“I do?” Boone asks. He pours kona beans into the grinder and the whir drowns out Johnny’s response, making him say it again.
“You parked out in front of Schering’s house with a camera or a sound-capturing device and you made a tape,” Johnny repeats. “I’m hoping it’s a video so it has a time track on it.”
“Sorry,” Boone says. “Audio only.”
“Goddamnit,” Johnny says. “Anyway, I want it.”
“Why?” Boone asks. “The boys at the house want a dirty chuckle?”
“You know why.”
Boone leans against the counter and looks out the window at the ocean, barely lit by the lamps on the pier. “There’s no surf again today. August blows. Look, you don’t need the tape. You already know that she had sex with Schering. If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you—she had sex with Schering. There’s nothing on that tape that’s going to help you, J.”
“They might have said something.”
“They didn’t.”
“Nichols hear the tape?”
Boone shakes his head.
“You were there from when to when?”
“I wasn’t there last night, J,” Boone says.
“The neighbor says differently.”
Boone shrugs. “The neighbor is mixed up. I was there the night
All night. I left in the morning when Schering went to work.”
“Did you go back to Schering’s last night?”
“One last time,” Boone says. “I was here until you and Fuckwad came by to visit.”
The pot whistles. Boone pours a little water on the coffee, waits a few seconds, then pours the rest. He doesn’t wait the recommended four minutes, but presses the plunger down and pours himself a cup.
Johnny asks, “Do you have anyone who can put you here before we came?”
Boone shakes his head, then says, “I talked with Sunny on the phone.”
“Landline or cell?”
“Since when do I have a landline?”
“Yeah, I forgot,” Johnny said. So Boone’s phone would show a record of him talking to Sunny, but wouldn’t say where he was. “What time did you talk to her?”
“I dunno. After nine.”
So it doesn’t help him anyway, Johnny thinks. “I want that tape.”
“Get a warrant,” Boone says, “and you can have it.”
“I will.”
There’s a slight lightening of the sky outside the window, the faintest touch of gold on the water.
“Sun’s coming up, Johnny.”
It’s time for the Dawn Patrol.
“You take it,” Boone says. “I’m dead tired, and anyway, I don’t go to parties where I’m not welcome.”
“You’re making your own choices, Boone,” Johnny says. “I don’t feel like I even know you anymore. Worse, I don’t think you know yourself.”
“Knock off the pop-pyscho-babble and go surf,” Boone says.
Words to live by.
95
Boone catches the Gentlemen’s Hour instead.
To his considerable surprise, Dan is out on the line.
“I didn’t do it,” Dan says when he paddles up next to Boone.
“Yeah, you said that.”
“You don’t believe me,” Dan says.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Boone says. “Look, I hooked you up with a good lawyer. I’m out of this.”
Yeah, except I’m not, he thinks. At the very least, I’ll be giving a statement and probably testifying about my role in the whole thing. And one cop wants to make it out that you paid me to kill your wife’s lover.
And a man is dead.
For no good reason.
A lot of that going around in San Diego these days.
96
Okay, maybe Dan didn’t do it, Boone thinks as he paddles in.
Dan is telling the truth, and he had nothing to do with Schering’s murder. There’s always that possibility. But if Dan didn’t, who did?
If Schering was fucking around with another’s guy wife, maybe Donna Nichols wasn’t the only one. Maybe there was another jealous husband or boyfriend out there. Maybe Schering was a real player, and someone else wanted him off the field.
Doubtful, but possible.
So worth checking out.
For several reasons, Boone thinks as he walks to the office. If Dan goes down, he takes me with him. I’m the guy who fingered the guy he killed. Worse, the suspicion that I did it, or helped, will always be out there. And fuck the suspicion—if I had anything to do with Schering’s murder,
want to know about it.
Hang is behind the counter.
“Hey, Hang.”
Hang doesn’t answer.
“Hey, Hang. S’up?”
Hang just looks at him. With a baleful expression.
“What?” Boone asks. “They stop making Pop-Tarts or something?”
“I heard something,” Hang says.
Boone has a sneaking suspicion what he heard, but he asks, “What?”
“That you’re helping get Corey Blasingame off.”
“I’m working on his defense team, yes.”
Hang looks dumbstruck. Shakes his head like he just bottom-smacked and is trying to clear the wuzzies out. Looks at Boone like Boone just shot his puppy and ate it in front of him.
“You have something to say,” Boone says, “say it.”
“You’re wrong.”
No Surfbonics now. Just plain English.
“What do you know about it?” Boone says, more sharply than he’d intended. “Seriously, Hang, the fuck you know about anything?”
Hang turns away.
“Cool with me,” Boone says. He feels a little bad as he goes up the stairs, but his anger washes it away.
