The Gentlemen's Hour Page 0,51

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.

60

“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.

61

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.

Boone gets there first and hangs out around a central point. Sure enough, Donna shows up a few minutes later. He watches her go into Vertigo, an expensive spa, then goes back out to the parking lot, finds her car, and parks the Deuce on the other side, where he can still watch, and sits. Now he remembers why he hates any kind of surveillance work—it’s boring as hell, especially on an August morning when it’s already getting hot. He rolls the window down on the van, sits back, and tries to grab some sleep.

Yeah, good luck with that.

He’s too pissed off to sleep.

What, I’m this subterranean well of rage threatening to go off