Fool's Paradise

by Mike Lupica

  “And proud of it,” Lily said.

  Jesse was thinking that somebody should ring a bell and end the round.

  Samantha sighed. “I didn’t come over here to have a fight, just say goodbye,” she said. “But whatever. See you in a week or so.”

  Now Lily was the one who sounded sarcastic. “I look forward to that, dear,” she said, and then her granddaughter gave a quick wave to her and Jesse and was gone.

  “I see a lot of you in her,” Jesse said.

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she said.

  “You were young once, too,” Jesse said.

  “Please don’t remind me.” Now she sighed. “But you’re not here to talk about me, or Samantha.”

  “I’ll try not to take up too much of Whit’s time,” Jesse said. “I’d just like to know if there’s any possibility that his life might have intersected at some point with Paul Hutton’s.”

  “He says no,” Lily said.

  “Just like to hear it for myself.”

  He followed her back to the foyer, up a curving staircase, and down a long hallway. He heard Whit Cain before he saw him in the wheelchair in front of another view of the Atlantic. It was a terrible sound that started with sneezing and then became something that sounded like a one-man lung ward.

  “He starts like that sometimes,” Lily said. “And it’s as if he’s never going to stop.”

  She turned and left the room. Karina was standing next to the wheelchair and waved Jesse over, pushing the chair out onto the terrace as she did. She gestured to a chair out there, where Jesse sat. Karina stood next to Whit Cain, a hand on his shoulder.

  When Jesse had first met Whit Cain, not long after arriving in Paradise, it was as if every room organized itself around him once he was in it. He was tall, taller than Jesse, with a thick head of what was gray hair at the time, always with a tan, no matter the season, a voice and presence bigger than he actually was. Jesse wasn’t sure how old he was now. Maybe Lily’s age, maybe a few years older. But it seemed irrelevant as Jesse looked at what was left of him, blanket over his legs, wearing a cardigan sweater despite the heat of the day, his body seeming to have collapsed into itself, like one of those buildings you saw implode on television. His hands were in his lap, almost as if he’d forgotten they were there.

  But when Jesse sat down, the old man surprised him, extended his right hand and said, “Jesse. Goddamn it’s good to see you.”

  Jesse gently shook his hand, as if afraid it might break if he gripped it too firmly.

  The old man smiled.

  “Goddamn,” he said again. “That’s no way to shake a man’s hand. Even one older than dirt.”

  He started coughing again. There was nothing to do but wait for it to run its course. Karina patted his back the way you would a baby’s. Then she handed him the glass of water from the tray in front of him.

  “Allergies, can you believe it?” Whit Cain said. “After every goddamn thing that’s happened to me, I’ve got to deal with these allergies.”

  He stared out at the water. Jesse did the same. He went back and forth on whether he believed in an afterlife. But Jesse knew he didn’t want this one to end for him like Whit Cain’s, vultures already circling.

  “Whit,” Jesse said finally. “You know why I’m here, right?”

  “Because you missed me?” the old man said and laughed, which touched off another coughing fit.

  When he stopped this time he said, “You never liked me all that much, admit it.”

  “Not true,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t lie to a dying man,” he said. “You just thought I was the dickhead in Paradise with the most money.”

  Jesse grinned. Maybe there was still some fight in the old man. Even some fun.

  “Am I under oath?” Jesse said.

  “Never bullshit a bullshitter,” Whit Cain said.

  “So,” Jesse said, “I assume you know about the murder I’m investigating.”

  “The Florida man,” he said. “My wife and Karina told me.”

  “Then you must also have been told he came here the night he died,” Jesse said.

  The old man nodded. “They told me that, too.”

  “What I’m just wondering is if he might have come here to see you,” Jesse said. “He worked in the horse business, and I know you spent time around it.”

  Whit Cain smiled.

  “Goddamn, Jesse, there were some good-looking girls in that world. Talk about ass. Those riding pants? I’d go down there for the season and my dick would be hard the whole time.”

  A raspy sigh came out of him, no coughing spell behind it this time.

  “Those were the days,” he said. “I used to wish there were pills to stop my dick from getting hard.”

  Jesse looked up at Karina. Hand still on his shoulder. They sat in silence until Whit Cain said, “You got secrets, Jesse?”

  “Pretty sure everybody does,” Jesse said.

  “Well, I’ve got some beauts,” he said. “But it was never a secret that I wasn’t somebody you fucked with. I protected myself. Protected what I had. Whatever it took.” He nodded again. “You know where I learned it? Some very bad guys in Boston I did business with from time to time. Joe Broz. Gino Fish. Desmond Burke. Guys like that, ones who got it done, whatever it took.” He smiled. “I always got it done.”

  Whit Cain pointed a shaky finger at Jesse. “You ever hear of them?”

  “Desmond Burke used to be father-in-law to a friend of mine,” he said.

  “Ask how he handled things back in the day,” Cain said. “Probably still does.”

  He needed to bring him back from wherever it was he’d just been. Jesse took out the picture of Paul Hutton he’d brought with him and handed it to Whit Cain. He told Jesse that Lily had already shown him the same picture. Jesse asked if he’d take another look at it.

  Cain held it close to his face. Handed it back to Jesse.

  “Nope,” he said.

  Jesse handed the photo to Karina now.

  “What about you?” he said.

  “I told you before, Chief Stone,” she said. “I do not know this man.”

  “Sure it’s not one of your old boyfriends, Kat?” the old man said.

  “No, Mr. Cain.”

  “You can only imagine what this one was like when she was young,” Whit Cain said. “Am I right?”

  “Mr. Cain,” Karina said.

  Talking to him the way she would to a child.

  The old man leaned his head back suddenly, closed his eyes. For a moment, Jesse was afraid he’d fallen asleep. But when he opened his eyes, he reached down and angled the wheelchair toward Jesse.

  “You know what all this is?” he said. “Me being in this chair like this? Dues. For all the fun I had. All the parties and all the booze and all the ass I grabbed, with both hands.”

  “Those were the days,” Jesse said.

  The old man closed his eyes again. This time they were closed so long Jesse briefly wondered if he’d died.

  “All that’s left to do is make amends,” he said in a voice so soft Jesse had to strain to hear it. “Settle up.”

  Then he was asleep. Karina put a finger to her lips. Jesse left them there. Karina’s hand still on Whit Cain’s shoulder.

  Jesse walked down the stairs. Lily was no longer in the sunroom. Jesse showed himself out. The last thing he heard as he opened the front door was more coughing from upstairs.

  The old man had talked about dues. But he’d talked about making amends.

  So had Paul Hutton.

  Whose secrets had he died knowing?

  Thirty-Six

  I’m telling you,” Molly said to Sunny from the passenger seat. “Geena Davis was in the passenger seat when they drove off the cliff.”

  Sunny grinned. “Is
this just a way to start talking again about Susan Sarandon’s breasts being bigger than Geena’s and yours being bigger than mine?”

  “Four kids,” Molly said. “I earned these babies.”

  They had driven along the water as long as they could. Then they were on I-95 in Amesbury, before crossing the New Hampshire line. Waze had said the whole trip would take ninety minutes unless they encountered unexpected traffic. Molly had called Bo’s number before they left Paradise, left a message when he didn’t pick up, and followed that up with a text. No response to that, either. But they had the address in Biddeford. Molly had called Joe Marino back after they’d left his office and gotten a contact with the construction foreman for whom Bo had been working. She’d called there and been told that Bo had taken some time they owed him after the Fourth, because he’d worked through the holiday weekend.

  Molly asked the foreman if he could remember the last time he’d seen Bo.

  “Last week sometime,” he said. “Is he in some kind of trouble? He told me one time he’d put all the trouble in his life behind him.”

  “No trouble,” Molly said. “Just want to ask him a few questions about a case I’m working.”

  Now they were less than an hour out from Biddeford and back to talking about Jesse. Like he was a case they’d both been working for a long time.

  “Tell me this,” Sunny said. “There was never a chance of something happening with the two of you?”

  “Never.”

  “So you’re telling me that you never thought about him that way?”

  Molly considered. “That’s a different question. Maybe when we first met, but it was the way you imagine being with an actor on TV or in the movies, an impossibility.”

  She reached over to the console, picked up her to-go cup of iced coffee, took a sip, put it back. A sign said they were coming up on Hampton, New Hampshire.

  “I know this sounds lame,” Molly said. “But for a long time I’ve thought of him as a brother.”

  “Oh, brother,” Sunny said in a throaty voice, and they both laughed. They were listening to one of Sunny’s jazz CDs. John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk at Carnegie Hall.

  “You wouldn’t be here if things were good with Richie,” Molly said. “You’re not the type to juggle two men at the same time.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sunny said. “I can barely handle one.”

  She reached over for her own iced coffee.

  “I can’t be what Richie wants us to be,” she said.

  “One big happy family.”

  “Yup,” Sunny said. “Did you ever feel that Michael saw your relationship differently than you did?”

  “Amazingly, no,” Molly said. “That doesn’t mean everything is perfect with us. It’s not. We’ve had our problems. I think everybody except Barack and Michelle do.”

  Sunny smiled. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I was with Spike at a bar one time and a guy we both thought was hot came walking in. And Spike said, ‘Somewhere somebody’s tired of him.’”

  “But no matter what,” Molly said, “Michael always knew who he is, who I am. Who we are.”

  “I feel that way with Jesse most of the time.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t remain a hot mess.”

  Molly smiled. “Hot and a mess. Yes.”

  “But in a weird way, even though he’s still dealing with not drinking,” Sunny said, “I feel as if I’m seeing him at his best at a time like this.”

  “Under pressure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The old ballplayer in him,” Molly said. “He wants the ball hit to him when the game is on the line.”

  “I really don’t like baseball.”

  “He told me,” Molly said. “I think there’s couple’s counseling that can help out with that.”

  “You think he’s glad I’m here?” Sunny said.

  “Extremely.”

  “What do I do when Michael comes back?”

  “Stay with him,” Molly said. “Bring Rosie. He’s a dog lover.”

  “I can’t leave Boston,” she said. “And he can’t leave Paradise.”

  “You’re both smart people,” Molly said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  There were signs for Portsmouth.

  “You looking for permanence, Sunny?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” she said. “All I know is this, if it makes any sense: Sometimes I feel like my best self is when I’m with him.”

  “He told me the same thing.”

  “He did?”

  “He’s like you. Trained investigator.”

  Sunny said, “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Don’t worry, Louise,” Molly said. “I won’t let that happen.”

  They drove the rest of the way to Biddeford, Maine, hoping to talk to Molly’s old friend Bo Marino.

  Thirty-Seven

  Sunny said they should stop at a place called Mabel’s Lobster Claw in Kennebunkport for lunch. Molly said they could do it on their way back after they’d talked to Bo, if they talked to Bo.

  “You really Maced him on the school bus?” Sunny said.

  “I did,” Molly said.

  “Where was Mace when I needed it in high school?” Sunny said.

  “Oh, please,” Molly said. “You probably needed to be armed as much in those days as I did.”

  The house looked exactly as it had on Google Maps, a run-down white ranch set back about fifty yards from the road, past an apartment complex called The Lofts at Saco Falls.

  The first thing they noticed when they were out of the car was what looked like a week’s worth of newspapers on the small front porch. No car in the driveway. The lawn needed mowing, badly. No one would have looked at Bo Marino’s circumstances and thought he had much of a life at all to turn around.

  “Young Bo appears to be away,” Molly said.

  They made their way up the front walk, overgrown with weeds, knelt down, and looked at eight days of the Journal Tribune, which Molly assumed was the Biddeford daily paper.

  “I’m impressed he was even subscribing to a newspaper,” Molly said.

  “Or still having it delivered,” Sunny said. “I thought that wasn’t even a thing anymore.”

  Molly walked back to the mailbox. It was filled with bills and flyers. All were addressed to Bo. Nothing in there resembled personal correspondence. If he’d gone on vacation, he’d done so without alerting the post office to hold his mail.

  Sunny had walked over to the garage and was staring through a dirty window.

  “No car in there, either,” she said.

  “Maybe he drove it down to Paradise to take a shot at Jesse and build a bomb for Suit,” Molly said.

  “And put you on the ground in your own backyard,” Sunny said.

  “He could have accomplished a lot in the eight days he’s been gone from here,” Molly said.

  “Or,” Sunny said, “he did just take a vacation and neglected to inform his newspaper delivery service or the people delivering his mail.”

  “Be nice to know which,” Molly said.

  “We could walk the neighborhood and knock on doors and ask if anybody has seen Bo lately,” Molly said.

  Sunny smiled. “Or,” she said, dragging the word out as if pulling on taffy.

  “I don’t like that look,” she said.

  “What look?” Sunny said.

  “The look that suggests to me that you are about to suggest something inappropriate to the deputy chief of police from Paradise, Massachusetts. Or flat-out illegal.”

  “I’m really, really good at picking locks,” Sunny said. “I know this guy back in Boston.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Molly said.

  “Tell you what,” Sunny said. “Why don’t I call Jes
se and ask him?”

  “You mean have the conversation about breaking and entering that we’re not even having right now?”

  “Exactly!” Sunny said.

  Sunny walked back to where her car was parked on the street. Molly watched her walk around the car, phone to her ear, smiling and nodding and talking. When she was finished, she stuck her phone in the back pocket of jeans Molly knew were way more expensive than hers. By now she was used to being outbranded by Sunny.

  “What did he say?” Molly said.

  “I think his exact words were ‘Don’t fucking get caught.’”

  “Front door or back, Louise?” Molly said.

  Thirty-Eight

  Jesse had just gotten off the phone with Sunny when Bryce Cain called to tell him that his father had died.

  “My mom wanted you to know,” Bryce said. “He passed about an hour ago.”

  “I was just with him yesterday,” Jesse said, not sure what else to say, other than he was sorry. Or that it was a blessing. All the phony rhetoric of death.

  Bryce said, “My mom was with him. He just stopped breathing.”

  There was a silence. “Where’s the body?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Just want to make sure that everybody’s following the proper protocols.”

  “Hospital,” Bryce said. “I guess they take blood. Once they finish with him, we’re having him cremated.”

  “That soon?”

  “Why wait?”

  Jesse didn’t have a good answer to that.

  “Funeral?” he said.

  “Mom wants to have a memorial service down the road,” Cain said. “For now, she just wants us all to get on with things.”

  “I assume his affairs are in order, as they say.”

  “I’m not just his partner,” Bryce Cain said. “I’m his lawyer. I don’t fuck around when it comes to business any more than he did.”

  A beauty to the end.

  “I’ll bet,” Jesse said.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Cain said.

  “Nothing,” Jesse said, thanked him for calling, and told him he’d call or stop by later to see Lily. After they ended the call, he walked out into the bullpen area and told Suit he was on his way to the hospital.