Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [106]
The strawberry fields, looking for the girl.
And Teddy knew right where to look for her because he’d been there before. He drove right to the strawberry fields, and when I tried to follow him, I got the shit beat out of me by a trio of very angry mojados kicking and punching me and calling me a—
Pendejo, lambioso …
Bastard, ass-licker …
… picaflor.
Child molester.
So they were used to guys coming to the reeds to look for little girls. That’s what they thought I was doing there, so that must be a place where pedophiles go. And the guy with the shotgun, the kid with the machete, the old man, they were fed up with it. They saw a chance to do something about it and they did it, except …
It was okay for Teddy to go to the strawberry fields to find a little girl, but not me. They let him through, but they stopped me, so … You’re a moron, Daniels, he tells himself. The mojados weren’t selling the kid; they were protecting her. But they let Teddy take her to the motel room.
He pulls onto Crystal Pier, gets out of the car, and goes into his place. Walks into the bedroom, goes to the desk, and opens the drawer.
Rain Sweeny looks up at him.
She has a silver chain with a cross around her neck.
“Talk to me,” Boone says. “Please, honey, talk to me.”
There’s a world out there you know nothing about.…
… If you’d seen what I’ve seen.
Boone sets the picture of Rain down and gets the pistol from his night-stand. Sticks it in the waistband of his jeans and heads back out.
He’s going to make this right, but he has one place to stop first.
Make that right, too.
113
Sunny goes over to the wall to inspect her quiver of boards.
Her quiver is her toolbox, her fortune, her biggest investment. Every spare dollar left after food and rent has gone into boards—short boards, long ones of different shapes and designs for different kinds of surf. Now she selects her big gun, pulls it off the rack, takes it from its bag, and lays it on the floor.
It’s a real rhino chaser—ten feet long, custom-shaped for her, it cost twelve hundred dollars, a lot of tips at The Sundowner. She examines it for nicks or hairline cracks; then, finding none, she checks the fins to make sure they’re in solidly. She’ll wait until morning to wax it, so she puts it back in its bag and up on the rack. Then she takes down her other big gun, a spare, because waves like this could easily snap a board in half and, if that happens, she wants to have another ready to go so she can get right back out there.
Then she checks her leash, the five-foot cord that attaches at one end to the board, on the other end to a Velcro strap around her ankle. The invention of the leash made it possible to ride big waves, because the surfer could retrieve the board before it crashed into the rocks.
But it’s a double-edged sword, the leash. On the one hand, it helps potential rescuers find a surfer trapped underwater in the impact zone, because the board will pop to the surface and “headstone,” and divers can follow the leash down to the surfer. On the other hand, though, the cord can get tangled on rocks or coral reefs and trap the surfer under the water.
Hence the Velcro “easy release” strap, and now Sunny practices her release. She straps the leash to her ankle and lies flat on the floor, then bends all the way forward and rips the Velcro off, removing the leash. She does this ten times from a lying-flat position, then rolls onto her side and does it ten more times each from the right and left side. Then she puts her feet up on the back of her couch, lies on the floor, and pulls herself up to rip the Velcro off. The routine builds the abdominal strength that could one day save her life if she’s trapped underwater and has to do one of these “sit-ups” against a strong current of water pushing her back. It’s a mental discipline, too, practicing in the calm, dry apartment so that the move will become so automatic that she can do it underwater,