The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

“So Alan.”


“Look,” Alan says, “a good investigator is hard to find, so much as I’d hate to lose one . . . you don’t want to do this the rest of your life. It’s a living, but there’s no upside. So here’s my offer: I’ll finance your way through law school; you have a job in my firm when you pass the exam.”

Whoa.

Speaking of SoCal, in other places offers like this are made on the golf course; here it’s out in the surf, or absence thereof.

“Alan, I don’t know—”

“Don’t answer now,” Alan says. “Think about it. But really think about it, Boone. It would be a big change for you, but change can be a good thing.”

“Sure.”

“Let me know.”

“Okay.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

Alan points. “A wave.”

Boone looks. Sure enough, a ripple about a hundred yards out breaks the otherwise flat surface of the sea. Then it appears as a small ridge, then it builds into an actually rideable wave. Nothing to make the cover of Surfer, to be sure, but definitely a wave.

“It’s yours,” Alan says.

“No, you take it.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“You’re a gentleman.”

Alan starts paddling. Boone watches him catch the wave, then gets up, and feels the wave pass beneath him.

I’m a gentleman, he thinks.

Dave is waiting for him on the beach.



111

“What’s up?” Boone asks.

“I heard.”

From the steely look on Dave’s face, Boone knows what he’s talking about. “You have a problem with it?”

“You don’t?”

“Of course I do,” Boone says. He hesitates, then adds, “Look, weird as this sounds, I think it’s what Kelly would have wanted.”

“What are you smoking?”

“Anyway, I’m not convinced that Corey did it.”

“Johnny’s pretty convinced,” Dave says. “He took the confession. You’re going to jam him up, B?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t.” Because you don’t f*ck a friend. They both know this. You just don’t do it. “How many times has JB stood up for you?”

“A lot.”

“So? That doesn’t mean anything?”

“He’s wrong on this one,” Boone says.

“And you’re right,” Dave says.

“I think I am.”

Dave shakes his head. “Dude, I don’t even know if I know you anymore. Maybe you should just climb into a suit and tie and become one of them.”

“One of them?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” Boone says, starting to get mad. “And yeah, maybe I should. Maybe I don’t want to be a surf bum all my life.”

Dave nods. Looks way out toward the water and then back again at Boone. “You go ahead, bro. Us bums will try to get by without you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Sure you did,” Dave says. “At least stand by your words, leave me with some respect for you. It’s been a ride, B. Late.”

He walks away.

Late, Boone thinks.



112

Winners and losers.

Start with the potential losers, Boone tells himself as he walks over to The Sundowner. Potential losers are more likely to kill out of desperation than potential winners are for profit. People tend to dread their losses more than they hope for their wins.

So list the losers.

Hefley Insurance.

Could be a big loser. What if Schering wasn’t giving them the answer they wanted, or was holding them up for more money? But, as Cheerful says, insurance companies don’t actually, physically kill people . . . do they?

Keep them on the list, but unlikely.

He walks into The Sundowner, where Not Sunny is caught off-guard by his uncharacteristically early appearance. She’s leaning against the bar, catching a standing nap, when the door opening wakes her. She sees Boone and signals the cook to get his usual going on the grill. Then she walks over and pours him a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” Boone says.

“You’re welcome.”

“Uhhhh, what’s your name?”

“Not Sunny.”

“No, I mean, what’s your real name?” Boone asks. “Not the one we glossed you with.”

The question takes her by surprise. Having been called Not Sunny during working hours for several months now, she actually has to think about it for a second. “Jennifer.”

“Thank you, Jennifer.”

“Okay,” she says. “Your usual?”

“Yeah. No,” Boone says. “It might be time to change things up a little, Not—Jennifer. I’ll have . . . the, uhhhh . . . blueberry pancakes.”

“Blueberry pancakes?” Not Sunny Jennifer asks.

“Are the blueberries fresh?”

“No.”

“I’ll take them anyway.”

“Okay.”

She goes to piss off the cook, who already has the eggs working.

Boone goes back to contemplating losers.

If Schering kept faith with Hefley’s, Boone thinks, the next possible losers would be the homeowners. So you’d have to have a homeowner with a lot of bucks to lose having an uninsured house fall into the rabbit hole, or a homeowners’ association.

Now, homeowners’ associations in SoCal are known for their brutality and utter ruthlessness in enforcing their codes, but Boone can’t quite envision one commissioning a contract murder, although he’d loved to have sat in on that meeting.

“All in favor of snuffing Phil Schering, please indicate by saying ‘aye.’ Motion carried. There’s coffee and cookies . . .”

He doesn’t even know if there is a homeowners’ association for the neighborhood, so decides that his first task after consuming the pancakes is to go down to the County Building and start researching ownership records. Come up with a list of the homeowners and try to see if any of them are likely candidates.

Not Sunny Jennifer brings him the pancakes.

And a bill.

“Will there be anything else?” she asks as if she worked hard to memorize the line.

Boone’s a little startled. As an unofficial bouncer and keeper of the peace at The Sundowner, he hasn’t received a bill for breakfast in years. Not Sunny Jennifer sees the surprised look on his face. Anxiety overwhelms her, and she gives it straight up. “Chuck said to next time you came in. Charge you. Like, you’re not family.”

“Relax. It’s cool.”

“I feel weird.”

“Don’t,” Boone says. He gets up, digs out his wallet, and leaves enough cash to pay the bill, plus a generous tip.

“Just tell Chuck for me that someone else can keep things cool around here from now on. I don’t go where I’m not invited.”

Not Sunny Jennifer frowns—it’s a lot to remember.

“Just tell him adiós,” Boone says.

“‘Adiós,’” she repeats.

Adiós.



113

Searching real-estate records at the County Administration Building is a sure antidote to any genre-inspired desire to be a private investigator.

The (sad) truth is that a real PI does a hell of a lot more paper-chasing than sitting around the office slugging bourbon while some long-legged blonde drapes herself across his lap and begs for sexual penance for her sins and a tenor saxophone wails in the background. Most of the work is a slog through records, and Boone hasn’t heard a Coltrane riff yet.

The County Administration Building is an enormous edifice that takes up three blocks on the east side of Harbor Drive, smack in the middle of the tourist district. Across the street, visitors come to see the old sailboats that are now maritime museums, or the decommissioned aircraft carrier, or go on harbor cruises, or grub down at Anthony’s Fish Grotto. Farther down Harbor Drive are the enormous docks where the big cruise ships come, spilling tourists out to hit the bars and clubs a few blocks away in the Gaslamp District, or to take a pedicab ride, or just stroll the long promenade that curves around the harbor, where hundreds of small, private sailboats moor.