Dawn Patrol

27

Dan Silver and Red Eddie are also having an unhappy conversation.

“What did you do, Danny?” Eddie asks.

“Nothing.”

“Killing a woman is ‘nothing’?”

Well, apparently.

Danny drops his head, which is a mistake because Eddie shoots a wicked slap across his cheek. “Did you think I wouldn't find out? I have to hear this from Boone when I go to him with an ask for you? You let me do that, not tell me you went ahead like some kind of cowboy you dress up like?”

“She was going to talk, Eddie.” Dan can still feel the burn on his cheek, and for a nanosecond he considers doing something about it-he's about twice Eddie's size and could toss him against the wall like a Ping-Pong ball-then decides against it because Eddie's hui boys linger on the edge of the conversation like sharks.

“That's why you were going to take her out of town, wasn't it?” Eddie asks. “Nobody ever said nothin' 'bout killing nobody.”

“Things got a little out of hand,” Dan says.

Eddie looks at him incredulously. “They hook her to you, they hook you to me, I'm gonna cut you loose like tangled fish line, Danny boy.”

Dan's getting a little tired of Eddie's superior shit. So the tattooed little freak went to Harvard, so fucking what? There's a lot of things you can't learn at Harvard. So he decides to educate Eddie a little. “A stripper takes a walk off a motel balcony. How long you think that's going to occupy the cops? An hour? Hour and a half? Nobody gives a crap, Eddie.”

“Daniels does.”

“Is he going to back off?”

“Probably not,” Eddie says. “Backing off ain't Boone's best thing.”

Dan shrugs. “Daniels is a low-rent surf bum who couldn't cut it with the real cops. He's fine for a skip trace or throwing a drunk out of The Sundowner, but he's in over his head here. I wouldn't worry about it, I were you.”

“Well, you ain't me,” Eddie says. “You're you, and you better fucking worry about it. Let me tell you something about that surf bum-”

Dan's cell phone rings.

“What?”

He listens. It's a cop from downtown, a sergeant who drinks free at Silver Dan's and gets a lap dance comped every once in a while. He wants to let Dan know that one of his girls has been positively ID'd, DOA from a jump at a Pacific Beach motel.

Her name is Angela Hart.

Dan thanks the guy and clicks off.

“What was that?” Eddie asks.

“Nothing.”

But it's a big freaking nothing. Dan's head is whirling, his stomach doing trampoline routines.

Tweety killed the wrong piece of ass.