Two minutes later, Boone's still trying to get the engine to turn over while he balances a Styrofoam go-plate on his lap and tries to eat eggs machaca with a plastic fork.
He turns the ignition key again. The engine moans, then grudgingly starts, like a guy with a hangover getting up for work.
Petra sweeps some Rubio's and In-N-Out wrappers off the seat, takes a handkerchief from her purse, wipes the cushion, then delicately sits down as she considers how this might fit into her dry-cleaning schedule.
“Stakeouts,” Boone says.
Petra looks behind her. “This is a hovel on wheels.”
“Hovel” is a little harsh, Boone thinks. He prefers “randomly ordered.”
The van contains North Shore board trunks, a couple of sweatshirts, a dozen or so empty go-cups from various fast-food establishments, a pair of Duck Feet fins, a mask and a snorkel, an assortment of sandals and flip-flops, several plaid wool shirts, a blanket, a lobster pot, a stick of deodorant, several tubes of sunblock, a six-pack of empty beer bottles, a sleeping bag, a tire iron, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, an aluminum baseball bat, a bunch of CDs-Common Sense, Switchfoot, and the Ka'au Crater Boys-numerous empty coffee cups, several containers of board wax, and a torn paperback copy of Crime and Punishment.
“Doubtless you thought it was an S and M novel,” Petra says.
“I read it in college.”
“You went to college?”
“Almost a whole semester.”
Which is a lie.
Boone got his B.S. in criminology from San Diego State, but he lets her think what she wants. He doesn't inform her that when he goes home (which doesn't contain a television set) pleasantly tired from a day of surfing, his idea of bliss is to sit with a cup of coffee and read to the accompaniment of the sound of the surf.
But it's the sort of thing you keep to yourself. You don't trot this out for The Dawn Patrol or anyone else in the greater Southern California surfing community who would consider any overt displays of intellectuality to be a serious social faux pas, not that any of them would admit to knowing the term faux pas, or anything else in French, for that matter. It's all right to know that stuff; you just aren't supposed to talk about it. In fact, having someone find a skanky porn book in the back of your van would be less embarrassing than a volume of Dostoyevsky. Johnny Banzai or Dave the Love God would give him endless shit about it, even though Boone knows that Johnny is at least as well read as he is, and that Dave has an almost encyclopedic and very sophisticated knowledge of early Western films.
But, Boone thinks, let the Brit chick indulge in stereotypes.
Speaking of which “Is this actually your vehicle,” Petra asks, “or the primary residence for an entire family of hygienically challenged amphibians?”
“Leave the Boonemobile alone,” Boone says. “You may be old, rusty, and need Bondo yourself someday.”
Although he doubts it.
“You named your car?” Petra asks.
“Well, Johnny Banzai did,” Boone says, feeling about as adolescent as he sounds.
“Your development isn't just arrested,” Petra says. “It's been arrested, tried, and summarily executed.”
“Get out of here.”
“No, I'm serious.”
“So am I,” Boone says. “Get out.”
She digs in. “I'm coming with you.”
“No, you're not,” Boone says.
“Why not?”
He doesn't have a good answer for this. She is the client, after all, and it's not like finding some wayward stripper is exactly dangerous. The best he can come up with is, “Look, just get out, okay?”
“You can't make me,” Petra says.
Boone has the feeling that she's uttered these words many times, and that she's usually been right. He glares at her.
“I have pepper spray in my bag,” she says.
“You don't need pepper spray, Pete,” says Boone. “Some dude attacks you? Just talk at him for a minute and he'll take him selfout.”
“Perhaps we should take my car,” Petra says.
“Let me ask you something, Pete,” says Boone. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“I don't see how that is-”
“Just answer the question,” Boone says.
“I'm seeing someone, yes.”
“Is he, like, miserable?”
Petra's a little surprised that this remark actually hurts her feelings. Boone sees the little flinch in her eyes and the slight flush of color on her cheeks, and he's as surprised as she is that she's capable of hurt.
He feels a little bad about it.
“I'll try one more time,” he says; “then we'll take your car.”
He cranks the key again and this time the engine starts. It's not happy-it coughs, gags, and sputters-but it starts.
“You should have your mechanic check the gaskets,” Petra says as Boone pulls out onto Garnet Avenue.
“Petra?”
“Yes?”
“ Pleaseshut up.”
“Where are we going?” Petra asks.
“The Triple A cab office.”
“Why?”
“Because Roddick now dances at TNG, and that's the cab service the TNG girls always use,” Boone replies.
“How do you know?”
Boone says, “It's the sort of specialized local knowledge you're paying the big bucks for.”
He doesn't bother to explain to her that most bars-strip clubs included-have arrangements with certain cab companies. When tourists ask a Triple A driver to take them to a strip club, he'll take them to TNG. In exchange, whenever the bartender or bouncer at TNG has to call a cab for a customer who might otherwise be charged with DUI, he returns the courtesy. So if Tammy Roddick called a taxi to pick her up at her place, she probably called Triple A.
“How do you know she didn't have a friend pick her up?” Petra asks. “Or that she didn't just walk?”
“I don't,” Boone replies. “It just gives me a place to start.”
Even though he doesn't think that Roddick took a cab anywhere. What he thinks is that Silver, or some of his muscle, or all of the above came and took her on a long trip to somewhere.
And that they'll never find Tammy Roddick.
But he has to try.
When you get on a wave, you ride the wave.
All the way to the end, if it lets you.
He drives through Pacific Beach.