Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  “Wizard of Oz,” Jesse said out loud.

  If he hadn’t gotten hurt, he’d have made the show. He knew that somatically. He had always known he was a big-league shortstop. If he hadn’t gotten hurt, he’d be just finishing up a career. Maybe moved to third in the last couple of years. Hit .275–.280 lifetime. Ten, twelve home runs. Less average maybe than Ozzie Smith, but a little more power. Good numbers for a guy with his glove. Guy who could throw a seed from the hole. His glass was empty. He went to the refrigerator, got more ice, and mixed himself another. He drank. Yes. Still there.

  He’d made the show, he wouldn’t be bullying teenagers for a living. “A conscious pattern of deception and coercion.” Fogarty had that right. May not stand up in court. Depends on which judge they drew. Might not get to court. Depended on which prosecutor they drew. He wondered who Jenn might be sleeping with. Experience would suggest the station manager. On the other hand, she said she’d changed. She said Dr. St. Claire had helped her be different than she was. Hard to love somebody sleeping with somebody else. Could be done though. He could do it. Hell, he was good at it.

  “Nice to be good at something, Oz.”

  Hadn’t worked with Abby either. She wasn’t tough enough, but at least she’d been faithful. Jenn was tough enough. One out of two ain’t bad. When he was nineteen, playing in Colorado, he’d been able to do a back flip, like Ozzie Smith, when he ran out to short at the start of a game. He made himself another drink and took a pull. It wasn’t there any more, but he took it back to the counter with him anyway. The truth of it was of course that he hadn’t loved Abby. He’d liked her, and he’d tried to love her because he wanted to move on from Jenn. But he couldn’t. That was a grim thought, wasn’t it? That he couldn’t move on from Jenn? Jesus Christ! He’d better be able to. Or, maybe he wouldn’t have to. Or, maybe he was drunk.

  He looked up at the picture of Ozzie Smith, frozen in midair.

  “It’s a long season, Oz,” Jesse said out loud.

  He drank most of the rest of his glass.

  “And it’s not like football,” he said.

  He emptied his glass and stood and made a fresh drink and brought it to the counter. He drank some and made a gesture with his glass toward the picture.

  “We play this game every day,” he said and heard himself slush the S in “this.”

  Chapter 15

  Macklin was eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes with a cracker named JD Harter at the Horse Radish Grill on Powers Ferry Road in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.

  “How big is big money?” JD said.

  He was small and slim with thick black hair worn long enough to cover his ears and slicked straight back. He had a pointed nose and wore rose-tinted black-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a powder blue jogging suit with dark maroon trim and a satin finish. On his feet were woven leather loafers and no socks.

  “Everybody gets at least a million,” Macklin said.

  JD raised his eyebrows.

  “Large,” he said. “How much you get?”

  “More than anybody else,” Macklin said.

  “Figures,” JD said. “How much more?”

  “Long as you get yours, what do you care?” Macklin said.

  JD shrugged. “I expect to get fucked,” he said. “Just like to know how bad.”

  Macklin grinned.

  “Chicken’s great, isn’t it?” JD said. He was drinking Coca-Cola with his bourbon.

  “It is,” Macklin said.

  “What happens if I sign up, and after it’s over I don’t get no million?” JD said. “What kinda recourse I got?”

  “You can try to kill me,” Macklin said.

  JD was silent for a moment. During the silence he drank more bourbon and chased it with more Coke. Then he said, “That’d be recourse, all right.”

  “You in?” Macklin said.

  “Exactly what kinda electrical work you need done?” JD said.

  “Alarms, phones, time locks, power lines, can’t say for sure yet, partly because I need you to tell me.”

  JD nodded. “Who else you got?”

  “Faye’s with me.”

  “I’ll be damned,” JD said.

  “And Crow,” Macklin said.

  “The Indian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, by God, you are serious, ain’t you.”

  “Nothing but the best,” Macklin said. “Why I’m down here talking to you.”

  “Shi-it,” JD said. “You going to toss anything but the bank?”

  “Toss everything out there,” Macklin said. “Bank, yacht club, health club, restaurant, real estate office, every house.”

  “For crissake, we going to move out there for the winter?”

  “We’ll make ourselves some time,” Macklin said.

  “I guess,” JD said.

  “So, you in?”

  “I got any time to think about it?”

  “No.”

  “I get to know where this island is?”

  “Not until you need to.”

  “I need to now,” JD said.

  Macklin grinned at him again.

  “I said it wrong, I meant not until I think you need to.”

  “You never going to get in trouble by blabbing, are you?” JD said.

  “Probably not,” Macklin said.

  “Got to decide tonight, don’t I?” JD said.

  “You’re not in by the time I leave the restaurant,” Macklin said, “I cross you off and go see the next guy.”

  “I the first wire guy you asked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s next?”

  Macklin shook his head. JD took a drink of Wild Turkey and held it in his mouth for a time before he swallowed. He chased it with Coca-Cola.

  “What’s your problem, JD?” Macklin said. “I’m giving you a shot at easy street the rest of your life. What’s holding you up?”

  The waitress came and cleared the table and gave them dessert menus. JD scanned his.

  “Peach pie,” he said. “That’s for me.”

  Macklin glanced at his menu and put it down and, with his elbows on the table, rested his chin on his folded hands. He let his gaze rest on JD. And he waited.

  “You want the peach pie?” JD said. “It’s great here.”

  “Sure,” Macklin said.

  The waitress took their dessert order and went away.

  “We’re leveling with each other here. Right, Jimmy?”

  Macklin said, “Sure.”

  “I mean no disrespect here, but you’ve always cut things very sharp, you know?”

  “Sharp?” Macklin said.

  “I mean nobody ever quite knows what you’re thinking, and you never quite say, and nothing’s ever quite the way it looks like it is when you start.”

  “Faye knows what I’m thinking,” Macklin said.

  “Well that’s nice, Jimmy. I’m glad she does. I really am. But nobody else does.”

  “You don’t trust me,” Macklin said.

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Jimmy, but, no. I don’t.”

  “Well, JD,” Macklin said, his chin still resting on his folded hands, “that’s your problem.”

  “I know. I know you don’t care. Man, it’s part of what worries me. You don’t care about nothing.”

  JD paused thinking about what he’d said.

  “Except Faye,” JD said.

  Macklin waited. The waitress brought the dessert. When she left, JD stared at the pie for a moment and then sat back in his chair.

  “Here’s how it looks to me, Jimmy. I get into this with you, and I might get rich or I might get fucked. I don’t get into this with you, I won’t get rich, a
nd, being as how I’m a crook, I may get fucked anyway.”

  Macklin waited. JD ate a forkful of pie.

  “So I’m in,” JD said.

  “Good. How’s the pie?”

  “Excellent,” JD said.

  Chapter 16

  Jesse leaned on one elbow against the end of the bar at the yacht club and looked out over the water at the tip of Stiles Island. He had a scotch and soda in his hand. Around him the princes of Paradise danced with their princesses at the annual Race Regatta Cotillion to a band playing music from the Meyer Davis songbook. Jesse hated these events, and he hated them particularly when he had to go alone. It would go easier with a few drinks. But he couldn’t let himself have a few drinks, and he hated fighting it off. But he was the chief of police, and he knew it would help him in his work to be part of the social fabric of the town. So he was there.

  Morris Comden, the chairman of the board of selectmen, stopped at the bar to pick up a vodka and tonic and chat with Jesse.

  “Always a nice party, isn’t it, Jess?”

  Comden was a short, square man with a strong chin and deep-set eyes. Jesse had never heard him say an intelligent word.

  “Sure is, Morris.”

  Jesse hated being called Jess.

  “Look at those ladies in their party dresses,” Comden said. “I was a single man like yourself, Jess, I’d be sashaying a few of them around the floor, lemme tell ya.”

  “You and Mrs. Comden cut a pretty mean sashay,” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Comden was a thin-lipped woman, taller than her husband, who wore no makeup. There was always about her a look of perpetual outrage. The Comdens dancing was in fact, Jesse thought, a mean sight.

  “What happened between you and that little lawyer lady?” Comden said. He sipped his vodka and tonic as he spoke.

  “Abby? Wasn’t in the cards, I guess,” Jesse said.

  Jesse turned his tall glass in his hands slowly. The longer he took between sips, the longer it would last. Comden had no such inhibition, and he gulped some more of his drink. If Morris was quick, Jesse thought, he could get it in and get another before he went back to his table. Jesse smiled to himself. Takes one to know one.

  “Heard your ex-wife came east to be on the television,” Comden said.

  “She’s doing weather,” Jesse said, “on Channel Three.”

  “You ever see her?”

  “Some.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Comden drank most of the rest of his drink in short quick swallows. Jesse knew that Comden wanted to ask if Jesse were sleeping with Jenn, but he couldn’t think how to ask.

  “Well,” Comden said, “that must be odd, seeing her again after you been divorced and all, and you having another girlfriend. She been, ah, seeing anybody?”

  “It’s kind of odd,” Jesse said.

  Comden’s eyes shifted, looking for the bartender. When he caught his eye he gestured for a refill.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it’s odd,” Comden said.

  The bartender set a fresh vodka and tonic up on the bar, and Comden grabbed it as if it were about to flop into the water.

  “Odd,” Jesse said.

  “Damned odd.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Well, can’t leave my bride alone too long,” Comden said. “Good seeing you, Jess.”

  “Nice talking with you, Morry.”

  He knew Comden preferred to be called Morris. It was late summer, and the sun was still above the horizon. Its reflection made a long shimmer straight across the dark water of the harbor. In another half hour it would be gone, and the blue evening would begin to thicken. Jesse took a small sip of scotch. When he got home, if he felt like it, he could have a couple of real ones before he went to bed. A tall, good-looking woman with a nice tan came to the bar and ordered an Absolut martini up with extra olives. Jesse smiled at her. She looked maybe five years older than he was, with platinum blond hair and a lot of makeup very well applied. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Isn’t this awful,” the woman said.

  “That martini will probably help,” Jesse said.

  “If I could have enough of them.”

  “And you can’t?”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “I’m here because it’s sort of good for business to be seen here,” she said. “Neither one of us can get drunk in public.”

  “You know my business?”

  “Sure. You’re the chief of police.”

  “And you?” Jesse said.

  “I sell real estate on Stiles Island. I brought a couple of prospective clients, let them circulate, get a feel for their neighbors.”

  She was wearing a very simple black dress with thin straps, which seemed to whisper engagingly over her body when she moved. Jesse could tell she worked out.

  “People from Stiles don’t usually come to these things,” Jesse said.

  “I told them that, but they said they’d like to get a sense of the whole town.”

  “This may blow the sale,” Jesse said.

  “Well, they’re circulating,” the woman said. “We’ll just play it as it lays.”

  She put out her hand.

  “Marcy Campbell.”

  Jesse took her hand and shook it.

  “Jesse Stone,” he said.

  She leaned her elbow next to him on the bar and looked at the dance floor. She was only a couple of inches shorter than he was. Her hair smelled the way he was sure violets would have smelled if he had ever actually smelled a violet, which he hadn’t.

  “You know what violets smell like?” he said.

  “No. But I’d recognize champagne in a heartbeat,” she said.

  Jesse smiled. “I like your priorities,” he said.

  “Despite life’s busy pace,” she said, “it’s always nice to stop and smell the booze.”

  Jesse smiled again and they were quiet watching the dancers moving about the floor. The band was playing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Old Oak Tree.” Most of the men wore white dinner jackets. Most of the women were in floor-length gowns, some of which were in small floral patterns. Many with puffy shoulders and bows in unexpected places. It looked like an overaged frat party.

  “My God, look at those dresses,” Marcy said.

  “Colorful.”

  “Look at this with the bow on her ass,” Marcy said. “If you had an ass like that, would you call attention to it by putting a bow on it?”

  “I’d rather not think about her ass,” Jesse said.

  Marcy laughed and took one of the olives from her martini and popped it in her mouth. Jesse took another controlled sip of his scotch.

  “Wouldn’t you think,” Marcy said, “with all that money and all that time on their hands, nobody works, that these women could manage to look better than they do?”

  “Well it’s not like they all married Tom Selleck,” Jesse said.

  “I suppose,” Marcy said. “But you know I sometimes seriously think about it. I mean really look at these people. Dancing to dreadful music, wearing dreadful clothes, saying dreadful boring things. Can they possibly be having any fun?”

  “Maybe they think it’s fun,” Jesse said.

  “But . . .” Marcy shook her head. “Just imagine the impoverishment of their daily lives,” she said. “If this is their recreation.”

  “Better than no recreation,” Jesse said.

  “But that’s the sad part. They do this and think it’s fun, and so they never have any actual fun. Can you imagine these people in bed?”

  “Another thing I’d prefer not to think about,” Jesse said.

  “Most men, and women, lead lives of quiet desperation,” Marcy said.

  “That’s a quote from someplac
e,” Jesse said.

  Marcy laughed.

  “Henry David Thoreau,” she said. “I modified it a little.”

  “How about yourself?”

  “Me? My desperations are never quiet,” Marcy said.

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “Eat,” she said, “drink, work out, shop, travel, read, talk to interesting people, have sex.”

  “Bingo,” Jesse said.

  “We’ve found a common interest?” Marcy said.

  “Anyone special?” Jesse said.

  “That I have sex with?”

  “Yes.”

  Marcy laughed. The laugh was genuine and quite big. He had already noticed that her face flushed slightly when she laughed.

  “They’re all special,” she said.

  “No husband?” Jesse said.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Not currently. How about you?”

  “I’m divorced,” Jesse said.

  “I knew that. Girlfriends?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you think we’ve stayed here long enough?” Marcy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go somewhere and get a real drink.”

  “What about the clients?”

  “They have their own car. I’ll just say good-bye.”

  Jesse watched the way her hips moved under the smooth tight dress as she walked away from him across the dance floor carrying her martini. She spoke to a good-looking couple near the buffet table. They looked more Palm Beach than Stiles Island, Jesse thought. But maybe they were just summer people. The man kissed Marcy on the cheek, and she turned and came back across the dance floor. In a while, Jesse was pretty sure, he’d see that body without the intervening dress. The pressure of possibility, which had begun almost as soon as she had spoken to him, was now very strong. He didn’t mind. He enjoyed the pressure. No hurry. He enjoyed looking forward to it. Marcy put her empty glass down on the bar.