The Gentlemen's Hour Page 0,75

their whole beef started when Boone refused to help him tune up a child kidnapping suspect and the guy walked.

Boone is a lot of things—overly laid-back, irresponsible, immature—but a killer for hire? Granted, Boone always needs money, but this? No way, nohow. He’s probably kicking himself for his unintentional role in Schering’s death.

No, if Nichols hired this out, he found someone other than Boone Daniels.

Okay, so what was Boone doing at Schering’s? Obviously, he tracked Donna Nichols there. But the neighbor’s statement had Boone parked right outside the house, and that’s bad technique. Boone wouldn’t go in that close unless . . .

. . . he needed proximity.

For what?

Johnny waits for Harrington to sign off the shift, then gets his own car and drives to Crystal Pier.

94

“Where is it?” Johnny asks him.

“Where’s what?” Boone asks.

He’s half asleep, having just woken up from a very short night in time to go out on the Dawn Patrol, when the doorbell rings and it’s Johnny Banzai. Boone leaves the door open and walks into the kitchen to put the water on for a badly needed pot of coffee.

Johnny follows him in.

“The tape,” Johnny says. “You have video or audio of Donna Nichols getting horizontal with the late Phil Schering.”

“I do?” Boone asks. He pours kona beans into the grinder and the whir drowns out Johnny’s response, making him say it again.

“You parked out in front of Schering’s house with a camera or a sound-capturing device and you made a tape,” Johnny repeats. “I’m hoping it’s a video so it has a time track on it.”

“Sorry,” Boone says. “Audio only.”

“Goddamnit,” Johnny says. “Anyway, I want it.”

“Why?” Boone asks. “The boys at the house want a dirty chuckle?”

“You know why.”

Boone leans against the counter and looks out the window at the ocean, barely lit by the lamps on the pier. “There’s no surf again today. August blows. Look, you don’t need the tape. You already know that she had sex with Schering. If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you—she had sex with Schering. There’s nothing on that tape that’s going to help you, J.”

“They might have said something.”

“They didn’t.”

“Nichols hear the tape?”

Boone shakes his head.

“You were there from when to when?”

“I wasn’t there last night, J,” Boone says.

“The neighbor says differently.”

Boone shrugs. “The neighbor is mixed up. I was there the night before. All night. I left in the morning when Schering went to work.”

“Did you go back to Schering’s last night?”

“One last time,” Boone says. “I was here until you and Fuckwad came by to visit.”

The pot whistles. Boone pours a little water on the coffee, waits a few seconds, then pours the rest. He doesn’t wait the recommended four minutes, but presses the plunger down and pours himself a cup.

Johnny asks, “Do you have anyone who can put you here before we came?”

Boone shakes his head, then says, “I talked with Sunny on the phone.”

“Landline or cell?”

“Since when do I have a landline?”

“Yeah, I forgot,” Johnny said. So Boone’s phone would show a record of him talking to Sunny, but wouldn’t say where he was. “What time did you talk to her?”

“I dunno. After nine.”

So it doesn’t help him anyway, Johnny thinks. “I want that tape.”

“Get a warrant,” Boone says, “and you can have it.”

“I will.”

There’s a slight lightening of the sky outside the window, the faintest touch of gold on the water.

“Sun’s coming up, Johnny.”

It’s time for the Dawn Patrol.

“You take it,” Boone says. “I’m dead tired, and anyway, I don’t go to parties where I’m not welcome.”

“You’re making your own choices, Boone,” Johnny says. “I don’t feel like I even know you anymore. Worse, I don’t think you know yourself.”

“Knock off the pop-pyscho-babble and go surf,” Boone says.

Words to live by.

95

Boone catches the Gentlemen’s Hour instead.

To his considerable surprise, Dan is out on the line.

“I didn’t do it,” Dan says when he paddles up next to Boone.

“Yeah, you said that.”

“You don’t believe me,” Dan says.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Boone says. “Look, I hooked you up with a good lawyer. I’m out of this.”

Yeah, except I’m not, he thinks. At the very least, I’ll be giving a statement and probably testifying about my role in the whole thing. And one cop wants to make it out that you paid me to kill your wife’s lover.

And a man is dead.

For no good reason.

A lot of that going around in San Diego these days.

96

Okay, maybe Dan didn’t do it, Boone thinks as he paddles in.

Maybe Dan is telling the truth, and