The Gentlemen's Hour

homes fell into the sinkhole, Dan told Blasingame to fix it, gin up the geo reports, but he couldn’t get it done.

“So you sent your wife,” Boone says now, “you pimped her out to seduce Schering and get him to change his reports, but he wouldn’t do it. Then Blasingame’s son was arrested for killing Kelly Kuhio and it’s all over the papers and people are digging into Blasingame’s life and you got really scared the connection would come out.”

So Dan hired Boone to “follow” Donna, knowing where it would lead, knowing it would provide a motive for Schering’s murder that would point an inquiry away from Paradise Homes. Dan and Donna were so desperate, so afraid of losing their money—or worse, if Iglesias found out how they’d put him in jeopardy—that they were willing for Dan to become a murder suspect.

“Boone—”

“Shut up,” Boone says. “You sent your wife to lay her body out, then you tried a bribe, and when that didn’t work, you had your cartel partners kill him before he could talk.”

“That’s outrageous!”

“Yeah, it is,” Boone says. “And then you set me up. Used me to set a false trail so it would look like an act of jealousy. You knew you had an alibi, and you were willing to take the risk because you were that desperate. Otherwise, your partners down in TJ would do to you what they did to Bill Blasingame.”

“Boone, we can talk about this,” Dan says. “There’s no need for this to go any further, we can settle this like gentlemen—”

“When I told you I had Nicole’s records, you knew you were in trouble,” Boone says, “so you sent your financial backers to get them back, whatever it took. Blasingame’s life, Petra’s . . . you didn’t care.”

“You can’t prove this,” Dan says. “I’ll destroy you in court. I’ll tell them you were having the affair with Donna, that you killed Schering out of jealousy. She’ll back me, Boone, you know she will.”

“Probably,” Boone says.

Dan smiles a little. “It doesn’t have to go there. How much do you want? Give me a figure, it will be in a numbered account end of business today.”

Boone takes the tape cassette player out of his pocket and hits “Play.”

“We came to you, didn’t we? We came to you.”

“But what if this scandal reaches you? How long before it reaches the rest of us?”

“It won’t. Please, por favor, please. I beg you. What can I do? ”

“It’s a copy,” Boone says. “John Kodani has the original. He’s waiting up on the boardwalk now.”

“You’re making a mistake, Daniels.”

“I met some of your partners,” Boone says. “I’m betting the legal process is the least of your worries. Have a good life, Dan.”

Boone walks away.

Passes Johnny Banzai on the way in.

159

Later that morning, Petra watches Alan Burke peruse the flow chart that she created on her computer.

He’s dead silent for a good, long minute, then asks, “You have documentation of all this?”

“Yes.”

Alan walks over to the window and looks out at the city. “Do you have any idea how many friends, colleagues, and business associates of mine could be implicated by this?”

“I would expect quite a few,” she says.

She is, as usual, polite and proper, but he notices that the deferential tone that she normally adopts is missing. Its absence is simultaneously alarming and promising. “Well, you expect correctly.”

Petra hears the gentle mockery and wonders what it means. Is its import that Alan will fire her, run for cover, and pull the lid down over his head? That would be the smart thing to do, and Alan has built his career on doing the smart thing.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“That must have been very frightening.”

“It was.”

Yeah, he thinks, looking at her, you were so terrified that you found the pistol in your bureau drawer and calmly gunned down a professional hit man. How can I let talent like that walk out my door? “You realize that there are going to be about eight zillion lawsuits coming out of your chart here? And that many of them will be politically difficult for me, and for the firm? Do you know the pressure that’s going to come down on us from on high?”

“Absolutely.”

Alan turns away and looks out at the city again. Maybe, he thinks, it needs shaking to the core, maybe it’s time to take it apart and rebuild it, and maybe there are worse things to do in the last phase of your career.

He turns back to Petra and says, “Okay, start contacting homeowners and signing them up. Do an assets search on Paradise and its related companies with an eye to freezing them, and . . . why aren’t you already moving?”

“I want to be made partner,” she says.

“Or maybe I should just fire you,” Alan answers.

“I’ll require a corner office, of course.”

He trains his plea-bargaining, settlement-negotiating evil stare on her. She doesn’t blink.

Alan laughs. “Okay, gunslinger. Partner. Call maintenance and make it thus. But Petra—”

“Yes?”

“We’d better win.”

“Oh, we’ll win,” she says. “Alan, what about Corey Blasingame?”

“We have a meeting with Mary Lou in thirty,” he says.

“Did she give any hint?”

He shakes his head.

160

As does Mary Lou Baker.

At John Kodani.

She looks up from the stack of documents that he dropped on her desk, shakes her head again, sighs, and says, “You’ve been a busy boy, sergeant. First the arrest of Dan Nichols, then a raid that nets Cruz Iglesias, then this . . . dirty bomb. Anything else you want to drop on me today?”

“That ought to do it.”

“Oh, it ought to “do it,” all right.”

Johnny picked Mary Lou Baker to bring the records to because (a) she’d been busting his chops on the Blasingame case and (b) she was the one prosecutor he knew with the integrity and the stones to take this up and start filing charges.

“You do know you’re ruining my career, don’t you?” she asks him as she looks at the papers and winces.

“Or making it,” he says.

“Same for you, chum,” Mary Lou says. “Romero wanted you strung up by the cojones, but he can’t do that now that you’re the hero of a shoot-out, and Iglesias and all. But did you have to save a defense attorney, John? Bad taste.”

“She was the only lawyer in the room,” Johnny answers. “Besides, she pulled me out of the soup.”

“We should recruit her for the good guys team,” Mary Lou says.