The Gentlemen's Hour Page 0,33

the man wants to waste his own money being a dick, it’s cool with Boone. Usually there isn’t a fine for that.

Second, patience is the single most necessary quality in a surfer and an investigator. Waves are going to come (or not, as the case may be) when they’re going to come (ditto), just like developments in a file. The trick is to still be there when they do, and that requires lots of patient hanging in and/or around.

Third, Boone really wants to see if he can figure out Corey Blasingame via his dad.

When Bill finally comes out of his inner sanctum, he looks at Boone and says, “I called Alan’s office. You check out.”

“Lucky me.”

Bill doesn’t like that. His chin—which is just starting to turn double—comes up a little and he gives Boone one of those “Who do you think you are?” looks, which Boone doesn’t respond to. So Bill says, “Come on in, Lucky You.”

And glares at Nicole as if to say, “Who are you letting bug me like this?”

Nicole looks at her nails.

Not a bad idea, Boone thinks—they’re nice nails.

“Shut the door behind you,” Bill says.

Boone kicks it shut with the back of his foot. Bill notices. “You have an attitude, Daniels.”

“You’re the second person today to tell me that,” Boone says, thinking, okay, maybe the third or fourth. The view from Bill’s office is terrific, showing La Jolla Cove in all its glory, from the kiddie beach where the seals come to rest, all the way north to the curving stretch of La Jolla Shores, the home of Jeff’s Burgers. Boone dismissed the thought of a burger and got down to business. “I’m here to talk about Corey.”

“You have news to tell me?” Bill asks. He sits behind his desk and motions Boone to a chair.

“No. I was hoping you had something to tell me.”

“I already talked to Alan and his girl,” Bill says. “I can’t think of her name—the attractive Brit—”

“Petra Hall.”

“That’s it,” Bill says. “So I don’t know what more I can tell you that I didn’t already tell them. Or what the hell difference it makes. Corey hit that man, he killed that man. Now we’re just shopping for the best deal, isn’t that right?”

“The Rockpile Crew—”

“Look,” Bill says, “I didn’t know that even existed, okay, until I read it in the papers. I don’t know, I guess the Bodin kid used to hang around the house a little, and the two brothers—”

“Do you know when—”

Bill just kooks out.

“No,” he says. “I don’t know when, I don’t know why, I don’t know shit. I’m a bad father, okay? Isn’t that what you want to hear me say? Fine, I said it. I’m a bad father. ‘I gave the kid everything he needed except what he needed most—love.’ Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say now? I was too busy with my work, I didn’t give him time or attention, I showered him with material things because I felt guilty, right? Okay? Are we done now? You can drop your attitude?”

“You made all his baseball games,” Boone says.

“Oh, they told you about that,” Bill says. “Maybe I was a little overintense. But Corey needed pushing, he wasn’t exactly a self-starter. The kid lacked motivation, the kid was lazy. . . . Maybe I took it too far, so it’s my fault, okay? I yelled at the kid at a baseball game and that made him go out and kill someone. My bad.”

“Okay.”

“You have kids, Daniels?”

Boone shakes his head.

“So you don’t know.”

“Tell me.”

Bill tells him.

He was a single dad. Corey’s mom was killed in a car accident when the kid wasn’t quite two years old. Some drunk careens off the Ardath exit into her lane and Corey gets to grow up without a mother. It wasn’t easy trying to raise a kid and build a business at the same time, and, okay, maybe Bill should have scaled things back, become a nine-to-five wage slave and been home to bake cookies or whatever, but he just wasn’t built that way and he wanted to give Corey every advantage, and that meant making money. A house in La Jolla is expensive, day care is expensive, private schools are expensive. The green fees at Torrey Pines are fairway robbery, but if you want to be making the kind of deals he wanted to be making, you’d better tee off there, and buy a few rounds in the clubhouse to boot.

If you don’t have a kid you don’t know