The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Organize.

Entering data from Nicole’s blackmail material, she cross-references every entry until the program starts to create a spider diagram of names, companies, properties, inspectors, geologists, politicians, City Council members, judges, and prominent citizens.

The software program assigns a discrete color to each linear connection, and within a couple of hours the screen is a dense, motley web—a Jackson Pollock canvas of corruption, with Bill Blasingame and Paradise Homes at its center.

She pushes a command button and the Web starts to create webs of its own, spinning out, as it were, multiple webs within webs. Switching imagery, she feels as if she’s looking through a high-resolution microscope, watching a cancer spread at hyperspeed.

The intercom buzzer startles her.

Who could be here so late at night?

“Boone?” she says into the speaker.

“Yeah.”

She buzzes him in.



144

The psychology of the early hours of a kidnapping is amazingly consistent.

After the initial shock comes a short period of disbelief, followed by despair. Then the survival instinct kicks in and forces a sense of hope, predicated on the same question:

Is anyone looking for me?

Then the kidnapped person goes through a checklist of his or her day, all the mundane little details that make up an average life, the routines that define daily living, with a now crucial emphasis on habitual human contact.

Who will miss me?

And when?

At what point in the day will someone not see me and wonder why not? A spouse, certainly, a friend, a coworker, a boss, a subordinate. Or would it be the lady who sells you the morning cup of coffee, a parking lot attendant, a security guard, a receptionist?

For most people, in most jobs, there’s a long list of daily, routine human contacts whose concern would be triggered by the simple fact that you didn’t show up for work, or school, that you didn’t come home.

But for the person who works alone, with no routine schedule; who lives alone, without family; whose work takes him different places at different times, day or night, often secretly, there are no expectations, the failure of which would cause anxiety and launch a search.

These thoughts run through Boone’s mind as he lies on the floor of the van, this enforced examination of his life in relation to other lives.

Who’ll miss me? he asks himself.

What is the first point in time that I will be expected somewhere?

The Dawn Patrol.

Virtually every day since I was fifteen years old, he thinks, I’ve shown up on the Dawn Patrol. So normally, if I didn’t make it, someone would ask, “Where the hell is Boone?”

Except that’s over. My others-encouraged, self-imposed exile from the Dawn Patrol will make my no-show, not my presence, the expectation. They won’t know, they won’t care, they’ll just assume that I’m still on my long, strange trip.

So, what’s next?

The Gentlemen’s Hour.

The next phase of the daily surf clock, my new surf home.

I told Dan Nichols I’d see him at the Gentlemen’s Hour, but will he remember that? Will he care? Like, so what if I don’t show? He won’t trip to something being wrong, he’ll just think I’m busy doing something else, that’s all. And if the old boys talking story on the beach notice I’m not there, it’s a huge so what? A nothing.

Next.

Well, that would be The Sundowner for breakfast. Who’s going to miss me there?

Not Not Sunny.

Not Sunny Jennifer.

Most days, but not all days, I go into the office. So there’s Hang Twelve downstairs in the surf shop. But Hang is pissed at me, sees me as a traitor, and probably doesn’t care if I show or not, if he even notices—observation of the real world not being Hang’s strongest suit.

So then there’s Cheerful.

Who sits up there like a buzzard, waiting for me to come in, most happily miserable when I’m really late. Cheerful, my last friend, would know, but would he think anything of it? Or just believe that I flaked again, or that a case has taken me elsewhere?

Sunny would miss me.

But Sunny’s not here. Sunny’s surfing and having her picture taken somewhere across the world.

Pete.

Petra Hall.

Pete knows what we’re into, but she doesn’t know what we’re into. She has no freaking clue that this has taken us into realms we didn’t imagine, and that’s the point: no one is going to miss me for a long time, and during that long time I have to keep Petra’s name from coming out of my piehole, or else I have to make them kill me before it does.

A hand reaches down and rips off the tape and the Voice asks, “Did you really think you could escape?”

The Voice is casual, but Boone can hear the edge of pain beneath it.

“No, I just wanted to hurt you,” Boone says. “It gives me pleasure.”

“I’ll make you live an additional hour for that,” the Voice says.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” the Voice says. “You know, you are remarkably calm for a man who is facing what you are. Let me tell you why you shouldn’t be.”

He starts telling Boone.



145

Petra opens the door.

John Kodani is standing there.

“Cute,” she says.

“I take it,” he says, “Boone isn’t here?”

“You take it correctly,” she answers. “And, as a lady, I should take umbrage at your assumption that he is, at this late hour.”

“It’s the middle of the day for me,” Johnny says. “Well, do you know where he is?”

“I assume he’s at home.”

Johnny shakes his head.

“Then I haven’t a clue.”

“May I come in?”

“Why?”

“I think you might be in possession of some material germane to a murder investigation,” he says. “Boone told me all about Blasingame and Paradise. About some records . . . what’s it . . . Nicole gave him? I didn’t believe him.”

“And now?”

“I might believe him.”

That’s interesting, she thinks. Boone didn’t ring me to tell me of any new developments.

“May I enquire what has occurred to change your mind?”

“No,” Johnny says. “May I come in?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I can get a warrant.”

“Off you go, then.”

He smiles. “I could just take you in, you know.”

“For about five minutes,” she says, calling his bluff. “Is it chilly out? Should I get a wrap?”

Johnny blows a puff of air out of his mouth and says, “Look, I’m worried about Boone.”

“I thought you were no longer friends.”

“We’re not,” Johnny says. “That doesn’t mean I want to see him dead. You neither, for that matter.”

Petra feels a sharp stab of fear, more for Boone than for herself. He left her to talk to Johnny and Dan Nichols, he didn’t come back, now something new has clearly occurred, and Johnny is worried about his life? She’s tempted to let him in, give him Nicole’s papers, show him the computer screen with its interwoven networks, but . . .

Can I trust him? she wonders. Boone didn’t trust him enough to actually give him the records. If he’d wanted Johnny to have them, he would have given them to him already. But what’s new? What’s happened? Where is Boone? She asks, “What do you mean?”

“All right, look,” Johnny says. “Shall we both get undressed here?”

“Why, Sergeant . . .”

Johnny takes out his cell phone, flips it open, and shows her the photo of Bill Blasingame he took at the house.

She gets dizzy, feels like she might vomit, but controls it and listens as he says, “Bill Blasingame. They broke his fingers and every bone in his feet before they cut off his hands, and then killed him. I think they were looking for the records that Boone has . . . or maybe he gave them to you? I don’t think they know you have them or they’d already have been here, but it’s just a matter of time. I’m concerned that Boone’s time may have already run out. So do you want to talk to me now?”



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