Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [57]
“I don’t know,” Boone says, “but as your friend, I’m going to strongly suggest you get out of town for a while. Some people are looking for her who are going to be looking for you. You don’t want them to find you. They’re going to ask the same questions I did, but they may not believe your first answers.”
“She’s in trouble,” Mick says.
“Throw some shit in a bag,” Boone says. “Put some serious distance between you and here.”
“I have to find her. I have to help her.”
“You gonna rescue her?” Boone asks. “Then she’ll take you back?”
“I just want her to be okay,” Mick says. “Is that fucked up, or what?”
Actually, Boone thinks, it might be the least fucked-up thing he’s heard all day. He warns Mick to get out of town again, and then he leaves to go see Dr. Theodore Cole.
42
Tweety sits in the office of TNG, looking at his swollen knee. It looks bad; it looks like it’s going to keep him out of the weight room for a while.
“We better get you to the hospital,” Dan says.
Tweety looks sad. “I don’t have health insurance.”
“Not a problem,” Dan says. “I got you covered. Come on.”
Dan and the bouncer lift Tweety to his feet—well, foot-carry him outside—and squeeze him into the front seat of a Ford Explorer. The bouncer gets behind the wheel. Dan gently swings Tweety’s legs in, then gets in the backseat.
Tweety says, “I’m gonna kill that fucking Daniels.”
“We’ll do it for you,” Dan says. He tells the bouncer to head south on the 15, down to Sharp Hospital, the nearest urgent-care facility.
“Oh, man,” Tweety says, “anybody got any Vike or Oxy or something? I need something to kill the pain.”
Dan sticks a .22 pistol in the back of Tweety’s head and pulls the trigger twice.
“Oughta do it,” he says.
You roid-shooting, wrong woman–killing, stupid son of a bitch.
43
“Did you take a nap?” Petra asks when Boone gets back to the van.
“I call them ‘siestas,’ ” Boone says. “It sounds better.”
He fills her in on his conversation with Mick.
“So now we think that Tammy’s with this Teddy person?” Petra asks.
“Or at least he knows where she is,” Boone says. Not that this is necessarily good news. If Tammy went to Teddy and asked him for help, he could have bought her a first-class ticket to Tahiti. For all they know, she’s sitting on a beach with a mai tai resting on her new chest.
Laughing at everybody.
“Where’s this doctor’s office?” Petra asks.
“Right back in La Jolla Village,” Boone replies. Within sight of the Milano. It’s been that kind of back-and-forth day. “But first, we’re going to fuel up.”
She leans over and looks at the fuel gauge. “The tank is three-quarters full.”
“I meant me,” Boone says. “You, too, if you want.”
It’s just a couple of blocks to Jeff’s Burger. It’s a matter of near-religious devotion to Boone never to enter the vicinity of Jeff’s Burger without having one of his burgers. Luckily, there’s a parking spot right out front. Boone pulls the van in, turns off the engine, and asks, “You want something?”
“Actually, a Caesar salad with dressing on the side would be nice.”
“You got it.”
He goes in and orders two cheeseburgers with everything. When the burgers arrive, he dissects one, puts the meat into his own burger, then scrapes the lettuce, tomato, and onions into the lid of the plastic go-plate and goes back to the van.
“What’s this?” Petra asks when he hands her the plate.
“Caesar salad, dressing on the side.”
“In what country, may I ask?”
“Mine,” Boone says. “If you don’t want it, the seagulls will.”
She closes the plate and tosses it over her shoulder into the back of the van. He shrugs and eats as he drives back up to La Jolla Village. The burger tastes great and makes the drive back there go quickly. As they pull into the parking lot of Teddy’s building, Boone calls information and gets Teddy’s number.
“You’re phoning?” Petra asks.
“Hard to put one over on you, Pete.”
“Why not just march in there and demand to speak with him?”
The receptionist has the perfect cultured voice, and Boone guesses that she has the perfect chiseled face