(5/10) Sea Change

by Robert B. Parker

  “What’s this all about, Chief?” he said.

  “Just routine,” Jesse said. “We’re looking into a homicide. Woman from Fort Lauderdale named Florence Horvath.”

  “Never heard of her,” Ralston said.

  “Well, that answers one question,” Jesse said. “We think she may have come off one of the yachts here for Race Week.”

  Ralston shrugged.

  “So, you being registered in Fort Lauderdale and all.”

  “Sure,” Ralston said. “Perfectly understandable. Why do you think she fell off a yacht.”

  “I didn’t say she fell,” Jesse said.

  “Whatever. You got any evidence?”

  Jesse took out his head shots from the Horvath video.

  “Know any of these three people?” Jesse said.

  Ralston studied the pictures for a time, then shook his head and handed them back.

  “Don’t know any of them,” he said.

  Ralston took a leather cigar case out of his shirt pocket.

  “Care for a cigar, Chief?” Ralston said. “The real thing. I’d deny it in court, of course. But genuine Cuban.”

  “No thank you,” Jesse said.

  Ralston shrugged and began to take out a cigar.

  “There’s a town ordinance against smoking on town property,” Jesse said.

  Ralston paused and shook his head and then put the cigar back in the case and the case back in his pocket.

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “Know anyone named Katie DeWolfe?” Jessie said.

  Jesse could almost hear something click shut inside Ralston. He seemed to think about the name for a moment. Then he shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. Why do you ask?”

  “Know Harrison Darnell?”

  “Darnell?” Ralston said. “Yeah. Sure. I know him a little. Not well. Just casual, you know? Yachting isn’t that big a world. He’s on the Lady Jane, I believe.”

  “Also out of Fort Lauderdale,” Jesse said.

  “Oh, sure, that’s right. Of course. That’s why you’re asking. The Fort Lauderdale connection.”

  “You think he might know Florence Horvath?” Jesse said.

  “I just have no way to know, Chief…?” Ralston looked at the nameplate on Jesse’s desk. “Jesse Stone, is it?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I don’t know who Harrison Darnell knows or what he does.”

  “What might he do?” Jesse said.

  “I just told you I don’t know,” Ralston said. “I’m trying to be cooperative, Chief, but you seem hostile.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Know anyone named Cathleen Holton?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “How about Corliss or Claudia Plum?”

  “No. Who the hell are these people?”

  “Mandy Morello?” Jesse said.

  “No, for crissake, Chief. What’s going on here? You think I did something?”

  “No,” Jesse said. “Just running through the list.”

  “Well, no offense, but I’m getting tired of it. Can I leave?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “Thanks for coming in.”

  37

  Kelly Cruz was in the manager’s office at the marina near the Boat Club. The manager was appropriately windblown and suntanned, wearing a marina staff polo shirt and khaki shorts. There was, Kelly Cruz noticed, a cute tattoo on his left calf. Kelly Cruz liked tattoos in discreet moderation.

  “Wow,” the manager said. “You’re pretty good-looking, for a cop.”

  “I’m pretty good-looking for a person,” Kelly Cruz said. “My name’s Kelly Cruz.”

  “Bob,” the manager said.

  “Do you have assigned mooring here, Bob?”

  “Sure,” the manager said. “Otherwise it’d be a free-for-all when they came in.”

  “So you got a record of the mooring locations,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Course.”

  The manager had thick black hair, cut short. His forearms and hands looked strong. He was wearing a nice aftershave.

  “May I see them?”

  “You bet,” the manager said. “Come around, we got it all on computer.”

  Kelly Cruz stood beside him while he punched up the listings.

  “Lookin’ for anybody special?” he said.

  “Thomas Ralston.”

  The manager scrolled down.

  “Here we go, he owns Sea Cloud. Number 10A.”

  “How about Harrison Darnell?”

  The manager scrolled again.

  “He should be 8A or 12A. I remember…yeah, 12A…I remember they made a point of insisting on side-by-side moorings.”

  “They registered together?”

  “We don’t call it registered, Kelly. But yeah. They came in a year, year and a half ago, said they wanted to be far out, and they had to be side by side.”

  “Do you know either of these gentlemen, Bob?”

  “Nope. Just saw them when they contracted the moorings.”

  “Do you know why they wanted to be side by side?”

  “Nope.”

  “A guess?”

  “Party together, I suppose. Two boats are better than one?”

  “Two of most things are better than one,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Absolutely, Detective Kelly Cruz.”

  “Kelly’s my first name.”

  Bob grinned at her.

  “I figured you weren’t Irish,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “You know anything interesting about either of these guys?” she said.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Know anybody named Florence Horvath?”

  “Nope.”

  “Corliss or Claudia Plum?”

  “Nope. Great names, though,” Bob said. “You ever go out with people you’ve questioned, Kelly Cruz?”

  “When I can get a babysitter.”

  “Kids.”

  “Yep.”

  “Husband?”

  “Nope.”

  “That works,” Bob said.

  “It does,” Kelly Cruz said, and handed Bob her card.

  38

  Healy took his hat off and put it on the edge of Jesse’s desk.

  “I’m on my way home,” he said.

  “Way to go,” Jesse said.

  “Which means I’m off duty.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jesse said.

  He went to the file cabinet, got a bottle of Bushmill’s Black Label, poured about two inches into a water glass and handed it to Healy.

  “You still can’t join me,” Healy said.

  “Almost eleven months now,” Jesse said. “Not yet. Maybe never.”

  “Day at a time,” Healy said.

  He took a sip, and put his head back, and closed his eyes.

  “You don’t have to enjoy it so fucking much,” Jesse said.

  “Sorry,” Healy said. “But you remember what the first one was like at the end of the day.”

  “I do,” Jesse said. “It’s the fifth or sixth one I have trouble recalling.”

  “I’ll try to be unemotional about the next swallow,” Healy said.

  “Appreciate it.”

  “So,” Healy said. “You asked me to stop by.”

  “Remember the floater we had?” Jesse said.

  “Horvath,” Healy said. “Been a long time in the water.”

  “Well, lemme bring you up to date,” Jesse said.

  Healy nodded and sat back with his Irish whiskey and listened.

  When Jesse was through, Healy thought about things for a moment. Then he said, “You can get them on statutory rape anytime you want.”

  “Yes.”

  “But when you do,” Healy said, “they’ll get lawyered to the eyeballs, and you won’t get another word out of them.”

  “Correct.”

  “And it’s pretty hard to leverage statutory rape into a murder confession.”

  “Pretty hard,” Jesse said.

  �
��So right now you’re just stirring the mix.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “So what do you want with me?”

  “I don’t want to lose them.”

  “You afraid they’ll run?”

  “They know I’m interested,” Jesse said. “They’ve got money. They leave the jurisdiction, I’m going to have trouble getting them back.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have let them know you were interested.”

  “Maybe. But I got no other way to go about this than to keep prying and asking and pushing and poking and looking around. And maybe the pressure will make one of them stupid.”

  Healy nodded. “They aren’t charged with a crime,” he said. “They can go where they want to.”

  “But they could be charged with statutory rape anytime,” Jesse said.

  “So you want me to help you keep track of them and if they try to depart we arrest them and charge them with the rape of a minor child.”

  “Yes.”

  “And tell them they have the right to an attorney.”

  “Better than losing them,” Jesse said. “I don’t have the resources.”

  “We can help you at the airport,” Healy said. “And the train stations.”

  “And I need some clout with the Coast Guard. They’re stretched a little thin these days.”

  “I can probably do something there. If I can’t, I can probably get you one of ours. What do you want, a patrol boat at the harbor mouth?”

  “Plainly marked,” Jesse said.

  “Soon?”

  “Now,” Jesse said.

  Healy sipped some whiskey.

  “Soon,” he said.

  They sat quietly.

  “You got a theory?” Healy said after a time.

  “Some kind of sex ring with these two clucks at the center,” Jesse said. “They bring some girls and recruit others, mostly very young. Florence would have been a bring-along.”

  “And you figure something grew out of that scene that caused the death of Horvath?”

  “Yes.”

  “You figure Darnell did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where’s Ralston fit?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. Maybe he’s just a pervert and all we get him on is the stat rape charge.”

  “Could have been Ralston,” Healy said.

  “Could have. They were tight, we know that. Cruz in Fort Lauderdale found that out. Moorings at the outer ring. Side by side.”

  “They were doing the same thing there,” Healy said.

  “I’d guess,” Jesse said.

  “You got anywhere to go now?”

  “Nothing beyond the rape charge. Hell, I don’t even know if that will stick on Ralston. We got Darnell cold with it on tape. But the girl may not be a good witness against Ralston, and we got no tape.”

  “Keep pushing,” Healy said. “These aren’t stand-up guys, I’d guess.”

  “You’d be right,” Jesse said.

  “And they’ve made a lot of messes in various places they’ve been. So one of them will scare and fuck up and you’ll catch him and it’ll either be him or he’ll give you the other one…”

  “Or one of the messes they left behind will give them up.”

  Healy nodded. They were quiet again. It was a late summer day. Still light, but the light slanting now from the west, and a darker tone. Healy sipped his whiskey. It would be nice, Jesse thought, to be able to sit at the edge of evening and sip a whiskey and talk. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

  “You’re living with your ex-wife,” Healy said.

  “We’re giving it another try.”

  “Working?”

  “So far,” Jesse said.

  “Good,” Healy said, and sipped.

  “You’re married,” Jesse said.

  “Long time,” Healy said. “Some of it has been some pretty bad thrashing around, but we hung in there and it turned out good.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Marriage is hard for cops,” Healy said. “Know a lot of them that can’t do it.”

  “Cop wasn’t the issue, I don’t think,” Jesse said.

  “Some of the divorces are a mess. They hate each other, they fight over the kids and the money and anything else they can find.”

  “I know marriages like that,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. But some of the breakups are bad. They loved each other, even liked each other, but they couldn’t do it.”

  “Hard,” Jesse said.

  “Hardest thing in the world, I think. Guys like us,” Healy said, “are not chit-chat guys. Closed in a little, maybe.”

  Healy sipped whiskey, and sat a minute as it settled in.

  “And the only people we know how to talk with is the women we marry,” he said.

  “I know,” Jesse said.

  “Then the marriage breaks up, and you need somebody to talk with more than you ever have and she’s the only one you can’t talk with…. Makes for a lot of guys alone with a bottle of vodka.”

  “That’s why they have shrinks,” Jesse said.

  “Lot of cops don’t do shrinks.”

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  “Which is maybe,” Healy said, “why she’s back in the house.”

  39

  Jenn’s dressing room was in the back part of a trailer, the remainder of which served as a production office.

  “Just like a movie star,” Jesse said.

  He sat on the little built-in banquette while Jenn took off her camera makeup.

  “Big production budget,” Jenn said. “This isn’t just Channel Three. This is Allied Broadcasting, which owns five other stations in big markets all across the country. New York, Chicago, L.A. This is like national.”

  Jenn washed her face carefully in the small bathroom, and came out and dried carefully, and began to reapply her own makeup.

  “Why not just leave the other makeup on?” Jesse said.

  Jenn glanced at him in the mirror.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said.

  “Just asking,” Jesse said.

  Jenn leaned very close to the mirror as she worked on her face.

  “When I get through,” she said, “I have something really interesting to show you. You know what B roll is?”

  “Sure, second unit. No stars or anything, just the director and a camera guy getting background stuff.”

  “Second unit,” Jenn said. “I forget you worked all those years in L.A.”

  “Everybody in L.A. knows second unit,” Jesse said. “Hell I can even say mise-en-scène.”

  “But can you define it?” Jenn said.

  “Nope. I left L.A. before I learned that part.”

  Jenn put her lip gloss on and leaned back a little and looked at herself in the mirror. Then she leaned very close and looked. Then back for one more medium-range look and turned toward him.

  “Check this out,” Jenn said.

  She put a cassette in the built-in VCR and pressed play. It was raw film, taken on board several yachts in Paradise Harbor. Jesse watched silently. There was no dialogue.

  “I was looking at some of the B roll,” Jenn said. “Marty’s great. She wants my input on everything. And I saw something that I thought would interest you.”

  “You want to say what?”

  “You’ll see,” Jenn said.

  Jesse watched silently. The scenes jerked from one to another without transition.

  “Yo!” Jesse said.

  Jenn stopped the tape and rewound it, and played it again.

  “Yo,” Jesse said.

  “See him?” Jenn said.

  “From the Florence Horvath sex tape,” Jesse said.

  “Part of the fuck sandwich,” Jenn said. “The one on top, I think.”

  “And you recognized him,” Jesse said.

  “I did.”

  “You must have been paying closer attention to that tape than I thought,” Jesse said.

  “I’m naturally observant,” Jenn said. “You recognized
him, too.”

  “I’m supposed to,” Jesse said. “Was this a test?”

  Jenn smiled. “I guess it was. I guess I would have kind of liked it if you’d missed him and I had to point him out.”

  “Glad I passed,” Jesse said.

  “Well,” Jenn said after a pause, “I guess I am, too.”

  “Sign of love,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know where the tape was made?” Jesse said.

  “Everything’s labeled,” Jenn said. “So when we get in the editing room, we have some idea of what we’re doing.”

  “Clever,” Jesse said. “And the location is?”

  “Sea Cloud,” Jenn said. “Yesterday. Contact Thomas Ralston.”

  “Yesterday,” Jesse said.

  Jenn nodded.

  “We always date everything,” Jenn said.

  “The sonovabitch is still here,” Jesse said.

  Jenn shrugged.

  “I need a copy of that tape,” Jesse said.

  “Take it,” Jenn said. “I had them dupe it for you.”

  “Christ,” Jesse said. “Maybe you should be chief of police.”

  “What,” Jenn said. “And give up show business?”

  40

  His name was Eric Jurgen. Suitcase Simpson and Arthur Angstrom went out to the Sea Cloud and got him.

  “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Jurgen,” Jesse said.

  “I try to obey the police,” Jurgen answered.

  He spoke with a faint accent.

  “Are you foreign born, Mr. Jurgen?” Jesse said.

  “I am Austrian,” Jurgen said. “Is there a problem?”

  “You are a crewman on the Sea Cloud,” Jesse said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you know Florence Horvath?”

  Jurgen smiled. “Florence,” he said. “Yes. I am very sorry to hear that she died.”

  “How did you know her?”

  “She was with Mr. Darnell when I worked on the Lady Jane.”

  “With Mr. Darnell?”

  “You know, like his girlfriend.”

  “Didn’t Mr. Darnell have several girlfriends?” Jesse said.