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actually immaterial,” Petra says. “Mr. Silver also owns a number of warehouses up in Vista, one of which burned to the ground several months ago. The insurance company investigated and, from the physical evidence, deemed it arson and refused to pay. Mr. Silver is suing for damages and for bad faith. He wants five million dollars.”
    “I’m not an arson investigator,” Boone says. “I can put you in touch with—”
    “Mr. Silver was having a relationship with one of his dancers,” Petra continues. “One Ms. Tamara Roddick.”
    “A strip club owner banging one of his dancers,” Boone says. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all …”
    “Recently,” Petra says, “Mr. Silver broke off the relationship and suggested that Ms. Roddick find employment elsewhere.”
    “Let me finish this for you,” Boone says. “The spurned young lady, in a sudden attack of conscience, decided that she couldn’t live with the guilt anymore and came forward to the insurance company to confess that she saw Silver burn his building down.”
    “Something like that, yes.”
    “And you
bought
this shit?” Boone asks.
    Alan Burke is way too smart to put this Tammy babe on the stand,Boone thinks. The opposing lawyer would shred her, and the rest of Burke’s case with her.
    “She passed a polygraph with flying colors,” Petra says.
    “Oh,” Boone says. It’s the best he can think of.
    “So what’s the problem?” he asks.
    “The problem,” Petra says, “is that Ms. Roddick is scheduled to testify tomorrow.”
    “Does she surf?” Boone asks.
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Then there’s no problem.”
    “When I tried to contact her yesterday,” Petra says, “to make arrangements for her testimony—and to bring her some court-appropriate clothes I bought for her—she didn’t respond.”
    “A flaky stripper,” Boone says. “Again, brave new world.”
    “We’ve made repeated attempts to contact her,” Petra says. “She neither answers her phone nor returns messages. I rang her current employer, Totally Nude Girls. The manager informed me that she hasn’t shown up for work for three days.”
    “Have you checked the morgue?” Boone asks.
    Five million dollars is a lot of money.
    “Of course.”
    “So she’s taken off,” Boone says.
    “You have a keen grasp of the obvious, Mr. Daniels,” Petra says. “Therefore, you should have no trouble discerning what it is that we require of you.”
    “You want me to find her.”
    “Full marks. Well done.”
    “I’ll get right on it,” Boone says. “As soon as the swell is over.”
    “I’m afraid that won’t do.”
    “Nothing to be afraid of,” Boone says. “It’s just that this …”
    “Tamara.”
    “… Tammy babe could be anywhere by now,” Boone says. “It’s at least an even bet that she’s at a spa in Cabo with Dan Silver. Wherever she is or isn’t, it’s going to take a while to find her, so whether I start today, or tomorrow, or the day after, it really doesn’t matter.”
    “It does to me,” Petra says. “And to Mr. Burke.”
    Boone says, “Maybe you didn’t understand me when I was talking about the big—”
    “I did,” Petra says. “Something is in the process of ‘swelling,’ and certain people with sophomoric sobriquets are, for reasons that evade my comprehension, ‘stoked’ about it.”
    Boone stares at her.
    Finally he says, as if to a small child, “Well, Pete, let me put it to you in a way you can understand: Some very big waves—the sort of waves that come only about once every other presidential administration—are about to hit that beach out there, for one day only, so all I’m going to be doing for those twenty-four hours is clocking in the green room. Now go back and tell Alan that as soon as the swell passes, I’ll find his witness.”
    “The world,” Petra says, “doesn’t come to a screeching halt on account of ‘big waves’!”
    “Yes,” Boone says, “it does.”
    He disappears into