by Mike Lupica
“Lot of work,” Molly said.
“Not to make it look like he killed himself when he didn’t,” Jesse said.
“Anything else?” she said.
“It’s probably nothing,” Jesse said. “But Dev said the bullet ended up behind Neil’s right eye. But the gun was in the dirt above his head. Almost like somebody had just tossed it into the grave.”
“Teach me, sensei,” she said.
“Somebody who shoots themselves has no control over where the gun ends up, they usually die instantly,” Jesse said. “But Dev says the bullet was behind his right eye. I had a case once in L.A. We had to keep testing the gun to see if it could have landed in the position it did next to the body. And no matter how many times we tested it, we finally decided it couldn’t have ended up where it did.”
“You’re gonna do that, aren’t you?”
“Eventually.”
“How long ago was that case in L.A.?” Molly said. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Long,” Jesse said.
She grinned. “You know what drinking didn’t do with you? Kill brain cells.”
“So far, so good.”
“Probably no point in stressing on it until you get Dev’s full report,” she said.
“I’ve been stressing since I looked down into that grave and saw who it was,” Jesse said.
Now Molly was the one staring out the window, chin in hand. She never seemed to age. Jesse just assumed that Molly Crane would still have her looks, and her marbles, when she was eighty.
“You worried about Michael?” Jesse said.
Her husband. Last year he had crewed for a hedge-funder named Teddy Altman in the Trans Pacific race. Now he was with Altman in a new race across the Atlantic.
“Michael Crane against the ocean?” she said. “My money would be on my cutie.”
“You’ve got that look,” Jesse said. He grinned. “The one where you’re almost having a deep thought.”
“Very funny,” she said.
She had been working up to something. But Jesse knew her well enough to know she’d get there when she was ready.
Finally she turned back to him and said, “Remember at The Throw when I said I thought I saw a ghost? Well, it wasn’t just a figure of speech.”
Jesse waited.
“I thought I saw Crow,” she said.
FIVE
“Your Native American friend,” Jesse said.
“Good for you for not saying ‘Indian,’ ” Molly said.
“Even the Cleveland Indians aren’t going to be the Indians for much longer. And the Redskins aren’t the Redskins.”
“And don’t call him my friend,” Molly said.
“He did have benefits, though.”
They had first met Wilson Cromartie, who claimed he was Apache, when he was part of a crew, Jimmy Macklin’s, that had blown up the Stiles Island Bridge and essentially taken everybody who lived over there hostage. Jesse had lost two of his cops during the siege. Finally had gotten to Stiles by boat and shot Macklin dead. Molly had been the one to capture Macklin’s girlfriend. When it was all over, Cromartie—known as Crow—had gotten away with millions of dollars, actual amount still unknown to Jesse.
Crow had gotten away on a speedboat. Jesse was sure that it was the last he would ever see of him. But he came back to Paradise ten years later, outside the statute of limitations for the money with which he’d gotten away, denying that he had killed anybody before he took off up the coast. At the time he was tracking down the runaway daughter of a Florida gangster. But then Crow decided he couldn’t give the girl, Amber Francisco, back to a bum like her father. Jesse helped him save the kid from the father’s men. The father later ended up dead. With no way of knowing or ever proving it, Jesse assumed that Crow had just gone down to South Florida and gotten it done, before disappearing again.
While Crow had been in Paradise the second time, he had spent one night with Molly Crane, the first and only infidelity in her marriage to Michael, another time when Michael had been out of town. Other than Molly and Crow, only Jesse knew what had happened between them. Michael Crane, according to Molly, had never found out that the mother of their four children, a Catholic almost as Catholic as a bishop, had slept not just with another man, but a criminal.
Jesse had always thought he understood the need upon which Molly had acted that night. It was the same sort of need, bordering on obsession, that he’d had for Jenn, during their marriage and long after it had ended, no matter how much she slept around.
Crow had been like that for Molly Crane. There was no way to know what would have happened if he had stayed in Paradise, what further damage she might have done to her marriage, and to her career. But she never had to find out. He left after he and Jesse had saved Amber Francisco.
Now she thought he was back.
“We don’t even know if he was really an Apache,” Molly said.
“One of many things we don’t know about Crow.”
“He could have been lying about that.”
“Hard to believe,” Jesse said. “A button man and thief being that unreliable. What can you even believe in anymore?”
“But you admitted you couldn’t have saved Amber without him,” Molly said. “In a way, you used him, too.”
Jesse grinned.
“Strange bedfellows,” he said. “So to speak.”
“Sunny’s right,” Molly said. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Why are we back to talking about Sunny?” Jesse said.
“Oh,” Molly said, “so you can bust my chops about Crow and I can’t bust yours about her?”
“You’re the one who thinks she saw him,” Jesse said. “If it was him.”
“And if it was,” Molly said, “what was he doing there after we found Neil’s body?”
Jesse waved at Daisy for the check. She smiled and gave him the finger and told him to get lost.
“I’ve put off going to the station as long as possible,” Jesse said.
“You get to hold a press conference,” Molly said, “just like a big boy.”
“I could just barricade myself in my office,” Jesse said.
Molly smacked her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
They came around the corner and saw the television trucks parked on both sides of the street and the microphone set up just outside the front door, the media beginning to form what Jesse imagined to be a gaggle of geese.
Jesse stopped and sighed.
“Any last words, soldier?” Molly said.
“Fuckety fuck,” Jesse said.
“The first one’s not even a real word,” Molly said.
SIX
Before Jesse walked back outside to face the media an hour later, Molly told him to make sure to put on his best face.
“I left it at home,” he said.
“You want me to run over and get it?” she said.
There were two more TV trucks by then, both from Boston stations. Jesse could no longer remember at which one Jenn had worked, first as a weather girl. She’d later moved up to news by sleeping with the station manager, Jesse thinking that likely wasn’t a course taught at the best journalism schools.
The rest of the people in front of him, he assumed now, were print and radio reporters. Jesse understood why they were all here. An old friend from the Los Angeles Times had once told him that the two biggest stories were war and big guy dies. So it was today, even though the big guy was just the top politician in a small town.
Nellie Shofner, from the Paradise Town Crier, was in the front row. Jesse kept waiting for her to be hired away by the Globe or a bigger paper somewhere else. Or end up on television, since she had both the talent and the looks for that—even though if he ever said that out loud, the looks part, he would probably have been on his
way to Weinstein Island.
For now, though, she was still in Paradise, practically a one-person staff on the Crier. Jesse liked her. Not as much, Molly and Suit were fond of saying, as she seemed to like him.
Jesse made a brief opening statement about finding Neil’s body in the middle of the night, and then called on Nellie first.
“Chief Stone,” she said, “is Mr. O’Hara’s death officially being classified as a suicide at this point?”
“It is being classified as an unattended death,” he said.
He saw Nellie grin.
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“No,” Jesse said.
“Does it mean you think it might not be a suicide?”
Jesse said, “I think it is an unattended death.”
Jesse looked over at Gary Armistead and Ellis Munroe. They both shook their heads, as if Jesse were back to being a town drunk. Munroe, who Jesse knew had been a wrestler at Harvard, looked tougher. Armistead was definitely prettier.
Jesse called on Wayne Cosgrove then, Sunny’s columnist friend from the Globe.
“Was it his own gun?” Cosgrove said.
“It was a gun,” Jesse said.
Now Cosgrove grinned.
“You always this forthcoming, Chief?” he said.
“On a good day,” Jesse said.
He answered a few more questions, none to the satisfaction of those asking them, before Armistead stepped to the microphone, ready for his first close-up as mayor.
“As always,” he said, “Chief Stone is a man of few words.” He smiled. “Occasionally they’re even well chosen.”
Jesse whispered to Molly, “I’ve got a few words for Gary, actually.”
She poked him hard with an elbow.
“I just want everybody to know that the chief and his people will get to the bottom of this tragedy,” Armistead said.
He paused and said, “But having said that, even as Chief Stone begins his investigation, the town needs to get back to the important work of finalizing the sale of The Throw.”
Jesse whispered to Molly, “Sure, the body must be good and cold by now.”
And got himself poked again.
By the time Armistead was answering his first question, Jesse was inside his office, sitting behind his desk, reaching into his bottom drawer and taking out his old glove and the ball he kept with it, snapping the ball into the pocket with a flick of his wrist, the sound of that as loud and sweet to him as ever.
He put the glove away and opened his laptop and saw the email from Scoppetta, telling him that the only gun residue they’d found had been on the right hand of Neil O’Hara.
The same Neil O’Hara who had been the left-handed throwing and left-handed hitting first baseman on Jesse’s softball team, and the left-handed tennis player whom he’d occasionally see on one of Paradise’s public courts.
He was considering the odds and probabilities of that, someone firing a gun to kill himself with his off hand, when Suit poked his head in.
“Somebody here to see you,” he said to Jesse.
“Friend or foe?” Jesse said.
“For you to know and me to find out,” Suit said.
He shut the door behind him and stepped into the office and lowered his voice and said, “It’s Crow.”
SEVEN
His long hair, so black it reminded Jesse of a blued gun barrel, but now sprinkled just slightly with gray, was tied into a ponytail. There were more lines around his eyes than Jesse remembered. Crow hadn’t gotten any younger since they had teamed up to save Amber Francisco from her father. But then who had?
He was as lean as ever, all sinew and hard edges and quiet menace. Especially that, Jesse thought. All that. There would never be any way of knowing how many men Crow had killed in his life, or how much money he’d gotten away with when he’d been on Jimmy Macklin’s crew and held Stiles Island for ransom.
But Jesse was sure it had been a lot, has always assumed it had been the score of a lifetime for Wilson Cromartie.
He wore black jeans, a black western shirt, buttoned to the neck, silver buttons. Crow settled into the chair across from Jesse, in which he had sat before.
Crow nodded at him.
“How come you don’t have that top drawer to your right open?” he said. “One with the gun in it.”
“I feel as if our relationship, such as it is, has evolved,” Jesse said.
“You’re saying you trust me now?”
Hint of amusement in his dark eyes. Not much. As if they’d briefly been flecked with light.
“You know better,” Jesse said. Jerked his head in the direction of the Keurig machine to Crow’s right. “Coffee?”
“You got any of that matcha green tea?” Crow said. “I’ve acquired a taste for it.”
Jesse said, “This isn’t Starbucks.”
“I take that as a no?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m good,” Crow said.
He and Crow had never been bears for small talk, so Jesse wasn’t now.
“You were at my crime scene last night,” he said.
“Who says?”
His voice still sounded like the raspy whisper that became more pronounced with Clint Eastwood the older he got.
“Molly saw you,” Jesse said.
“Paradise Police Department,” Crow said. “Ever vigilant.”
“We try.”
“I didn’t see Molly out there when I came in,” Crow said.
“Maybe she didn’t want to be seen.”
“How’s she doing?”
Jesse smiled. “None of your business.”
Crow smiled. Jesse noticed a single gold tooth, upper right, that he didn’t remember having been there before.
“I come in peace,” Crow said.
“You left out ‘paleface,’ ” Jesse said.
“My people have evolved, too.”
“You really Apache?”
“None of your business.”
“What were you doing at The Throw?”
“I was walking back to my house and saw the flashing lights.”
“At that time of night.”
“I’m nocturnal,” Crow said. “Like you.”
“You have a house here?” Jesse said.
“Airbnb,” Crow said. “Paradise side of the bridge.”
“A bridge you blew one time.”
“The others did that,” Crow said. “Not me.”
“Accessory after the fact,” Jesse said.
“Allegedly.”
“The money you stole wasn’t.”
Crow grinned. “See previous answer.”
“What are you doing here?” Jesse said.
“Billy Singer’s an old acquaintance of mine, guess you could say. He sent me to look out for his interests. He knew I had history here.”
“Do you ever.”
“He really wants that land.”
“I’m aware,” Jesse said.
They stared at each other.
“You happen to have an alibi for the hours before you say you saw all the flashing lights?”
“Do I need one?”
“Humor me.”
“Was with a lady,” he said.
“She have a name.”
“You want her married name?”
Jesse grinned. “Old dog,” he said. “Old tricks.”
“It was the dead guy’s wife,” Crow said.
Didn’t see that coming.
“You’re telling me you were with Kate O’Hara last night,” Jesse said.
“Not the way you think. And not for very long.”
“Kind of a coincidence,” Jesse said, “in light of what happened to her husband later that same night.”
�
��Only if you believe in that shit,” Crow said.
“So why were you with her?”
“Trying to gather as much information as possible, from all sides,” Crow said. “Billy thinks information is power.”
“So did Bugsy Siegel,” Jesse said.
“Vegas is different now,” Crow said.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “More fountains.”
Jesse had done a lot of research on Billy Singer by now. And Ed Barrone. Singer had spent the last several years trying to bury the reputation for ruthlessness he’d acquired on the way up, mostly for burying people who’d gotten in his way.
“Put it this way,” another casino owner had said of Billy Singer in one of the stories Jesse had read. “Billy goes into the corner, he’s the one coming out with the puck.”
“What were you talking about with Kate?” Jesse said.
“I couldn’t get ahold of her husband,” Crow said. “And I wanted to get a sense of how much influence she might have with him.”
“Meet and greet,” Jesse said.
“You could put it that way.”
“But not trying to persuade her to persuade her husband.”
“Told you I’ve evolved.”
“My ass.”
“Ask you a question?” Crow said.
Jesse waited.
“If I was back here threatening people to get them on Billy’s side of this, don’t you think you would have heard about it?” Crow said.
“Unless you threatened them with what would happen to them if I did hear,” Jesse said. “Another way of looking at it.”
“Least now I know why I couldn’t track down O’Hara,” Crow said. “Even though my people are noted trackers.” Crow shrugged. “The closer the vote gets, Billy just wanted me to take some temperatures, see how many people were as conflicted as O’Hara.”
“So you’d met with Neil previously.”
“Couple days ago,” Crow said. “Last night was supposed to be a follow-up.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“Like he knew the only thing left was finding out whether Billy or Barrone was going to be the last man standing on this thing.”
