Dawn Patrol

7

Petra Hall steers her starter BMW west on Garnet Avenue.

She alternately watches the road and looks at a slip of paper in her hand, comparing the address to the building to her right.

The address-111 Garnet Avenue-is the correct listing for “Boone Daniels, Private Investigator,” but the building appears to be not an office but a surf shop. At least that's what the sign says, a rather unimaginative yet descriptive pacific surf inscribed over a rather unimaginative yet descriptive painting of a breaking wave. And, indeed, looking through the window she can see surfboards, body boards, bathing suits, and, being that the building is half a block from the beach, 111 Garnet Avenue would certainly appear to be a surf shop.

Except that it is supposed to be the office of Boone Daniels, private investigator.

Petra grew up in a climate where the sun is more rumor than reality, so her skin is so pale and delicate that it's almost transparent, in stark contrast to her indigo black hair. Her charcoal gray, very professional, I'm-a-serious-career-woman suit hides a figure that is at the same time slim and generous, but what you're really going to look at is her eyes.

Are they blue? Or are they gray?

Like the ocean, it depends on her mood.

She parks the car next door in front of The Sundowner Lounge and goes into Pacific Surf, where a pale young man behind the counter, who would appear to be some sort of white Rastafarian, is playing a video game.

“Sorry,” Petra says, “I'm looking for a Mr. Daniels?”

Hang Twelve looks up from his game to see this gorgeous woman standing in front of him. His stares for a second; then he gets it together enough to shout up the stairs, “Cheerful, brah, civilian here looking for Boone!”

A head peers down from the staircase. Ben Carruthers, glossed “Cheerful” by the PB crew, looks to be about sixty years old, has a steel gray crew cut and a scowl as he barks, “Call me ‘brah’ one more time and I'll rip your tongue out.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Hang Twelve says. “Like, the moana was epic tasty this sesh and I slid over the ax of this gnarler and just foffed, totally shredded it, and I'm still amped from the ocean hit, so my bad, brah.”

Cheerful looks at Petra and says, “Sometimes we have entire fascinating conversations in which I don't understand a word that is said.” He turns back to Hang Twelve. “You're what I have instead of a cat. Don't make me get a cat.”

He disappears back up the stairs with a single word, “Follow.”

Petra goes up the stairs, where Cheerful-a tall man, probably six-six, very thin, wearing a red plaid shirt tucked into khaki trousers-is already hunched over a desk. Well, she takes it on faith that it's a desk because she can't actually see the surface underneath the clutter of papers, coffee cups, ball hats, taco wrappers, newspapers, and magazines. But the saturnine man is punching buttons on an old-fashioned adding machine, so she decides that it is, indeed, a desk.

The “office,” if you can grace it with that name, is a mess, a hovel, a bedlam, except for the back wall, which is neat and ordered. Several black wet suits hang neatly from a steel coatrack, and a variety of surfboards lean against the wall, sorted and ordered by size and shape.

“Forty-some years ago,” Cheerful says, “a bra was something I tried with trembling fingers and little success to unsnap. Now I find that I am a brah. Such are the insults of aging. What can I do for you?”

“Would you be Mr. Daniels?” Petra asks.

“I would be Sean Connery,” Cheerful replies, “but he's already taken. So is Boone, but I wouldn't be him even if I could.”

“Do you know when Mr. Daniels will be in?”

“No. Do you?”

Petra shakes her head. “Which is why I asked.”

Cheerful looks up from his calculations. This girl doesn't take any crap. Cheerful likes that, so he says, “Let me explain something to you: Boone doesn't wear a watch; he wears a sundial.”

“I take it Mr. Daniels is somewhat laid-back?”

“If Boone was any more laid-back,” Cheerful says, “he'd be horizontal.”