Sunny thought that this was a cathartic moment, that he'd start to heal after this, that things would get better.
She was wrong.
He just sank deeper into his depression, slowly drowning in his guilt and shame.
Johnny Banzai tried to talk to him. Came over one day and said, “You know that girl was almost certainly dead before you picked up Rasmussen. All the data show that-”
“Sunny ask you to come over?”
“What difference-”
“Fuck your ‘data,’ Johnny. Fuck you.”
The whole Dawn Patrol tried to work him out of it. No good. Even Red Eddie came by.
“I have all my people out,” Eddie said, “looking for your girl, looking for that sick bastard. If he raises his head anywhere, Boone, I'll have him.”
“Thanks, Eddie,”
“Anything for you, bruddah, ” Eddie said. “Anything in this world.”
But it didn't happen. Even Eddie's soldiers couldn't find Russ Rasmussen, couldn't find Rain Sweeny. And Boone sank deeper and deeper into his depression.
A month later, Sunny gave him an ultimatum. “I can't live like this,” she said. “I can't live with you like this. Either you go get some help or…”
“Or what? Come on, say it, Sunny.”
“Or find another place to live.”
He took the “or.”
She knew he would.
You don't give a guy like Boone an ultimatum and expect any other result. The truth was, she was relieved to see him go. She was ashamed of it, but she was glad to be alone in her place. Alone was better.
Better for him, too.
He knew that he was just taking her down with him.
If you're going to sink, he told himself, at least have the decency to sink alone. Go down with your own ship.
Alone.
So he left the police force, he left Sunny, he left his friends, The Dawn Patrol, and he left surfing.
Never turn your back on the ocean.
You may think you can walk away from it, but you can't. The pull of the tide brings you back; the water in your blood yearns for its home-coming. And one morning, after two more months of lying around his apartment, Boone picked up his board and paddled out alone. He didn't think about it, had no intention of going out that morning; he just went.
The ocean healed him-slowly and not completely, but it healed him. He went out in the roughest, baddest surf he could find; he wandered from break to break like Odysseus trying to navigate his way home. At Tourmaline, Rockslide, Black's, D Street, Swami's, Boone sought the pounding he felt that he deserved, and the ocean gave it to him.
It beat him, battered him, scrubbed his skin with salt and sand. He'd trudge home exhausted and sleep the sleep of the dead. Get up with the sun and do it again. And again and again, until one morning he reappeared at The Dawn Patrol.
It was nothing dramatic-there was no moment of decision-it was just that he was there in the lineup when the rest of them paddled out. Johnny, High Tide, Dave, and Sunny. Nobody said anything to him about it; they just picked up where they'd left off, as if he'd never been gone.
On the beach at the end of that session, Johnny asked him, “What are you going to do now?”
“You're looking at it.”
“Just surf?”
Boone shrugged.
“Did you win the lottery?” Johnny asked. “You need to make a living, don't you?”
“Yeah.”
Dave offered to get Boone on as a lifeguard. He'd need to take a couple of courses, Dave said, but it should only take about six months. Boone declined; he figured he wasn't that good at guarding people's lives.
It was Johnny's idea for Boone to get his PI's license.
“All kinds of work for ex-cops,” Johnny said. “Insurance investigations, security, bond jumpers, matrimonial stuff.”
Boone went with it.
He wasn't thrilled about it, but that was the point. He didn't want a job that he loved. You love something, it hurts when you lose it.
Which is what worried Sunny. To the rest of his world, Boone was back, same as he ever was-laid-back, joking, refining the List of Things That Are Good, grilling fish on the beach at night, making supper for his friends, wrapping everything in a tortilla. Among The Dawn Patrol, Sunny was the only one who knew that Boone wasn't back, not fully. She suspected that he now inhabited a world of diminished expectations, both of himself and of other people, of life itself. That Boone only wanted to work enough to support his surfing jones might have seemed hip, but she understood it as the disappointment that it was.
Disappointment in life.
In himself.
They stayed close; they stayed tight. They even slept together now and then for old times' sake or out of loneliness. But they both knew it wasn't going anywhere and they both knew why-Sunny knew that Boone was still missing a piece of himself, and neither she nor he was willing to settle for anything less than the whole man.
The ironic thing was that it was Boone who pushed her to be everything she could be. Boone who did for her what she couldn't do for herself, and what she couldn't do for him. It was Boone who told her that she couldn't settle for anything less than her dream. When she was discouraged and ready to sell out, get a real job, it was Boone who told her to hang in, keep waiting tables so that she could surf, that success was riding the next wave her way.
Boone wouldn't let her quit.
The way he quit on himself.
What Sunny doesn't know is that Boone's still trying to find Russ Rasmussen. In those soulful hours of the morning, he sits at his computer at home, tracking him down. Trying to find a trail-a Social Security number showing up on a job, a rental application, a gas bill, anything. When he runs into skells, he asks them if they've heard anything about Rasmussen, but none of them have.
When the man disappeared, he disappeared.
Maybe he's dead, taking the truth with him.
But Boone doesn't give up. Boone Daniels, one of the most peaceful creatures in the universe, keeps a. 38 in his apartment. He never takes it out, never carries it. He just saves it for the day when he finds Russ Rasmussen. Then he's going to walk the man to a quiet place, make him talk, and then put a bullet in his head.
30
Boone walks back to the office.
To the office, not into the office.
What he's going to do is just get in his van and take off to Angela Hart's place. If Angela took Tammy's place, there's a good chance that Tammy took Angela's. Anyway, it's the best shot he has. And he needs to hurry, because Johnny Banzai's gonna figure out on the quick that he's got the wrong ID and he'll be on it.
So will Danny Silver, Boone thinks. Cops get comped at strip bars, for the same reasons he gets free nosh at The Sundowner, so there's any number of guys who could have given Danny the heads-up.
It doesn't really matter who it is, Boone thinks; it only matters that it is, and now we're in a race to get to
