The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Case closed.

Or is it? Was it the punch that killed Kelly, or the sidewalk? You’ve been in a few scuffles yourself, thrown a couple of punches. What if the addressee of one of those had fallen backward, hit his head on something unforgiving that canceled his reservation? Would that have made you guilty of murder, justifiably put you in a box the rest of your life?

It depends.

On what?

On the very shit that Alan Burke wants you to look into. You know the game—a top-notch trial lawyer such as Alan is too smart to try for an acquittal, he’ll try to get the jury to go for a lesser charge, and he’ll angle his case toward the sentencing hearing. That’s if he takes it to trial at all—he’ll probably try to find some facts that might persuade the DA to cut the kid a deal instead.

Boone looks back out at the ocean, where a flock of pelicans skim over the surface. A weak breeze wafts a scent of salt air and suntan lotion.

Is Pete right? Boone wonders. Is that what has you so jacked up? That this murder confirmed something you’ve known for a long time but didn’t want to admit—that surfing isn’t the Utopia you always wanted it to be? Needed it to be?

He decides to see his priest.



14

Dave the Love God sits atop the lifeguard tower.

Boone walks to the base of the tower and asks, “Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted.”

Boone climbs up the ladder and sits down next to Dave, who doesn’t so much as turn his head to acknowledge his presence. Dave stares steadily out at the water, the shallows of which are packed with tourists, and doesn’t take his eyes off it. Sure, the ocean is placid, but Dave knows from experience how quickly tedium can turn to terror. While the running joke among the Dawn Patrol is that Dave uses the tower as a vantage point to scope turista women—which he does—the actual truth is that when Dave is on duty and people are in the water, he is deadly serious about his job.

It’s the rule that Boone’s dad drilled into him, the rule that they all grew up with:

Never turn your back on a wave.

Never turn your back on the absence of a wave, either, because the second you do, a real thundercrusher will rise out of nowhere and smack you down. The ocean may look like one thing on the surface, but there’s always something different happening underneath. That something could start a thousand miles away and then be headed toward you and you’ll never know about it until it happens.

Dave’s been on duty on a totally placid day when a freak rip comes in and takes a few swimmers out and then it’s on, and the few seconds it might have taken him to get over his surprise would have cost those people their lives. As it was, he wasn’t surprised, never surprised by the ocean, because, as much as we love her, she’s a treacherous bitch. Moody, mercurial, seductive, powerful, and deadly.

So Dave’s head never turns toward Boone as they talk. Both men look straight out at the water.

“Your take on something?” Boone asks.

“You come seeking wisdom, Grasshopper?”

“Do you think,” Boone says, “that we’re a smug, self-anointed elite that can’t see past our own zinc-oxide-covered noses?”

Dave touches the bridge of his nose to check that the zinc oxide is still fresh. Then he says, “Sounds about right.”

“What I thought,” Boone says, getting up.

“That’s it?”

“Yup.”

“’Bye.”

“Thanks.”

“Nada.”

Boone walks up the beach.



15

Boone only knows what happened that night from the newspaper accounts and the usual beach-bongo telegram system of rumors that went around PB.

But here’s how it went.

Kelly Kuhio walked out of The Sundowner a little after midnight, stone-cold sober, on his way to his car in a parking lot on the corner.

He never made it.

Corey Blasingame—drunk, stoned, high on whatever—stepped out of the alley, backed by his crew, walked up to Kelly, and punched him.

Kelly fell backward and hit his head on the curb.

He never regained consciousness.

They unplugged him from life support three days later.



16

Petra sits and sips her tea.

Very unlike her, to sit and do nothing, but she’s sort of enjoying it, sitting and musing about Boone.

An odd man, she thinks. Simplistic on the surface, but extraordinarily complicated below. A maelstrom of contradictions beneath a placid-seeming sea. A Tarzan-like surfer boy who reads Russian novels at night. A devoted glutton of junk food without an ounce of body fat who can grill fish to a turn over an open fire. A philistine who, when jollied into it, can talk quite intelligently about art. A disillusioned cynic with barely concealed idealism. A man who will desperately sprint away from anything that resembles emotion, but a deeply sensitive soul who might simply be the kindest and gentlest man you’ve ever met.

And attractive, damn it, she thinks. And frustrating. They’ve been sort of dating for some three months now and he’s attempted nothing more than a quick, virtually chaste brush on the lips.

No, he’s been terribly well behaved, a real gentleman. Just two nights ago she had dragged him to a charity event at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and he showed up wearing a smart summer khaki suit, with a blue Perry Ellis shirt he certainly couldn’t afford, and had actually had his hair cut. He’d been wonderfully tolerant of all the chitchat, and even wandered around the gallery with her and made some sharp observations about some of the pieces, though none of them was a depiction of breaking waves or a wood-sided station wagon from the 1950s. And, in truth, he’d been absolutely charming to the other guests and the hosts, displaying a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the charity in question, and Petra had quite bristled at a colleague’s ladies’ room remark that her “boy toy cleaned up nicely.”

But he stood at her doorway later that night as if his feet were planted in the concrete, gave her a polite hug and a perfunctory kiss, and that was it.

Do I want more? she asks herself. Certainly in this day and age, and as a modern, liberated woman, if I wanted more I could go after it. I’m perfectly capable of making the first move.

So why don’t you? she asks.

Are you feeling the same ambivalence that he is? Because clearly he’s attracted to you, else why would he ask you out repeatedly, but he seems hesitant to take it to the next level. As are you, to be honest. Why is that? Is it because we know that we’re so different and it would therefore never work? Or is it because we both know in our heart of hearts that he’s not yet over Sunny?

Is that a “yet,” she wonders, or an “ever”?

And do I want him or not?

This attitude about Corey Blasingame certainly argues against it. How an intelligent person could take such a knee-jerk, “law and order,” vengeful, Dirty Harry, unenlightened stance . . .



17

There were paddle-outs for Kelly Kuhio all over the world, timed to go off at the same moment.

The one in San Diego was especially poignant.

They went out just before dawn to wait for the sun, as Kelly had for his morning meditations. Everyone brought a flower lei and tossed it into the water. Someone played a tune on the uke while someone else sang a song in Hawaiian, then a Buddhist monk said a prayer. Then anyone who wanted shared a memory or a thought about Kelly—his kindness, his superb skill, what he taught, how he was, his gentle humor, his strong compassion. There was some laughter and a lot of crying.

Boone didn’t say anything; he just fought to hold back his tears.

What impressed him the most were the black and Mexican kids who paddled out even though most of them couldn’t swim and looked scared shitless. Boone kept an eye on them to make sure they made it back okay, which they did.