Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Vic was so lost inside his own head, he didn’t hear the pilot return.

  “Okay, we’re good to go,” the pilot said.

  Vic was so startled by the sound of the pilot’s voice, he nearly dropped his phone into the lake.

  “You all right, mister? Relax. I’ve done these sorts of flights hundreds of times. We’re going to be flying pretty low, so hold on tight.”

  But what Vic said was, “There’s been a change of plans.”

  71

  Harlan Salter IV was looking through the papers that would allow his son to be transferred to Tufts Medical Center. Monty Bernstein wasn’t happy about it, but he hadn’t been happy about nearly anything Salter had done since this whole mess began.

  “Harlan, I want to again advise against doing this. Chief Stone would be within his rights to arrest Ben if you attempt to move him out of this jurisdiction. We both know Ben had nothing to do with the girl’s murder, but he’s still the only suspect they have and certainly the only viable material witness.”

  Salter stuck the stem of his unlit pipe into his lawyer’s sternum. “You do that too frequently for my taste, Counselor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Advise against things,” Salter said. “I thought your people were supposed to be pushier, not so worried about making waves. They certainly are that way in my business. I admire proactive people, Bernstein. I admire bravery and risk-taking. You’re not too keen on risk-taking.”

  Monty Bernstein was no fan of Harlan Salter to begin with, and after his “your people” remark, Salter had descended several levels on Monty’s popularity scale.

  “When it’s necessary, I take some pretty heavy risks.”

  “Sure you do, but it’s your clients that pay the price when those risks don’t turn out.”

  “I’m good at my job. That’s why I’m standing here.”

  “Next time, you won’t be.”

  “I am now, though, and my advice is to let Ben stay put.”

  “Well, I’ve had contact with another more cooperative lawyer who’s had some high-profile doctors draft a memo saying that my son needs the kind of care he can only receive at a major medical facility. It should be arriving by messenger soon. Let Stone try and make something of this. Time that small-town bully got his bluff called. And Bernstein—”

  Before Salter finished his sentence, his cell phone rang. He stepped away from his lawyer. When he returned, he had what passed for a broad grin on his face.

  “Good news?” Monty said.

  “Excellent news. Mr. Vic Prado is about to get his comeuppance. Apparently the gentleman you procured for me has used Prado’s wife to ensure he shows up to his own execution.”

  As broad as the grin on Salter’s face was, it was matched by the frown on Monty Bernstein’s.

  “I dread saying this to you yet again, but I feel I have to as your—”

  “Don’t bother, Bernstein. Why not record yourself saying, ‘I would advise against it,’ and carry the recorder in your pocket? It would save a lot of wear and tear on your vocal cords.”

  “Still, I would plead with you to reconsider this course of action.”

  Salter shook his head in disgust.

  “And I was going to ask you to accompany me to watch my pound of flesh extracted from Prado’s hide.”

  Monty said, “No, thanks.”

  “I didn’t make the offer, Counselor. I said I was going to ask, but that was before I decided that I no longer require your services. Consider yourself fired.”

  “Gladly. You are as unpleasant a man as I have ever met. And here’s some pro bono advice. Don’t go through with this. Right now you’re free and clear. You’ve got total control of your firm back. It wasn’t your daughter who was killed. Your son will be fine in a couple of months. Do this and it’s murder one.”

  “Farewell, Mr. Bernstein. I’m certain I do not have to remind you to send me the bill for your services. In any case, I will pay it promptly.”

  With that, Salter turned his back on his former lawyer and began filling out the hospital transfer papers.

  72

  Mike Frazetta was seated before his huge flat screen, watching High Plains Drifter. One of Frazetta’s favorite scenes, an exchange between the town preacher and Clint Eastwood’s Stranger, was playing. Frazetta sat mute as Eastwood’s character spoke.

  “All these people, are they your sisters and brothers?” Eastwood’s character asks the indignant preacher about the dispossessed residents of the town.

  “They most certainly are,” says the preacher.

  Frazetta leaned forward, balling and unballing his fists in anticipation of Eastwood’s reply.

  “Then you won’t mind if they come over and stay at your place, will ya?”

  He clapped his hands together.

  “I love that line,” he said as Joe Breen came into the room. He turned to gaze at Joe. “What’s wrong? I can tell something’s wrong by that look on your puss.”

  “Vic.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone.”

  That got Frazetta’s attention. He stood up and spun around, his face twisted in anger.

  “What do you mean, he’s gone? Gone where? Gone how?”

  “Mexico, then to Belize,” Joe said. “How, I don’t know, but he’s out of here.”

  “Fuck! I thought I told you to keep an eye on him.”

  “I staked out his hotel. He must’ve slipped out the back or something.”

  “Then how do you know he split?”

  “A source.”

  “What good is a source. I seen some of your sources, Joe. People will tell you all kinds of shit because they’re afraid of you or they want to get greased or they need a favor.”

  “Not this source. This girl’s as reliable as they come, Mike. I trust her like you trust Lorraine. You can make book on it.”

  “What, you trust a hooker?”

  “I suppose she’s an escort of a sort,” Joe said. “Let’s leave it at that. Whatever label you choose to give her, I’ll vouch that she’s telling the truth of what she knows. But why are you so troubled? We’re rid of Vic. Isn’t that what you wanted all along? Any stink is on him. We’re insulated.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about,” Mike said. “He could rot in Belize eating bananas and mangoes, for all I care. I was planning on him going for a long one-way ride no matter what. It’s his documentation. It’s his computer. It’s anything he’s got that links us to him other than us growing up together. He’s the only person who can tie us to that SEC guy’s murder.”

  “I think we’ll be okay.”

  “Not for nothing, Joe, but thinking is my department. Listen, I want you to head out to Scottsdale. Pull Vic’s house apart—stick by stick, if you have to. Find his computer, his papers, and bring them back. Go have a talk with his lawyer.”

  “A talk or ‘a talk’?”

  “If the normal kind of talking don’t work, do your kind of talking.”

  “What if Vic’s wife is—”

  “Since when do I have to tell you what to do every step of the way? What’s up with you lately? If the wife gets in the way, send her to summer camp like the Salter kid’s girlfriend.”

  Joe’s stomach twisted in a knot at that, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll arrange for you to fly out there on a private jet. We don’t want records of you on a commercial flight. Use the alias you bought your house with, okay? You still got all the fake paper I got for you?”

  “I got it.”

  “Go pack some stuff and head out to Logan. And, Joe, one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Dress your age, for crissakes already. Lose the faded jeans and sneaks. Wear a suit and some decent shoes. I’ll arrange for somebody to fix you up
with a piece when you land. Okay, get out of here.”

  When Joe Breen left, Mike Frazetta didn’t call his connection at the airport or his contact in Phoenix. He sat back down, pressed rewind, then play. He sat forward.

  Lorraine was pacing by the front door as Joe came out of the study.

  “Don’t worry,” Joe said. “I’ve kept my word.”

  “I’ve hated you for such a long time. I feel all twisted up inside now. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about you anymore.”

  “I did what I did for me, not for you. Stop fretting over it.”

  She stroked his cheek. “Bless you, anyway, Joe.”

  He smiled with his mouth closed tight. “It’ll take more than your blessing to make up the ground I mean to make up. I’ll be on my way.”

  He brushed past Lorraine Frazetta, down the front steps, and hoped like hell Moira was home. He wasn’t any good at leaving notes.

  73

  Jesse wished Molly had taken the bottle and watered the other half-dead plants or dumped it down the drain. Molly was long gone, but he was still in his office, listening to Johnnie Walker singing his muted siren’s song from the bottom desk drawer. It wasn’t so much about Dee and Vic anymore, but about boredom and frustration. Alcoholics have an endless stream of reasons, rationales, and excuses for their thirsts. The funny thing is that they make the excuses to themselves, whether anyone else cares or is there to listen. Jesse was no different.

  Connor Cavanaugh had been there for three hours, left-clicking, going over hundreds and hundreds of mug shots without any luck. He and Jesse had shared a large pepperoni-and-sausage pizza for dinner, though Jesse preferred mushroom and green pepper. He figured he owed it to Cavanaugh to let the hotel security man pick the toppings. For the first two hours he had gone out to check on Cavanaugh every fifteen minutes. He stopped when he noticed that it served only to frustrate the both of them. Jesse wasn’t an action junkie like a lot of other cops, but quiet times in a crisis could be rough. He considered going home, then thought better of it. Even on good nights, he had a rough time getting to sleep. No, it was best to stay at work.

  He had run out of straightening to do. Had paced the floor. Had pounded the ball into his glove. Had cleaned his .38 and his rarely used nine-millimeter. Had read and reread the files and forensic reports on Martina Penworth and Ben Salter. Had found himself staring at the crime scene photos of Martina Penworth. She had been a very pretty girl, on the verge of beauty. The photograph had captured that in spite of the damage the bullets had done. It also captured something else. The dead are different. As a homicide detective and as chief, Jesse had lived much of his life among the dead, but it wasn’t until Abby Taylor had been murdered that the nature of that difference coalesced for him.

  Jesse remembered standing over Abby’s lifeless body and noting how still she was. There was more to it than her stillness. He had slept with her less than an hour before she’d been murdered, yet the body before him was no more Abby Taylor than the car on which her leg was caught. Something was missing. Jesse didn’t know if people had souls. In fact, he could swear that many of the people he’d encountered as a cop, such as the couple who had murdered Abby as a kick, were pretty much soulless. But after standing over Abby’s body that night, he thought he understood the genesis of souls. He only regretted that it had taken Abby’s death for him to see it. He preferred lessons learned at his own expense. He closed the files.

  He was pacing again when he caught sight of a plastic evidence bag on top of a file cabinet. It took a second for Jesse to make sense of it. Gabe Weathers’s personal effects from the Helton PD. With all that had been going on, he’d forgotten to give it to Gabe’s wife. Gabe. Jesse hadn’t given much thought to Gabe in the last few days. He supposed that was a hangover from his ball-playing days. You didn’t think about injured teammates. It was a matter of reality, not cruelty. It was about the task at hand. If you could help the team, great. If you couldn’t help the team, regardless of the reason, you were forgotten. And as a ballplayer or a cop, it didn’t serve you well to think about getting injured. To do both jobs you needed to be focused. Distraction of any kind was a bad thing. To be distracted by fear of injury was the worst kind of distraction.

  Jesse picked up the bag and looked at it: wallet, badge, nine-millimeter (clip removed), clip (ammo removed), ammo, pen, notepad, spare change, small binoculars, camera. He carried the bag out front to the desk. It was late, but not too late to have Pete deliver Gabe’s things to his family.

  “Pretty quiet night. What’s up, Jesse?”

  “Call Pete in. I want him to run this stuff over to Gabe’s wife.”

  Ed, the cop working the front desk, gave Jesse an odd look.

  “What?” Jesse said.

  “She’s probably not home. Remember, she’s been staying—”

  “Right, right. We put her up across from the medical center. Forget it. I’ll run it over to her tomorrow. I should go see Gabe.” Jesse nodded at Cavanaugh. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing okay, I guess,” Ed said. “Talk about some needle-in-a-haystack shit, that’s it.”

  “If he fades or barks about it, let me know.”

  “Sure thing, Jesse.”

  Back at his desk, Jesse sat with Gabe’s things in his lap. He realized that he didn’t want to give Gabe’s things to his wife in an evidence bag, so he removed the items one at a time and laid them out on his desk. For some reason, his eyes kept drifting toward the camera. He hadn’t instructed Weathers to photograph Salter’s activities, but Gabe was a thorough cop with big-city experience. That’s why Jesse had chosen him instead of the younger candidates. To the annoyance of his fellow Paradise PD colleagues, Gabe took the initiative without being prodded. Jesse picked up the little Canon, pressed the on/off switch, and flipped it around so the viewing screen faced him. As he fumbled with the buttons, trying to figure out how to display the photos in the camera’s memory, he hoped like hell Gabe wasn’t the kind of guy who took nude shots of his wife or worse.

  “Here goes nothing,” Jesse said to himself.

  When a photo of Burt’s All-Star Grill, Salter’s black Navigator parked out front, appeared on the screen, Jesse breathed a sigh of relief. When he scrolled a few photos ahead and saw a white Nissan Sentra, he burst out of his office.

  “Eddie, wake Molly up and send Pete over to get her.”

  “What is it, Jesse?”

  “Just do it.”

  Before Ed could call Peter Perkins, Peter called in to the station on the radio.

  “Unit three, unit three calling dispatch. Over.”

  “Unit three, this is dispatch. What’s up, Pete?” Ed said. “Over.”

  “Jesse still there?”

  Jesse Stone grabbed the mic. “This is Jesse. What’s up, Pete?”

  “There’s been a little trouble at the Scupper.”

  “What kind and how little?”

  “Bar fight. Couple of punches thrown, then a roll around on the floor,” Pete said. “The usual thing.”

  “You need me for this why?”

  “One of the parties involved says he’s a lawyer. Driver’s license identifies him as Monty Bernstein. Claims he’s a close personal acquaintance of yours. That’s an exact quote, Jesse. Figured I should give you a heads-up before I dragged his ass down there.”

  “Good thinking. Keep him there. I’m coming over. I wanted to have a talk with him, anyway. When I get there, I want you to pick Molly Crane up at her house and bring her down to the station. I’ll explain when I get there.”

  “Okay, Jesse. Roger that. Over.”

  “Over and out.”

  Jesse turned to Ed. “Get Molly up. There’s a camera on my desk. Tell her I want every one of the photos blown up and parsed like a sentence in Catholic school. She’ll understand.”

  74

  The so
uthwest area of town, the Swap, as residents called it, had boomed in the wake of WWII and was now the most run-down part of Paradise. The small slab houses, built with only expedience and profit in mind, were showing their age. The Swap had been the only part of Paradise considered working-class and for sixty-plus years the Scupper had been the place where fathers brought their sons for first drinks. Like the climate and the economy, that was all changing. The Swap was the one area in town where a young couple without much in the way of financial resources could buy a house. It’s where Paradise’s tiny Hispanic population had taken root. It was also home to whatever art and food scenes Paradise could muster.

  Five years from now, Jesse thought as he pulled up behind Pete’s cruiser, the rents around here will be through the roof. He’d witnessed transitions like this before in L.A., the churning of neighborhoods from least to most desirable. But any way you looked at it, the Scupper was a dump.

  As Jesse came through the front doors he got a full dose of stale beer and cigarette smell. Although smoking in bars had been banned years ago, it still went on in places like the Scupper. Smoking was possibly the one thing the old and newer patrons of the Scupper agreed on. The bouncer, Brian Kent, another one of Suit’s ex-teammates, nodded hello to the chief and pointed his thumb at the first booth in the back. The place was pretty empty. The bartender asked Jesse if he wanted something to drink. Tempted as he was, Jesse waved him off.

  Peter Perkins was sitting across the booth from Monty Bernstein. Bernstein’s face looked undamaged, but the same could not be said of his sweater or his pride. The black, fine-wool sweater was torn in three places and covered with dust and beer. The cowed, slump-shouldered way the lawyer held himself told Jesse everything he needed to know about Bernstein’s state of mind.