Joe had no such heartbreak when it came to the man seated to his right. Vic Prado was a smug bastard, a smarmy shite, his uncle Declan might have said. Joe shook his head as he thought about Vic. What, he wondered, did everyone see in this guy? Vic’s charms had forever escaped Joe. Even as kids, when Mike and the other boys in the neighborhood followed Vic about as if he was the Pied Piper, Joe was at a loss to comprehend it. Was it that Vic was always the best athlete among the boys? Joe knew that sports was a measure by which most boys found their place in the world, but so was toughness. And by that measure, Joe should have had as big a following as Vic. Not one of the boys could touch Joe’s willingness to fight older boys. Not one of them matched Joe’s determination. It was true that Mike Frazetta had always admired Joe for that.
“How do you do it, Breen?” Mike had once asked after Joe had kicked the shit out of Chicky Giardo, a guy five years older and half a foot taller.
“You’re going to get hit, Mike, and it’s going to hurt. The trick is not caring that it hurts. The trick is making sure he knows that no matter how bad he hurts you, you’re willing to hurt him worse, much worse. You hurt a few guys bad enough, no one wants a piece of you anymore.”
It was something Mike never forgot, and when he followed his dad into the family business, he took Joe along with him. That was another thing about Vic, he was a one-way kind of guy. His loyalty was to himself alone. The minute he knew he was getting out of Lowell, he dropped his old friends and never looked back. Joe detested Lorraine, and yeah, she had cheated on Vic with Mike, but Joe wasn’t fooled. He knew that Vic was going to scrape Lorraine away like shit off his shoe whether she had been faithful or not. She had just made it easier for Vic to do the inevitable. Everybody made it easy for Vic until all of his investments went south and he showed up on Mike’s doorstep with his hand out and an idea.
It still burned Joe’s ass that Mike hadn’t made Vic crawl. If it had been up to Joe, he would have made Vic Prado beg and give his paw before he would have given the bastard a penny. But Mike had never got over his boyhood admiration for Vic, nor had he got past the guilt he felt for what had happened between himself and Lorraine that night all those years ago. Vic was a lot of things. Stupid wasn’t one of them. Joe had to give Vic that much. Joe sat there and watched Vic use Mike’s guilt to manipulate him into fronting him the money for his scheme. Yeah, the scheme had worked like a charm, at least until now, and everybody, including Joe Breen, had made a lot of money from it. Even the firms that had reluctantly got into bed with Vic’s front company had profited like mad. Yet Joe had foreseen trouble from the moment Mike shook hands on the deal with Vic, and he had warned Mike about it from time to time.
“It’s just a fancy Ponzi scheme, Boss. Sooner or later Vic’s going to run out of these asset firms and then it’s going to blow up in everybody’s faces. Once you don’t have one more Peter to pay the next Paul, the whole thing falls to shite.”
Mike would just laugh and pat Joe on the cheek. “You worry about me, Joe. That’s great, but don’t lose no sleep over it. Everything got a shelf life. The only stupid person is the one who don’t know that and don’t plan for it. I know it and I got a plan for it.”
Joe wasn’t buying it. There was too much money being made, and Joe had seen what greed did to men. They didn’t like giving up the nipple if they didn’t have to. Maybe the girl hadn’t died for nothing, Joe thought, as he turned off the state road into Paradise. Maybe his killing her would wake Mike up, maybe get him to realize the shelf life on this scam was almost up. Yeah, Joe thought. Maybe she hadn’t died for nothing.
“What are you smiling at, Joey,” Vic said, noticing the cracked and cruel look on Breen’s face.
“Mind your own affairs. Forget it.”
“Try me.”
“I don’t think so, Vic.”
“Whatever. Just drop me off anywhere along here. I have to make the call to set up the meeting for tomorrow.”
“I should come in with you to the meeting,” Joe said.
“No, you heard Mike. We can’t spook this guy and we can’t get Jesse Stone suspicious. That’s why Geno and Carlo are back in Boston. You just leave me here. I’ll call you afterwards and let you know where the meeting is. Once I get the papers signed, we can kick the kid loose and get back to business.”
“Where are you staying?” Joe said.
“Not where Salter is staying.”
“That’s not an answer, Vic.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get. I’ll call you about the meeting. Pull over.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Have you ever liked anything in your life, Joe?”
“Nah, Vic, for me it’s always been a choice between things I don’t like and things I hate. You care to guess where you fit in on that scale?”
Vic Prado just flashed his expensive smile at Joe and blew him a kiss. He got out of the Caddy, not looking back to see Joe Breen make a gun of his right thumb and forefinger. Joe aimed the finger pistol square at the back of Vic’s head and pulled the trigger.
28
The three of them sat at a table at the Gray Gull. Jesse had thought about taking them to the Lobster Claw, but didn’t want to press his luck. He’d managed to elude Dan Castro while he’d been there with Jim Penworth and didn’t think he would be able to avoid him on a second visit, especially not with Kayla and Dee in tow. This wasn’t L.A., a place where beautiful women seemed to sprout from the soil. Jesse had often wondered what the experience was like for the women who flocked to Hollywood—the ones who had been the prettiest girls in their high schools, the ones who had won every local beauty pageant, the ones who had turned heads back home—when they came to the realization that every waitress and hostess they encountered in L.A. had been the prettiest or hottest or most talented girl in their towns. L.A. was a town that chewed up beautiful women, spit them out, and made no apologies. Jesse had tried discussing it with Jenn, his ex, but as stunning as she looked, she was so insecure about her own career and appearance that it was impossible to scratch the surface. He wondered if it was the same as it had been for him when he showed up in class-A ball and every guy on the field had been all-city, all-county, all-state. Now, suddenly, you were just another guy who had to prove himself all over again.
Because this wasn’t Hollywood, Jesse knew that word of his companions would soon spread from the front of the house to the back and that within ten minutes, every male employee would be out to have a look for himself. He was right. By the time they had finished toasting, the entire kitchen staff had been out at the bar asking for a Coke or glass of juice. Each one of them then taking a circle route back to the kitchen that included a close pass by the chief’s table and a quick hello.
“You’re the most popular cop I’ve ever met, Jess,” said Kayla.
Dee agreed. “Very popular with the kitchen help, I see.”
“Uh-huh. Usually they stop to kiss my ring.” He sipped his Black Label and soda. “So what is it exactly that you two are doing in my town?”
“Doesn’t everyone want to see Paradise someday?” Dee said, smiling. The neon was on full power tonight.
Kayla leaned in very close to him. “Vic said he was disappointed that you had to leave so suddenly. He had some business in Boston and figured he’d come up and visit with you when he was done. He sent us ahead.”
Jesse liked the way Kayla looked tonight, the way her perfume smelled on her skin of musk and fresh-cut grass. She seemed alive, untamed, more like the woman he had dated in Albuquerque than the vaguely sad woman he’d just seen in New York. All his life he had been partial to blondes, the one big exception being Kayla. She was so intelligent, so well bred, yet almost feral when they were alone together. Jesse had never forgotten that part of his past life. He had got over the sting of losing Kayla to Vic a long time ago. The sting of losing his career as a major-league sho
rtstop always overwhelmed everything else. Still, he remembered being with Kayla, and, right or wrong, if he harbored any lingering resentment, it was for Vic, not Kayla.
Dee noticed Jesse’s interest in Kayla and broke the spell. “We’re kind of like advance scouts.”
“Advance scouts,” he said. “Planning an invasion?”
Dee arched an eyebrow. “Of sorts. We were hoping you’d give us a tour of Paradise.”
Jesse frowned. Caught himself. Undid it, but not fast enough.
Kayla said, “What’s the matter, Jess? Something’s wrong.”
“There’s been a murder in town. A college girl.”
Kayla put her hand to her mouth. The light dimmed in her eyes. “That’s why you had to rush back from the reunion.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dee asked a question she already knew the answer to. “Do you know who did it?”
“We have a suspect we’re looking for.”
“Not what I asked,” Dee said and then immediately regretted saying it. She was letting her training show.
But all Jesse Stone said was, “No, it’s not.”
“Sorry, Jess,” Kayla said, placing her hand on Jesse’s. She tried staring into his eyes, but he was somewhere else.
He turned his hand over to clasp hers and he brought his other hand over to cover hers. “Thanks. Things are still raw around here.” Then he let her hand go. “But I can give you two a quick ride-along.”
Dee winked. “Mmm, a ride-along. Sounds like fun.”
Kayla slapped Dee’s wrist only half playfully. “Take a cold shower, Dee. He means we can do a short tour of the town in his police car.”
Dee’s eyes got big. “Can we use the siren and flash the lights?”
Jesse shook his head and smiled. “Let me go settle the bill. I’ll meet you out front.”
As Jesse watched Kayla and Dee head for the exit, he got a funny feeling. He didn’t believe in coincidences, and as stimulating as it was to see Kayla and Dee, he didn’t much care for the timing of their visit. He hadn’t seen Kayla or Vic in forever and now here they were showing up on his doorstep two days removed from seeing them in New York. And there was something else, something about Dee that had gotten his attention. Something that had nothing to do with her looks, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Not yet.
29
Jesse was having a scotch with his favorite but least talkative drinking companion, Ozzie Smith. Ozzie existed in suspended animation, his body parallel to the infield as he dived to snatch a line drive out of midair. The poster of Ozzie frozen in time and space had survived many moves with Jesse, though Jesse had never given a lot of thought to why he dragged the Wizard of Oz around with him from house to house. Sure, Jesse liked to talk to Ozzie occasionally, raise his glass to him. Jesse would sometimes brag about his arm to Ozzie. I would never have had your range, but I had a better arm, Oz. I had a monster arm, a cannon. Sometimes Jesse thought Ozzie understood him better than anyone. Better than Dix or Sunny or even Molly. Certainly better than Jenn. Better than himself.
When he went to pour himself another, he realized that between his time with Jim Penworth and Kayla and Dee, and now here, he’d had quite a bit to drink. Jesse had stopped beating himself up over his drinking, but he hadn’t stopped keeping track of it. There was one time a few years back when he’d just lost it one day and drank himself into oblivion. The next morning, he was still so many sheets to the wind that he’d been forced to blow off work. Molly and Suit covered for him and there had been no fallout over it. Yet that day stuck in his head like the point of a thumbtack. Two mobbed-up guys had been murdered in Paradise, so it was about the worst possible time for Jesse to go off the deep end. The thing was, it wasn’t the killings that set Jesse off. It was about two beautiful women, twins, Roberta and Rebecca Bangston. They had triggered Jesse’s meltdown.
As he held the rectangular bottle of Black Label in his right hand, contemplating his next drink, he thought about Kayla and Dee. Jesse put the bottle down. One more drink and clear thought would be lost to him. He wanted to think clearly, needed to. What were Kayla and Dee doing here, really? Mostly he wanted to know about what they were doing here now. And what was it about Dee, who had been a nearly perfect companion during his brief time in New York City, that now seemed a bit off? He turned back to Ozzie and asked him. “So Oz, you got any ideas about Dee?” Ozzie gave the same answer he always gave: silence. “Come on, Oz, even Dix gave me feedback every once in a while.” But Ozzie was nothing if not consistent, in the field and in his Zen-like silence. As it happened, Ozzie wouldn’t have got the chance to change his ways, had he been so inclined.
First there were the dancing shadows cast by headlights against the walls of Jesse’s house. Then came the telltale grousing and ripples of tires against the rough road surface outside his house. A car door slammed. Shoes, women’s shoes, clickety-clacked along the walk. A bell rang. A hand rapped the wooden door. Jesse pulled back the door.
He bowed his head slightly. “Dee.”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Give me a minute to think about it.”
She punched Jesse in the right arm. “Time’s up, darlin’.”
“Then I guess I better invite you in.”
Dee stepped close to him, stood on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips. She kicked off her gray slingbacks and strolled past him. She was dressed in tight jeans, but not the kind they sold at Old Navy. These were expensive jeans that showed off what you had and hid what you didn’t. That second benefit was wasted on Dee. There wasn’t much she didn’t have. She wore a lightweight periwinkle sweater that made her eyes almost glow blue. The sweater’s neckline plunged just enough to show off the tanned and slightly freckled skin of her upper breasts and the cleavage between them. She smelled great, too. Her perfume was more peppery than Kayla’s and was put on with a gentler hand.
“Make yourself at home,” Jesse said, though it seemed a moot point. She’d already walked past him and found the bar.
“You mind if I make myself a drink?”
“No.”
“Want one?”
“Sorry, I’ve passed my limit,” he said.
“But you’re the chief of police and this is your house.”
“A short one, then. Plenty of ice and soda.”
Dee poured two drinks. They clinked glasses. And sipped.
“So,” Jesse said, “how’d you find this place?”
“Magic.” She laughed and drank some more. “I wanted to see you by myself. When we were together in New York . . . Well, I kinda felt cheated when you left so suddenly.”
“Murder trumps sex,” he said, “even incredible sex.”
She smiled that neon smile and then turned it off. “I know I sound selfish and that you’re in the middle of this horrible thing, but I haven’t enjoyed being with a man like that in a very long time.” She drank a little more and came very close to him.
With his face cool and serious, he said, “You mean I wasn’t your first?” Then the corners of his mouth curled up slightly. Suddenly, with her standing so near, the questions he had about her seemed to vanish.
She nestled her head against his chest. “If it makes you feel more special, you were my first chief of police.”
“That works for me.”
He put his drink down, lifted her face by the chin, and kissed her hard on the mouth. At first she just let him kiss and then kissed him back with equal verve. When they stopped, they were both breathing heavily. They stared into each other’s eyes for a few seconds. Jesse wasn’t sure about what she had seen in his eyes, and he was even less sure about what he had seen in hers. It was strange, he knew, but he felt as if he could only see so far into her. That at some point, the blueness of her eyes became an opaque barrier. You may see into me just so far, Jesse Stone, and n
ot an inch more. There were those questions again, only they didn’t matter at that moment.
“Show me around the rest of your place,” she said.
“Where would you like me to start?”
She kissed him softly again. “Your bedroom seems like an awfully good place to begin the tour.”
He grabbed her hand. “It’s a big house,” he said.
“Don’t worry, darlin’. We can get up early in the morning and finish the tour.”
Jesse led her to the bedroom.
30
They were to meet at Burt’s All-Star Grill, a drab little restaurant in the equally drab little town of Helton, Mass. Helton was about forty miles due west of Paradise. Unlike Paradise, Helton fell beyond the sway of Boston. It had once been the kind of place that employed thousands of people who manufactured this or that, and probably both. These days all it manufactured was future candidates for unemployment insurance. Its old red brick factory buildings stood soot-covered and disused, the habit of persistence being about the only thing preventing their imminent collapse.
Dawn was still a faint promise when the black Navigator stopped in front of Burt’s. Monty Bernstein laughed to himself when he emerged from the SUV and walked into the restaurant. What a dump, he thought, but at least Burt had had a sense of irony when he named the joint. Monty almost shared his observation with his client, then reconsidered. Even if they hadn’t gone there to negotiate Ben Salter’s release, Harlan Salter IV wasn’t a man prone to casual laughter. He wasn’t a man prone to casual anything. As they’d been instructed, Monty and Salter sat at the last booth on the right. Their suits seemed to stick to the red vinyl as they slid into the booth. The cushions themselves were more springs than padding. The vinyl was scarred and patched with copious amounts of duct tape. The plastic-covered menus and Formica tabletop were coated in a thin layer of yellowed grime that smelled vaguely of ancient cigarette smoke and cooking oil. Both men brushed their palms together as they waited for the other party to show. Monty waved a waitress over and ordered two cups of coffee.
Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot Page 9