The Gentlemen's Hour

110

“You’re saying that Phil Schering was a whore?” Alan Burke asks, a little out of breath because he and Boone have just paddled out to the break and Alan hasn’t hit the Gentlemen’s Hour in a while.

You want to know what kind of cardio condition you’re in, paddle a surfboard, even in a mild sea. It will tell you all you need to know. It tells Alan he needs to hit the Gentlemen’s Hour more often, or maybe get one of those roller boards and put it in the office.

“A whore?” Boone asks.

“A geo-whore,” Alan says cheerfully. “Listen, I cut my teeth on all those dirt cases back in the eighties and nineties, and there was a geo-whore on every corner. They knew what opinion you wanted without you having to tell them, and they delivered it. You got to court, it was pretty much a battle between your geo-whore and their geo-whore. You get a whore who gives good testimony, you usually win.”

“Did you know Schering?”

“No,” Burke says. “He’s newer to the game. But I’ll have Petra run a search and grab his testimony transcripts, and that should give us an idea of what his shtick was. So you don’t think Dan Nichols did it?”

“No. Do you?”

“I don’t,” Alan says. “It’s too retro. People don’t kill over adultery anymore, they just divorce. Did you know they had a prenup?”

“Nope.”

“Yup,” Alan says. “So Dan loses a little money and goes out shopping for the next trophy wife. Big deal. She’s done him a favor by leaving on her own before her sell-by date.”

“Cynical.”

“SoCal.” Alan shrugs. “So Boone . . .”

“So Alan.”

“Look,” Alan says, “a good investigator is hard to find, so much as I’d hate to lose one . . . you don’t want to do this the rest of your life. It’s a living, but there’s no upside. So here’s my offer: I’ll finance your way through law school; you have a job in my firm when you pass the exam.”

Whoa.

Speaking of SoCal, in other places offers like this are made on the golf course; here it’s out in the surf, or absence thereof.

“Alan, I don’t know—”

“Don’t answer now,” Alan says. “Think about it. But really

think

about it, Boone. It would be a big change for you, but change can be a good thing.”

“Sure.”

“Let me know.”

“Okay.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

Alan points. “A wave.”

Boone looks. Sure enough, a ripple about a hundred yards out breaks the otherwise flat surface of the sea. Then it appears as a small ridge, then it builds into an actually rideable wave. Nothing to make the cover of

Surfer

, to be sure, but definitely a wave.

“It’s yours,” Alan says.

“No, you take it.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“You’re a gentleman.”

Alan starts paddling. Boone watches him catch the wave, then gets up, and feels the wave pass beneath him.

I’m a gentleman, he thinks.

Dave is waiting for him on the beach.