The Gentlemen's Hour (Boone Daniels #2)

Johnny knew that a public spectacle, like Burke going Deliverance on him in court, would definitely f*ck him up. Add to that the potential of a high-profile murder case involving Dan and Donna Nichols . . . the rest of Johnny’s career is on the line over the next few weeks.

Make those cases, he thinks as he drives over toward The Sundowner and looks for a place to park, and I’m on my way to chief of division. And, admit it, that’s what I want. Do a bad public wipeout on those cases, and the old glass ceiling is going to come down on my yellow skin and slanted eyes like a bad, angry wave, and I will be Sergeant Kodani for the rest of my derailed career.

So he isn’t all that thrilled when his cellie rings and he sees it’s Boone.



123

“F*ck you,” Johnny says.

Boone’s not too surprised—he knows that Johnny’s royally pissed about the Blasingame case and probably shouldn’t even be talking to him outside the office about the Schering murder. “Johnny, I—”

“Save it, friend,” Johnny says. “I hear you put me square into Burke’s sights for the Blasingame trial. It’s going to be about me now? Just for the record, Boone, friend, in case you guys are planning to turn me into Mark Furman, I’ve never used the word ‘cracker’ or ‘whitey’ in my life. Late.”

“Don’t,” Boone says. “I have a break in the Schering murder.”

“Bring it to the house.”

“Can’t.”

“Of course not.”

“Johnny, this will make the case for you.”

“On Nichols?”

“No.”

“’Bye, Boone.”

The line goes dead. He walks back over to Nicole.

“Is your cop friend going to meet us?” she asks him.

“Not yet,” Boone says. “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

He walks her over to Jeff’s Burgers.

They’ve spruced the tiny place up a little bit. Its two long narrow rooms have a fresh coat of white paint and murals of the Coronado Bridge with little sailboats gliding underneath. Nicole stands at the counter and looks up at the menu printed on the board above.

“What’s good?” she asks.

“At Jeff’s Burgers?”

“Well, yes.”

“A Jeff’s Burger,” he says.

She asks for a Jeff’s with everything, fries, and a chocolate shake. Boone doubles the order, then they go sit in a booth. The food is ready in a couple of minutes, and she digs into it like it might be her last meal.

“S’good,” she says.

“Stick with me,” Boone answers. “I know all the good places.”

She keeps wolfing it down. Doesn’t say a word until she’s finished the whole thing and then says to him, “Okay.”

“Okay, you’re done?”

“Okay, I trust you.”

“Because of a burger?”

She nods and tells him that’s pretty much it. If he was a slime bucket on Bill’s payroll he would have taken her to the nearby Marine Room, bought her an expensive meal, and plied her with wine. Only a genuine surf bum chump would be dumb enough to take her to Jeff’s Burgers.

Well, Boone thinks, you work with what you got.



124

“He has a girlfriend,” Monkey says with a gasp. “British.”

“Name?” Jones asks.

“Pete.”

“Come again?”

“Petra, I think.”

“Surname?”

Monkey shakes his head.

“Oh, dear.”

“Hall,” Monkey says quickly.

“Good,” Jones says. He turns to the Crazy Boys. “Wrap this up and take him with you. We might have more questions to ask him later.”

They take Monkey down from the pipe.



125

Nicole drives Boone to a storage locker in Solana Beach and tells him to wait in the car. Comes out five minutes later with a box and puts it on his lap, then drives him back to her office parking lot and drops him off at the Deuce.

“That’s quite some ride you have there,” she says. “The PI business booming?”

“Like real estate,” he says. “What are you going to do now?”

“Go home, I guess.”

“You have a friend or a relative you could stay with?” Boone asks. “Someone Bill doesn’t know about?”

She has her grandmother up in Escondido, and Boone suggests she stay there for a few days. She gets it, tells him she will, and they exchange cell phone numbers.

“You did the right thing,” Boone says.

“The right thing,” she says, “won’t pay my mortgage.”

Too true, Boone thinks.



126

They have the papers spread out all over Petra’s living-room floor as they create piles of related records and documents that link one to another.

“Do you know what we have here?” Petra asks him.

Boone knows. Freaking dynamite, enough to blow the lid off the city and shake it to its foundations. Bribes to city, county, and state officials for approvals for building projects on dangerous ground; cover-ups of shoddy construction practices; real-estate development partnerships that connect to half the big businesspeople in the county. And this is from just one developer, Bill Blasingame. He can’t be the only pitcher working the corners of the plate; there must be dozens. Where would those connections lead?

Yeah, Boone knows what they have there.

“This might be more wave than we want,” he says.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

Boone explains that sometimes you get into a wave that’s too big for you to handle. It isn’t a matter of pride or ego or even your skill level, it’s just physics—the wave is too tall, heavy, and fast for your board and your body, and it will crush you.

He has that sense here. The individuals and businesses listed in Nicole’s records are connected, and the connections are connected, and it’s not just linear—each line reaches out in multiple directions to other lines. It’s what that old yuppie concept of “networking” is all about, and in a city as small and tight as San Diego, the network is close and dense.

Where in that network do you bring this information? he asks her. You bring it to the DA’s office—where is the district attorney in that matrix? Bring it to the cops—same thing. A judge—ditto, ditto.

“Certainly we can take this to Alan,” Petra says. “I mean, we have to take it to Alan, it’s potentially exculpatory evidence for a client. For you, as well.”

She sees the look on his face and says, “Good lord, Boone, you don’t suspect Alan?”

He doesn’t suspect that Burke is involved in any sketchy real-estate deal, but Alan is definitely woven into the San Diego power network. And Petra doesn’t know the leverage that can be worked on a guy like Alan—all of a sudden the wiring in his office building is out of code, a slam-dunk motion in court goes the other way, a guy he defended five years ago claims that Alan suborned him to perjury . . .

It’s Chinatown, Pete. It’s Chinatown.

“So what do you want to do?” Petra asks.

“We’ll turn it over to Alan in the morning,” Boone says. “In the meantime, let me lay a little pipe.”

“Really, Boone, these metaphors.”

If you take the info to one source, he explains, it might get buried. Take it to two or three, you improve your chances.

“But to whom do you take it?” she asks.

Depends in whom you trust.



127

Nicole finally calls him back.

“Where the f*ck,” Bill asks, “have you been?”

“Out,” she says. “Listen, I wasn’t even going to call you . . . I . . .”

She starts crying, for Chrissakes.

“Nicole,” Bill says, “why don’t you come over and we’ll talk about this? We can work it out. You can have anything you want, I swear. Come on, we’ve meant a lot to each other. Do this for me, come over.”

There’s a long hesitation, and then she says, “Okay. I’m on my way.”

Ten minutes later his bell rings and he opens the door.

It isn’t Nicole.

“Hello,” Jones says.



128

“I shouldn’t be meeting you,” Johnny says, “outside the house.”

Yeah, but he does. He meets Boone beneath the pylons under Crystal Pier. Meets him because old habits die hard and old friendships are hard to let go, even when the old friend planted a blade somewhere around your lumbar vertebrae.

“I appreciate it,” Boone says.

“You burned me, Boone.”