,” Amber says quickly. “His name is Mick Penner.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know,” Amber says. “I swear.”

“I believe you, Amber,” Dan says. He takes a roll of bills out of his jeans pocket, hands her a hundred-dollar bill, and says, “You buy something nice for that kid of yours.”

“Let’s go get Tweety taken care of,” Dan says back in the main room.

Boone makes the short drive down to La Jolla Shores.

It might be the prettiest beach in San Diego, Boone thinks. A gentle two-mile curve from the bluffs of beautiful-people La Jolla Village to the south all the way to the Scripps Pier in the north, with the pale sienna cliffs of Torrey Pines in the background.

Just off to his left, to the south, are the twin hotels—the La Jolla Shores and the La Jolla Tennis and Beach Club—that sit right on the beach. And the Tennis and Beach Club houses the famous Marine Room restaurant, where on a stormy night you can sit and eat shrimp and lobster with the waves hitting right against the window.

Boone likes Shores, as the locals simply call it, even though the surf
usually isn’t very challenging, because it’s calm and pretty and people always seem to be having a good time there, whether they’re in the water, playing on the sand, strolling the boardwalk, or having a cookout in the little park that edges the beach. At night, people come down and make bonfires and sit and talk, or play guitars, or dance to the radio, and you can hear all kinds of music down here at night, from rasta to retro folk to the exotic, twisting chants that the groups of Muslim students like.

Boone likes to come down here for that reason, because he thinks it’s what a beach is supposed to be—a lot of different kinds of people just hanging out having a good time.

He thinks that’s what life’s supposed to be, too.

Mick’s car is parked in the narrow alley behind his building.

A silver Beemer with the hopeful vanity plate that reads
SCRNRITR
.

“I’ll be a son of a gun,” Boone says.

“They’re here?” Petra asks, her voice a little high and excited.

“Well, his
car’s
here,” Boone says, trying to lower her expectations. But the truth is, he’s pretty hopeful that they’re in there, too.

“Wait in the van,” he says.

“No way.”

“Way,” Boone says. “If I go in the front, they might come out the back?”

“Oh. All right, then.”

It’s total bullshit, Boone thinks as he gets out of the van, but it will keep her out of my way. He walks up the stairs to Mick’s door and listens.

Faint voices.

Coming from the television.

Other than that, nothing.

Boone tries the door.

It’s locked.

There are two windows on this side of the apartment. The venetian blinds are closed on both, but even through the glass, Boone can smell the dope. Mick and Tammy must be having a hell of a party.

Boone raps on the door. “Mick?”

Nothing.

“Yo,
Mick
.”

No response.

So either they’re in there hiding or in the bedroom, stoned, and can’t
hear anything. Well, Boone thinks, if they can’t hear anything … He kicks the glass in, reaches through the hole, unlocks the window, and slides it open. Then he climbs through.

Mick Penner is asleep on the sofa.

Passed out is more like it. He’s lying facedown, one arm dangling to the floor, his right hand still holding a bottle of Grey Goose.

Boone walks right past him into the bedroom.

No Tammy.

He opens the bathroom door.

No Tammy.

He looks at the back door. Still locked from the inside.

Tammy isn’t here and she didn’t just go out the back. There are no women’s clothes, no makeup in the bathroom, no smell of perfume, moisturizer, hair spray, nail polish, nail polish remover.

It smells like a guy’s place.

A guy on a steep downhill slide.

Stale sweat, old beer, unchanged linens, garbage, a trace of eau de vomit. Mick himself reeks. When Boone steps back into the living room, it’s instantly apparent that the guy hasn’t hauled himself into a shower for a few days.

Mick isn’t cute or pretty right now. If his trophy wives could see him passed out on this couch—his dirty hair disheveled, his teeth green with grime, dried grunge caked around his lips—they wouldn’t be slipping between the clean, crisp sheets of the Milano with him. If they were in a good mood, they might,
might
, drop a quarter into his hand and keep moving.

“Mick.” Boone gently slaps him across the face. “Mick.”

He slaps him again, a little harder.

Mick opens one jaundiced eye. “What?”

“It’s Boone. Boone Daniels. Wake up.”

Mick closes his eye.

“I need you to wake up, dude.” Boone grabs him by the shoulders and sits him up.

“The fuck you doing here?” Mick asks.

“You want some coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“You got any?”

Boone walks into the kitchen area.

Dirty dishes are piled in the sink or strewn over the counter. Empty boxes of microwave meals overflow the garbage can or have just been tossed on the floor. Boone opens the fridge and finds an opened bag of Starbucks espresso on the door shelf. He dumps the grounds out of the filter in the coffeemaker, washes the carafe, finds a new filter, puts the coffee on, and scrubs out a cup while he listens to Mick puking in the bathroom.

Mick emerges, his face dripping with water where he splashed it on himself.

“Fuck, dude,” Mick says.

“You’ve been slamming it,” Boone says.

“Hard.” Mick sniffs his armpits. “God, I stink.”