81
“Sunny! Hey!”
“Hey yourself! S’up?”
“Nuch,” Boone says. “Where are you?”
“Bondi Beach, Oz,” she says. “Thought I’d give you a shout.”
It’s great to hear her voice. “What time is it there?”
“I dunno,” Sunny says. “Listen, did I catch you at a bad time? You going out or something?”
Women are amazing, Boone thinks. Talk about high-tech spy stuff—she’s on the other side of the freaking world and can smell over the phone that I have a date. He’d tell her no, but they have a long-standing deal never to lie to each other, so he doesn’t say anything.
“You do, don’t you?” she asks. “At . . . ten at night? Boone, baby, that’s a booty call.”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is it?” she asks. “Is it the British betty? What’s her name?”
Boone knows that Sunny knows her name. But he says, “Petra.”
“You charmingly call her ‘Pete.’” Sunny laughs. “I’ll bet she loves that. Makes her feel all girlie and stuff. It’s her, right?”
“Look, this must be costing you a—”
“It is, isn’t it?” Sunny says. “It’s cool, my Boone. She’s a good chick. I like her. Kinda tightly wound, but . . . okay, what are you going to wear?”
“Jesus, Sunny.”
“I know you, Boone,” she says. “I don’t want you to blow this. So what are you wearing?”
This is both sick and wrong, Boone thinks. But he says, “White dress shirt, jeans.”
“Tennis or dress shoes?”
“I dunno. What do you think?”
“
are you meeting her?” Sunny asks. “Bar or club?”
“Her place,” Boone says.
Sunny laughs. “If you’re meeting a woman at ten p.m. at her place, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.” Her implication being that, whatever you’re wearing, you won’t be wearing it for long. Then she adds, “By the way, congratulations.”
“Tennis or dress?” Boone insists.
“Black or brown?”
“Black.”
“Dress.”
“Thanks.”
“The shirt. In or out?”
“Jeans?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this the, uhhh, first . . .”
“Aww, he’s shy,” she says. “In.”
“Thanks.”
“No worries.”
They talk about her surf tour, how well it’s going, how she’s getting in shape for the big wave season in Hawaii, Pipeline, and all that. Boone fills her in a little on what he’s been up to, skipping the Blasingame case, and tells her that the gang is doing well.
“Tell them I miss them,” Sunny says. “I miss you, too, Boone.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Love you, B.”
“Love you, Sunny.”
Boone hangs up. Five seconds later the phone rings and Sunny asks, “Do you have any cologne or after- shave?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She hangs up.
Feeling weirder than weird—he will never understand women and neither will anyone else, even Dave— Boone goes to his closet, takes out the black dress shoes, then finds a pair of white gym socks and wipes the dust off them. This leads him to the unhappy quandary of what color socks to wear, and again, he has limited choices.
White or white.
He decides on white and then checks his watch: nine twenty-five. Almost time to leave if he wants to be at Petra’s apartment downtown by ten. But the date isn’t for ten, it’s for “tennish,” so he sits and debates with himself about when to actually arrive. Ten? Five past? Ten past? What’s “ish,” anyway? And is “ish” different in England than in the United States?
He heads out the door at nine-forty, to get there around ten-ten.
When he opens his door, Johnny Banzai is standing there.
Which is good.
“Johnny,” says Boone. “Look, I’m glad you came by. I’m—”
Then he sees Sergeant Steve Harrington walk up behind Johnny.
Which is bad.
82
They hate each other.
Boone and Harrington.
No, they don’t hate each other, they fucking
each other. Go to your thesaurus, look up every synonym for hatred, add them together, multiply them by ten, and you still don’t come up to the level of malice that these two guys hold for each other.
“Good evening, piece of shit,” Harrington says.
“Johnny, what the hell?” Boone says, ignoring him and turning to Johnny Banzai. If they’re here to bust my chops about Blasingame, Boone thinks, nine-something on a Friday night is way out of bounds.
“Can we come in?” Johnny says, looking grim. “Have a talk?”
“Yeah, ‘now,’ asshole,” Harrington says. “We’re here ‘now,’ aren’t we? We want to come inside ‘now.’ We want to talk ‘now.’”
Boone shines him on. He looks only at Johnny and asks, “You have a warrant?”
Johnny shakes his head.
“Then ‘no,’” Boone says. “Anyway, I’m going out.”
“Got a date?” Harrington asks.
“As a matter of fact.”
“Where you taking her?” Harrington asks, checking his watch. “Legoland’s closed for the night.”
The last time Boone punched Harrington he ended up in jail, so he keeps his hands down. It’s what
