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strippers after twenty-plus years of trying to manage them is that they can’t keep their legs or their mouths shut.
    So the girl had to go.
    It’s no time for taking chances.
    There’s another shipment due in, and the merchandise is worth a lot of money, and that kind of money you don’t let some dancer jeopardize, even if she is a freak.
    Dan slips Tweety the money and keeps walking, making sure to stay far away from the water.
13
    Boone usually eats breakfast at The Sundowner.
    For one thing, it’s next door to his office. It also serves the best eggs
machaca
this side of … well, nowhere. Warm flour tortillas come on the side, and, as we’ve already established, everything …
    Although mobbed with tourists in the afternoon and at night, The Sundowner is usually inhabited by locals in the morning, and it has a congenial decor—wood-paneled walls covered with surfing photos, surfing posters, surfboards, broken surfboards, and a television monitor that runs a continuous loop of surf videos.
    Plus, Sunny works the morning shift, and the owner, Chuck Halloran, is a cool guy who comps Boone’s breakfast. Not that Boone is a freeloader; it’s just that he deals largely in the barter economy. The arrangement with Chuck has never been formalized, negotiated, or even discussed, but Boone provides sort of de facto security for The Sundowner.
    See, in the morning it’s a restaurant full of locals, so there is never a problem. But at night it’s more of a bar and tends to get jammed up with tourists who’ve come to PB for the raucous nightlife and to provoke the occasional hassle.
    Boone is often in The Sundowner at night anyway, and even if he isn’t, he lives only two blocks away, and it just sort of evolved that he deals with problems. Boone is a big guy and a former cop and he can take care of business. He also hates to fight, so more often than not he uses his laid-back manner to smooth the rough alcoholic waters, and the hassles rarely escalate to physical confrontations.
    Chuck Halloran believes that this is the best kind of problem solving, taking care of a situation before it becomes a problem, before damage is done, before the cops get involved, before the Liquor Licensing Board gets to know your name.
    So one night a few years back, Chuck’s eyeballing a situation where a crew of guys from somewhere east of the 5 (doesn’t matter specifically where—once you’re east of Interstate 5, it’s all the same) are about to leave with a young
turista
who’s about three sips from unconscious. Chuck overhears the word
train
.
    So, apparently, does Boone, because he gets up from his seat at the bar and sits down at the booth with the guys. He looks at the one who is clearly the alpha male, smiles, and says, “Dude, it’s not cool.”
    “What isn’t?” The guy is big; he puts his time in at the gym, takes his supplements. One of those barrel-chested chuckleheads, his shirt opened to his chest and a chain with a crucifix nestled into his fur. He’s got enough brew down him to think it’s a good idea to get hostile.
    “What you have in mind,” Boone says, jutting his chin at the young lady, who is now taking a brief nap with her head on the table. “It’s not cool.”
    “I dunno,” Bench Press says, grinning at his crew. “I think it’s cool.”
    Boone nods and smiles. “Bro, I’m tellin’ ya, it’s not on. We don’t do that kind of thing here.”
    So Bench Press says, “Who are you, like the sheriff here?”
    “No,” Boone says. “But she’s not leaving with you.”
    Bench Press stands up. “
You
gonna stop me?”
    Boone shakes his head, like he can’t believe this walking cliché.
    “That’s what I thought, bitch,” Bench Press says, mistaking Boone’s gesture. He reaches down and grabs the
turista
by the elbow and shakes her awake. “Come on, babe, we’re all gonna party.”
    Then suddenly he’s sitting down again, trying to breathe, because Boone has jammed an open hand into