Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  Jesse looked at Robbie.

  “You?” he said.

  “Fourteen.”

  “You?” he said to Jencks.

  “Old enough,” Jencks said.

  Jesse nodded. Jencks looked older than the other two. He was short, but he already had the shadow of a beard, and he had muscle definition. Didn’t have to be older. Might merely have grown up quicker.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go,” Jesse said.

  “You better let me call my mother or father,” Earl said.

  Jesse gestured at the phone. Earl stared at it and didn’t call. Jesse hadn’t thought he would. They weren’t scared enough yet, and they didn’t want their parents to know they were in trouble. Yet.

  “Shut up,” Jesse said. “We’re going to ask you to wait in separate cells while we question you one at a time until one of you tells us that the three of you set the fire on Geary Street. Then we will throw the book at the ones who held out on us and go easy on the one who cooperated.”

  “Think you’re bad,” Earl said, “picking on three kids?”

  “This the toughest we got?” Jesse said to Simpson.

  “Three of the toughest kids in Paradise,” Simpson said.

  “How you think they’ll do at Lancaster?” Jesse said.

  Simpson and DeAngelo both laughed.

  “They were in with the girls,” he said, “they’d be the three sissies.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You think you’re tough because kids in the schoolyard are scared of you, and you dare do things like torch somebody’s house. Small town tough guys.” He snorted. “But when we send you up, you’ll be in with people who routinely carry razor blades in their hat bands, who would cut you right across the eyeballs for a pack of cigarettes, or for the hell of it. They will have you snowflakes for a snack.”

  Earl said, “I want . . .”

  And Jesse cut him off. “I don’t care what you want,” Jesse said. “Get them out of here, Suit.” Simpson and DeAngelo left with the three kids. In ten minutes Simpson came back.

  “The Hopkins kids are scared already,” he said. “I could see it when we put them in their cells. Jencks is the tough one.”

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “I know. ”

  “We don’t have too long, Jesse,” Simpson said. “One of the parents will come home from work or get a call from a neighbor, or whatever, and they’ll be up here with a lawyer.”

  “We’ll make do,” Jesse said. “You got them isolated?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Leave the cell doors unlocked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They know that?”

  “No.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “Jencks in the farthest cell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said, “bring him in here. Make sure they both see him on the way by.”

  When Jencks was in Jesse’s office, Jesse nodded Simpson from the room and pointed at the empty chair in front of his desk. Jencks sat.

  He met Jesse’s look.

  “You’re not scared?” Jesse said.

  Jencks shook his head.

  “I’m a juvenile,” Jencks said. “You can’t do shit with me.”

  “You know one of the Hopkins boys will rat you out,” Jesse said.

  “Nobody’s gonna rat nobody,” Jencks said.

  Jesse smiled and shook his head.

  “You gonna be a bad guy, Snapper, you better learn the business. Everybody rats everybody. It’s only a matter of time and pressure.”

  Jencks leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head and stared at Jesse without speaking. He had on baggy jeans and big sneakers. He wore a Foo Fighters sweatshirt. Jesse assumed that Foo Fighters was a rock group.

  “You’re a tough kid,” Jesse said. “I like that. Why I gave you the first shot. You tell me about the fire and you walk.”

  “Even if I did it too?”

  “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Jesse said.

  “Some great legal system,” Jencks said.

  “Here’s how I think it went,” Jesse said. “The three of you started out just busting in there because the place was empty. And you didn’t have anything else going. Then you got in there and decided it would be fun to write ‘fag’ on the walls, and then one of the Hopkins boys, Earl, I bet, said, ‘Let’s torch the fucker.’ I figure you didn’t much want to because you thought it was stupid, but you went along because they were going to do it anyway. You may have even tried to stop them but couldn’t.”

  “I wanted to stop them, they’d stop,” Jencks said.

  Jesse nodded. “Yeah, I can see that,” Jesse said. “I’m surprised you wanted to do it too. Go to jail for what? No money in it. Just a kid’s asshole prank. I figured you for a little more serious tough guy than that.”

  “Showed them fairies something,” Jencks said.

  “What’d you show them, tough guy?”

  “Showed ’em,” Jencks said stubbornly.

  Jesse laughed. His laugh was rich with contempt.

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “One time, and one time only, you want to tell me what happened and walk, or you want to go to jail?”

  “I ain’t going to jail.”

  “Yeah, you are,” Jesse said. “And because you’re so fucking stupid, you may be the only one.” Jesse raised his voice. “Suit?”

  Simpson opened the door.

  “Take him out,” Jesse said. “Turn him loose.”

  Jencks looked startled.

  “Back way?” Simpson said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on,” Simpson said, and he led Jencks out of Jesse’s office. In two minutes he was back.

  “They see him go?” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. I took him down past the cells,” Simpson said, “with my arm around his shoulder. When I let him out the back door, I shook hands with him. They could see all that.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “Go get the younger one.”

  “Robbie.”

  “Yeah. Arrest him. Read him his rights. Cuff him in front.”

  Seated in the chair, his cuffed hands resting in his lap, Robbie was very pale and swallowed often. Jesse ignored him while he read some documents on his desk. He initialed one and picked up another, read it initialed it and put it in his out basket.

  “I don’t like these handcuffs,” Robbie said.

  “I don’t care,” Jesse said without looking up. He studied the next document for a moment, shook his head, and put it in another pile.

  “Couldn’t you please take them off?”

  Jesse read for another moment, then, still holding the document, he looked up at Robbie.

  “You think I’m your camp counselor or something?” Jesse said. “We got you for a felony, kid. You’re going to jail.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Robbie said. His voice was clogged, and Jesse knew he’d cry in a little while. “I don’t like these handcuffs.”

  “First thing to know,” Jesse said, “now that you are officially a tough guy, is that from now on nobody will give one small shit about what you like and don’t like. You’re not home with your momma. You’re in the machine now, boy. You want me to get you a lawyer?”

  Jesse went back to his paper work. Robbie stared at him, and when he spoke again his voice was shaking and his eyes were wet.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “Not how I hear it,” Jesse said absently, scanning a missing persons flyer. “Heard you did the spray painting. Heard you actually poured the gasoline and struck the match.”

  “No.” Robbie’s voice was shrill now.

  “Snapper and Earl were only in the house in the
first place because they were trying to get you out. They both tried to stop you, but they were too late.”

  Robbie was crying now. There was a tape recorder on Jesse’s desk. Jesse punched the RECORD button.

  “No,” Robbie said, struggling to talk through the sobs. “No. I wasn’t even in the house. I was outside watching chickie for the cops.”

  “Oh? So who set the fire?”

  “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,” Robbie said. He was talking as fast as he could, at the same time struggling not to wail. “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,” Jesse said gently.

  “No,” Robbie almost screamed. “No, I didn’t. Snapper and Earl torched it.”

  Jesse punched the STOP button on his tape recorder. Then he got up and went around the desk and took the cuffs off Robbie’s wrists. He shoved a box of tissues to the edge of the desk where Robbie could reach it and went back and sat down. He raised his voice.

  “Suitcase?”

  The door opened. And Simpson appeared.

  “Time to talk with Earl,” Jesse said.

  Chapter 12

  Macklin was having lunch outside on the patio at Janos restaurant in Tucson with an Indian named Crow. The Indian’s real name was Wilson Cromartie, but he liked to be called Crow. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, pressed blue jeans, polished boots, and a silver concho belt. Everything about Crow was angles and planes, as if he had been packed very tightly into himself. The muscles bulged against his taut skin like sharp corners. The veins were prominent. He wasn’t much bigger than Macklin, but everything about him spoke of force tightly compressed. They were drinking margaritas.

  “And you want me to be the shooter?” Crow said.

  “Not just a shooter,” Macklin said. “I need a force guy, somebody can do the job on the operation and keep discipline in the crew.”

  “You can’t do that?”

  “I can do that, but I gotta run the whole dance, you know? Besides I don’t scare people like you do.”

  “That’s ’cause you look like some guy graduated Cornell,” Crow said.

  His voice had traces of that indefinable Indian overtone, even though Macklin knew that Crow hadn’t seen a rain dance in his entire life.

  “And I sound like it, and that works pretty good for me. But I still need a force guy.”

  “And you come all the way to Tucson to hire me?” Crow said.

  “To cut you in,” Macklin said. “I’m trying to cut you in on the score of a fucking lifetime and you’re asking questions like I was trying to steal your land.”

  “White eyes speak with forked tongue,” Crow said.

  “Don’t give me that Geronimo crap,” Macklin said. “It’s me, Jimmy Macklin. You wouldn’t know a tepee from a pee pee, for crissake.”

  Crow’s expression didn’t change.

  “Tepee bigger,” he said.

  A waitress came and took their lunch order. There were small birds in some dry desert shrubbery around the patio. They made a lot of noise.

  When the waitress left, Crow said, “Twenty percent.”

  “I got too many expenses, Crow. I gotta get an electronics guy, explosives guy, guy with a boat. I can’t afford to give you twenty.”

  “How much you taking?”

  “Half,” Macklin said. “My show.”

  “And I’m the number-two man?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Twenty,” Crow said.

  “That only leaves thirty percent for everybody else,” Macklin said. “I can’t get quality guys divvying thirty.”

  “Lie to them,” Crow said.

  Macklin grinned.

  “How you know I promise you twenty, I’m not lying to you?”

  “You know better,” Crow said.

  Macklin cocked a forefinger at Crow and brought the thumb down.

  “Twenty it is,” Macklin said.

  Chapter 13

  Abby Taylor was in Jesse’s office with another lawyer.

  “I’ve been retained to represent Carleton Jencks,” Abby said. “This is Brendan Fogarty, who represents the Hopkins boys.”

  Abby had on a maroon suit with a short skirt and a short jacket with no lapels.

  “You a criminal lawyer, Mr. Fogarty?” Jesse said.

  “I’m Charles Hopkins’ personal attorney,” Fogarty said.

  “This is a criminal case,” Jesse said.

  “Well,” Abby said, “that’s what we wanted to talk about.”

  Abby would be wearing maroon lingerie. When he had been in a position to know such things, her undergarments had always been coordinated.

  “Go ahead,” Jesse said.

  “These are kids,” Abby said. “They made a mistake, but they have a life ahead of them. To press charges will just make matters worse.”

  “You talk to Canton and Brown?” Jesse said.

  “Yes. They came to me to ask if I could represent them in a civil suit, but I had already been retained by the Jencks family.”

  “They don’t want to press charges?”

  “The Jencks family and, as I believe Mr. Fogarty will confirm, the Hopkins family are prepared to make financial restitution.”

  “If charges are dropped?”

  “That would be the idea,” Fogarty said.

  “And what about the kids?” Jesse said.

  “They get a second chance.”

  “To burn somebody else’s house down?”

  “They’re kids, Jesse.”

  “And they burned down a house because they don’t like the sex lives of the people who live there. What if they don’t like your sex life?”

  Jesse thought that Abby blushed faintly, but maybe he was wrong.

  “Wait a minute, Jesse,” Fogarty said.

  “You don’t know me,” Jesse said. “Call me Chief Stone.”

  “Don’t get hard-assed with me, chief,” Fogarty said. “You don’t have a case will stand up in court. You didn’t read them their Miranda rights.”

  “They were read their rights when they were arrested,” Jesse said. “They confessed.”

  “Under coercion. Questioned without an attorney. Thrown in a cell.”

  Peripherally, Jesse saw Abby shake her head at Fogarty. “This is not a big building, Mr. Fogarty. I needed to talk to each of them alone. There was nowhere else to put them. Cell door wasn’t even locked. I offered them an attorney at every juncture.”

  “Handcuffed?”

  “Once charged,” Jesse said.

  “You led them to believe that Jencks had implicated them,” Fogarty said.

  “That I did,” Jesse said.

  “You pretended to let him go, in order to reinforce that belief.”

  “Yes, I did,” Jesse said. “He walked out the back door and sat in the patrol car for an hour with Anthony DeAngelo.”

  “There is a conscious pattern of deception and coercion of three minors,” Fogarty said. “You better deal.”

  Abby shook her head again more vigorously. She knew that Fogarty’s tactics wouldn’t work with Jesse.

  “I think your case may be shaky, Jesse,” Abby said. “But that’s not really the point. The point is do you want to put these kids and their families through this? The parents
make restitution. The two gay gentlemen rebuild the house. Life goes on.”

  “And the ‘two gay gentlemen’? How do they feel?”

  “They got their house rebuilt,” Fogarty said.

  “People ought to be able to fuck who they want to,” Jesse said. “Without getting their house burned down.”

  Abby knew Jesse was stubborn. But she had rarely seen him mad too.

  “And you’re going to fix that by running three kids and their families through the criminal courts?”

  “I’m going to run them through the courts,” Jesse said.

  “To prove?” Abby said.

  “That the kids can’t mistreat whoever they want and have their parents buy them out of it.”

  The two lawyers were quiet. Abby knew it was a lost cause. Fogarty tried again.

  “You won’t get the DA into court with this,” Fogarty said.

  Jesse didn’t reply.

  “You’ll look like a fool,” Fogarty said. “You don’t have a case.”

  “No disrespect, counselor,” Jesse said. “But I guess I’m not willing to take your word on that.”

  Chapter 14

  There was a large photograph of Ozzie Smith on the wall in Jesse’s living room where you could see it while sitting at the kitchen counter. Jesse looked at the photo as he poured soda over the ice in a tall glass of scotch. He took a drink. If you didn’t drink, Jesse thought, you’d never get it. You’d never know the way it felt. Casual drinkers, people who drank to be sociable, who would just as soon have a 7UP if it weren’t so unsophisticated, they couldn’t understand the fuss about the first drink. Jesse had always thought that the first couple of drinks were like life itself. Pleasing, smooth, bubbly, and harsh. For people who didn’t like the taste, Jesse had unaffected scorn. The greatest pleasure came long before you got drunk. After the first one, with the certainty of more, there was gratitude for the life you led. After a couple of drinks, the magic went away, and pretty soon it was just addiction.

  “Got to work on that addiction,” Jesse said to Ozzie Smith.

  Ozzie was in midair, parallel to the ground, his glove outstretched. As far as Jesse knew, Ozzie Smith had no addictions. Best shortstop that ever lived, Jesse said to himself. He knew it was too large a claim. He knew that Ozzie Smith was only the best shortstop he’d ever seen. He couldn’t speak of Marty Marion or Pee Wee Reese, or for that matter, Honus Wagner. He drank some more scotch. They better than Ozzie, they were very goddamned good. He was pretty certain that none of the others did a back flip.