The Gentlemen's Hour

67

Boone goes to Starbucks.

Which doesn’t happen very often.

It’s not like he’s some sort of antiglobalization, antifranchise freak, it’s just that he gets his coffee at The Sundowner and pretty much leaves it at that. Like, Boone could probably distinguish between Kenya AA and root beer, but that’s about it.

Anyway, he goes, and endures the skepticism that results from his order of a “medium black coffee.”

“You want an Americano grande,” the barista asks him.

“A medium black coffee.”

“Grande.”

“Medium,” Boone says, gesturing to the cups. “The size between large and small.”

“That’s a grande.”

“There we go.”

“Your name?” the barista asks.

“My name?”

“So we can call you.”

“For what?”

“For when your Americano grande is ready.”

“I thought you’d just pour it.”

“We have to make it,” the barista says. “Then we’ll call you.”

“Boone.”

“Boo?”

“Just use Daniels.”

“Thank you, Daniel.”

He stands there waiting for his coffee. She looks at him kind of funny, then points to her right and says, “It will be over there. They’ll call you.”

“Got it.”

He slides over to his left and waits behind another couple of caffeine communicants who receive their cappuccinos and

macchiatos

with appropriate reverence, then hears, “Daniel.”

“Thanks.”

“You got it.”

He takes his coffee into the main part of the place and sits down in an overstuffed easy chair. About the only one there without a laptop computer, he feels like an old man going to the newspaper rack and taking a physical copy of the

New York Times

, printed on something called paper, and goes back to his chair. People look up, slightly annoyed, when he turns the page and makes a rustling noise.

To Boone’s mild surprise, the New York paper is actually pretty good, even though it lacks a surf report. He knows there are waves on the East Coast because he’s read about it in

Surfer

, but apparently even the local rag doesn’t think it’s important enough to write about. Anyway, he kind of gets into the reports on world news and books and the time passes pretty quickly until Jill Thompson takes her break.

That is, she goes out back to smoke.

Boone slots the paper on a rack apparently put there for that purpose and walks around out back. She’s pretty—slight build, short, spiky blond hair, a little stud in her right nostril. Soft blue eyes, thin lips sucking on a thin brown cigarette.

“Jill?”

“Yeah?” She points at her name tag. Like she really doesn’t feel like being hit on by another customer.

“My name is Boone Daniels. I’m a private investigator.”

Her lips get thinner. “I already told the police what I saw.”

“See,” Boone says, “I think the police may have told

you

what you saw.”

My gut tells me, he thinks. My gut says that there’s something sketchy about this whole thing. Because it’s too neat, too wrapped up, and neither murder nor life is that clean.

“What do you mean?” Jill asks.

“You know what I mean.”

He sees the slight expression of self-doubt. “I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

“You seem like a nice person,” Boone says. “Let me tell you what I think happened. You were walking down the street, probably a little less than completely sober yourself. You saw or heard something, then you saw a man on the ground. You tried to help him but it was too late and you felt terrible about that. It’s an awful feeling, someone dying on you. You feel helpless, even guilty that there was nothing you could do.”

Boone looks in her eyes and sees the hurt still there. “You wait quite a while for the detectives to get there. While you’re waiting, you play the thing over and over again in your mind, wondering what you could have done. Then the detective comes to question you and he suggests what you can do now—you can help put the guy who did it behind bars. You can get justice for the victim.”

Jill’s eyes tear up.

“See,” Boone continues, “the police had already picked up a suspect. They already thought they had their guy. So the detective who interviewed you asked his questions in a certain way, didn’t he? ‘Did you see this guy?’ ‘He was sort of thin, wiry, had a shaved head?’ ‘He was wearing a hoodie with the sleeves cut off?’ ‘He walked up and hit the victim?’

“And by the time you get to the precinct, Jill, you believe you saw Corey Blasingame throw that punch. You really think so, because that’s what you want to think, because a man died in your arms and you couldn’t help him then, but now you could. You could walk in and identify his killer.”

She’s tough, though, and tries to brave it out. “I saw that piece of shit kill him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He likes her, even though he doesn’t believe her. This girl wants to do the right thing. He says, “Show me.”

“What?”

“Show me how Corey hit him.”

“I don’t have to do that.”

“Absolutely you don’t,” Boone says.

She glares at him, takes a drag of the cigarette, and snuffs it out. Then she takes a stance, cocks her right hand, and throws a pretty wicked cross.

With her feet planted solidly on the ground.

Boone takes a card out his shirt pocket and offers it to her.

“Kelly Kuhio’s death was a tragedy,” he says. “A stupid, ugly, unforgivable thing that never should have happened. The only thing worse would be answering it with another stupid tragedy. Kelly would tell you the same thing.”

She takes the card.