Jesse nodded. And then quite suddenly she began to cry. For a moment it seemed to surprise her, and she sat perfectly still with the tears falling. Then she bent forward and put her face in her hands and cried some more. Jesse stood and put a hand gently on her shoulder. She shrank from it, and he took it away. I know the feeling, he thought. Sometimes you don’t want to be comforted.
“Maybe we can work something out,” Jesse said.
He turned and walked down the veranda steps and across the driveway to his car.
Like what?
61.
Esteban was on the vinyl-covered chaise, watching Jerry Springer, when his cell phone rang. He muted the television and answered. Three of the Horn Street Boys were watching with him, passing a bottle of sweet white wine among them. Smoking grass.
“It’s Amber,” a voice said.
“Yeah?” Esteban said. “So what?”
“I’m bored.”
“Yeah?” Esteban said.
He grinned at his friends and made a pumping movement with his free hand.
A skinny Horn Street Boy with tattoos up and down both arms mouthed the word Alice? Esteban nodded and made the pumping gesture again.
“Don’t you want to know where I am?” Amber said.
“I got no interest in you,” Esteban said.
“I miss you,” Amber said.
“Yeah?”
“I could see you if you promise not to send me back.”
“Yeah? Where are you?”
She giggled.
“I’m at the police chief’s house,” she said. “In Paradise.”
“No shit,” Esteban said.
He was still watching the soundless television as he talked to her. The Horn Street Boys who were watching with him didn’t like it when he muted the television. But Esteban was the man, and no one argued with him.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m thinking about how to kill Crow,” Esteban said.
“If I help you, can I come back and you won’t send me to Florida?”
“You walked out on me, bitch. Nobody walks out on me.”
“I got Crow’s cell phone number,” she said. “I could call him, ask him to meet me, tell him I needed help. He’d come.”
“And when he got there…” Esteban said.
“You and the other guys…” Amber said.
“Ka-boom,” Esteban said.
“If I do that, can I come back and not go to my father?”
Esteban paused, watching the soundless Jerry Springer show.
“It’ll go a long way,” Esteban said. “A long way.”
“I miss you,” she said.
“You banging the chief?” Esteban said, and grinned at the other Boys.
“God, no, there’s a couple cops here all day, and the chief and his ex-wife are here at night,” Amber said. “They don’t even let me smoke in the house.”
“Must be pretty horny by now,” Esteban said.
“I’m dying to see you,” Amber said.
“Set that thing up with Crow,” Esteban said. “Let me know.”
“Where should I meet him?” Amber said. “He knows I’m in Paradise.”
“Okay, meet him on that bridge thing, or whatever they call it that leads out to where we dumped your old lady.”
“The causeway,” Amber said.
“Tell him you’ll meet him there,” Esteban said. “He’s got no cover out there, so we can come at him from the other side, drive by, and waste him without even stopping.”
“In the middle?”
“Right in the middle,” Esteban said.
“That’s what I’ll say,” Amber said. “I love you.”
“Sure, baby, love ya, too,” Esteban said. “Call me back.”
He broke the connection and sat back on the chaise for a time with the television still muted. The others in the room watched him but didn’t speak. Then he picked up his cell phone, punched up a number, pressed send, and waited.
“This is Esteban Carty,” he said. “Let me speak to Louis Francisco…. He knows who I am…. Tell him he needs to call me…. That’s right, he needs to…. I can maybe give him Crow and his daughter, at ten each…. Anytime. The sooner he calls, the sooner he knows the deal.”
He shut off the cell phone and looked around the room.
“How does ten thousand each sound?” he said.
62.
Crow strolled into Jesse’s office and sat down.
“You know this town better than I do,” Crow said. “Is there any place worse to meet someone secretly than the middle of the causeway?”
“The causeway to the Neck?”
“In the middle,” Crow said.
“I can’t think of any place worse,” Jesse said.
Crow nodded thoughtfully. Jesse waited.
“Got a message on my cell,” Crow said. “From Amber Francisco. Says she’s run off from your place and is in trouble and needs my help.”
Jesse nodded.
“Says she wants to meet me in the middle of the causeway as soon as possible,” Crow said. “And I should call her back and let her know.”
“You didn’t talk to her live,” Jesse said.
“Not yet,” Crow said. “What’s it sound like to you?”
“You’re being set up,” Jesse said.
He picked up the phone and called Molly.
“Where’s Amber,” he said.
“In the bedroom,” Molly said.
“Can you see her?”
“No,” Molly said. “The door’s closed.”
“Go open it,” Jesse said.
“Something up?”
“Just go look, Moll.”
There was no conversation for a moment, and then Molly came back on the line.
“She’s in there,” Molly said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“She’s currently bitching about privacy.”
“Let her shut the bedroom door,” Jesse said. “Have Suit move around so he can watch the windows of the bedroom and the bath. You stay where you can watch the bedroom door. Everywhere else, you keep her in sight.”
“What’s going on?” Molly said.
“I’m not sure,” Jesse said. “Just don’t nod off.”
He broke the connection and buzzed Arthur at the front desk.
“Who’s on patrol?” Jesse said.
“Maguire and Friedman,” Arthur said.
“Send them to my condo,” Jesse said. “And have them park where they can watch the front door. Molly’s inside, Suit’s out back. Nobody in. Nobody out.”
“Okay, Jesse.”
Jesse looked at Crow.
“She called Esteban,” Jesse said.
Crow nodded.
“For whatever reason,” Jesse said. “You know he’s got a contract on you.”
“He’s an idiot,” Crow said.
“To try to kill you for ten grand?”
“Ten grand,” Crow said, “is for drunken middle-aged broads.”
“We both know,” Jesse said, “that anyone can kill anyone. It’s a matter of how much they want to and what they’re willing to do.”
“Got something to do with how good the anyone is,” Crow said.
“Something,” Jesse said.
“I figure she gets me to meet her in the middle of the causeway,” Crow said. “Except she doesn’t show up, and Esteban and company drive by and shoot me full of holes.”
“And they’ll come from the Neck,” Jesse said. “Toward town, so if we respond quickly we can’t seal them in by blocking the causeway.”
Crow nodded.
“Her father came to visit me,” Jesse said.
“He’s in town.”
“Yep,” Jesse said. “Wants his daughter.”
“You tell Amber?” Crow said.
“No.”
“So we don’t know if Esteban knows he’s in town or not,” Crow said.
“W
e know that Esteban can get in touch with Francisco,” Jesse said.
Crow’s eyes brightened and he smiled.
“And if you were Esteban?” Crow said.
“I figure he knows where she is now,” Jesse said.
“She would have told him,” Crow said.
“And he knows how to get in touch with her father,” Jesse said. “And if I were Esteban, I might call Dad up and say for another ten big ones, I’ll deliver Crow and your daughter. One each, dead and alive.”
The two men sat quietly for a time in Jesse’s office, looking at nothing.
“Why would she call him?” Jesse said.
Crow grinned.
“Love?” he said.
Jesse shook his head. They sat some more.
Then Jesse said, “Are we thinking the same thing?”
Crow shrugged.
“What are you thinking,” Crow said.
“That if we manipulate this right, we might roll the whole show up at one time,” Jesse said.
“We, White Eyes?” Crow said.
Jesse nodded.
“I don’t know much about you, Crow,” Jesse said. “And most of what I know, I don’t understand. But I know you wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Crow smiled.
“Maybe that’s all there is to know,” he said.
63.
Crow sat on the seawall in the middle of the causeway, talking on his cell phone.
“Can you hang on a couple days?” he said. “I’m in Tucson.”
“I’m okay right now,” Amber said. “But I have to see you.”
“Couple days,” Crow said.
It was a bright day. The wind off the water was steady on his back. Across the causeway, the sailboats bobbed at their moorings.
“Can I meet you someplace?” Amber said.
“Sure,” Crow said. “As soon as I get back.”
“On the causeway?” she said. “Like in my message?”
“Sure. Sounds like a perfect place,” Crow said. “Can’t miss each other.”
“You promise?” Amber said.
“Soon as I get back. I’ll call your cell.”
“I hope you hurry,” Amber said. “You’re the only person I can trust.”
“Absolutely,” Crow said. “Couple days.”
“Okay.”
Crow closed the cell phone and put it away. He sat and looked around. It was a two-lane road. Traffic was slow. At the mainland end the road curved right, away from the ocean, shortly after it left the causeway, and vanished among the middle-market homes of East Paradise. At the point where the road reached Paradise Neck, at the other end of the causeway, it turned left and disappeared among the trees and shingled estates. Crow looked behind him. The seawall at this point dropped about five feet to a strip of rocky beach, maybe two feet wide, which dwindled from the full-fledged beach on the mainland side to nothing, maybe a hundred feet beyond him toward the Neck. It was high tide. Crow had already checked the tides. Crow stood and walked across the roadway. On this side the water of the harbor lapped against the base of the causeway. He would check it again at low tide. But he was pretty sure that the ocean side was better for his purposes. He went back and sat on the wall again on the ocean side. He looked to his right, toward the Neck.
They’d come from there. This wasn’t a smart group of people, but nobody was stupid enough to do a drive-by shooting and keep going into a dead end. So they’d linger up around the bend on Paradise Neck until he appeared and took his place, and then they would drive down along the causeway, presumably at a moderate pace, like everyone else on the causeway, and when they got opposite, someone would open up at him, probably from the back window, probably with at least a semiautomatic weapon. One issue, if there was any traffic, would be for him to distinguish which car was carrying the shooter.
Meanwhile, if they could pull this off, Francisco and friends would be coming from the mainland end. They would have scouted the location, and would know that going toward Paradise Neck was a road to nowhere. But they had no reason to worry about escape. They would simply drive out on the causeway from the mainland end, planning to pick up the daughter in the middle, and follow the circular road around the Neck and back.
The crucial moment would come when Francisco saw no daughter, and people shooting at Crow. If they could get the timing to come out right, it might work. But it seemed to Crow that it needed tweaking. It would work better if Francisco could see people shooting at his daughter. But that would be tricky. He knew Stone would never let the kid be used as a decoy. And since a lot of this was about protecting the kid, Stone was probably right. But it wasn’t all about protecting the kid. For Stone there was a case to close, maybe even some justice thing he cared about. For Crow there was the fun of it. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. With real guns and real bullets…Crow’s excellent adventure.
It would go better if there were a decoy. Dressed properly, from a moving car, over a short span, with a kid he hadn’t seen in several years, maybe a stand-in would work with Francisco. He looked slowly along the causeway, first toward the mainland, then toward the Neck. It wasn’t a long causeway. The reaction time would be pretty brief. This could get him killed. Or not. The uncertainty made the game.
Alone on the seawall, with the wind still steady on his back, Crow smiled happily. Hard to be a warrior if death wasn’t one of the options.
64.
In the back of Daisy’s Restaurant, there was a bedroom with a single bed, and a bathroom with a shower.
“I lived here when I first opened the restaurant,” Daisy said. “I was still single.”
“And how is the lovely Mrs. Dyke,” Jesse said.
“She’s great. And she’s starting to sell her paintings.”
“Good for her,” Jesse said.
“Makes her happy,” Daisy said. “Which makes me happy.”
“I got a kid,” Jesse said. “A runaway, fourteen, I think. Mother’s dead. Father’s a gangster. She doesn’t want to live with him. At the moment we’re taking care of her at my place.”
“We?”
“Jenn and me.”
“Congratulations,” Daisy said.
“It’s temporary,” Jesse said. “Molly can’t work twenty-four hours a day, and I can’t keep her there myself.”
“That would be your style,” Daisy said. “Sex with fourteen-year-old girls.”
“They’re so fun to talk with after,” Jesse said. “How about you?”
Daisy grinned. She was a big blonde woman with a round, red face and when she smiled like that it was as if a strong light went on.
“I’m an age-appropriate girl, myself,” she said.
“And the wife?” I said.
“Angela likes me,” Daisy said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “If I can make it work, I’m going to keep her from her father, and I’m looking for someplace to put her.”
“To raise?” Daisy said.
“No, to give her an option.”
“And you think Daisy Dyke is going to play Mother Courage?”
“She can work in the restaurant, sleep in the back. I’ll be responsible for her. Get her registered for school, take her to the doctor, whatever.”
Daisy stared at him.
“She old enough to get a work permit?”
“I think so,” Jesse said.
“Is she a pain?” Daisy said.
“You bet,” Jesse said.
“Might she run off anyway?”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said.
“And you think the town will feel much better about her living with two lesbians than they would about her living with you?”
“I think so,” Jesse said. “More important, though, I think it would be better for her.”
“Because a fourteen-year-old girl living alone with an unrelated man will tie herself into some kind of Oedipal knot?” Daisy said.
“You’re pretty smart for a queer cook,” Jesse said.
&n
bsp; “I used to see a shrink,” Daisy said. “When I was trying to figure out if I should be a lesbian.”
“Well, it must have worked,” Jesse said.
“I don’t seem ambivalent about it,” Daisy said, “do I.”
“I don’t know if this will happen,” Jesse said. “It won’t happen until I am sure her father will not present a problem for anybody.”
“This is a just-in-case,” Daisy said.
Jesse nodded.
“You want to discuss it with Angela?”
“No,” Daisy said. “I’ll do it.”
“Like that?”
“I’m not from here, Jesse, and neither are you,” Daisy said. “Neither one of us exactly belongs. And probably neither one of us ever will.”
Jesse shrugged.
“And I didn’t improve my chance for membership by marrying Angela Carlson,” Daisy said. “Of the Paradise Carlsons.”
“I think most people don’t give much of a damn one way or the other,” Jesse said. “Unless they’re running for office and their opponent is winning.”
Now Daisy shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said. “You may recall, I got some nasty feedback when I got married. But you’ve had problems of your own, and you do a tough job well, and ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been a decent and welcoming friend. I love it that you called me a queer cook.”
Jesse grinned.
“Can I take that as a yes?” Jesse said.
“You may,” Daisy said. “And to prove it I’ll give you the secret lesbian sign.”
She put her arms around Jesse and kissed him. Jesse hugged her for a moment and stepped back.
“You know,” he said, “we heteros have a similar sign.”
65.
Crow drove the length of the causeway and clocked the distance, and on the way back stopped to check the water level at low tide. There was a wide strip of sand and rocks on the ocean side, but still no footing on the harbor side. Okay. He’d be leaning on the ocean-side seawall. At the mainland end of the causeway, he pulled into the town parking lot by Paradise Beach and parked and flipped open his cell phone. He punched in a number and waited.
“It’s Crow,” he said when a voice answered. “Got a message for Francisco.”
Crow waited a moment, then spoke again.
“You call him what you want, and I’ll call him what I want. Tell him I got his daughter, and I’ve changed my mind. He can have her if the price is right.”
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