Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [105]
He doesn’t sleep those nights. Despite what he teaches his young charges—that you do your best and then let it go—Dave doesn’t let it go. Maybe it’s ego, maybe it’s his sense of omnipotence in the water, but Dave feels in his heart that he should save everybody, get there in time every time, that he can always snatch a victim out of the ocean’s clutches, never mind what the moana wants.
He’s lost four people in his career: a teenager who got sucked out on a boogie board and panicked; an old man who had a heart attack outside the break and went under; a young woman distance swimmer who was doing her daily swim from Shores over to La Jolla Cove and just got tired; a child.
The child, a little boy, was the worst.
Of course he was.
The screaming mother, the stoic father.
At the funeral, the mother thanked Dave for finding her son’s body.
Dave remembered diving for him, grabbing him, knowing the instant he touched the limp arm that the boy was never going home. Remembered carrying him to shore, seeing the mother’s hopeful face, watching the hope dissolve into heartbreak.
The night of the funeral, Boone came by with a bottle of vodka and they got good and drunk. Boone just sat there and poured as Dave cried. Boone put him to bed that night, slept on the floor beside him, made coffee in the morning before they went to The Sundowner for breakfast.
Never talked about it again.
Never forgot it, either.
Some things you don’t forget.
You just wish you could.
And the chances of losing another one tomorrow are very real, Dave thinks, running through his mind the list of highly skilled, experienced surfers who have died in recent years trying to ride big waves. There were lifeguards out there those days, too, great watermen who did everything they could, but everything wasn’t enough.
What the ocean wants, it takes.
So now he interrupts Eddie’s stream-of-consciousness, polyglot rap and says, “Sorry, bro, it’s not on for tonight.”
“Gots to be tonight,” Eddie says.
“Get someone else, then.”
“I want you.”
He mentions the price—three months of Dave’s salary for plucking people out of the current. Three freaking months of sitting on the tower looking out for other people who go home to their houses, their families, their bank accounts, their trust funds.
Then he says, “You take a walk on me tonight, David, you keep walking. You retire on a lifeguard’s pension, take a job delivering the mail or flipping burgers, bruddah.”
Fuck it, Dave thinks.
I ain’t no George Freeth.
112
There’s a world out there you know nothing about.
Boone’s thinking about this as he leaves Tammy’s apartment, gets back in the BMW, and starts to drive. It’s getting dark and the streetlights are coming on; the ocean is going slate gray and headed toward black.
What were you trying to say, Tammy? Boone thinks.
Okay, back it up again.
Tammy has a picture of a girl named Luce in her apartment. Teddy goes into the reed beds by the strawberry fields and, protected by a bunch of armed mojados, comes out a little while later with the same girl. He takes her to a motel room, feeds her drugs, and is about to rape her, when you bust in. You put Teddy into the wall.
The girl runs, Danny’s muscle comes in. They grab Teddy and he leads them right to where he’s stored Tammy at Shrink’s. You get there first. They try to shoot her, but it doesn’t work. You get her back to your place, tell her about Angela, and …
She’s not surprised.
Tammy knew already.
She didn’t send Angela to the Crest Motel to switch places; she went with her. She was in the motel the night Angela was murdered. Was it a jealousy thing? Did Tammy set Angela up? Did she kill her herself? Tammy’s a big, strong girl; she could have pitched Angela off that balcony.
That would be crazy, because when she left the motel, she went to Angela’s place. She took a shower; she lay down. Made coffee she didn