This Wicked World

by Richard Lange

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Elmore Leonard meets Denis Johnson in this explosive first novel set on the seedy side of Southern California. Ex-marine Jimmy Boone-former bodyguard to Los Angeles's rich and famous-is fresh out of Corcoran, on parole, and trying to keep his nose clean until he figures out his next move. He has a job tending bar on Hollywood Boulevard, serving drinks to tourists, and is determined to put the past behind him. But trying to do the right thing has always been Boone's downfall. When he backs up a buddy on a hero-for-hire gig -- looking into the mysterious death of a kid on a downtown bus -- he once again finds himself in a world of trouble. As Boone learns more about the boy, an innocent who got involved with the wrong people, his investigation becomes a mission. Along the dangerous margins of Los Angeles, he encounters down-on-their-luck drug dealers, a vengeful stripper, a dog-fighting ring, a beautiful ex-cop, a vicious crime boss and his crew, and a fortune in counterfeit bills. Before long, Boone realizes that his quest to get at the truth about a ruthless murder may also turn out to be his last chance at redemption. This Wicked World is a knock-out blend of superb writing and breakneck storytelling that grabs you by the collar and makes it impossible to stop reading.

Release date: June 29, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 428

Sample

JIMMY. HEY, JIMMY.”

Jimmy Boone raises a hand to signal Robo to hold off, he’s in the middle of taking an order, but Robo either doesn’t see or
doesn’t care.


“You hear about that kid they found dead on the bus?” he says.

“Later, buddy, okay?” Boone replies. “I’m busy.”

The big redhead he’s serving can’t decide what she wants, a cosmo or an appletini. “Which do you recommend?” she asks, sexing
up her southern drawl. Another tourist cutting loose, getting crazy in Hollywood.


“Hard to say,” Boone replies. “They’re both popular.”

Red slides her sunglasses down to the end of her nose, rests her elbows on the bar to give Boone a nice shot of her freckled
cleavage, and says, “Let’s put it this way: which’ll get me fucked up fastest?”


“I’d go with the appletini.”

The Tick Tock restaurant is on Hollywood Boulevard, a few blocks east of the Chinese Theater, and most of the patrons are
out-of-towners looking for a little old-time glitz and glamour. The guidebooks tell how the place opened in 1910, was a hot
spot throughout the thirties and forties, closed in 1972, becoming a notorious squat for runaway teens, then reopened in 2004,
when the boulevard began to come back.


The new owner, an Israeli businessman named Weinberg, spent a fortune getting the place into shape. The bar, all the woodwork,
is original, and they even replaced the dozens of clocks jammed into every nook and cranny that gave the restaurant its name.


The bar runs along one wall, separated from the dining room by a chest-high partition. Boone can see over it to the tables,
where Joe Blow from Iowa and his brood eat their fifteen-dollar burgers. It’s the perfect tourist trap: cheaper than Musso’s,
more authentic than Hooters, and every once in a while a C-list celebrity stops in, someone from Survivor or an eighties sitcom.


Red sips her drink and says, “This’ll do just fine, sweet cheeks.”

Sweet cheeks. Jesus.

Boone isn’t looking to hook up with a customer. Nine times out of ten, it’s nothing but trouble. Apparently, though, the customers
haven’t heard this statistic. It’s gotten so bad lately that Boone has been thinking about taking the advice of an old pro
who told him that a simple way to keep things professional is to pick up a cheap wedding band at a pawn shop and wear it when
you’re behind the bar. He wonders if Red would take that kind of hint.


“You an actor?” she asks.

“Nah. I’m a bartender,” Boone replies. “Do you want to run a tab?”

“Sure,” Red says and hands over a Gold Card. “I thought everyone in Hollywood was an actor.”

“A lot of the girls working here take acting classes. Does that count?”

“I’m staying up the street, at the Renaissance, here for a medical supplies conference.”

“Great hotel,” Boone says, trying to figure out some way to be polite about moving on. Delia didn’t show for her shift again,
and thirsty customers are lined up all the way to the waitress station.


“Be nice to have a friendly tour guide,” Red says.

“Talk to Robo, our doorman,” Boone replies. “I bet he can help you out.” He turns quickly to the guy standing next to Red
and asks what he wants, and it’s go-go time after that. Gonzalo, the bar back, handles the drinks for the dining room while
Boone moves up and down the stick, pouring beers and blending margaritas, completely focused on keeping his orders straight
and making sure tabs are settled.


He falls into a groove sometimes when he’s slammed, and an hour will pass like nothing. It makes him think back to Corcoran,
when a day could last a month, no matter how many god-damn games of dominoes or chess you played, trying to burn off your
time.


Right when things are busiest, Simon, the owner’s son, appears at the end of the bar. A little schmuck with curly black hair
and a prominent mole on his cheek, he runs the place for his father. This entitles him to hit on all the waitresses when he
isn’t holed up in the office watching online porn and entertaining his “boys,” the greasy pack of rich shitheads he rolls
with. He’s twenty-three, drives a Lexus, and recently boasted to Boone that he’s popped eight cherries so far. The mere sight
of the guy is enough to put Boone in a foul mood.


“See that dude?” Simon asks, pointing with his nose at a wigger in a baby blue warm-up suit who’s been nursing a Southern
Comfort and Coke and chatting up the other customers.


“Eminem?” Boone asks. The kid looks fourteen, but Boone checked his ID when he ordered, a Florida license that put him at
twenty-two.


“Watch him,” Simon says. “I think he’s up to no good.”

“You want Robo to walk him out?”

“What did I just say? I want you to watch him. Find out what his game is and call me.”

Boone grits his teeth, being talked to like that by such a punk, but there’s not much he can do about it. Employment opportunities
are limited for ex-cons, and he needs the job.


“You got it, boss,” he says, the words stinging his tongue like acid.

IT ISN’T LONG before Boone hears the kid offer to sell ecstasy to a young couple who look ready to party. Money changes hands, the deal
is done, and the wigger moves on to work another section of the bar.


Boone calls Simon in the office.

“The kid’s selling X,” he says.

“Okay. Now what I want you to do is take him out back, to the alley, and I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m a bartender, Simon, not security. You’ve got Robo for this kind of shit.”

“Robo has enough to do. Get Gonzalo to watch the bar for a minute while you handle this.”

Boone hangs up. Deep breaths from the stomach. He needs to get past the initial red-hot, “I want to kill every fucking thing”
spasm and shove his anger into a cage, where he can gawk at it like it’s a poor, dumb zoo animal. It’s a trick a shrink taught
him in the joint, but it’s tough today. The tiger fights back with all its strength.


BOONE HAS EVERYTHING under control by the time he steps out from behind the bar. He’s focused yet alert, his antennae extended. He feels like
he used to when guarding a client at a crowded premiere, like a cocked and loaded pistol. It’s good to be back in action,
even if he is just rousting some goofball.


He swoops down on the wigger, who’s bobbing his shaved head and mouthing the words to the old Beastie Boys song blasting out
of the sound system. Putting his hand in the middle of the kid’s back, Boone exerts just enough pressure to get him moving,
all the while talking in a low, friendly voice, a big smile on his face.


“Hey, bro, how’s it goin’? Having a good time? Buddy of mine wants to invite you to join our VIP club. Have you tried any
of our drink specials?”


The idea is to fill his pea brain with so much noise that by the time he realizes what’s up, he’ll be out of the restaurant.

“We got three-buck Jager shots, kamikazes.”

“Do I know you?” the kid asks as they pass the bathrooms. He stiffens and slows, starts to turn around. Too late. Boone grabs
his wrist and twists his arm up between his shoulder blades as he shoves him through the back door and across the alley that
runs behind the restaurant, pinning him face-first against a brick wall and kicking his ankles until he spreads his legs wide.


“What the fuck?” the wigger yells. “You best get offa me, motherfucker.”

The stench of rotting garbage from a nearby Dumpster has Boone breathing through his mouth. Simon steps into the alley with
a mean smile.


“Let me see him,” he says.

Boone wraps an arm around the kid’s throat and turns him to face Simon, who is careful to keep his distance. Spillover from
a neon sign on the boulevard gives everything a spooky green glow and makes them all look like monsters.


“So you’re a real pimp, huh? Big-time dope dealer,” Simon says to the kid, getting all South Central via Beverly Hills.

“The fuck you talking about, dope dealer?” the kid replies.

“I got you on camera, dog, selling to my customers. The cops are on their way.”

The wigger struggles a bit, and Boone tightens up on his windpipe to calm him. The kid’s pulse taps frantically against the
thin skin on the underside of Boone’s forearm.


“What’s your name, playa?” Simon asks.

“Virgil,” the kid replies. “Folks call me V for Vendetta.”

“What do you think this is, Virgil, the fucking ghetto? The fucking trailer park where you grew up? This is Hollywood, son,
and I own this town.”


“I didn’t know,” Virgil says, his voice rising into a whine. “Come on and let me go and you’ll never see me again.”

“Let you go. Right. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Bullshit. That mustache of yours looks like a motherfucking eyelash.”

“Okay, eighteen.”

“Eighteen? Oh, man, the booty bandits down at County are gonna be scrapping over you.”

“Come on, dog.”

Simon rubs his mole and pretends to think while Virgil trembles in Boone’s choke hold, close to crying. Boone frowns at Simon
and shakes his head to say, “That’s enough,” but Simon ignores him.


“Show me everything you got,” Simon says.

“What?”

“The drugs, fool.”

Virgil reaches into his pocket and brings out a plastic bag. Simon grabs it and empties it on top of a Dumpster.

“Shit, doc, you make house calls?” he says as he sorts through the contents. “We got some rock, some powder—what is it?”

“Crank.”

“These pills?”

“Vicodin.”

“Nice!”

Simon sweeps everything back into the bag and says, “You know what I have to do, right? I’m confiscating all this garbage
and taking it off the street. We have to think about the children.”


“Come on, dog,” Virgil wails. “Why you want to rip me off?”

“Why you want to peddle drugs in my house? You’re lucky I don’t have my man here tear you a new asshole.”

“Seriously, bro, somebody fronted me that stuff. I come back with nothing, I’m in deep shit.”

“You’re in deep shit right now, you idiot. What are you? Retarded? Let him go, Jimmy.”

Finally, Boone thinks as he releases his grip and Virgil scurries out of reach. A couple of real criminal masterminds going head-to-head.
Boone wants to smack them both. Virgil runs halfway down the alley, then stoops to pick up an empty beer bottle and turns
back to face Boone and Simon.


“You stupid bitch,” Simon says. “I’m giving you a pass. Take it and get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m not kidding,” Virgil says around a sob. “Give me my shit.” Green tears crawl down his cheeks.

Simon takes a few steps toward him, and Virgil throws the bottle, which shatters harmlessly in the shadows. He then runs to
where the alley opens onto Cherokee, turns left, and disappears.


Simon is bent at the waist, laughing. “Now that was fucking funny,” he says.

Boone snorts disgustedly and walks inside the restaurant. Danny Berkson, his lawyer, lined up this bartending gig for him
when Boone was released from prison six months ago; worked out some kind of deal with Simon’s dad, an old friend of his. Boone
is grateful, but he isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to tolerate Simon. And this kind of crap, jacking dope dealers—if his parole officer got wind of it, she’d violate him for sure.


Simon catches up to him and pats him on the shoulder.

“You must have been an excellent bodyguard,” he says with a nasty grin.

Boone doesn’t respond.

“Too bad you fucked up, huh?”

“Too bad,” Boone says. He thought the story of how he ended up here was going to stay between him, Berkson, and Weinberg,
but now Simon knows too. Boone hopes that whatever shit Simon helps himself to from Virgil’s stash is cut with rat poison.


CUSTOMERS ARE THREE deep at the bar when Boone returns. Gonzalo is getting it from all sides. Boone steps behind the stick and dives right in.
After a few orders he finds his rhythm, and his troubles slide to the back of his mind. Work can be a blessing sometimes,
when everything else lists toward rotten.


The crowd thins out at about eleven, when the restaurant stops serving and everyone moves on to one of the clubs in the neighborhood.
Wait an hour in line, pay twenty bucks to some jerk-off with too much gel in his hair, and maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of
a drunk starlet’s snatch.


This is Boone’s favorite part of the night, the sudden quiet after all the hustle. It feels like a party has just ended, kind
of mellow, kind of melancholy. He listens to the waitresses gossiping at the end of the bar as he polishes wineglasses. They’re
all ten years younger than him. How the hell does that happen?


Gonzalo is practicing tossing ice and catching it in a cup behind his back, some kind of Tom Cruise Cocktail move. He’s saving up to open his own place in Mazatlán where he’ll serve sweet, potent drinks with names like the Itchy Pussy
and the Cum Shot to sorority girls on spring break. “You can come work for me,” he told Boone the other day. Definitely an
offer to consider.


Boone puts the Nirvana unplugged CD on the sound system and begins setting up for the day guy. Mr. King and Gina roll in for
Mr. King’s nightcap. Mr. King is dressed to the nines as usual, in an ascot and a dark blue jacket with brass buttons. He’s
eighty-two, a retired cameraman whose heyday was in the fifties and sixties. He’s got those big, thick glasses, and his last
few strands of white hair are combed straight back and lacquered across his spotted scalp. Gina, his fourth wife, is a mail-order
bride from the Philippines. She’s a plump little woman, maybe thirty years old. Looks more Spanish than Asian.


They live in a condo at the base of the hills and come in an hour before closing every night. In spite of the difference in
their ages, they seem to get along just fine. Gina doesn’t speak much English but always has a smile on her face, and the
old man treats her with a gentleness Boone doesn’t often see husbands display toward their wives.


Mr. King once told him that Filipino women are the best in the world. Loyal, loving, good cooks. “They smell kind of strange
down there,” he said, pointing at his crotch. “But you get used to it quick enough.” Boone didn’t tell him that he’d been
with plenty of Olongapo whores when he was in the Marines and never once caught a whiff of anything funny.


“What can I get you tonight?” Boone asks. “The usual?”

“For Gina, a Sprite, but for me, it’ll be a Blood and Sand,” Mr. King replies.

“A Blood and Sand, huh? You’re gonna have to help me with that one.”

Mr. King leans back on his stool and rubs his hands together. He’s on a mission to turn Boone into a proper bartender. That
means once a week or so he forgoes his usual martini to order a drink nobody’s heard of since Kennedy died, then guides Boone
through the process of preparing it. Boone gets a kick out of the way he calls out the ingredients, playing teacher.


“First, you’ll need a shaker filled with ice.”

“Got it.”

“Now an ounce of scotch—not the good stuff, something blended will do fine—and an ounce of orange juice.”

Boone measures them out and pours them into the shaker.

“Then three-quarter ounces each of cherry brandy and sweet vermouth.”

“I bet you sleep good tonight.”

“Shake it, strain it into a martini glass, and I’ll have mine with two cherries.”

Boone slaps down a napkin and sets the drink in front of Mr. King, who sips it, his hand shaking a bit as he raises the glass,
then nods approvingly and says, “Fantastic. Make yourself one, Jimmy.”


Boone doesn’t necessarily want a drink, but it’s part of the routine: Mr. King always buys him one of whatever classic concoction
he’s having.


Boone has refilled the shaker with ice and added the scotch when Robo appears at the bar and motions him over. Robo stands
six feet tall and weighs in at about 350 pounds. His enormous gut starts right below his chest and hangs over his belt, and
there are thick rolls of fat on the back of his bald head. He couldn’t run to save his life, but God be with you if he gets
his hands on you. Boone once saw him dislocate a mouthy drunk’s shoulder with a flick of his wrist, and he can fold half-dollars
between his thumb and forefinger.


“Can you talk now?” Robo asks.

“Sure, man, shoot,” Boone replies.

“You heard about that kid on the bus, right? The one with the dog bites?”

There was something about it on the news last week. A Guatemalan illegal turned up dead on an MTA bus. When they examined
him they discovered that he was covered with dog bites that had gotten so infected, they’d killed him. The cops gave the picture
from his bogus green card to the media, but nobody ever showed up to claim the body or to explain what had happened. A weird
one, even for L.A.


“That was messed up,” Boone says. “Did you know him?”

Robo snaps his head back, feigning indignation. “Why?” he asks. “Because all us beaners hang out together? No, man, I didn’t
know him, but it turns out my cousin, he knows someone who knows the kid’s grandpa, who heard about my side work, the community
outreach stuff…”


“Is that what you call it?”

Robo does hero-for-hire gigs for people who can’t go to the police for this reason or that. He’ll evict that crackhead who
refuses to pay rent, convince that gangbanger he really doesn’t want to date your daughter, or find out who your wife is screwing
on her lunch break. Penny-ante strong-arm stuff and surveillance mostly. Half his customers pay him in trade—bodywork, haircuts.
Even a fifty-gallon aquarium once.


“Seriously, ese, check it out,” Robo says. “The grandpa wants to meet me tomorrow to talk business. I don’t know what’s going to go down,
but he’s got three hundred dollars to spend, and I’ll give you fifty if you show up and pretend to be my cop buddy. All you
got to do is wear a sport coat and sit there looking like you got a stick up your ass.”


“Won’t that scare him off?”

“Nah, nah. I’ll tell him you’re working under the table, that it don’t matter that he’s illegal or whatever. You’ll make me
look legit is all, like I got weight. I wouldn’t ask you, but my regular white boy is fishing in Cabo.”


Boone shrugs and throws up his hands. “I’d like to help you, man, but tomorrow’s my day off, and I really need a day off.”

Robo narrows his eyes, strokes his handlebar mustache. “You like that Olds I got for you?” he says. “Runs good, don’t it?
What’d I charge you for that again, for getting you that deal?”


“I’m just saying, I’ve got to stay out of trouble,” Boone replies. “You know how it goes.”

“There ain’t gonna be no trouble, ese. I’ll see to that.”


Simon and his posse explode out of the back room and pass through the bar, laughing too loud and playing grab-ass. Simon stops,
a little unsteady on his feet, and points at Robo.


“If you’re in here, who’s watching the door?”

“Just getting a drink of water, boss,” Robo replies.

“And I told you I want you to wear a suit. Let’s get that going next time you’re on duty.”

Robo tugs at his XXXL Raiders jersey and says, “Where’m I gonna find a suit that’ll fit me?”

“That really ain’t my problem, bro,” Simon says. “Alls I know is, I can’t have you looking like a thug.”

“Denny’s at Gower Gulch, eight a.m.,” Robo hisses at Boone before following Simon and the others out the front door, saying,
“Yo, we need to talk about a raise then, boss.”


Boone finishes making the drink he started, shakes it, and pours it into a glass. OJ and scotch. Tastes pretty good. You wouldn’t
think it would, but it does.


He could say fuck it and stand Robo up tomorrow morning, but there’s no denying that the ’83 Cutlass the guy hooked him up
with is a pretty decent five-hundred-dollar ride. He’s had no real trouble with it yet, except that the battery won’t hold
a charge. It’s hard for him to believe that he was driving a Porsche four years ago. Seems like he died since then and was
born again into a different life.


Kurt Cobain is singing about the man who sold the world as Boone walks down to where Mr. King and Gina are sitting.

“This one’s a winner,” Boone says. He raises his glass. “Blood and Sand.”

“After the Valentino picture,” Mr. King says.

“How are you two doing tonight?”

Mr. King pats Gina’s hand, and she smiles shyly. “It’s our anniversary tomorrow. Two years,” the old man says.

“Congratulations.”

“What about you? Are you married?” Mr. King asks.

“I was,” Boone replies. “It didn’t work out.”

“Well, don’t give up. It’s like the man said, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ ”

Boone raises his glass once more and says, “Hey, I like that.”

The waitresses come out of the back room in their street clothes, all ready to go to a club. One of them cracks a joke, and
the others laugh. Boone takes another sip of his drink, then moves off to help Gonzalo finish cleaning up.


FAIL BETTER. BOONE WAKES UP THINKING HE’S GOING TO take this as his motto, the most he can hope for. The previous night’s dreams, more real than life a moment ago, slip away
from him, and he lies in bed and listens to the birds’ simple morning songs while waiting for dawn to chase the shadows into
the corners.


He’s in the midst of putting his day in order—the meeting at Denny’s, the Laundromat, grocery shopping—when the past begins
to circle like a persistent fly, demanding attention. As far as he’s concerned, it does him no good to look backward when
all he’s going to do is beat himself up for the mistakes he’s made. But sometimes, despite his best efforts, he’s forced to
contemplate the damage.


This time he goes back to when he was eighteen, right out of high school, and killing time in his hometown of Oildale, California,
working pickup construction jobs and running with a hard crowd of wannabe bikers and gunslingers who were always half out
of their heads on something, always zinging wildly between rage and black despair. He’d put in ten hours pounding nails in
the merciless Central Valley sun, then spend the night drinking and doping with Chi Chi, McMartin, Frank, and the rest, doing
his best to keep up.


Chi Chi was the ringleader. At twenty-three, he’d already served time for robbery. He lived in a trailer next to an onion
field at the edge of town, where the crew gathered every evening to listen to Metallica, drink whatever beer was on sale,
and smoke bowl after bowl of dirt weed, and it was he who came up with the idea to break into Tony Rubio’s cabinet shop.


Frank had worked for Tony for a while and remembered the combination to the lock on the door of the shop. They’d go in, steal
as many tools as they could carry, pawn them in Bakersfield, then drive on to Magic Mountain to ride a new roller coaster
and party at a motel with some girls Chi Chi knew from East L.A.


Boone had never stolen anything in his life, but, in a moment of drunken bravado, he volunteered for the job. Why the hell
not? His mom was dying of lung cancer, his dad had split when he was a baby, and he didn’t give two shits about anything.
Also, his participation would give him some cred with the gang from Chi Chi’s trailer.


He listened closely as the scheme was laid out: he and Chi Chi would go in and steal the tools, Little Jerry would act as
lookout, and Frank would be playing pool at Shooters, so he’d have an alibi if the cops questioned him later.


The whole thing was so stupid it makes Boone wince even now. They didn’t do any planning, didn’t even bother to case the shop.
The night it went down, they guzzled a twelve-pack of Pabst, parked the car by a canal, and set off through an orange grove
to reach the shop, which was located in a Quonset hut next to Tony’s house.


It was slow going beneath the trees. The stink of a nearby dairy came to them on a hot wind that rattled leaves and rearranged
shadows, and Chi Chi stumbled in the dark and fell, spitting a curse.


They paused at the edge of the grove. The shop lay twenty-five yards away, across a dirt road, and beyond that was the house.
It was after midnight, and all the lights were out. The full moon, small and bright overhead, cast a graveyard pall, and a
dog barked somewhere in the distance.


Once they got Jerry settled in a spot where he could keep an eye on things, Boone and Chi Chi stepped out onto the road and
sprinted for the shop. Chi Chi spun the combination into the lock, and the door creaked as it swung open. Boone’s heart tossed
in his chest. He glanced over his shoulder at the house. Nothing.


It was pitch dark in the windowless shop. Chi Chi fired up his disposable lighter and began pointing out the most valuable
items. Within seconds, however, the lighter grew too hot for him to hold, and the flame died. Chi Chi let the lighter cool,
then sparked it again, and Boone set about gathering as many tools as he could before Chi Chi’s thumb began to cook.


They worked in short bursts of weak, watery light. The router and bits, the circular saw. The petty-cash box was right where
Frank said it would be, in the bottom drawer of the desk. Everything went into two duffel bags they’d brought along to carry
the loot.


Boone was grinning as they stepped outside. He couldn’t believe they’d actually pulled the heist off. But then a powerful
white beam scorched their eyes, and a voice shouted, “Hands on your heads, boys.”


Turns out Tony had installed an alarm since he’d fired Frank, one that went off in the house if anyone entered the shop. He
waited for them to come out, got the drop on them, then used his shotgun to herd them into the yard, where they knelt next
to Jerry, who was being covered by Tony’s wife and a .45. She’d spotted him pissing in the bushes, his stream shining in the
moonlight. Approaching sirens cut the night’s stillness to ribbons.


The judge offered Boone a choice of jail or the military, so two weeks later he said good-bye to his mom and caught the bus
to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. He enjoyed his four years in the service. The physical training added a thick
layer of muscle to his frame, and the complex web of rules and regulations was the first real discipline he’d ever known.
Even being forced to show respect for the officers, no matter what species of asshole they were, was good for him, a valuable
lesson in how to hold his tongue and play the game.


Plus, it was a hell of a lot of fun. He got to shoot powerful weapons, blow up stuff with his fellow devil dogs, and see some
of the world—the Philippines, Korea, Japan. He learned a little Tagalog, a little Japanese; climbed Mount Fuji while on
leave; and fell in mad, sad love with an Okinawan bar girl who called herself Sunshine.


He also discovered that he could fight. A soft-spoken black guy in his platoon, Carl Perry, had won a few amateur bouts back
in Compton, and Boone spent hours in the gym with him, training, sparring, and soaking up his knowledge of boxing. When it
came to technique, Boone was a bit of a brawler. The first few times he climbed into the ring, anger welled up in him after
taking a few jabs from Carl, and he charged in, swinging wildly. After a while, though, he was able to channel that anger
into powerful punches that often rocked the bigger man back on his heels.


“Damn, Jimmy,” Carl said once. “You got zero style, but when you hit somebody, dude’s gonna know it.”

Boone returned to Oildale only once, near the end of his first year in the corps, to attend his mother’s funeral. Cancer had
finally brought her down. She’d done a lousy job ra