Dawn Patrol

18

The taxi office is a small, formerly white clapboard building in need of a paint job. A metal security screen is open, revealing the company logo stenciled in fading red on the front window. Off to the left is a garage, where a taxi is up on a rack. Another half a dozen cabs are parked haphazardly around the parking lot.

“Wait in the van, okay?” Boone says as he turns off the engine.

“And flirt with hepatitis C for what reason?” Petra asks.

“Just stay in the van,” Boone says, “and try to look aggro.”

“‘Aggro’?”

“Aggravated,” Boone translates. “Angry, annoyed, pissed off.”

“That shouldn't be difficult,” she says.

“I didn't think so.” He takes his watch off and hands it to her. “Take this. Keep it in your lap.”

“You want me to time you?”

“Just do it. Please?”

She smiles. “Cheerful said you'd have a sundial.”

“Yeah, he's a hoot.”

Boone walks across the parking lot into the dispatch office. A young Ethiopian guy has the chair tipped back and his feet on the desk. Almost all the cab companies in San Diego are run by East African immigrants. Triple A Taxi is a strictly Ethiopian operation, Boone knows, while United Taxi is Eritrean. Sometimes they get into border skirmishes in the taxi line at the airport, but usually they get along okay.

“Can I help you?” the dispatcher asks as Boone walks in. He's a kid, barely out of his teens. Skinny, dressed in a ratty brown sweater over new 501 jeans that look freshly pressed. He doesn't take his Air Jordans off the desk. Boone isn't dressed so you'd have to take your feet off the desk for him.

“Dude,” Boone drawls, so it sounds more like “Duuuuuuude.” “I'm in trouble.”

“Breakdown?”

“Break up,” Boone replies. “See the chick in the van?”

The dispatcher swings his feet off the desk, brings the chair down on its wheels, adjusts his thick glasses on his nose, and looks out the window into the parking lot. He sees Petra sitting in the van's passenger seat.

“She's pissed off,” the dispatcher says.

“Way.”

“How come?”

Boone holds his left wrist out, showing white skin in the exact shape of a watch and band.

“Your watch is missing,” the dispatcher says.

Boone nods in Petra's direction. “She gave it to me for my birthday.”

“What happened to it?”

Boone sighs. “You keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

I hope not, Boone thinks, then says, “My boys and me partied last night? Some girls dropped in and I got a little friendly with one, maybe a little too friendly, you know what I'm saying, and I wake up and she's gone. Dude, with the watch.”

“You're fucked.”

“Totally,” Boone says. “So I told my girlfriend that it was my roommate Dave who was with the stripper but that he was in my room because Johnny was in his and I passed out by the pool, you know, but I'd left the watch in my room and the dancer, this Tammy chick, just, like, took it, you know, because she thought it was Dave's and she's pissed he called her a cab. So I was wondering maybe you could tell me where she went?”

“I'm not supposed to do that,” the dispatcher says. “Unless you're the police.”

“Bro,” Boone says, pointing out the window, “I ain't nailing that again until I get that watch back. I 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.