The Gentlemen's Hour

Boone laughs. “I get it. I had it backward. You were

already

in the line of fire and you saw a chance to do yourself some good. So you write down the license number because you know you can trade up on a murder beef.”

Georgie shrugs.

“Except Harrington drives a tough bargain,” Boone says, “especially since he knows you’re looking at three- time-loser status. You want a solid from him, you’re going to have to give him more than a license plate. You’re going to have to wrap up Corey Blasingame for him.”

“I heard the kid confessed anyway.”

“So what’s the harm, right?”

Georgie shrugs again. Like, yeah, what’s the harm? A man’s dead, the kid’s going down for it anyway, someone might as well get some good out of it.

Someone like Georgie Poptanich.

Boone is faced with the hard truth that most career criminals are sociopaths. It’s no use appealing to their consciences because they don’t have them. You can only appeal to their self-interest.

Or their fear.

“Let me tell you what the harm is,” Boone says. He pauses for a little dramatic effect and then says, “Red Eddie.”

Georgie goes white. “What’s Eddie got to do with it?”

“Eddie is going to clip the guy who killed his calabash cousin,” Boone says. “And if he finds out that he didn’t because certain people like you deliberately misled him . . . well, that would be the harm, Georgie. And he will find out.”

“Because you’ll tell him.”

“Bingo.”

“You son-of-a-bitch cocksucker!”

Boone gets up from the chair.

“Just tell the truth, Georgie, all I’m asking. If you saw what you said you saw, fair enough. But if you didn’t . . . I’d think about that, if I were you.”

“Harrington

told

me the kid confessed.”

“He didn’t lie,” Boone says. “The question is, did you?”

“Fuck you.”

Yeah, Boone thinks.

Fuck me.

70

The jailer brings Corey into the room.

The kid looks thin in the baggy orange jumpsuit, but the fact is that he probably has been losing weight on the awful jail food. He plops down in the chair across from Boone and stares down at the metal table.

“Hi,” Boone says. “I have a few more questions for you.”

“I have nothing to say.”

Great, Boone thinks. We’re back to that.

“First question,” Boone says. “You didn’t throw that punch, did you?”

Corey looks up.

71

“Yes, I did.”

“I don’t think so,” Boone says.

“I did,” Corey insists. “I told the cops I did.”

It’s the first time Boone sees any animation, any emotion, from him. He says, “Yeah, I know—you killed him because you thought . . . blah-blah. I know what you told the cops, what you wrote. I think it’s all fucking bullshit.”

“That girl saw me do it,” Corey says hotly. “The cabdriver saw me do it.”

“No, they didn’t.”

Corey drops his head again. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“I think,” Boone says, “you claimed that punch before you knew that it killed Kelly, and now you’re trapped in that lie, and it’s attached to your balls. I think that you want to be a man so badly, you’d fuck up the rest of your life for it.”

“What are you, some kind of shrink?”

“Maybe,” Boone says, “you were just so high you don’t remember, so you swallowed whatever bullshit the cops fed you. Or maybe Trevor Bodin told you that you threw that punch, and you liked what that did for you so much you held on to it, I don’t know. But I’m telling you right now, Corey—knowing a little bit about you, looking at you, there’s no fucking way you killed that kid. You’re not Superman.”

Corey shifts his stare from the table to the floor. He shuffles his feet a little bit, then mumbles. “Too late anyway.”

“What is?”

“I confessed.”

Yeah, it’s a problem, Boone thinks. A real close-out wave, but I’ve paddled through close-outs before. This one is a matter of making my good friend Johnny Banzai eat that confession piece by piece on the stand.

Humiliating him.

Calling into doubt his ethics and credibility.

Shredding his career.

For this punk kid who

wants

to claim the murder.

And who Red Eddie will probably kill anyway.

“What if it isn’t?” Boone asks. “Too late.”

Corey thinks about this for a few seconds, then shakes his head. Then he gets to his feet and calls for the guard to take him out. He turns in the doorway and says to Boone, “I killed him. I killed him, all right?”

All right, Boone thinks.

All right, maybe we should just let it go down that way. Sometimes a wave just breaks bad and you get caught in the bad break and that’s the way it is.

So leave it be.

Make everybody happy.

72

Okay, not Dan Nichols.

He catches Boone outside Pacific Surf and they go for a walk along the boardwalk.

“Tell,” Dan says.