Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

Praise for Don Winslows

The Dawn Patrol

The action revs up to a pulsating pace. A rousing thriller with a sense of morality.

The Oregonian

A great book. Winslow fills his prose with a staccato, manic energy, stitching words into paragraphs like an expert surfer riding the waves. The Dawn Patrol is that smooth and seemingly effortless, a book that deserves to be a bestseller if ever there was one.

The Providence Journal

Entertaining. Finds seamy secrets lurk even in idyllic places.

Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Im hoping this changes things for Don Winslow, that this is a huge success, and that he is hereafter mentioned in the same breath as modern giants such as Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos, because this new book is one of the best private-eye novels Ive read in years.

Cameron Hughes, January Magazine

Winslow peels back the layers, showing the corrupt soul of a city paying the price for paradise.

Crimespree Magazine

A high-octane tale [and] a stellar meditation on one of Californias favorite pastimes: surfing. Winslows measured pitch-perfect sentences bring to life the aching dreams and disappointments, both causal and devastating, that befall Boone and his close-knit circle of wave-riding friends.

Newsday

A powerful, elbow-in-the-throat book. Pounds its story forward like a relentless surf.

The Plain Dealer

Don Winslow is like a wave-riding Elmore Leonard.

Outside

The perfect summer hybrid novel. Cant make it to the beach? No worries. Don Winslow brings the beach right to you.

Dayton Daily News

A tasty combo plate of laid-back surfing, Southern California weirdness and motley ethnic groupsplus passionate love songs to the monster ocean waves and bitchin fish tacos.

The Seattle Times

DON WINSLOW

The Dawn Patrol

Don Winslow is a former private investigator and consultant. He lives in California.

www.donwinslow.com

ALSO BY DON WINSLOW

The Winter of Frankie Machine
The Power of the Dog
California Fire and Life
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
While Drowning in the Desert
A Long Walk up the Water Slide
Way Down on the High Lonely
The Trail to Buddhas Mirror
A Cool Breeze on the Underground

FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, JUNE 2009

Copyright 2008 by Don Winslow

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2008.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Winslow, Don.
The dawn patrol / by Don Winslow. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. SurfersFiction. 2. Private InvestigatorsFiction. 3. CaliforniaFiction.
I. Title.
PS3573.I5326D38 2008
813.54dc22
2008006531

eISBN: 978-0-307-79379-9

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

wave (n): a disturbance that travels through a medium from one location to another location.

Let me take you down, cos Im going to, Strawberry Fields.

Lennon/McCartney

The marine layer wraps a soft silver blanket over the coast.

The sun is just coming over the hills to the east, and Pacific Beach is still asleep.

The ocean is a color that is not quite blue, not quite green, not quite black, but something somewhere between all three.

Out on the line, Boone Daniels straddles his old longboard like a cowboy on his pony.

Hes on The Dawn Patrol.

The girls look like ghosts.

Coming out of the early-morning mist, their silver forms emerge from a thin line of trees as the girls pad through the wet grass that edges the field. The dampness muffles their footsteps, so they approach silently, and the mist that wraps around their legs makes them look as if theyre floating.

Like spirits who died as children.

There are eight of them and they are children; the oldest is fourteen, the youngest ten. They walk toward the waiting men in unconscious lockstep.

The men bend over the mist like giants over clouds, peering down into their universe. But the men arent giants; theyre workers, and their universe is the seemingly endless strawberry field that they do not rule, but that rules them. Theyre glad for the cool mistit will burn off soon enough and leave them to the suns indifferent mercy.

The men are stoop laborers, bent at the waist for hours at a time, tending to the plants. Theyve made the dangerous odyssey up from Mexico to work in these fields, to send money back to their families south of the border.

They live in primitive camps of corrugated tin shacks, jerry-rigged tents, and lean-tos hidden deep in the narrow canyons above the fields. There are no women in the camps, and the men are lonely. Now they look up to sneak guilty glances at the wraithlike girls coming out of the mist. Glances of need, even though many of these men are fathers, with daughters the ages of these girls.

Between the edge of the field and the banks of the river stands a thick bed of reeds, into which the men have hacked little dugouts, almost caves. Now some of the men go into the reeds and pray that the dawn will not come too soon or burn too brightly and expose their shame to the eyes of God.

Its dawn at the Crest Motel, too.

Sunrise isnt a sight that a lot of the residents see, unless its from the other sideunless theyre just going to bed instead of just getting up.

Only two people are awake now, and neither of them is the desk clerk, whos catching forty in the office, his butt settled into the chair, his feet propped on the counter. Doesnt matter. Even if he were awake, he couldnt see the little balcony of room 342, where the woman is going over the railing.

Her nightgown flutters above her.

An inadequate parachute.

She misses the pool by a couple of feet and her body lands on the concrete with a dull thump.

Not loud enough to wake anyone up.

The guy who tossed her looks down just long enough to make sure shes dead. He sees her neck at the funny angle, like a broken doll. Watches her blood, black in the faint light, spread toward the pool.

Water seeking water.

Epic macking crunchy.

Thats how Hang Twelve describes the imminent big swell to Boone Daniels, who actually understands what Hang Twelve is saying, because Boone speaks fluent Surfbonics. Indeed, off to Boones right, just to the south, waves are smacking the pilings beneath Crystal Pier. The ocean feels heavy, swollen, pregnant with promise.

The Dawn PatrolBoone, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, Johnny Banzai, High Tide, and Sunny Daysits out there on the line, talking while they wait for the next set to come in. They all wear black winter wet suits that cover them from their wrists to their ankles, because the early-morning water is cold, especially now that its stirred up by the approaching storm.