Trouble in Paradise js-2

by Robert B. Parker

  "Each is good," Fran said.

  "Who's in it?"

  "So far, Crow, JD, Faye, and me," Macklin said.

  "She waited for you."

  "Yes."

  Fran nodded.

  "Where's this going to go down?" he said.

  Macklin smiled and shook his head.

  "Keep thinking about the million," Macklin said.

  "It's what you need to know."

  "You wouldn't have Crow if you didn't think it would take some doing," Fran said.

  "Better to have him and not need him," Macklin said, "than need him and not have him."

  "Maybe," Fran said.

  "How many guys you need all together?"

  "One more after you," Macklin said.

  "I'm married now," Fran said.

  "Congratulations."

  "Four kids."

  "How about that," Macklin said.

  "I been legit since I got out. Working for the city, mostly slum clearance."

  "Making the big buck?"

  "Not this big," Fran said.

  "How long will it take?"

  "You'll probably be gone a week, ten days."

  "Ten days?"

  "It's a big job. You'll need some time."

  "Ten days," Fran said, "I could blow up Baltimore."

  "You have to look at the site," Macklin said.

  "Decide what you need. Then you have to get it. And install it. It'll take some time.

  You can't get away ten days for a million bucks?"

  "Old lady'll croak," Fran said.

  "I tell her I'm leaving her alone with four kids for ten days."

  "You'll have to deal with your wife," Macklin said.

  The two of them were silent then, their forearms resting on the railing, the littered sea water washing tamely against the pier. The harbor was busy with small boats and behind them Harbor Place was raucous with teenagers.

  "Okay," Fran said finally.

  "I'll deal with her."

  Macklin smiled and put out his hand. Fran shook it slowly.

  "I'll be in touch," Macklin said.

  TWENTY.

  Surveillance was easy enough. Stay out of sight and watch. He'd done a lot of it in L.A. and the greatest enemy was boredom.

  Tonight in the Back Bay, outside Jenn's apartment, there was no boredom. He'd found space to park on a hydrant in view of her front door. And he sat in his car in the dark with a feeling of such complex intensity that he didn't understand it. He knew that he felt anticipation and anger nd excitement, which was at least partly sexual. He also felt calmness and curiosity and hope and guilt and something like strength.

  Too hard for me, he said to himself and settled back against the car seat. He didn't let the motor run because that was a dead giveaway to surveillance, a car parked with its motor on. He didn't play the radio. He simply sat and waited. People moved along the sidewalk past his parked car. There was money in the Back Bay and the four-story brick town houses along Beacon Street were full of young, well-dressed, good-looking men and women. It was evening and many of them were coming home from dinner or movies or working late. Dogs were being walked, and elegantly dressed women in high heels were carrying plastic bags to clean up after them.

  Dog shit does not respect social status, Jesse thought.

  He looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. If she'd left the station by seven and gone to dinner with somebody, she'd be coming home now. Unless she was spending the night somewhere else. He took in some air and let it out slowly with his lips pursed in a kind of silent whistle.

  He felt the comfortable weight of his gun near his right hip. If she were with another guy, he could kill him. He could feel the release it would bring him. He could imagine the near ejaculatory surge of relief he would get, and he rolled the thought around in his mind passionately. And then what. Now that I've croaked your boyfriend, honey, let's you and me get together? That wouldn't work.

  It would also get him jailed. Even police chiefs weren't permitted to kill people for dating their ex-wives. He could probably do it secretively and get away with it. But how many would he have to kill off? And mightn't Jenn get a bit suspicious when her dates kept getting clipped? And how often could he get away with it? Cops normally looked for the disgruntled lover when some men get killed that are dating the same women. He gave it up slowly, knowing he'd never really thought he could. So why was he here? He shrugged in the darkness. Better to know than not know.

  Jenn turned the corner at Dartmouth Street and walked down Beacon Street beside a short man. They were holding hands. Jesse knew Jenn's walk in the dimness before he could recognize any feature. As they got closer, Jesse recognized the evening news anchor, Tony Salt. He was much shorter than he appeared on the tube.

  Shorter than Jenn. But he had a large head and a strong chin and deep masculine smile lines around his mouth. His walk seemed stilted, and Jesse realized that Tony Salt was teetering on high heeled cowboy boots. Christ, in his bare feet he can walk under bar stools, Jesse thought.

  They were walking close together and their shoulders brushed often. Jenn was talking in that brilliant, animated way she had when she seemed to put her whole self into whatever she was saying. Tony Salt was listening and nodding and laughing often. They walked past Jesse sitting in the darkness and turned into Jenn's doorway. Jesse's concentration was so intense that he didn't realize he had drawn his gun until he clanked it gently against his steering wheel, as he turned in the seat. He rested the gun on the back of the seat, and, knowing he wouldn't shoot, he aimed it carefully at Tony Salt's back and sighted carefully at the spot between Tony Salt's shoulder blades that sat invitingly, and looked a yard wide, on top of the front sight. He held the aim as Jenn fumbled for her keys at the door. Jenn could never find her keys quickly, and when she did find them she never recognized one key from another, so more time ensued while she tried several in the lock before she got the right one. Jesse had always found it endearing that she couldn't find her keys and, indeed, often lost them. Goddesses had no time for keys. Tony Salt stood close to her while she worked on the keys.

  Jesse knew he was so close that their bodies would be touching every time either of them moved. Jesse could feel how shallow his breathing was. Given the intensity of his feeling, it was surprising that the gun hand was perfectly steady. He squinted a little. He knew it was too far and too dark, but it was as if he could see the weave in the back of Tony Salt's thousand-dollar jacket. Jenn found the right key, and the door opened. She turned and gave Tony Salt a light kiss and stepped through the door. He followed her. With the door still open, they stopped in the lighted hallway and turned the easy kiss into a long embrace, Jenn slouching a little so that she wouldn't have to actually bend down to kiss Tony Salt. Jesse could see Tony Salt's hand move down to Jenn's butt. He had on a big ring that caught the hall light and flashed like Elliott Krueger's ring.

  Then they broke the clinch.

  The door shut.

  "Bang," Jesse said.

  TWENTY-ONE.

  "You're the last piece," Macklin said to Freddie Costa.

  They were sitting in Macklin's Mercedes in the parking lot near the wharf office on the town pier in Mattapoisett, about ninety minutes south of Boston.

  "You need a Northshore guy," Costa said.

  "Knows the waters. I never even been up there."

  "I don't have a Northshore guy," Macklin said.

  "You didn't know the waters in the Mekong, did you? Besides you're the best sailor I know who's dishonest."

  "Thanks," Costa said.

  "Then if I'm gonna do it, I gotta have time to go up there, cruise around, look at charts. Not only around Paradise but all over that part of the coast."

  "Sure," Macklin said.

  "That's why I'm talking to you early, give you time to plan."

  "It'll cost money," Costa said.

  "You got to spend money to make money," Macklin said.

  "I gotta buy fuel. I got boat payments. I gotta l
eave my ex with some."

  "Haven't you got anything ahead?"

  Costa laughed.

  "You talking to me about ahead?"

  Macklin shrugged.

  "Okay," he said.

  "I haven't got too much ahead myself."

  "Can't help you without something up-front," Costa said.

  Macklin was silent. The harbor around the pier was mostly small sailboats. Some were at their moorings. Their masts bare, the boats tugging gently at the tether. Some were under sail, the mooring marked by the small boat they had rowed out to it. Two kids were fishing off the end of one of the two stone piers. A big old Chris-Craft with gleaming mahogany trim was refueling in the slip between the piers.

  "Whatta they catching?" Macklin said.

  "The kids? Scup if they're lucky. Blowfish, mostly."

  "They good to eat?"

  "Scup is, but not the blowfish. Kids like to haul them in, get them to inflate, and skip them on the water."

  "There's a good time," Macklin said.

  "You know what kids are like."

  "No," Macklin said.

  "I don't."

  They were quiet. A rowboat pulled in to the pebbled beach to their right, and two men got out in knee-deep water and dragged the boat up onto the landing area above high tide. The men left the rowboat there and took the oars. The Chris-Craft finished refueling and began to inch out of the slip.

  "Okay," Macklin said finally.

  "I got five grand I can spot you."

  "Cash," Costa said.

  "Whaddya think? I'm going to write you a check?"

  "I don't like to leave nothing to chance," Costa said.

  "I could enter the notation: advance on robbery loot," Macklin said.

  "You got it on you?"

  "No."

  "When do I get it?"

  "You drive the boat up..." Macklin said. Costa began shaking his head before Macklin finished his sentence.

  "And I'll pay you when you get there."

  "Me and the boat stay right here," Costa said.

  "Until I get the five."

  Macklin had known Costa a long time. He was just as he looked. He was squat and strong with thick hands and dark skin that had cured darker in a lifetime on the water, and he didn't change his mind. Once his mind was set, he plowed right through anything in his way-including the law. Costa wasn't scared of Macklin. Costa probably wasn't even scared of Crow. You had the choice of his way or kill him, and Macklin wasn't prepared to kill him yet.

  "I'll be here Monday noon," Macklin said.

  "With the cash?"

  "With the cash."

  "Good," Costa said.

  "When can you get up there?"

  "To Paradise?"

  "Yeah."

  "You gimme the cash Monday noon, I'll leave Tuesday morning. Go through the canal."

  "Good," Macklin said.

  Costa nodded. He got out of the car and closed the door. Macklin put the Mercedes in gear, backed up, U-turned, and drove away.

  In the rearview mirror he could see that Costa hadn't moved.

  TWENTY-TWO.

  Copley Place was a high-end, upscale, vertical mall in the middle of Boston. It looked like every other high-end, upscale, vertical mall Jesse had ever seen. When you were in Copley Place, Jesse thought, you could be anywhere in western civilization. He had been in Copley Place for three hours, trailing behind Jenn, carrying bags, feeling like a husband, and rather liking it. But he knew he would have to tell her the secret thing he had done, and he was afraid. Usually Jesse could put the fear away, know it was there, but function around it. This fear nearly paralyzed him.

  "You must be making the big buck," Jesse said.

  They were sitting beside the waterfall near the top of the escalator in the middle of the second floor.

  "I get a clothing allowance," Jenn said.

  "And I haven't spent it all yet. Are you bored?"

  "No" Jesse said.

  "I like to be with you."

  Jenn smiled. But the smile was automatic, Jesse thought. She was looking at the display in a window down the mall.

  "What do you think of that little suit?" Jenn said, "With the chalk stripe."

  "It would look good on you." Jesse took a breath.

  "I followed you the other night when you were out with Tony Salt."

  Jenn kept looking at the chalk-striped suit for a moment, and then slowly she turned her head toward him.

  "You followed us?"

  "Actually I staked out your apartment. I saw you come home with him. I saw him go in."

  "And?"

  "He spent the night."

  Jenn sat back against the bench and kept looking at him.

  "Jesse," she said finally, "how... how goddamn dare you?"

  Jesse clenched himself and held tight.

  "I don't know," Jesse said.

  "I'm ashamed of it."

  His voice was steady. Jenn continued to look at him. A woman brought her two small children to the waterfall and let them throw pennies in it. Then she moved on. The kids didn't want to leave.

  There was an argument. The kids cried. The woman finally dragged them away.

  "You... have... the... right," Jesse said slowly, "to... date who... you wish and... spend the night with... who you wish."

  "Yes,"Jennsaid. "Ido."

  "I don't know why I did that," Jesse said.

  "I don't know why you're telling me," Jenn said.

  "Because it's the truth."

  "Do I have to know all the truth?"

  "I don't know," Jesse said, "but I have to tell you all the truth."

  Jenn smiled.

  "Well, at least you know it's about you and not about me," she said.

  Jesse stared at the artificial waterfall cascading discreetly into the artificial pool.

  "I won't do it again," Jesse said.

  Jenn could see the way his jaw muscles bunched at the hinges.

  "Tell the truth?"

  Jesse shook his head.

  "I have to do that," he said.

  "I won't spy on you again."

  "Why do you have to tell me the truth, even if it's a bad truth?" i Jesse shook his head as if to clear it. Jenn remembered his doggedness. It was a good quality sometimes, she thought, but not always. yJenn asked again.

  "Where does it say you have to always tell me the truth?"

  "No secrets," Jesse said.

  His voice sounded as if it were being forced through too narrow an opening. God, this is hard on him, Jenn thought. She leaned over and patted his forearm.

  "It's hard, Jesse," she said.

  "You're fighting the booze, you're fighting this. It's hard."

  "I don't win this fight, I may not win the booze fight," Jesse said and wished he hadn't as soon as he heard it.

  "I know, but I can't help you with that," Jenn said.

  "I can't be with you so that you won't drink."

  "It was the wrong thing to say. Following you was the wrong thing to do." Jesse laughed angrily.

  "I'm on a roll."

  "It's not that bad," Jenn said.

  "It was the wrong thing to do," Jesse said.

  "Of course it was, but it hasn't changed anything. I'm not going to give up on this because you once acted like a jerk."

  Jesse nodded.

  "You don't act like a jerk too often anymore," Jenn said.

  Jesse grinned at her without any happiness in the grin.

  "I'm not sure I like the 'anymore' part," he said.

  "How about, you never act like a jerk when you're working," Jenn said.

  Jesse nodded.

  "It's why I work," he said.

  TWENTY-THREE.

  When Macklin came in the front door, Faye jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. She was wearing a silk robe and nothing else.

  "Whoa," Macklin said.

  "Let me at least get the door closed."