The Gentlemen's Hour

prison. Figure it somewhere in the middle range.

“Tell Alan I’ll take the case.”

“Actually, I already did.”

Because with all your contradictions you’re really a very simple man, she thinks.

You’ll do the right thing.

She reaches over to his plate, tears off a piece of tortilla, and says mildly, “There’s a slight problem.”

Actually, six slight problems.

Five eyewitnesses.

And Corey’s confession.

19

Since starting to date Pete, Boone has gained an appreciation of British understatement.

If she says she’s “a bit peckish,” it means she’s starving; if she’s “a tad annoyed,” she’s really approaching near homicidal rage; and little Corey’s having “a slight problem” means he’s totally screwed.

Calling Corey’s confession “a slight problem” is like tagging a tsunami “a little wave,” Boone thinks as he looks over the file. It could sweep Corey off the beach and carry him all the way to San Quentin, never to be seen again.

Here’s what stupid Corey wrote:

“We were outside the bar waiting because we were pissed that they threw us out of there earlier. So I saw the guy coming out of the bar and decided to mess him up. I walked up to him and hit him with a Superman Punch.”

A “Superman Punch”? Boone asks himself. What the hell is a “Superman Punch”?

“I saw his lights go out before he hit the ground. Other than that, I have nothing to say.”

“Other than that”? Boone wonders. Other than that, you moronic dweeb? Other than admitting to premeditation, then the premeditated act? Yeah. Other than that, good time to clam up, dim bulb. Efficient writing style, though—life without parole in five crisp sentences. Hemingway couldn’t have done it better.

Three of the witness statements are from his little friends.

Corey’s Rockpile crewmates threw him under the bus.

Typical of gangs, Boone thinks. It’s all “brothers forever” until they start doing the hard math of murder one vs. accessory to manslaughter vs. witness with immunity; then the brotherhood goes Cain and Abel.

Of course, the police were shaping the case that way from moment one. They had two other eyewitnesses who would testify to Corey throwing the fatal punch, so the cops went to work on the potential codefendants, making sure they had Corey sewn up tight in the net.

Technically, they could book all four for murder—doubtless that was their opening gambit—but in practice they could never make anything but an accessory charge stick so they put a bright light over the “Exit” door for three of them to find their way.

Trevor’s statement is priceless.

“We were hanging in the alley when we saw this guy come down the street. Corey said, ‘Check it out—I’m going to mess with him. I’m going to fuck him up.’ I tried to restrane him . . .”

“Tried to restrane him,” Boone thinks. Three years on the SDPD, Boone recognizes “copspeak” when he hears it.

Trevor was coached.

They just couldn’t coach him to spell.

A nice touch of authenticity, though.

And the “I’m going to fuck him up” is really bad news.

“ . . . but Corey shook me off, walked up, and hit the guy with a Superman Punch.”

This Superman Punch, Boone thinks, seems to be like a thing, whatever it is.

“Then I heard this really bad ‘crack’ sound when Mr. Kuhio’s head hit. I knew it was real bad then. I said to Corey, ‘What did you do, dude? What did you do?’

“I know we should have called 911 and stayed, but we got freeked out and scared and so we got back in the car and drove away. I was crying. Corey was yelling, ‘I got him! I got the motherfucker. Did you see me get him?’”

Yup, Trevor has the shovel out and he’s digging like mad. With a helping hand from the investigating officer.

Boone could practically hear the detective in the interview room with dumb-ass Trevor:

This might be your last chance to help yourself, guy. The train is pulling out of the station. There’s a big difference between a witness and an accessory, kid. The former gets to go home, the latter gets to take showers with the Mexican Mafia.

Then he slides a pad of paper and a pen across the table and tells Trevor to start writing.

Write for his life.

Then the cops buzz back and forth like bees, cross-pollinating Trevor Bodin with Billy and Dean Knowles. Have them toss as much shit as they can at each other, but especially on Corey. A little expository writing workshop, there in the precinct house. Pencils up, students, be sure to use vivid verbs and lively adjectives. Tell it in your own words, find your inner voice.

The one kid who didn’t get a tutorial was Corey. They just handed him the suicide pen and told him to write.

“Just stick the point in your belly, son, and slash up and across. And try not to leak your bloody entrails on our furniture, kid.”

The investigating officers on the file were Steve Harrington and John Kodani.

Johnny Banzai.

A slight problem there.

Even with the jump-in rule.

Boone and Johnny established the jump-in rule shortly after Boone got his PI card and they realized that their lines were going to clash from time to time. So the rule is just an understanding that their business lives are sometimes going to conflict with their friendship—that sometimes one of them is going to have to jump in on the other guy’s wave, and it’s nothing personal.

Yeah, but . . .

This threatens to get real personal, because for Boone to do his job he’s going to have to attack Johnny’s work, his professional ethics. Which is not something you do to a friend and, no mistake, Boone and Johnny Banzai are friends.

They’ve been boys since they were freshmen law enforcement majors at San Diego State. In those days, Johnny used to surf down in Ocean Beach, and it was Boone who told him that he should check out PB Pier, Boone who made sure that he didn’t catch any locie aggro as a newbie. Yeah, that didn’t take long—when the PB boys saw Johnny shred that wave like he was born in it, when they caught how cool a guy he was, they took him right in.

Yeah, Boone and JB are friends, as in . . .

Boone was the best man at Johnny’s wedding (and studied for weeks to learn enough Japanese to properly greet Johnny’s grandparents). As in . . .

If Johnny and his wife both had to work a weekend day, they’d leave their boys with Boone and Dave at the beach and never give it a second thought because they knew that Boone and Dave would die before they’d let anything happen to those kids. As in . . .

One of those kids, the younger son, is named James Boone Kodani. As in . . . The normally ultrapeaceful Boone clocked some clown who called Johnny a “slant” right here in this same Sundowner. As in . . .