Dawn Patrol

22

Boone doesn't get far from the lifeguard tower.

He's on the boardwalk, heading back toward his ride, when who should he see, on a kid's dirt bike with tires thicker than a Kansas prom queen, than Red Eddie.

Red Eddie is a Harvard-educated, Hawaiian-Japanese-Chinese-Portuguese-Anglo-Californian with traffic-cone red hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah-traffic cones aren't red, they're orange, and Eddie's first name isn't Eddie, it's Julius. But there isn't a soul on this earth who has the stones to call the dude “Orange Julius.”

Not Boone, not Dave the Love God, not Johnny Banzai, not even High Tide, because Red Eddie is usually surrounded by at least a six-pack of super size Hawaiian moke guys and Eddie don't think nothing about letting the dogs out.

Red Eddie deals pakololo.

His old man, who owned a few dozen grocery stores in Oahu, Kauai, and the Big Island, sent Eddie from the north shore of Oahu to Harvard and then to Wharton Business School, and Eddie returned to the island with a sound business plan. It was Eddie who put the Wowie in Maui, the high in hydro. He brings massive amounts of the stuff in by boat. They drop it offshore in watertight plastic wrap, and Eddie's guys go out at night in Zodiacs, the small double-pontoon motorboats, and bring it in.

“I'm a missionary,” Eddie said to Boone one night at The Sundowner. “Remember how missionaries sailed from America to Hawaii to spread the good word and totally fuck up the culture? I'm returning the favor. Except my good news is benevolent and your culture needs fucking up.”

Benevolence has been good to Red Eddie, giving him an ocean-view mansion in La Jolla, a house on the beach in Waimea, and a 110-foot motor yacht docked in San Diego Harbor.

Red Eddie is totally Pacific Rim, the epitome of the current West Coast economic and cultural scene, which is a mйlange of Cali-Asian-Polynesian. Like a good salsa, Boone thinks, with a little mango and pineapple mixed in.

Boone and Eddie go back.

Like a lot of stories in this part of the world, it starts in the water.

Eddie has a kid from a high school indiscretion.

The kid doesn't live with Eddie-he lives with his mother in Oahubut Keiki Eddie comes for visits. He was about three years old on one of these visits, when a big swell hit the coast and Keiki Eddie's idiot nanny decided it would be a good idea to take her charge for a walk on La Jolla Cove to see the big waves. (Like he had never seen them on the North Shore, right?) One of the big waves smashed into the jetty and took Keiki Eddie back with it, so the kid was really getting a close-up look at the big mackers.

These things usually end badly. Like, the best news is they find the body.

Call it luck, call it God, call it karma-but Boone Daniels, designed by DNA for just this situation, was also there checking out the big waves, using the long view from La Jolla to scope the best break. He heard a scream, saw the nanny pointing, and spotted Keiki Eddie's head bobbing in the surf. Boone jumped into the next wave, grabbed Keiki Eddie, and kept them both from being smashed into the rocks.

It made the Union-Tribune.