Robert B Parker: The Jesse Stone Novels 1-5

by Robert B. Parker

  “We’re a small department,” Jesse said. “We can’t afford smart people.”

  “This could be a total waste of time,” Simpson said.

  “Ah,” Jesse said, “you are beginning to understand the intricacies of police work.”

  51

  “You wanted to drink,” Dix said.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Why’d you want to?”

  Jesse shrugged. It never occurred to him to ask why he wanted a drink. Wanting a drink was part of existence. It didn’t have a why.

  “Did you want one at 2:35 that afternoon?”

  “I’m not that far gone,” Jesse said.

  “I’ll take that to mean no,” Dix said. “So why did you want one at seven o’clock that evening?”

  “What difference does it make?” Jesse said.

  “None,” Dix said, “to me.”

  They were silent.

  “It was, you know, you used to be a drinker,” Jesse said. “It was the end of the day and the harbor was quiet, and we were sitting together on the deck, and later we’d have sex. I mean it was all ahead of us.”

  “The romance of booze,” Dix said.

  Jesse thought about that. “Miller time,” he said.

  “Soft light touching on crystal stemware, bright liquid, clean white shirt, shimmering gown, alto sax, here’s looking at you, kid.”

  “You think that makes me drink?”

  “No. But it helps make you want to.”

  “But I didn’t give in this time.”

  “No,” Dix said. “You didn’t.”

  “Kind of late,” Jesse said.

  Dix waited.

  “Now I’m saying no,” Jesse said. “Now that it’s cost me my job and my marriage.”

  “But you have a new job,” Dix said.

  “Marriage is gone.”

  “You think that’s your fault?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “She couldn’t be expected to stay with a drunk.”

  “You don’t think she should share the blame?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said. “I know. In every breakup there’s fault on both sides, blah, blah.”

  “But this one was all yours,” Dix said.

  “Pretty much,” Jesse said.

  “You don’t think the fact that she was sleeping with other men might have contributed?”

  Jesse didn’t answer.

  “Maybe you couldn’t be expected to stay with an adulteress.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “If you take the responsibility for it, then it’s in your hands.”

  “If I broke it, maybe I can fix it,” Jesse said.

  “And if you didn’t break it, maybe you can’t,” Dix said. “And you have to face the scary fact that you can’t control how this will work out.”

  Jesse sat for a long time without speaking.

  “So what’s this got to do with me not drinking when I wanted to the other night?”

  “What we’re doing here,” Dix said, “is a little like what you did when you were working homicide in L.A. There are incidents, we’re not sure of how these incidents connect, but we register them, notice sequence, think about them.”

  “Maybe because I don’t love Lilly, I can spare some energy to control my drinking, instead of controlling myself when I’m with Jenn.”

  “Maybe,” Dix said.

  “And maybe I need to think about not drinking so I can stop being a drunk.”

  “Instead of?”

  “Instead of not drinking so I can be with Jenn.”

  Dix nodded.

  “Sometimes we clear a case,” Dix said.

  52

  “He used the girl to register,” Simpson said.

  “If it was him.”

  “Whoever it was,” Simpson said.

  “Anybody see him?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “The Boundary Suites, on Route One.”

  “The No Tell Motel,” Jesse said. “Have Peter Perkins do a crime-scene workup on the room.”

  “It’s a motel room,” Simpson said. “There’ll be a kajillion prints in there.”

  “See what you can find,” Jesse said. “You get a positive ID on the girl?”

  “She registered as Elinor Bishop.”

  “Anybody recognize her picture?”

  “No.”

  “Tell Perkins when he goes up there, use his own car,” Jesse said. “No need to make the motel look bad.”

  “I still think it’s a waste of time, Jesse.”

  “Of course it is,” Jesse said. “That’s one of the things cops do. We waste a lot of time.”

  Simpson left the office. Jesse stood and went to the coffeemaker and poured himself another cup. He added a lot of sugar and brought the cup back to his desk. There was a picture of Billie Bishop taped to the corner of his desk calendar. He nodded at it.

  “We’re getting there,” he said.

  He drank some coffee while he looked at her picture. The chances of Perkins finding anything they could use in a busy motel room a month after Billie’s last visit were nearly nonexistent. Which would leave him with what he had now. He knew some facts. Billie had left Gino Fish’s business phone number with the shelter. Alan Garner worked for Gino. Alan Garner pimped young runaways he picked up from the shelter. Billie was a young runaway who had stayed at the shelter. She turned up dead in Paradise. Norman Shaw lived in Paradise. Norman Shaw knew Gino Fish. Put all of that together, give it to a skilled prosecutor, who’ll take it to the grand jury, and there will be no chance of an indictment. He could bust Garner and try to turn him, but the chances that Garner would testify against Gino were very slim. And it would send everybody else scurrying underground. If Shaw was in fact being supplied with very young girls, it probably would happen again. We know that, Jesse thought, maybe we can turn him. What about Joni Shaw? Could she be married to a pedophile and not know it? Did pedophiles have active adult sex lives? Joni was a lot younger than Shaw. Was she the first wife? If she wasn’t, what had ended the previous marriage?

  He got up and walked to the front desk where Molly was reading an issue of Martha Stewart Living.

  “You ever read Norman Shaw’s books?” Jesse said.

  “Sure. I got every one,” Molly said. “He’s great.”

  Jesse nodded, but not as if he believed her.

  “How many are there?”

  “Ten, I think. At least in paperback.”

  “You got them at home?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll take the desk,” Jesse said. “Go home and get them.”

  “All ten?”

  “Yeah.”

  Molly stared at him for a moment. But she didn’t say anything. Jesse was Jesse. She dog-eared Martha Stewart, put it down, got up, and went.

  While she was gone, Jesse took a call about a missing bicycle, and a call reporting a rabid skunk and could someone come over and shoot it. Jesse took down the missing-bicycle information and left it on the desk for Molly. He called John Maguire on the radio and told him to go shoot the skunk.

  “Make sure there’s no bubble gum wrappers in the shotgun barrel,” he said.

  “Hey,” Maguire said, “I’m a law-enforcement professional.”

  “Yes, you are,” Jesse said. “Go enforce that skunk.”

  Molly came back into the police station with a plastic supermarket bag filled with paperback books. Jesse turned the desk over to her and took the books into his office. His coffee was gone. He poured some more. Added a lot of sugar. The less booze he drank, the more coffee he drank. Jittery was b
etter than drunk. He sat down and pulled one of Shaw’s books out of the grocery bag. The title Outcast was embossed in raised gold letters on the front cover. On the back cover was a picture of Norman Shaw. He looked a lot younger in the picture than he had with his forehead resting on his grilled scrod the last time Jesse had seen him. Jesse glanced through the text. The book was 456 pages long. Jesse wasn’t sure he had read a total of 456 pages in his life. In the front of the book were three pages of quotes from newspaper reviews, all of them favorable, another page listing Shaw’s other books and a dedication page. The dedication in Outcast was “To Joni, who rescued me in time.” Jesse looked for a date. The book had been published the year before. Jesse looked through the front matter in the other books. The previous book was dedicated “To Arlene: Toward the sunset—together.” The publication dates were four years apart. Three books previous had been dedicated “To Cheryl: Till the End of Time.” Jesse read a few pages of Outcast. He didn’t like it. He put the books away and finished his coffee and got up and walked across the street to the Paradise Public Library.

  He liked the library. It was one of those nineteenth-century brick-and-brownstone buildings that could just as easily have been a fire station or a jail. The research librarian smiled at him as he went by the desk. She didn’t seem like a librarian. She had a good body. She wore tight clothes. And she always looked at him as if they were sharing a private joke.

  He sat at a table and looked up Norman Shaw in Who’s Who. He had been born in Bronxville, NY, August 26, 1945 s. Samuel G and Andrea (Vogal) L; m. Cheryl Anne Masters, June 5, 1975 (div. 1979); m. Arlene Marie Greene, April 21, 1980 (div. 1985); m. Felicia Jane Feinman, Oct. 16, 1989 (div. 1996); m. Joan Harriet Roth, May 21, 1999.

  No book for Felicia? Or a dedication to his lawyer?

  Jesse copied the Shaw entry and took it back with him across the street to his office. He handed the sheet to Molly.

  “Do your phone magic,” he said. “See if you can come up with one or more of the ex-wives.”

  “In between times,” Molly said. “When I’m not running the department.”

  “That would be good,” Jesse said.

  53

  “Are you still seeing Dix?” Jenn asked.

  They were on the footbridge over Storrow Drive, near the Hatch Shell, walking toward the river.

  “I am,” Jesse said.

  “And?”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “And I’m talking with him.”

  “Do you feel you’re making progress?” Jenn said.

  “I might be,” Jesse said.

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “No, I don’t think I can.”

  “It’s all right,” Jenn said. “Therapy’s a private thing.”

  “I don’t mind you knowing,” Jesse said. “It’s simply that I don’t know how to talk about it. Something’s happening in there, but I’m not sure what.”

  “Do you like Dix?”

  “It sort of doesn’t matter,” Jesse said. “He’s a lot more than an alcohol counselor.”

  “Yes,” Jenn said.

  “You knew that when you sent me to him,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “Manipulative,” Jesse said.

  “Absolutely.”

  They went down off the bridge and started west on the esplanade along the river. College-aged kids were sunning themselves near the water, dogs chased Frisbees, small sailboats moved on the surface where the river widened into a basin.

  “Are you talking about us?” Jenn said.

  “Of course.”

  “How is that going?”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “It seems to me sometimes that everything I know, I learned from you,” she said.

  “But we’re divorced and seeing other people.”

  “I know,” Jenn said.

  They crossed the lagoon on a small barrel-arched footbridge. Jesse stopped at the top of the arch and leaned his forearms on the railing. Jenn stopped beside him and leaned back.

  “The other night I really wanted to drink,” Jesse said. “And I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. But I didn’t. Almost always before when I felt that way, I did.”

  “One robin doesn’t mean it’s spring,” Jenn said.

  “I think you got the quote wrong,” Jesse said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Day at a time,” Jesse said.

  “Easy does it,” Jenn said.

  They both laughed.

  “Friend of Bill’s?” Jenn said.

  Below the bridge on the lagoon three ducks with brown feathers slid along the water.

  “Friend of Jenn,” Jesse said.

  54

  Felicia Feinman Shaw had remarried. Her current name was Felicia Teitler and she agreed to have tea with Jesse at the Four Seasons Hotel. Jesse wore a coat and tie, his gun well back on his hip so it wouldn’t show if he unbuttoned his jacket. The hostess escorted Jesse to the table. Felicia Teitler was already there.

  “I’m Jesse Stone, Mrs. Teitler.”

  “Please, sit down,” she said.

  Jesse sat.

  “Thank you for agreeing to talk,” Jesse said.

  “Actually I was rather curious,” she said, “to see what aberration he’s guilty of this time.”

  The language was elegant, but the accent wasn’t. Money can buy the language, Jesse thought, but the accent is harder.

  “He being Norman Shaw?” Jesse said.

  “Of course,” she said. “What other aberrant jerk would we be here to discuss?”

  “Tell me about some of his aberrations,” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Teitler was looking at her menu. The waitress hovered.

  “I’m going to have the full tea,” she said.

  The waitress looked at Jesse.

  Jesse said, “I’ll have that, too.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure what a full tea was. Mrs. Teitler put the menu down and smiled at him. She looked to be about fifty. She was very well made up, but small lines showed around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her hair was too blond. Her skin was too tan. But what Jesse could see of her body still looked good. Her teeth were very white. Her beige suit fit her well. On her left hand she wore an enormous diamond ring. She had a small pony of what appeared to be sherry.

  “And what kind of tea for you, sir?” the waitress said.

  “Are you allowed to have coffee?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I’ll have some,” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Teitler took a little sherry.

  “So what did you wish to know about Norman Shaw?” she said.

  “Whatever you can tell me,” Jesse said. “We’re just doing background.”

  “He’s done something,” Mrs. Teitler said. “You wouldn’t track me down and arrange to meet me, just for background.”

  “You were his third wife,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  The waitress brought Jesse a small silver pot of coffee. She poured some in his cup.

  “Why did you divorce him?”

  “Maybe he divorced me,” she said.

  Jesse shook his head.

  “We checked,” he said. “You brought suit against him.”

  “Well, aren’t you thorough.”

  “And got a dandy settlement,” Jesse said.

  “I earned it,” she said.

  “The basis for the divorce was adultery,” Jesse said.

  “Whores.”

  “Only?”

  “He marries the good girls,” Mrs. Teitler said, “but whores were his passion. My therapist said probably it was about own
ership.”

  “The more he paid for them,” Jesse said, “the more valuable they were?”

  “I think he liked them young, too.”

  “Younger than you?”

  “Apparently.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “Do you know any of the whores?” he said.

  She shook her head. The waitress brought small sandwiches and assorted pastries and set them out. Tea was a bigger deal than Jesse had realized. He took a cucumber sandwich. Mrs. Teitler carefully put strawberry jam on a small scone and added a dollop of clotted cream.

  “I preferred not to meet them,” she said. “My attorney employed a private detective and he got affidavits from four of them that Norman had paid them for sex.”

  She popped the little scone into her mouth and chewed. Jesse poured himself some more coffee.

  “There were pictures, too,” Mrs. Teitler said. “Norman agreed not to contest the divorce.”

  “Did you see the pictures?”

  “I preferred not to,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jesse said. “This is, ah, indelicate but I need to ask. How was he at home, sexually?”

  “Christ!” Mrs. Teitler said. “A cop who says ‘indelicate.’ In bed Norman was, oh, adequate.”

  “Any dysfunction?”

  “You mean like he couldn’t get it up?”

  “Or odd sexual practices?”

  Mrs. Teitler laughed. “Sometimes I think they’re all odd,” she said. “But no. He was not a maiden’s dream, but he was, ah, sufficient . . . when he was sober.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Which was often?”

  “Less so as time went on,” Mrs. Teitler said. “You get any kicks out of asking these questions?”

  “Depends on the answers,” Jesse said. “Can you give me the name of the private detective you hired?”

  “My attorney hired him. Mark Hillenbrand on State Street. Hillenbrand and Doherty.”

  Jesse wrote it down in his little notebook. He smiled at her.

  “How’s the second marriage?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Two-time loser,” she said. “You like older women?”