by Mike Lupica
Jesse said, “Not to get you off point. But does that drink next to you have an umbrella in it?”
“Maybe I shoulda done this on the phone,” Vinnie said, “upon further review.”
“You’ve come a long way from Joe Broz and Gino Fish,” Jesse said.
“You wanna hear me out or not?”
It came out “he-ah.”
Vinnie took him through it then, in his spare, linear way. Like a lot of guys in Vegas, Billy Singer had gotten crushed by COVID-19, and still wasn’t close to coming all the way back at The House, not with gambling, not with occupancy at the hotel, or his restaurants, or retail.
“Basically revenue’s still down half, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, depending on the month,” Vinnie said.
“But like you said,” Jesse said, “isn’t he in the same boat as everybody else out there?”
He heard a doorbell in the background then, saw Vinnie’s head jerk to the side before he yelled, “You think that Do Not Disturb sign is some kind of poker bluff?”
Turned back to the screen. “Where were we?”
“I just asked you why Billy’s troubles are worse than everybody else’s.”
“Because everybody else don’t have Billy’s loans, which need to be paid off, like yesterday,” Vinnie said.
Vinnie told Jesse the name of Billy’s bank, and asked if he’d heard of it. Jesse said that even people in outer space knew the name of that particular bank by now. Vinnie stopped and asked Jesse how much he understood about high finance. Jesse said the reason his son was doing his taxes now was because he didn’t even have a good handle on low finance.
He saw Vinnie sip his drink, which looked to be the color of his shirt. At least he didn’t use the straw.
“So,” he said. “Over the past few years, Singer has turned into a juggler. He refinances like it’s going out of style every time a big principal payment is due. And he managed to stay ahead of shit until a few years ago, when he stepped in it big-time and personally guaranteed the loans with the bank whose name everybody knows by now.”
“And now that bank finally wants its money,” Jesse said.
“But he don’t have it,” Vinnie said. “He’s got enough to cover him on this deal back there, if he gets the land. He’s got enough for that, but not the loans. He’s held them off so far, but can’t for much longer, and when they come after him, they’re not just gonna take the hotel and the casino. They will cut his nuts off with personal bankruptcy. And from everything I know, Singer would cut his own nuts off before he’d go down for that in front of the whole freaking world.”
“So he needs the land, and all the side deals he’ll be able to make with construction and developers that’ll come with it,” Jesse said.
“Needs it like this town needs suckers,” Vinnie said.
“This helps a lot,” Jesse said.
“I ain’t done,” Vinnie said. “On account of it gets better, just not better for this schmuck. Turns out, according to my guy, that our Billy is also a tax cheat, with all the usual high-roller dodges that go with that. Deductions for consulting charges.” He put air quotes around consulting. “Because of course he’s got his deadbeat kids on the payroll, too.”
“Don’t they all,” Jesse said.
“My guy says that cheating the government is all tied up with dirty money overseas,” Vinnie said. “So the poor bastard doesn’t just have the bank on his ass, he’s got the IRS.”
Vinnie sipped the pink drink. On their Zoom call.
“He’d be better off with me on his ass,” Vinnie said. “Bottom line? This guy’s needing this deal this much makes him dangerous as hell.”
“When we last spoke,” Jesse said, “you told me Barrone was the guy I needed to watch.”
“It’s a fluid situation,” Vinnie said.
Jesse saw him check his phone. Put it down. “We done?” Vinnie said.
“One more,” Jesse said. “Ask your guy the next time you talk to him if he thinks Singer would be desperate enough to cut some kind of side deal with Barrone.”
“I can answer that one after listening to all this shit on Singer out here,” Vinnie said. “He’d get into bed with an iguana to save his ass.”
“One more.”
Vinnie said, “You already did one more.”
“You ever hear of a couple of hitters from Rhode Island named Sammy Baldelli and Roy Santo?”
Vinnie had been reaching for his screen. He stopped.
“Them two are in this?”
“With Singer,” Jesse said. “I assumed he imported them.”
Vinnie said, “They’re from Albert Antonioni’s old crew. You know him?”
“Sunny did.”
“Them two were the worst,” Vinnie said.
“Killers?” Jesse said.
“Only for the sheer enjoyment of it,” Vinnie said.
It came out “she-ah.”
“Forewarned is forearmed,” Jesse said.
“Make sure it’s a lot of arms,” Vinnie said.
Then he said “Later” and was gone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
At eight the next morning, Jesse sat in Neil O’Hara’s old office, across Neil’s antique desk, the one he used to joke to Jesse was old enough to be indigenous. He’d been ordered here by Gary Armistead, who’d informed Jesse when he’d awakened him that he was pulling rank, and Jesse just had to deal with that.
Armistead had been so loud and so angry since Jesse had sat down that Jesse had begun to worry about the possibility of spontaneous combustion.
The source of the combustion being Jesse himself.
“You thought it was a good idea to get up in Singer’s ass,” he said, “and Ed Barrone’s? On the same night? Well, guess what? Now I’m up in yours.”
“And, boy, if I find out about it,” Jesse said.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Armistead said.
“Guess not,” Jesse said.
Armistead would occasionally get up and pace behind the oversized desk, but staying at the top of his voice. For now he was back in his chair. It was the one piece of furniture in Neil’s old office he’d changed. The chair looked to Jesse like one of those fancy ergonomic deals Molly was always on him to try.
“Are you trying to get me to fire you?” Armistead said.
“For doing my job?” Jesse said. “Deputy Chief Crane and I were investigating an active-shooter incident.”
“You were there to bust balls and you know it,” Armistead said.
“It is one of Deputy Chief Crane’s specialties,” Jesse said. “Just not in this case. We were responding to a call from a neighbor about shots having been fired at Singer’s house.”
“Shots fired by your Indian friend!”
“Not very politically correct for a politician,” Jesse said.
“And when you do show up, you talk to Singer and Barrone like they’re the criminals,” Armistead said. “And then, the frosting on the cake, you let your friend, this Crow guy, walk.”
“We didn’t have enough to hold him.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Armistead said. “You know what I ought to do? I ought to suspend you until the Board votes so you don’t find a way to jack the whole thing up.”
“I thought the whole thing was a foregone conclusion,” he said.
“It will be if you don’t get in the way,” Armistead said. He shook his head. “I really should just fire you and come up with a reason later.”
Jesse smiled.
“Do it,” he said.
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Sounds like I already tempted you,” Jesse said. “So do what you have to do, Gary. Set me down and then explain to your brand-new constituents why you set me down in the middle of an investigation about the death of your predecessor.”
Armistead started to say something. Jesse held up a hand.
“You know who maybe turned out to be a big winner with Neil O’Hara dead?” Jesse continued. “The guy with great big ambition who replaced him.”
“You said you were just doing your job last night? I’m doing mine, and looking out for what’s best for the town,” Armistead said. “Now get the hell out of my office.”
“Funny,” Jesse said. “I can’t stop thinking of it as Neil’s office.”
“You have to know this isn’t over,” Gary Armistead said.
“Finally we agree on something,” Jesse said.
When he was walking back to the station, he thought that the new mayor had talked about getting up in Jesse’s ass, but that any fair-minded person would have had to conclude that it had been the other way around.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jesse and Molly were finishing dinner in his office, wood-fired pizza from the Gull now that Spike had installed his new oven in the extension to the kitchen he’d had built.
Molly said that pizza was pizza. Jesse told her that even cops could get arrested for throwing around irresponsible language like that.
She had spent most of her time over the green pepper and mushroom pie telling him that he was making a mistake trusting Crow. He told her what he’d told Crow. That he didn’t trust him.
“You practically have deputized him,” Molly said. “Do you honestly believe he’s in this because he wants to help you? There’s always an angle.”
“When you say ‘angle,’ ” he said, “I assume you don’t mean horizontal.”
She gave him a look that had never meant anything good for him, but held her fire.
“Bottom line is that I think he can help,” Jesse said. “He already has helped, and you know it.”
“You’ll be sorry,” she said, and then added, “Like I am.”
“You need to let things go,” he said.
“Look who’s talking,” she said.
He changed the subject, asking when Michael would be back. She said in a week or so, that the boss, Teddy Altman, wanted to make a quick side trip to Paris to visit a boat-building company there that was supposed to be one of the best in the world. Jesse said Molly would be less cranky when Michael was back. She accused him of being a sexist pig and snapped that she wasn’t cranky. Jesse said she sure sounded cranky.
It went like that for a few minutes, the two of them once again sounding like an old bickering married couple, before they cleaned up and walked outside to the back lot and got into their cars.
Jesse drove to The Throw, where everything had started. Where he’d found the mayor of Paradise, his friend and left-handed first baseman, dead because of a single shot fired into his right temple.
He didn’t know whether Neil had died here or had been moved here, and might never know.
What had Neil died knowing?
He kept coming back to that. Where else? Did he know what Ben Gage knew? Something else Jesse might never know.
Jesse walked back to the grave where he’d found Neil, the sound of the ocean behind him and the sound of night birds all around him.
He was finally walking back to the Explorer when his phone rang.
He took it out of the side pocket of his jacket.
Unknown Caller
He wondered if Vinnie Morris might have turned up something new on Billy Singer when he heard the scared, weak voice of Kate O’Hara, sounding as if it were about to shatter.
“Jesse . . . please help me.”
THIRTY-NINE
He kept her on the phone as he headed for the bridge to Stiles Island, after asking her if she needed him to call for an ambulance. She said she did not. He asked if she was sure. Kate said she was.
“Just hurry,” she said.
“What happened?” Jesse said.
“I walked in on them . . .” she said. Her voice trailed off for a moment. “They must have been looking for . . . something . . . One of them hit me.”
She was waiting for him on the porch when he came around the corner. She was holding something to the side of her face, probably ice. As Jesse ran up the walk he saw her start to slide down the doorframe before he got to her in time.
He started to walk her into the house when she dropped the icepack suddenly and turned and put her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry,” Kate said.
“Don’t be,” he said.
Then he pulled back and got an arm around her shoulder and got her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. There were books from the built-in case scattered all over the floor and cushions and a lamp turned over, and one of the end tables near the sofa. The room had been tossed.
“Is the whole house like this?” Jesse said.
“The downstairs,” she said. “I haven’t been upstairs.”
“Doorbell cam didn’t help?” he said.
“They must have come through the kitchen door,” she said.
Jesse walked back there. He could see where somebody had broken one of the windows, probably unlocked the door that way. There was glass all over the floor.
He went back to the front door now, picked up the icepack where she’d dropped it, came back and handed it to her. He could see the bruising starting to show from her right cheekbone all the way down her jawline.
“Not sure ice is going to help at this point,” she said.
“As an old ballplayer,” Jesse said, “let me tell you that it never hurts.”
“Not much of a face right now,” she said.
“Still a nice one,” he said.
He asked her if she wanted a drink. She said not right now. He asked if they’d hit her more than once and she said no, she’d just hit her head again on the floor when she went down.
“You should be seen by a doctor,” Jesse said. “That new Urgent Care over here is just a few blocks away.”
“I’m fine,” she said, then added, “At least now I am.”
“Not much evidence of that,” he said.
“If my head still hurts in the morning, I’ll go see somebody,” she said. “For now, as they say, it only hurts when I laugh, so I feel as if I’m in no immediate danger.”
She took him through it. She’d felt a need for the ribs at the Gull, so she’d decided to do takeout, because she didn’t want to go over there and sit alone. Too much alone time these days, she said. Then she managed to build a small smile and said, “But who knows more about alone time than you, Jesse.”
She had locked the house before she left, she was sure of that. The front door was still locked when she got back from the Gull. She heard a noise upstairs as soon as she walked in.
“They must have seen you leave,” Jesse said.
“Then I was like one of those silly girls in the horror movies, actually asking if someone was here,” she said. “The next thing I remember is someone coming from my right, out of the den, and punching me in the face.”
He thought she might cry, but she didn’t.
“No one has punched me in my face my whole life,” she said.
“So there was more than one of them.”
“I’m sure I heard somebody upstairs,” she said. “But if there was somebody up there, I didn’t see him. I wish I could tell you more, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Kate,” Jesse said. “Do you feel as if you lost consciousness?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The next thing I remember is one of them pressing my face to the floor and asking me if he’d left it with me.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Left what, Jesse?”
“Somebody is looking for something that might interfere with the sale of the land,” Jesse said. “They’ve searched the house of Ben Gage from Save Our Beach, the kid that just got shot over in Marshport. Somebody searched Ne
il’s house the other night. Couple guys. I knew someone was in there because I’d left a sensor the last time I’d been there. They ended up shooting at me before I lost them on the beach.”
“Why would they think Neil would tell me?” she said. “Or leave something that important with me? Do you even know exactly what it is?”
“Just something of value to one of the people involved in this deal,” Jesse said. “Or maybe all of them.”
“But what?”
“Working on it,” he said.
“On a mission, you mean.”
“Idle hands,” Jesse said.
He asked again if he could drive her to Urgent Care. She told him no again. Jesse said that she was as stubborn as Molly Crane, likely slugged by the same guys. Kate said she’d take that as a compliment. She said she’d take that drink now. Scotch. Jesse asked where she kept it. She said on the kitchen counter, in a corner underneath the cupboards. Jesse went into the kitchen and saw it was as much of a mess as the living room. There were two bottles. One was red wine.
The other was Chivas Regal.
He picked it up and saw that it was mostly full. Always a happy moment for him in his drinking days. Seeing the amber liquid nearly all the way to the top. Feeling the weight of the bottle. He stared at it a moment longer, then found a glass and uncapped the bottle and poured scotch into it.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had his hand around a bottle of scotch. He screwed the cap back on and made sure not to smell it. He already knew what it smelled like. He could teach a master class in what it smelled like and what it tasted like. And felt like.
“Jesse?” Kate called from the living room. “You find it okay?”
Her voice snapped him out of it. He slid the bottle back into the corner, thinking that no bad guy he had ever encountered had ever been more dangerous to him than the glass in his hand. It had nearly cost him everything, including Kate once.
But he’d made it through another day without pouring himself a drink.
