The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Tide looks bewildered. “Then—”

“They’re out to lynch that kid,” Boone says. “It’s not right.”

“Let the system work it out.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Without you,” Tide says. “Burke can hire any PI he wants. It doesn’t have to be you. I’m telling you, it’s personally hurtful to me that you took this case. I’m asking you, as your friend, to step out of it.”

High Tide is not only a friend, but also one of the most fundamentally decent people whom Boone has ever known. He’s a man who rebuilt his life—not once, but twice—a family man whose view of family extends to his whole community. He’s gone back and worked with the gangs he used to lead in fights, he’s created peace and a little hope. An intelligent, sensitive man who wouldn’t have come with this request unless he’d given it a lot of thought.

But he’s wrong, Boone thinks. Every lawyer, every investigator in town, could take a pass on this case on the same basis, and even the Coreys of the world—especially the Coreys of the world—need help. If Kelly taught us anything, he taught us that.

“I’m sorry, Joshua, I can’t do that.”

Tide gets up.

Boone says, “We’re still friends, right?”

“I don’t know, B,” Tide says. “I’ll have to think about that.”

First Johnny, now Tide, Boone thinks after the big man has left. How many friendships do I have to put on the line for piece-of-shit Corey Blasingame?

Then he smells his fish burning.

He runs outside but the tuna has already gone Cajun style on him. He brings it back in, lays it in a tortilla with the red onion, finds some hot sauce in the fridge, pours it all over the fish, and then scarfs down the whole mess in a few big bites.

Food is food.

Then he calls Pete.

She’s still at the office, of course.

You don’t make partner working nine to five, or even nine to nine.

“Hall,” she says.

“Daniels.”

“Hi, Boone, what’s up?”

He fills her in on his day looking for the soul of Corey Blasingame, leaving out his fight at the dojo, Red Eddie’s threat, and the fact that he’s pissing off half his friends. There’d be time to tell her about that later.

When he’s finished his account she says, “There’s really not a lot there we can use. The father is an alternately overbearing and neglectful horror show, and Corey was a mediocre surfer and a poor martial artist. Unfortunately, not poor enough. I think it does knock the ‘gang’ thing back a bit, though.”

“There is no Rockpile ‘gang’ outside the four of them,” Boone says. “And their only criminal activity seems to be going around trying to start fights.”

Yeah, except, he thinks. There’s always a freaking “except,” isn’t there? The except in this case being the two points of contact. Corey and the other Mouseketeers surf at Rockpile, a spot notorious for its localism, and the sheriff there is Mike Boyd. Corey and the boys trained at Boyd’s gym, where Corey learned the punch that killed Kelly Kuhio. The freaking Superman Punch.

“. . . a late dinner or something?” she’s saying.

“Uhh, Pete, yeah, I’d like to, but I have to work.”

“The w word?” she asks. “From the self-proclaimed surf bum?”

She keeps it light, but he can hear that she doesn’t quite believe him, thinks it’s payback from last night.

“Yeah, you never know, huh?” Boone says. “But listen, another night . . .”

“Another night. Well, I won’t keep you.”

He punches out.



50

Dan Nichols is also on the phone.

Saying, “. . . I understand. . . . I understand. . . . No, I understand.” Dan understands.



51

Bill Blasingame sets down the phone.

His hand is shaking.

He looks at it, surprised. Tells himself to quit being a p-ssy and stop his hand from quivering.

It doesn’t.

Bill’s freaked.



52

Well, he paid me back, Petra thinks. She gets out of the elevator and walks into the parking structure of the office building. Apparently an appreciation for subtlety is too much to expect from a man whose idea of sophistication is a shirt with buttons.

Petra hits the unlock button on her remote key, flinches at the responding honk of the horn, and reminds herself again to take it into the dealer to have that particularly annoying “feature” removed.

She gets in, turns the ignition, and heads toward the exit, driving down level after level of switchback turns until she comes to the gate, rolls down the window, and touches her card to the little machine.

What passes for human contact, she thinks.

Well done, girl, she tells herself. Another evening of dining alone over a microwave “dinner” or a take-out Chinese, and God, would that there were a decent Indian in downtown San Diego that delivered, just to mix it up a little.

She steers the car onto the street.

I should start walking to work, she thinks. The streets are relatively safe at night, it’s foolish going to the gym and hitting the treadmill, and God knows I’m not in a particular hurry to get home. Where I usually do the same things I do in the office, only with my shoes off and the television on for background noise. Read documents, take notes . . . go to bed.

Alone.

Again.

Yes, well done, girl.

She goes down the ramp into the parking structure of her building.

Damn him, damn him, damn him.



53

A few students are hanging out in Team Domination, sparring, getting in a little bagwork, lifting weights.

One of them is Boone’s “corner,” Dan.

“Hey,” Boone says. “Mike around?”

“He took off.”

“Any idea where?”

Dan has this funny little look on his face, like he knows where Boyd is but also knows that he shouldn’t say. The other gym rats have their ears pricked up, too. So apparently “Mike around?” is an interesting question.

“I say something funny?” Boone asks.

A guy yanking kettle weights in the corner sets them down and comes over. Boone recognizes him from this afternoon. The guy says, “Mike said you might come around.”

“And here I am.”

“He said we could use a guy like you.”

“Well, I’m a useful guy.”

I can surf, I can burn fish . . .

“Mike’s out in Lakeside,” the guy says. “The 14 Club.”

The 14 Club? Boone thinks. He remembers the “5” tattoo on Mike’s thick forearm. The boy has this number thing going.

“I’ll go check it out,” Boone says.

“You go check it out,” the kettle-weight guy says with this weird, smarmy smile.

So I guess we agree on that, Boone thinks.

I’ll go check it out.



54

It’s an article of faith among surfers in SoCal that you journey east of Interstate 5 at your own risk.

Nowhere is this more true than in San Diego County.

In fact, a lot of people make a clear distinction between San Diego County and the fictional “East County,” its eastern portion, the latter, rightly or wrongly, having a rep for crystal meth, biker bars, and the Southern California version of rednecks. Sticking with the stereotypes for the moment, west of the 5 you have stoned-out surfers smoking weed, east of the 5 you got jacked-up gearheads spitting tobacco.

So Boone drives east, thirty miles out to the town of Lakeside, up in the barren hills just north of Interstate 8.

Lakeside is cowboy country.

No, actual, real cowboys—hats, boots, big-belt-buckle cowboys—forty-five minutes from downtown San Diego. The bars out here have pickup trucks in the gravel parking lots, built-in toolboxes in the beds, and dogs chained to eyebolts to keep people from lifting the tools while the owner’s inside having a few beers.

The 14 Club is your classic cinder-block bunker. The small windows have been painted black to keep cops, wives, and girlfriends from peeking in. The small “14” sign is hand-lettered, red on black. There’s dozens of these joints in “East County”—hard-drinking caves for hardworking guys looking to blow off a little steam at the end of the day.

Yeah, except—