The Gentleman's Hour

by Don Winslow

  Boone hears sirens in the background.

  151

  Boone stands beside the van.

  Three bodies inside—two Crazy Boys and Jones.

  Rabbit tosses Boone a set of sweats. “You should get out of those wet clothes, bruddah.”

  “Wet clothes.”

  “Eddie wouldn’t want you catching cold, da kine,” Rabbit says.

  “Da kine.”

  Boone peels off the wet clothes and crawls into the sweatsuit. It fits—Red Eddie is a big-on-the-details, Triple-A-personality, micromanager kind of guy. Which is all the more impressive given the quantities of dope he smokes.

  “You’re slipping, Boone,” Rabbit says, “walking easy into your crib like that.”

  “Slipping,” Echo agrees. “Advancing age.”

  They’re both pretty casual about the corpses in the van. Why not? Boone thinks. With the warfare going on for control of the cartels, three bodies in a van is a subaverage day on the body count.

  “I didn’t know they were looking for me,” he says, knowing how weak it sounds.

  But a good thing that Red Eddie did.

  Rabbit explains that Iglesias asked his permission to pick up Boone, knowing that Eddie had an interest and it was on his turf. Eddie didn’t give his good, his word was “hands off Boone.” But Iglesias did it anyway, which put Eddie in a bad position. He couldn’t let himself be disrespected like that.

  So Eddie sent his boys to keep an eye out. They were surprised when Boone went out the window, and the boat was a little hard to track, but as soon as it pulled into the little marina in National City, they knew just where the van was headed.

  “They used this place before.”

  “Used it before. Habits kill.”

  “Speed kills.”

  “Speed kills,” Echo says. “Then habits.”

  Boone hears yelling from inside the steel building. He opens the door and sees Monkey, hog-tied on the floor.

  He looks in pretty tough shape, badly beaten.

  “Monkey,” Boone says. “Oh, shit, Marvin, are you—”

  “Fuck you, asswipe.”

  Boone thinks Monkey’s probably going to make it.

  152

  Harrington takes her statement, and for once he’s respectful.

  It’s a no-brainer self-defense shooting, just as Johnny’s is a righteous double shoot. Two of the Crazy Boys are DOA; the other might make it. Harrington has mixed feelings about that—on the one hand, it would be good to question him; on the other, it’s always convenient when one of them checks out of the hotel.

  So he’s nice with the British chick.

  For one, she’s a looker, even with the shock blanket wrapped around her shoulders. And she apparently saved his partner’s life. So even if it wasn’t pure self-defense, it’s going to go down that way. He pitches the questions to get those answers.

  “You clearly thought that your life was in danger, didn’t you?”

  “Clearly.”

  “And you had no possible avenue of retreat?”

  “None.”

  “And you saw that Detective Sergeant Kodani’s life was also in immediate jeopardy?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Where did you learn to shoot?” he asks her, just out of curiosity.

  “My father insisted,” Petra tells him, still clutching the laptop computer she brought with her and will not let go. “He started me off on clays and rough shooting, and we were lucky enough to go on a friend’s shoot occasionally. When I moved to San Diego, as a single woman living alone, I decided to acquire a handgun—licensed, of course. I go to the indoor range from time to time.”

  “It shows,” Harrington says, smiling.

  “I took no pleasure in killing that man,” she says.

  “Of course not.”

  “Is Sergeant Kodani—”

  “John’s in the e room getting some glass and splinters taken out,” Harrington answers. “He’s fine.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Harrington’s about to ask her out when Boone Daniels comes into the room. Petra gets out of the chair, sets the computer down, and throws her arms around him.

  Harrington hates Daniels.

  153

  Boone takes her to Crystal Pier.

  Her place is a yellow-taped crime scene, and she probably shouldn’t go back there soon, anyway. For a change, she doesn’t argue, just gets into a cab with him, and then lets him escort her into his home.

  “Would you like a drink, Pete?”

  She sits on the couch. “What do you have?”

  “I have some wine in here somewhere,” he says, rooting through the cabinet under the kitchen sink. “I have beer and maybe some tequila.”

  “A beer would be lovely, thanks.”

  Boone pops open a beer, sits beside her on the couch, and hands her the bottle. She lifts it to her lips and takes a long drink, looking at him with wide eyes. He’s a little concerned that she’s in shock. “You want to talk about it, Pete?”

  “There’s not a lot to say, really. I did what I had to do, that’s all.”

  “You saved Johnny’s life.”

  “Not before he saved mine,” she says. “I owe him a great deal.”

  We both do, Boone thinks, and it makes him sad. They’d seen Johnny as they were leaving the precinct and he was coming in. He asked if Petra was all right, then thanked her, then looked at Boone and said, “None of this changes things between you and me.”

  Boone didn’t answer him, just wrapped his arm around Pete’s shoulders and walked her out. But he’ll always be grateful to Johnny for going over to Pete’s. If he hadn’t . . . Boone doesn’t want to think about that “if.”

  “Pete,” he says gently, “I’m going to assume this is the first time you’ve ever—”

  “Killed someone?” she asks. “You can say it.”

  “It isn’t an easy thing to deal with,” Boone says. “Even when you didn’t have a choice. You might want to think about . . . seeing someone . . . you know, to talk it out.”

  “Why do I think you’ve been on the receiving end of that speech?” she asks.

  “If I’d known,” Boone says, “that the cartels were in this, I’d never have involved you. And I’m really sorry.”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I’m not sorry at all.”

  Her remarkable violet eyes are wide and wet.

  He leans over, takes the bottle from her hand, and sets it down. Then he pulls her close and wraps his arms around her.

  She puts her face into his chest and sobs.

  154

  It seems like an hour later when she pulls away from him, sits up, and says, “Thank you for that.”

  “No worries.”

  “You’re a good man, Boone Daniels,” she says. She gets up. “I’m just going to splash a little water on my face and freshen up.”

  “Are you hungry?” he asks. “You want some tea . . . something to eat?”

  “Thank you, no,” she answers. “I think I’d just like to turn in.”

  “You take the bedroom,” Boone says. “I’ll take the couch.”

  She goes into the bathroom. Boone picks up the beer bottle, pours the remnant into the sink, and looks out the window. There’s something that still doesn’t make sense. The big money behind Paradise Homes came from the Baja Cartel, fine, but . . .

  Petra comes out clad only in one of his T-shirts. She’s brushed her hair to a shine, put on fresh makeup, and looks beautiful.

  She reaches her hand out and says, “I wanted this to be with a lovely, filmy negligee I bought for the occasion, and perfume and soft music and scented sheets, but I’ve done the best I could with what was to hand.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Come to bed.”

  He hesitates.

  “Pete,” he says, “you’ve been in shock, maybe you still are. You’re emotionally vulnerable . . . I don’t want to take advantage.”

  She nods. “I’
ve been terrified, I’ve seen horrible things, I’ve taken a life and I don’t know how that’s going to work out, but right now I need life, Boone. I want you inside me and I want to move under you like that ocean you love so much. Now come to bed.”

  He takes her hand and she walks him into the bedroom.

  155

  Petra sleeps the sleep of the dead.

  Which, fortunately, Boone thinks, is just a metaphor, thanks to Johnny B.

  That brings up another troublesome question. Who fingered me for the cartel? Johnny B was one of the few people who knew what I had on Paradise Homes.

  No, Boone thinks. Couldn’t be.

  So run it back, barney. Who else knew about Paradise Homes?

  Bill Blasingame, of course.

  Nicole. But it wasn’t her. Boone called her from the police station and she was all right. She’d almost gone to Blasingame’s house, and changed her mind.

  Johnny and . . .

  Dan and Donna.

  The Perfect Couple.

  He remembers his conversation with Johnny B the morning after the Schering murder.

  “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?”

  No, Boone thinks, he didn’t. He didn’t even know about the tape. Boone goes out to the Deuce, digs around in the back, and reaches into the flipper where he hid the tape he’d made of Phil Schering and Donna Nichols. He pops the cassette into the tape player, fast forwards past their lovemaking, and watches the timer until it hits the morning before she left the house.

  “You have to.” Donna says.

  “I’m not going to prison for you.”

  Silence, then, “If you don’t change your report, Dan and I are ruined. How could you do that to me? After—”

  “Is that why you fucked me, Donna?”

  “I’m begging you, Phil.”

  “And I thought you loved me.” A short, cynical laugh.

  “If it’s money,” Donna says, “we can pay you whatever . . .”

  The nifty LiveWire Fast Track Ultrathin Real-Time GPS tracking device keeps a record of every place where the target vehicle went. Boone types in the command for the program to do just that and watches it for the night when Schering was murdered.

  You didn’t follow Donna Nichols that morning, Boone tells himself. You followed Phil. You assumed Donna went straight home, but . . .

  The record says she didn’t. The record says that she went to a house down in Point Loma, was there for an hour, and then she went home.

  Boone scrolls the tracking record. Donna Nichols made three more visits to the same house over the past two days. She—or at least her cool white Lexus—went to that house just after you left her at the party at the Prado. Just a little while before you were bagged and thrown into the water, then interrogated.

  To find out what you did with the records.

  He turns the GPS device onto “active” and watches the screen.

  Donna Nichols is at the same house now.

  156

  It’s a modest house at the end of a cul-de-sac on a nondescript street.

  There’s nothing special about it if you don’t know what you are seeing.

  Boone does.

  He spots the two cars—a soccer mom–style van and a preowned sedan—parked out on the street with men sitting in them. Sicarios, as they’re known in the narcotics trade. Gunmen, bodyguards.

  Donna’s car is in the driveway.

  Boone knows he can’t get closer—the sicarios in the cars would be watching and they’d shake him down before he got anywhere near the house where Cruz Iglesias is hiding. He turns around in the shallow opening of the street and does a U-turn, goes back down the avenue, and turns into the parallel street.

  The rear of the house is visible, set behind a high stone wall. Sicarios will be on guard in the backyard, but he doesn’t see any on this street, so he parks the Deuce a house away, turns off the motor, and gets out the parabolic sound detector. He trains it at Iglesias’s safe house, praying that it has the range advertised.

  It takes a few minutes, but he picks up the sound of her voice.

  Begging for her husband’s future, begging for his life. Telling Iglesias that Dan knew nothing, nothing about Blasingame’s scam originally, and that he told the drug lord as soon as he found out. He wouldn’t cheat his partners that way, Don Iglesias. Their families have been in business together for generations.

  “We came to you, didn’t we?” she says. “We came to you.”

  “But what,” Iglesias asks, “if this scandal reaches you? How long before it reaches the rest of us?”

  “It won’t,” she says. “Please, por favor, please. I beg you. What can I do?”

  He tells her.

  Boone listens to the sound of their lovemaking, if it can be called that, for only a minute or so, and then he drives away.

  157

  The Dawn Patrol, or what’s left of it, is already out, paddling toward the small break, their bodies silver in the gathering light. They are mercurial and fluid, timeless and of the moment. Boone watches, admiring their strength and grace, then turns away and walks outside.

  He opens the stand-up locker and takes out a long paddle board and a paddle, walks to the edge of the pier opposite the Dawn Patrol, tosses the board over, and jumps in behind it. He climbs up onto the board, balances the paddle, stands up, and rows out, to give himself distance from his former friends, before he turns north and rows parallel to the coast.

  Boone has always loved this coastline, each of its distinctive beaches and coves, points and cliffs and bluffs, its black rock, red earth, and green chaparral, but now, as he takes it in, he sees it differently.

  It’s his home, will always be his home, but is it fundamentally flawed, built on cracks and faults, on shifting ground that will fall and slide and collapse? And the culture built on top of this unstable earth—the Southern California free, easy, casual, rich, poor, crazy, beautiful life—is it also fundamentally corrupt? Will its cracks and rifts widen to the point where it can no longer stand, its own weight pulling it down?

  Boone feels strong, standing and rowing. It’s good to stand on a board, instead of lying or sitting; it gives him literally a different perspective, a longer view. He looks back to where his old friends sit on the line, small now in the vast ocean, dots against the pylons of the pier. What about those friends, the Dawn Patrol? Were those friendships, too, built on a cracked and flawed foundation? Was it inevitable that the fissures of race and sex, ambitions and dreams, would separate them like continents that were once joined and now are oceans apart?

  And what about you? he asks himself as he rows on, sweating with the fine exertion of powerful strokes against the current. What’s your life been built on? Uncertain, shifting ground . . . unsteady tides? Has it all come apart now? And if so, can you rebuild it?

  Has your life always been based on shaky foundations? Everything you believed been false?

  He keeps rowing and only turns around when he has just enough strength to make it back to shore.

  By that time, the Dawn Patrol has ended.

  It’s the Gentlemen’s Hour.

  158

  He waits on the beach for Dan Nichols to come in.

  Dan looks good, strong and refreshed, and a little out of breath as he picks his board up from the water, walks onto the sand, and gives Boone a big wave.

  “Boone!” he says. “I thought you were coming out.”

  “Changed my mind.”

  “Have you had a chance to think about my offer?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And?”

  “You set me up, Dan.”

  Boone lays it out.

  How Dan was a silent partner in Paradise Homes, partners with Cruz Iglesias and his Baja Cartel. When the homes fell into the sinkhole, Dan told Blasingame to fix it, gin up the ge
o reports, but he couldn’t get it done.

  “So you sent your wife,” Boone says now, “you pimped her out to seduce Schering and get him to change his reports, but he wouldn’t do it. Then Blasingame’s son was arrested for killing Kelly Kuhio and it’s all over the papers and people are digging into Blasingame’s life and you got really scared the connection would come out.”