The Gentlemen's Hour

It rings and rings and rings.

Clearly, she has caller ID.

88

Yeah, but he has one of the all-time great excuses, right?

“Honey, I was detained on suspicion of murder.” Has

to be good for a hall pass, doesn’t it? Has to be, Boone thinks, if I can get her to listen to it.

He debates with himself what to do next. Part of him says to let it slide until morning—he looks at his watch, okay,

later

in the morning—and let her cool down. Another part of him says he should drive over there right now and ring her doorbell.

What to do, what to do?

He calls Dave.

Who is, after all, the Love God.

“Oh, this better be

prime

,” Dave says when he answers the phone.

“You busy?”

“I was getting busy,” Dave answers. “What is it, you forgot the lyrics to

The Jetsons

? For the last time, it’s ‘His boy, Elroy. Jane, his wife.’”

Boone explains his situation, without specific reference to the Nicholses. Dave just lets it slide that Boone was picked up on suspicion of homicide and that Johnny B was the picker-upper. He gets right to the problem at hand.

“Go over there.”

“Really?”

“

Hell

, yes,” Dave says. “Dude, do you have any idea how pissed she is? Chick sets up a booty call and you don’t get your booty over there?”

“Uhh, murder charge?”

“Doesn’t matter to a woman,” Dave says.

“Has to. Come on.”

“Hold on,” Dave says. Boone hears him talking softly to someone, then Dave gets back on and says, “No. Doesn’t matter.”

“Shit.”

“Shit indeed,” Dave says. “Listen to your Uncle Dave, who has himself been in this same doleful situation. . . . I just said that to make him feel like a little less of an idiot, babe. . . . What you do is, you go over there, ring her bell, and beg forgiveness over the intercom. She won’t let you in, but she’ll feel better that you made the effort.”

“Then flowers . . . candy?”

“A little cliche,” Dave says, “and knowing the woman in question, she’d be happier with a DVD of your ritual disembowelment. No, this goes to Defcon four—you might be looking at jewelry.”

“Yikes.”

“You fucked up, bro.”

“I was detained for—”

“Again . . .”

“Doesn’t matter?”

“The beginning of wisdom, Boone.”

Dave hangs up.

Boone drives over to Petra’s building.

89

Nichols admits everything.

Except the murder.

Johnny Banzai sits and listens as Dan Nichols, closely monitored by Alan Burke, admits that his wife was having an affair with Phil Schering, admits that he hired Boone Daniels to uncover the infidelity, even admits that he shared part of the responsibility for his wife’s adultery.

“I work so many hours,” he says.

Johnny isn’t buying it. Hell, he and his wife each have full-time jobs, and kids, and they don’t play around on each other. You make time for what’s important to you. It’s the simplest way of learning what really matters to a person—just look at how he spends his time.

Besides, Johnny doesn’t give a stale tortilla

why

Donna Nichols cheated, only

that

Donna Nichols cheated, and he wouldn’t care about that either except that the guy she cheated with turned up dead. He wouldn’t really care about that either, except he turned up dead on Johnny’s shift.

So now Johnny has two high-profile cases—the Kelly Kuhio murder, with all its tourist and surf culture implications, and now a billionaire socialite adultery/murder that will have the media coming in its collective shorts and the chief buzzing around his head like an annoying but powerful fly.

And his ex-buddy Boone has managed to turn up in both cases.

“Where were you last night?” Johnny asks.

Burke nods to his client, allowing him to answer.

“Home with my wife,” Nichols says, with a trace of self-righteousness that annoys Johnny. “We talked. About everything. Our thoughts, our feelings . . .”

“That’s fine,” Burke says.

Beautiful, Johnny thinks. The cuckolded husband’s alibi is his cheating wife. You have to love the symmetry. “And did you confront her with your knowledge of her infidelity?”

“I wouldn’t call it exactly a confrontation,” Nichols says. “I just told her that I knew she was having an affair and asked her—”

“That’s enough,” says Burke.

“What did you ask her?” Johnny says.

Burke shoots his client an I-told-you-so look.

“How could she do that to me?” Nichols says.

“And what did she say?”

“Don’t answer that,” Burke snaps. “Irrelevant.”

“This isn’t a courtroom, counselor,” Johnny says.

“But it could end up in one, couldn’t it?” Burke asks. “Her response to him regarding her motivation is immaterial. What you want to know—”

“Don’t tell me what I want to know.”