Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5
Page 54
“Have you been drinking lately?” Jenn said in the car.
“Now and then,” Jesse said.
“You didn’t drink anything tonight.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Jenn said.
“Scared to, I guess,” Jesse said.
“Scared of what?”
“Scared it will get out.”
“It?”
“How I feel. I love you. I’m mad at you. I’m jealous. I’m full of, hell, I don’t know, yearning, I guess. I have to keep it in its cage.”
“And you’re afraid if you drink it will jump out.”
“Yeah.”
“So you drink alone?”
“Yeah.”
“So if it gets out, there’s no one around.”
Jesse nodded. He could feel Jenn looking at him.
“What I don’t understand,” Jenn said, “is, if you can choose not to drink sometimes, why can’t you choose not to drink all the time?”
“I don’t know.”
They drove over the Longfellow Bridge in silence.
When they reached the Charles Street circle, Jenn said, “You need help with this, Jesse.”
Jesse shrugged.
“You don’t have to start big,” Jenn said. “Maybe just talk to a guy, about drinking.”
“You know a guy?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“How do you know a guy?”
“My shrink told me.”
“You been talking about me in therapy?” Jesse said.
Jenn laughed gently. “Of course,” she said. “Would you go talk to this guy? I can make you an appointment.”
“He a psychiatrist?”
“No. He’s not a doctor. He’s just somebody that has had some success helping people with drinking.”
“You ever meet him?”
“Yes. I went to see him.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
It went through him viscerally, shimmering along the nerve traces. Jolting his stomach. He was part of her therapy. She was trying to help him. He was still in her life. He mattered.
“If I go,” Jesse said, “I can make the appointment.”
25
Molly was at the front desk when Jesse came into the station carrying coffee in a paper cup.
“We found Dr. Levine,” Molly said.
“Billie’s dentist.”
“Yes. Suit brought the dental chart over that we got off the body.”
“And?”
“It’s her.”
Jesse nodded. There was no satisfaction in it. He sort of wished it wasn’t Billie.
“You call that phone number from Sister Mary John?”
“Yes,” Molly said, and looked down at her notepad. “Development Associates of Boston. Nobody there ever heard of Billie.”
“Or so they say.”
Molly smiled. “Or so they say.”
“What’s the address there?” Jesse said.
Molly gave it to him. “You going to talk with them?”
“Yes.”
“Before you go we need to talk about Mr. and Mrs. Snyder,” Molly said.
“The Bickersons?”
“She’s in the hospital.”
“How bad?” Jesse said.
“Nothing fatal—concussion, couple of fractures. The ER called us.”
“Her husband put her there?”
“That’s what she told the ER doctor.”
“Didn’t we send her down there the last time we had them in?”
“Yes. They found a lot of old injuries.”
“And?”
“She swore they were skiing injuries. Said her husband didn’t hit her,” Molly said. “DeAngelo talked with an assistant DA who said if she stuck to her story, there wasn’t enough of a case.”
“I figured that,” Jesse said. “I was hoping he might get scared.”
“Booze,” Molly said.
Jesse nodded.
“So how come she’s blowing the whistle this time?”
“Maybe enough is enough,” Molly said. “Suit’s on his way there to get a statement.”
“If she sticks with it,” Jesse said, “arrest the husband, read him his rights. Call the DA’s office.”
“You going to go see the people at”—she looked down at her notebook again—“Development Associates of Boston?”
“Yeah.”
“If this Snyder thing gets complicated, I’ll call you.”
“Molly, you run this station better than I do,” Jesse said.
“I know,” Molly said. “But the sexist bastards made you chief.”
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”
26
Development Associates of Boston was in the South End, not far from the Cyclorama, one flight down, with a plate-glass window looking out onto the cement stairway. The room had been recycled from whatever it used to be. The walls were old brick and the beams had been exposed and sandblasted. The young man at the reception desk had curly black hair and big blue eyes. He was very good-looking.
“Hi,” Jesse said, “the boss in?”
“Do you have an appointment?” the young man said.
Jesse showed him his badge. The young man looked at it closely.
“What police department is that?” he said.
“Paradise,” Jesse said. “North Shore.”
“And what was it about?”
“I’ll talk to the boss.”
“Mr. Fish never sees anyone without an appointment,” the young man said.
“And your name is?” Jesse said.
“Alan Garner.” The young man widened his eyes and smiled again. “Is your interest personal or professional?”
Jesse put his badge away.
“Alan,” Jesse said, “we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. Easy is I go in and sit with your boss and discuss my case. Hard is I go get a Boston cop and we bring your boss in for questioning.”
The young man smiled at Jesse again. No hard feelings.
“I’ll talk to Mr. Fish,” he said, and went through a curtained archway.
Jesse looked around. There were framed prints of sailboats, and a hanging lamp with a dark green shade. The furniture was the kind of bleached oak that was bought secondhand in Europe and refinished and sold at a large profit in the USA. Mr. Fish. The name was familiar. It had come up in a case Jesse had when he first came to Paradise. Not a common name.
The good-looking young man came back into the room and smiled again at Jesse.
“Surprise, surprise,” he said.
“Mr. Fish will see me,” Jesse said.
“You bet,” the young man said, and gestured Jesse in.
A tall, lean man with a shaved head and long, graceful fingers sat behind a big oak table in a room that was just like the anteroom but bigger.
“I’m Gino Fish,” he said.
It had to be him, Jesse thought. How many Gino Fishes are there?
“Jesse Stone.”
Against the wall to Gino’s left and Jesse’s right sat a compact man with an expressionless face. Jesse could almost feel the force of his meaningless stare.
“And you are?” Jesse said.
“My associate,” Fish said, “Vinnie Morris.”
“I’m looking for a girl,” Jesse said, “named Billie Bishop.”
“And why are you looking here?” Fish said.
“She told someone she could be reached at this phone number.”
Fish stared at Jesse for a long moment before he spoke.
“Vinnie, do we know anyone named Billie Bishop?”
Vinnie shook his head.
“I guess we don’t,” Fish said.
“You have any explanation for the phone number?”
“None.”
“What does Development Associates do?” Jesse asked.
“Development and marketing,” Gino said.
“Development and marketing of what?” Jesse said.
“Our best interests,” Gino said.
“Do you remember developing and marketing a little something with a guy named JoJo Genest?”
“No.”
“Hasty Hathaway?”
“No.”
“Gino,” Jesse said. “I’m not sure you’re leveling with me.”
“Why wouldn’t I level with you, Jesse?” Gino said. “We’ve been close personal friends for what, five or six minutes?”
“Of course,” Jesse said.
He put a business card on Gino’s desk.
“You think of anything, give me a ringy dingy,” Jesse said.
“You bet,” Gino said. “Nice of you to stop by.”
Vinnie had been looking at Jesse with nothing in his eyes since Jesse had entered.
Jesse turned and shot Vinnie with his forefinger. Vinnie had no reaction as Jesse walked back out through the draped arch.
27
Jesse sat in a cubicle in the Organized Crime Unit in the new Boston Police headquarters and talked with a detective sergeant named Brian Kelly.
“Bobby Doyle over in District Thirteen told me you were the man to talk to,” Jesse said.
“He still in youth service?” Kelly said.
“Yes.”
“I used to work over there in Area C,” Kelly said. “Whaddya need?”
He was about Jesse’s size with thick black hair cut short. He looked in shape.
“Gino Fish,” Jesse said.
Kelly rocked back in his swivel chair and paused for a moment.
“Ahh,” Kelly said. “Gino.”
Jesse nodded.
“OCU spends a lot of time thinking about Gino Fish,” Kelly said.
“What can you tell me?” Jesse said.
“How long you been chief out there?” Kelly said.
“Four years.”
“Work your way up?”
Jesse smiled.
“Down, I think,” Jesse said. “I was in L.A. working homicide. I got fired for drinking on the job, which sobered me up some, and I sort of resurfaced in Paradise.”
“What’s the deal with Gino?” Kelly said.
Jesse knew he had passed.
“There was a floater in the lake,” Jesse said. “Shot once behind the right ear and weighted. Body pulled loose from the weight and surfaced.”
“Execution?”
“I would guess,” Jesse said. “She was a kid named Billie Bishop. Runaway, and the last place she ran away from, she gave Gino’s phone number as a forwarding address.”
“She was with Sister Mary John,” Kelly said.
“Yes.”
“Which is how you ran into Bobby Doyle.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know Bobby knew about Gino,” Kelly said.
“He didn’t. I did. His name came up a few years ago in a case I was on.”
“In Paradise?”
“Yep.”
“Mean streets,” Kelly said.
Jesse smiled.
“So,” he said, “you know any reason a fifteen-year-old girl would be giving people Gino’s number?”
“Gino’s into a lot of things,” Kelly said. “None of them pleasant.” He grinned. “But girls are not usually one of them.”
“I picked that up,” Jesse said.
“So she wouldn’t be for his own use,” Kelly said. “There’d have to be a profit motive. Kid come from money?”
“Not that kind,” Jesse said.
“So . . .”
“So sex.”
“Gino hasn’t got much background in prostitution,” Kelly said.
“Because he wouldn’t?”
“There’s nothing Gino wouldn’t,” Kelly said. “He just hasn’t.”
“How about Vinnie Morris?”
Kelly shook his head. “He wouldn’t.”
“He a shooter?” Jesse said.
“They say he shoots clays with a handgun.”
“Nobody can do that,” Jesse said.
Kelly shrugged.
“He’s a shooter,” Kelly said. “Clay pigeons, people, don’t make any difference to Vinnie.”
“But?”
“But.” Kelly shook his head. “You know how some of these guys are. There’s stuff he won’t do.”
“Like prostitution?”
“Like that. Like dope.”
“So what’s he do for Gino?”
“Bodyguard, enforcement. Gino needs to threaten somebody, Vinnie’s the threat. People threaten Gino, Vinnie’s the response.”
“How far from the street is Gino?” Jesse asked.
“Far. City used to be run by a guy named Joe Broz, but he got old, and his kid wasn’t up to it. So things got divided up. The Feds put the Italians out of business. Tony Marcus runs Roxbury and part of Dorchester. The Burkes have the Irish neighborhoods like Southie. Fast Eddie Lee has Chinatown. Gino’s pretty much got what’s left: South End, Back Bay.”
“So if Gino’s an executive, how does he come in contact with a street kid like Billie Bishop?”
“Maybe you start at the other end,” Kelly said. “Who likes fifteen-year-old girls?”
“That knows Gino Fish,” Jesse said.
“And maybe has a connection to Paradise,” Kelly said.
“That Gino likes?” Jesse said.
“That Gino can use.”
28
The room was empty of ornament. Just a gray metal desk, an extra chair, and a swivel chair with a man sitting in it behind the desk. The man was white, entirely bald, clean-shaven. He wore a white shirt buttoned to the neck and a pair of pale blue jeans. The shirt and jeans were starched and pressed. His face was healthy-looking. His teeth were very white. His fingernails gleamed. The man’s name was Dix.
Jesse sat in the extra chair.
“My name is Jesse Stone,” he said. “My ex-wife says she’s talked to you.”
“She did,” Dix said.
“You used to be a cop.”
“Until I gave it up to be a drunk.”
“What pushed your button?” Jesse said.
“My boozer button?”
“You know,” Jesse said, “the precipitating event.”
Dix laughed. Jesse noticed that Dix’s hands lay perfectly still, one on top of the other on the desk in front of him.
“Booze,” Dix said.
“Booze?”
“I was a drinker of opportunity,” Dix said. “As soon as I could get booze, I did.”
“I was all right until my wife left.”
“No, you weren’t. Even if you were sober. You were a drunk waiting to happen.”
Jesse was silent for a time. Dix waited. He seemed ready to wait for the rest of eternity. There was nothing hurried in him.
“Lot of wives leave a lot of husbands,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded.
“Not all the husbands have a drinking problem.”
Dix nodded again.
“You married?” Jesse said.
“My wife left me because I was a drunk,” Dix said. “By the time I got sober she was with somebody else.”
“Tough.”
“I earned it,” Dix said. “Like they say, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
“Booze kill the job, too?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get sober?”
“I stopped drinking,” Dix said.
“That’s the secret?”
“You’re a drunk because you drink,” Dix said. “Don’t drink, you’re not a drunk.”
“You don’t believe in addiction?”
“Sure I do. I was addicted. Still am. But that’s an explanation. You want to stop drinking, pal, you have to do more than explain it.”
Jesse smiled a little.
“You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you,” he said.
“Stopping is cold bastard work,” Dix said. “Ever been to a shrink?”
“Not till now.”
“Lotta people go to the shrink. They discover their childhood. They understand why they do what they do. And they say, ‘Oh boy, now I understand why I’m such a full-bore blue-blooded asshole.’ And they think they’re cured.”
“But they aren’t,” Jesse said.
“They’re halfway,” Dix said. “The trick is to stop being a full-bore blue-blooded asshole.”
“I sense a parable,” Jesse said.
Dix smiled. “You need will as well as understanding.”
“There’s the rub,” Jesse said.
“Yep. There’s the rub,” Dix said.
“Can you help?”
“What am I, another pretty face? Of course I can help you. But I can’t stop you. You got to find a reason for that.”
“Like a higher power?” Jesse said.
“Like not getting your ass shot because you’re drunk while serving and protecting,” Dix said.
“So what do we do?”
“We talk,” Dix said. “We think about where you are and how you got there. Sometimes I offer advice.”
“Like what?”
“Like drink a lot of orange juice. Your body starts to crave sugar when you give up booze.”
“Why juice?”
“Because it’s better for you than candy bars and tonic,” Dix said.
“For that I’m paying a hundred and fifty an hour?”