Dawn Patrol

23

“Boone Dawg!”

Red Eddie's retro-Afro orange hair is jammed under a brown Volcom beanie; he has a sleeveless Rusty shirt over a pair of cargo pants that are at least three sizes too big for him. No socks, Cobian sandals, Arnette shades that have to go two bills.

And he reeks of the chronic.

“Eddie,” Boone says.

“S'up?”

“Not much.”

“That's not what I hear,” Eddie says.

“Okay, what do you hear?”

“I hear,” Eddie says, flashing Boone forty g of cosmetic dentistry, “that you're dogging some stripper who thinks she saw something she didn't see.”

“That didn't take long.”

“Time is mo-naaay.”

Well, Boone thinks, time is money if you actually make money. If you don't, time is just time.

“So, bruddah, ” Red Eddie says, “can you back out dis wave?”

Which rings some alarm bells in Boone's head. Like, why does Eddie care? Eddie goes to Dan's clubs from time to time, but they're not, like, boys. That Boone knows of anyway. So he asks, “What's it to you, Eddie?”

“I come to a bruddah with an ask,” Red Eddie says. “I have to have a reason?”

“It would help.”

“Where's your aloha? Where's da love?” Red Eddie asks with a tone of hurt disappointment. “You can be very haole sometimes, Boone.”

“I am a haole, ” Boone says.

“Okay,” Red Eddie says. “Talking story now, Dan Silver is a degenerate gambler, bruddah Boone, bad at picking basketball games. He got in deep water, I pulled him out; now he can't pay me. He owes the big dog a pile of bones he don't have, which he ain't going to have if he doesn't win his lawsuit against the insurance company. We on the same wave, coz?”

“It's beach break.” Straight, simple, easy to read.

“So,” Red Eddie says, “you would be showing me your aloha if you would sit out on the shoulder for a while. Now I'm hip that you need to rake lettuce to live, Boone brah, so whatever the haoles are paying you to do, I'll double you to don't. You know me, coz-I never come with my hand out, I don't have something in the other.”

Yeah, but what? Eddie wonders. It brings up the age-old Christmas shopping conundrum: What do you give to the man who has everything? More precisely, what do you give to the man who wants nothing? That's the problem with trying to bribe the Boone Dawg: He's unique in the fact that his needs are simple, basic, and already met. The man needs cash, but it doesn't mean enough to him to be a swaying factor. So what's the tipping point? What can you offer B-Dog that would move him off his perfectly balanced ball?

Boone looks down at the weathered wood of the boardwalk, then back to Red Eddie. “I wish you'd come to me a couple of hours ago,” he says. “Then I could have said yes.”

“What happened then and now?”

“A woman was murdered,” Boone says. “That puts it over the line.”

Red Eddie doesn't look happy.

“So much as I hate to say no to you,” Boone says. “I have to ride this one through, bro.”

Red Eddie looks out to the ocean.

“Big swell coming,” he says. “There's gonna be some real thunder crushers out there. Wave like that can suck you in and take you over the falls. Man's not careful, Boone Dawg, he could get crushed.”

“Yeah,” Boone says, “I know a little about big waves sucking people in, Eddie.”

“I know you do, brah,” Eddie says. “I know you do.”

Red Eddie does a doughnut and pedals away. Shouts over his shoulder, “E malama pono!”

Take care of yourself.