Stranger in Paradise js-7

by Robert B. Parker

  “Maybe Molly and I can help them get past that,” Jesse said.

  Nina Pinero nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can see how you might.”

  12.

  In the Gray Gull, Crow was nursing Johnnie Walker Blue on the rocks at the bar when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID, and answered it as he walked outside to talk.

  “The kid charged a big television set,” a voice said at the other end.

  “On your account?” Crow said.

  “Yeah. She got one of those satellite cards, you know? Her name’s on it, but the bill comes to me.”

  “Her real name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She know the bill comes to you?” Crow said.

  “Who knows what she knows. Bills been coming to me all her life. I doubt that she ever thought about who pays. Hell, she may not even know that somebody has to.”

  Crow smiled in the darkness outside the Gray Gull.

  “Where’d she get it,” Crow said.

  “Place called Images in Marshport, Massachusetts.”

  “So she is around here,” Crow said.

  “I told you she would be.”

  “What kind of TV?” Crow said.

  “I wrote it down,” the voice said.

  It was a soft voice. But there was tension in it, as if it wanted to yell and was being restrained.

  “Mitsubishi 517,” the voice said. “Fifty-five-inch screen.”

  “So she didn’t carry it away,” Crow said.

  “Not her,” the voice said.

  “Maybe they’ll tell me where they sent it,” Crow said.

  “Maybe,” the voice said.

  The connection broke. Crow folded up his cell phone and put it away. He stood for a moment looking across the parking space toward the harbor.

  “When I find her,” he said aloud, “then what?”

  13.

  The small bus was yellow, with school-bus plates. And the usual signage about stopping when the lights were flashing. The driver was a white-haired Hispanic man who spoke too little English to have a conversation. Jesse stood in the exit well beside the driver. Molly sat in back with Nina Pinero. Both Molly and Jesse were in full uniform. Jesse even had on the town-issued chief’s hat with braid on the front. The children’s clothes were spruced and ironed. The children themselves were very quiet. Jesse could see them swallowing nervously. Several of them kept clearing their throats. And though most of them were dark-skinned, Jesse could see that their faces were pale.

  The bus went past Paradise Beach. No one paid any attention. The kids looked at the hot-dog stand. The bus moved out onto the causeway with the crowded harbor to the left and the open Atlantic to the right. The kids stared out the window. The silence in the bus was palpable. Jesse made no attempt to reassure the kids. He knew how useless that was. Across the causeway, the bus went straight ahead on Sea Street. Past the Paradise Yacht Club. The bus stopped in front of a fieldstone wall that separated a rolling lawn from the street. Across the street there was a white van with a big antenna. On the side it said ACTION NEWS 3. At the top of the lawn was a huge weathered-shingle house. A wide, white driveway wound from behind the house down across the big lawn to the opening in the stone wall, where it joined the street. In the opening, on the driveway, there were maybe twenty adults in varying hues of seersucker and flowered hats. Among them in an on-air summer dress and a big glamorous hat was Jenn. With her was a cameraman in a safari vest.

  Nina Pinero stood and walked down to the front of the bus. Molly stayed in the rear. She stopped beside Jesse. Jesse nodded at the driver and he opened the bus doors. Jesse stepped out. The gathered adults stared at him. Walter Carr stood with Miriam Fiedler. They both had pamphlets ready. Jesse wondered who they planned to hand them out to.

  “Hello,” Jesse said. “I’ve come to protect you from the invaders.”

  Carr said, “What?”

  “I’m here, with Officer Crane, to see that not one of these small savages attacks you or in any way harms your property,” Jesse said.

  “There’s no need to be caustic, Chief Stone,” Miriam Fiedler said. “We are simply trying to maintain the integrity of our property and the safety of our streets.”

  Jesse nodded at Nina Pinero, and she gently pushed a little boy forward. Jesse took his hand as he stepped from the bus.

  “Meet the enemy,” Jesse said.

  The boy was wearing sandals and khaki shorts, and a snow-white T-shirt. Jesse could feel the stiffness in his hand when he held it.

  “His name,” Jesse said, “is Roberto Valdez. He was five last week.”

  Nina gently directed a little girl from the bus. Jesse took her hand as she stepped down. She had on red sneakers with red-and-white striped laces, and white shorts and a white T-shirt.

  “This is Isabel Gomez,” Jesse said. “She won’t be five until later this month.”

  He could feel Isabel tremble a little as he held her hand.

  “Okay, Isabel,” Jesse said. “You stand with Roberto, right here, beside the bus, behind me.”

  “Is this really necessary, Chief Stone?” Miriam Fiedler said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jesse said. “It is.”

  One by one, the kids emerged from the bus and stood fearfully with Jesse for a moment while he introduced them. Finally they were through. Molly got out of the bus and stood with the kids. Nina Pinero got out and stood beside Jesse.

  “Chief Stone,” Austin Carr said, “we do not have any animosity toward these children. We would support them, and I mean financially, if they wished to establish a nice school and summer camp in Marshport.”

  At the top of the driveway, several young men and women in shorts and T-shirts came out of the house and stood, waiting.

  “Staff is in place,” Nina Pinero said to Jesse.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Follow me, kids.”

  “This is outrageous,” Miriam Fiedler said. “We are not a bunch of rabble to be brushed aside.”

  “You’re not?” Jesse said.

  With Nina Pinero and Molly herding the children behind him, Jesse walked straight through the seersucker circle and up the driveway. Behind him he heard Miriam Fiedler cry out in pain.

  He heard Molly say, “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. I seem to have stepped on your foot.”

  Jesse didn’t turn around to look. But he smiled as he led the kids up the driveway.

  14.

  Wilson Cromartie, in a tan summer suit and a yellow gingham shirt, walked down the center passage of a big mall that had replaced the nineteenth-century brick buildings in the heart of Marshport. There were some shoppers, but the majority of the people in the mall were Hispanic teenagers, in the various costumes of their age group. A number of them were in a store called Images, gazing at the television sets they couldn’t afford.

  Crow went into the store.

  “My daughter bought a big-screen TV here a while ago,” Crow said to the clerk. “And the delivery seems to have gone astray.”

  “Astray?”

  “Yes,” Crow said. “She never got it.”

  “Oh, my,” the clerk said.

  He turned to the computer.

  “What’s your daughter’s name, sir?”

  “Amber Francisco,” Crow said.

  The clerk worked the computer for a moment.

  “Twelve-A Horn Street?” the clerk said.

  Crow nodded. The clerk smiled.

  “It was delivered ten days ago,” the clerk said. He was triumphant. “Signed for by Esteban Carty.”

  Crow looked puzzled.

  “Here in Marshport?”

  “Yes, sir. If you’d like to step around the counter, I can show you.”

  “No,” Crow said. “Thank you. That’ll be fine.”

  He shook his head.

  “Damn kid will put me in an early grave,” he said.

  He left the store. As he walked back through the mall, several of the teenage girls lounging ab
out watched him as he passed.

  15.

  Jenn came into the police station with her cameraman, waved at Molly, and came to Jesse’s office, the cameraman behind her.

  “No cameras in the station,” Jesse said when he saw them.

  The cameraman looked at Jenn.

  “You want to make it a freedom-of-the-press thing?” he said.

  Jenn grinned.

  “Go ahead, Mike,” Jenn said. “Take a break in the van. I’ll just talk with Jesse.”

  The cameraman picked up his camera and went out. Jenn sat across from Jesse.

  “Very impressive,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Riding in with the little kids. Introducing them. Made the protesters look foolish,” Jenn said.

  Jesse nodded again.

  “I kind of liked it also,” Jenn said, “when Molly stomped on that woman’s foot.”

  “Molly being Molly,” Jesse said.

  “I am woman, hear me roar,” Jenn said.

  “I suspect Molly would be Molly with or without feminism,” Jesse said.

  Jenn nodded.

  “I like her,” Jenn said.

  “I like her, too,” Jesse said.

  “What do you suppose the protesters really want in all of this?” Jenn said.

  “We on the record here, Jenn?”

  “I’d like to be,” Jenn said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “No comment,” he said.

  Jenn leaned back a little in her chair and looked at Jesse with her head tilted to the side. Her summer dress had slid up to mid-thigh. Her legs were tan. Jesse felt the feeling. He had felt the feeling for such a long time now that it was nearly routine. Sometimes he thought it was the only feeling he had.

  “Okay, then,” Jenn said. “Off the record.”

  “First, a question for you,” Jesse said. “How’d you happen to be there.”

  “It’s news,” Jenn said with a smile. “A lawyer named Blake called us up and informed us of that.”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “They actually think if they get coverage,” Jenn said, “they’ll get sympathy.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Maybe a little out of touch,” Jesse said. “They probably have a couple of problems with the Crowne estate project. Neither of which, as you may have observed, is traffic.”

  “Hell,” Jenn said. “Our van took up as much space as your bus.”

  “It did,” Jesse said. “One of their problems is they fear a decrease in the value of real estate around the school. And if everybody is like them, the real estate next to a school for disadvantaged children will be harder to sell. And they think that everybody is like them. Or at least everybody who counts.”

  “They do seem insular,” Jenn said.

  “Most people are.”

  “What’s their other problem?” Jenn said.

  “They don’t want a bunch of low-class wetbacks moving into Paradise.”

  “Simple bigotry?” Jenn said.

  “It’s almost always that,” Jesse said, “when you wipe away the bullshit.”

  “Wow,” Jenn said. “Cynical, cynical, cynical.”

  “I like to think of it as profiting from the learning experience,” Jesse said.

  “May I use any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was off the record,” Jesse said. “Feel free to use anything I said on the record.”

  “The only thing you said on the record was ‘no comment.’”

  “Feel free,” Jesse said.

  16.

  Mostly Molly ran the front of the police station, but she had persuaded Jesse to allow her, at least once a week, to take a shift on patrol. Jesse had not wanted her shift to be at night. But after Molly explained that he was treating her like a woman, not a cop, and that she was both and should be treated as both, Jesse put her out every couple of weeks, at night, in one of the two patrol cars.

  Tonight she was cruising Paradise Neck. She liked the night patrol. Every night would be awful. She’d never see her husband or her kids. But once every couple of weeks it was very soothing. She felt safe enough. Paradise was hardly a war zone. She also had a .40-caliber handgun, Mace, a nightstick, a radio, and the shotgun locked to the dashboard.

  She smiled. Armed to the teeth.

  She passed a pickup truck parked on Ocean Street. White-collar affectation, she thought. Riding in the soft darkness, she could think about things like white-collar affectation. She could worry about her children. She could ponder what would become of them. She could think about her husband and herself when the kids had grown. She giggled to herself. She could think about Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow. She shook her head. She had never cheated on her husband. Probably never would. If she did, it would probably be with Jesse, and not an Apache gunman. And even if she wanted to cheat with Jesse, she was not sure he’d allow it. He had so many little rules. Which, she said to herself, is one of the reasons you find him attractive in the first place.

  As she rounded a curve on Ocean Street she saw dimly a man coming down the front walk of one of the big houses that overlooked the Atlantic on the outer side of the Neck. It was 3:10 in the morning. She slowed when she saw him. He paused in the shadow of a shrub and waited. She drove slowly past. Around the next bend she U-turned and drove back. The man was walking back down Ocean Street toward where she’d seen the pickup truck. He was a big man, and his walk looked familiar. She pulled up beside him and looked. Then she pulled ahead and parked and lowered her window.

  “Suitcase Simpson,” she said. “You get right in this cruiser, right now.”

  Suitcase said, “Hi, Molly,” and got in beside her.

  “That your truck up ahead?” Molly said.

  “Yep.”

  “Was that Miriam Fiedler’s house you were coming out of when I passed you before and you tried to hide in the bushes?”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” Suitcase said.

  “You were, too, and it is Miriam Fiedler’s house,” Molly said.

  Suitcase shrugged.

  “You doing some off-duty security work?” Molly said.

  Suitcase looked at her and grinned.

  “No,” he said. “I was banging Mrs. Fiedler.”

  “Suit,” Molly said, “you dog.”

  Suitcase smiled and nodded.

  “Where’s Mr. Fiedler?”

  “He travels,” Suit said, “a lot.”

  “Weren’t you, in your elegant phrase, banging Hasty Hathaway’s wife a few years back?”

  “I was,” Suit said.

  “And not embarrassed about it,” Molly said.

  “She was hot,” Suit said.

  “And Mrs. Fiedler?” Molly said. “With the teeth?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Suit said.

  “You together often?” Molly said.

  “Whenever Mister goes traveling.”

  “Which is often.”

  “Often enough,” Suitcase said.

  “You think there’s any conflict of interest here?” Molly said. “We’re sort of opposing her efforts to keep the Latinos out of the Crowne estate.”

  “Sleeping with the enemy?” Suit said.

  “You might say that,” Molly said.

  “We don’t talk about the Crowne estate when we’re together.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Sex stuff,” Suit said.

  “Jesus,” Molly said.

  She stopped the cruiser beside Suit’s truck.

  “You want to hear what she says when we’re in bed together?” Suit said.

  “Good God, no,” Molly said. “I’m already horrified.”

  “It’ll be our secret, though, right, Moll?” Suit said. “Chief might not like it.”

  “He’s nobody to disapprove,” she said. “I’m surrounded by a bunch of billy goats.”

  Suit got out of the cruiser. He leaned his head back in through the open door.
<
br />   “Mum’s the word, Moll?” he said

  “Mum,” Molly said.

  Suit closed the door and got in his truck.

  As she drove away, Molly giggled.

  “Miriam Fiedler,” she said aloud. “Oh, my sweet Jesus.”

  17.

  The sun shining through the window made a long, bright splash on the far wall of Dix’s office. Dix was at his desk. As always, he was immaculate. His white shirt gleamed. His bald head shone. The crease in his gray slacks could have been used to sharpen pencils. His cordovan loafers gleamed darkly.

  “Why do you suppose she’s like that?” Jesse said to Dix.

  “Sounds as if her career matters to her,” Dix said.

  “More than I do,” Jesse said.

  Dix shrugged.

  “She’s still pursuing the career,” he said.

  “And not me,” Jesse said.

  “Is that true?” Dix said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “She does still pursue me.”

  Dix nodded. The air-conditioning made its quiet sound.

  “Maybe she wants both,” Dix said.

  “I don’t see why they’d be mutually exclusive,” Jesse said.

  Dix was quiet. It was always amazing to Jesse how still Dix could be, and yet how clearly his stillness could speak. Jesse knew that in the language of psychotherapy, Dix was asking him to examine that issue.

  “Do you?” Jesse said.

  “I only know what you tell me,” Dix said.

  “The hell you do,” Jesse said.

  “I only know about you and about Jenn by listening to what you tell me about you and about Jenn.”

  “And bringing to bear thirty years of training and experience to interpret what you heard,” Jesse said.

  Dix smiled and tipped his head in acceptance.

  “We won’t divert ourselves with the difference between knowing and interpreting,” Dix said. “Let’s just agree that my innocence is a fiction that is useful to the process.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “What you know, if you’re a cop, is that what people say needs to be compared to what they do.”

  Dix seemed to nod.

  “So,” Jesse said, “Jenn left me to pursue her career but never quite let go, and has ricocheted between me and her career ever since.”