“Oh, naturally, all you moralistic yahoos, you’d love to blame it on swinging, wouldn’t you?”
Jesse was resting his elbows on the arms of his chair with his fingertips at chin level. He tapped the tips of his fingers together slowly.
“I don’t mean to be too repressive here,” he said. “But you asked me to find your husband.
To do that, I need to ask questions.”
She was silent for a moment.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “we stopped going to swinger parties.”
“When?” Jesse said.
“It’s been several weeks,” she said.
“Do you know exactly?” Jesse said.
“Not now. It’s on my calendar. When I get home I can call you,” she said.
“Do,” Jesse said. “Why did you stop going?”
“My husband said he’d lost interest, that he was bored by it all.”
“And you wouldn’t go without him?” Jesse said.
She looked at him the way she might have studied a caveman.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said.
“Guess not,” Jesse said.
“Going alone is not the point,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“Has he ever left before?”
“Absolutely not.”
“No arguments, nothing to precipitate it?”
“None.”
“Did you argue at all about giving up swinging?”
“I wouldn’t call it an argument,” she said.
“What would you call it?”
“I wanted to continue,” she said. “He wished to stop. We disagreed.”
“Angrily?”
“No, we don’t have an angry relationship,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“He take anything with him?”
“His computer’s gone,” she said.
“He have a car?”
“Yes, a black Chrysler Crossfire,” she said. “You know, with the slanty back?”
“Plate numbers?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Insurance broker would know.”
“Yes,” she said. “I can get it when I go home.”
“Let me know that, too,” Jesse said.
“Plates and the day he stopped swinging,” she said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “And a list of credit cards. He have a checkbook?”
“Yes, I think he took that, too,” she said. “We each have our own separate accounts.”
“We’ll need the name of his bank. Account numbers if you have them.”
“We have such a good marriage,” she said. “Sexually compatible. Both love the academic life, love literature.”
Jesse nodded.
“Well,” he said. “Something happened.”
“Of course it did,” she said. “Seth disappeared.”
“In the last several weeks he has made some major changes in his life. He quit swinging.
He left you. Something caused that.”
“Unless something happened to him,” she said.
“Unless that,” Jesse said.
“What are you going to do.”
“Once we get your input we’ll look for his car, check his credit-card activity, see if he’s cashing checks anywhere or using ATMs, the usual stuff,” Jesse said. “You’ll let us know if you hear from him.”
“Do you think you’ll find him?” she said.
“Probably,” Jesse said. “Of course, if he’s left voluntarily, and broken no laws, we can’t force him to come back.”
“I have to know what happened,” she said.
“Don’t blame you,” Jesse said.
58
“HE DECLINED to go to a swinger party,” Jesse said, “two days after Gloria Fisher chased him out of her house.”
They were in the squad room drinking coffee.
“Must have killed him,” Molly said. “The fearsome Night Hawk.”
“So why wouldn’t he want to do more swinging, not less?” Suit said.
He had brought a box of doughnuts and was eating one. Jesse had already had one, and Molly had broken one in half and eaten half of it. Jesse took the discarded half.
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I don’t know why he does what he does.”
“And then a few weeks later he disappears on his wife,” Molly said.
“May be a string of coincidences,” Jesse said.
“But coincidences don’t do us any good,” Suit said. “They don’t give us anyplace to go.”
“Where’d you get that idea?” Jesse said.
“You told me that twenty times,” Suit said.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”
“The good news here,” Molly said, “is now we have a legitimate reason to poke around in his affairs more. Access his credit-card records, see who he writes checks to, that sort of thing.”
“I’d like to find a way to look at his computer,” Jesse said. “We find the pictures in there, we got him.”
“Too bad he took it, we’d have had a legitimate reason to look in there, trying to find him,”
Suit said.
“That’s why he took it,” Molly said.
“If we were to find it, before we found him . . .” Jesse said.
“We might get away with it,” Molly said.
“We’ll keep it in mind while we’re looking,” Jesse said.
Jesse examined the contents of the doughnut box and selected another cinnamon-sugar.
“Moll?” he said, and offered the box.
“My God,” Molly said. “Keep those away from me, you animal.”
Jesse shrugged and pushed the box toward Suit. Suit took out a honey-dip and bit into it.
“Moll,” Jesse said. “You got the credit-card stuff, the checking accounts, the car registration.”
“Yep,” Molly said. “Let the phone calls begin.”
“Suit, get his license picture and take it around to the local motels,” Jesse said. “Check the parking lots, too, for the car.”
“Molly,” Suit said. “You sure you don’t want another one of these doughnuts? It’s cop food.
You’re a cop. Get a little meat on those hips?”
Molly put her fingers in her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Suit,” Jesse said. “You’re department liaison with the Paradise Free Swingers. They got like a president or anything?”
“Head wife-swapper?” Suit said. “I don’t know. I could ask Debbie.”
“Do that,” Jesse said.
“And if they do?”
“I’d like to gather them together and talk with them,” Jesse said.
“And if they don’t?” Suit said.
Jesse grinned.
“I’d like to gather them together and talk with them,” Jesse said.
“Sort of limits my options,” Suit said.
Jesse nodded.
“You want all of them?” Suit said.
“Just the women,” Jesse said.
Suit smiled.
“Can I be there?” he said.
“Probably be Molly,” Jesse said. “She makes the women less uneasy.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Suit said, “eat my doughnuts, but when I need a favor . . .”
Molly grinned at Suit.
“I’ll tell you what they talked about,” Molly said. “It will be almost the same.”
“The hell it will,” Suit said.
59
JENN’S VOICE on the answering machine said, “Jesse. It’s me. I know you’re probably still working, but I needed to talk.”
Jesse drank some from his first drink of the night.
“The program is struggling. Syndication isn’t going as well as we’d hoped. They’re talking about restructuring, and it could mean that there’d be no job for me.”
Jesse sighed aloud in the empty living room. He took another swallow of whiskey.
“I’m scared, Jesse. I don’t kno
w what to do. I need to talk to you. I . . . I guess I need you. .
. . Call me.”
Jesse stared into his drink. Ice always had a nice, fresh look to it. Clean-looking. He finished the glass and made another. Full glass of ice. Two inches of scotch. Fill with soda. Stir with forefinger.
“Boyfriend must have bailed on her,” Jesse said aloud.
Carrying his drink, he walked into the kitchen and looked into his refrigerator. Not much.
Maybe later he’d fry a couple of eggs, make a sandwich. Maybe some onions. He took his drink back to the living room and sat down.
“And I’m the safety net,” he said.
He laughed without pleasure and drank some whiskey.
“Backup,” he said.
He laughed again and drank again.
“A career backup,” he said.
He looked at his drink.
“It’s going good,” he said. “I’m on the bench. It’s going bad, she calls. I rescue her.”
He drank.
He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith. He looked at his gun and badge lying on the bar.
He finished his drink and stood and made another one. He walked with his drink into the bedroom and looked at the picture of Jenn on his night table. He gestured at it with his glass.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.
He sat on the bed, looking at her.
It would be nice to have her home. It would be nice to call her and say, Come on home, I’ll look out for you. She enriched a space when she was in it. Her laughter bubbled. Her affec-tion seemed genuine. She was good-looking and funny and she was smart . . . he smiled . . .
though not always. If she was to come and stay with him, they’d have sex. Sex with Jenn was like sex with no one else. He knew, if he looked at it for a while, that it wasn’t so much what she did, it was how he felt.
His glass was empty. Drinks disappeared faster, he noticed, the more of them you drank.
He stood and walked back to the living room and mixed another. He’d been doing pretty good lately. Two drinks before dinner, maybe half a glass of wine with dinner. Tonight, not so good.
He drank.
He looked at the phone.
“You keep on doing the same thing you been doing, and expect the results to be different,”
Jesse said aloud. “You’re maybe a little crazy.”
He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith and raised his glass toward it.
“Maybe even a little obsessive, Oz. You know?”
He drank, and looked at the phone.
Couple more drinks, maybe less, and there’d be no more pleasure to it. Then it would be something else, something dull and needful.
“But not yet,” he said.
And drank.
And didn’t call.
60
“I HOPE you didn’t mind coming into Boston,” Jay Ingersoll said in a way that let Jesse know that he didn’t really care whether Jesse liked it or not.
“I didn’t mind,” Jesse said.
He sat across from Jay Ingersoll’s big desk on the top floor of Cone, Oakes. Betsy Ingersoll sat to her husband’s left in a comfortable chair facing Jesse. It was a big office, but not or-nate, the most prominent features being the view, which rivaled that from the client conference room three flights down, and a large leather sofa on the inside wall next to the door.
“What can we do for you?” Jay said.
“I have a letter,” Jesse said, “from the Night Hawk that I thought you both should see.”
Jay Ingersoll put out his hand.
Jesse took a photocopy of the original letter from his briefcase and gave it to Ingersoll. He took another copy and started to hand it to Betsy. Ingersoll put up a hand.
“I’ll read it,” he said.
Jesse held on to the copy and waited.
Ingersoll read the letter carefully. His face seemed to harden, but otherwise nothing changed. He looked up at Jesse when he was through reading.
“You find this credible?” he said to Jesse.
“You?” Jesse said.
“What does it say,” Betsy asked.
“It’s about you,” Jay said.
“Then perhaps,” Betsy said, “I ought to see it.”
Jesse handed her a copy.
“Don’t say anything,” Jay said to her.
She read slowly. As she read, her face began to flush. When she finished she stared at the paper for a moment and then looked at Jesse.
“Well, of course he tells you that,” Betsy said. “He’s a perverted criminal. He wouldn’t admit it.”
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said, “don’t talk.”
“I mean, do you think I made it all up, for God’s sake?”
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said sharply.
“Actually, ma’am, I do think you made it all up,” Jesse said.
“Betsy,” Jay Ingersoll said. “He is saying that you filed a false police report. That’s a crime.
It is time to let your lawyer do the talking.”
“Oh, screw you, Jay,” she said. “If you expect me to sit here and be insulted, then you can just kiss my ass.”
“He’s not insulting you, Betsy,” Ingersoll said. “He’s questioning you in the presence of your lawyer.”
“Well, I want another lawyer, then,” she said. “I am sick to death of you.”
“The Night Hawk regularly writes me letters,” Jesse said. “In every one he brags about what he has done. In this letter he denies it. He has never touched a victim. According to you, he hit you and forced you down and tied you up. In this letter he denies it. He has never sent me a letter that didn’t tell the truth.”
“How do you even know it’s him?” Betsy said.
“I know his voice by now,” Jesse said. “And who else would write, and why?”
Ingersoll stood.
“I’m afraid this meeting is over, Chief Stone,” he said.
“And you’d take his word over mine?” Betsy said. “A school principal?”
“Well, your record there is not unblemished,” Jesse said.
“Enough,” Ingersoll said. “This interview is finished.”
“She has told me you’re not her lawyer,” Jesse said.
“Goddamn it,” Ingersoll said. “I am also her husband.”
“As such, you have no standing to stop the interview,” Jesse said.
“What blemish,” Betsy said.
“The panty-check escapade was a little odd,” Jesse said.
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said.
Betsy was leaning forward toward Jesse, her shoulders hunched, her hands clasped tightly.
“Odd?” she said. “Odd that a dedicated educator would care enough about her charges that she would try to prevent these girls from growing up to be sluts?”
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said. “Please, please, please, please shut up. If not for yourself, then for me.”
“For you?” Betsy said.
“My reputation,” Ingersoll said.
“Your reputation?” Betsy said. “Your reputation. Your reputation is sluts. I sit here and look at that couch and wonder how many little law-school whores you’ve been with there.”
Ingersoll stared at her for a moment.
Then he said, “Fuck this. Hang yourself.” And walked out of the office.
She screamed at him as he left.
“Whoremaster!”
Jesse sat quietly.
Betsy said more quietly, “Whoremaster.”
She seemed to be speaking to herself.
“He why you faked the home invasion?” Jesse said.
“He didn’t even care,” she said thoughtfully. “You know what he said when he learned what happened?”
“Tell me,” Jesse said.
“He said, ‘If those pictures get out, I’ll be laughed out of court.’ ”
There was a dreamy quality to the way she was speaking.
“Did he know it was a fake?”
“No,” she said. “He thought it was real.”
“And he didn’t care,” Jesse said.
“No, he didn’t even want to hear about it. He seemed angry that I’d called the police.”
“That must have been hurtful,” Jesse said.
Betsy nodded absently.
“ ‘Hang yourself,’ ” she murmured.
She seemed to be talking to herself much more than to Jesse.
“Okay,” Betsy said. “I’ll hang us both. See how he likes that.”
Jesse nodded. Betsy took a deep breath.
“He has cheated on me since I’ve known him,” she said.
As she spoke, some tears appeared on her cheeks.
“He had a reputation when I married him,” she said.
Her voice was steady and soft.
“But he was so handsome, and I was, I guess, naively flattered that a man who had been with so many women would pick me. I assumed it was love.”
“That makes sense,” Jesse said.
“I thought he’d change,” she said.
“But he didn’t,” Jesse said.
“No matter what I did,” she said.
The tears came harder. “No matter what I did. No matter how hard I tried. God, I was an idiot.”
“Maybe not,” Jesse said.
“I tried everything. I read books on sex, I bought sexy lingerie. I tried so hard.”
She looked at Jesse suddenly, as if she’d come out of a trance.
“He laughed at the lingerie,” she said.
“Hard,” Jesse said.
“I even went to a therapist for a while, to find out what was wrong with me.”
Jesse nodded.
“Your husband must have been unpleasant about the incident at school,” he said.
“I did nothing wrong,” she said.
“But his reputation . . .” Jesse said.
She nodded.
“He was very angry,” she said.
“And with the Night Hawk being the talk of the town,” Jesse said, “you thought maybe it would distract people from the school incident, and also engage you husband’s sympathy.”
“I was hoping he might say something like ‘Thank God you weren’t harmed.’ ”
“But he didn’t.”
She shook her head slowly.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t.”
“You knew there had to be a picture,” Jesse said. “Everybody knows about the pictures.”
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