The Gentlemen's Hour (31 page)

“No worries. Is Monkey in?”

“Where else would he be?”

Nowhere, Boone thinks, it was a rhetorical question. Monkey Monroe ran the records room of Ruffin Road and rarely came out. The records were his personal treasure that he hoarded and protected like Gollum. Some people thought that Monkey was part vampire because he never came out in the light of day.

“You think he'd see me?”

Shirley shrugs. “He's in one of his moods.”

“Just ask?”

She gets on the phone. “Marvin? Boone Daniels would like to see you . . . . I don't know what for, he just wants to see you . . . . Act like an actual
human being for a change, would you, Marvin?” She holds the receiver into her bosom and says, “He wants to know if you brought anything.”

“Cupcakes.”

“Cupcakes, Marvin.” She listens for a second, then says to Boone, “He wants to know if they're the good kind or some cheap supermarket shit.”

“The good stuff,” Boone says. “I went to Griswald's.”

He holds up the bag to show her.

“He went to
Griswald's
, Marvin . . . . Okay. Okay.” She smiles at Boone. “You can go down.”

“You want a cupcake?”

“You brought extra?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Boone.”

He takes a cupcake—chocolate frosting—out of the bag and sets it on her desk. “Tell Elise I said hi.”

“Why don't you date her?”

“No.”

He gets in the elevator and goes down to the records room.

As usual, it's colder than a loan shark's blood—Monkey keeps the AC cranked up because it's better for the computers. And noisy—the air conditioners are blasting, the bank of computers humming. Monkey crouches on one of those weird, posture-improving chairs that you half-kneel on, rolls toward Boone, and reaches for the Griswald's bag.

“Vanilla. Did you get me vanilla?”

“Is the pope German?”

One look at Monkey, you know why he's called Monkey. His arms are unnaturally long, especially next to his short-waisted, small body, and he's quite possibly the most hirsute human being in the world: tendrils of curly hair popping up over his shirt collar and around the back, thick hair
on his arms, and hairy knuckles. The scraggly hair on his head is starting to thin and show a few unkempt strands of silver, but his eyebrows are thick, and his beard, which comes up high on his cheekbones, almost to his deep-set simian eye sockets shaded by bottle-thick glasses, is black.

He grabs at the bag like a monkey reaching through the bars and snatching popcorn from a kid at the zoo, and his hands dig greedily into it. Within seconds his mouth is full of cupcake, his lips crusted with white frosting and crumbs.

Another reason he's called Monkey is that he's a true computer monkey. What Monkey's hairy little fingers can't do on a keyboard can't be done. They can make his bank of computers cough up data about any part of any building ever constructed (legally, anyway) in San Diego County.

But the real reason he's called Monkey stems from an unfortunate incident when the director of Ruffin Road urgently needed a copy of an old building permit, couldn't remember Marvin's name, and asked Shirley to summon “That guy in the basement, you know, the records monkey.” Monkey has tried many times to get his nickname shortened to “Monk,” which he thinks is more distinguished and more apt, given his role as a scribe of sorts, but it ain't gonna happen.

“What do you want, Boone?” Monkey asks. Gratitude or expressions of simple courtesy aren't in Monkey's nature—he sees the world pretty much as a constant quid pro quo, so why say “Thank you” for the quo when the request for the quid is doubtless on the way?

Boone hands him the list of properties. “I need to know who built these houses.”

“
You
do.
I
don't.”

“All right, Monkey, how much?”

“There are eighteen properties listed here,” Monkey says. “Twenty each.”

“Dollars?”

“No, cat turds, you moron. Yes, dollars.”

“I'll give you ten.”

Monkey digs in the bag for the next cupcake and shoves it into his mouth. “Round it up to two hundred, you cheap piece of surf trash.”

“Yeah, all right, but I need it now.”

“You don't ask for a lot, do you,” Monkey says, rolling back to the computer. “Bring a couple cupcakes, think you own me.”

“Griswald's.”

“Whatever.” He starts banging keys.

“This is on the down low, Monkey,” Boone says.

“Who am I going to tell, idiot?”

True, Boone thinks. Monkey rarely leaves the record room and has no known friends. No one can stand him. Actually, Boone has developed almost a fondness for Monkey, although he doesn't know why. Maybe it's the sheer persistence of his unpleasantness, his refusal to let his standards down, or raise them, whichever.

Now he types away, moaning in pleasure from the cupcakes and/or professional interest at what he's seeing on the screen, which he keeps carefully tilted away from Boone. “Ummmm . . . ohhhhh . . . unnnnnn . . . this is interesting.”

“What's interesting?”

“Nothing
yet
, asshole,” Monkey answers. “Ummmm . . . ohhhhh . . . unnnnnn . . .” It goes on for a good ten minutes. “Are you looking up my stuff or giving yourself a happy ending?” Boone asks. Shirley, for one, believes that Monkey's dedication to masturbation comes only behind his obsession with his records and greed for pastry items. (“If you handed him a file, a girlie magazine, and a cheese Danish, he'd have a heart attack.”)

“If I wanted to jerk off, limp dick,” Monkey answers, “I'd think about that girlfriend of yours. The little Brit with the tight rack.”

“Nice.” Boone and Pete had run into Monkey on the street down in
the Lamp one night. It was startling—and disturbing—to see him out of his natural element. Anyway, Monkey had looked Pete up and down as if she was a stack of cupcakes he couldn't wait to devour.

“She's three-Kleenex material,” Monkey says, the lips hidden in his beard twisting into a lascivious leer.

“
God
, Monkey.”

“Ummmm . . . ohhhhh . . . unnnnnn . . .”

An interminable hour later, during which Boone has seriously considered suicide several times, Monkey swivels in his weird chair and says, “This
is
sort of interesting, beach bum.”

“Okay, can I ask
now
what's interesting?”

“Money.”

“What about money?”

“
My
money, retard,” Monkey snaps.

Boone takes two bills out of his wallet. Monkey snatches them and shoves them into the front pocket of his stained khaki trousers.

“
What's interesting
is that all your houses were built by one company. It was part of a single development owned by an LLC called Paradise Homes.” He hits a couple of buttons and hands Boone a sheaf of printouts. “Paper for the big dumb Luddite.”

“Thanks.”

“So, Boone,” Monkey asks. “You still seeing her?”

“Yes.”

“What about the other one?” Monkey asks. “The tall, blond surfer chick?”

“Sunny and I are pretty much done.”

“Can I have her number?” Monkey asks.

“She's out of the country.”

“God fucking dammit!” Monkey grabs the Griswald's bag and digs around for some crumbs, which he shoves into his mouth.

Boone sighs. “I'm going to regret this, I know, but she has a Web site.”

Monkey's eyes light up. “She does?”

“Sunnydaysurf.com.”

“Photos?”

“Yes.”

“Video?”

“Enough, Monkey.”

Monkey rolls his chair to another computer and starts banging on the keys.

It's nothing Boone wants to see. Neither Sunny's site, with photos of her shredding it at Bondi or Indo, or the onanistic use that Monkey is going to make of it. He takes his records, gets back in the elevator, waves a good-bye to Shirley, and goes out to the Deuce.

Paradise Homes, he thinks.

Eighteen times a couple of mil each?

Money to kill for.

“Hello, lover boy,” Becky says, grinning at Boone.

“Hello, Becky.”

“Who did you come to see?” she asks. “Do you have an appointment, or is this a spontaneous booty—”

“Okay, okay. Is she in?”

“This is your lucky day.” She buzzes Petra, who comes out to the front desk. He follows her to her office and tells what he's learned about Paradise Homes, LLC. She says, “So Paradise Homes could be on the hook for all that money?”

“And the next question is—who are Paradise Homes?” Boone asks. “It's a limited partnership. Who are the partners?”

“I can track that down from here,” she says.

“Aren't you busy on the Blasingame case?”

“Nichols is our client, too,” says Petra. “Besides, there's nothing much to do now except wait for Mary Lou to decide how she wants to go.”

Turns out Petra's quite a keyboard jockey. Sits with a cup of tea in one hand, the mouse in another, and rocks. It takes three hours, but she comes up with the answer. She leans back and points to the monitor.

“To coin a phrase,” she says, “Jesus Christ.”

It jogs Boone's memory.

In Blasingame's office, when he was interviewing him about Corey.

“That punch? First time in his life that Corey ever followed through on anything.”

The phone buzzed and it was the pretty receptionist, Nicole:
“You wanted me to remind you that you have a meeting with Phil at the site?”

No, Boone thinks. It couldn't be.

Could it?

Bill Blasingame is the chief partner in Paradise Homes.

Boone sits in the Deuce outside Blasingame's office building.

Nicole comes out at 6:05
P.M
. and heads straight for happy hour at a bar across the street. Not surprising, given who she works for, Boone thinks. If I worked for Blasingame, which I sort of do, happy hour would be about 10:00
A.M
.

Boone waits a few minutes and then goes in.

The bar is like a convention of local receptionists, most of them sitting at one long table, drinking, blowing off a little steam, bitching about their bosses, unwilling to go home yet to the lonely condo or the marriage that's gotten boring sooner than hoped.

Boone takes a seat at the bar and orders a beer. He pretty much keeps his eye on a baseball game playing on the wall-mounted television as Nicole finishes her first drink, then a second. When she's in the middle of the third she gets up to use the ladies' room and walks past him, but if she notices him, she doesn't let on.

She comes back out, finishes her drink, drops some money with her friends, and leaves the bar. Boone catches up with her in the parking lot as she digs in her purse for her car keys.

“Nicole?”

“Do I know you?”

“My name's Boone Daniels,” he says. “We met the other day in your office. You shouldn't be driving right now.”

“I'll be fine, thanks.”

“I don't want to see you get a DUI,” he says. “Hurt yourself, somebody else.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“I'd like to be your friend,” he says.

“I bet you would.” She laughs, but it has no humor. It's a harsh and bitter sound. Which is a real shame, Boone thinks.

“Friends don't let friends blah-blah-blah,” he says. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“The MADD pickup is original, anyway,” she says. She drops her keys back in her purse.

“There's a Starbucks across the street.”

They walk over to Bucky's and he orders her a tall iced latte, himself
an iced green tea with lemonade. She looks at his drink and laughs, “You some sort of health freak?”

“I'm coffee'd out.”

“Burning it at both ends, huh?”

“You could say that.” Two murder cases—one in which I'm a suspect. Yeah, that's both ends and more, if you could have more than two ends. Which would make a great interwave topic for the Dawn Patrol—then he remembers that he's not on the Dawn Patrol anymore, and the guys at the Gentlemen's Hour wouldn't go for it. “So how is it, working for Bill?”

“You wanna guess?”

“Kind of a pain?”

“More than kind of. He's a real son of a bitch.” Then she remembers herself and adds quickly, “You're not, like, a friend or a business partner, are you?”

“Neither.”

“How do you know Bill?”

“I'm working on his kid's case.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Boone says. “What makes him a son of a bitch?”

“You don't know?”

“I'm interested in what
you
think,” Boone says.

“Well, that would make you the first,” Nicole says. “Bill, for instance, isn't very interested in what I
think.
Unless I thought with my boobs.”

“Which you don't.”

“No.” She looks down at her chest and asks, “Hey, what do you guys think?”

She listens for a second and then says, “Nothin'.”

They both laugh. Then Boone starts to push the river a little. “Hey, when I was in with Bill a few days ago, you buzzed him to say something about an appointment he had?”

But you don't push the river, just like you don't get out in front of a wave. It's usually a bad idea. It sure is this time. She looks at him and says, “You bastard.”

“I—”

“Yeah, you want to be my ‘friend.' Well, fuck you,
friend.
”

She slams her cup down and walks out. Boone follows her outside, where she's steaming back toward her car. “Nicole, come on.”