Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [79]
“Why should I?” she asked.
“Because he’s a nice old man and you fucked him over.”
“He got his money’s worth,” she said. Then she looked at him with an expression of lust she no doubt learned from porn videos and asked, “You want proof?”
“Look,” Boone replied, “you’re hotter than hell, and I’m sure you’re the whole barrel of monkeys in bed, but, one, I like your husband; two, I’d cut my junk off with a jagged, shit-encrusted tin can lid before I’d ever stick it anywhere near you; and three, I’ll not only take your home movies and photo album into court, but I’ll put them on the Net, and then we’ll see what that does for your television career.”
She took the walk-away deal.
And made it big on TV playing the second lead, the sassy best friend, on a sitcom that’s been draining viewer IQs for years.
“What do I owe you?” Cheerful asked him afterward.
“Just my hourly.”
“But that’s a few hundred,” Cheerful said. “You saved me millions. You should take a percentage. I’m offering.”
“Just my hourly,” Boone said. “That was the deal.”
Cheerful decided that Boone Daniels was a man of honor but a crap businessman, and therefore he made it his hobby to try to get Boone on some sort of sound financial footing, which is something like trying to balance a three-legged elephant on a greased golf ball, but Cheerful persists anyway.
You had money, sure, he tells himself now, but nothing else. You’d do your books, count your money, and sit around your condo eating microwave meals, watching television, cussing out the Padres’ middle relief, and thinking about how miserable you were.
Ben Carruthers—multimillionaire, real estate genius, total personal failure. No wife, no kids, no grandkids, no friends.
Boone opened up the windows, let some air and sunshine in.
The Dawn Patrol brought youth into your life. Hell, it brought life into your life. Much as you grouse about them—watching these kids, getting to be a part of their lives, sticking your beak into Boone’s cases, playing the curmudgeon—they make it worth getting up in the morning.
Boone, Dave, Johnny, High Tide, Sunny, even Hang Twelve—they’re precious to you, admit it. You can’t imagine life without them.
Without Boone.
The kid Hang Twelve sits staring at the phone, willing it to ring.
Cheerful thinks he needs to say something to the kid. “He’s okay.”
“I know.”
But he doesn’t.
Neither of them do.
“You hungry?” he asks Hang.
“No.”
“You have to eat,” Cheerful says. He takes a twenty from his wallet, hands it to Hang. “Go over to The Sundowner, get us a couple of burgers, bring them back.”
“I don’t really feel like it,” Hang says.
“Did I ask you what you felt like?” Cheerful says. “Go on, now. Do what I tell you.”
Hang takes the money and leaves.
Cheerful goes to the Yellow Pages, gets the number of Silver Dan’s, and calls it. “Let me speak to Dan Silver,” he says. “Tell him Ben Carruthers is on the line.”
He waits impatiently for Silver to get to the phone.
73
Dan takes his time getting to the phone.
He’s a little uneasy about what Ben Carruthers might have to say to him. The real estate mogul is asshole buddies with Boone Daniels.
Or the late Boone Daniels, if the word on the street is right.
Dan had sent one of his guys over to The Sundowner to keep his eyes and ears open, to find out if anyone had seen or heard from Daniels after he did his Houdini on the beach. Daniels is a major fucking pain in the ass, and now he has Tammy Roddick. Except, the word came in that Daniels drove his piece of shit vehicle off the cliff and went out in flames.
So Dan has constructed a hopeful scenario: He hit Daniels with one of his shots. The dumb fuck made it up to his van somehow, but, weak with loss of blood, put the car in drive instead of reverse and went airborne.
Crash and burn.
The even more optimistic version is that Tammy Roddick and her big fucking mouth went over the cliff with him and the fire guys are going to scrape out two crispy critters instead of one. And then there’s the mouthy British broad, the