“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.
39
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.
40
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.
