Hang takes the money and leaves.
Cheerful goes to the Yellow Pages, gets the number of Silver Dan's, and calls it. “Let me speak to Dan Silver,” he says. “Tell him Ben Carruthers is on the line.”
He waits impatiently for Silver to get to the phone.
73
Dan takes his time getting to the phone.
He's a little uneasy about what Ben Carruthers might have to say to him. The real estate mogul is asshole buddies with Boone Daniels.
Or the late Boone Daniels, if the word on the street is right.
Dan had sent one of his guys over to The Sundowner to keep his eyes and ears open, to find out if anyone had seen or heard from Daniels after he did his Houdini on the beach. Daniels is a major fucking pain in the ass, and now he has Tammy Roddick. Except, the word came in that Daniels drove his piece of shit vehicle off the cliff and went out in flames.
So Dan has constructed a hopeful scenario: He hit Daniels with one of his shots. The dumb fuck made it up to his van somehow, but, weak with loss of blood, put the car in drive instead of reverse and went airborne.
Crash and burn.
The even more optimistic version is that Tammy Roddick and her big fucking mouth went over the cliff with him and the fire guys are going to scrape out two crispy critters instead of one. And then there's the mouthy British broad, the one that would rather fuck a pig. Well, maybe her stuck-up twat is melted to the seat springs, too.
Now this old man is calling. What's up with that?
He picks up the phone.
“Dan Silver?”
“Yeah?”
“You know who I am,” Carruthers says. “I'm going to give you my accountant's number; he'll tell you exactly how much I'm worth. I'll pay off your debt to Red Eddie. Cash, interest, I'll put it to bed.”
“Why would you do that?”
“So you call the dogs off Boone Daniels,” Carruthers says.
The fuck? Dan asks himself. Is Daniels alive? He decides to check it out. “I heard he had an accident.”
“I heard that, too,” Carruthers says. “That's the other reason I want you to know how much I'm worth. It's in the eight figures somewhere, and, Dan Silver, if Boone is dead, I'll spend every cent of it to have you tracked down and killed.”
Dial tone.
74
Cheerful had bought the Crystal Pier back in the day when it was pretty run-down. He renovated it and flipped it, with the proviso that he retain the last cottage on the north side of the pier.
He gave the cottage to Boone.
Boone didn't want to take it.
“It's too much, Cheerful,” he said. “Way too much.”
“You saved me millions from that gold-digging little bitch,” Cheerful responded. “Take the cottage. Then you'll always have a place to live.”
Boone didn't take the cottage, not ownership anyway. What he took was a long-term lease at a lower-than- market rent.
So Boone became a permanent resident of the Crystal Pier Hotel. He lives literally over the ocean. He can, and does, hang a fishing pole outside his bedroom window, right into the water. The cottage itself is made up of a small living room with a kitchenette, a bedroom off to one side, and a bathroom off to the other.
Now High Tide drives up to the gate at the base of the pier, kills his headlights, and punches in the code he knows by heart. The gate slides open and High Tide drives the van down the pier all the way to the end, and into a little parking spot, now vacated by the late Boonemobile, next to Boone's cottage.
Boone has been lying down in the back. He gets up, quickly slips over the side, and walks around to the driver's door as the women slide out the passenger side.
“Thanks, bro.”
Tide shakes his head and touches his fist to Boone's.
“Dawn Patrol.”
Tide turns the truck around and drives off the pier. Turns left and parks the truck just behind the new lifeguard station that Dave rules like a feudal warlord. He sits and juggles the phone in his hand, thinking about what he needs to do.
Then he does it.
“Boone wasn't in the van,” he says into the phone. “He's at his place.”
Then Josiah Pamavatuu-former gang banger, football star, surfing stud-lays his head on the steering wheel and sobs.
75
Boone lowers all the window shades and turns on one lamp by the side of the sofa. Then he goes into his bedroom, opens the drawer of his night-stand, and takes out the. 38 that he's saving to shoot Russ Rasmussen.
“You guys need to take hot showers,” he says. Then he runs water into a kettle and puts it on the stovetop. “I'll make something hot to drink.”
Petra is surprised that the place is so neat and clean.
Everything stored in its place-the efficiency of small spaces. A surprisingly good collection of pots and pans hangs from a rack above a small but good-quality butcher's block, on which two expensive Global knives are set on magnetized strips.
The man likes to cook, Petra thinks.
Who would know?
Unsurprisingly, the white walls of the living room are decorated with framed photos of waves, which give Petra an involuntary shudder after what they've just been through. She can't know it, but the pictures are of local breaks-Black's, Shores, D Street, Bird Rock, and Shrink's.
“I'll get you guys something to change into,” Boone says, walking into his bedroom.
Tammy jumps when a big wave goes off like a cannon, sounding like it's crashed right on the cottage.
“Are you all right?” Petra asks.
“I want to talk to Teddy.”
“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Petra says.
Boone emerges from the bedroom carrying a stack of sweatshirts, sweatpants, and socks. “They'll be big for you,” he says, “but they'll keep you warm anyway.”
“Warm is good,” Tammy says. She takes a blue hooded La Jolla Surf Systems sweatshirt and a pair of black sweatpants and goes into the bathroom. Boone and Petra hear the shower running.
“God, that sounds good,” Petra says.
“Yeah, it does.”
“I still have salt water running from my nose,” she says. “I must look a fright.”
