The Gentlemen's Hour

by Don Winslow

  “Jump.”

  “She’s going to ask if you wouldn’t really be happier going to law school.”

  “Jesus, Dave.”

  “On that day, my friend,” Dave says, “you bail. You don’t even stop to get dressed or pick up your clothes—you can always get a new T-shirt. You backpaddle, flailing your arms like a drowning barney. We will all come racing to your rescue.”

  “Can’t happen,” Boone says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Law school?

  Law school?

  Boone thinks. The first step to becoming a

  lawyer

  ? Show up at an office every day at nine in a suit and tie? Spend your time shuffling documents and arguing with people. People who

  like

  to argue?

  Hideous.

  They sit quietly for a few minutes, drinking in the night and the warm salt air.

  Summer was slowly coming to an end, and with it the torpid sea and the days of lassitude. The Santa Ana winds would be blowing in, with bigger surf-and-fire danger, and then the swells of autumn and the colder weather, and the air would be cool and clear again.

  Still, there’s a certain sadness to the coming end of summer.

  The two friends sit and talk bullshit.

  Boone doesn’t tell Dave that he’s working on the Corey Blasingame case.

  28

  The case that Boone

  still

  works on is the Rain Sweeny case.

  Rain was six years old and Boone was a cop when she disappeared from the front yard of her house.

  The chief suspect was a short-eyes named Russ Rasmussen. Boone and his then partner, Steve Harrington, found Rasmussen. Harrington wanted to beat the answers out of the suspect, but Boone hadn’t let him do it. Boone left the force shortly after that but Harrington stayed and worked his way up to sergeant in the Homicide Division.

  Rasmussen never told what he did with Rain Sweeny.

  He walked and went off the radar.

  Rain Sweeny was never found.

  Boone became a pariah on the SDPD and pulled the pin shortly after.

  That was five years ago, and Boone hasn’t stopped trying to find Rain Sweeny, even though he knows that she’s almost certainly dead.

  Now he sits at his computer and checks a special e-mail file for any updates on the list of Jane Does that would match Rain’s age and description. He pays annually for computer constructions of what Rain would look like at her current age, and now he compares her eleven-year-old “photo” with pictures from morgues in Oregon and Indiana.

  Neither of the poor girls is Rain.

  Boone’s relieved. Every time a photo pops up, it stops his heart; every time it’s not Rain, Boone feels a bittersweet contradiction of emotions. Glad, of course, that the girl has not been confirmed dead; sad that he can’t give her parents closure.

  Next he goes to another address and checks for messages about Russ Rasmussen.

  Through Johnny Banzai and his own connections, Boone has reached out to the sex crimes units in most major cities and state police forces. Creeps like Rasmussen don’t strike just once, and sooner or later he’s going to get picked up strolling a park or a schoolyard.

  When he does, Boone is going to be there soon after.

  He keeps a .38 in a drawer just for the occasion.

  Tonight, like all the other nights, there’s nothing.

  Rasmussen has disappeared.

  With Rain.

  Gone.

  Nevertheless, Boone writes to three more police forces, e-mailing photos of Rain and Rasmussen, the latter in case the skell has managed to change identities and is in custody under a different name.

  Then Boone hits the sack and tries to sleep.

  It doesn’t always come easily.

  29

  The next morning’s Dawn Patrol is another dull session, surfwise.

  The sea is flat glass—any half-competent surgeon could do delicate brain surgery sitting on a longboard in this ocean. Michelangelo could lie on a board and paint the Sistine . . . ahh, you get the idea.

  Johnny tries to bust up the monotony.

  “Do ducks,” he asks, “really line up in a row?”

  “Ducks?” Dave asks. “In a row? Why?”

  “Why do I ask, or why do they line up in a row?”

  “We haven’t established yet that they

  do

  line up in a row,” Tide says, “so Dave is asking why you’re asking. Is that what you’re asking, Dave?”

  “Yeah, I’m asking why JB wants to know whether ducks line up in a—”

  Boone dips his head into the water. When he comes back up Johnny is saying, “You know the expression ‘ducks in a row’? I’m seeking input whether that reflects a zoological reality, or it’s just bullshit.”

  “It would be an ‘ornithological’ reality,” Boone says, “not a ‘zoological’ reality.”

  “Good pickup, B,” Dave says. “We finally know the question that Banzai missed on his SATs.”

  “Let it go, Dave.”

  “So?’ Johnny asks. “Has anyone actually ever seen ducks in a row?”

  “I believe that ducks,” Boone says, “are freshwater creatures. Hence, I don’t know that I’ve actually ever seen

  ducks

  , in a row or otherwise.”

  “I’ve seen ducks in a row,” Tide offers.

  “You have?” Johnny asks.

  “At the Del Mar Fair,” Tide says. “At one of those booths where you shoot the BB guns. The ducks were all in a row.”

  “This is just what I mean,” Johnny says. “Is that an imitation of actual nature, or the perpetuation of an ornithological myth?”

  “An avian stereotype?” Boone asks. “Pelicans are gluttons, seagulls are filthy, ducks are anal-retentive—”

  “Can you be politically incorrect about birds?” Dave asks.

  “Only birds of color,” Tide says. “Or female birds. White male birds you can trash. This Irish seagull waddles past a bar and—”

  Hang Twelve sits up on his board and in a tone of unusual authority pronounces, “When the mother duck has

  baby

  ducks, the baby ducks swim behind her in a precise row.”

  “You’ve personally witnessed this?” Johnny challenges.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  They stare at each other for a second, then Johnny says, “We have to get some waves.”

  “We really do.”

  “We’re pathetic,” High Tide says.

  “We are,” Boone agrees.

  He’s not sure whether it’s the absence of waves or the absence of Sunny that is the main source of this malaise. Probably both, but Sunny would have put a quick and witty end to this idiot discussion with some deadly accurate barb.

  “Maybe we need to recruit another female onto the Dawn Patrol,” Boone suggests.

  “A replacement Sunny?” Dave asks.

  “We already have Not Sunny the Waitress,” Tide says. “Do we also want Not Sunny the Surfer?”

  “Recruiting a replacement Sunny,” says Johnny, clearly nonplussed, “would be making a statement that the real Sunny isn’t coming back.”

  She isn’t, Boone thinks. She’s moved on. To the professional, sponsored surfer ranks. Good for her, but we have to face the fact that we’re mostly going to be seeing Sunny on magazine covers, not out here in the lineup.

  Hang Twelve, mouth agape, stares at him.

  “What?” Boone asks.

  “Shame on you,” Hang says.

  The session drags on in desultory silence. Even the ocean doesn’t make a pretense of showing up, just lies there lifeless and supine.

  “It’s like a big lake,” Tide says.

  “Lakes don’t have salt,” Hang says, still pouting over Boone’s suggestion of replacing Sunny. “There’s no such thing as a big salt lake.”

  The other surfers look at ea
ch other for a second, then Johnny says, “No. Don’t bother.”

  They don’t. They don’t bother to educate Hang about Utah, they don’t bother to launch into another topic of conversation, the ocean doesn’t bother to come up with waves. Boone is grateful when the Dawn Patrol drags to an end and the guys start to paddle in.

  “You coming?” Dave asks him.

  “Nah, I’m going to hang.”

  He looks toward the shore, where the veteran denizens of the Gentlemen’s Hour are already gathering, pointing at nonexistent waves, sipping coffee, and sucking cigarettes, doubtless talking about flat Augusts past.

  And Dan Nichols is paddling out.

  30

  Boone tells him that he didn’t find anything suspicious in the phone records or e-mail files.

  Dan looks almost disappointed.

  “Could she have a phone I don’t know about?” he asks.

  Boone shrugs. “I dunno. Could she? Wouldn’t the billing come to you?”

  “Yeah,” Dan says. “I’m going out of town tomorrow. That would be a good time to . . .”

  He doesn’t say to what.

  Boone’s always thought that if you don’t want to say something, it’s a pretty good indication that you shouldn’t do the something, so he says, “Dan, are you sure, man? Are you sure you shouldn’t just, like, talk to her? Upfront, ask her what’s up?”

  “What if she says nothing is?”

  “Good.”

  “But what if she’s lying?”

  That’s kind of that, Boone thinks. He knows now that he’s going to have to follow Donna Nichols and hope like hell the route doesn’t lead to some other man’s bed. It would be a very skippy result, to come back to Dan and tell him he’s a paranoid jerk, go buy some flowers, and stop being dumb and insecure.

  “Okay,” Boone says. “I’m on it.”

  “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

  I’m neither, Boone thinks, but whatever. “I’ll have to pick up some equipment.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  What he’s going to need is a little unit that will fit under the bumper of Donna’s car.

  “What does Donna usually drive?” Boone asks. “A white Lexus SUV,” Dan said. “Birthday present.”

  Nice, Boone thinks. For his last birthday he got some sex wax from Hang, some two-fer coupons for Jeff’s Burger from Tide, and a card from Dave expressing the sentiment “Go Fuck Yourself.”

  “Who’s the car registered to?” Boone asks.

  “Me,” Dan answers. “Well, the corporation.”

  “Natch.”

  Tax stuff, Boone thinks. People with corporations don’t buy anything personally if they can help it. Anything that even tangentially touches the business is a write-off. But your wife’s birthday present?

  Dan says, “Donna’s an officer.”

  Doesn’t matter, Boone thinks—it would still be perfectly kosher for Dan to put a tracking device on a car his corporation owns, and he wouldn’t have to disclose it to Donna, even if she were an officer. Boone describes the little tracker device that’s attached to a small but powerful magnet. “You just put it under the rear bumper.”

  “Without her seeing me,” Dan says.

  “That would be better, yeah.”

  And the tracking device would be better than following her because this could be a long job, and it would be too easy to get made.

  “I’ll pick up the stuff and meet you somewhere to hand it over,” Boone says.

  “Cool.”

  No, uncool, Boone thinks, already feeling like a sleaze.

  Very uncool.

  They paddle in.

  Boone skips The Sundowner because he’s in a hurry.

  He now has one clear day to explore the life and times of Corey Blasingame.

  31

  He drives over to Corey’s “place of work,” as they say in the police reports.

  Corey delivered pizzas.

  Drove around in one of those little cars with the sign on top, carting twelve-dollar extra-large specials to college kids, slackers, and parents too busy on a given night to get supper together for the kids.

  Yeah, okay, but what was rich kid Corey doing delivering pizzas for minimum wage and minimum tips? Tip money is good money if you’re waiting tables at Mille Fleurs on a Saturday night, but not when you’re pushing the pepperoni in dorms. Corey’s daddy is slapping up half the luxury homes infesting the coastline, but the kid is driving around wearing a funny hat and taking shit for not getting there in twenty minutes?

  Turns out Corey was about to lose even that job.

  “Why?” Boone asks the franchise owner, Mr. McKay.

  “The job was delivering pizzas,” Mr. McKay says. “And he wasn’t delivering them.”

  Worse, he was stealing them. McKay suspected that Corey had his friends call up, order pizzas, and then deny it when Corey went to “deliver.” Then Corey ate the “spoilage.” It got to the point where McKay insisted that Corey bring the spurned extra-large-with-everything-except-anchovies back to the store to be officially thrown away.

  “Anyway, I think he was stoned,” McKay says.

  “On what?”

  McKay shrugs. “I don’t know anything about drugs, but he seemed like he was hopped up on speed or something. Really, I was about to terminate him when . . .”

  He lets it trail off.

  Nobody liked talking about the Kuhio killing.

  Depressing, Boone thinks as he drives over to Corey’s old high school. The guy had a gig hauling pizzas and jacks his own product. Like, if you were around pizza all the time, is that really what you’d want for dinner?

  Boone checks himself. Are you feeling sorry for this kid now?

  Yeah, sort of, especially after he leaves the school.

  32

  LJPA.

  La Jolla Prep.

  More properly, La Jolla Preparatory Academy.

  Prep for what? Boone thinks as he approaches the security shack that flanks the gated driveway. The students were born on third base, so it must be prep for getting them that last ninety feet. Not that these kids start with a foot on the bag. No, they take a nice long lead, secure in the knowledge that no one is going to even try to pick them off.

  The guard isn’t too enthused about the Deuce.

  It’s a funny thing about security guys, Boone thinks as he sees the uniformed man step out of the shack with that “Turn it around, buddy” look already on his face. They stay in one spot long enough, they get to thinking that they own the place. They actually take a protective pride in guarding a group of people who are very polite, even warm, as they’re going in and out, but are never, ever going to ask them inside to the Christmas party. Boone can never understand why people will man the gates that keep them out.

  And, since Columbine, getting into a school is hard, especially when the school is one of the most exclusive on the West Coast. Boone rolls down the window.

  “Can I help you?” the guard asks, meaning, “Can I help you

  out

  ?”

  Because the guard already knows. He takes one look inside the Deuce at the mess of wet suits, board trunks, fast-food wrappers, Styrofoam coffee cups, towels, and blankets, and

  knows

  that Boone doesn’t belong here. Now he has to make sure that Boone knows he doesn’t belong here.

  While the guard was checking out the van, Boone took a quick glance of the little nameplate pinned on his shirt pocket. “You’re Jim Nerburn, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any relation to Ken Nerburn?”

  “He’s my kid.”

  “He’s a good guy, Ken.”

  “You know him?”

  “We’ve surfed together a little.” Boone sticks his hand out the window. “Boone Daniels.”

  “Jim Nerburn.”

  “We met at a Padres game, didn’t we?” Boone asks. “You were with Ken and some of his friends?”

  “That’s right,” Ne
rburn says. “That Cardinal rookie threw a no-hitter.”

  “I remember that. Dollar hot dog night, too.”

  Nerburn pats his belly. “Yes, it was. What brings you here today, Boone?” Boone takes out his PI card and shows it to Nerburn. “I’m on the clock. I need to talk to some folks about Corey Blasingame.”

  Nerburn’s face darkens. Funny, Boone thinks, how faces tend to do that when you bring up Corey’s name. “They’d like to forget about Corey around here.”

  I’ll bet they would, Boone thinks. LJPA students go on to Stanford, UCLA, Princeton, and Duke, or maybe closer to home at UCSD. They don’t go to jail. Boone seriously doubts that Corey is going to make the holiday newsletter this year.

  “LJPA alum Corey Blasingame was admitted to San Quentin State Prison for the coming term, twenty-five to life. We wish Corey all the luck in the world as he starts his exciting new career. . . .”

  “You knew him?” Boone asks.

  “I knew him.”

  “Trouble?”

  Nerburn looks thoughtful. Then he says, “That’s the thing—no. God knows we got our rich-kid chuckleheads around here, think they can get away with anything, but the Blasingame kid wasn’t one of those. Never came blasting in or out of my gate.”

  “What’d he drive?”

  “Had a Lexus,” Nerburn says, “but he totaled it. Then his old man got him a preowned Honda.”

  “Good cars.”

  “Run forever.”

  “He get hurt in the accident?”

  Nerburn shakes his head. “Bumps and bruises.”

  “Thank God, huh?”

  “Truly,” Nerburn says. Then he asks, “The dad hired you?”

  “Indirectly. The lawyer.”

  “That’s the way it works?”

  “Usually.”

  “Maintains the privilege,” Nerburn says.

  “I guess.”

  Nerburn reaches inside the booth, pulls out a clipboard, and scans it. “You have an appointment with anyone?”

  “I could lie to you and say I did.”

  “You’re supposed to have an appointment.”

  “You’re right,” Boone admits. “But, you know how it is, you let people know you’re coming, they start to think about what they’re going to say . . .”

  “You get canned stuff?”

  “Yup.”