The Gentlemen's Hour

Instead, he straightens up and announces, “I have nothing to say.”

“White supremacist garbage you picked up from Mike Boyd?” Boone asks. “You’re just going to take the pipe because you finally found something so shitty even

you

could belong to it?”

Petra warns, “Boone—”

Boone ignores her. “You couldn’t deliver a pitch or a pizza, you couldn’t really surf, and you couldn’t really fight, but you could sign on to this filth, and when you finally thought you’d succeeded at something, you killed a ‘nigger,’ you just hold on to it because that’s all you have. A stupid, dirty slogan, ‘I have nothing to say.’”

“For God’s sake—” Petra says.

“I don’t think you threw that punch,” Boone says. “I think Trevor did. Except he’s too smart to take the weight, so he lays it on you. I hope you

do

keep your mouth shut, Corey, I hope they do give you the needle, so maybe you can finally

be

something. Maybe some other racist piece of shit will tattoo your name on his wrist and—”

“I don’t know, all right?” Corey yells. “I don’t fucking remember what happened, okay!”

He slams his fists on the table, then raises them and starts hitting his own head as he repeats, “I don’t fucking know! I don’t fucking know! I don’t—”

The guard rushes in and grabs him in a bear hug, pinning his arms.

“I don’t fucking know. . . . I don’t—”

He breaks down into sobs.

Alan turns to the guard.

“Can you get DA Baker down here.

Now

?”

101

Here’s the story that Corey tells, on the record.

He started surfing with Trevor and the Knowles brothers. Something to do and it was fun, you know. At first, the older guys there didn’t really want them around, but Trevor made their bones by chasing some foreigners away. Then Mike said they should swing by his gym, check it out.

They were all, like, why not? MMA is cool, and it was, so they started spending most of their time at the gym and at Rockpile.

So they, like, hung around the break and the gym, and they helped keep it pure at Rockpile, you know. It was their water, their turf, and they tagged themselves the Rockpile Crew, and they were hanging in the gym one night and Mike asked if they’d like to check out some Web sites and they said sure, they thought he was talking about porn or something, but then he logged on and it was all about the white race and how they had to fight to preserve it, and Mike asked what they thought and they said they thought it was cool.

Mike said it was like the white race was their tribe and they were warriors, and warriors fight to protect their tribe, and were they willing to fight? And they said they were, and Mike said that’s what they were all about, training as warriors to protect their tribe. He told them about Alex Curtis going to prison and what Alex said and the number 5 and Corey went out after a few beers one night and got that ink and Mike said he was becoming a warrior . . .

And a warrior fights for his people.

“San Diego used to be white,”

Mike said,

“now it’s mud. They’re crowding us out. Pretty soon there won’t be room for white guys anymore on our street, at our beaches, in our own waves.”

And Trev said,

“Somebody should do something about it.”

That night,

that

night, they were cruising that night, club-hopping, looking for trouble. If you wanted to be a fighter, okay, you had to fight, and you just couldn’t get enough fights in the gym, not unless you were one of the stars, which Corey wasn’t. But a lot of MMA guys had a lot of street fights, beach fights . . . man, they just kicked asses wherever they could find asses to kick.

So they went out.

Corey, Trevor, Billy, and Dean.

The Rockpile Crew.

They hit a bunch of bars but couldn’t get anything going. Then they rolled up on The Sundowner. By this time they’d had a lot of beers, and downed some speed, so they were torqued, ready to go, and that’s when that lifeguard guy came and threw them out.

Like we didn’t belong, Corey said. There was all kinds of mud in there—tacos and slants and even niggers— and they wouldn’t let white men stay?

That was bullshit.

So they went riding around, high and stoked, adrenaline pumping, and Trev just wouldn’t let it go, wouldn’t let it go, just kept at it, like:

“We have to take care of this, we can’t let them disrespect us like that.”

“It ain’t right.”

So they went back and waited outside, across the street, in the alley. They got themselves worked up, started duking with each other, really throwing down, and that’s when Trev spotted the nigger coming out of The Sundowner.

And Trev was all, like, “Let’s go show him, let’s mess him up a little, fuck with him, sweep the mud off our street.” So they went up to the guy, and they didn’t know it was K2—he had on this hooded poncho and it was dark and there was like blood in the back of Corey’s eyes, sloshing around inside his head, boiling hot . . . all he could see was that red. And then there was yelling. The next thing he knew he was sitting in the back of the car, and they were all stoked and shit, and Trev was slapping him on the back, yelling, “You got him good, man. You took him out! Did you guys see our boy Corey hit him with that Superman?” And then Billy and Dean were saying, like, “Yeah, we saw you, Corey. We saw you do him.”

And Corey was like . . .

Proud.

Like, proud that he’d defended his turf, you know? Stood up and fought like a warrior for his tribe.

They drove around some more, and then the cops found them. Put them in cuffs and took them down to the station, and that’s when Corey confessed.

“I hit him with a Superman Punch.”

102

“Come

on

, Mary Lou!” Alan says in her office.

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t see how this really changes things. Except that your client has now confessed to a hate crime.”