Pat Dubonnet

Pat Dubonnet is a South Bay police veteran who rises to the top position at the Gordita Beach station. His brief appearances connect the personal aftermath of Coy Harlingen’s suspected overdose to the institution’s expanded, federally funded machinery, and reveal his hostility toward Bigfoot Bjornsen as well as his cynical view of the murder investigation that follows Glen Charlock’s death.

Identity and Background

Dubonnet is the lieutenant who called Hope Harlingen with news of Coy’s suspected overdose. Hope had recorded his name in her diary, making the recollection a documented detail from that period rather than an uncertain guess. Doc Sportello recognizes the name and recalls having conducted business with Dubonnet before; he also jokes that the earlier encounter may have involved being arrested.

Dubonnet and Bigfoot began their police careers at roughly the same time in the South Bay, near Doc’s stretch of beach, during the Surfer-Lowrider Wars. Dubonnet stayed in the area, while Bigfoot acquired a reputation for forceful, stick-assisted policing and moved on, apparently an obvious candidate for advancement in the eyes of the department’s downtown leadership. Doc, who has watched several ambitious officers come and go, understands that their departures leave a residue of local history. One durable piece of that history is Dubonnet’s long-standing hatred of Bigfoot.

The Gordita Beach Station

By the time Doc visits him, Dubonnet is the senior figure at the Gordita Beach station. The station itself has been transformed by federal anti-drug funding: what was once a modest, pier-side booking desk, equipped with a two-coil hot plate and instant coffee, has become a lavish police compound. Its amenities include oversized espresso machines, a mini-jail, a motor pool filled with vehicles that might otherwise have gone to Vietnam, and a kitchen staffed by pastry chefs around the clock.

Doc has to make his way through trainees tending the station’s ornamental plants before reaching Dubonnet’s office. The contrast between the old booking desk and this well-resourced complex places Dubonnet’s promotion within a broader expansion of police capacity. The station’s new scale is not incidental scenery: it gives Doc’s sardonic decision to visit what he calls “Hippiephobia Central” a concrete institutional setting.

Doc’s Visit

Doc brings Dubonnet a foot-long, foil-wrapped hot dog, presenting it as a gift expressly for him. Dubonnet unwraps and eats at least half of it almost immediately, despite remarking on his appetite and asking who let Doc into the building. Doc says he posed as a drug informant, a pretense that works on the inexperienced new faces at the station. The exchange establishes their familiarity and gives their meeting a comic, matter-of-fact tone: Doc can pass through the police compound by playing to its anti-drug routines, while Dubonnet receives him in his office and accepts the food.

The easy banter does not make Dubonnet an ally. Doc’s visit takes place against the history of his earlier police contact with him, and Dubonnet’s professional authority rests inside an institution that Doc approaches through disguise and mockery. Their interaction is cordial enough to proceed, but it remains shaped by the station’s suspicion of the counterculture and by Doc’s practiced ability to manipulate that suspicion.

Bigfoot and the Charlock Case

When the conversation turns to the killing of Mickey Wolfmann’s security guard, Glen Charlock, Dubonnet describes the investigation as another case of the century for Bigfoot. In his view, the case could become a bottomless source of money for the right chief investigator. He expects it to become a television movie and imagines Bigfoot securing script and production credits, perhaps even playing himself.

That prediction turns a murder investigation into a possible career asset. Dubonnet’s remark is edged with contempt for Bigfoot, whom he calls an asshole, and he starts to allude to the police department’s “eleventh-commandment” issues before warning Doc to ignore the remark. His comment suggests that the pursuit of publicity and profit is entangled with rules the police do not openly discuss. Dubonnet does not explain those issues, but the abrupt retreat from the subject makes the boundary of what can be said part of the scene.

Narrative Role

Dubonnet’s limited appearances carry information across several parts of the story: he is the named officer behind the call to Hope about Coy, a familiar figure in Doc’s past dealings with the police, and a senior local officer watching Bigfoot’s rise from a position of entrenched resentment. His station embodies the material growth of anti-drug policing, while his estimate of the Charlock case exposes the possible conversion of violence into funding, publicity, and professional advancement. The gap between his casual manner and his guarded reference to police rules leaves the investigation framed not only as a search for what happened, but also as an opportunity within a system whose incentives Dubonnet understands well enough to distrust.