The Gentlemen's Hour (38 page)

He opens the stand-up locker and takes out a long paddle board and a paddle, walks to the edge of the pier opposite the Dawn Patrol, tosses the board over, and jumps in behind it. He climbs up onto the board, balances the paddle, stands up, and rows out, to give himself distance from his former friends, before he turns north and rows parallel to the coast.

Boone has always loved this coastline, each of its distinctive beaches and coves, points and cliffs and bluffs, its black rock, red earth, and green chaparral, but now, as he takes it in, he sees it differently.

It's his home, will always be his home, but is it fundamentally flawed, built on cracks and faults, on shifting ground that will fall and slide and collapse? And the culture built on top of this unstable earth—the Southern California free, easy, casual, rich, poor, crazy, beautiful life—is it also fundamentally corrupt? Will its cracks and rifts widen to the point where it can no longer stand, its own weight pulling it down?

Boone feels strong, standing and rowing. It's good to stand on a board, instead of lying or sitting; it gives him literally a different perspective, a longer view. He looks back to where his old friends sit on the line, small now in the vast ocean, dots against the pylons of the pier. What about those friends, the Dawn Patrol? Were those friendships, too, built on a cracked and flawed foundation? Was it inevitable that the fissures of race and sex, ambitions and dreams, would separate them like continents that were once joined and now are oceans apart?

And what about you? he asks himself as he rows on, sweating with
the fine exertion of powerful strokes against the current. What's your life been built on? Uncertain, shifting ground . . . unsteady tides? Has it all come apart now? And if so, can you rebuild it?

Has your life always been based on shaky foundations? Everything you believed been false?

He keeps rowing and only turns around when he has just enough strength to make it back to shore.

By that time, the Dawn Patrol has ended.

It's the Gentlemen's Hour.

He waits on the beach for Dan Nichols to come in.

Dan looks good, strong and refreshed, and a little out of breath as he picks his board up from the water, walks onto the sand, and gives Boone a big wave.

“Boone!” he says. “I thought you were coming out.”

“Changed my mind.”

“Have you had a chance to think about my offer?”

“Yeah?”

“And?”

“You set me up, Dan.”

Boone lays it out.

How Dan was a silent partner in Paradise Homes, partners with Cruz Iglesias and his Baja Cartel. When the homes fell into the sinkhole, Dan told Blasingame to fix it, gin up the geo reports, but he couldn't get it done.

“So you sent your wife,” Boone says now, “you pimped her out to seduce Schering and get him to change his reports, but he wouldn't do it.
Then Blasingame's son was arrested for killing Kelly Kuhio and it's all over the papers and people are digging into Blasingame's life and you got really scared the connection would come out.”

So Dan hired Boone to “follow” Donna, knowing where it would lead, knowing it would provide a motive for Schering's murder that would point an inquiry away from Paradise Homes. Dan and Donna were so desperate, so afraid of losing their money—or worse, if Iglesias found out how they'd put him in jeopardy—that they were willing for Dan to become a murder suspect.

“Boone—”

“Shut up,” Boone says. “You sent your wife to lay her body out, then you tried a bribe, and when that didn't work, you had your cartel partners kill him before he could talk.”

“That's outrageous!”

“Yeah, it is,” Boone says. “And then you set
me
up. Used me to set a false trail so it would look like an act of jealousy. You knew you had an alibi, and you were willing to take the risk because you were that desperate. Otherwise, your partners down in TJ would do to you what they did to Bill Blasingame.”

“Boone, we can talk about this,” Dan says. “There's no need for this to go any further, we can settle this like gentlemen—”

“When I told you I had Nicole's records, you knew you were in trouble,” Boone says, “so you sent your financial backers to get them back, whatever it took. Blasingame's life, Petra's . . . you didn't care.”

“You can't prove this,” Dan says. “I'll destroy you in court. I'll tell them you were having the affair with Donna, that you killed Schering out of jealousy. She'll back me, Boone, you know she will.”

“Probably,” Boone says.

Dan smiles a little. “It doesn't have to go there. How much do you want? Give me a figure, it will be in a numbered account end of business today.”

Boone takes the tape cassette player out of his pocket and hits “Play.”

“We came to you, didn't we? We came to you.”

“But what if this scandal reaches you? How long before it reaches the rest of us?”

“
It won't. Please
, por favor,
please. I beg you. What can I do?
”

“It's a copy,” Boone says. “John Kodani has the original. He's waiting up on the boardwalk now.”

“You're making a mistake, Daniels.”

“I met some of your partners,” Boone says. “I'm betting the legal process is the least of your worries. Have a good life, Dan.”

Boone walks away.

Passes Johnny Banzai on the way in.

Later that morning, Petra watches Alan Burke peruse the flow chart that she created on her computer.

He's dead silent for a good, long minute, then asks, “You have documentation of all this?”

“Yes.”

Alan walks over to the window and looks out at the city. “Do you have any idea how many friends, colleagues, and business associates of mine could be implicated by this?”

“I would expect quite a few,” she says.

She is, as usual, polite and proper, but he notices that the deferential tone that she normally adopts is missing. Its absence is simultaneously alarming and promising. “Well, you expect correctly.”

Petra hears the gentle mockery and wonders what it means. Is its
import that Alan will fire her, run for cover, and pull the lid down over his head? That would be the smart thing to do, and Alan has built his career on doing the smart thing.

“I'm glad you're all right,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“That must have been very frightening.”

“It was.”

Yeah, he thinks, looking at her, you were so terrified that you found the pistol in your bureau drawer and calmly gunned down a professional hit man. How can I let talent like that walk out my door? “You realize that there are going to be about eight zillion lawsuits coming out of your chart here? And that many of them will be politically difficult for me, and for the firm? Do you know the pressure that's going to come down on us from on high?”

“Absolutely.”

Alan turns away and looks out at the city again. Maybe, he thinks, it needs shaking to the core, maybe it's time to take it apart and rebuild it, and maybe there are worse things to do in the last phase of your career.

He turns back to Petra and says, “Okay, start contacting homeowners and signing them up. Do an assets search on Paradise and its related companies with an eye to freezing them, and . . . why aren't you already moving?”

“I want to be made partner,” she says.

“Or maybe I should just fire you,” Alan answers.

“I'll require a corner office, of course.”

He trains his plea-bargaining, settlement-negotiating evil stare on her. She doesn't blink.

Alan laughs. “Okay, gunslinger. Partner. Call maintenance and make it thus. But Petra—”

“Yes?”

“We'd better win.”

“Oh, we'll win,” she says. “Alan, what about Corey Blasingame?”

“We have a meeting with Mary Lou in thirty,” he says.

“Did she give any hint?”

He shakes his head.

As does Mary Lou Baker.

At John Kodani.

She looks up from the stack of documents that he dropped on her desk, shakes her head again, sighs, and says, “You've been a busy boy, sergeant. First the arrest of Dan Nichols, then a raid that nets Cruz Iglesias, then this . . . dirty bomb. Anything else you want to drop on me today?”

“That ought to do it.”

“Oh, it ought to “do it,” all right.”

Johnny picked Mary Lou Baker to bring the records to because (a) she'd been busting his chops on the Blasingame case and (b) she was the one prosecutor he knew with the integrity and the stones to take this up and start filing charges.

“You do know you're ruining my career, don't you?” she asks him as she looks at the papers and winces.

“Or making it,” he says.

“Same for you, chum,” Mary Lou says. “Romero wanted you strung up by the
cojones
, but he can't do that now that you're the hero of a shootout, and Iglesias and all. But did you have to save a
defense
attorney, John? Bad taste.”

“She was the only lawyer in the room,” Johnny answers. “Besides, she pulled me out of the soup.”

“We should recruit her for the good guys team,” Mary Lou says.

“We could do worse,” Johnny says. “What about Corey Blasingame?”

“What about him?”

“What are you going to do?”

Her intercom buzzes. “
Alan Burke and partner here for you.
”

“I'll be right out,” Mary Lou says. Then, to Johnny, “I don't know yet. Let's go find out.”

Johnny follows her into the conference room.

Boone, Petra, and Alan are already seated at the table.

Mary Lou and Johnny sit down across from them.

Alan smiles and opens, “I'm taking it to trial.”

“You'll lose,” Mary Lou says.

“The fuck I will,” Alan answers. “Your first three witnesses are garbage, the next two have recanted, which will make clowns of your investigating officers.”

Boone glances at Johnny. Face set in stone, but his cheeks turn red.

Boone looks away.

“We still have the confession,” Mary Lou says.

“Yeah, go with that,” Alan says. “I can't wait to feed it piece by piece to Sergeant Kodani here. How do you like your crow, detective? A little salt and pepper?”

Johnny doesn't say anything. Boone can't look at him, and Petra stares at the table.

Mary Lou stands up. “If there's nothing else . . .”

Johnny stands up too.

Looks at Boone with disgust.

“Come on, sit down, Mary Lou,” Alan says. “We don't want it to end this way.”

Mary Lou sits back down. “Neither Harrington's borderline subornation of perjury nor Kodani's assertive interview of the defendants changes the fact that your client, at least partially motivated by racial hatred, at least participated in a beating that cost a human life.”

“Agreed.”

“He has to do some serious time for that, Alan.”

“Also agreed,” Alan says. “But he didn't throw the fatal punch, Mary Lou. That was Bodin. And he wasn't the ringleader. That was Bodin too.”

“There are practical reasons why I can't go after Bodin.”

“That doesn't mean you should single Corey out for special punishment,” Alan responds. “There's an issue of justice here.”

“There's an issue of justice for Kelly, too.”

“I share that view,” Alan says. “My client participated in a disgusting act with a tragic result, and he should face the consequences. I'll go vol man.

“With max sentencing—eleven years.”

“Minimum—three.”

It's kabuki theater—they both know the next step in this ritual.

“Fine,” Mary Lou says. “Medium-range. Six.”

“Done.”

They shake hands—Alan and Mary Lou, Alan and Johnny, Petra and Mary Lou, Petra and Johnny, Boone and Mary Lou, not Boone and Johnny.

They avoid each other.

Boone drives to La Jolla.

The Hole.

Rabbit and Echo are on duty in front of the house. Rabbit pats Boone down while Echo gets on the horn and then comes back and says it's okay for Boone to go in. Or out.

Red Eddie's lying on a floatie in the pool, sipping some fruity drink with an umbrella in it. His ankle bracelet is wrapped in a plastic Baggie. Dahmer's stretched out on a floating cushion nearby. Eddie cranes his neck up, squints into the sun, and says, “Boonie, an unexpected pleasure! You could have just sent a card.”

Red Eddie's pidgin Hawaiian comes in and out like the tide. It depends on his mood and intent. Today, he's all Wharton Business.

“Fuck you, Eddie.”

“Not exactly the Hallmark sentiment I was expecting.” Eddie says, “but pithy, nevertheless.”

“Stay out of my life.”

“Even to save it, Boone?” Eddie asks. “It's not just a past-tense question—the cartel is very upset with you, costing them all this money and trouble. They're not so happy with me, either, wiping out two of their boys and one of their best interrogators. When things settle for them, they'll be coming for both of us.”

“Look out for yourself,” Boone says. “Not me.”

Eddie paddles to the edge of the pool and sets his drink down. Then he rolls off the floatie into the water, dives down to cool himself, comes back up, and says, “This is the problem with that, Boone: I owe you. My son's life. My life, too. How can I ever stop repaying that? I can't. So you will just have to learn to accept my care and largesse—a little more graciously, please.”

“I just came to tell you that Corey Blasingame didn't kill—”

“I already heard,” Eddie says. “Do you think that I'm without resources in the hallways of power? I am informed that it was Trevor Bodin who murdered my calabash cousin. Is that correct?”