The Gentleman's Hour

by Don Winslow

  Who could be here so late at night?

  “Boone?” she says into the speaker.

  “Yeah.”

  She buzzes him in.

  144

  The psychology of the early hours of a kidnapping is amazingly consistent.

  After the initial shock comes a short period of disbelief, followed by despair. Then the survival instinct kicks in and forces a sense of hope, predicated on the same question:

  Is anyone looking for me?

  Then the kidnapped person goes through a checklist of his or her day, all the mundane little details that make up an average life, the routines that define daily living, with a now crucial emphasis on habitual human contact.

  Who will miss me?

  And when?

  At what point in the day will someone not see me and wonder why not? A spouse, certainly, a friend, a coworker, a boss, a subordinate. Or would it be the lady who sells you the morning cup of coffee, a parking lot attendant, a security guard, a receptionist?

  For most people, in most jobs, there’s a long list of daily, routine human contacts whose concern would be triggered by the simple fact that you didn’t show up for work, or school, that you didn’t come home.

  But for the person who works alone, with no routine schedule; who lives alone, without family; whose work takes him different places at different times, day or night, often secretly, there are no expectations, the failure of which would cause anxiety and launch a search.

  These thoughts run through Boone’s mind as he lies on the floor of the van, this enforced examination of his life in relation to other lives.

  Who’ll miss me? he asks himself.

  What is the first point in time that I will be expected somewhere?

  The Dawn Patrol.

  Virtually every day since I was fifteen years old, he thinks, I’ve shown up on the Dawn Patrol. So normally, if I didn’t make it, someone would ask, “Where the hell is Boone?”

  Except that’s over. My others-encouraged, self-imposed exile from the Dawn Patrol will make my no-show, not my presence, the expectation. They won’t know, they won’t care, they’ll just assume that I’m still on my long, strange trip.

  So, what’s next?

  The Gentlemen’s Hour.

  The next phase of the daily surf clock, my new surf home.

  I told Dan Nichols I’d see him at the Gentlemen’s Hour, but will he remember that? Will he care? Like, so what if I don’t show? He won’t trip to something being wrong, he’ll just think I’m busy doing something else, that’s all. And if the old boys talking story on the beach notice I’m not there, it’s a huge so what? A nothing.

  Next.

  Well, that would be The Sundowner for breakfast. Who’s going to miss me there?

  Not Not Sunny.

  Not Sunny Jennifer.

  Most days, but not all days, I go into the office. So there’s Hang Twelve downstairs in the surf shop. But Hang is pissed at me, sees me as a traitor, and probably doesn’t care if I show or not, if he even notices—observation of the real world not being Hang’s strongest suit.

  So then there’s Cheerful.

  Who sits up there like a buzzard, waiting for me to come in, most happily miserable when I’m really late. Cheerful, my last friend, would know, but would he think anything of it? Or just believe that I flaked again, or that a case has taken me elsewhere?

  Sunny would miss me.

  But Sunny’s not here. Sunny’s surfing and having her picture taken somewhere across the world.

  Pete.

  Petra Hall.

  Pete knows what we’re into, but she doesn’t know what we’re into. She has no freaking clue that this has taken us into realms we didn’t imagine, and that’s the point: no one is going to miss me for a long time, and during that long time I have to keep Petra’s name from coming out of my piehole, or else I have to make them kill me before it does.

  A hand reaches down and rips off the tape and the Voice asks, “Did you really think you could escape?”

  The Voice is casual, but Boone can hear the edge of pain beneath it.

  “No, I just wanted to hurt you,” Boone says. “It gives me pleasure.”

  “I’ll make you live an additional hour for that,” the Voice says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” the Voice says. “You know, you are remarkably calm for a man who is facing what you are. Let me tell you why you shouldn’t be.”

  He starts telling Boone.

  145

  Petra opens the door.

  John Kodani is standing there.

  “Cute,” she says.

  “I take it,” he says, “Boone isn’t here?”

  “You take it correctly,” she answers. “And, as a lady, I should take umbrage at your assumption that he is, at this late hour.”

  “It’s the middle of the day for me,” Johnny says. “Well, do you know where he is?”

  “I assume he’s at home.”

  Johnny shakes his head.

  “Then I haven’t a clue.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “I think you might be in possession of some material germane to a murder investigation,” he says. “Boone told me all about Blasingame and Paradise. About some records . . . what’s it . . . Nicole gave him? I didn’t believe him.”

  “And now?”

  “I might believe him.”

  That’s interesting, she thinks. Boone didn’t ring me to tell me of any new developments.

  “May I enquire what has occurred to change your mind?”

  “No,” Johnny says. “May I come in?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I can get a warrant.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  He smiles. “I could just take you in, you know.”

  “For about five minutes,” she says, calling his bluff. “Is it chilly out? Should I get a wrap?”

  Johnny blows a puff of air out of his mouth and says, “Look, I’m worried about Boone.”

  “I thought you were no longer friends.”

  “We’re not,” Johnny says. “That doesn’t mean I want to see him dead. You neither, for that matter.”

  Petra feels a sharp stab of fear, more for Boone than for herself. He left her to talk to Johnny and Dan Nichols, he didn’t come back, now something new has clearly occurred, and Johnny is worried about his life? She’s tempted to let him in, give him Nicole’s papers, show him the computer screen with its interwoven networks, but . . .

  Can I trust him? she wonders. Boone didn’t trust him enough to actually give him the records. If he’d wanted Johnny to have them, he would have given them to him already. But what’s new? What’s happened? Where is Boone? She asks, “What do you mean?”

  “All right, look,” Johnny says. “Shall we both get undressed here?”

  “Why, Sergeant . . .”

  Johnny takes out his cell phone, flips it open, and shows her the photo of Bill Blasingame he took at the house.

  She gets dizzy, feels like she might vomit, but controls it and listens as he says, “Bill Blasingame. They broke his fingers and every bone in his feet before they cut off his hands, and then killed him. I think they were looking for the records that Boone has . . . or maybe he gave them to you? I don’t think they know you have them or they’d already have been here, but it’s just a matter of time. I’m concerned that Boone’s time may have already run out. So do you want to talk to me now?”

  146

  The Voice drones on.

  His name is Jones—his professional name, that is—and he was trained as a physician—a neurologist, in fact—so he knows every nerve in the human body. Early on, even as a boy, he was fascinated by the phenomenon of pain. What was it? How did it register in the brain? Could the brain be chemically influenced to block the perception of pain, and if so, did pain exist independent of the perception?

  Somewhat similar to the old conundrum about a tree fallin
g in the forest with no one present to hear it—if pain occurred and the brain did not perceive it, was it still pain? In any case, his early work all involved the reduction or elimination of pain; noble effort, truly, but as he continued his research, he could not help but notice that, on the visceral as opposed to the intellectual level, he was likewise interested in the infliction of pain.

  He first observed in a sexual manifestation (as is so often the case, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Daniels?) that he began to take pleasure from pain. Not his own, of course, but other people’s. At first, he found willing participants among the submissive, masochistic community, women who found that the endorphin release triggered by mild to moderate pain allowed or enhanced orgasmic pleasure. This was the perfect symbiotic relationship, as the infliction of said pain produced intense physical sensations for him.

  Boone feels the van take a sharp right.

  Alas, these sensations, similar to drug or alcohol use, were subject to a similar effect of diminishing returns; it would take a higher and higher degree of pain to produce an ever-lessening, unsatisfactory result, and he soon ran out of partners willing to endure that level of suffering. He turned to prostitutes, of course—fortunately there are any number of brothels, especially in Europe, that specialize in sadism—and this proved satisfactory for several years until his addiction required ever-increasing dosages and he became unwelcome at even the most tolerant of establishments. He found the answer in Asia and Africa for some time, where the desperation of poverty provided subjects for sale, but, alas, one is not made of money.

  Boone feels the rattle of an unpaved road beneath him. Wherever they’re going, they must be nearly there, and he feels real fear, feels himself start to tremble.

  It therefore became necessary to make his avocation a vocation, if Mr. Daniels would forgive the cliché, and he was pleasantly surprised to find a large number of clients eager, in fact, to retain his services at a more than reasonable fee.

  It was the perfect match of personality to profession, of expertise to exigency. It has provided him with moderate wealth, material comfort, international travel, and pure physical pleasure beyond the imagination of those bound by the strictures of mundane morality. That is the reward, Mr. Daniels, for those rare individuals willing to confront and acknowledge their true natures and live their lives based on that hard-acquired self-realization. Once he’d endured the agonies of self-hatred and recrimination, he fairly burst into the rarefied aether of pure action.

  He goes on and on.

  War stories.

  The rebel soldiers in the Congo, the diamond dealers in Burkina Faso, the Communist nun in Guatemala, the kidnappers in Columbia, the female student in Argentina whose cries for mercy produced . . .

  The van slows down and comes to a stop.

  “Ah, well. Now the drug cartels . . . the drug cartels are a boon to business. A guarantee of full employment, if you will. Their conflicts, rivalries, power struggles—the sheer intensity and duration of their hatreds, the uninformed barbarism of their rough-hewn viciousness—produce a demand for pain that is apparently limitless. It is a seller’s market.

  “The geologist, Mr. Schering, was a disappointment. A simple ‘hit,’ as they called it, for it had to be disguised as something else, as you know, Mr. Daniels.

  “But Mr. Blasingame . . . Ahhhhh! The bones in the foot, as perhaps you know, are keenly sensitive . . . acutely, shall we say, sensitive to pain . . . and the application of a simple blunt-force object such as a hammer produced an impressive reaction. Snapping his digits was a second-act amusement, a superfluous frisson when you consider the denouement, the sawing off of his hands without benefit of anesthesia. A bit Sharia law, admittedly, but it’s what the Mexicans wanted: sending a message, pour encourager les autres sort of thing. The look of sheer incredulity on his face was delightful.

  “There are, you know, some people in this world of ours who believe that bad things simply cannot happen to them, so when the blade first went in, his scream was as much from indignation as physical suffering. Of course, that didn’t last, not throughout the amputation, much less the cauterization, which led the man to suffer through the agony in the belief that we had done with him—a belief I did nothing to discourage, I’m afraid. He screamed and sobbed and lost consciousness, but when we brought him around he thanked me for sparing his life. Then I started in on the other hand.

  “I think the sheer disappointment quite crushed him, even when I assured him that ‘this was it,’ his punishment was almost over, if he could live through it, and that many men have lived useful lives, et cetera. He was quite shocked when the dirt was shoved into his mouth—another mandate from my Mexican employers—but I think somewhat relieved when I shot him.

  “Which brings us to you, Mr. Daniels,” Jones says.

  “How foolish, how careless of you, to allow yourself to become somehow enmeshed with people who would cost the Baja Cartel multiple millions of dollars. Mr. Daniels, I have inflicted unspeakable agony on people who have cost them petty change. Do you have any idea what I have in my imagination for you?”

  Jones reaches down and tears the tape from around Boone’s eyes.

  Boone blinks, momentarily blinded, then sees the spectacled eyes looking down at him. Pale blue, bright, and alive with ferocious sexual energy. Jones is a man in late middle age, light brown hair thin at the top, wrinkles around his eyes. He’s close-shaven, and even in this August heat wears a knotted knit tie, button-down white shirt, and a linen sports coat.

  A real gentleman.

  “You look at me oddly,” Jones says. “Why?”

  Maybe because he has a bright red dot on his forehead.

  147

  Johnny is looking through the documents when he hears something in the hallway.

  “You have a bathtub?” he asks Petra.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Go lie down in it,” Johnny says as he unlatches the holster at his waist.

  “I will not.”

  The doorbell rings.

  A man’s voice says, “Petra? Boone sent me to see if you’re okay.”

  “One second,” she says. “I’m just getting dressed.”

  Johnny juts his chin toward the bathroom. She gets up from the sofa and starts to go. The door comes in. There are three of them.

  Los Niños Locos.

  Crazy Boys.

  The first one through the door sees Johnny, the badge he’s holding up, and the pistol he has in his other hand, and makes a snap decision.

  He raises the gun in his hand and fires. Johnny fires back—two shots in rapid succession—and the Crazy Boy goes down. The other two come in over him.

  148

  The right lens of the spectacles shatters, one bright blue eye disappears in a spray of red, and then Jones drops from Boone’s view.

  Two more shots follow, each into the brain of one of the narcothugs. The driver slumps dead over the wheel. The last thug reaches for his gun, but the bullet catches him in midmotion, and then it’s quiet.

  The van door slides open.

  “You good, bruddah?”

  “Good, bruddah.”

  149

  Johnny’s next two shots take out the Crazy Boy who comes in first, but the next one—the one they call Chainsaw—hits the floor, rolls to the right, and comes up shooting.

  Diving to the floor himself, Johnny tips the coffee table in front of him, but it’s not much cover, and the little machine pistol blasts a swath across the top, sending splinters of glass and wood spraying across the room.

  When Johnny comes up, he can’t find the shooter.

  Chainsaw finds him, though, and is about to squeeze off another burst when his heart blows up instead.

  Petra stands against the wall.

  Pistol gripped in both hands.

  150

  Boone asks for a phone, and Rabbit gives him one. “Who you calling, the Brittita?”

  “He’s calling the Brittita.”

  �
�Boone’s in love.”

  “In looooooove.”

  She answers on the first ring.

  “Pete?” Boone says. “Get out of there. Now.”

  “It’s all right, Boone,” she says. “Johnny’s here. Just, please, meet me at the police precinct. I need you, please.”