Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [21]
And prices continued to rise, to the point where the average working person, the man or woman who built the town, can’t even think about buying a place anywhere near the beach and will soon be priced out of the market entirely—threatening to turn the beachfront area into that weird dichotomy of a rich person’s ghetto, where the rich lock themselves inside at night when the streets are taken over by drunk tourists and predatory gangs.
Now Boone drives east on Garnet, past all the clubs and bars and into the area of coffee shops, ethnic restaurants, tattoo parlors, palm-reading joints, used-clothing stores, and fast-food restaurants, then into the mostly residential neighborhood of the flats. He crosses the 5, where Garnet becomes Balboa Avenue, and pulls into the parking lot of Triple A Taxi.
Just around the corner from the old Consolidated Aircraft factory, where Reuben Fleet won the war and Pacific Beach got lost.
18
The taxi office is a small, formerly white clapboard building in need of a paint job. A metal security screen is open, revealing the company logo stenciled in fading red on the front window. Off to the left is a garage, where a taxi is up on a rack. Another half a dozen cabs are parked haphazardly around the parking lot.
“Wait in the van, okay?” Boone says as he turns off the engine.
“And flirt with hepatitis C for what reason?” Petra asks.
“Just stay in the van,” Boone says, “and try to look aggro.”
“ ‘Aggro’?”
“Aggravated,” Boone translates. “Angry, annoyed, pissed off.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult,” she says.
“I didn’t think so.” He takes his watch off and hands it to her. “Take this. Keep it in your lap.”
“You want me to time you?”
“Just do it. Please?”
She smiles. “Cheerful said you’d have a sundial.”
“Yeah, he’s a hoot.”
Boone walks across the parking lot into the dispatch office. A young Ethiopian guy has the chair tipped back and his feet on the desk. Almost all the cab companies in San Diego are run by East African immigrants. Triple A Taxi is a strictly Ethiopian operation, Boone knows, while United Taxi is Eritrean. Sometimes they get into border skirmishes in the taxi line at the airport, but usually they get along okay.
“Can I help you?” the dispatcher asks as Boone walks in. He’s a kid, barely out of his teens. Skinny, dressed in a ratty brown sweater over new 501 jeans that look freshly pressed. He doesn’t take his Air Jordans off the desk. Boone isn’t dressed so you’d have to take your feet off the desk for him.
“Dude,” Boone drawls, so it sounds more like “Duuuuuuude.” “I’m in trouble.”
“Breakdown?”
“Breakup,” Boone replies. “See the chick in the van?”
The dispatcher swings his feet off the desk, brings the chair down on its wheels, adjusts his thick glasses on his nose, and looks out the window into the parking lot. He sees Petra sitting in the van’s passenger seat.
“She’s pissed off,” the dispatcher says.
“Way.”
“How come?”
Boone holds his left wrist out, showing white skin in the exact shape of a watch and band.
“Your watch is missing,” the dispatcher says.
Boone nods in Petra’s direction. “She gave it to me for my birthday.”
“What happened to it?”
Boone sighs. “You keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
I hope not, Boone thinks, then says, “My boys and me partied last night? Some girls dropped in and I got a little friendly with one, maybe a little too friendly, you know what I’m saying, and I wake up and she’s gone. Dude, with the watch.”
“You