“What do you think?”
“I think guys like Gino usually do.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Jesse said.
Chapter Thirty-five
When Jerry Snyder came out of the car dealership where he worked, Jesse, in jeans and a gray tee shirt, was leaning on the fender of the aging Ford Explorer in which he had driven east when he left L.A.
“Whaddya want?” Snyder said. “You ain’t even a cop in this town.”
“We need to talk,” Jesse said.
“I don’t want to talk with you, pal.”
“Why would you?” Jesse said, and opened the door on the passenger side of the Explorer. “Get in.”
Jesse’s tee shirt was not tucked in. It hung down over his belt, partially hiding the gun on his right hip.
“Are you arresting me?”
“Hell no,” Jesse said.
“Then I don’t have to go.”
He held the door open. Another salesman walked by with a customer. Both of them looked uneasily at Jesse and Snyder.
“Sure you don’t,” Jesse said. “We can talk about domestic violence right here.”
The salesman and the customer looked again and quickly away, trying to act as if they hadn’t heard.
“Jesus Christ,” Snyder said.
Jesse still held the car door open. Snyder looked around, and then at Jesse, and got into the car. Jesse closed the door and went around and got in and started the car.
“You wanna get me fired?” Snyder said.
Jesse didn’t answer.
“Where we going?”
“Someplace where we can talk, and you won’t get fired,” Jesse said.
“I ain’t done nothing wrong,” Snyder said.
They drove south on Route 1, and crossed the Paradise town line. Jesse pulled the car off onto the little cul-de-sac near the lake where Billie Bishop had been found. He turned off the engine and took out his gun. Snyder’s eyes widened.
“Open your mouth,” Jesse said.
“What the hell are you doing?” Snyder said.
Jesse tapped him on the upper lip with the muzzle of the handgun.
“Open,” Jesse said.
Snyder opened his mouth and Jesse put the gun barrel into it. Jesse didn’t say anything. Snyder tried to swallow. Behind them the traffic went routinely by on Route 1. The hot damp smell of the lake came in through the open windows of the Explorer. Jesse looked at Snyder without expression.
“This is the only chance I’m going to give you,” Jesse said after a time.
Snyder was breathing in small gasps.
“You hit your wife again and I’m going to kill you,” Jesse said.
Again Snyder tried to swallow and failed. He raised both hands in front of his chest, palms toward Jesse. Jesse held the gun steady. His face was expressionless. Below them, down the hill toward the lake, a group of insects made a keening hum.
“You understand that?” Jesse said.
Snyder nodded his head maybe an inch.
“You believe me?”
Snyder nodded slightly as if it hurt to move his head.
Jesse took the gun from Snyder’s mouth and put it back in its holster.
“Get out of the car,” Jesse said.
Snyder got out.
“Close the door,” Jesse said.
Snyder closed the door. Jesse started his engine, put the car in gear and drove away.
Chapter Thirty-six
Lilly came down to the lakeside one evening to watch Jesse play. Though it was still bright, the lights were on. The players gathered in shorts and sweats and tee shirts and tank tops and baseball caps on backward. All of them had expensive gloves, and the talk among them was the same talk, she thought, that Cap Anson had heard, or Cobb, or Ruth, or Mickey Mantle: insulting, self-deprecating, valued for its originality less than for its tradition, like the ancient ballad singers she’d heard of, rearranging the same phrases to create something new. The music was the same. Beloved teammates. Beloved adversaries. Celebrating the same ritual, together on a summer evening. She felt entirely separate from this. She understood it, but she knew she’d never feel it. If there were real differences between the genders, she thought, she was observing one of them.
Looking at the game, her eyes were drawn to Jesse. It wasn’t just because of their intimacy, she was pretty sure. It was the way he moved. Among twenty or more men who all valued the same thing, Jesse seemed most to embody it.
It was darkening after the game. Jesse and Lilly walked across the outfield toward the parking lot. The coolers were open. The beer was out. The cans were popped. The bright malty smell of the beer rode gently on the evening air. The men smelled of clean sweat. Jesse took two beers from a cooler and opened them and handed one to Lilly. She took it though she didn’t like beer much.
“I don’t belong here,” Lilly said.
Jesse smiled.
“Can she play short?” someone said. “We need someone, bad, to play short.”
Jesse held up his hands, all five fingers spread.
“Five for five,” Jesse said.
He walked with Lilly across the parking lot toward his car. He had his glove under his left arm, and the open beer in his right hand.
“Don’t you want to stay and drink beer with your friends?” Lilly said. “I could meet you later.”
“No,” Jesse said. “I’d rather drink beer with you.”
She liked that. They sat in his car in the quiet, drinking their beer.
“You got a hit every time,” Lilly said.
Jesse nodded.
“People hit eight hundred in this league,” Jesse said. “Nobody’s throwing a major-league slider up there.”
The beer was very cold. One of her husbands had insisted on drinking it at room temperature, claiming that you could experience the beer’s full complexity. Lilly found it more tolerable cold.
“You’re being modest,” she said.
“No,” Jesse said. “I’m being accurate. I’m supposed to go five for five. I was a professional ballplayer.”
“And the other players never were.”
“No.”
“And professionals beat amateurs.”
“Every time,” Jesse said. “You want another beer?”
“God no,” Lilly said.
“You don’t like beer.”
“No.”
“We don’t have to stay here,” Jesse said. “We could go someplace and get something you like.”
“I like it here.”
“Okay.”
Jesse got out of the car and got another beer and brought it back.
Someone yelled, “You doing something bad in that car, Jesse?”
Jesse got back in the front seat and closed the door. He drank some beer. It didn’t have the jolt that scotch did, and it took longer. But it had enough.
“Do you feel the same way about being a policeman?” Lilly said.
“As?”
“As being a ballplayer,” Lilly said. “You know—professionals and amateurs?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re a professional policeman.”
“I am.”
“And it matters to you.”
“Yes.”
Someone had turned the field lights off. They could see the moon at the low arc of the horizon. They were quiet. There was something surprisingly romantic about sitting in a silent car with the windows down on a summer night. Maybe the memory of going parking, Lilly thought, memory of the uncertain groping in parked cars when everyone first had their license. It had all been starting then. She had not contemplated, then, being twice divorced at forty, living alone in an uninteresting condominium.
“Is the police work more important than Jenn?”
“No.”
“Maybe it should be.”
Jesse drank the rest of his beer.
“Because?”
“Because you can control the police work,” Lilly said. “At least some of
it.”
“And I can’t control Jenn.”
“Nobody can control anybody,” Lilly said.
“I don’t want to control her, I just want to love her.”
Lilly smiled in the darkness. She thought of all the psychotherapy that had escorted her through two bad marriages. Shrinks must get bored, she thought. Always the same illusions. Always the same mistakes.
“You can do that now,” she said to Jesse. “What you want is for her to love you. You have to trust her to do that.”
Jesse stared out through the windshield at the opaque surface of the darkening lake.
“I’m not sure I can,” he said after a time.
“That’s the bitch of it,” Lilly said.
The parking lot was getting empty. Most of the beer was gone, and the Boys of Evening were drifting back to home and wives and children. Back to adulthood. None of them would have given that up to play ball forever in the twilight. But all of them were grateful for the evenings when they could.
Beside him in the front seat Lilly said, “I feel as if we ought to neck.”
“If we can do it without breaking a rib on the storage compartment between us,” Jesse said.
“When you were seventeen that wouldn’t have bothered you,” Lilly said.
“When I was seventeen I didn’t have an apartment to neck in.”
“And now you do.”
“And now I do.”
“Well then,” Lilly said. “Lets go there.”
“And neck?”
“For starters,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Jesse, out of uniform, sat in his own car on Tremont Street and watched the front door of Development Associates. He had been doing that, when he could, off and on, for two weeks. Brian Kelly had done it when he could, off and on, for two weeks. They had learned that Alan Garner arrived every morning by nine. That Gino and Vinnie showed up when they felt like it. And that nobody else showed up at all.
It was hot. The windows were open. There was no breeze. The city smelled hot. Close hot. City hot. Hot asphalt. Hot metal. Hot brick. Hot exhaust. Hot people. The Explorer had air-conditioning. But a car parked all day with its motor running would, after a time, attract attention. Jesse had learned a long time ago how to sit almost motionless for as long as he needed. He’d learned how to relax his shoulders and widen his mind, and breathe easily, and sit.
As he sat, Brian Kelly came to the car and got in beside him.
“Gino come out and confess yet?” Kelly said.
“Surprisingly, no,” Jesse said.
“Well, maybe I got something for you,” Kelly said. “I called your office and they said you were here.”
“I’m here a lot,” Jesse said.
“That nun,” Kelly said. “Sister Mary John. She wants to talk with you. But she forgot what police department you worked for.”
“And called you?”
“No. She called Bobby Doyle. He called me. Didn’t you leave a card?”
“She must have lost it.”
“Well,” Kelly said. “She’s probably thinking of salvation and all that.”
Jesse nodded.
“She say what she wanted?”
“No. Just that she wants to see you.”
Jesse looked at his watch.
“Been here all morning?” Kelly said.
“Since quarter to nine,” Jesse said.
“And the pretty boy comes at nine. And unlocks the place.”
“That’s right.”
“Gino and Vinnie show up yet?”
“Not this morning,” Jesse said.
“They must be developing something off-site.”
“For all I’ve seen,” Jesse said, “they haven’t ever developed anything on-site. Nobody but the pretty boy and Gino and Vinnie ever come here.”
“That’s the evidence I’ve developed,” Kelly said.
“If there’s something going on with young girls, it doesn’t seem to be going on here.”
“Not while we’re looking,” Kelly said.
“Which, between us, is most of the time.”
“But not all,” Kelly said.
“No.”
They were silent. The heat pressed on them. The street was nearly empty. The metal exterior of the car was too hot to touch.
“You’re putting a lot of time on this,” Kelly said.
Jesse nodded.
A single yellow cab rolled by, going slowly, as if it were too hot to drive fast.
“I worked homicide for a while,” Kelly said. “I always hated it when it was a kid.”
“Yes.”
They were quiet again. Kelly shrugged.
“Not every case gets solved,” Kelly said. “You worked homicide for a while. You know that.”
“I do,” Jesse said.
They were quiet again.
“I’m up the street,” Kelly said after a while. “You want to go see that nun, I can sit here and do nothing for a while.”
“That would be good,” Jesse said.
“You find out anything interesting, you’ll let me know.”
“I will,” Jesse said.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The basement room was cool. There was an air conditioner in the window near the ceiling. Sister Mary John was wearing cutoff jeans and a tank top.
When Jesse came in, he said, “Jesse Stone.”
“I remember,” Sister said.
“You have something helpful? About Billie Bishop?”
“I don’t know. Most of the girls that we have here come and go without a trace. We have a first name, or a nickname, and no last name, and no address. They are not required to tell us any more about themselves than they wish to. Our rules are simple. No drugs. No alcohol. No sex partners.”
“Sex partners?”
Sister smiled.
“Some years ago one of the girls was using the shelter as a place to ply her trade. We cannot allow a bordello to operate under our auspices, so we added a ‘no men’ rule.”
“And things changed, so in the interests of sexual equality…” Jesse said.
“You understand,” Sister said.
“I do. We now call our people police officers.”
“It is good to be current,” Sister said.
“It is,” Jesse said. “Billie Bishop?”
“Some of the girls, like Billie, when they depart, leave us a phone number or forwarding address. It occurred to me that if I went through our file of those, I might find a pattern.”
Sister paused. Jesse waited.
“And I believe I have,” Sister said.
“Sister, social worker, counselor, sleuth,” Jesse said.
“A renaissance nun,” Sister said. “There were, in the past five years, fifteen girls who left us a phone number or address. There was no correlation among the addresses, but in the last year two of them left the same phone number.”
“Did they leave here at the same time?” Jesse said.
“No. They left about six months apart.”
“Did they overlap?”
“You mean were they here at the same time? No.”
“Did you call the number?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“It is no longer in service.”
“But you have written it down for me.”
“Yes.”
Sister handed Jesse a piece of blue-lined notepaper with a phone number written on it in a very smooth and graceful hand.
“In this area code?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
Jesse took the notepaper and folded it and tucked it into his right hip pocket.
“Can you find out who had that number?” Sister said.
“Yes.”
“Do you think it will be helpful?”
“We’ll see,” Jesse said. “Do you have anything else?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, Sister. You do good work.”
&
nbsp; “God’s work,” she said.
It was odd to hear her talk that way, Jesse thought. Even though he called her Sister, he didn’t think of her, in her tank top and shorts and ornate Nike running shoes, as religious.
“He’s lucky to have you,” Jesse said.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Across the table, through the candle flicker, Jenn’s face looked like no other. Objectively, Jesse knew there were other women as good-looking as Jenn. But that was, at best, a factual conceit. At the center of his self, Jesse knew that she was the most beautiful woman in existence.
“You don’t see that Abby person anymore, do you?” Jenn said.
She was wearing a short red-and-blue flowered dress with thin shoulder straps. When he had arrived at her condo, Jesse had noticed the amount of leg showing between the hem of the dress and the top of her high black boots.
“No,” Jesse said. “Not socially.”
“How about Marcy Campbell?”
On the table between them was a bottle of Riesling, a bottle of Merlot and a bottle of sparkling water. Jesse poured her some Riesling and himself some sparkling water.
“I see Marcy sometimes,” Jesse said. “We’re friends.”
“Sex?” Jenn said.
“Do I ask you about your sex life?”
“Yes,” Jenn said. “You do.”
“And do you tell me about it?” Jesse said.
“I admit to one.”
“Me, too,” Jesse said.
The table was set with linen napkins and good china. Jenn always liked a nice table. On a board between them she had set out an assortment of cheeses. There was French bread on a cutting board. There were apples and black grapes in a bowl.
“You don’t want to walk into the sunset with Marcy,” Jenn said.
“No. We’re friends. We sleep together sometimes. Neither of us wants to marry the other one.”
“She came to see me after Stiles Island,” Jenn said. “We talked about you.”
Jesse sliced some bread, took a piece, and ate it with some blue cheese. He sipped some sparkling water. With the good bread and the strong cheese, the sparkling water tasted thin.
“She likes you,” Jenn said. “She wondered what the future was for you and me.”
“What did you tell her?” Jesse said.
“That I didn’t know.”
“At least you’re consistent,” Jesse said.
Death In Paradise js-3 Page 10