The Gentlemen's Hour

75

“Boone,” Alan says after Bill slams the door behind him, “you’re giving me whiplash. One second you want the kid strung up, then you jump the case from manslaughter to a hate crime, now you’re saying he’s innocent.”

“I didn’t say he was innocent,” Boone argues. “I said he didn’t throw the punch. If he was part of a gang that assaulted Kelly, he should do time. But he doesn’t deserve the death penalty.”

“Who said anything about the death penalty?”

“Red Eddie.”

“Oh?”

Boone tells them about Eddie’s threats against Corey.

Alan takes this in, then says, “I will present young Mr. Blasingame with his options in an evenhanded way. And if he chooses to go to trial, God help the both of you! But you, Petra, can help both him and yourself by lining up the best causal biomechanics expert in the universe, and you, Boone, had better go back to digging like a dog on crank. It wouldn’t hurt if you found Nazi paraphernalia and KKK robes in Mr. Bodin’s closet, for instance.”

“Right away, Alan.”

“Got it.”

“Thank you,” Alan says.

He leaves the room.

“He certainly seemed in a hurry,” Petra says.

“He’s pissed off.”

“Not Alan,” she says. “Blasingame. He seemed in a terrible hurry to accept a deal that would put his son in prison for ten years.”

“He doesn’t want to roll the dice on a jury,” Boone says. “I get it.”

He does and he doesn’t. If I were in his place, Boone thinks, and someone told me that there was a good chance my kid didn’t do it, I’d leap at that hook. Blasingame couldn’t push it away fast or hard enough.

And on the topic of confessions . . .

“Look,” Boone says, “about the other day—”

“I was completely out of line,” Petra says. “I assumed an intimacy that simply doesn’t exist and—”

“I was an immature, hypersensitive jerk.”

“Yes, all right.”

“So you’re busy tonight?” Boone asks.

“I have that thing,” Petra says. “But I should be free and clear by . . . tennish.”

“Tennish.”

“Around ten.”

“No, I knew what you meant,” Boone says. “I just . . . yeah. Ten . . . around tennish. Should I call you?”

“Or just come over.”

“To your place,” Boone says.

“Well, yes,” says Petra. “Not to the restaurant, I meant.”

“No.”

To her place, Boone thinks.

To close the deal?