Read Online Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow - Free Book Online

mean, check her out.”
    The dispatcher does. “She’s hot.”
    “She’s
filthy
.”
    “You shouldn’t have gone with that other girl,” the dispatcher says, looking indignantly outraged for the pretty girl in the van.
    “I was hammered,” Boone says. “But you are right, brother. So you think you can toss a drowning man a rope here? See if you sent a cab to 533 Del Vista Mar, chick named Tammy? Where you took her? I’ll do a solid for you sometime.”
    “Like what?”
    Nice to see that the Ethiopians have adapted to the American way of life, Boone thinks. MTV, fast food, capitalism. Cash on the barrelhead. He takes his wallet out of his pants and holds out a twenty. “It’s all I have, bro.”
    Which is pretty much the truth.
    The dispatcher takes the twenty, goes into his log, and comes back with “You say her name was Tammy?”
    “Yeah, Gilooley … Gilbert …”
    “Roddick?”
    “That’s it,” Boone says.
    “One of our drivers took her to the Crest Motel.”
    Well, I’ll be damned, Boone thinks. He says, “Right here in PB.”
    “Five o’clock this morning.”
    A stripper on the move at five a.m.? Boone thinks. Strippers aren’t up at
five
, unless they’re
still
up at five. He says, “Hey, thanks, brah.”
    “Your girlfriend …”
    “Yeah?”
    “She’s beautiful.”
    Boone looks out the window to where the dispatcher is staring. Petra’s sitting erect in the seat, looking into the mirror as she carefully applies fresh lipstick.
    Yeah, Boone thinks, she is.
    He walks back to the van and gets in.
    “Six minutes and thirty-eight seconds,” she says, consulting the watch.
    “What?”
    “You wanted me to time you,” she says. “It took rather longer than I would have expected from a professional of your reputation.”
    “Tammy went to the Crest Motel,” Boone says, “right here in Pacific Beach. You owe me twenty bucks.”
    “I’ll need a receipt.”
    “You want a
bribe
receipt?”
    She considers this. “Just get me
any
kind of receipt, Boone.”
    “Cool.” In fact, it’s the first cool thing he’s heard her say. “Let’s go pick up your witness.”
    Then I can shed you, Boone thinks, get my big-wave gear rigged out, and be in the water in plenty of time for the big swell.
    The first thing he sees when he pulls the van into the Crest parking lot is an alarming band of yellow caution tape.
    Police tape.
    With police behind it.
    Including Johnny Banzai of the SDPD Homicide Squad.
    This can’t be good, Boone thinks.
19
    That’s what Johnny Banzai thinks, too.
    When he sees Boone.
    Normally, Johnny likes to see Boone. Normally, most people do. But not here, not
now
. Not when there’s a dead woman who dived off a third-floor balcony and missed, her body now sprawled a scant two feet from the swimming pool, her red hair splayed on her outstretched arm, her blood forming a shallow, inadequate pool of its own.
    A tiny angel is tattooed on her left wrist.
    Behind the pool are the four floors of the Crest Motel, built in two angular wings, one of a dozen ugly, indistinct hotels thrown up in the early eighties, catering to budget-minded tourists, economy-priced hookers, and anonymity-seeking adulterers. Each room has a tiny “balcony” overlooking the “pool complex,” with its small rectangular swimming pool and requisite Jacuzzi, which Johnny thinks of as basically a swirling, bubbling mass of potential herpes infections.
    Now he ducks under the tape and steps into Boone’s way. “Get out of here before the lieutenant sees you,” Johnny says.
    Boone looks over his shoulder at the body. “Who is she?”
    “What are you doing here anyway?”
    “Matrimonial.”
    Johnny sees the woman in Boone’s van. “With the wife in tow?”
    “Some people have to see for themselves,” Boone says. He juts his chin at the crime scene, where the ME is squatting by the body, doing his voodoo. Lieutenant Harrington squats beside him, his back to Boone. “Who’s the jumper?”
    In