Stone's Throw

by Mike Lupica

  “Could be him just as easy. Or even that Lawton. I could ask around.”

  “Have at it,” Jesse said.

  Vinnie had suggested they use Zoom again. Jesse told him he remembered what he looked like.

  “That girl gonna make it?” Vinnie said.

  “Too early to tell.”

  “How’s Molly?”

  “She’s Molly,” Jesse said. “Which means tougher than both of us.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a pause at Vinnie’s end and then he said, “She put down Richie Carr. Son . . . of . . . a . . . bitch.”

  “Not much light, she’d already been hit, she still made the shot,” Jesse said.

  “I could come back, you want,” Vinnie said. “I pretty much got this thing buttoned up.”

  “Molly and Suit and I can handle this,” Jesse said. “And my faithful companion, Crow.”

  “I got no comment on that,” Vinnie said, “on account of it ain’t as if my résumé ever stopped you when you needed something.”

  Jesse thanked him for the intel and told him to go get another umbrella drink.

  “It was a one-off, for chrissakes,” Vinnie said.

  “I thought the umbrella went nicely with your outfit,” Jesse said.

  Vinnie ignored him.

  “Listen, before I go, there’s something else you should know about Richie Carr, if one of your cop friends from Boston didn’t tell you,” he said. “Last few years, he’s been working with a partner on any sort of gun or strong-arm shit you need.”

  “Got a name?”

  “Sure.”

  Shoo-ah.

  “Darnell Woodson is the dude’s name,” Vinnie said.

  “Another ex-cop?”

  “Ex–Tony Marcus. Except he was so much of a psycho that even Tony had to let him go before he had to have him popped.”

  “You know where I might find him?” Jesse said.

  “Hope that it ain’t Paradise,” Vinnie said. “But you should ask Tony. Or have Sunny ask him.”

  “I’m good,” Jesse said.

  “Tony’s not much for cops, maybe you heard,” Vinnie said.

  “I’m not like the other boys and girls,” Jesse said.

  “You don’t want Darnell up on you, from what I hear,” Vinnie said, “even if you got Crow for backup.”

  “Noted.”

  “I got one last question ’fore I hang up,” Vinnie Morris said. “How did one piece of land in Fancy Ass, Massachusetts, turn into this kind of goddamn gang beef?”

  FORTY-NINE

  Mayor Gary Armistead and Thomas Lawton showed up in Jesse’s office first thing the next morning. Armistead had the print edition of the Paradise Town Crier in his hand until he tossed it on Jesse’s desk.

  Jesse didn’t even look down at it.

  “Coffee?” he said.

  “You don’t want to get cute with me today, Stone,” Armistead said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said.

  “ ‘Okay’?”

  “I won’t try to get cute,” Jesse said.

  They took the visitor seats across from him. Jesse asked Lawton why the mayor had asked him to come along.

  “As a concerned citizen,” Lawton said.

  “You know why we’re here,” Armistead said. “Nellie Shofner doesn’t write the story about the girl getting shot and Molly shooting that guy without you calling her.”

  “It’s like you wrote the story yourself,” Lawton said. “You think we don’t know who the police department source is”—he put quotes with his fingers around “source”—“who told her the shooting is connected to the deaths of Neil O’Hara and Ben Gage? Give me a break.”

  “Seems to me that if you want to know who the source is, you should ask the reporter,” Jesse said. “And good luck with that if you do ask, by the way.”

  He sipped some of his own coffee. Third cup of the day. He was jazzed enough to picture himself walking around his desk and banging their two heads together.

  He took a good, deep breath instead, holding the air in as long as he could.

  “The deputy chief of this department,” he said evenly, “was involved in a shootout last night.”

  “We can read,” Lawton said.

  “She took a bullet in the arm before killing her assailant,” Jesse continued. “Then she discovered Blair Richmond inside the house, a young woman who’d just been shot in the head by this assailant. Ms. Richmond is currently hospitalized at Marshport General, and is out of what is successful brain surgery for now, but still in a coma.”

  Jesse smiled now, clasped his hands together, and leaned across his desk. Amiable Chief Jesse.

  “So I’d like to ask both of you gentlemen a question,” Jesse said. “If that isn’t front-page news, then what the fuck is?”

  Lawton’s head snapped back a little, as if Jesse had slapped him when he raised his voice. Armistead, in suit and tie, as if he thought that dressing the part was somehow a requirement of his new job, continued to glare across the desk at Jesse.

  “No one is suggesting it isn’t news, Stone,” he said. “But you wanted that story out there, written the way it was written, and somehow in the paper this morning. And you know why?”

  “Help me out,” Jesse said.

  “Because you are going out of your way to scare the other members of the Board away from this land deal,” Armistead said, “even at the last minute.”

  “Like you’re one of those tree huggers who want this deal to end up dead,” Lawton added.

  “Not my job,” Jesse said. “And by the way? I thought the vote was a sure thing.”

  “And we aim to keep it that way,” Armistead said, “whatever your agenda is.”

  “My agenda,” Jesse said, “involves two people dead because of this deal and a young woman about whom neither of you seem to care who might be dying.”

  Jesse stood.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you both to get the hell out of my office so I can get back to work,” Jesse said.

  Armistead and Lawton stood.

  “When this vote is over,” Armistead said to Jesse, “and this deal has gone through, there is going to be a reckoning about your future.”

  “Guys like you,” Lawton said, “sometimes get the idea that they have jobs for life.”

  Jesse turned and trained one last smile on him.

  “Shut the fuck up, Thomas,” he said.

  “You can’t talk to me like that,” he said.

  “Just did,” Jesse said, and walked around his desk and held the door for them until they had in fact gotten the hell out of his office.

  FIFTY

  Two hours later Jesse was back in Boston, in Tony Marcus’s office at a bar and restaurant he owned named Buddy’s Fox.

  There was a decent lunch crowd in the front room. As far as Jesse could see as he walked past the bar, he was the only white person there. He was wearing a windbreaker and jeans and sneakers and his favorite old Red Sox cap. Somehow he felt as if he still could have been carrying a sign that read COP.

  By now he had heard enough about Tony Marcus to feel as if he knew him and his two top body men, Junior and Ty Bop.

  Before Junior had let him into the office he’d said, “Gonna need the piece I know you got on you someplace.”

  Jesse grinned. “No,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  “Say no,” Jesse said. “Tony wouldn’t have told me to come down here if he thought my intent was to shoot him.”

  Junior focused a long, dead-eyed look on him, then opened the door. The skinny kid, at least he looked like a kid to Jesse, leaning against the wall inside had to be Ty Bop, whom Sunny said could shoot the numbers off a debit card. He was wearing an oversized old Patriots jersey with Tom Br
ady’s number 12 on it. Old school.

  Tony Marcus made no move to get up from behind his desk. He wore a beige summer suit, a blue shirt, a canary-and-blue-striped tie, and a pocket square that matched the canary in the tie. He had a neatly trimmed beard with just a touch of gray in it, same as his hair. If he was dying it, the job was artfully done.

  “Heard you done lost your woman,” Marcus said as a way of greeting.

  “Misplaced might be a better way of putting it,” Jesse said. “Like when you can’t find where you put your car keys.”

  “That’s only for people got to drive themselves,” Marcus said.

  “We’re taking a time-out,” Jesse said.

  “Boy who’d get himself into a time-out with Miss Sunny Randall shouldn’t be allowed to be no chief of po-lice,” Marcus said. “Poor judgment like that’s just another reason why nobody trusts cops no more.”

  Tony Marcus looked over at his man Junior, who was as big as Sunny said he was, and said, “Yo, J. You ever remember a cop thought he could invite his ass in here like this?”

  Junior shook his head. Even his head looked as big as a bowling ball.

  Marcus turned back to Jesse.

  “So you looking for intel on my boy Darnell Woodson?” he said.

  “Vinnie says that you retired Darnell from being one of your boys,” Jesse said, “though not permanently.”

  “How is Vinnie, now that you mention him?”

  Jesse told him he had a gig going in Vegas.

  “Give him my best and tell him to stay the fuck away from me when he gets back,” Marcus said. “So tell me something: How’d Darnell end up in your business.”

  “Still not sure he is,” Jesse said. “But if he is, trying to get out ahead of him. One of my deputies shot Richie Carr last night.”

  “Heard about that,” Tony Marcus said. “Heard your deputy is a girl. Which girl, Annie Oakley?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Vinnie said that Darnell and Richie partnered up.”

  Marcus lightly tapped his tented fingers underneath his chin. His fingernails gleamed in the soft light of the office.

  “Ebony and Ivory,” he said. “Darnell went off, after he accepted early retirement, and damned if he didn’t find himself a mad dog worse than he is.”

  “Early retirement,” Jesse said.

  “Means I let the boy live,” Marcus said. Then he shook his head and whistled softly. “Amazing, I get to thinking about it, that either one of them lived long enough to get taken out by that girl cop of yours.”

  “I’m trying to figure out if he’s up in my town,” Jesse said. “Darnell, I mean. And who he might be working for.”

  “If he is in your town, he ain’t likely to take his partner getting shot up lightly,” Marcus said.

  Jesse asked if Marcus was aware of the land business. He told Jesse that he made it his business to know about anything that had that much money around it.

  “Why I’m here,” Jesse said, “is because I was wondering if you might find out who Darnell might be working for.”

  Tony Marcus smiled then.

  “Are you under the impression that you got some kind of capital with me because you were hitting it with Sunny Randall?” he said. “ ’Cause if so, it is my duty to disavow you of that notion.”

  Tony shook his head and said, “The stones on you, Chief Jesse Stone.”

  “Would it help if she called?” Jesse said, smiling back at him.

  “You was gonna ask her to do that, you would’ve done it already,” Marcus said.

  “An innocent young woman got shot in the head,” Jesse said. “I’m just trying to square up on that.”

  “Shee-it,” Tony Marcus said. “You mean you down here appealing to my better angels? Because I got none.”

  “Sunny helped you find out who shot your girlfriend once,” Jesse said.

  He saw something change in Tony Marcus’s eyes then, without him changing his expression, or moving a muscle. Something dark and subtle at the same time. Jesse had always been told that the eyes were the window to the soul. Maybe that worked if you didn’t have a soul.

  “Sunny Randall gets to play that card,” he said. “Not you.”

  Jesse said, “Just asking you to come down on the right side of this, not with jag-offs like Carr and Darnell Woodson.”

  They sat there in silence for a moment, as if still taking the measure of each other. But even having been here a few minutes, Jesse knew that Marcus was everything that Sunny had said he was, slick and calculating and charming when he wanted to be, and dangerous as a pipe bomb.

  “Maybe I can see what I can see and hear what I can hear,” he said finally. “And then maybe, if I find out something, I give it to you and maybe I don’t.”

  He smiled again. There was no mirth or warmth in that smile.

  “Now get your cop ass out my office and don’t come back,” Tony Marcus said.

  Jesse thought about adding, “Good talk,” but didn’t, having decided that the prudent thing was getting his cop ass out of there.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Crow drove over to Marshport and sat outside Blair Richmond’s hospital room. He wasn’t sure why. He’d spent only a few minutes with the girl. Felt like she was scared of him the whole time he was with her that day.

  He’d done plenty of gun work himself in his life, though never once shooting a woman. He’d killed plenty of men. But who put a gun to the head of a kid like this and fired? He knew who. Richie Carr.

  But who hired somebody to do shit like that?

  Crow was still sitting there when he knew he’d gone past visiting hours. None of the nurses had told him to leave. He scared them, too, he knew. The girl’s sister had long since been out of the room. Crow had stayed in the waiting room down the hall until she left. He didn’t want to talk to her, tell her how sorry he was, have to explain who he was, why he was here.

  He got out of the chair one of the nurses had brought for him and walked to the door and stared through the window at Blair Richmond, who looked like a little girl asleep in her bed, made smaller by the monitors and machines she was attached to.

  Stone had asked the question: What about her had gotten to him this way?

  He had always prided himself on never getting attached or involved, letting his emotions get in the way of things he needed to get done.

  Somehow, though, this girl had gotten to him. Now he was like Stone, he had to know who had hired Richie Carr to shoot Blair Richmond and then end up shooting Molly Crane. He knew Molly could take care of herself. Damn, damn, goddamn, she was tough. What Stone, the old ballplayer, called a tough out.

  It was different with this kid. All she’d wanted to do was protect some ocean land. Only nobody had protected her, and maybe her boyfriend, too, from a cockroach like Carr.

  Crow turned and walked down the hallway and got into the elevator and got into the rental car and drove back to Paradise and then over the bridge to Stiles Island, one he had helped blow up once without giving it a second thought, and all the way to Billy Singer’s rented house.

  Maybe Richie Carr was with Billy Singer, too, even though he already had Santo and Baldelli on the payroll. Or maybe Carr was with Barrone. Or Lawton. Still no way to know for sure.

  He still hadn’t forgotten that somebody had punched Molly Crane in the face.

  Crow was suddenly tired of just letting the game come to him and Stone, that was something he was sure about. As he pulled up on the street in front of Singer’s house he saw Santo and Baldelli on the front porch, both of them in rocking chairs, either side of the door, feet up on the railing. They both stood up when they saw Crow casually come up the walk and up the steps.

  “Relax,” he said. “Billy’s expecting me.”

  “I’ll go check on that, if it’s just the same with you,” Santo said.

 
Crow had his gun stuffed into the back pocket of his jeans. He took it out and swung it hard across the side of Santo’s face, and then again as he was going down. Before Baldelli could clear his gun, Crow turned and pointed his at his face.

  “Shhhh,” he said, raising his free hand and putting a finger to his lips.

  He told Baldelli to put his gun on the ground. He did. Santo was still conscious, but barely. He was bleeding from the head. Crow motioned Baldelli down the steps as he grabbed Santo by the front of his shirt and dragged him down the steps as they all walked to where the car was parked.

  Crow reached into a front pocket and pulled out his key fob and popped the trunk.

  “Help him in,” Crow said to Baldelli.

  “Fuck you,” Baldelli said.

  Crow effortlessly swung the gun and this time caught Baldelli on the side of his head, and now he went down in the street. He lifted Santo into the trunk first, then pulled up Baldelli and shoved him in next.

  It was a big enough trunk for both of them, Crow knew, for all the bitching they were both doing. Crow figured he would have to pay extra for the blood on the carpet when he turned it in.

  “You gonna just leave us in here?” Santo said. “I could bleed out.”

  “Okay,” Crow said.

  Crow went back up the walk and through the front door. That show Shark Tank with the guy who owned the Dallas Mavericks was on the flat-screen television. Singer came out of the kitchen with a drink in his hand. Johnnie Walker Blue for him, too, as Crow remembered. When he looked up at Crow, he said, “What the hell?”

  “You need to think about better security, Billy,” Crow said.

  Then Crow put his gun away and was across the room and grabbing Singer by the front of his shirt and throwing him up against the wall near the television, the glass falling onto the marble floor and shattering.

  “Did you hire Richie Carr?” Crow said, his face close enough to Singer’s to smell the scotch on his breath.

  “Who’s Richie Carr?” Singer said, choking out the words.

  Crow pulled him off the wall and then slammed him back into it.