The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

“You want a beer?” Boone asks.

“Oh, yes, I want a beer,” Johnny says. The G2 on the street is that Cruz Iglesias has slipped into San Dog to escape the heat in TJ, and if that’s true, it’s alcohol-motivating news. It means that the Death Angels will be on the hunt, and they’re not exactly SEAL-like in their target selection process. It could get sloppy ugly bloody. So Johnny would like a lot of beers. “Most definitely I want a beer, but I’m going on duty so I can’t have a beer.”

Boone signals the waiter and orders a couple of Cokes.

Johnny says, “You wanted to see me about something?”

“Yeah. Thanks for coming.”

“Are we in the business or personal realm here?”

“Business,” Boone says, although he’s worried it’s going to get personal. Murky border there, as easy to cross as the one with Mexico just a few miles to the south and, just like that border, hard to cross back from.

“Shoot,” Johnny says.

“Red Eddie told me he’s going to kill Corey Blasingame,” Boone says.

“Okay,” Johnny says, taking it in. “How did you come by this information? You and Eddie don’t exactly hang.”

“He sent a gunpoint invitation.”

“And how could you say no?”

“How could I say no?”

Johnny nods, then gives Boone a long look. ‘So here’s the big question—why does Eddie give you the word? Let me rephrase that; why does Eddie give you the word?”

Boone takes a deep breath and then says, “I’m working on the Blasingame defense team.”

Johnny stares at him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

Boone shrugs.

“Putting my Sherlock Holmes hat on here,” Johnny says, “let me deduce: Alan Burke is representing Corey. Burke’s second chair is a certain British woman you’ve been dating. Hence . . . and it’s elementary, my dear Watson . . . you’re whipped.”

“It’s not that.” It’s hard to be whipped by something you haven’t . . . he doesn’t finish the thought. Let Johnny think what he wants. There are tougher topics to take on and you might as well get it over with and jump. So he says, “You coached the Rockpile boys to write their statements, J.”

Johnny looks at him for what seems like an hour. Then he says, “That Blasingame bitch is guilty. You know it, I know it, he knows it, Burke knows it, even that tea bag you’re banging knows it.”

“Easy, now.”

“You go easy,” Johnny says. “You back way off. Unless, that is, you’re going to choose a betty over your friends.”

“It isn’t about her,” Boone says.

“Then what’s it about?”

“The first-degree charge is jacked up.”

“You want Mary Lou’s number?”

“The witness statements—”

“—say what they say,” Johnny insists. “Did I let them know how the system works? You bet I did. Did that change what happened out there that night? Not even a little.”

“Come on, J—you have Trevor Bodin putting intent in Corey’s mouth.”

“He had intent in his mouth!” Johnny yells. “He said what he said, and he wrote it down. What are you saying, Boone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you saying that I cooked the statements? The confession?” Johnny asks. “Is that the tack that you and your new best friends are going to take? You can’t try the facts so try the cop?”

“Johnny—”

“You know what that would do to my career?” Johnny asks.

Boone knows. As fast as his own descent in the force was, Johnny had been that fast in the upward direction. Johnny’s rising with a rocket, there’s talk of chief of detectives someday, and Banzai takes his career very seriously.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Boone says.

“Yeah?” Johnny says. “Well, I don’t want to be collateral damage when your do-gooder, misplaced, p-ssy-whipped meddling goes off.”

He walks over to the bar and sits down, his back to Boone.

A shaft of sunlight pierces the room as the door opens and High Tide comes in for his End of the Workday Beer, a ritual that he practices with religious devotion. He sits down at the table with Boone and then notices Johnny sitting by himself at the bar.

“What’s with Johnny B?” Tide asks.

“We had a spat.”

“Over a boy?” Tide asks, raising a fat finger to the waiter. “Tell you what, why don’t you girls come over tonight, we’ll make popcorn, put on a nice, goopy movie, and the two of you can have a good cry and make up. We could even make brownies.”

“I’m helping defend Corey Blasingame.”

Tide looks at him in disbelief, sees he’s serious, and then says, “Maybe I’ll have my beer at the bar.”

“You know where it is.”

“Late.”

“Late.”

Tide lifts his bulk out of the chair, shakes his head, walks away, and settles himself on a stool next to Johnny.

Well, Boone thinks, this has been a good day.



48

Well, it has been for Jones.

Nothing not to like, moving from one fine hotel to another, checking in twice a day to see if they want him to interview someone, with or without a terminal conclusion.

Jones prefers to be active. He enjoys his work, but a little leisure doesn’t go down so hard, either. Apparently his employer and the powers that be are trying to work this particular problem out “amicably.” If so, Jones gets a free vacation in San Diego; if not, he does a job of work and takes a fatter envelope home with him.

In the meantime he strolls the beach boardwalk, slathers himself with sunblock, observes the lovely young ladies in their swimsuits, and imagines them grimacing in pain.

All in all, a good day.



49

Boone goes home.

Pulls a yellowtail steak out of the fridge, gets it ready, and tosses it on the grill.

Sunny always used to bust him for his ability to eat the same thing over and over again, day after day, but Boone never got what the problem was. His logic was simple: if something is good on Tuesday, why isn’t it good on Wednesday? All that’s changed is the day, not the food.

“But what about variety?” Sunny pressed.

“Overrated,” Boone answered. “We surf every day, don’t we?”

“Yeah, but we change up the place sometimes.”

He steps outside, turns the fish over, and sees High Tide coming up the pier. Boone goes outside to meet him.

“Big man,” Boone says. “S’up?”

“We need to talk.”

Boone unlocks his door and says, “Come on in.”

He’s known Tide since college days, when the big man was a star lineman at SDSU, headed for the pros. He was there to pick him back up when a knee injury ended that career. Boone didn’t know him in his gangbanging days, when Tide was the lord of the Samoan gangs in O’Side, before he found Jesus and gave all that up. He’s heard the stories, though—not from Tide but from other people.

They go into Boone’s. Tide gently lets himself down on the sofa.

“You want anything?” Boone asks.

Tide shakes his big head. “I’m good.”

Boone sits in a chair across from him. “What’s up?”

High Tide is usually a pretty funny guy. Not now. Now he’s dead serious. “You’re on the wrong side of this, Boone.”

“The Blasingame case.”

“See, we don’t look at it as ‘the Blasingame case,’” Tide says. “We look at it as the ‘Kuhio murder.’”

“‘We’ being the island community?” Bundling together the Hawaiians, Samoans, Fijians, and Tongans who have moved in greater numbers to California.

Tide nods. “We fight among ourselves, but when an outsider attacks the calabash, the community, we bond together.”

“I get that.”

“No,” Tide says, “if you got that, you wouldn’t be lining up on the other side. We’re talking about Kelly Kuhio . . . K2. You know how many islanders the kids have to look up to? A few football players, a couple of surfers. You remember when the Samoan gangs were going at each other?”

“Sure.”

“K2 went street to street, block to block, with me,” Tide says. “He put himself on the line to bring the peace.”

“He was a hero, Tide, I’m not arguing that.”