by Mike Lupica
Day wasn’t quite over.
He went back to the living room and handed her the glass and she drank some. The bruise on her face was darkening. He told her to stay where she was. She said she wasn’t going anywhere. He went through the house then, room by room, downstairs and upstairs. When she walked in on them, they must just have been going through the upstairs rooms, because there were just a few drawers pulled out of her dresser, and they seemed to not have made it to her clothes closet. Jesse was sure they’d left no prints behind. If it was the same two guys, they hadn’t left prints at either Ben Gage’s house or Neil’s, either.
But was it the same two guys? Or were there roving teams of idiots involved in this thing? Maybe Ed Barrone had one of his own. And Lawton’s goon had chased Ben Gage and Blair Richmond that time.
When he came back downstairs Kate had curled herself into a corner of the couch, feet underneath her. Most of the scotch was gone.
“You’re sure you didn’t get any kind of look at them?” Jesse said.
She shook her head.
“If they’re who I think they are,” he said, “they work for Billy Singer.”
He was sitting next to her on the couch. He was sure he was imagining that he could smell the scotch. He grinned at her.
“What I don’t know right now,” he said, “could fill up Fenway Park.”
He took out his phone.
“Who are you calling?” she said.
“The station,” he said. “I want them to send a car over here and have it stay until morning. Do you want me to file a report?”
“I don’t have what they wanted,” she said. “What would be the point?”
She stared at Jesse now with what he thought had always been truly amazing eyes. Beautiful eyes. Beautiful woman. They suddenly seemed closer to each other than they actually were.
“Why can’t you stay?” she said finally.
His throat felt thick suddenly.
“Because I can’t,” he said.
“Just as a friend,” she said.
“Neil was my friend,” he said.
“Mine, too,” she said.
“He was mine longer,” Jesse said.
She was right there. Her and the scotch. Like old times.
He held her eyes for a long time.
Then he said, “You want me to help you clean up?”
“I’ll do it in the morning,” she said.
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” he said.
“Under the watchful eyes of the Paradise Police Department,” Kate said, “who wouldn’t be?”
“I meant being alone,” he said.
She smiled with her eyes one last time and said, “One of these days I really might be as good at it as you are.”
When he got to the Explorer, the squad car with Peter Perkins in it having just arrived, he took big, deep breaths of the night ocean air. Then he got inside, started up the engine, and called Crow.
FORTY
They were on Jesse’s terrace. Crow was sipping whiskey out of a flask he carried with him sometimes. Jesse drank decaf coffee. He planned to get some sleep tonight. Just not quite yet.
“Tell me again what time she called you,” Crow said.
Jesse did.
“Then I don’t see how it could have been them,” Crow said. “They were getting a load on at the Scupper then. You want to lock them up? Send somebody over there and have them wait outside, and get ’em on a DUI. They’re probably still there, getting dumber by the minute.”
“Be a challenge,” Jesse said.
“You ever think about how much of your life you’ve spent banging up against guys like them?” Crow said.
“You were a guy like them,” Jesse said.
Crow capped the flask and stuck it in his back pocket.
“For all you know,” Crow said, “I still might be.”
“There’s that,” Jesse said.
“One of the things that keeps our relationship fresh,” Crow said.
“How’d you know they were at the Scupper?” Jesse said. “You follow them tonight?”
“Got some money out,” Crow said. “Here and Marshport. With bartenders mostly. The two morons show up someplace, I get a call.”
“Saves money on gas,” Jesse said.
They could hear the ocean from here, but not see it.
“If it’s not them,” Crow said, “that means we’ve got two more headbangers to worry about.”
Jesse told him he’d taken the words right out of his mouth.
Crow had his boots up on the railing. Jesse said, “What kind of boots are those? I used to wear boots back in L.A., thought it made me look like more of a hard case.”
“Lucchese,” Crow said. “Not cheap, but I’ve had them awhile. You get them broken in right, you stay with them.”
“Like a baseball glove,” Jesse said. “I still have the last one I used as a player.”
“It still bother you, the way it ended?” Crow said. “Baseball, I mean.”
Jesse was about to ask him how he knew how baseball had ended for him, but it was as if he were reading his mind because he said, “Molly told me.”
“It only bothers me most days,” Jesse said. “And every night.”
“I never had anything that mattered to me like that,” Crow said.
“You act like you do now.”
“Doesn’t take much pretending when I think about that girl.”
“Why’d she get to you this way?”
“ ’Cause that shit with the land mattered to her the way playing ball mattered to you,” Crow said.
They sat in silence, staring into the night.
“I’m still stuck on the same things,” Jesse said. “Who needs the deal the most. And what the hell they’re looking for.”
Then he told Crow about the extent of Billy Singer’s money problems. Crow said he had no idea, when he’d signed on he just looked at Singer and saw every other high-roller asshole in Vegas.
“He’s no better or different than Barrone,” Crow said. “Barrone’s just the stiff who’s local.”
“Maybe we need to know just how hard Barrone got hit by the virus,” Jesse said. “Guys like them, there’s no vaccine gets them back all the money they lost.”
“You or me?” Crow said.
“There’s somebody I want to talk to, might know.”
“What about Lawton?” Crow said. “You add it all up, he might need it more than either Billy or Barrone. He only gets to be a higher roller than he is already if he gets his money.”
“If it’s not Baldelli and Santo,” Jesse said, “be nice to know who sent somebody to Kate O’Hara’s house.”
“You want it to be Baldelli and Santo.”
“Something else we need to consider?” Jesse said. “That maybe they’re not the only two morons Billy’s got on the payroll.”
He saw Crow grin. “ ‘We,’ ” he said.
Crow stood. He said he could call the Scupper and see if Baldelli and Santo were still there, and roust them just for sport. Jesse said to leave them be for now, and hope that they drank themselves into comas.
Jesse stood. They both hung over the railing.
“You seem to trust me pretty good for a guy you say you don’t trust,” Crow said.
“Funny world,” Jesse said.
“Can’t have guys running around town beating up women,” Crow said.
“Place is going to hell,” Jesse said.
He turned to look at Crow, silhouetted against the night sky, like he was a part of it.
“One of these days they might come after us,” Crow said. “You know that, right?”
“I kind of look forward to it,” he said.
Crow grinned.
“Same,” he said.
FORTY-ONE
The next afternoon Jesse was in Dorchester, sitting in the office of a man named Mike Altamero.
The office was off Morrissey Boulevard, past the old Boston Globe building that Sunny had pointed out to Jesse one time when they were driving to the Cape for a romantic weekend, when they were still having those.
This was the modest home of Altamero Construction. Jesse had been reading back on Ed Barrone in his spare time, trying to find something in his past that might make him as desperate as the money-strapped Billy Singer to close the deal on The Throw.
Altamero, fittingly enough, was built like a block of concrete. Dark complexion, short hair a mixture of gray and white, big hands he’d probably used to build his business.
Mike Altamero had been in serious competition with Ed Barrone for the casino that eventually got built in Taunton, until Altamero suddenly withdrew his bid at the last moment. When he’d been asked why by a reporter from the Globe, Altamero had said, “You gotta know when to fold ’em.” Other than that, he had never said another public word about it.
Now Jesse said to him, “Doesn’t look as if Barrone’s going to be as lucky with Billy Singer.”
“Luck ain’t got anything to do with it,” Altamero said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Barrone ain’t going to be able to put the muscle on Singer the way he did me,” Altamero said. “Just following the thing, it looks like more of a fair fight between them two.”
“Put the muscle on you how?” Jesse said.
“He beat up my kid, that’s how, the son of a bitch,” Altamero said. “Or had him beat up. Same difference. Coming out of Santarpio’s one night. You know Santarpio’s? Best pizza on the planet.”
Jesse said he had a friend who’d taken him there. She’d told him the same thing about the pizza before they went. And hadn’t lied.
“They tried to make it look like a mugging,” Altamero said. “Even went through the motions of stealing Mikey’s wallet. But I knew better.”
Altamero grabbed a coffee mug that looked as small as a shot glass in his right hand.
“And Mikey, he’s a tough kid, like I raised him,” Altamero said. “Played linebacker at Northeastern. One of the guys holding him while the other one smacked him around said, ‘You know what this is about.’ ”
“What did you do?”
“Went looking for him, is what I did. I mean, fuck that shit. Barrone denied it, of course. Said he didn’t do business that way, even though we both knew that’s exactly how he does business. But before I left his office, he told me that every deal requires risk assessment, on both sides, and he wondered if I’d properly assessed my risk. That was before he had a couple of his body men show me out.”
“Why does he want the land in my town so badly?” Jesse said.
“Because the word on the street is that the guy is underwater, on account of what he’s lost the last couple years,” Altamero said. “And all’s I can say is that it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I hope he chokes on his own debt.”
“The word on the street,” Jesse said.
He always wanted to ask, which street?
“I hear that he was looking for loans at a couple of the banks that have been kissing his fat ass for years,” Altamero said. “But he got turned down flat when he went to them a few months ago, around that time that land got put up for sale.”
“Can he get the land in our town without a loan?” Jesse said.
“There’s always other ways.”
Jesse told him then about Billy Singer’s current circumstances, electing to leave out the part about the Feds.
“Two losers in the same boat,” Altamero said. “A boat that sounds like it’s taking on water.”
“But they’ve both got enough money to buy the land,” Jesse said.
“Barely, I’m guessing,” Altamero said. “But once they’re across the goal line, then the money starts coming in from all the contractors and golf course builders and retailers want to be in business with them. At which, if it’s Barrone, he stops being sideways with the banks, and everybody lives happily ever after.”
“What happens if the whole deal goes sideways?” Jesse said to Altamero.
“What I hear, that ain’t possible, the train’s too far down the track.”
“But say that it does,” Jesse said. “From what I hear, Singer might not get whole even if he wins the bid.”
“Why’s that?”
“Not at liberty.”
“I don’t talk,” Altamero said, “even after Barrone done what he done to my kid.”
Jesse said, “Take Singer out of it. What would happen to Barrone if he loses, or if this thing falls apart?”
“Again, I’m just going on what I hear, but the bank takes the casino in Taunton, at the very least,” Altamero said. “Or he scrambles by rolling an eleven. Like in Chapter Eleven.”
Altamero leaned forward across his desk, his thick fingers interlocked.
“You’re the chief up there,” he said. “This ain’t just about the land, is it?”
“It is not,” Jesse said. “A couple people are dead because of this.”
“One of them the mayor,” Altamero said.
“He was a friend of mine,” Jesse said.
Almatero gave him a long look. “You don’t let shit go, do you?”
“Hardly ever,” Jesse said.
“Well, all’s I can tell you is that I hope Barrone goes down for whatever he can go down on,” Altamero said.
Jesse nodded.
“Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Mike Altamero said.
“So I’ve heard,” Jesse said.
FORTY-TWO
Jesse had no interest in fighting the rush-hour traffic heading north at this time of day. He’d called Kate O’Hara again to ask how she was feeling. She said she was feeling the same as she had when he’d called her in the morning.
He thought about asking her to meet him for dinner at the Gull if she was feeling up to it. The words were nearly out of his mouth before he swallowed them. He had been too close to something happening between them last night before an inner alarm sounded. What Dix called his moral alarm, one that Dix had suggested could survive a nuclear attack. So he had left. Even now it amused the hell out of Jesse that he’d chosen the company, and companionship, of Crow over a woman with whom he once might have been about half in love.
He got off the expressway in Chinatown, and eventually made his way to Charles Street, which ran between the Public Garden and the Boston Common, finally making a left at the Charles Street Meeting House and a right on River Street Place until he parked the Explorer in front of Sunny Randall’s house.
A famous writer had basically given it to her, not rent-free, but close enough, considering the neighborhood. He had walked these streets with her more times than he could recall. They had even gone across the little bridge and run together along the Charles, then come back to the house at the end of the street and made love in the big bed upstairs.
Jesse knew he’d never been in love with Kate O’Hara, not really, as many times as he’d tried to talk himself into believing that he was.
It was Sunny he’d been in love with, and still was, not that it was doing him much good lately.
Don’t project. Another of the big ones from AA. So Jesse wasn’t projecting that it was over between him and Sunny. It just felt that way right now. Had she said she’d call when they’d last spoken? He felt like she had. But hadn’t called. No idea what was happening with her in L.A., or when she’d be back, and whether or not they’d pick up where they’d left off. He asked himself again: What are you, in high school?
Sitting outside your girlfriend’s house, or ex-girlfriend, or whatever she currently was, even knowing she wasn’t there.
He sat ther
e for a long time, anyway, and was about to leave when Spike came out with Rosie, Sunny’s dog, on a leash. He grinned when he saw Jesse step out of the Explorer.
“I can’t be extradited to Paradise, right?” Spike said.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Jesse said, and walked over and shook Spike’s hand.
“I’m just a gay man picking up more toys for a small dog,” he said. “Is that a crime?”
“Should be.”
“Well, that’s my excuse,” Spike said. “What’s yours?”
“In the neighborhood.”
“Yeah, sure,” Spike said. “Jesus, you look like you miss her more than the dog does.”
Spike had grown a beard since the last time Jesse had seen him at the Gull. But he looked ripped, as always, like he ought to be starring in one of those gym ads on television. Orange T-shirt, tight, sneakers to match the shirt, skinny jeans.
“You talk to her?” Jesse said.
“Not much,” Spike said. “And when we do, it’s mostly about the dog. I don’t know much about this case, but it seems to be pretty intense.”
“For her, there’s never any other kind.”
“Have you talked to her?” Spike said.
“Maybe a week ago, just to check in,” Jesse said. “Not for long.”
Spike smiled. “You want to stand here and keep talking about her without really talking about her?” he said.
“I’d rather try to zigzag my way across Storrow Drive when the rush-hour traffic picks up,” Jesse said.
They were out of things to say. They both knew it. Jesse said he’d see him in Paradise. Spike said that always sounded kind of bleak to him.
“I miss her, too,” Spike said, “if that’s any consolation to you.”
“It’s not,” Jesse said.
FORTY-THREE
Molly thought: How had this happened?
Jesse and Crow had practically turned into one of those movies with a couple buddy cops. The only problem, from where she sat, was that only one of them was a cop. The other guy, whatever Molly’s history with him—brief history—was one the cop had tried to put away.
