Fool's Paradise

by Mike Lupica

  “Maybe it was the wrong address,” Lily said.

  “Or not.”

  “Dog with a bone,” Lily said.

  “Canine police,” Jesse said.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jesse and Lily and Karina Torres sat in Lily’s living room, the terrace doors opened wide. A small army of landscapers were at work on the back lawn, tending to trees and privet and Lily Cain’s own botanical gardens, and grass that looked to be in better shape than the field at Fenway Park.

  Jesse hadn’t known what to expect from a woman who was effectively Whit Cain’s nanny at this point, for whatever time he had left. He hadn’t expected someone as attractive as Karina Torres. A knockout. Were you still allowed to think of women as knockouts? Probably, just as long as you didn’t say it to her face.

  She had long, thick black hair, pale skin, and eyes as blue and bright as Lily Cain’s. Jesse wondered if Torres might be a married name. She wore a lemon-colored summer dress and sat next to Lily on a long leather couch, knees pressed together, hands clasped in her lap.

  Whit Cain, she’d told Jesse, was napping.

  “He sleeps quite a lot these days,” she said.

  “Even though he isn’t much more alert when he’s awake,” Lily said.

  Karina didn’t move her head, but seemed to give Lily a brief, sidelong look with her eyes.

  “He has good days and bad days,” Karina said.

  “Don’t we all,” Jesse said.

  He smiled at her. She did not smile back.

  Karina said, “I hate that you wasted time coming over here, Chief Stone. But I already told Mrs. Cain that I had no contact with this man on the night he died.”

  “You don’t know him?” Jesse said.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I do not.”

  “And you would have heard the phone if he’d tried to call from the gate?” Jesse said.

  “Not after I turned it off that night,” she said.

  “What time would that have been?” Jesse said.

  “Perhaps sometime around ten?” she said. “Or perhaps before that.”

  “Don’t you think it odd,” Jesse said, “that he’d come out here and then not try to contact somebody inside the house? He was picked up in Marshport around eight forty-five. He would have been here twenty minutes later. Half-hour, tops.”

  “We might have gone to bed at nine that night,” Karina said. “I wish I could be more specific, Chief Stone. But it varies from night to night.”

  “He could have been coming to see somebody else who works here,” Jesse said.

  “But Mr. Cain and I were the only ones here,” Karina said. “Mrs. Cain gave everybody else the night off.”

  “Paul Hutton would have had no way of knowing that,” Jesse said.

  “But who would he have been coming to see on a Saturday night?” Lily said.

  “Trying like hell to figure that out,” Jesse said.

  Lily was wearing a long robe, her silver-blond hair slicked back, as if she’d just finished a swim before Jesse arrived. Or showered after a run. Another knockout, he thought, even at her age, thirty years older at least than the woman sitting next to her.

  But calling Lily a knockout to her face would probably make her whole damn day.

  Jesse smiled again. Lily smiled. Karina acted as if she’d much rather be upstairs listening to a dying man snore.

  “You’re sure you don’t know this man?” Jesse said.

  “Mrs. Cain showed me the picture,” Karina said. “I have never met him in my life. Since I came to work here and before that.”

  “How did you come to work for the Cains?” Jesse said.

  “How is that possibly relevant to the murder?” Lily said.

  “Just curious,” he said.

  Lily put a hand on Karina’s knee and took charge here. Lady of the manor.

  “It was after Whit’s first mild stroke, last spring,” she said. “He’d planned on spending the whole winter in Palm Beach, anyway, and decided that would be a much better place for him to rehab. I needed to be back here. So I reached out to a quite reputable visiting nurse service, recommended by some friends. Karina was the one they sent for the interview.” Lily turned and smiled at her. “It obviously didn’t hurt, once Whit met her, that she’s obviously quite stunning.”

  Sure.

  She could say it.

  “He was in better shape then, even after the stroke?” Jesse said.

  “The decline over the past several months,” Lily said, “has been rather precipitous.”

  “But has turned him into a sweet man,” Karina said.

  “About fucking time,” Lily said.

  The f-word seemed to jolt Karina Torres slightly.

  “He keeps saying that he doesn’t know how long he’s supposed to live,” Karina said. “I tell him to not worry about such things. And there are still the days when he is very much himself.”

  “Is it possible that Paul Hutton may have had some personal business with Whit, Lily?” Jesse said.

  “What could that possibly have been?” Lily said.

  “Maybe I could ask him sometime,” Jesse said. “On a good day.”

  “I’d have to ask my husband,” Lily said.

  Jesse turned back to Karina and said, “Was it difficult, up and leaving Florida to move up here?”

  “There was nothing to keep me there,” she said.

  “Married, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “And I was, a long time ago. I was quite young.”

  “You’re still quite a young woman,” Jesse said.

  “I was a girl,” she said.

  They all heard a buzzing sound. Karina reached into the pocket of her dress and came out with a phone.

  “He’s awake,” she said, and stood.

  She looked at Jesse.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Not right now,” Jesse said.

  She walked past Jesse and toward the stairs in the foyer. The foyer alone was bigger than Jesse’s condominium. There had never been a single time when he’d visited this house when he didn’t want to ask Lily where the gift shop was.

  “Satisfied?” Lily said.

  “Rhetorical question?”

  “What were you hoping to find out here today, really?” she said.

  “Among other things, I’m trying to get Paul Hutton from here to the lake, where somebody shot him dead, Lily,” he said. “There’s some kind of connection to somebody here, whether you know what it is or not.” He grinned at her. “To put it in language you’ll understand, nothing else makes any fucking sense at all.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “And when you do make sense of it, I’m certain you’ll let me know. But for now, I’m going to send you on your way because my granddaughter is on her way over here. She’s taking one college course this summer, and wants help on the inglorious history of our inglorious family.”

  Jesse stood. “Inside or outside the statute of limitations?” he said.

  She laughed. “God,” she said, “I hope outside.”

  She stood. They were about the same height.

  “One more question,” Jesse said.

  “I would have expected nothing less.”

  “The guy was working and living down in Wellington, Florida, earlier this year,” Jesse said. “It’s only about a half-hour from Palm Beach, if that. Is there any chance at all that his path might have crossed with Whit’s somehow?”

  Lily Cain sighed.

  “Only if he looked the way Karina does in a summer dress,” she said.

  “Have fun with your granddaughter,” Jesse said as she walked him to the front door.

  “Despite who her father is,” Lily said, “she’s turned into a great kid.”

>   “Must get it from you,” Jesse said.

  She sighed again.

  “The endless mysteries of DNA,” she said.

  Twenty-Eight

  He was in Dix’s office, four in the afternoon, sunlight slashing through the blinds behind the desk. Dix’s bald head was gleaming, as always, as if he’d not only just shaved it, but buffed it. His long-sleeved white shirt looked as if it had just come out of a dry cleaner’s box. Jesse knew without having to look under the desk that the black shoes Dix liked to wear with his pressed jeans were as shiny as the top of his head. All in all, Dix made Vinnie Morris look as sloppy as Pigpen in the old Peanuts cartoons.

  He was tan, clear-eyed, curious, and attentive, the look on his face, no matter how serious the topic, making it seem as if everything in the world amused him, but only somewhat. From the start, Jesse had found it impossible to see him as the falling-down drunk he’d been when he’d been a cop.

  Dix had told himself that when it came to world-class drinking, he had retired with all the championship belts you could win. Belts, he said, being the operative word.

  There was only a blotter on the desk in front of him, and a brass lamp in the corner. No pens, no notebook, no landline. Just Dix’s hands in front of him, palms down. There was even a shine to his fingernails.

  They had spent some time today talking about Sunny, even though there had never been a single afternoon like this from when they started working together that Jesse had felt as comfortable talking about the women in his life as he did about copland, or drinking.

  Dix had asked him if he was happy being with her.

  “Very,” Jesse said.

  “She with you?”

  “All indications are that she is.”

  “Then don’t be a dick,” Dix said.

  “They teach you that language in Freud school?” Jesse said.

  “Variations.”

  He had told him about the assault on his department and the precautions he had taken, but how he’d rejected help from Lundquist.

  “You would, wouldn’t you?” Dix said.

  Finally Jesse got around to the Hutton investigation, all the way through his meeting with Lily Cain that morning.

  Dix asked if Jesse felt she was telling him the truth, and that the nurse was.

  “I did,” Jesse said.

  “And you’re usually such a suspicious-type person,” Dix said. “But let me ask you something, cop to cop: You ever find out that somebody you believed in the past was lying their ass off?”

  Jesse grinned.

  “Once or twice,” he said.

  “The old man spent time in Florida,” Dix said. “The nurse came from Florida. The dead guy lived in Florida. Until you find out there’s no connection, you have to assume there is one.”

  “Maybe we should switch seats,” Jesse said.

  They sat in silence, as if retreating briefly into their own interior selves. Jesse had once told Dix that, more than anybody he’d ever met, he knew who Jesse was, who he wasn’t. And who he was trying to be. On the other hand, Jesse only knew things about the man seated across from him that Dix wanted him to know, and things really only relevant to Jesse’s wellness, his sobriety.

  Jesse always knew when they were coming to the end of his fifty minutes, without checking his watch. They were there now. He hadn’t solved any of his own mysteries since he’d sat down across from Dix, but he felt better for having been here. Maybe Dix was right. Maybe he was becoming more assimilated.

  “I feel like I owe this guy,” Jesse said, “even though I met him just the one time.”

  “Because you both ended up in that room,” Dix said.

  “And because I know how hard it is to get there,” he said.

  “He got sober and then somebody killed him,” Dix said. “Doesn’t seem right.”

  Dix patted his hands gently on the blotter. Time was up.

  “Next week?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Jesse turned and walked toward the door.

  “Hey?” Dix said.

  Jesse turned.

  “If it was me,” he said, “I’d like to know a little bit about how the old man spent his time in Florida.”

  “Does that count toward next week’s session?” Jesse said.

  “On the house,” Dix said.

  He smiled, teeth as white as his shirt.

  When he got home and put his key in the front door, Jesse saw that it was already unlocked. He never left without locking the door behind him.

  He quietly turned the knob, gun already in his hand, and stepped into the room.

  Sunny had just come out of the bathroom, wearing only one of his big white bath towels.

  She smiled and dropped the towel and put her hands up.

  “I’m not armed,” she said.

  Twenty-Nine

  They were in his bed at twilight, windows open, shades partially drawn, the day having cooled as it became night, wind from the east making the ocean sound closer than it was. Sunny’s hand was on Jesse’s chest. She’d always said she liked to feel the beat of his heart after they made love. She had covered them with a sheet.

  “When did you decide this would happen?” Jesse said.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” she said.

  “You know how they talk about undecided voters during an election?” Jesse said. “I was never undecided.”

  She turned slightly, leaving her hand where it was, so she could get closer to him and put her head on his shoulder.

  “I feel like we’ve been slow-walking in this direction since I came up here,” Sunny said. “And I did talk to Richie today.”

  “He still in L.A.?”

  “Yes.”

  “You tell him where you were?”

  “I did.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “It started out badly,” she said. “Then devolved from there.”

  “He didn’t take your current, ah, proximity to me well?”

  “I’d spent a lot of time on the call listening to him tell me how happy his boy is out there,” she said. “How happy he was that they were all together. I finally asked how long he planned to stay. He said he wasn’t sure. Then he asked me how long I planned to stay here. I told him I was working a case, and that I wasn’t sure. He said, ‘Must feel like old times with you and Jesse.’ Or words to that effect. That’s when the devolving occurred.”

  “So this was revenge sex?” Jesse said.

  She couldn’t see him smiling. Maybe she heard it in his voice. She was smiling when she looked up at him and said, “What do you think, sailor?”

  He was still smiling. “Fucking well is the best revenge?” he said.

  “We’re still good together,” she said.

  “Only good?”

  “What is this,” Sunny said, “one of those product reviews with stars? We both know the worst sex we ever had was great.”

  They lay there in silence. Sunny reached up with her hand and put it to Jesse’s lips and he kissed it.

  “How long do you think Molly and Suit will be at dinner?” Jesse said.

  “I told her I’d call.”

  “They know this was a conjugal visit?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Sunny said.

  Jesse laughed. He hadn’t laughed much lately. Didn’t laugh much, period. It felt good, she felt good, they felt good.

  “I told Dix today that being with you made me happy,” Jesse said. “Or as happy as I can be.”

  “Low bar,” Sunny said.

  “No shit.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “he told me I should try not to be a dick about this.”

  Sunny giggled. “Dix talked about dicks?” she said. “You think he appreciated the irony of that?”

  “Dix prett
y much appreciates the irony of everything,” Jesse said. “Life, mostly.”

  “Yours?”

  “Everybody’s,” he said.

  He leaned over and kissed her hair.

  “Have I ever told you I find the smell of your hair intoxicating?”

  “Pretty fancy notion there, Chief.”

  “I have my moments.”

  “Whatever turns you on,” she said. “Intoxicatingly.”

  “Is that a word?”

  “Is now.”

  They lay there in silence again. It seemed to Jesse that the sound of the waves had grown louder.

  “I just want you to know that I’m up here as long as you need me,” Sunny said.

  “Want you or need you?”

  “Either way.”

  Just like that, the sheet was off them and she was on top of him, their faces close, her hair falling into his eyes.

  “Which one do you suppose it is right now?” Sunny said. “Want or need?”

  “Either way,” Jesse said.

  Then neither of them spoke for a long time.

  An hour later Jesse was cooking them up eggs and bacon when Lundquist called.

  “We may have your bomber,” he said.

  Thirty

  The other two Paradise High boys involved with Bo Marino in the rape of Candace Pennington were named Troy Drake and Kevin Feeney. The three of them had raped her and photographed her and threatened to shame her.

  One of Molly’s daughters had run into one of Bo Marino’s old football teammates at a party a few months ago, and said Bo was living in Maine now. Kevin Feeney was back in Paradise, running a small business called KF Audio Visual Services.

  Troy Drake was now sitting in Jesse’s office.

  Jesse hadn’t seen him since he’d played the three punks off against one another, before they’d all gotten off with community service because of good lawyering and because they were minors. Bo had gotten kicked off the Paradise High football team and lost any chance at a college scholarship. After the incident with Candace Pennington, Feeney had gone off to boarding school.