Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [7]
So by the time he was eleven, Boone was your classic gremmie.
A gremmie is nature’s revenge.
A gremmie, aka “grom,” is a longhaired, sun-bleached, overtanned, preadolescent, water-borne, pain-in-the-ass little surfer. A gremmie is karmic payback for every annoying, obnoxious, shitty little thing you did when you were that age. A gremmie will hog your wave, ruin your session, jam up the snack bar, and talk like he knows what he’s talking about. Worse, your gremmie runs in packs with his little gremmie buddies—in Boone’s case, this had been little Johnny Banzai and a young Dave the yet-to-be Love God—all of them equally vile, disgusting, smart-mouthed, obscene, gross little bastards. When they’re not surfing, they’re skateboarding, and when they’re not surfing or skateboarding, they’re reading comics, trying to get their filthy little mitts on porn, trying (unsuccessfully) to pull real live girls, scheming to get adults to buy beer for them, or trying to score weed. The reason parents let their kids surf is that it’s the least sketchy thing that the board monkeys get up to.
As a gremmie, Boone got his fair share of shit from the big guys, but he also got a little bit of a pass because he was Brett and Dee Daniels’s kid, glossed “the Spawn of Mr. and Mrs. Satan” by a few of the crankier old guys.
Boone grew out of it. All gremmies do, or they’re chased out of the lineup, and besides, it was pretty clear early on that Boone was something special. He was doing scary-good things for his age, then scary-good things for any age. It wasn’t long before the better surf teams came around, inviting him onto their junior squads, and it was a dead lock that Boone would take home a few armloads of trophies and get himself a sweet sponsorship from one of the surf-gear companies.
Except Boone said no.
Fourteen years old, and he turned away from it.
“How come?” his dad asked.
Boone shrugged. “I just don’t do it for that,” he said. “I do it for …”
He had no words for that, and Brett and Dee totally understood. They got on the horn to their old pals in the surf world and basically said, “Thanks but no thanks. The kid just wants to surf.”
The kid did.
7
Petra Hall steers her starter BMW west on Garnet Avenue.
She alternately watches the road and looks at a slip of paper in her hand, comparing the address to the building to her right.
The address—111 Garnet Avenue—is the correct listing for “Boone Daniels, Private Investigator,” but the building appears to be not an office but a surf shop. At least that’s what the sign says, a rather unimaginative yet descriptive PACIFIC SURF inscribed over a rather unimaginative yet descriptive painting of a breaking wave. And, indeed, looking through the window she can see surfboards, body boards, bathing suits, and, being that the building is half a block from the beach, 111 Garnet Avenue would certainly appear to be a surf shop.
Except that it is supposed to be the office of Boone Daniels, private investigator.
Petra grew up in a climate where the sun is more rumor than reality, so her skin is so pale and delicate that it’s almost transparent, in stark contrast to her indigo black hair. Her charcoal gray, very professional, I’m-a-serious-career-woman suit hides a figure that is at the same time slim and generous, but what you’re really going to look at is her eyes.
Are they blue? Or are they gray?
Like the ocean, it depends on her mood.
She parks the car next door in front of The Sundowner Lounge and goes into Pacific Surf, where a pale young man behind the counter, who would appear to be some sort of white Rastafarian, is playing a video game.
“Sorry,” Petra says, “I’m looking for a Mr. Daniels?”
Hang Twelve looks up from his game to see this gorgeous woman standing in front of him. His stares for a second; then he gets it together enough to shout up the stairs, “Cheerful, brah, civilian here looking for Boone!”
A head peers down from the staircase. Ben Carruthers, glossed “Cheerful” by the PB crew, looks to be about sixty years old, has a steel gray