The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Boone treads water, looks at the beach, remembers, and laughs.

Recalls the day when Sunny joined K2 in his yoga session. She strode up, laid her mat beside his, and started to copy his moves. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and kept going through his routine, and now the boys were really watching because this babe was putting herself through these contortions and it was, uhhh, compelling. Like, no one was not going to watch that, and then one of the dudes joined in to get next to Sunny, and then a few more, and it wasn’t long before K2 had a yoga class going on the beach.

Not for Boone—he did his workouts in the water—but Sunny was a devotee, totally aware that K2 was a father figure to her. Sunny’s own dad split when she was three, and she was totally open about the fact that she always wanted a dad.

“Basic psychology,” she told Boone during one of their training sessions. “I want to stay aware of it so I don’t do the stereotypical thing of trying to get the love I didn’t get from my father from my boyfriend.”

Which is a good thing, Boone thought, because he was her boyfriend at the time. So it was perfect when Sunny made her yoga hookup with K2.

“It’s almost better than having a real father,” she told Boone.

“How so?”

“Because I’m choosing my father figure,” she answered, “so I can look for all the qualities I want in a father instead of having to settle for whatever my real father was.”

“Got it.”

So did K2.

He was so cool about it. It didn’t freak him out, he never talked about it, never came close to doing that creepy “You can call me Daddy, daughter” thing. He just kept on being himself—kind, gentle, wise, and open.

All the qualities you’d want in a father.

Anyway, Sunny had her grandmother, Evelyn, and her father figure, K2, and her own package of DNA, and self-reliance, and a love for the ocean, so she never became the neurotic f*cked-up SoCal broken family girl who careens around for love and ends up creating another generation of f*cked-up SoCal broken family girls.

She became a great surfer instead.

A great lover and then a great friend.

He remembers that night on the beach. Low tide and deep fog, and him and her under the pier, making love with the water washing over them. Her long, sleek neck tasted like salt, her hands were firm on his back, her long, strong legs pushed him deeper into her.

After, they wrapped up in a blanket together and listened to the sound of the small waves slapping the pylons, and talked about their lives, what they wanted, what they didn’t, and they just talked bullshit and made each other laugh.

Boone misses her.

He swims over, gets on his board, sits up, and looks at the beach.

No less than the water itself, the beach is a place of memories.

Stand on it, you look out at the ocean and remember certain waves, awesome rides, bad wipeouts, hysterical conversations, great times. Sit off it and look back and you remember lying around talking, you remember volleyball games and cookouts, your memory makes it night instead of day and you remember bonfires, pulling on sweatshirts against the cold, guitars and ukuleles and quiet talks.

Now he remembers a talk he had with K2.

They were sitting a little away from the fire, listening to someone strum “Kuhio Bay” on the uke, when K2 said, “The secret of life . . .”

He paused and then added, “. . . Grasshopper”—because he liked to make fun of his status as a local guru—“is to do the right things, big or small, one after the other after the other.”

Boone had just returned to the surf and the beach after months of self-imposed isolation following the Rain Sweeny case. He’d quit the force, laid on Sunny’s sofa until she booted him out, then hid in his own place feeling sorry for himself.

Now he was back and it was only Sunny, his now ex, who knew that he wasn’t fully back. Sunny and, it seemed, K2.

Who just said that and left it there for Boone to pick up or not.

But they both knew what he meant:

You did the right thing.

Now, will you keep doing it?

Yeah, K, Boone thinks, watching the beach change from the night of his memory to the harsh sunlight of an August day, but what’s the right thing?

You know.

In your gut, you know.

Shit, K.

Shit indeed, Grasshopper.



67

Boone goes to Starbucks.

Which doesn’t happen very often.

It’s not like he’s some sort of antiglobalization, antifranchise freak, it’s just that he gets his coffee at The Sundowner and pretty much leaves it at that. Like, Boone could probably distinguish between Kenya AA and root beer, but that’s about it.

Anyway, he goes, and endures the skepticism that results from his order of a “medium black coffee.”

“You want an Americano grande,” the barista asks him.

“A medium black coffee.”

“Grande.”

“Medium,” Boone says, gesturing to the cups. “The size between large and small.”

“That’s a grande.”

“There we go.”

“Your name?” the barista asks.

“My name?”

“So we can call you.”

“For what?”

“For when your Americano grande is ready.”

“I thought you’d just pour it.”

“We have to make it,” the barista says. “Then we’ll call you.”

“Boone.”

“Boo?”

“Just use Daniels.”

“Thank you, Daniel.”

He stands there waiting for his coffee. She looks at him kind of funny, then points to her right and says, “It will be over there. They’ll call you.”

“Got it.”

He slides over to his left and waits behind another couple of caffeine communicants who receive their cappuccinos and macchiatos with appropriate reverence, then hears, “Daniel.”

“Thanks.”

“You got it.”

He takes his coffee into the main part of the place and sits down in an overstuffed easy chair. About the only one there without a laptop computer, he feels like an old man going to the newspaper rack and taking a physical copy of the New York Times, printed on something called paper, and goes back to his chair. People look up, slightly annoyed, when he turns the page and makes a rustling noise.

To Boone’s mild surprise, the New York paper is actually pretty good, even though it lacks a surf report. He knows there are waves on the East Coast because he’s read about it in Surfer, but apparently even the local rag doesn’t think it’s important enough to write about. Anyway, he kind of gets into the reports on world news and books and the time passes pretty quickly until Jill Thompson takes her break.

That is, she goes out back to smoke.

Boone slots the paper on a rack apparently put there for that purpose and walks around out back. She’s pretty—slight build, short, spiky blond hair, a little stud in her right nostril. Soft blue eyes, thin lips sucking on a thin brown cigarette.

“Jill?”

“Yeah?” She points at her name tag. Like she really doesn’t feel like being hit on by another customer.

“My name is Boone Daniels. I’m a private investigator.”

Her lips get thinner. “I already told the police what I saw.”

“See,” Boone says, “I think the police may have told you what you saw.”

My gut tells me, he thinks. My gut says that there’s something sketchy about this whole thing. Because it’s too neat, too wrapped up, and neither murder nor life is that clean.

“What do you mean?” Jill asks.

“You know what I mean.”

He sees the slight expression of self-doubt. “I don’t think I should be talking to you.”