Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [86]
It’s hard to really see them in the dark and the mist, but just by the way they move, Boone can see they’re Hawaiians.
He touches Petra’s arm and wakes her up.
She looks around the room, not knowing where she is.
“Go into the bedroom,” Boone says. “Shut and lock the door behind you, lie down on the floor.”
“What—”
“Just listen,” Boone says, and to her surprise, she does. “If you hear shooting, take Tammy and go out the window. You can swim into shore easily.”
“All right,” she says. “Will you—”
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Go.”
He waits until she goes into the bedroom and he hears the lock click. Then he walks over to the cottage door, checks that he has a round chambered, and waits.
Tide, he thinks, what did Eddie offer you?
82
Love’s a funny goddamn thing.
Makes you do shit you’d never thought you’d do.
Then suddenly you’re doing it.
In Teddy Cole’s case, it makes him take the chauffeured ride home, go to his garage instead of the house, take one of his other Mercedeses and head straight for the strawberry fields. He knows he’s not going to find her there at night—she’s never there at night—but it’s the best shot he has, so that’s what he does.
Love is a funny goddamn thing.
83
Red Eddie sits in the back of the Hummer and watches the guys move up the pier toward Boone’s cottage. He checks out the two others lingering around the base of the pier and knows that for every one he sees, there are probably two he can’t.
Large respect for the Samoans guarding Boone Dawg from harm. They’re good at what they do.
Respect to Josiah Pamavatuu also.
The guy went the other way. Bad for his icehead cousin, to be sure, but good for him. Gonna be rough on the big man, though; Samoans are huge on family.
And Boone Daniels is a cockroach—you just can’t kill the kanaka.
Eddie had actually been very relieved when he got the word that Boone wasn’t charcoal. It’s a blessing. What is a curse is Dan Silver, who is gripping.
“She testifies tomorrow,” Dan says. “She saw everything—she’ll kill us.”
Red Eddie draws the herb smoke deep into his lungs, holds it for the count of three, then exhales. He passes the blunt to Dan as he sings, “Oh, Danny Boy, the lights, the lights are shining.… Relax, Daniel Spaniel.”
“You relax,” Dan snaps, shaking his head to refuse the smoke.
Red Eddie shrugs. “I will.”
Relax and think.
Relaxation, Red Eddie knows, is the prerequisite for efficient thought. No sense in getting all geeked up—you just cut off the flow of blood to your brain exactly when you need it the most. So he takes another hit of the weed to boost his intellectual capability, and then comes to a conclusion.
Eddie turns to Dan Silver and says, “Sorry, chief. You’re out of luck.”
Danny doesn’t want to accept it. “You telling me your guys can’t take a bunch of Sammy gang bangers?”
The Hummer is full of very moke hui boys and another car, also packed with muscle, waits just a block away. Doubtless they could do some serious damage to the Sammies and blow their way into Boone Dawg’s crib, Eddie knows, but that’s the problem—the last thing in the world Eddie wants is to trigger a transoceanic war.
And that’s what it would be, too. Let one of these Sammy guys get scratched, it would start a blood feud, with obligations for revenge. So the Sammies would crack a Hawaiian, then Eddie would have to crack back, and it would never end. And not just here, either; it would speed back to Honolulu in a heartbeat, and there’d be aggro there and in freaking Pago Pago, too. It would get out of freaking control, cause a lot of heartache, and interfere with business.
And Eddie’s all about the business.
No, the High Tide dude was smart, Eddie thinks. He figured all this out and put a screen around his boy Boone. A screen of ohana that he knew I would never attack.
Round to you, Tide.
“Sorry,” he says to Dan. “It just ain’t on, man.”
“That cunt’s going to testify in the morning,” Dan says. “God knows what’s going to come out of her stupid fucking mouth.”
“You better hope,” Eddie says, “she confines