Stranger in Paradise js-7

by Robert B. Parker

  “Honestly, Jesse…” Molly said.

  Jesse put up a hand as if he were stopping traffic.

  “I don’t want to put you in the position where you have to break a promise or lie to me. I like you too much. Hell, I depend on you too much.”

  “Jesse, I…”

  Again, Jesse stopped her.

  “Suit is very appealing to a certain kind of older, affluent, dissatisfied woman,” Jesse said. “They see him as both masculine and cute. Like a big, friendly bear, and he is often in marked contrast to their husbands.”

  “Like Hasty Hathaway’s wife,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “Like her. In return, Suit is flattered by the attention of such a woman, and their age and status seem not to be a detriment but an attraction.”

  “Oedipus again?” Molly said. “Maybe you’ve been seeing that shrink too long, Jesse.”

  “In fact,” Jesse said, “not long enough. But for whatever reason, Suit has a track record of bopping some surprising women.”

  “Lot of that going around,” Molly said.

  Jesse grinned.

  “You bet,” Jesse said. “And I’m all for it. As long as it does not compromise what we do here.”

  “You think Suit is doing the hokey-pokey with Miriam Fiedler?” Molly said.

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  “If you were right, would it harm the department?”

  “Not if Suit kept it separate,” Jesse said. “Not as long as he continues to serve and protect the kids at the Crowne estate.”

  “You think he wouldn’t?” Molly said.

  “No,” Jesse said. “I think he will. But I don’t want him, or us, embarrassed.”

  Molly nodded.

  “I would,” she said, “if he were doing something.”

  “Good,” Jesse said.

  They sat together for another moment in silence. Then Jesse looked at Molly and said, “Miriam Fiedler?”

  And Molly giggled.

  22.

  It took a long time for Mrs. Franklin to open the door.

  When she did, Crow said, “My name is Wilson Cromartie. I work for a man named Francisco.”

  She tried to shut the door, but Crow wouldn’t let her.

  “We need to talk,” he said, and forced the door open and went in and closed it behind him.

  The woman backed away.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said.

  Her voice was blurred and Crow assumed she’d drunk most of the beer she’d bought earlier.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Crow said.

  “He sent you,” she said.

  “He did. He wants his daughter back.”

  “He fucking deserves her,” the woman said. “How’d you find us.”

  “Your daughter used a credit card in her own name.”

  “Dumb bitch,” the woman said.

  There was an open can of beer on the coffee table in front of the couch. The woman picked it up and drank some.

  “He can have her back,” the woman said. “I can’t do anything with her. But I’m not going back.”

  “He doesn’t want you back,” Crow said.

  The woman belched softly.

  “Good,” she said. “’Cause I ain’t going.”

  “He told me to kill you,” Crow said.

  The woman backed up a step.

  “You said you wasn’t going to hurt me,” she said.

  “I’m not,” Crow said. “I don’t kill women.”

  “He know that?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your daughter’s got a boyfriend?”

  The woman finished her beer.

  “Everybody’s her boyfriend, the little slut. Who’s she with now?”

  “Kid from Marshport named Esteban Carty,” Crow said.

  “The fucking gangbanger,” the woman said.

  “Yep.”

  “She loves those gangbangers,” the woman said. “I think she does it to spite me.”

  Crow nodded. The woman went to the refrigerator and got another beer. While she had the door open, she counted the number of beer cans left.

  “I done everything for her, give up everything. Took her away from him. Run off, risked my life taking her with me, so I wouldn’t leave her with him. And she comes here and turns into a fucking slut.”

  “Your daughter’s boyfriend knows I found you,” Crow said. “She’s with him now. So she’ll know, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want her running off again.”

  “You think I can stop her?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Crow said. “I can.”

  23.

  Jenn sat across from Jesse in the Gray Gull, at the window overlooking the harbor. He was sipping a scotch and soda. Jenn had a mojito.

  “You’re working,” Jesse said.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “You’re on expenses,” Jesse said, “or you wouldn’t have promised to pay for dinner.”

  Jenn smiled.

  “I missed you,” she said. “I wanted to talk. You can pay if you’d rather.”

  “That’s okay,” Jesse said.

  “Secure in your manhood?”

  “Something like that,” Jesse said.

  “I need a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “We have been all over the gang infiltration story,” Jenn said. “And I’m not so sure there is a story.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “We keep getting information from a group called Paradise Preserved about gang activity here. But we can’t verify much more than a couple of instances of graffiti.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Are we being jerked around?” Jenn said.

  “You are,” Jesse said.

  “What do they want?”

  “They want the Crowne estate project to fail,” Jesse said.

  “So they are trying to convince people in Paradise that gang invasion is a collateral result?”

  “Something like that,” Jesse said.

  “I suppose it’s better than being opposed to education of the young,” Jenn said.

  “They’ve discovered, I think, that intimidating five-year-old kids doesn’t look good on TV,” Jesse said.

  “When we talked about this before, I thought you were being defensive and you thought I was being careerist.”

  “Neither of us was entirely wrong,” Jesse said.

  Jesse’s first drink had been a very small drink. Jenn still had half of hers. His drinking always bothered her. What would she think if he ordered another one? They were divorced and she was sleeping with other men. How much did he have to lose? He gestured toward the waitress.

  “No,” Jenn said. “I am a careerist, I guess. My job means a great deal to me. As yours does to you.”

  “I’m good at it,” Jesse said. “If I can keep being good at it, maybe I’ll get to be good at other things.”

  “You’re good at a lot of things, Jesse.”

  “Marriage doesn’t seem to be one of them,” Jesse said.

  Jenn shook her head.

  “It takes two,” Jenn said. “Not to tango.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “I never said you were perfect,” he said.

  “The mess we’re in,” Jenn said, “is a collaborative effort. No one person could have created it alone.”

  Jesse tried to nurse his second drink.

  I’ll take a sip, he thought, and put the glass down. And savor the sip. And talk a little. Like Jenn does. And have another sip. No hurry.

  “You’re sure there’s no story, then,” Jenn said.

  “Not the one you came out here for,” Jesse said.

  Jenn had started to pick up the menu. She stopped, her hand resting on it.

  “But there is a story,” she said.

  Jesse sipped some scotch and put the glass back down carefully on the table. He let the drink ease down his throat.

  “The Crowne estate
project might make an interesting feature piece,” Jesse said.

  “Yes!” Jenn said. “My God, yes! The conflict between privilege and poverty. Between real-estate values and human values. It could become a…” She moved her hands in circles while she searched for a word. “It could become a replica…a…ah…a microcosm of the same kind of conflict between haves and have-nots worldwide.”

  “Wow!” Jesse said.

  “It’s great,” Jenn said. “I can sell this, I can sell this.”

  “How ’bout the conflict between you and me,” Jesse said.

  “I haven’t quit on that,” Jenn said.

  “Me either,” Jesse said.

  Jenn picked up his hand in both of hers and looked at his face.

  “I have always loved you,” she said. “I love you now.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “But right now you have a story to sell,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” Jenn said. “And don’t dismiss it, Jesse, it might be my way back.”

  “To what?” Jesse said.

  “To you, for crissake, don’t you see that? To you.”

  24.

  The woman was on the couch with a half-drunk can of beer on the coffee table in front of her. Her head was tilted back against the top of the couch. Her mouth had fallen open. She was snoring gently. Crow sat across the room. If someone opened the door, Crow would be out of sight behind it. At 11:07 the daughter arrived.

  “Ma,” she said, and saw her mother slumped on the couch. “Oh, swell,” she said. “Have another beer, Ma.”

  She closed the door and saw Crow.

  “Shit!” she said.

  Crow smiled at her.

  “Should I come back later?” the daughter said. “Or did you fuck her already.”

  “No need to come back later,” Crow said.

  The woman on the couch came awake with a startle.

  “Alice?”

  “I think Daddy’s found us,” Alice said. “Esteban told me a guy…”

  She stopped and looked at Crow.

  “You’re the guy.”

  “That visited Esteban?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am,” Crow said.

  “You shot Puerco,” Alice said.

  “Only once,” Crow said.

  “Shot?” the mother said.

  “Shut up, Ma,” Alice said. “He works for Daddy.”

  Mrs. Franklin frowned, trying to focus.

  “He said he wasn’t gonna hurt us,” she said.

  “Whaddya gonna do?” Alice said.

  “Your old man asked me to kill your mother and bring you back to him.”

  “Kill her,” Alice said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And bring me back?” Alice said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You gonna do either one?”

  Crow shook his head.

  “So whaddya gonna do?”

  “I don’t know,” Crow said. “You got any suggestions?”

  “Whyn’t you go kill Daddy,” she said.

  Crow nodded.

  “And what would you do then?” he said.

  “What I’m gonna do anyway. Move in with Esteban.”

  “Not on your life,” her mother said. “I didn’t raise you to slut for no spick gangbanger.”

  “You didn’t raise me at all, you fucking drunk,” Alice said. “I go where I want. I want to slut it up with Esteban, you got no say.”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way,” her mother said, and struggled to get off the couch.

  “You calling me a slut,” Alice said. “There’s a laugh.”

  “I rescued you from your father, and you talk to me like this?”

  “At least I’m not a fat slut,” Alice said. “I’m outta here.”

  She turned and found Crow standing in front of the door.

  “Get the fuck out of my way,” she said.

  Crow slapped her hard across the face and sent her halfway across the room. She fell back onto the couch beside her mother and began to cry with her face buried in her hands.

  “Esteban is going to kill you,” she said. “He’s going to kill you for Puerco, and now, when I tell him, he’ll kill you for me, too.”

  Crow took his cell phone out and punched in a number.

  After a moment he said, “Chief Stone? Wilson Cromartie. We got a situation down here on Sewall Street.”

  25.

  Jesse brought Molly with him. They were all together in the living room. Jesse standing by the door. Molly in the opposite corner so Crow wouldn’t be able to shoot them both together. Crow sat on a reversed straight chair, his arms folded across the back. Alice’s face was red from Crow’s slap, and her heavy black eye makeup had run when she cried.

  “Can we talk off the record?” Crow said.

  “I don’t see why we should,” Jesse said.

  “Guy named Louis Francisco,” Crow said. “Lives in Palm Beach. Does business all over South Florida. He’s very, very important in South Florida. Miami, all over. He’s married to this woman, calls herself Frances Franklin, but her real name’s Fiona. Fiona Francisco. Kid here, looks kind of like Alice Cooper, is his daughter. She goes by Alice Franklin around here. But her real name’s Amber Francisco.”

  Jesse didn’t comment. He waited, leaning on the wall, his arms folded across his chest. In the opposite corner, Molly was watching both women as Crow talked.

  “One day, about three years ago, in the middle of the afternoon, Mrs. Francisco”—Crow nodded toward her—“and the kid disappear. Francisco’s upset. He don’t care too much about Fiona. But he wants the kid.”

  Crow paused for a moment, thinking about what he’d say next. No one else said anything.

  “So,” Crow said, “think about it. You’re Louis Francisco. You don’t know where your daughter is. And you don’t know who’s got her, or so you say. But you not only want her back but you probably want to get her away from her mother, whom you consider a bad influence.”

  “He should talk,” Fiona Francisco said.

  No one paid her any attention.

  “What do you do?” Crow said. “You probably hire somebody to find her. Now suppose he did, hypothetically, hire somebody. And suppose the guy found them. And he calls Louis and tells him and Louis says kill the mother, bring the girl to me.”

  “He would say that,” Fiona said. “The prick.”

  “I’m not going back,” Amber Francisco said.

  “And here’s the kicker,” Crow said. “This hypothetical guy doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to kill the mother and he doesn’t want to drag the daughter down to Florida.”

  “Why?” Jesse said.

  “Guy’s got his reasons,” Crow said. “But hypothetically, he’s already annoyed the hell out of the members of a Latino gang in Marshport. And Louis won’t be too thrilled with this hypothetical guy, who took a lot of dough up front from Louis and is now not doing what he was signed up for.”

  “So why doesn’t our hypothetical friend tuck his hypothetical ass under him and scoot?” Jesse said.

  “Probably wouldn’t be his style,” Crow said.

  “And he doesn’t quite want to bail on these women,” Jesse said.

  “Something like that,” Crow said. “If he was an actual guy.”

  Jesse was nodding his head slowly. Crow waited.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “I can’t stand this hypothetical crap anymore. We’re off the record.”

  “Which means?” Crow said.

  “Which means I won’t use anything you say against you,” Jesse said.

  Crow looked at him for a time.

  “Good,” Crow said.

  “So you got Louis Francisco on your ass,” Jesse said, “and I assume he has a lot of resources for getting on your ass.”

  “He does,” Crow said. “On the other hand, I got kind of a hard ass.”

  From across the room, Molly said, “Uh-huh!”

  Crow looked at her and grinned.

&n
bsp; “And,” Jesse said, “you got a Latino gang on your ass for a reason not yet specified.”

  “Correct.”

  “And you want me to keep track of these women while you deal with your other problems.”

  “Correct.”

  Jesse was quiet for a moment.

  Then he said, “What’s in this for me?”

  “Do the right thing?” Crow said.

  Jesse stared at him.

  “Crow,” Jesse said, “how many people you killed in your life?”

  “It’s bush to count,” Crow said.

  “And you think I’ll do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What makes you so sure.”

  “It’s the way you are,” Crow said.

  “How the hell do you know the way I am?” Jesse said.

  “I know,” Crow said.

  Again, a pause.

  Then Jesse said, “Yeah, you probably do.”

  26.

  “I can’t hold them for long,” Jesse said.

  He and Crow were in his office. The Francisco women, mother and daughter, were in the squad room with Molly and Suitcase Simpson.

  “Part of a criminal conspiracy?” Crow said.

  “I don’t think that statute covers the intended victims,” Jesse said.

  “At least you could put a cop with them,” Crow said.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “I can. And I will. But if either or both decides to run off, my cop can’t stop them.”

  “You got them now,” Crow said.

  “For questioning. They can leave when they want to.”

  Crow didn’t say anything.

  “Why do you care about any of this?” Jesse said.

  “Why not?” Crow said.

  “Why’d you take the job in the first place? You need the money?”

  “Hell, no,” Crow said. “I came into a lot of money, ’bout ten years ago.”

  “So…?”

  “Being rich can get boring,” Crow said. “I like to work. Francisco leads me to think there might be some push and shove when I found the women. He led me to believe that somebody might be with them that would need to be…” Crow made a small rolling gesture with his right hand. “Removed.”

  “And that would be your kind of work.”

  “It would,” Crow said. “I’m very good at it.”

  “So you took the job because you wanted to get into it with somebody?” Jesse said.