The Gentlemen's Hour

97

Boone hops into the Deuce and drives up to Del Mar. If Schering picked up one woman at Jake’s, maybe he picked up others. Maybe it was his happy hunting ground.

Jake’s is an icon.

The restaurant, just across the street from the old Del Mar train station, sits on the beach. Actually

on

the beach. You get one of the front tables at Jake’s during high tide, you’re practically in the water. You sit there and watch kids play out in front of you, and just to the south there’s a tasty little break below the bluffs where the surfers hang. You ever get tired of living in San Diego—the traffic, the prices—you go to Jake’s for lunch and you aren’t tired of living in San Dog anymore.

You wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Boone doesn’t go to one of the front tables today, he goes to the bar. Orders himself a beer, sits and checks out the surf, then strikes up a conversation with the bartender. Lauren’s a pretty young woman, tanned with sun-bleached hair, who took the job because it keeps her on the beach. It takes two slow beers to get around to the subject of Phil Schering.

“I knew him,” she says.

“No kidding?”

“He used to hang out here a lot,” she says. “It was sort of his place. His out-of-office office. He did a lot of business lunches here.”

“What kind of business was he in?”

“Some kind of engineer?”

With that upward, Southern California inflection that turns every sentence into a question. Boone’s always thought it was a reaction to the transience of California life, like—it is . . . isn’t it?

“He hang out at the bar a lot?”

“Sometimes, not a lot,” Lauren says. “He wasn’t a big drinker and this isn’t exactly a pickup joint.”

“No,” Boone says, “but was that what he was looking for?”

“Aren’t we all?” Lauren asks. “I mean, looking for love?”

“I guess.”

Boone lets a good minute pass, looks past the bar out the window where the ankle-high surf curls onto the sand. He gets up, leaves the change from a twenty on the bar, and asks, “So, did he find it? Schering, I mean. Love?”

“Not that I noticed,” Lauren says. “I mean, he wasn’t really the player type. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“You do,” she says, scooping up the change, “because you’re not the player type either. I can always tell.”

Off Boone’s quizzical look she adds, “I gave you a big opening and you didn’t walk through it.”

“I’m sort of seeing someone.”

“Tell her she has a good guy.”

Yeah, Boone thinks—I’ll let her know.