by Mike Lupica
“No college?” Molly said.
“In the end he didn’t even finish freaking high school,” he said. He closed his eyes, shook his head. “My only kid.”
“When you two were in contact after he left Paradise,” Molly said, “did he ever express a desire for revenge against Chief Stone or the rest of us?”
Marino barked out a laugh. The sound was as unlikely as if it had come from a pit bull.
“When it first happened? With the girl? All day and every day. Especially with Stone. Said if he’d been wearing a gun and not Stone when he was doing his community service, he would’ve shot him right there. Talked a lot about that. Maybe being the one with the gun someday.”
“And now somebody does take a shot at Chief Stone,” Molly said.
“And you think that after all these years, my kid has come back here looking to settle things with Stone and the rest of you?” Marino said.
“As Molly said,” Sunny said, “we’d just like to talk to him.”
She was wearing a short black skirt today, one that showed off her legs nicely. Sunny crossed them now. Molly watched Marino watch her do it. Maybe he wasn’t that worried about the Him Too movement after all.
“Fuck it,” he said.
He reached into the top drawer of his desk, came out with his cell phone, jabbed at it with stubby fingers. “What’s your number?” he said to Molly.
She gave it to him. Marino jabbed at the phone again and said he’d just texted her Bo’s address in Biddeford, and his cell phone number.
“When was the last time you were in contact with him?” Molly said.
“Christmas,” he said. “He called to tell me he’d stopped drinking.”
“Drinking a problem with him?” Molly said.
“One of several.”
Molly stood then. Sunny stood. Joe Marino stayed in his chair. He looked up at Molly.
“I don’t think he’d start a regular job and stop drinking and then do shit that would put him in jail for real this time,” Marino said.
“Then he has nothing to worry about,” Molly said. “Does he?”
She and Sunny turned to leave.
“Hey,” Marino said when they got to the door.
They turned back to him. He was addressing Molly again.
“Can you give your boss a message for me?” he said.
“Certainly,” Molly said.
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Marino said.
“First thing,” Molly said.
When they were outside, Sunny said, “You were only wrong about one thing.”
“What?”
“There can’t possibly be a bigger asshole in this town than him,” she said.
Thirty-Three
While Molly and Sunny were with Joe Marino, Jesse was at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord, seated across from Hasty Hathaway in the middle of the afternoon.
Hasty: former top guy on the Board of Selectmen in Paradise. Head of the Rotary Club. A pillar of the community who was also a tinhorn general in a cockeyed militia group called Freedom’s Horsemen. Currently serving twenty-five-to-life for the first murders Jesse had investigated in Paradise, before charging the guy who had hired him. He had been in the courtroom the day Hasty was convicted.
His first parole hearing had been the one at which Jesse testified. Hasty had been denied. Now here they were. Jesse had been surprised at the hearing that the geek he remembered seemed to be in much better shape on the inside than he ever had been on the outside. The warden had told him that Hasty ran his prison block the way Jesse had read that Bernie Madoff used to run his in North Carolina. Like he was still chairman of a board.
Jesse had told the guard he could uncuff him, that he’d never felt threatened by Mr. Hathaway when he could see him, but the guard said rules were rules, and he’d be right outside.
When the guard had shut the door Hathaway said, “The stones on you, coming to see me.” He smiled. “See what I did there? Stones?”
“Still a silver-tongued devil,” Jesse said.
“You must want something,” Hathaway said.
“You’ve got nothing I want, Hasty,” Jesse said. “But I would like you to answer a couple questions for me.”
“So you do want something,” Hathaway said. “I get a lot of that here. It’s more like Paradise than you’d think. Very transactional. Just with a better class of people.”
“Hope you’re not trading sexual favors for more phone time,” Jesse said.
“Fuck you, Stone.”
“Silver-tongued devil.”
“So what do you want?”
“You trying to have me killed again?” Jesse said. “At first you don’t succeed?”
“Been there. Done that. Didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped.” He swiveled his head around, as if taking in their surroundings.
“Thought you might have worked up a brand-new grudge because of the parole hearing,” Jesse said. “Almost like I put you away all over again.”
Hasty started to lift his hands, realized they were cuffed, put them back on the table.
“You know, I was thinking that day that you were the two biggest mistakes I ever made,” Hathaway said. “The first was hiring a drunk like you. The second was that I didn’t have you killed when I did have the chance.”
“Have to say getting me was a lot easier for you than getting rid of me.”
Hathaway shook his head. “Who knew I was hiring the last fucking boy scout? At least when you’d crawl out of the bottle and do your job.”
He smiled again. “Heard you got sober. That true?”
“Where’d you hear?”
“I hear a lot of things. You’d be surprised.”
“Hear that somebody tried to shoot me?”
“Heard they missed,” Hathaway said. “Good help’s hard to find these days. Even with the Horsemen.”
“Some of them still hanging on, Hasty?”
“You’d be surprised at that, too.”
“You send somebody after me and my cops?” Jesse said. “Looking to square the books once and for all?”
“From here?” Hathaway said. “I’m just here living my life, and doing my time. Thanks to you.”
He smiled again.
“I ever tell you about the bomb guys we recruited for the Horsemen, back in the day? Man, those were some gnarly fuckers.”
“You’d know.”
Hathaway was enjoying this.
“And I gotta say,” he said, “that even though that Molly of yours has some miles on her by now, she’s probably still one good-looking piece of ass.”
“I can check the visitors log and phone records,” Jesse said. “See who you’ve been talking to.”
“Kiss my ass,” Hathaway said. “You think if I did send somebody after you I’d leave bread crumbs? I’m getting older in here, Stone. Not dumber.”
“Surrounded by all the other geniuses who ended up in here.”
Hasty Hathaway leaned forward, liver-spotted hands in the cuffs. Jesse could see tattoos on both forearms.
“Why’d you really come here today?” he said. “Think I was going to confess to something you think I had done?”
“Just wanted to look you in the eyes when I asked.”
“Now you have,” he said. “So get the fuck out.”
“You know if you did have it done, I’ll find out.”
Hathaway laughed.
“And do what? Have me arrested and thrown in jail?”
They were done. They both knew it. Jesse got up, walked to the door, gave it a single rap with his knuckle. The door opened and the guard stepped back into the room.
“Hey, Stone,” Hathaway said.
Jesse turned around.
“You watch your back, you he
ar?” Hathaway said.
Thirty-Four
Molly and Sunny had dinner together at Molly’s house. Jesse had been invited to join them, and asked Sunny who was cooking. She asked what difference it made.
“A lot,” he said.
“Is that a reflection on my kitchen skills?”
“It is,” he said.
“Molly’s cooking, if that influences your thinking,” she said.
Jesse told her that while it did, he wanted to stay home and do some work on the Paul Hutton case.
“Got my book to keep me company,” he said.
They both knew he meant his murder book. He never made a big deal of it, but Molly and Suit and Gabe and Peter all knew he kept one. So, too, did Sunny. He kept the same kind of book he had when he’d worked Robbery Homicide. The only difference was that he used a Moleskine notebook now. Upscale.
“I know you,” Sunny said on the phone.
“Oh, boy,” he said.
“I mean, you think you’re missing something,” she said. “Even though you hardly ever miss anything.”
“Missing you right now.”
“I could call later and talk dirty to you on the phone,” Sunny said.
“Maybe we should pin down a time right now,” Jesse said.
Sunny said, “You think this Hathaway guy might be the one behind everything?”
“He’s a vindictive son of a bitch,” Jesse said. “And probably still thinks of himself as some kind of king rat, even from prison. But I got the sense that he just wanted me to think it was him, once he knew why I was there.”
She had put them on speaker.
“But we are going to check the visitors logs and his phone calls, right?” Molly said.
“Yes, sir.”
He had food delivered from a new fusion place a couple blocks from the station. He always ordered the Drunken Noodles. Another private joke.
Now he ate at the kitchen table and slowly went through the notes he had been taking on the unlined pages since Christina had found Paul Hutton’s body, all the way through his last meeting with Lily Cain.
Next to his notebook was a yellow legal pad.
In big letters he had once again written:
WHO WAS HE THERE TO SEE?
Underlined it.
If he knew that, it didn’t mean he’d know who shot Hutton in the back of the head on the other side of town. Wouldn’t mean he had the murder weapon, or motive. But he would know a hell of a lot more than he knew now.
He went back and started at the beginning. He read his notes on his meeting with Ellen Chagnon and Karen Boles, from Stony Hill Stables, struck again by how much of this seemed to run through Florida. Whit Cain had been there a lot. Karina had come from there. Hutton had worked there when he was still a drunk, but showed up in Paradise sober. Searching for someone or something. Talking about amends.
From whom?
For what?
Jesse also ended up back there, spinning his wheels.
He cleaned the table. Saved the leftovers. Thought about firing up the Keurig he kept near the coffeepot for a single cup. He’d finally given in and bought one for himself, though part of him was resistant to the whole idea. The Keurig made a perfect cup of coffee, every time, but Jesse had always thought that took the sport out of it.
What he really wanted to do was open the cabinet where the bottle had always been and begin fixing himself a good strong drink in a tall glass with just the right combination of scotch and ice and soda. Level himself off. What he used to tell himself. The word he used. Like booze was one of those levels that carpenters used to make sure planes and angles were straight.
Jesse knew he was kidding himself—it was the ultimate drinker’s game, bullshitting yourself, even after you were sober—by not keeping liquor in the house. Not even for Sunny. He knew by heart how late the stores stayed open in Paradise. Franco’s, the best liquor store in town. The chains. He knew he didn’t even need the stores, he could drive over to the Gull and ask whichever bartender was on the stick tonight to sell him a bottle of scotch.
It was always there if you wanted it.
He’d explained that once to Marcy Campbell, one of the times when he was sober again before rehab, when they were still hooking up for casual sex, just for the sheer uncomplicated fun of it.
“The way I’m always there when you want me,” Marcy had said.
He’d quit Marcy, too, even though she made it abundantly clear every time they ran into each other that she was still abundantly available to him.
He made himself a cup of coffee and took it into the living room. He’d been with Sunny drunk and sober. He’d been with a lot of women both drunk and sober. The ones he’d left, the ones who’d left him. It was different with Sunny. More than any of them, including Jenn, Sunny had always accepted who he was. Didn’t mean the others hadn’t. He’d tried to explain it to Dix once, badly, finally telling him that he’d always found his relationship with Sunny nontransactional, without expectations or boundaries.
Or commitment.
Maybe until now.
She was here now because she wanted to be with him, not her ex-husband. He knew she still loved Richie. Probably always would. Maybe he’d been her drug of choice. Maybe she was the one in recovery, from him. There had been a part of Jesse that’d never completely understood the connection she felt with Richie, the romanticized version of him she’d carried around inside her since she’d first fallen for him. Saloon owner. Son of the Irish Mob. Now full-time father to his son.
Whatever the connection, Jesse had always thought the best version of Sunny was when she was here. With him. Working with him, again.
He walked over and turned on the Red Sox game and felt himself smiling. Better to be thinking about her than about drinking. Bullshitting himself into thinking that a drink in his hand, a night like this, used to help him think better. More clearly. But then he’d have one and he’d be off, making himself the next one. And he’d wake up in the morning and look at the notes he’d been taking and feel as if he were trying to read Sanskrit.
He drank coffee, picked up the book, went back to the beginning, again, read it all the way through. Wondering all over again why Paul Hutton would make the effort to go to the Cain house and then not make any attempt to get in.
Maybe he went to see Lily, not knowing what was happening at the theater. Or the old man. Or Karina. Maybe there was a prior relationship with her in Florida, and she was the one lying her ass off. Maybe Troy Drake had been lying. Maybe Kevin Feeney had been lying to Molly and Sunny. And Joe Marino, Bo’s father, always made Jesse think of a line he’d read once about a guy looking like a bouncer who’d come into some money.
The shit you thought about, alone in the night.
He closed the notebook and fell asleep in front of baseball again, despite the perfect cup of coffee next to him. Didn’t have to be drunk to still be able to do that. Had plenty of practice.
Tomorrow he would go back to the Cains’ and bother Lily again and talk to Karina again. Karina and the old man, if it was one of the old man’s good days.
When he woke just past two in the morning, they were replaying the game on the Red Sox network. He shut off the television and went to bed.
Another big night for the chief.
Thirty-Five
By the time Jesse and Suit were in Jesse’s office having coffee and donuts, Molly and Sunny were in Sunny’s car and on their way to Maine. Jesse had already spoken to Lily and arranged to come by the house at eleven.
“Maybe you should have your own room here,” Lily had said.
“Only with a view.”
“They all have views,” she said, before hanging up.
Now Suit said to Jesse, “Why does Sunny get to drive?”
“She wants to be Louise,” Jesse said.
&nb
sp; “From that movie Thelma and Louise,” Suit said.
“Look at you,” Jesse said.
Jesse drank some Dunkin’ coffee. He’d already eaten two jelly-filled donuts. He wasn’t worried about donuts. He could quit them anytime he wanted.
He just didn’t want to.
“But Thelma and Louise were criminals,” Suit said.
“Badass,” Jesse said.
“Molly and Sunny think they’re badass.”
“Because they are,” Jesse said.
When he got to the Cains’, a house man Jesse didn’t recognize showed him in. Lily was waiting for him in the precinct of the big front room she called the sunroom. Her granddaughter, Samantha, was with her. Jesse vaguely remembered her as a high school soccer player. She was as tall as Lily, not quite as blond.
“I know you’ve previously met Samantha Cain,” Lily said.
“Granny knows everything,” Samantha said.
She turned the kind of sarcastic smile on Lily that Jesse noticed kids were mastering at earlier and earlier ages.
“Samantha,” Lily said.
Jesse sensed he’d come in on the end of something unpleasant between them.
“Center middie, as I recall,” he said. “Number ten, right?”
Samantha smiled at him now and seemed to mean it. He could only imagine the effect of that smile on college boys.
“Good memory, Chief Stone,” she said. “You a soccer fan?”
“Not even a little bit,” he said.
“Samantha is on her way to Harvard Business in the fall,” Lily said. “Her plan is to be running Cain Enterprises eventually.”
The kid snorted. “I could do it better than dear old Daddy even without a Business degree.”
Lily said, “She’s off to Europe for hiking through the Alps. They call it the Tour du Mont Blanc. Or it’s just an excuse to meet European boys.”
“I promise to stay out of trouble, Granny,” she said.
More sarcasm.
“You cause quite enough around here,” Lily said.
“You forget I’m twenty-one now,” Samantha said.
