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his chest and blown all the air out of it. One of his boys starts to go for Boone, then looks up and changes his mind because a shadow has fallen over the table. High Tide is standing there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and Dave the Love God is right over his shoulder.
    “S’up, Boone?” Dave asks.
    “Nuch.”
    “We thought maybe there was a problem.”
    “No problem,” Boone says.
    No there’s not, because the sight of a 350-pound Samoan tends to have a tranquilizing effect on even the most hostile drunks. Truly, even if you’re more or less totally faced and you’re thinking about throwing down, one sight of Boone backed by High Tide and an evilly grinning Dave the Love God (who
does
like to fight and is very,
very
good at it) will usually make you go Mahatma Gandhi. If that crew shows you the door, the other side of that door is going to knock Disneyland off the Happiest Place on Earth throne.
    “I gotta pay the check,” Bench Press says.
    “I got it,” says Boone. “Peace.”
    Bench Press and his crew go out like March lambs. Boone pays their bill; then he, High Tide, and Dave revive the
turista
long enough to find out what motel she’s in, take her back, put her in bed, and go back to The Sundowner for an aloha beer.
    The next morning, Boone went in for breakfast, and no bill was forthcoming.
    “Chuck says no,” Sunny explained.
    “Listen, I don’t expect—”
    “Chuck says no.”
    And that was that. The unspoken deal was in place. Boone’s breakfast is on the house, but he always leaves a tip. Lunch or dinner, he pays, and still leaves a tip. And if a situation occurs in or around The Sundowner, Boone settles it before it becomes a problem.
14
    Now, Boone comes into The Sundowner, slides into a booth, and is annoyed but not surprised when Petra takes a seat across the table.
    Dave the Love God, sitting at the counter as he packs down a stack of blueberry panckakes, notices her, too.
    “Who’s the betty with Boone?” he asks Sunny.
    “Dunno.”
    “Bother you?”
    “No,” Sunny says. “Why should it?”
    Petra may not bother her—which is a lie anyway—but she’s sure as shit bothering Boone. “I should have thought,” Petra’s saying, “given the urgency, that you would want to get right at it.”
    “There’s a limit,” Boone says, “to what you can accomplish on an empty stomach.”
    Actually, Petra thinks that there’s a limit to what he can do on a full stomach, too, but she refrains from saying so. There must be something to this oceangoing Neanderthal that I’m missing, she thinks, because with all the reputable detective firms in San Diego, Alan Burke was adamant about hiring him, and Alan Burke may be the best trial lawyer in captivity. So he must have a high opinion of Mr. Daniels, or perhaps it’s just that Alan thinks that Mr. Daniels is simply the man to call when you need to locate a stripper.
    Chuck E. Cheese’s, my aching teeth.
    Sunny comes over and asks him, “The usual?”
    “Please.”
    For the inland betty’s benefit, Sunny recites Boone’s usual order, “Eggs
machaca
with jack cheese, corn
and
flour tortillas, split the black beans and home fries, coffee with two sugars.”
    Petra stares at Boone. “Have you
no
restraint?”
    “And throw in a side of bacon,” Boone says.
    “And for you?” Sunny asks Petra.
    Petra picks up the edge in her voice right away and knows without doubt that Boone Daniels and this woman have slept together. The waitress is drop-dead gorgeous, a stunner with long blond hair, longer legs, a figure to kill for, and a golden suntan. No, Surf Boy is most decidedly not a stranger to this lovely creature’s bed.
    “Would you like to order?” Sunny asks.
    “Sorry, yes,” Petra says. “I’d like a small oatmeal, raw brown sugar on the side, dry wheat toast, and a decaffeinated tea, please.”
    “Decaffeinated
tea
?” Boone asks.
    “Is that a problem?” she asks him.
    “No problem,” Sunny says, giving