The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

“Take your time,” Boone says.

Probably Dan suspects that an employee is embezzling, or selling secrets to a competitor or something, which would seriously bum him out, because he prides himself on running a happy, loyal ship. People who go to work at Nichols tend to stay, want to spend their whole careers there. Dan has offered Boone a job any time he wants it, and there have been times when Boone’s been almost tempted. If you’re going to have a (shudder) nine-to-five, Nichols would be a cool place to work.

“I think Donna’s cheating on me,” Dan says.

“No way.”

Dan shrugs. “I dunno, Boone.”

He lays out the usual scenario: She’s out at odd hours with murky explanations, she’s spending a lot of time with girlfriends who don’t seem to know anything about it; she’s distant, distracted, less affectionate than she used to be.

Donna Nichols is a looker. Tall, blond, stacked, leggy—an eleven on a California scale of ten. A definite MILF if she and Dan had children, which they don’t. The two of them are like the poster couple for the SoCal Division of the Beautiful People, San Diego Chapter.

Except they’re nice, Boone thinks. He doesn’t know Donna, but the Nicholses have always struck him as genuinely nice people—down-to-earth, amazingly unpretentious, low-key, generous, good community people. So it’s a real shame that this is happening—if it’s happening.

Which is what Dan wants Boone to find out. “Could you look into this for me, Boone?”

“I don’t know,” Boone says.

Matrimonial cases suck.

Megasleazy, sheet-sniffing, low-rent, depressing work that usually ends badly. And you’re always left feeling like some leering, Peeping Tom pervert who then gets to present the client with proof of his or her betrayal or, on the other hand, confirmation of the paranoia and mistrust that will destroy the marriage anyway.

It’s a bad deal all around.

Only creeps enjoy doing it.

Boone hates matrimonial cases, and rarely if ever takes them.

“I’d consider it a personal favor,” Dan says. “I don’t know where else to turn. I’m going crazy. I love her, Boone. I really love her.”

Which makes it worse, of course. There are a few thousand deeply cynical relationships on the Southern California marital merry-go-round—men acquire trophy wives until the sell-by date does them part; women marry rich men to achieve financial independence via the alimony route; young guys wed older women for room, board, and credit-card rights while they bang waitresses and models. If you absolutely, positively have to do matrimonial, these are the cases you want, because there’s very little genuine emotion involved.

But “love”?

Ouch.

As has been overly documented, love hurts.

It’s sure laying a beat-down on Dan Nichols. He looks like he might actually cry, which would violate an important addendum to the rules of the Gentlemen’s Hour: there’s no crying, ever. These guys are old school—they think Oprah’s a mispronunciation of music they’d never listen to. It’s okay to have feelings—like if you’re looking at photos of your grandchildren—but you can never acknowledge them, and showing them is way over the line.

Boone says, “I’ll look into it.”

“Money is no object,” Dan says, then adds, “Jesus, did I really say that?”

“Stress,” Boone says. “Listen, this is awkward, but do you have . . . I mean, is there anyone . . . a guy . . . you suspect?”

“Nobody,” Dan says. “I thought you might tail her. You know, put her under surveillance. Is that the way to go?”

“That’s one way to go,” Boone says. “Let’s go an easier way first. I assume she has a cell phone.”

“iPhone.”

“iPhone, sure,” Boone says. “Can you access the records without her knowing it?”

“Yeah.”

“Do that,” Boone says. “We’ll see if any unexplained number keeps coming up.”

It’s kooky, but cheaters are amazingly careless about calling their lovers on the cellies, like they can’t stay off them. They call them, text them, and then there’s e-mail. Modern techno has made adulterers stupid. “Check her computer, too.”

“Got it, that’s good.”

No, it’s not good, Boone thinks, it reeks. But it’s better than putting her under surveillance. And with any luck, the phone records and e-mails will come up clean and he can pull Dan off this nasty wave.

“I’m going out of town on business in a couple of days,” Dan says. “I think that’s when she . . .”

He lets it trail off.

They paddle in.

The Gentlemen’s Hour is about over anyway.



5

In the middle of August, on a ferociously hot day, the man wears a seersucker suit, white shirt, and tie. His one concession to the potentially harmful effects of the strong sun on his pale skin is a straw hat.

Jones just believes that is how a gentleman dresses.

He strolls the boardwalk along Pacific Beach and watches as two surfers walk in, their boards tucked under their arms alongside their hips.

But Jones’s mind is not on them, it is on pleasure.

He’s reveling in a memory from the previous day, of gently, slowly, and repeatedly swinging a bamboo stick into a man’s shins. The man was suspended by the wrists from a ceiling pipe, and he swayed slightly with each blow.

A less subtle interrogator might have swung the stick harder, shattering bone, but Jones prides himself on his subtlety, patience, and creativity. A broken shin is agonizing but hurts only once, albeit for quite some time. The repetitive taps grew increasingly painful and the anticipation of the ensuing tap was mentally excruciating.

The man, an accountant, told Jones everything that he knew after a mere twenty strokes.

The next three hundred blows were for pleasure—Jones’s, not the accountant’s—and to express their common employer’s displeasure at the state of business. Don Iglesias, patron of the Baja Cartel, does not like to lose money, especially on foolishness, and he hired Jones to find out the real cause of said loss and to punish those responsible.

It will be many months before the accountant walks without a wince. And Don Iglesias now knows that the origin of his losses is not in Tijuana, where the beating took place, but here in sunny San Diego.

Jones goes in search of an ice cream, which sounds very pleasant.



6

AK-47 rounds shatter the window.

Cruz Iglesias dives for the floor. Shards of glass and hunks of plaster cover him as he reaches back for his 9mm and starts to fire onto the street. He might as well not bother; the machine-gun fire from his own gunmen dwarfs his efforts.

One of his men throws himself on top of his boss.

“Get off me, pendejo,” Iglesias snaps. “You’re too late anyway. Dios mío, if my life depended on you . . .”

He rolls out from under the sweaty sicario and makes a mental note to require the use of deodorant for all his employees. It’s disgusting.

Within the hour he’s concluded that Tijuana is just too dangerous during his turf war with the Ortegas over the lucrative drug market. Times are hard—the pie is shrinking, and there’s no room for compromise, especially with his recent losses. Three hours later he’s in a car crossing into the U.S.A. at San Ysidro. It’s not a problem; Iglesias has dual citizenship.

The car takes him to one of his safe houses.

Actually, it’s not too bad a thing to be in San Diego—if you can tolerate the inferior cuisine. He has business there that needs his attention.



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