The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Boone knows that Sunny knows her name. But he says, “Petra.”


“You charmingly call her ‘Pete.’” Sunny laughs. “I’ll bet she loves that. Makes her feel all girlie and stuff. It’s her, right?”

“Look, this must be costing you a—”

“It is, isn’t it?” Sunny says. “It’s cool, my Boone. She’s a good chick. I like her. Kinda tightly wound, but . . . okay, what are you going to wear?”

“Jesus, Sunny.”

“I know you, Boone,” she says. “I don’t want you to blow this. So what are you wearing?”

This is both sick and wrong, Boone thinks. But he says, “White dress shirt, jeans.”

“Tennis or dress shoes?”

“I dunno. What do you think?”

“Where are you meeting her?” Sunny asks. “Bar or club?”

“Her place,” Boone says.

Sunny laughs. “If you’re meeting a woman at ten p.m. at her place, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.” Her implication being that, whatever you’re wearing, you won’t be wearing it for long. Then she adds, “By the way, congratulations.”

“Tennis or dress?” Boone insists.

“Black or brown?”

“Black.”

“Dress.”

“Thanks.”

“De nada.”

“The shirt. In or out?”

“Jeans?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this the, uhhh, first . . .”

“Yes.”

“Aww, he’s shy,” she says. “In.”

“Thanks.”

“No worries.”

They talk about her surf tour, how well it’s going, how she’s getting in shape for the big wave season in Hawaii, Pipeline, and all that. Boone fills her in a little on what he’s been up to, skipping the Blasingame case, and tells her that the gang is doing well.

“Tell them I miss them,” Sunny says. “I miss you, too, Boone.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Love you, B.”

“Love you, Sunny.”

Boone hangs up. Five seconds later the phone rings and Sunny asks, “Do you have any cologne or after-shave?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She hangs up.

Feeling weirder than weird—he will never understand women and neither will anyone else, even Dave—Boone goes to his closet, takes out the black dress shoes, then finds a pair of white gym socks and wipes the dust off them. This leads him to the unhappy quandary of what color socks to wear, and again, he has limited choices.

White or white.

He decides on white and then checks his watch: nine twenty-five. Almost time to leave if he wants to be at Petra’s apartment downtown by ten. But the date isn’t for ten, it’s for “tennish,” so he sits and debates with himself about when to actually arrive. Ten? Five past? Ten past? What’s “ish,” anyway? And is “ish” different in England than in the United States?

He heads out the door at nine-forty, to get there around ten-ten.

When he opens his door, Johnny Banzai is standing there.

Which is good.

“Johnny,” says Boone. “Look, I’m glad you came by. I’m—”

Then he sees Sergeant Steve Harrington walk up behind Johnny.

Which is bad.



82

They hate each other.

Boone and Harrington.

No, they don’t hate each other, they f*cking hate each other. Go to your thesaurus, look up every synonym for hatred, add them together, multiply them by ten, and you still don’t come up to the level of malice that these two guys hold for each other.

“Good evening, piece of shit,” Harrington says.

“Johnny, what the hell?” Boone says, ignoring him and turning to Johnny Banzai. If they’re here to bust my chops about Blasingame, Boone thinks, nine-something on a Friday night is way out of bounds.

“Can we come in?” Johnny says, looking grim. “Have a talk?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, ‘now,’ a*shole,” Harrington says. “We’re here ‘now,’ aren’t we? We want to come inside ‘now.’ We want to talk ‘now.’”

Boone shines him on. He looks only at Johnny and asks, “You have a warrant?”

Johnny shakes his head.

“Then ‘no,’” Boone says. “Anyway, I’m going out.”

“Got a date?” Harrington asks.

“As a matter of fact.”

“Where you taking her?” Harrington asks, checking his watch. “Legoland’s closed for the night.”

The last time Boone punched Harrington he ended up in jail, so he keeps his hands down. It’s what Harrington wants, anyway, an excuse to roust him. Johnny steps in and says, “Boone, it’s better you come to the house so we can record the interview.”

“What are you talking about?” Boone asks.

“You want to tell us where you were tonight?” Harrington asks.

“Here.”

“You got anyone who can verify that?”

“No.”

Harrington looks at Johnny and smiles. Steve Harrington has a face like razor wire, and the smile doesn’t help. “The neighbors noticed a suspicious vehicle lurking around the neighborhood, and one of them jotted down the plate. Guess who the vehicle belongs to, surf bum? I almost thought it was my birthday.”

“What neighbors? What are you yapping about?”

“Do you know a Philip Schering?” Johnny asks Boone.

Boone doesn’t say anything.

“S’what I thought,” Harrington says. “Can we just take him in now?”

“Take me in for what?”

“You’re a person of interest,” Johnny says.

“In what?”

“In Schering’s murder,” says Johnny.

This is macking messed up, Boone thinks.

Dan Nichols used me to bird-dog his wife’s lover.

Then he killed him.



83

The interview room is small.

It was designed that way so the suspect feels tight, trapped, suffocated—the detective can get right in his face without necessarily being accused of deliberately trying to intimidate him, which, of course, he is.

Puke-green walls, a metal table, two chairs. A video camera bolted into a corner on the ceiling. The classic one-way mirror on one wall, which everybody and his dog knows from television is a window onto the facing observation room.

Johnny sits across the table from Boone. Harrington leans against the wall in the corner, his entire purpose apparently to keep a smirk trained on Boone like a gun.

“You were at the scene,” Johnny says. “The neighbor wrote down your plate and described your van accurately.”

“Not tonight.”

“So do you want to tell me what you were doing there?” Johnny asks. “On any night?”

“No.”

Not now, anyway, Boone thinks.

He’s not going to cover for Dan Nichols indefinitely. If he did this, screw him, but he wants a chance to talk to him first. He looks up as Harrington gives out a disgusted little snort of laughter—like, of course he doesn’t want to tell you what he was doing there, he was there killing Philip Schering.

“If it’s professional,” Johnny says, “I’ll get it anyway. I’ll pull your phone records, e-mail, billing records. I’ll bring in Ben Carruthers if I have to.”

“Leave Cheerful out of it,” Boone says.

“Up to you, not me,” Johnny says. “If you were there on a job related to your activities as a private investigator, just tell me. I understand that you might think you have a client’s interests to protect, but I’m sure you’re also aware that it’s not a privileged relationship.”

Boone nods. There’s no “PI-client” privilege, as there is between a lawyer and his client. The only time the attorney-client privilege would apply to Boone is when he’s working directly for a law firm, in which case his communications to the lawyer would be protected. But in this case he was working directly for Dan Nichols, so he’s . . . f*cked.

“What was your relationship to Philip Schering?” Johnny asks.

“There was no relationship.”

“He wasn’t your client,” Johnny says.

“No.”

Johnny asks, “Was he the target of an investigation?”

F*cking Johnny Banzai, Boone thinks. Don’t ever play chess with him. Or poker. At least not for money. He interrogates like he surfs—finds a clean, direct line down the wave and never gets off it. My man can read a wave—and he can read me.