The Gentleman's Hour

by Don Winslow

  He pulls up to 1457 Cuchara Drive.

  The neighbors are out on the sidewalk, looking concerned. They have those “this kind of thing just doesn’t happen here” looks on their faces. Yeah, but it does, Johnny thinks as he gets out of the car. Gangbangers lop each other’s heads off, surfers beat another surfer to death, men get shot in “nice” neighborhoods, and it all happens here.

  “This is going to be a major pain in the ass,” Harrington mutters as they walk up to the house.

  Yes, it is, Johnny thinks. The recent killing spree in San Diego is bad for a town that depends on tourism. The City Council rags on the mayor, the mayor passes it down to Mary Lou, Mary Lou hands it off to the chief, and then the shit flows downhill to me. Why, he wonders with rare self-pity, do people have to kill each other on my shift?

  The victim lies on his back in the living room.

  One entry wound square in the forehead from close range.

  Harrington’s examining the front door. He looks down where Johnny’s squatting beside the body and shakes his head. They’ve worked together for a while now, so Johnny knows what he means—there are no marks on the door around the lock.

  The victim opened the door for the shooter.

  “Stop ’n’ Pop,” Harrington says.

  Sure looks like it, Johnny speculates from the placement of the body. The victim opened the door, the shooter pulled the gun, walked the victim back a few steps, then shot him. Not your hot August night sudden flaring of violence, but a premeditated, cold-blooded murder.

  Still, it doesn’t have the look or feel of a professional hit. Contract killers don’t normally do the job at the target’s home—more often at their place of business or on the way to or from it. And they usually take the body, dump it somewhere, or destroy it.

  So what you have here is probably an amateur, most likely a first-time killer angry enough to make a decision and then act on it.

  The crime scene boys arrive so Johnny gets out of their way and goes out on the street to help Harrington with the canvas. There are certainly plenty of neighbors standing around to interview, but most of them have nothing useful to offer.

  Some heard the shot and called 911.

  No one saw anybody come to the door or leave.

  One older guy, from across the street one door down, says that he’s noticed a “weird” vehicle hanging around the neighborhood lately.

  An old Dodge van.

  Wary of burglars, he even jotted down the license plate.

  Johnny recognizes it.

  Boonemobile II.

  Aka the Deuce.

  81

  “Sunny! Hey!”

  “Hey yourself! S’up?”

  “Nuch,” Boone says. “Where are you?”

  “Bondi Beach, Oz,” she says. “Thought I’d give you a shout.”

  It’s great to hear her voice. “What time is it there?”

  “I dunno,” Sunny says. “Listen, did I catch you at a bad time? You going out or something?”

  Women are amazing, Boone thinks. Talk about high-tech spy stuff—she’s on the other side of the freaking world and can smell over the phone that I have a date. He’d tell her no, but they have a long-standing deal never to lie to each other, so he doesn’t say anything.

  “You do, don’t you?” she asks. “At . . . ten at night? Boone, baby, that’s a booty call.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who is it?” she asks. “Is it the British betty? What’s her name?”

  Boone knows that Sunny knows her name. But he says, “Petra.”

  “You charmingly call her ‘Pete.’” Sunny laughs. “I’ll bet she loves that. Makes her feel all girlie and stuff. It’s her, right?”

  “Look, this must be costing you a—”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Sunny says. “It’s cool, my Boone. She’s a good chick. I like her. Kinda tightly wound, but . . . okay, what are you going to wear?”

  “Jesus, Sunny.”

  “I know you, Boone,” she says. “I don’t want you to blow this. So what are you wearing?”

  This is both sick and wrong, Boone thinks. But he says, “White dress shirt, jeans.”

  “Tennis or dress shoes?”

  “I dunno. What do you think?”

  “Where are you meeting her?” Sunny asks. “Bar or club?”

  “Her place,” Boone says.

  Sunny laughs. “If you’re meeting a woman at ten p.m. at her place, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.” Her implication being that, whatever you’re wearing, you won’t be wearing it for long. Then she adds, “By the way, congratulations.”

  “Tennis or dress?” Boone insists.

  “Black or brown?”

  “Black.”

  “Dress.”

  “Thanks.”

  “De nada.”

  “The shirt. In or out?”

  “Jeans?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is this the, uhhh, first . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Aww, he’s shy,” she says. “In.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No worries.”

  They talk about her surf tour, how well it’s going, how she’s getting in shape for the big wave season in Hawaii, Pipeline, and all that. Boone fills her in a little on what he’s been up to, skipping the Blasingame case, and tells her that the gang is doing well.

  “Tell them I miss them,” Sunny says. “I miss you, too, Boone.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Love you, B.”

  “Love you, Sunny.”

  Boone hangs up. Five seconds later the phone rings and Sunny asks, “Do you have any cologne or after-shave?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  She hangs up.

  Feeling weirder than weird—he will never understand women and neither will anyone else, even Dave—Boone goes to his closet, takes out the black dress shoes, then finds a pair of white gym socks and wipes the dust off them. This leads him to the unhappy quandary of what color socks to wear, and again, he has limited choices.

  White or white.

  He decides on white and then checks his watch: nine twenty-five. Almost time to leave if he wants to be at Petra’s apartment downtown by ten. But the date isn’t for ten, it’s for “tennish,” so he sits and debates with himself about when to actually arrive. Ten? Five past? Ten past? What’s “ish,” anyway? And is “ish” different in England than in the United States?

  He heads out the door at nine-forty, to get there around ten-ten.

  When he opens his door, Johnny Banzai is standing there.

  Which is good.

  “Johnny,” says Boone. “Look, I’m glad you came by. I’m—”

  Then he sees Sergeant Steve Harrington walk up behind Johnny.

  Which is bad.

  82

  They hate each other.

  Boone and Harrington.

  No, they don’t hate each other, they fucking hate each other. Go to your thesaurus, look up every synonym for hatred, add them together, multiply them by ten, and you still don’t come up to the level of malice that these two guys hold for each other.

  “Good evening, piece of shit,” Harrington says.

  “Johnny, what the hell?” Boone says, ignoring him and turning to Johnny Banzai. If they’re here to bust my chops about Blasingame, Boone thinks, nine-something on a Friday night is way out of bounds.

  “Can we come in?” Johnny says, looking grim. “Have a talk?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, ‘now,’ asshole,” Harrington says. “We’re here ‘now,’ aren’t we? We want to come inside ‘now.’ We want to talk ‘now.’”

  Boone shines him on. He looks only at Johnny and asks, “You have a warrant?”

  Johnny shakes his head.

  “Then ‘no,’” Boone says. “Anyway, I’m going out.”

  “Got a date?” Harrington asks.

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “Where you taking he
r?” Harrington asks, checking his watch. “Legoland’s closed for the night.”

  The last time Boone punched Harrington he ended up in jail, so he keeps his hands down. It’s what Harrington wants, anyway, an excuse to roust him. Johnny steps in and says, “Boone, it’s better you come to the house so we can record the interview.”

  “What are you talking about?” Boone asks.

  “You want to tell us where you were tonight?” Harrington asks.

  “Here.”

  “You got anyone who can verify that?”

  “No.”

  Harrington looks at Johnny and smiles. Steve Harrington has a face like razor wire, and the smile doesn’t help. “The neighbors noticed a suspicious vehicle lurking around the neighborhood, and one of them jotted down the plate. Guess who the vehicle belongs to, surf bum? I almost thought it was my birthday.”

  “What neighbors? What are you yapping about?”

  “Do you know a Philip Schering?” Johnny asks Boone.

  Boone doesn’t say anything.

  “S’what I thought,” Harrington says. “Can we just take him in now?”

  “Take me in for what?”

  “You’re a person of interest,” Johnny says.

  “In what?”

  “In Schering’s murder,” says Johnny.

  This is macking messed up, Boone thinks.

  Dan Nichols used me to bird-dog his wife’s lover.

  Then he killed him.

  83

  The interview room is small.

  It was designed that way so the suspect feels tight, trapped, suffocated—the detective can get right in his face without necessarily being accused of deliberately trying to intimidate him, which, of course, he is.

  Puke-green walls, a metal table, two chairs. A video camera bolted into a corner on the ceiling. The classic one-way mirror on one wall, which everybody and his dog knows from television is a window onto the facing observation room.

  Johnny sits across the table from Boone. Harrington leans against the wall in the corner, his entire purpose apparently to keep a smirk trained on Boone like a gun.

  “You were at the scene,” Johnny says. “The neighbor wrote down your plate and described your van accurately.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “So do you want to tell me what you were doing there?” Johnny asks. “On any night?”

  “No.”

  Not now, anyway, Boone thinks.

  He’s not going to cover for Dan Nichols indefinitely. If he did this, screw him, but he wants a chance to talk to him first. He looks up as Harrington gives out a disgusted little snort of laughter—like, of course he doesn’t want to tell you what he was doing there, he was there killing Philip Schering.

  “If it’s professional,” Johnny says, “I’ll get it anyway. I’ll pull your phone records, e-mail, billing records. I’ll bring in Ben Carruthers if I have to.”

  “Leave Cheerful out of it,” Boone says.

  “Up to you, not me,” Johnny says. “If you were there on a job related to your activities as a private investigator, just tell me. I understand that you might think you have a client’s interests to protect, but I’m sure you’re also aware that it’s not a privileged relationship.”

  Boone nods. There’s no “PI-client” privilege, as there is between a lawyer and his client. The only time the attorney-client privilege would apply to Boone is when he’s working directly for a law firm, in which case his communications to the lawyer would be protected. But in this case he was working directly for Dan Nichols, so he’s . . . fucked.

  “What was your relationship to Philip Schering?” Johnny asks.

  “There was no relationship.”

  “He wasn’t your client,” Johnny says.

  “No.”

  Johnny asks, “Was he the target of an investigation?”

  Fucking Johnny Banzai, Boone thinks. Don’t ever play chess with him. Or poker. At least not for money. He interrogates like he surfs—finds a clean, direct line down the wave and never gets off it. My man can read a wave—and he can read me.

  “I think I’m done here,” Boone says.

  “Please,” Harrington breaks in. He steps up to the table, sets his hands on it, and leans across at Boone. “Please keep stonewalling, Daniels. I’m begging you. Keep it up. We’ve put you at the scene, and we’ll put you in the house. We have ‘opportunity’ and we’ll have ‘means.’ That just leaves ‘motive,’ and we’ll get that, too. So you just keep your mouth shut all the way through the trial and really piss the jury off. Please.”

  Just like Harrington, Boone thinks, to way overplay his hand. He might have “opportunity”—he can put Boone at Schering’s place. But “means,” no. He doesn’t have a murder weapon, and even if he does, he can’t possibly tie it to me. As for “motive,” there is no motive, so he can kiss that good-bye, too. No, Harrington really jumped the gun, and Boone can read annoyance even on Johnny B’s poker face. They’re nowhere near having me as a suspect, and they know it.

  Johnny plays the best card he has.

  “If you’re covering for somebody,” he says, “you’re impeding a homicide investigation, which will at least get your PI card pulled even if it doesn’t result in a felony charge. Keep it up, Boone, and you’re edging toward ‘accessory.’”

  “Accessory, my ass,” Harrington says.

  “If you have enough to hold me,” Boone replies, “hold me. In that case, I want a lawyer. If not, I’m leaving now.”

  Johnny shakes his head.

  “Late,” Boone says.

  84

  Boone walks out into the street, then over to the U. S. Grant Hotel to get a taxi.

  Boone gets in, leans his head back, and takes a deep breath. It was one thing to eavesdrop and tape people having sex, that was bad enough, but to set someone up for murder? Completely different deal, something he never thought he’d be involved with. It makes him sad and furious at the same time.

  It only takes him a few minutes to drive to Nichols’s house that time of night. Boone pays the driver, gets out, and rings the doorbell. Dan comes to the door looking sleepy in a T-shirt and sweatpants.

  “Boone, it’s a little—”

  Boone grabs him by the front of the shirt and pushes him inside, kicking the door shut behind him. He backs Dan into the huge living room, pushes him over the arm of a sofa, and asks, “Where were you tonight, Dan?”

  “What the—”

  “Where were you tonight, Dan?”

  “Here,” Dan says. “I was here.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Let me up, Boone.”

  Boone releases his grip. Dan sits up on the couch, rubs his chest, and looks at Boone with a little anger in his eyes. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “I’m the guy the cops just rousted,” Boone says, “because they think I had something to do with killing Phil Schering.”

  “What?”

  Boone watches him closely, looking for legitimate surprise in his eyes. But he can’t tell whether Dan is shocked that Schering is dead or that Boone knows about it. But the guy is shook, no question about that.

  “Somebody murdered Schering,” Boone says. “Was it you?”

  “No!”

  “You used me to find your wife’s lover so you could kill him,” Boone says.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Boone.”

  “Which?”

  “Neither.”

  Right, Boone thinks. On the same day that he confirms Schering is Donna’s lover, Schering gets murdered and Dan had nothing to do with it?

  “Bullshit,” Boone says. “I called you, you went off your nut, you drove over there, and you shot him. Where’s the gun, Dan? What did you do with it?”

  “Nothing!” Dan yells. “I’ve never even owned a fucking gun!”