The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

They don’t say anything for a long time, just walk and watch the sky change color, and think about what she told him.

Bill used Schering as a geo-engineer on a lot of development projects over the years. Schering would go out, do a report on the suitability of a site for construction, and Bill would use that report to take to the county for approval. Most of Schering’s reports were legitimate, but sometimes . . .

Sometimes he would shade the report a little, maybe overlook a weakness, a flaw, a potential danger. And usually the county would accept Schering’s report, but sometimes the inspectors needed a little . . . persuasion to pass on a piece of land.

“Phil was the bagman,” Boone said.

“I guess so.”

It made sense. As a geo-engineer, Schering had relationships with the county engineers. He could go to breakfast or lunch, arrive with an envelope, leave without it. A week or so later, the permits would get issued. They did it a bunch of times.

“I was no blushing virgin either,” Nicole said. She took the bonuses, the gifts, the vacations, all the little perks that came with flowing money. Schering took the payments to the geo-engineers; she took them to the politicians.

“What about Paradise Homes?” Boone asked.

It was Bill’s really big shot, Nicole told him. His chance to go from Triple-A to the major leagues. He got a group of investors together, called the company “Paradise Homes,” and put everything he had into buying the land. But . . . the land was no good. Bill got pretty drunk one night in the office after they’d . . . after she’d given him what he needed to relieve the stress . . . and he told her. She didn’t understand all of it—she wasn’t sure he did, either—but the land sat over some kind of geological problem. Sandy soil over rock, and there was a shifting plate or something underneath.

Schering tried to tell him, to warn him, but Bill begged him . . . begged him . . . to write a different report. For the county, for the investors.

“Hold on,” Boone said. “The investors didn’t know about the land problem?”

No, because Bill knew that if they knew, they’d never put their money into it. Schering argued that it was a time bomb, but Bill argued what was time when you’re talking about earth movement? The earth is always moving. The problem could be hundreds or even thousands of years away. And they were talking millions and millions of dollars. . . .

Schering wrote a clean report. Did what he had to do to get it through the county. A lot of envelopes went out . . . vacation homes were sold under market value. Ski places in Big Bear, weekend desert spots out in Borrego. . . .

The site was approved.

“How do you know all of this?” Boone said. “I know Bill talked a little when he was ‘comfortable,’ but—”

“I dug in the files,” she says. “I kept copies of Schering’s original reports and compared them to the new ones he wrote.”

“Why?”

Bill was blackmailing her; she thought she’d turn it around and blackmail him. Win her freedom, maybe take a little of all that money with her on the way out.

“But you didn’t,” Boone said.

“Well, I haven’t,” she said.

Maybe she just got lazy, or complacent. Maybe it was all too difficult, too hard to understand. Maybe she just didn’t have the confidence to think she could actually pull it off. And maybe . . . maybe her feelings for Bill were . . . complicated.

Then the whole thing with Corey happened and she didn’t have the heart to “pile on,” and Bill hadn’t demanded anything of her lately, and she just kind of forgot about it. Then . . .

Paradise Homes collapsed.

Bill freaked out, just freaked out. He was on the phone to Phil all the time. He was calling lawyers, insurance people . . . it was horrible. Bill was a mess—first the thing with his kid, then this. He was sure he was going to lose everything. Especially if Phil got weak-kneed and couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Or if he sold himself to the higher bidder, Boone thought. And Blasingame was right—he could lose everything. If a criminal conspiracy were even alleged, a plaintiff could walk right through his corporation and sue him personally. Take his bank account, his investments, his real property . . . his house, his cars, his clothes.

And no wonder he’s in a hurry to get his son’s case out of the newspapers. The longer the spotlight stays on the Blasingame name, the more digging people do, the more likely someone is to connect him to Paradise Homes and the landslide disaster. He had all this shit going on. . . .

Then Schering was killed and Nicole got scared.

Bill said apparently it was some kind of jealousy thing—Phil was banging another guy’s wife, was the rumor—and that it had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with him, but there was no point in taking chances. He told her to dump appointment books, eighty-six phone records, bills, anything that could connect him to Schering.

“But you didn’t,” Boone said.

She didn’t.

She didn’t keep them all, but she kept the really tasty ones.



119

“It’s beautiful,” she says, watching the sun go down. “Just beautiful. I’m usually still at work . . .”

“It has a way of putting things in perspective,” Boone says. He lets a few seconds go by before he says, “I need those records, Nicole.”

“They’re my safety net.”

“Until he knows you have them. Then they’re a danger.” Rule of thumb: If you know where the bodies are buried, sooner or later you’re going to be one of them.

“You think he killed Schering?”

“You don’t?” Boone asks. “You of all people know what he’s capable of. Nicole, he might already be thinking about what he told you when he was drunk.”

“I know.”

“If I have the records, I can help you,” Boone says. “I’ll take you to a cop I know—”

“I don’t want to go to jail.”

“You won’t,” Boone assures her. “Once your story is on the record, it’s done. You’re safe. There’s no point in anyone doing you harm. But the records prove your story. Without them . . .”

“. . . I’m just a bimbo secretary with a nose-candy problem.”

He doesn’t say anything. There’s no response to that—she’s dead on.

Nicole scans the view, the long, curving stretch of coastline from La Jolla Point to the south, all the way down past Scripps Pier toward Oceanside. Some of the most valuable real estate on earth, some of it built on land that never should have been built on. She says, “So I’m supposed to trust you.”

He gets it, totally. Why should she trust him? Or some cop she doesn’t know? Why should she trust any public official? She’s seen them bribed and bought—helped to do it herself.

A new idea, a fresh fear, hits her. “How do I know Bill didn’t send you? You work for him. How do I know he didn’t send you to find out what I know, get what I have?”

She’s on the edge of panic. Boone has seen it before, not just on cases but with inexperienced swimmers in the deep water. They feel overwhelmed, outmatched, exhausted—then they see the next wave coming and it’s too much, too frightening. They panic, and unless someone is there to pull them out, they drown.

“You don’t,” Boone says. “All I can tell you is, at the end of the day, you have to trust someone.”

Because the ocean is too big to cross alone.



120

Bill Blasingame gets on the horn to Nicole.

Calls her at home.

N.A.

Calls her on her cell.

N.A.—the bitch has it turned off.

He’s freaking. First Phil Schering gets shot, then Bill gets the phone call. He remembers what was said, pretty much word for word: “This can’t go any farther. You can’t let this go any farther. Do you understand?”

Bill understands. He knows the people he’s dealing with.

But I can contain it, he thought after the phone call. With Schering dead, the only other person who could really blow this open is Nicole. And she knows what side her bread is buttered on.