The Gentlemen's Hour

68

Boone goes into Pacific Surf, where Hang Twelve is trying to cope with a busload of German tourists who are bustling around the shop, trying on anything that isn’t chained down, asking him a zillion questions about wet suits, fins, and boogie-board hydrodynamics.

“It doesn’t matter!” Hang is pleading. “There’s no surf anyway! No waves! Get it? No waves!

Nein

waves! Waves

verboten

! Can’t ride the Maxi-Pads. Boone. What’s German for ‘flat’?”

“Vlat,”

Boone says, making it up.

“Vlat,”

Hang is saying as Boone goes up the stairs to his office.

Cheerful looks up from the old-fashioned adding machine, one of those dinosaurs that still has the little loop of paper coming out of it, usually stained with red ink. The old man is actually smiling. Boone has to look twice to make sure it’s not a heart attack or something, but it sure looks like a smile.

Awkward, however, because Cheerful is way out of practice. Boone’s a little afraid he might pull a face muscle. Maybe he should warm up first, do some cheek stretches or something.

“This is a big day in your life,” Cheerful says.

“They’re bringing

Baywatch

back?” Boone asks.

Cheerful holds up a slip of adding-machine paper. “Boone Daniels Investigation Services is in the black.”

“Wow.”

“I thought you’d be happier,” Cheerful says.

“The surf sucks,” Boone says, “and I have some bad news for a friend.”

“The Nichols thing?”

Boone nods.

“She cheating on him?”

“Yup.”

“But that’s not all that’s bugging you,” Cheerful says.

“Nope.”

“Spill.”

“I think I got it wrong on the Blasingame case.”

He walks Cheerful through it, then the old man says, “So maybe you were a little blinded by your anger. It happens. But you have to remember that the kid confessed in the station, he confessed to you, and you still have another objective eyewitness.”

George Poptanich, Boone thinks.

The cabdriver.

There’s something about him skitting around the edge of Boone’s consciousness. He yells down to Hang, “Yo! Is the

Kriegsmarine

still down there?”

“The what?!”

“Never mind,” Boone says. “You got a minute to do some work for me?”

“Dude.”

“Run a criminal check on a George Poptanich?” He spells the name and hears Hang slapping the keyboard even before he finishes.

The phone rings. It’s Dan Nichols.

“Anything?”

“Dan, maybe it would be better to talk about this in person,” Boone says.

Pause.

“That’s not good, huh?”

“No,” Boone says.

“I’ll be back this afternoon,”

Dan says.

“We’ll talk.”

“Sounds good.”

As good as that conversation can be, which is, like,

not.

Hang comes bounding up the stairs. “Dude.”

“Dude.”

“Yabba-dabba-doo!” He hands Boone a printout.

Georgie has a sheet.