The Gentlemen's Hour (18 page)

Wham!

Show 'em who I am!

Wipe the mud off my feet,

Hose the mud off the street

So I can walk again

Like a white man!

Okaaaay
, Boone thinks. Rhymes, anyway. Boyd leans over and yells into Boone's ear. “Fourteen! Fourteen
words
!”

Which turn out to be, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Boone counts them—fourteen words, all right. “The man who said that,” Boyd hollers, “died in prison!” Good idea, Boone thinks.

Wham!

The taco's head goes bam!

What do I see?

Another block is free!

Where I can walk again

Like a white man!

“He gave his
life
for the cause!” Boyd yells. He has fucking
tears
in his eyes. “We all have to be prepared to give our lives for the cause!”

Yeah, no, Boone thinks.

Not me.

Not for
this
cause.

White supremacist, neo-Nazi, needle-dick, double-digit IQ, mouth-breathing, bottom-feeding, off-the-chart dismo, sick bullshit.

The skins are rocking out now—the adrenaline is pumping, the blood is flowing.

Good, Boone thinks.

Bleed out.

As Boone drives away, his ears are still ringing from the music and Boyd's parting words.

“You'll be back, Daniels! When you figure it all out, you'll be back!”

Yeah.

Boone drives west until he spots a Starbucks sign—no big trick there—and pulls off. He digs out the laptop and Googles.

The fourteen words—“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”—were the Nathan Hale of one David Lane, founder of the neo-Nazi group the Order, who was sentenced to a buck ninety in prison for murder, bank robbery, and other happy crap. He tapped out in the joint in 1997.

So good things
do
happen in prison, Boone thinks.

He types in “5 + white supremacist.”

What comes up makes him sick to his stomach.

In white-supremo code, “5” stands for “the Five Words”:

I have nothing to say.

Turns out to be a white supremacist slogan coined by a local San Diego buttplug, Alex Curtis, at his trial for violating people's civil rights. Boone sort of remembers the whole thing. Curtis was a young creep from “East County” who had a Web site and a streaming podcast to spew his drool. Was a big proponent of the “lone wolf” tactic—which said that the racists should act alone to foil law enforcement—go out solo to kill Jews and blacks and the rest of the “mud people.”

Curtis went to jail back in—was it 2006?—and became kind of a cult hero-martyr for the knuckle-dragger set, and according to the story on the Web site, his words in court “I have nothing to say” became a slogan.

Encoded in the number 5.

Good, Corey, Boone thinks.

Real good.

I guess you found something you could belong to.

Regarding the next morning's Dawn Patrol, there's dawn . . .

 . . . but not much of a patrol.

Boone, Dave, and Hang are out there, but Johnny and Tide are 404.

“Johnny must have got hung on a case,” Dave observes.

“Probably,” Boone says.

“Yeah, but where's Tide?” Hang asks.

“He was at The Sundowner last night,” Dave says.

“He say anything?” Boone asks.

“About what?”

“I dunno,” Boone says. “Anything.”

Great, he thinks. Lie to the friends you have left.

“He was quiet,” Dave says. “A big Buddha statue sitting at the bar, banging beers. I left early, had a date with a nurse from Frankfurt. The Euros are here in force, man. The beach is like the freaking UN.”

“Weak dollar,” Boone says.

“I guess.” Dave looks at Boone funny, like, What aren't you telling me?

Boone sees it and ignores it. Can't tell you what I can't tell you, bro, and you'll find out about it soon enough anyway.

Corey Blasingame sits slumped across the table from Boone.

“I have noth——”

“Save it.”

Corey shrugs and reaches for the plastic bottle of water by his right hand. Boone gets to it first and moves it out of reach. When Corey stretches his arm out to get the bottle, Boone grabs his wrist and holds it down on the table.

Then he reaches over and slides Corey's sleeve up.

Sees the “5” tattoo.

He lets Corey's wrist go. The kid jerks his arm back and smirks at Boone.

“I killed him,” Corey says, “because I thought he was a nigger.”

Corey freaking Blasingame.

Total loser.

Even when he tries to do something hatefully stupid and stupidly hateful, he fucks it up. Sees a dark-skinned man come out of a bar, thinks he's African American, kills him, and then finds out his victim is Hawaiian.

Well done, C. Good job.

You killed one of the finest men I've ever known because you “thought he was a ‘nigger.' ”

Excellent.

The rest of the scenario is easy to put together—Corey originally confessed to the crime but, realizing he'd fucked up, didn't cop to his real motive. Then the Aryan Brotherhood boys got to him in the lockup and let him know that he could do his time in one of two ways—as a snitch or as a race hero. Even a fucking idiot like Corey figured out he'd better take door number two. So he fell back on the ‘I have nothing to say' mantra, which made him more of a hero. But then he just couldn't keep it inside—something forced him to make himself look as bad as possible.

“I killed him because I thought he was a nigger.”

Hateful
and
stupid.

Boone goes down the ramp below the big office building on Broadway and Sixth, takes a ticket from the machine, and makes several orbits of the parking structure before he finds a vacant space. He locks up the Deuce, gets into the elevator, and goes up to the fourteenth floor, to the door marked “Law Offices of Burke, Spitz, and Culver,” and goes inside.

He's known Becky Hager for years. Middle-aged; very attractive; long, curly red hair, she's the sentinel at Alan's castle gate. If Becky doesn't want you to get in to see Alan, you're not getting in to see Alan.

“Daniels,” she says. “Long time no.”

“Busy, Becky.”

“Surf up?”

“Not lately,” Boone says.

“You here to see Mary Poppins? Blasingame?”

“Yup.”

Becky gives just enough of a smirk to inform him that she knows there's a little more between him and Petra than a purely professional relationship, then pushes a couple of buttons and says into her mouthpiece, “Petra? There's a ‘Boone Daniels' here for you?”

She listens, then looks up at Boone and says, “She'll be out in a minute. The new
Surfer
arrived.”

Boone sits down and looks at the magazine. Petra comes out two minutes later, looking cool and lovely in a white lawn self-stripe blouse over a light tan skirt.

“This is a surprise,” she says.

“Sorry I didn't call.”

“That's quite all right,” she says. “Come on back.”

“Nice to see you, Daniels.”

“And you, Becky.”

Petra's office is midway down the hall. It has a nice view of the city, dominated by the aircraft carriers docked at the navy base with Point Loma as a backdrop, but Boone knows that she covets the corner office that comes with being made partner.

She sits behind her desk, which is as neat and tight as she is.

“I have motive for Corey,” Boone says.

“Do tell.”

“He was making his bones with the white supremacist movement,” Boone says, “and went after Kelly because he thought he was black.”

“How do you know this?”

“He told me.”

“You
asked
him if he did it?”

“Of course not,” Boone says. “He volunteered it.”

“Why?”

“Because he's a fuckup, Pete,” says Boone. “A total loser. I hate him. Anyway, that's what I was doing last night when you called, checking it out. I didn't mean to—”

“No, I'm sorry for the last-minute invitation. It was presumptuous of me.”

“Look, you can presume . . . what you want to . . . presume.”

“I don't know
what
to presume about us, Boone,” she says. “Are we colleagues, or friends, or
more
than friends, or—”

Before he knows what he's doing he's standing up, leaning over her desk, and kissing her on the mouth. Her lips flutter under his, something he's never experienced before, and they're fuller and softer than he would have thought. He pulls her out of her chair, and papers spill off the desk onto the floor.

He lets her go.

“So that would be more than friends?” she says, smoothing her skirt. “I presume?”

What the hell are you doing? he asks himself. One second you're ready to take her head off, the next second you're kissing her.

“I'd better go tell Alan the good news,” she says.

“Right.”

Boone has felt awkward, uncomfortable, and indecisive before, but never anything like this. Do I just leave? he wonders. Or shake her hand? Or kiss her? On the lips? Or the cheek, or . . .

She comes around the desk, puts her hand behind his neck, closes her eyes, and kisses him, warmly.

“I'll go with you,” Boone says.

“That would be nice.”

On his way out of the office he passes by Becky who says, “Wipe the lipstick off, idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“Nada.”

He goes into the lobby, turns around, and comes back. Hands Becky the parking ticket. “I forgot to get validated.”

“I think you got plenty validated,” Becky says. Then, her eyes wide with mock surprise, she adds, “Oh, you want me to stamp the
ticket.
”

She takes the ticket from him, stamps it, and hands it back. “Cheerio, old chap.”

Becky, Boone thinks, is the whole barrel of monkeys.

“Let me share a concept with you, Boone,” Alan Burke says, staring out of his window at San Diego Harbor. “I hired you to make our case better, not work it up from involuntary manslaughter to a
hate crime
!”

He turns to look at Boone. His face is all red and his eyes look as if they might pop out on springs like they do in the cartoons.

“You were never going to get ‘invol man,' ” Boone says.

“We don't know that!”

“Yeah, we do.”

Petra says, “I think what Boone is trying to say—”

“I know what Boone is trying to say!” Alan yells. “Boone is trying to say that I'd better crawl on my hands and knees into Mary Lou's office and accept any deal she offers short of the needle. Is that what you're trying to say, Boone?”

“Pretty much,” Boone answers. “If I found this out, I can guarantee that John Kodani will find it out, too. And when he does—”

“—Mary Lou refiles on the hate crime statutes and Corey gets life,” Alan says. He punches a button on his phone. “Becky, get Mary Lou Baker for me.”

Alan looks at Petra and Boone and says, “I'd better get with Mary Lou before Boone
helps
us anymore and puts Corey on the Grassy Knoll. You don't have him on the Grassy Knoll, do you? Or anywhere in the vicinity of the Lindbergh baby? You got him nailing Christ up, too, Daniels?”

“I'm guessing Corey's not crazy about Jews, Alan.”

“Funny,” Alan says. “Funny stuff from a guy who just harpooned my case.”

“I didn't harpoon your case,” Boone says. “Your client is guilty. Deal with it. Get the little shit the best deal you can and move on to the next one. Just leave me out of it.”

Boone walks out of the office.

Petra follows him, grabs him by the elbow, and hauls him into the law library. “Why are you so angry?”

“I'm not.”

“You are.”

“Okay,” Boone says, “I'm
angry
because I'm helping you get this subhominid a deal he shouldn't get. I'm
angry
because you're going to do it. I'm
angry
because Corey
should
get life without parole instead of the sixteen to twenty you're going to plead him out for. I'm
angry
because—”

“Or maybe you're just angry,” Petra says. “Maybe mister cool, laid-back surfer is seething with rage about the—”

“Back off, Pete.”

“—injustices in the world,” Petra continues, “that he can't do anything about, which he masks with this ‘surf's up, dude' persona, when in actual fact—”

“I said, ‘Back off.' ”

“Rain Sweeny was not your fault, Boone!”

He looks stunned. “Who told you about that?”

“Sunny.”

“She shouldn't have.”

“Well, she did.” But Petra's sorry she said it. He looks so hurt, so vulnerable. “I'm sorry. I'm very sorry . . . I had no right—”

Boone walks out.

It's good being Donna Nichols.

What Boone thinks after he drives over to the Nichols neighborhood south of La Jolla, parks a couple of blocks away from the house, and waits with a paper-wrapped breakfast burrito, a go-cup of coffee, and his laptop computer.

Donna comes out of the house a little after ten-thirty. She's hot, no question about it, her blond hair done in a ponytail under a white visor, and her tight frame tucked into a white sleeveless blouse and designer jeans. Boone watches her little red icon ping—he's set it for one-second intervals—on his laptop screen and makes a correct assumption about where she's headed: an upscale mall called Fashion Valley.