The Gentleman's Hour

by Don Winslow

  “Do I look,” she asks, “as if I just got up from a bed of passion?”

  “Only to me,” Boone says.

  “That was the perfect response,” she says. “Listen, could I have . . . what do they call it in baseball games?”

  “A rain check.”

  “One of those?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It was very nice,” she says. “What we did, as far as we got.”

  “It was great.”

  He gets up and walks to her car in the subterranean garage. A quick kiss on the lips and she drives off to join the campaign to save Dan Nichols.

  I hate matrimonial, Boone thinks.

  93

  “I like Daniels for it,” Harrington says after they’ve kicked the Nicholses loose with the usual warnings about staying available.

  “His AA test came up negative,” Johnny says.

  “So what?” Harrington says. “They come up with a lot of false negatives.”

  Harrington walks him through it. First, they have Daniels at the scene, while they don’t have Nichols. Second, rich people rarely, if ever, do their own killing—they hire other people to do it for them. Third, Daniels is just the kind of low-life, perpetually broke surf bum who would do something like this.

  “He bird-dogs Schering for Nichols,” Harrington says. “Then Nichols says there’s money in it for him if he finishes the job. Shit, it was probably Daniels who made the offer. As a former cop—which I’m ashamed to say—Daniels knows how to use a gun. But he’s such a dumb asshole he drives his own vehicle to the scene. What we do now is squeeze his balls into a confession, then get the DA to offer him a reduced sentence to roll on Nichols. Job done, we go get breakfast, home to bed.”

  But Johnny doesn’t like Boone for it. Pissed off as he is about Boone jumping into the Corey Blasingame wave, he doesn’t buy Boone as a killer. Neither should Harrington. Hell, their whole beef started when Boone refused to help him tune up a child kidnapping suspect and the guy walked.

  Boone is a lot of things—overly laid-back, irresponsible, immature—but a killer for hire? Granted, Boone always needs money, but this? No way, nohow. He’s probably kicking himself for his unintentional role in Schering’s death.

  No, if Nichols hired this out, he found someone other than Boone Daniels.

  Okay, so what was Boone doing at Schering’s? Obviously, he tracked Donna Nichols there. But the neighbor’s statement had Boone parked right outside the house, and that’s bad technique. Boone wouldn’t go in that close unless . . .

  . . . he needed proximity.

  For what?

  Johnny waits for Harrington to sign off the shift, then gets his own car and drives to Crystal Pier.

  94

  “Where is it?” Johnny asks him.

  “Where’s what?” Boone asks.

  He’s half asleep, having just woken up from a very short night in time to go out on the Dawn Patrol, when the doorbell rings and it’s Johnny Banzai. Boone leaves the door open and walks into the kitchen to put the water on for a badly needed pot of coffee.

  Johnny follows him in.

  “The tape,” Johnny says. “You have video or audio of Donna Nichols getting horizontal with the late Phil Schering.”

  “I do?” Boone asks. He pours kona beans into the grinder and the whir drowns out Johnny’s response, making him say it again.

  “You parked out in front of Schering’s house with a camera or a sound-capturing device and you made a tape,” Johnny repeats. “I’m hoping it’s a video so it has a time track on it.”

  “Sorry,” Boone says. “Audio only.”

  “Goddamnit,” Johnny says. “Anyway, I want it.”

  “Why?” Boone asks. “The boys at the house want a dirty chuckle?”

  “You know why.”

  Boone leans against the counter and looks out the window at the ocean, barely lit by the lamps on the pier. “There’s no surf again today. August blows. Look, you don’t need the tape. You already know that she had sex with Schering. If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you—she had sex with Schering. There’s nothing on that tape that’s going to help you, J.”

  “They might have said something.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Nichols hear the tape?”

  Boone shakes his head.

  “You were there from when to when?”

  “I wasn’t there last night, J,” Boone says.

  “The neighbor says differently.”

  Boone shrugs. “The neighbor is mixed up. I was there the night before. All night. I left in the morning when Schering went to work.”

  “Did you go back to Schering’s last night?”

  “One last time,” Boone says. “I was here until you and Fuckwad came by to visit.”

  The pot whistles. Boone pours a little water on the coffee, waits a few seconds, then pours the rest. He doesn’t wait the recommended four minutes, but presses the plunger down and pours himself a cup.

  Johnny asks, “Do you have anyone who can put you here before we came?”

  Boone shakes his head, then says, “I talked with Sunny on the phone.”

  “Landline or cell?”

  “Since when do I have a landline?”

  “Yeah, I forgot,” Johnny said. So Boone’s phone would show a record of him talking to Sunny, but wouldn’t say where he was. “What time did you talk to her?”

  “I dunno. After nine.”

  So it doesn’t help him anyway, Johnny thinks. “I want that tape.”

  “Get a warrant,” Boone says, “and you can have it.”

  “I will.”

  There’s a slight lightening of the sky outside the window, the faintest touch of gold on the water.

  “Sun’s coming up, Johnny.”

  It’s time for the Dawn Patrol.

  “You take it,” Boone says. “I’m dead tired, and anyway, I don’t go to parties where I’m not welcome.”

  “You’re making your own choices, Boone,” Johnny says. “I don’t feel like I even know you anymore. Worse, I don’t think you know yourself.”

  “Knock off the pop-pyscho-babble and go surf,” Boone says.

  Words to live by.

  95

  Boone catches the Gentlemen’s Hour instead.

  To his considerable surprise, Dan is out on the line.

  “I didn’t do it,” Dan says when he paddles up next to Boone.

  “Yeah, you said that.”

  “You don’t believe me,” Dan says.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Boone says. “Look, I hooked you up with a good lawyer. I’m out of this.”

  Yeah, except I’m not, he thinks. At the very least, I’ll be giving a statement and probably testifying about my role in the whole thing. And one cop wants to make it out that you paid me to kill your wife’s lover.

  And a man is dead.

  For no good reason.

  A lot of that going around in San Diego these days.

  96

  Okay, maybe Dan didn’t do it, Boone thinks as he paddles in.

  Maybe Dan is telling the truth, and he had nothing to do with Schering’s murder. There’s always that possibility. But if Dan didn’t, who did?

  If Schering was fucking around with another’s guy wife, maybe Donna Nichols wasn’t the only one. Maybe there was another jealous husband or boyfriend out there. Maybe Schering was a real player, and someone else wanted him off the field.

  Doubtful, but possible.

  So worth checking out.

  For several reasons, Boone thinks as he walks to the office. If Dan goes down, he takes me with him. I’m the guy who fingered the guy he killed. Worse, the suspicion that I did it, or helped, will always be out there. And fuck the suspicion—if I had anything to do with Schering’s murder, I want to know about it.

  Hang is behind the counter.

  “Hey, Hang.”

  Hang doesn’t answer.

  “Hey, Hang. S’up?”

&
nbsp; Hang just looks at him. With a baleful expression.

  “What?” Boone asks. “They stop making Pop-Tarts or something?”

  “I heard something,” Hang says.

  Boone has a sneaking suspicion what he heard, but he asks, “What?”

  “That you’re helping get Corey Blasingame off.”

  “I’m working on his defense team, yes.”

  Hang looks dumbstruck. Shakes his head like he just bottom-smacked and is trying to clear the wuzzies out. Looks at Boone like Boone just shot his puppy and ate it in front of him.

  “You have something to say,” Boone says, “say it.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  No Surfbonics now. Just plain English.

  “What do you know about it?” Boone says, more sharply than he’d intended. “Seriously, Hang, the fuck you know about anything?”

  Hang turns away.

  “Cool with me,” Boone says. He feels a little bad as he goes up the stairs, but his anger washes it away. Screw it, Boone thinks, I don’t need his hero worship. It’s a drag anyway. I’m not who he thinks I am? Cool. I’m not who he thinks I am.

  Maybe I’m not what anyone thinks I am. Or what they want me to be.

  Cheerful is hunched over the adding machine as usual. He doesn’t look up but waves his hand and says, “Up bright and early, I see.”

  “I was up most of the night,” Boone says. He walks through the office and gets into the shower. He comes out, wraps a towel around his waist, and tells Cheerful all about the events of the night—the cops picking him up, Dan Nichols being a (probably worthy) murder suspect.

  “Send his check back,” Boone says.

  “I already deposited it.”

  “Then send him a refund,” Boone says. “I don’t want blood money.”

  “You’re so sure he did it?”

  “I have some doubts.”

  Cheerful gets up from his chair and stands over Boone. No, he looms over Boone, and asks, “So are you going to sit there on your ass being pissy and feeling sorry for yourself, or are you going to do something about it?”

  “I’ve already done—”

  “Bullshit,” Cheerful says. “You’re an investigator, right? You think Nichols might not be the real killer? Then go out and find the real killer. Investigate.”

  Yup.

  Boone throws some clothes on and heads out.

  Refund, Cheerful thinks.

  No wonder he’s always broke.

  97

  Boone hops into the Deuce and drives up to Del Mar. If Schering picked up one woman at Jake’s, maybe he picked up others. Maybe it was his happy hunting ground.

  Jake’s is an icon.

  The restaurant, just across the street from the old Del Mar train station, sits on the beach. Actually on the beach. You get one of the front tables at Jake’s during high tide, you’re practically in the water. You sit there and watch kids play out in front of you, and just to the south there’s a tasty little break below the bluffs where the surfers hang. You ever get tired of living in San Diego—the traffic, the prices—you go to Jake’s for lunch and you aren’t tired of living in San Dog anymore.

  You wouldn’t live anywhere else.

  Boone doesn’t go to one of the front tables today, he goes to the bar. Orders himself a beer, sits and checks out the surf, then strikes up a conversation with the bartender. Lauren’s a pretty young woman, tanned with sun-bleached hair, who took the job because it keeps her on the beach. It takes two slow beers to get around to the subject of Phil Schering.

  “I knew him,” she says.

  “No kidding?”

  “He used to hang out here a lot,” she says. “It was sort of his place. His out-of-office office. He did a lot of business lunches here.”

  “What kind of business was he in?”

  “Some kind of engineer?”

  With that upward, Southern California inflection that turns every sentence into a question. Boone’s always thought it was a reaction to the transience of California life, like—it is . . . isn’t it?

  “He hang out at the bar a lot?”

  “Sometimes, not a lot,” Lauren says. “He wasn’t a big drinker and this isn’t exactly a pickup joint.”

  “No,” Boone says, “but was that what he was looking for?”

  “Aren’t we all?” Lauren asks. “I mean, looking for love?”

  “I guess.”

  Boone lets a good minute pass, looks past the bar out the window where the ankle-high surf curls onto the sand. He gets up, leaves the change from a twenty on the bar, and asks, “So, did he find it? Schering, I mean. Love?”

  “Not that I noticed,” Lauren says. “I mean, he wasn’t really the player type. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  “You do,” she says, scooping up the change, “because you’re not the player type either. I can always tell.”

  Off Boone’s quizzical look she adds, “I gave you a big opening and you didn’t walk through it.”

  “I’m sort of seeing someone.”

  “Tell her she has a good guy.”

  Yeah, Boone thinks—I’ll let her know.

  98

  So the Phil Schering as playboy theory looks shot, Boone thinks as he hands his ticket to the valet and waits for the kid to bring the Deuce around. We’re probably not looking for a jealous husband, but who else would have a capital grudge against a soils engineer?

  The valet hops down from the Deuce and looks surprised when Boone hands him three dollar bills. Based on the vehicle, he was probably hoping for a quarter. But the kid looks enthused.

  “Are you Boone Daniels?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dude, you’re a legend.”

  Great, Boone thinks as he gets behind the wheel. I’m a legend. Legends are either dead or old. He pulls out onto the PCH and moves his mind from the topic of being old back to the topic of a motive for killing Phil Schering.

  Motives are like colors—there are really very few basic ones, but they have a thousand subtle shades.

  Your primary motive colors are crazy, sex, and money.

  Boone doesn’t linger on the first. Crazy is crazy, so there’s no line of logic you can pursue. It’s too random. Of course, there are shades of crazy: You have your basic, organic, Chuck Manson or Mark Chapman crazy. There’s also the “temporary insanity” crazy, aka “rage”—a tsunami of anger that washes away normal restraint or inhibition; a person “sees red” and just goes off. A subcategory of rage is drug or alcohol-induced rage—the booze, pills, meth, ice, steroids, whatever, make a person commit violence they otherwise would never do.

  None of these applies to what facts Boone knows about the Schering murder.

  Boone goes on to the next major motive, sex. Murder over sex is closely related to rage, as it’s usually provoked by jealousy. So if sex was the motive, Dan Nichols is the number-one suspect, as it doesn’t appear as if there were other jealous husbands or boyfriends. Yeah, Boone thinks, but for the moment anyway you’re looking for someone other than Dan, so move on.

  On to money.

  People will kill for the jack, sad but true. But what kind of money hassle could Schering have been involved in? A business deal gone south? A bad debt? Did he have a gambling jones he couldn’t keep up with? Even if he did, pop culture notwithstanding, bookies and loan sharks rarely kill their deadbeats—it’s a guarantee of never getting paid.

  No, you usually kill someone so you can get your money.

  But what kind of a payday could Schering offer? Wasn’t anything he had in the house, because Johnny never brought robbery up as a possibility. So if Schering didn’t have something, maybe he was in the way of something.

  Whose payday could Schering have been cockblocking?

  Boone drives to the dead man’s office.

  No crime tape up. The cops haven’t sealed the scene, and why should they? Schering wasn’t killed here, plus they have a suspect they like and they’re fixated on him.<
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  Good, Boone thinks.

  For the time being, better.