Dawn Patrol

38

Mick Penner parks cars.

This is how Boone knows him. If you're a private investigator in a resort town like San Diego, you know the parking valets at the major hotels and restaurants. If you're a more financially successful private investigator than Boone Daniels, you go around at Christmastime handing out twenty-dollar bills to the parking valets at the major hotels and restaurants.

Not that Boone hasn't handed out a few bills in his day. He has, lots of times, and more than once to Mick Penner, who is a daytime valet at the Hotel Milano in La Jolla.

You do this because nobody in California goes anywhere except in their cars. You want to track somebody in Cali, you track their vehicle, and vehicles have to park somewhere. And when they park at a hotel, you have a good idea about what they're doing there.

You want to know who's having lunch with whom, who's laying out big bucks for a dinner party to make a deal, who's banging somebody they shouldn't be, you stroke the parking valet. You want to stake out someone at a hotel and you don't want to be seen, you lay off a couple of blocks and let the valet call you when the person rings for his car. You need video of a husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend getting in or out of a car in a hotel parking lot, you pay one of the valets to let you park in there. You're looking for some high-rolling scam artist, you want a parking valet to give you a jingle when your guy checks into his hotel.

Parking valets, concierges, desk clerks, room-service waiters-their base salaries are just that, a base; the smart ones make their real money from tips and tip- offs.

And Mick Penner is one of the smart ones.

Mick is a good-looking guy. Slim but built, about six-one, with black hair, deep blue eyes, and white teeth. He has what you might call movie star good looks.

He'd better have.

Mick parks cars and fucks trophy wives.

This is why he works the day shift. See, you'd think a parking valet would want nights, when the tips are bigger, but Mick does matinees, when he can flash that smile at the ladies who lunch.

It's a numbers game.

Mick smiles at a lot of ladies who lunch, and enough of them are going to have lunch and then have Mick. And enough of them are going to tell their friends that Mick spends some of his afternoons up in the rooms sharing the unique joy that is Mick.

The ladies don't give him cash-that would make him a prostitute, and Mick doesn't see himself that way. They give him gifts-clothes, jewelry, watches-but that's not where the money is.

The money is in their homes.

When Mick gets tired of banging a woman, or she gets tired of him, or the gifts get thin, Mick cashes out. He's very careful about which women he picks to give him his severance pay-they have to be married, have to have signed a prenup, have to have a real, rooting interest in keeping their marriages intact.

But if a woman qualifies, then Mick puts in a call to a friend who does high-level house burglaries. Mick has her keys, right? He gets them copied, and he knows for a fact when she's not going to be in the house. So the woman is snuggled up with Mick in bed in a room overlooking the ocean while Mick's pal is in her house, taking the jewelry she decided not to wear that day. And maybe her silverware, crystal, artworks, loose cash, anything portable.

Even if the woman figures out that sweet Mick fucked her over, she isn't going to tell the cops where she was; she's not going to tell them who might have access and knowledge. She's going to keep her mouth shut, because, at the end of the day, it's the insurance company's problem.

It's not that Mick does this a lot, just enough to help finance the next big thing.

Mick's a screenwriter. He hasn't written a word in about three months, but he has an idea that's drawn some attention from the assistant to a senior VP at Paramount. It's a sure thing, just a matter of time, just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

But Mick's been too busy.

Boone pulls the van up to the valet stand at the Milano, an exclusive, bucks-up hotel in the heart of La Jolla Village.

Calling La Jolla Village a village is like calling the Queen Mary a rowboat.

Boone's always thought of a village as a place with grass huts and chickens running around, or a quiet row of thatch-roofed cottages in one of those English movies that a girl made him go to.

So he's always been amused at the folksy pretentiousness of calling some of the most expensive real estate on earth a village. The Village occupies a bluff overlooking the ocean, with a magnificent sweep of a view, a cove that features some of the best diving in California, and a small but tasty reef break. There are no grass huts, running chickens, or thatch-roofed cottages. No, this village features platinum-card boutiques, exclusive hotels, art galleries, and froufrou restaurants that cater to the beautiful people.

The Boonemobile looks distinctly out of place in the Village, among the Rollses, Mercedeses, BMWs, Porsches, and Lexuses. Boone thinks that the locals might figure that he's a cleaner or something, but the house-cleaners in the Village drive better cars than the Boonemobile.

Anyway, he pulls it up to the valet stand at the Milano. A valet ambles over, ready to tell whoever this is that he has the wrong address. Boone thinks he might have the wrong place, too. Several parking valets are standing around, none of them Mick.

Boone rolls down his window. “Hey.”

“Hey, it's you,” the valet says. He and Boone touch fists. “What brings?”

“Alex, right?”

“Right.”

“Mick around?”

“It's his day off,” Alex says.

“His day off?” Boone asks. “Or he just didn't show?”

“Okay, door number two,” Alex says, glancing at Petra. He lowers his voice and adds, “You need a room, I can probably hook you up.”

Boone shakes his head. “I'm good.”

Alex shrugs. “Dude didn't show today, didn't show yesterday. He's gonna lose the gig, he doesn't straighten up.”

“D'you cover for him?”

“I made up some bullshit story. I dunno, the flu.”

Boone asks, “Where does he lay his head these days?”

“He was crashing with this stripper chick,” Alex says. “In PB.”

“I tried,” Boone says. “He's not there.”

“Oh, you know her.”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking Mick, huh?” Alex says with a smile of envious admiration.

“Fucking Mick,” Boone agrees. “Anyway, you have his phone number, right?”

“It's in the shack. I can get it.”

“It would be a help, man. I'd appreciate it.”

“Be right back.”

Alex trots away.

“She's with this Mick person,” Petra says.

“That's how I read it,” Boone says.

“Do you think they're still in town?”

“Not if they're smart.”

If they're smart, they're two days' drive away, maybe up the coast in Oregon or even Washington. Or they drove out to Vegas, where Tammy could get work easily. Hell, they could be anywhere.

Alex comes back and hands Boone a slip of paper with Mick's number on it.

“Thanks, bro.”

“No worries.”

“Mick still drive that little silver BMW?” Boone asks.

“Oh yeah. He loves that car.”

“Well, late, man.”

He slips Alex a ten.

“Late.”

Parking valets driving Beemers, Boone thinks. The trophy-wife business must be booming.

He backs out into the street and drives down to the cove and finds a parking spot overlooking the beach where the seals gather. A couple of big males are lying out on the rocks, with tourists standing above them snapping pictures.

“So we think that Mick and Tammy have disguised themselves as sea lions?” Petra asks.

Boone ignores her. He grabs his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Petra asks.

“I'm calling Mick to tell him we're on our way over.”

“You're kidding.”

“Yeah.”

“Yo. I mean, Pacific Surf,” Hang says when he picks up.

“Hang?”

“Boone?”

“Get off whatever porn site you're on and run a reverse for me,” Boone says. He gives him Mick's phone number.

“That's a cell phone, Boone.”

“I know.”

“Gonna take a minute.”

Boone knows this, too. Hang will use the number to go on the service provider's Web site, get a new password for the one he “lost,” then access the billing record to get a home address.

It's going to take at least five minutes.

Hang's back on in three.

“Two-seven-eight-two Vista del Playa. Apartment B.”

“Down in Shores?” Boone asks.

“Hold on a sec.”

Boone hears him tapping at some keys, then Hang says, “Yup. You take-”

“No, I got it, thanks.”

Boone pulls out of the slot and heads back up to the Village, then heads north for La Jolla Shores. Mick's place is only ten minutes away, and Boone already knows what he's going to find there.

No Mick.

No Mick's Beemer.

No Tammy.