Trouble in Paradise js-2

by Robert B. Parker

  He held her easily.

  With her face a half inch from his Faye said, "Welcome home. Wanna fuck?"

  "Well, yes," Macklin said, "as a matter of fact I do."

  She pressed her mouth against his and held it there while he carried her to the bedroom and put her on the bed. She held on even after he put her down.

  "Faye," he said as he pulled away from her.

  "I need to get my clothes off."

  "Well, be quick about it," Faye said as she untied her robe.

  She was very inventive and experimental. She liked to try different positions. Whenever she heard of a new sexual trick or an innovative device, she was eager to try it. There was something joyous in her sexuality. Macklin always thought of her as laughing while they had sex, though he knew she didn't really. When they were through, they lay together on her bed and stared at their reflection in the mirrored ceiling.

  "That calm you down for a while?" Macklin said.

  "For a while," Faye said.

  "You hungry?"

  "For cris sake Faye," Macklin said.

  "One appetite at a time. Let me sort of rest up."

  "I've got supper ready whenever you want it."

  "You serve a nice hors d'ouevre," Macklin said.

  "You get the people you want?"

  "Yeah, Crow was the most important one. Now I got JD for wiring, and Fran for explosives, and Freddie Costa for the boat."

  "That means a five-way split," Faye said.

  "Unless some of them drop out," Macklin said.

  Faye met his eyes in the mirrored ceiling.

  "You think that could happen?"

  Macklin smiled and shrugged at her.

  "Could," he said.

  Still looking at him in the ceiling, Faye said, "You're a heartless bastard, Jimmy."

  "Not all the time," Macklin said and patted her thigh.

  "No," Faye said.

  "Not all the time."

  She put her head against his shoulder, and they were quiet together. Faye knew that it wasn't quite right, what he'd said about "not all the time." He loved her, within his limits, but Jimmy wasn't capable of a lot of feeling. What he could feel most sharply, she knew, was excitement and boredom, and his life was mostly seeking one to avoid the other. It was why jail was so hard on him.

  She knew that she didn't know what he did to fight boredom in jail, but she knew Jimmy and what excited him was risk. She knew that the odds were good that he'd risk too much someday. And, she knew that he would be unfaithful. It had nothing in his emotional world to do with loving her or not. It had to do with opportunity and conquest. She hated knowing it, but she was a woman who had learned early in life that things were so whether she wanted them to be so or not. And she knew that she loved him and that he would never leave her, and she would take what there was and make as much of it as she could. Looking up at the two of them lying naked on her bed, Faye thought that probably that was what life was, taking what you could get and making the most of it.

  "What's for supper?" Macklin said.

  "Pork and pepper stew," Faye said.

  "And I made a big pitcher of sangria."

  "Faye," Macklin said, "you're the best."

  Faye knew he meant it, even if he couldn't say she was the only.

  "Yes," Faye said.

  "I am."

  TWENTY-FOUR.

  Jesse's office was crowded. He was there at his desk. And seated to his right was Nick Petrocelli, the new town counsel. In front of them, in a broad semicircle, were the two Hopkins boys, their father, Charles, their mother, Kay, and their lawyer, Brendan Fogarty. Beyond them was Carleton Jencks, Sr." Carleton Jencks, Jr." known as Snapper, and the Jencks lawyer, Abby Taylor. Earl gave Jesse the finger while pretending to scratch his upper lip. He and Robbie both smirked. Snapper was expressionless.

  "As you know, Stone," Fogarty said, "and, as I warned you, the District Attorney's Office has decided that your case against these lads is so tainted by the way you treated them that they won't bring it to trial."

  Jesse was motionless, his swivel chair tipped back, while he looked at Fogarty the way he had learned to look at gang bangers in South Central. The stone-faced stare that every big city cop masters his first month in a black and white. To his right Petrocelli was equally motionless, looking bored, staring out the side window at the late gathering evening. He was a dark, slim young guy who wore glasses with big, thick black frames. Jesse wasn't sure about him. Petrocelli had graduated from Harvard Law not very long ago and put in time as a prosecutor in Suffolk County, before he joined a big Boston firm as a litigator. He had moved to Paradise after that and become pro bono town counsel when Abby Taylor resigned. But he wasn't thirty yet, Jesse was pretty sure. There was about him a hint of Ivy League condescension, and in the few times Jesse had been with him, he seemed bored in his duties. Fogarty, Jesse noticed, responded to Petrocelli with inadequately concealed amusement. Even Abby, who, except in certain areas that Jesse knew of, was the essence of propriety, seemed heedless of Petrocelli. On the other hand, Jesse thought, the price is right.

  "And," Fogarty went on, "it is that same precipitous treatment of these boys that has brought us here tonight. We intend to bring suit, for false arrest and imprisonment."

  Jesse turned his stare from Fogarty for a moment and looked at Abby Taylor. She nodded.

  "We are part of the suit, Jesse," she said.

  Jesse didn't speak. His stare rested heavily once again on Fogarty.

  "Do you have anything to say?" Fogarty asked.

  Jesse glanced over at Petrocelli.

  "Nick?"

  "It's America, Jesse, say whatever you want."

  Jesse nodded as if that were sage advice. He kept nodding slightly as he looked carefully at each of the people seated in front of him.

  "What are you all doing here?" Jesse said.

  "I told you," Fogarty began.

  Jesse interrupted, "Nobody had to come here for that. You could have sent me a notice in the mail," Jesse said.

  "Why are you here?"

  "Well," Kay Hopkins said.

  "I can tell you why I'm here."

  Her husband said, "Kay..."

  "Don't you shush me, Charles," Kay bore on.

  "I wanted to look right into the eyes of the kind of man who would mistreat two little kids."

  "Mistreat?" Jesse said.

  "Arrested falsely, imprisoned falsely, frightened to death? What would you call it?"

  "You guys frightened?" Jesse said to the Hopkins brothers.

  "Oh sure" Earl said.

  "We was scared to death, wasn't we, Robbie?"

  "Scared to death," Robbie said and giggled slightly.

  Jesse nodded and looked at their mother.

  "Don't you talk to them," she said.

  "You don't want them talked to, what'd you bring them for?"

  "I wanted them to learn that the system does work. That they have parents who will stand up to it and make it work. That police brutality is unacceptable."

  "You feel the same way?" Jesse said to Charles Hopkins.

  "I feel my sons were badly treated," Hopkins said.

  "I want to see justice done."

  "How 'bout you, Jencks?"

  "I haven't decided what I'm here for yet," Jencks said.

  "I'm listening."

  Jesse leaned back in his chair a little farther. Petrocelli seemed almost asleep. He had one elbow on the edge of Jesse's desk and was resting his chin on his fist. He didn't appear to be looking at anything. Jesse surveyed the parents. Charles Hopkins wore a good suit and tie. He was a slim unathletic-looking man, who parted his hair low on the left side and swooped it up over his bald spot. His wife was just overweight enough to make her chic business suit ride a little at the hips. She had a lot of blond hair and considerable eye V shadow and a hard mouth. Snapper's father was a big man with f square hands and a crew cut. His neck was thick. He wore desert boots and khaki pants and a white short-sleeved dres
s shirt open at the neck. His forearms were muscular.

  "So what have you guys learned so far?" Jesse said.

  "That you can't push us around and get away with it," Earl said.

  "That's what I learned too," Robbie said.

  Jesse looked at the parents.

  "Good enough?" he said.

  "No," Kay Hopkins said.

  "I demand that you apologize to these boys."

  "Mrs. Hopkins," Fogarty said and put a hand out as if to keep her at bay.

  "We hired you, Fogarty," Kay Hopkins said.

  "You didn't hire us.

  I'll talk when I want to talk."

  "Mrs. Hopkins, as your attorney..."

  "Oh be quiet. Stone, are you ready to apologize?"

  "I'm ready to talk," Jesse said.

  "As soon as it's my turn."

  "I'd like to hear him," Carleton Jencks said.

  His voice was deep, and there was authority in it.

  "Anyone else got anything else to say?" Jesse said.

  "I don't want to cut you off."

  He looked over the group. No one else spoke. Outside the office windows, it was dark.

  "Okay, here's what I know. I know that there were two perfectly nice guys living a perfectly nice life in a perfectly nice house, and these three kids burned it down for the hell of it."

  "You can't prove that," Kay said.

  "Didn't say I could," Jesse answered.

  "Said I know it. Robbie told me."

  Jesse reached across his desk and punched up the tape recorder.

  "No." It was clearly Robbie's voice.

  "No. I wasn't even in the house. I was outside watching chickiefor the cops."

  "Oh? So who set the fire?" Jesse's voice sounded calm.

  "I don't know. I wasn't even in there. Earl had the gas can."

  "You're trying to tell me that he was in there with Snapper?"

  "Snapper told us he found an open window at the fag house and he'd been in there and tagged the walls in the living room. Earl stole the gas from my dad, for the power mower, and him and Snapper told me to watch for the cops, and they went in the house."

  "Through the window?"

  "No, Snapper left the door unlocked."

  "And you went in and torched the place."

  "No." The sound of panic in Robbie's voice was oppressive in the crowded room.

  "No, I didn't. Snapper and Earl torched it."

  Jesse reached over and shut off the tape recorder.

  "Fucking squealer," Snapper said.

  "He's lying," Earl said.

  "Brat."

  Carleton Jencks put a hand on his son's knee.

  "We're here to listen, son," his voice rumbled softly.

  "Not to talk."

  "That's not admissible evidence," Kay Hopkins said.

  "You intimidated him into saying it."

  "Kay," Fogarty said.

  "Shut up," Kay said.

  "You weren't in the house?" Jesse said to Earl.

  "No."

  Jesse sighed and ran the tape fast forward and punched PLAY.

  "Snapper made me do it." Earl's voice said. It was shaky as if he'd been crying.

  "We went in the house just to look around and then we got in there, and Snapper made me help him."

  "Stop it," Kay Hopkins said.

  "Stop the tape."

  Jesse punched STOP. Kay Hopkins was pale, and there was a small tremor in her shoulders. Beside Jesse, Nick Petrocelli had his feet up on the windowsill. His eyes were closed.

  "I didn't say that," Earl said.

  "You did too, liar," Robbie said.

  "You're the liar," Earl said.

  Kay Hopkins turned and slapped the son that was nearest. It was Earl. His eyes filled and his face reddened.

  "Kay," her husband said.

  "You bastards," she said to her sons, "see what you make me do?

  Do you like seeing me like this?"

  "For God's sake, Kay," Fogarty almost shouted, "will you shut the hell up."

  She spun toward him in her chair as if she might slap him too.

  Her husband stood and put his hands on her shoulders. Jesse hoped she didn't have a weapon.

  "Mrs. Hopkins," Jesse said.

  "You either get yourself under control, or I'll arrest you for assault on a minor child."

  Kay didn't look at him. She shook her shoulders, trying to dislodge her husband's hands, and looked at Abby Taylor.

  "Well, goddamn it, what about you? You're a woman."

  "I think you should be quiet, Mrs. Hopkins. I think you should let your attorney speak for you. I know Chief Stone. He will do what he says he will do."

  Slumped on his spine in the chair by the window, with his feet still on the windowsill, Petrocelli opened his eyes and pushed his glasses up on his nose, "You've probably guessed, Brendan," he said in a strong New York accent, "what the heart of our defense will be if you bring false arrest charges."

  "I don't like to guess, Nick."

  "Regardless of the final disposition of the case, these tapes are very clear evidence that Chief Stone and the Paradise Police had reasonable cause to arrest these boys."

  "What's that mean?" Kay Hopkins said.

  "It means he'll pretty likely get to play these tapes in court," Fogarty said.

  "Can he do that?"

  "Probably," Fogarty said.

  "Abby?"

  "I concur," Abby Taylor said.

  "But they can't try these kids for the crime," Jencks said.

  "No," Abby said.

  Jencks nodded and looked at Jesse.

  "Okay. My son and I are not going to bring any false arrest suit," he said.

  Jesse nodded. Jencks looked at his son.

  "You work too hard at being a tough guy," he said.

  "We'll talk about that at home."

  "You're a tough guy," Snapper said.

  "Maybe too tough," Jencks said.

  "We'll talk about that too."

  He stood up.

  "We're free to go?"

  Jesse nodded again. Jencks took hold of his son's arm and stood him up from the chair. Snapper didn't resist. His father's hand seemed to make him still.

  "Come on, Snap," Jencks said, and they walked from the room without looking at Kay or Charles Hopkins as they went.

  "I don't know why you hang out with a boy like that. No mother, father working all the time. No wonder he gets in trouble."

  "Mrs. Hopkins," Jesse said.

  "Snapper's got problems, but he's a stand-up kid. He didn't blame either of your sons, and when he heard them blaming him, he didn't deny it."

  "So?"

  "So your own two kids are a mess. They're criminals. They burned down a couple's house because the couple was gay, if they even know what it means. Neither would accept any blame.

  They blamed Snapper. They blamed each other. Not much honor there, not much loyalty. No pride at all."

  "Don't you lecture me about my children," Kay said.

  "Lecture's over. But here's a warning. Every day one of us will look at them. We catch them breaking the law, we will do our best to get them the maximum punishment allowed."

  "And I'll have you for harassing them."

  "Put that energy into getting them some help, ma'am."

  Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Petrocelli spoke again.

  "So," he said, "you bringing suit or no."

  Fogarty looked at his clients.

  "Your call," he said.

  Kay Hopkins said, "Well, you're the damned lawyer, Brendan, what do we pay you for?"

  "I pay him," Charles Hopkins said.

  "No, we won't bring suit."

  "Then I see no reason to linger," Fogarty said and stood up.

  "You need a ride, Abby?"