The Gentlemen's Hour

Dave and Tide went back to the bar and laughed about it.

Nobody was laughing about it the next day.

Because Kelly Kuhio was in a coma.

13

Boone walks straight to the beach.

Where he always goes when he’s pissed off, sad, or confused. Looks to the ocean for an answer, or at least solace.

Pete’s full of shit, he thinks as he looks at the torpid sea. Classic defense attorney bullshit. It’s always somebody else’s fault, not the poor criminal’s. He’s just a victim of society. “Lynch mob” my aching ass. Four guys going to a man’s house and beating him to death, that’s a lynch mob.

Except Pete’s not some knee-jerk, NPR-addicted, Volvo-driving, crunchy granola, left-wing type. She enthuses about the Laffer curve, thinks litterers should get jail time, and owns a gun, for Chrissakes. Hell, if she wasn’t getting paid to do the opposite, she’d be out to hang little Corey from the yardarm.

The beach is crowded today, mostly with families. Lots of kids running around, and they don’t seem to care that there’s no surf. The mommies and daddies sure like it, they can relax and let the kiddies ride the boogie boards in the tiny whitewash. Other kids are tossing Frisbees, playing paddleball, making sand castles. A few women are asleep in beach chairs, paperback books lying open on their laps.

Up on Crystal Pier people are strolling around, enjoying the view, the sunshine, the blue water. A few fishermen cluster at the end of the pier, their lines stretched down into the water, pretty much just an excuse to be out there on a day when the fish aren’t biting. Below the pier a few lunchtime surfers are out, more from habit than hope that any decent wave is going to come along. Still, it’s better than sitting in the office cubicle waiting for the bell to sound again and summon them back to whatever shit is waiting on their desks.

Pete’s right about the lynching thing, Boone reluctantly concedes. The papers have been full of editorials and letters demanding strong reaction to the Kuhio murder, and the radio talk shows have been hammering the deterioration of Pacific Beach, the callers and hosts screaming for a “crackdown.”

So dumb-ass Corey takes some of that weight. Is that so unfair? He killed someone.

Case closed.

Or is it? Was it the punch that killed Kelly, or the sidewalk? You’ve been in a few scuffles yourself, thrown a couple of punches. What if the addressee of one of those had fallen backward, hit his head on something unforgiving that canceled his reservation? Would that have made you guilty of murder, justifiably put you in a box the rest of your life?

It depends.

On what?

On the very shit that Alan Burke wants you to look into. You know the game—a top-notch trial lawyer such as Alan is too smart to try for an acquittal, he’ll try to get the jury to go for a lesser charge, and he’ll angle his case toward the sentencing hearing. That’s if he takes it to trial at all—he’ll probably try to find some facts that might persuade the DA to cut the kid a deal instead.

Boone looks back out at the ocean, where a flock of pelicans skim over the surface. A weak breeze wafts a scent of salt air and suntan lotion.

Is Pete right? Boone wonders. Is that what has you so jacked up? That this murder confirmed something you’ve known for a long time but didn’t want to admit—that surfing isn’t the Utopia you always wanted it to be? Needed it to be?

He decides to see his priest.

14

Dave the Love God sits atop the lifeguard tower.

Boone walks to the base of the tower and asks, “Permission to come aboard?”

“Granted.”

Boone climbs up the ladder and sits down next to Dave, who doesn’t so much as turn his head to acknowledge his presence. Dave stares steadily out at the water, the shallows of which are packed with tourists, and doesn’t take his eyes off it. Sure, the ocean is placid, but Dave knows from experience how quickly tedium can turn to terror. While the running joke among the Dawn Patrol is that Dave uses the tower as a vantage point to scope turista women—which he does—the actual truth is that when Dave is on duty and people are in the water, he is deadly serious about his job.

It’s the rule that Boone’s dad drilled into him, the rule that they all grew up with:

Never turn your back on a wave.

Never turn your back on the absence of a wave, either, because the second you do, a real thundercrusher will rise out of nowhere and smack you down. The ocean may look like one thing on the surface, but there’s always something different happening underneath. That something could start a thousand miles away and then be headed toward you and you’ll never know about it until it happens.

Dave’s been on duty on a totally placid day when a freak rip comes in and takes a few swimmers out and then it’s on, and the few seconds it might have taken him to get over his surprise would have cost those people their lives. As it was, he wasn’t surprised, never surprised by the ocean, because, as much as we love her, she’s a treacherous bitch. Moody, mercurial, seductive, powerful, and deadly.

So Dave’s head never turns toward Boone as they talk. Both men look straight out at the water.

“Your take on something?” Boone asks.

“You come seeking wisdom, Grasshopper?”

“Do you think,” Boone says, “that we’re a smug, self-anointed elite that can’t see past our own zinc-oxide- covered noses?”

Dave touches the bridge of his nose to check that the zinc oxide is still fresh. Then he says, “Sounds about right.”

“What I thought,” Boone says, getting up.

“That’s it?”

“Yup.”

“’Bye.”

“Thanks.”

“Nada.”

Boone walks up the beach.

15

Boone only knows what happened that night from the newspaper accounts and the usual beach-bongo telegram system of rumors that went around PB.

But here’s how it went.

Kelly Kuhio walked out of The Sundowner a little after midnight, stone-cold sober, on his way to his car in a parking lot on the corner.

He never made it.

Corey Blasingame—drunk, stoned, high on whatever—stepped out of the alley, backed by his crew, walked up to Kelly, and punched him.

Kelly fell backward and hit his head on the curb.