Dawn Patrol

73

Dan takes his time getting to the phone.

He's a little uneasy about what Ben Carruthers might have to say to him. The real estate mogul is asshole buddies with Boone Daniels.

Or the late Boone Daniels, if the word on the street is right.

Dan had sent one of his guys over to The Sundowner to keep his eyes and ears open, to find out if anyone had seen or heard from Daniels after he did his Houdini on the beach. Daniels is a major fucking pain in the ass, and now he has Tammy Roddick. Except, the word came in that Daniels drove his piece of shit vehicle off the cliff and went out in flames.

So Dan has constructed a hopeful scenario: He hit Daniels with one of his shots. The dumb fuck made it up to his van somehow, but, weak with loss of blood, put the car in drive instead of reverse and went airborne.

Crash and burn.

The even more optimistic version is that Tammy Roddick and her big fucking mouth went over the cliff with him and the fire guys are going to scrape out two crispy critters instead of one. And then there's the mouthy British broad, the one that would rather fuck a pig. Well, maybe her stuck-up twat is melted to the seat springs, too.

Now this old man is calling. What's up with that?

He picks up the phone.

“Dan Silver?”

“Yeah?”

“You know who I am,” Carruthers says. “I'm going to give you my accountant's number; he'll tell you exactly how much I'm worth. I'll pay off your debt to Red Eddie. Cash, interest, I'll put it to bed.”

“Why would you do that?”

“So you call the dogs off Boone Daniels,” Carruthers says.

The fuck? Dan asks himself. Is Daniels alive? He decides to check it out. “I heard he had an accident.”

“I heard that, too,” Carruthers says. “That's the other reason I want you to know how much I'm worth. It's in the eight figures somewhere, and, Dan Silver, if Boone is dead, I'll spend every cent of it to have you tracked down and killed.”

Dial tone.