Dawn Patrol

13

Boone usually eats breakfast at The Sundowner.

For one thing, it's next door to his office. It also serves the best eggs machaca this side of… well, nowhere. Warm flour tortillas come on the side, and, as we've already established, everything…

Although mobbed with tourists in the afternoon and at night, The Sundowner is usually inhabited by locals in the morning, and it has a congenial decor-wood-paneled walls covered with surfing photos, surfing posters, surfboards, broken surfboards, and a television monitor that runs a continuous loop of surf videos.

Plus, Sunny works the morning shift, and the owner, Chuck Halloran, is a cool guy who comps Boone's breakfast. Not that Boone is a free-loader; it's just that he deals largely in the barter economy. The arrangement with Chuck has never been formalized, negotiated, or even discussed, but Boone provides sort of de facto security for The Sundowner.

See, in the morning it's a restaurant full of locals, so there is never a problem. But at night it's more of a bar and tends to get jammed up with tourists who've come to PB for the raucous nightlife and to provoke the occasional hassle.

Boone is often in The Sundowner at night anyway, and even if he isn't, he lives only two blocks away, and it just sort of evolved that he deals with problems. Boone is a big guy and a former cop and he can take care of business. He also hates to fight, so more often than not he uses his laid-back manner to smooth the rough alcoholic waters, and the hassles rarely escalate to physical confrontations.

Chuck Halloran believes that this is the best kind of problem solving, taking care of a situation before it becomes a problem, before damage is done, before the cops get involved, before the Liquor Licensing Board gets to know your name.

So one night a few years back, Chuck's eyeballing a situation where a crew of guys from somewhere east of the 5 (doesn't matter specifically where-once you're east of Interstate 5, it's all the same) are about to leave with a young turista who's about three sips from unconscious. Chuck overhears the word train.

So, apparently, does Boone, because he gets up from his seat at the bar and sits down at the booth with the guys. He looks at the one who is clearly the alpha male, smiles, and says, “Dude, it's not cool.”

“What isn't?” The guy is big; he puts his time in at the gym, takes his supplements. One of those barrel-chested chuckleheads, his shirt opened to his chest and a chain with a crucifix nestled into his fur. He's got enough brew down him to think it's a good idea to get hostile.

“What you have in mind,” Boone says, jutting his chin at the young lady, who is now taking a brief nap with her head on the table. “It's not cool.”

“I dunno,” Bench Press says, grinning at his crew. “I think it's cool.”

Boone nods and smiles. “Bro, I'm tellin' ya, it's not on. We don't do that kind of thing here.”

So Bench Press says, “Who are you, like the sheriff here?”

“No,” Boone says. “But she's not leaving with you.”

Bench Press stands up. “ Yougonna stop me?”

Boone shakes his head, like he can't believe this walking clichй.

“That's what I thought, bitch,” Bench Press says, mistaking Boone's gesture. He reaches down and grabs the turista by the elbow and shakes her awake. “Come on, babe, we're all gonna party.”

Then suddenly he's sitting down again, trying to breathe, because Boone has jammed an open hand into his chest and blown all the air out of it. One of his boys starts to go for Boone, then looks up and changes his mind because a shadow has fallen over the table. High Tide is standing there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and Dave the Love God is right over his shoulder.

“S'up, Boone?” Dave asks.

“Nuch.”

“We thought maybe there was a problem.”

“No problem,” Boone says.

No there's not, because the sight of a 350-pound Samoan tends to have a tranquilizing effect on even the most hostile drunks. Truly, even if you're more or less totally faced and you're thinking about throwing down, one sight of Boone backed by High Tide and an evilly grinning Dave the Love God (who does like to fight and is very, very good at it) will usually make you go Mahatma Gandhi. If that crew shows you the door, the other side of that door is going to knock Disneyland off the Happiest Place on Earth throne.

“I gotta pay the check,” Bench Press says.

“I got it,” says Boone. “Peace.”

Bench Press and his crew go out like March lambs. Boone pays their bill; then he, High Tide, and Dave revive the turista long enough to find out what motel she's in, take her back, put her in bed, and go back to The Sundowner for an aloha beer.

The next morning, Boone went in for breakfast, and no bill was forthcoming.

“Chuck says no,” Sunny explained.

“Listen, I don't expect-”

“Chuck says no.”

And that was that. The unspoken deal was in place. Boone's breakfast is on the house, but he always leaves a tip. Lunch or dinner, he pays, and still leaves a tip. And if a situation occurs in or around The Sundowner, Boone settles it before it becomes a problem.