“What happened to you?” she said.
He shook his head, thinking of repeating the battered-wife lies he’d heard a hundred times and never believed. I banged into a cabinet. I fell down a few stairs. Instead, he repeated another pat line he had used before.
“You should’ve seen the other guy.”
She walked right up to him, placed her hand gently under his chin, and turned his head so that she could get a good look at the right side of his face.
“Don’t see many black eyes on the outside of the eye. Your cheek’s a little swollen, too. Does it hurt?”
“Only my pride,” he said.
“You’re just full of clichés today.”
“I could’ve said ‘Only when I laugh.’”
“You could have, but that would only have made you seem like an even bigger ass.”
He wagged his finger at her. “Rank, Crane! Rank.”
“That would have made you seem like an even bigger ass, Chief.”
“Better.”
But Molly wasn’t smiling. “Enough, Jesse. What really happened?”
“The guys on the softball team were reenacting the Battle of Hastings.”
Her face clenched. “I don’t know why I bother.”
“Because you love me,” Jesse said.
“Love means straight answers.”
“Vic Prado’s wife left him and he had to take his frustration out on somebody. And before you ask, yes, he looks much worse.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“He also confided to me that he thought you were pretty hot.”
Molly tried unsuccessfully not to smile.
She said, “What are you going to tell the rest of the department?”
“Nothing. I’m the boss of them.”
“What do you want me to tell them? Because you know they’re going to come to me.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Be creative, just not too creative.”
She was smiling broadly when she went back to her desk, but it wasn’t long before she was on the intercom.
“You miss me already, Crane?”
“Dream on, Boss. It’s the chief of the Helton PD for you, line one.”
Jesse pressed line one and picked up. “Jesse Stone.”
“Morning, Chief Stone. Ralph Carney here, chief of the Helton PD.”
“Too many chiefs. Let’s go with Ralph and Jesse. Okay with you, Ralph?”
“Works for me.”
“What can I do for you, Ralph?”
“Wanted to let you know that the accident investigation has been completed on the incident involving your Officer Weathers. How’s he doing, by the way?”
“He’s smashed up pretty bad, but the good news is he’ll recover. He’ll be getting transferred over to Paradise General soon as his concussion symptoms have cleared. Thanks for asking.”
“Not at all. Miracle he survived at all, given the severity of the accident. Also wanted to tell you that the blood analysis showed no alcohol in his system, so he’s clear. And you can send someone to come pick up your guy’s personal effects.”
Alarms were going off in Jesse’s head.
“Ralph, what’s up? I appreciate the courtesy of your call, but chiefs don’t usually call other chiefs about a simple car accident.”
Chief Carney said, “What if it wasn’t simple or an accident?”
“If you wanted my full attention, you just got it. Want to explain?”
“I think maybe it would be better if you came over to Helton sometime today so we could have a private chat and I could show you Weathers’s car.”
“Okay, give me a few hours to clear some of my work. I’ll call ahead to give you a heads-up.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Jesse stared at his phone for several seconds after he hung up. He wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation he’d just had. That was okay, he would have his curiosity satisfied when he got to Helton. Without thinking, he reached for his glove and ball, which were still sitting on his desk from the previous evening. He stopped himself. A lot of what Vic had said to him while they were drinking was bullshit, but not all of it. Jesse thought that maybe it was time to stop looking at his poster of Ozzie Smith and time to take a good long look in the mirror.
54
This time they didn’t meet at Burt’s All-Star Grill in Helton but at a rest stop on the interstate between Paradise and Boston. Harlan Salter IV was equally out of place at the rest stop as he was at Burt’s. He wasn’t a man who frequented grills or rest stops or did the kinds of things most people did. He made money and liked to sail. He tolerated his older boys and his wife. He enjoyed a bowl of good pipe tobacco, savored a glass of aged single-malt scotch, liked to fantasize about women he would consider cheap. He detested Vic Prado. Monty Bernstein’s eyes got wide as Prado approached their table.
“Did the person whom you procured do that to him?” Salter said to his lawyer.
“I don’t think so. His reputation is that when he does a job, the victim no longer moves among the living. Vic Prado must have other enemies.”
“No doubt a lengthy and comprehensive list.”
Prado came to their table. As wrecked as he had looked from across the food court, he looked even worse up close. His face was swollen and bruised, though not quite as badly as Ben Salter’s. There were heavy purple bags under his eyes that blended into the bruising from his nose. He reeked of sweat and whiskey. His jacket sleeve was torn and the rest of his clothes looked as if he had slept in them. For the first time since Prado had approached Harlan Salter at a hedge fund managers’ meeting in Chicago the year before, Salter took some pleasure at the sight of this man he hated.
Prado, a large to-go cup of coffee in his shaky right hand, slid in across from Bernstein and Salter.
Monty couldn’t contain himself. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I pinched a nun’s ass and God hit me with a lightning bolt,” Prado said. “Does it matter?”
For some reason it mattered to Harlan Salter IV. “Yes, it does. If you don’t want us to walk out of this meeting, please answer Mr. Bernstein’s question.”
Under any other set of circumstances, Vic would have told the prune-faced Brahmin to go shove it. But he was still fairly nauseated and his headache was in crescendo. He just wanted to get it over with.
“Jesse Stone,” he said. “We got into it last night.”
Monty had liked and respected Jesse Stone from the first. Vic’s face reinforced Monty’s faith as a judge of character. Salter gloated quietly.
“You summoned us here,” Monty said. “I’m not sure I see the point, given—”
“Please, Counselor, enough,” Vic said, reaching into his jacket for the envelope Mike Frazetta had given him.
“My client isn’t signing anything else. We did as you asked. And Mr. Salter’s son has been—”
“For crissakes, Bernstein, shut up!” Vic said too loudly. People at surrounding tables turned to stare at him. When they turned back, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Consider this a gesture of apology from me and my partners.” He opened the envelope and showed the papers to the men across the table from him. He then proceeded to rip the papers into confetti. “Our partnership is dissolved.”
Monty was skeptical. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Prado brushed his palms together twice. “Coastline Consultants can go back to doing business as usual. You have my word that we won’t disclose any information we have about your prior questionable practices. We are sorry about the girl and your son. Believe me when I tell you that we didn’t mean for anything to play out this way.”
“Believe me when I tell you to go fuck yourself,” Salter said, his voice an angry growl. He was shoving the stem of his pipe into V
ic Prado’s chest. He was nearly as shocked by his words and actions as Prado and Bernstein. “My son was nearly beaten to death and an eighteen-year-old girl was murdered in cold blood and I am supposed to simply say thank you and smile and move on? Unlikely, sir. Very unlikely indeed.”
Now it was Vic’s turn to make some threats. He leaned across the table. “Listen to me, Salter. You do anything but say thank you, smile, and move on, and what happened to your son and that girl will look like a sunny Sunday at the state fair. To paraphrase one of my partners, we’ll dismantle the Salter family tree one branch at a time. And since Ben is already damaged, we’ll start with him and work our way through the rest of you. Believe me when I tell you this isn’t an idle threat. It ends here or it’s an end to you and your whole fuckin’ clan. Consider yourself warned. Your choice.”
Prado slid himself away from the table and left.
In the car on the way back into Paradise, Monty Bernstein decided his client had sufficiently calmed down to have a rational conversation.
“Do you want me to call off the hounds now that you’re out of it,” he said.
Salter stared at his lawyer as if he had just sprouted a second head. “Are you mad? Of course not. I spit on their gesture.”
“Why borrow trouble? You have your company back. Your son is safe and he will recover in time.”
“Because, Mr. Bernstein,” he said, holding the bowl of his lit pipe and pointing the stem at Monty, smoke leaking upward out of the tip, “there is a price to be paid.”
“Yes, I know. The girl, but—”
“It’s not about the girl. What do I care about some girl? No, balance needs to be restored. A bill is due and someone must pay with their blood. I want it to be Prado’s blood and I want to be there to see the remittance.”
“Harlan, I need to advise against this. You heard Prado, his partners will—”
“You may be very good at your job, Monty. In fact, I’ve no doubt of it, but I am very good at mine, too. That Prado was forced by his partners to come crawling to me to beg forgiveness should tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
Salter drew in a lungful of smoke and let it escape slowly from between his thin, crooked lips. A damp, smoked-cherry aroma filled the air. “They will be as happy to see Prado gone as I will. They won’t lift a finger against me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent me a bouquet and a thank-you card for having him excised.”
“Still, Harlan, I have to advise against it. Innocent people are going to get hurt here. Why put yourself in danger of the blowback?”
“The innocence threshold has already been crossed. Loss of innocence is often the price of doing business.”
“It’s a dirty business.”
“Something you know intimately, Mr. Bernstein, dirty business.” Salter smiled an icy smile at his attorney. “As I recall, it was you who knew how to contact this man who would collect the debt, not me.”
“That may be true, Harlan. But I’m asking you to please reconsider.”
But Harlan Salter was no longer listening to Monty. He was staring out the Navigator’s back window, imagining Vic Prado’s screams of agony.
55
Like hardware stores and sporting-goods shops, garages were places in which men seemed genetically predestined to feel at ease. Whether they knew a lug wrench from a pipe wrench, football cleats from a hammer claw, or a fuel injector from a smoke detector was beside the point. Jesse was no exception to the rule. A kind of beatific smile flashed across his face as he stepped into the Helton Police Department Garage and Motor Pool. If asked, he couldn’t have said what it was exactly that triggered his involuntary smile. Maybe it was the smell of the place: the metallic tang of glowing hot welds, the earthy scent of used motor oil, the distinct odor of new tires, the cloying chemical aroma of fresh paint. Maybe it was the sights of the garage: cars up on hydraulic lifts, engines suspended in midair on chain hoists, men in dirty coveralls wiping sweat from their brows with grease-blackened sleeves. Or maybe the sounds: the snap and crackling of sparks from the welders, the insistent drone and chatter of pneumatic tools, the thump thump thump of tires bounced against the concrete floor. Whatever the reason, Jesse felt a level of comfort, a kind of mindless ease he seldom experienced anymore.
The garage was on Park Place around the back of police headquarters. Chief Ralph Carney, decked out in full dress blues, shiny black shoes, and a classic cop hat. His hat had more cabbage on it than a local farm. It was a match for General MacArthur’s, and that was saying something. At least Carney had forgone the white gloves. Jesse felt like a slob next to his Helton counterpart. After shaking hands, Carney asked Jesse about the bruises.
“What happened to you? Nice shiner you’re working on.”
“Long story not worth the time. In any case, Ralph, how could you even notice my face with all those shiny brass buttons on that uniform. What do you wear when the governor passes through town, one of Liberace’s capes?”
“I knew you were gonna say something. Don’t get bigheaded. This getup isn’t for you. I had to give a speech over at the high school and the town requires me to do the fancy-Dan routine when I make official public appearances.”
“Paradise is a little more relaxed about my dress code, but I have to get on the blues once in a while myself. Ralph, somehow I don’t figure you called me down here just to see you in your dress blues, as sharp as you look in them.”
“Nope. C’mon with me.”
Jesse followed Chief Carney through the garage, past the paint booth, to a separate area. It was a much quieter space, full of mostly wrecked vehicles. Some with evident splotches of dried blood on their cracked windshields and side windows. Jesse spotted Gabe Weathers’s smashed-up Honda Civic almost immediately. Standing next to Gabe’s car was a large, officious-looking man wearing safety glasses and a Helton PD windbreaker. When Jesse and Chief Carney came into view, the man in the windbreaker grabbed a flat and ripped tire out from behind the Civic. He rested the tire against his leg and waited.
“That’s Paul Bynam, our lead accident investigation guy,” said Carney.
Jesse was impressed. “We’ve only got one person who does accident investigation.”
“So do we.” Carney laughed, covering his mouth with his hand. “You know how some people just got to have a title and their own little kingdom?”
“I do.”
“Then you understand Paul. Don’t get me wrong, Jesse. He’s very good at his job. Got all kinds of awards and certificates. He’ll explain it all to you.”
Carney made the introductions. Jesse waited.
“Okay, Paul,” Carney said. “Walk Chief Stone through it.”
Bynam said, “When there’s an accident in this jurisdiction on a municipal thoroughfare or a section of state road that—”
“Cut to the chase, Paul. Jesse is a chief of police. He doesn’t need the prerequisites.”
“Understood, Chief,” Bynam said and then turned to Jesse. “When we first got your officer’s vehicle in here, our working theory about the cause of the accident was that he was traveling at a high rate of speed and had a blowout. This caused him to lose control of the vehicle, resulting in the vehicle hitting the median and flipping over.”
Chief Carney rolled his hands, motioning for Bynam to speed it up.
“However, when I got around to examining the rubber on your guy’s vehicle, I noticed that the tires were not only of high quality, but basically brand-new. I found a receipt in the glove box for the tires that indicated the rubber had less than two thousand miles’ wear on them. I checked the data on blowouts on these tires and discovered that they almost never occurred. So I immediately began to search the blown tire for indications of penetration by a foreign body.”
“Road debris,” Jesse said. “A nail, glass, something like that.”
Bynam’s face
lit up. “Exactly. We removed the tire from the rim.”
Chief Carney prompted his man. “And . . .”
“Right, Chief. And we found this.” Bynam handed Jesse a sealed evidence bag with a small piece of metal inside.
Jesse’s expression took a serious turn. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Ballistics tells me it’s a twenty-two,” said Carney. “It’s been distorted by the rim.”
“Someone shot out my man’s tire.”
Carney nodded. “Looks that way, Jesse.” He turned to Bynam. “That’ll be all, Paul. Great work, but I need a minute with Chief Stone, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes,” Jesse said, “you did good here. Thank you.”
Bynam bowed slightly, leaned the tire back against the car, retreated to a small office, and closed the door.
“You see why I called you down here now, right, Jesse?”
“Absolutely. This is no longer a simple accident, but possibly attempted murder.”
“So you see where I’m going with this?” Carney said.
“You’re going to launch a full criminal investigation.”
“Already launched.” He handed Jesse a business card. “Detective Lino Basquet, silent t, is in charge. He’ll be in touch.”
“He’ll want to know what Gabe was doing here in the first place. Whether it was official business,” Jesse said, frowning.
“Problem?”
Jesse shrugged. “Maybe. I can tell you it was official. He was doing surveillance on a subject who is related to an ongoing homicide investigation.”
Carney nodded. “The girl?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Terrible thing. I read up on what was going on in Paradise when Bynam came to me about the twenty-two slug in your man’s tire. Any progress on the case?”
“We got the kid back, but we’ve hit a dead end on the murder. I’ve got a theory about it, but that’s all it is at the moment.”
Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot Page 18
