The Gentlemen's Hour

47

Boone meets Johnny at The Sundowner.

Now, Boone has met Johnny at The Sundowner, like, a lot. You wanna run the numbers, Boone has probably met Johnny at The Sundowner more days than he

hasn’t.

And he usually looks forward to it. Why not? The Sundowner is cool, Johnny is cool, it’s all skippy.

Not gonna be this time.

So Boone is the opposite of stoked about it.

“You rang?” Johnny asks as he sits down at the table across from Boone. Johnny has his summer homicide detective uniform on—blue cotton blazer, blue shirt, khaki pants. He takes one look at Boone and says, “You’ve been in a fight.”

“A couple of them.”

“Did you win anyway?”

“Neither one.”

“Then it hurts worse, huh?”

Boone doesn’t know if it hurts worse, but it definitely

hurts.

As does what he’s about to tell Johnny.

“You want a beer?” Boone asks.

“Oh, yes, I want a beer,” Johnny says. The G2 on the street is that Cruz Iglesias has slipped into San Dog to escape the heat in TJ, and if that’s true, it’s alcohol-motivating news. It means that the Death Angels will be on the hunt, and they’re not exactly SEAL-like in their target selection process. It could get sloppy ugly bloody. So Johnny would like a lot of beers. “Most definitely I want a beer, but I’m going on duty so I can’t

have

a beer.”

Boone signals the waiter and orders a couple of Cokes.

Johnny says, “You wanted to see me about something?”

“Yeah. Thanks for coming.”

“Are we in the business or personal realm here?”

“Business,” Boone says, although he’s worried it’s going to get personal. Murky border there, as easy to cross as the one with Mexico just a few miles to the south and, just like that border, hard to cross back from.

“Shoot,” Johnny says.

“Red Eddie told me he’s going to kill Corey Blasingame,” Boone says.

“Okay,” Johnny says, taking it in. “How did you come by this information? You and Eddie don’t exactly hang.”

“He sent a gunpoint invitation.”

“And how could you say no?”

“How could I say no?”

Johnny nods, then gives Boone a long look. ‘So here’s the big question—why does Eddie give you the word? Let me rephrase that; why does Eddie give

you

the word?”

Boone takes a deep breath and then says, “I’m working on the Blasingame defense team.”

Johnny stares at him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

Boone shrugs.

“Putting my Sherlock Holmes hat on here,” Johnny says, “let me deduce: Alan Burke is representing Corey. Burke’s second chair is a certain British woman you’ve been dating. Hence . . . and it’s elementary, my dear Watson . . . you’re whipped.”

“It’s not that.” It’s hard to be whipped by something you haven’t . . . he doesn’t finish the thought. Let Johnny think what he wants. There are tougher topics to take on and you might as well get it over with and jump. So he says, “You coached the Rockpile boys to write their statements, J.”

Johnny looks at him for what seems like an hour. Then he says, “That Blasingame bitch is guilty. You know it, I know it, he knows it, Burke knows it, even that tea bag you’re banging knows it.”

“Easy, now.”

“

You

go easy,” Johnny says. “You back

way

off. Unless, that is, you’re going to choose a betty over your friends.”

“It isn’t about her,” Boone says.

“Then what’s it about?”

“The first-degree charge is jacked up.”

“You want Mary Lou’s number?”

“The witness statements—”

“—say what they say,” Johnny insists. “Did I let them know how the system works? You bet I did. Did that change what happened out there that night? Not even a little.”

“Come on, J—you have Trevor Bodin putting intent in Corey’s mouth.”

“He

had

intent in his mouth!” Johnny yells. “He said what he said, and he wrote it down. What are

you

saying, Boone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you saying that I cooked the statements? The confession?” Johnny asks. “Is that the tack that you and your new best friends are going to take? You can’t try the facts so try the cop?”

“Johnny—”

“You know what that would do to my career?” Johnny asks.

Boone knows. As fast as his own descent in the force was, Johnny had been that fast in the upward direction. Johnny’s rising with a rocket, there’s talk of chief of detectives someday, and Banzai takes his career very seriously.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Boone says.

“Yeah?” Johnny says. “Well, I don’t want to be collateral damage when your do-gooder, misplaced, pussy-whipped meddling goes off.”

He walks over to the bar and sits down, his back to Boone.

A shaft of sunlight pierces the room as the door opens and High Tide comes in for his End of the Workday Beer, a ritual that he practices with religious devotion. He sits down at the table with Boone and then notices Johnny sitting by himself at the bar.

“What’s with Johnny B?” Tide asks.

“We had a spat.”

“Over a boy?” Tide asks, raising a fat finger to the waiter. “Tell you what, why don’t you girls come over tonight, we’ll make popcorn, put on a nice, goopy movie, and the two of you can have a good cry and make up. We could even make brownies.”

“I’m helping defend Corey Blasingame.”

Tide looks at him in disbelief, sees he’s serious, and then says, “Maybe I’ll have my beer at the bar.”

“You know where it is.”

“Late.”

“Late.”

Tide lifts his bulk out of the chair, shakes his head, walks away, and settles himself on a stool next to Johnny.

Well, Boone thinks, this has been a good day.