The Gentlemen's Hour

118

Boone turns on La Jolla Shores Drive, then takes a left on La Playa, then a right, and pulls into the parking lot at La Jolla Shores beach.

Nicole looks at him funny.

“You want to take a walk on the beach?” he asks.

“A walk on the beach?”

“Great time of day for it.” Well, any time is a great time for it. But early evening on a hot August day, with the sky just starting to soften into a gentle pink and the temperature starting to drop: perfection. And dusk is a great time for confession—give your sins to the setting sun and watch them go over the horizon together. Put your past in the past.

So why don’t you do it? he asks himself.

No answer.

She flips down the sunshade and looks at herself in the mirror. “I’m a mess.”

“It’s the beach, nobody cares. Come on.”

“You’re nuts.” But she goes with him.

They don’t say anything for a long time, just walk and watch the sky change color, and think about what she told him.

Bill used Schering as a geo-engineer on a lot of development projects over the years. Schering would go out, do a report on the suitability of a site for construction, and Bill would use that report to take to the county for approval. Most of Schering’s reports were legitimate, but sometimes . . .

Sometimes he would shade the report a little, maybe overlook a weakness, a flaw, a potential danger. And usually the county would accept Schering’s report, but sometimes the inspectors needed a little . . . persuasion to pass on a piece of land.

“Phil was the bagman,” Boone said.

“I guess so.”

It made sense. As a geo-engineer, Schering had relationships with the county engineers. He could go to breakfast or lunch, arrive with an envelope, leave without it. A week or so later, the permits would get issued. They did it a bunch of times.

“I was no blushing virgin either,” Nicole said. She took the bonuses, the gifts, the vacations, all the little perks that came with flowing money. Schering took the payments to the geo-engineers; she took them to the politicians.

“What about Paradise Homes?” Boone asked.

It was Bill’s really big shot, Nicole told him. His chance to go from Triple-A to the major leagues. He got a group of investors together, called the company “Paradise Homes,” and put everything he had into buying the land. But . . . the land was no good. Bill got pretty drunk one night in the office after they’d . . . after she’d given him what he needed to relieve the stress . . . and he told her. She didn’t understand all of it—she wasn’t sure he did, either—but the land sat over some kind of geological problem. Sandy soil over rock, and there was a shifting plate or something underneath.

Schering tried to tell him, to warn him, but Bill begged him . . . begged him . . . to write a different report. For the county, for the investors.

“Hold on,” Boone said. “The investors didn’t know about the land problem?”

No, because Bill knew that if they knew, they’d never put their money into it. Schering argued that it was a time bomb, but Bill argued what was time when you’re talking about earth movement? The earth is always moving. The problem could be hundreds or even thousands of years away. And they were talking millions and millions of dollars. . . .

Schering wrote a clean report. Did what he had to do to get it through the county. A lot of envelopes went out . . . vacation homes were sold under market value. Ski places in Big Bear, weekend desert spots out in Borrego. . . .

The site was approved.

“How do you know all of this?” Boone said. “I know Bill talked a little when he was ‘comfortable,’ but—”

“I dug in the files,” she says. “I kept copies of Schering’s original reports and compared them to the new ones he wrote.”

“Why?”

Bill was blackmailing her; she thought she’d turn it around and blackmail him. Win her freedom, maybe take a little of all that money with her on the way out.

“But you didn’t,” Boone said.

“Well, I haven’t,” she said.

Maybe she just got lazy, or complacent. Maybe it was all too difficult, too hard to understand. Maybe she just didn’t have the confidence to think she could actually pull it off. And maybe . . . maybe her feelings for Bill were . . . complicated.

Then the whole thing with Corey happened and she didn’t have the heart to “pile on,” and Bill hadn’t demanded anything of her lately, and she just kind of forgot about it. Then . . .

Paradise Homes collapsed.

Bill freaked out, just freaked out. He was on the phone to Phil all the time. He was calling lawyers, insurance people . . . it was horrible. Bill was a mess—first the thing with his kid, then this. He was sure he was going to lose everything. Especially if Phil got weak-kneed and couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Or if he sold himself to the higher bidder, Boone thought. And Blasingame was right—he could lose everything. If a criminal conspiracy were even alleged, a plaintiff could walk right through his corporation and sue him personally. Take his bank account, his investments, his real property . . . his house, his cars, his clothes.

And no wonder he’s in a hurry to get his son’s case out of the newspapers. The longer the spotlight stays on the Blasingame name, the more digging people do, the more likely someone is to connect him to Paradise Homes and the landslide disaster. He had all this shit going on. . . .

Then Schering was killed and Nicole got scared.

Bill said apparently it was some kind of jealousy thing—Phil was banging another guy’s wife, was the rumor—and that it had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with him, but there was no point in taking chances. He told her to dump appointment books, eighty-six phone records, bills, anything that could connect him to Schering.

“But you didn’t,” Boone said.

She didn’t.

She didn’t keep them all, but she kept the really tasty ones.