The Gentlemen's Hour

82

They hate each other.

Boone and Harrington.

No, they don’t hate each other, they fucking

hate

each other. Go to your thesaurus, look up every synonym for hatred, add them together, multiply them by ten, and you still don’t come up to the level of malice that these two guys hold for each other.

“Good evening, piece of shit,” Harrington says.

“Johnny, what the hell?” Boone says, ignoring him and turning to Johnny Banzai. If they’re here to bust my chops about Blasingame, Boone thinks, nine-something on a Friday night is way out of bounds.

“Can we come in?” Johnny says, looking grim. “Have a talk?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, ‘now,’ asshole,” Harrington says. “We’re here ‘now,’ aren’t we? We want to come inside ‘now.’ We want to talk ‘now.’”

Boone shines him on. He looks only at Johnny and asks, “You have a warrant?”

Johnny shakes his head.

“Then ‘no,’” Boone says. “Anyway, I’m going out.”

“Got a date?” Harrington asks.

“As a matter of fact.”

“Where you taking her?” Harrington asks, checking his watch. “Legoland’s closed for the night.”

The last time Boone punched Harrington he ended up in jail, so he keeps his hands down. It’s what Harrington wants, anyway, an excuse to roust him. Johnny steps in and says, “Boone, it’s better you come to the house so we can record the interview.”

“What are you talking about?” Boone asks.

“You want to tell us where you were tonight?” Harrington asks.

“Here.”

“You got anyone who can verify that?”

“No.”

Harrington looks at Johnny and smiles. Steve Harrington has a face like razor wire, and the smile doesn’t help. “The neighbors noticed a suspicious vehicle lurking around the neighborhood, and one of them jotted down the plate. Guess who the vehicle belongs to, surf bum? I almost thought it was my birthday.”

“What neighbors? What are you yapping about?”

“Do you know a Philip Schering?” Johnny asks Boone.

Boone doesn’t say anything.

“S’what I thought,” Harrington says. “Can we just take him in now?”

“Take me in for what?”

“You’re a person of interest,” Johnny says.

“In what?”

“In Schering’s murder,” says Johnny.

This is macking messed up, Boone thinks.

Dan Nichols used me to bird-dog his wife’s lover.

Then he killed him.