Trouble in Paradise (11 page)

”No,“ Macklin said.

”I like you better than anything.“

”If I asked you to give this up, would you?“

Macklin put down his fork and sat quietly for a moment while he thought about that.

Then he said, ”Yes.“

Faye sat quietly for longer than he had.

Then she said, ”Well, I won’t ask you to.“

TWENTY-SIX

”Very cute,“ Abby said when they were alone.

”How’d you know she’d be a jerk?“

”Given their kids, you had a pretty good shot that one of them was a jerk,“ Jesse said.

”Even if she weren’t, we’d have found occasion to play the tapes,“ Petrocelli said.

”Once they heard them, they weren’t going to press the suit.“

”What do you think about the kids?“ Abby said.

“Snapper maybe has a chance,” Jesse said.

“Canton and Brown still thinking about a civil suit?”

“Yes, thanks for the business,” Abby said.

“I referred them to a woman I know at Cone, Oakes.”

Petrocelli took his feet down and swiveled his chair around slowly with feet off the ground. He came to rest with his chair tilted back as far as it would go and his toes just touching, in nearly perfect balance.

“Think they’ll go forward?” Petrocelli said, looking straight down his nose at nothing.

“They were pretty mad,” Jesse said, “when I talked with them.”

“The tapes may get played after all,” Petrocelli said.

“Who’d you send them to?”

“Woman named Rita Fiore,” Abby said.

“Used to be a prosecutor,” Petrocelli said.

“South Shore?”

“Yes. Norfolk County. You know her?”

“She kicked my ass in a thing about two years ago,” Petrocelli said.

“She’s tougher than Jesse.”

“No one’s that tough,” Abby said.

“You think they might admit the tapes in a civil case?” Jesse said.

“Rules of evidence are a little different,” Petrocelli said.

“And if anyone can get them in, it’s Rita.”

They were quiet. No one wanted to leave yet. They lingered like players after a game. Jesse got up and walked to the water cooler and got three small plastic cups from the container. He came back and lined them up on his desk. Then he sat back down, took a bottle of Black Bush out of his drawer, and poured a shot into each cup. He handed one to Abby and one to Petrocelli. All three drank sparingly.

“I know you, Jesse,” Abby said.

“So I heard,” Petrocelli said.

Abby laughed, her face flushing, and continued.

“You must have known you were in danger of tainting the evidence.”

Jesse said, “We’re all off the record, I assume.”

“Right now we’re just three friends sitting around talking,” Abby said.

“I’m surprised you had to ask.”

“I knew they did it, but the way I knew it wouldn’t stand up in court. I had to get them to confess.”

“And you tricked them into thinking each had tattled on the other,” Abby said.

“In school,” Petrocelli said, “it’s tattling. In police stations, it’s ratting.”

“It’s an old cop trick, and if the kids were older and smarter they wouldn’t have fallen for it. Snapper didn’t fall for it now. Next time the Hopkins kids won’t.”

“And there’ll be a next time?” Abby said.

“Unless this was the kind of wakeup call that can help them turn it around.”

“You think?” Abby said.

“No.”

“And you can’t help them,” Abby said.

“No.”

“He did what he could,” Petrocelli said.

“Yes,” Abby said.

“That’s why you did it, isn’t it? You knew you probably couldn’t get them into court, but if you got a taped confession, you might be able to get the parents’ attention.”

“I didn’t want them to think they could burn down some guys’ house and walk away from it,” Jesse said.

“There needed to be consequences,” Petrocelli said.

“He created some.”

They all thought about that while they sipped their whisky.

“You’re a little more than I thought you were,” Abby said.

“I thought you were a tough guy with an ex-wife.”

Jesse nodded.

“Still got the ex-wife,” he said.

“And when all that was going on with Jo Jo and the Horsemen last year…” She paused in mid-sentence and sipped from her second cup of whisky. “I was scared.”

Jesse nodded. The room was quiet. Petrocelli was examining the empty space three feet in front of him.

“There was a lot to be scared of,” Jesse said.

“For you too.”

“That’s sort of supposed to be part of the job,” Jesse said.

Abby looked at Petrocelli.

“You ever wonder if he can say more than one sentence at a time?” she said.

“I like brevity in a client,” Petrocelli said.

“Are you trying to tell him you made a mistake last year?”

“I’m trying to apologize for misjudging him.”

Petrocelli smiled and swiveled slightly toward Jesse.

“Learned counsel says…” Petrocelli began.

“I heard her,” Jesse said. He looked at Abby.

“No apology required. I am a tough guy with an ex-wife.”

“Maybe,” Abby said.

And the three of them were quiet again for a while, sipping their whisky together in the bright room before they went home for the night.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Crow sat in the back booth
of a storefront Chinese restaurant
on Tyler Street with a sleek Asian man who said his name was Bo.

Bo was wearing a silver-gray leisure suit and a black silk shirt buttoned to the neck.

Leaning against the wall behind the booth was a heavyset Chinese man.

“You Portagie?” Bo said.

“Apache.”

Bo looked puzzled.

“Indian,” Crow said. “Native American.”

“Ah,” Bo said.

“Whores say to pimp you asking about buy a key. Pimp tell someone, someone tell me.”

“That’s right,” Crow said.

“You mind feel for wire?”

Crow smiled and stood and held his arms from his sides.

The heavyset man stepped forward and patted Crow down.

When he was finished, he said something in Chinese.

“You have gun,” Bo said.

“Yes.”

Bo shrugged.

“No problem,” he said.

“You have money?”

“Not with me,” Crow said.

“How you buy? No money?”

“You got the blow?” Crow said.

Bo smiled.

“No with me,” he said.

“How you sell, no blow?” Crow said.

Bo shrugged.

“Why you come?”

“Thought I’d look at the product,” Crow said.

“I like it, we’ll arrange something with money.”

“You look see blow?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You give gun to Vong,” Bo said.

“Sure,” Crow said.

He took the 9-mm Clock off his hip and handed it butt-first to Vong. Vong took it and dropped it in his side pocket.

“We go,” Bo said.

He went out the front door of the restaurant. Crow followed him, and Vong followed Crow. There was a parking lot next door.

Bo walked straight to an old Dodge van with Chinese lettering on the side, and in English, hand painted below the Chinese characters were the words FINE PRODUCE. Bo unlocked the back door, climbed in the van, moved some crates around, and came up with a maroon athletic bag with gray lettering on the sides. He dragged the bag by its shoulder strap to the lip of the van bed and opened it. Inside were several kilos of white powder in transparent plastic bags.

“Lemme try,” Crow said.

Bo untwisted the plastic tie that closed one of the bags. Crow tasted it.

“Been stepped on some,” he said.

“Sure, but it’s good stuff. No cut and…” Bo rolled his eyes and pretended to fall over.

“Yeah.”

Crow picked up the plastic tie and closed the bag. Then he half turned and drove his right heel into Vong’s groin. As Vong bent over, he put both hands on Vong’s head and snapped his neck with one twist. Crow moved so quickly that Bo was only half out of the truck when Crow got a handful of his hair and yanked him all the way out and slammed his head against the car bumper. He let go of Bo’s hair and Bo fell face down on the asphalt. Without any hurry, Crow went to Vong’s body and took his Clock out of Vong’s pocket. He shot Vong between the already lifeless eyes, and then turned and put one bullet into the base of Bo’s skull. Then he put the cocaine back in the bag, zipped it up, picked up the bag, and walked out of the parking lot. There was an attendant in the booth, a thin black man with Rastafarian hair. He was crouching down, trying to hide. Crow walked to the booth and shot him in the head.

Then he put his gun back in his holster and walked off down Tyler Street toward Kneeland Street, carrying the maroon Nike bag over his shoulder.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Jesse stood off-camera on the news set
at Channel 3
and watched Jenn expertly describing isobars and cold fronts and other things about which he knew she had no clue. She made confident sweeping hand gestures against an empty blue background. Jesse knew that somewhere between Jenn and the television audience the empty blue background acquired a weather map, though he didn’t know how.

Nor did he care.

The floor director counted her down.

Jenn said, “Back to you, Tony.”

When Tony Salt, the news anchor, replaced her on the monitors, Jenn came past the cameras with her finger to her lips, stood beside Jesse, and gave him a small bump with her hip. They stood silently until a commercial break, and then Jenn led them out through the heavy door into the corridor.

“Hi,” she said.

“A low-pressure area dominating our weather system?” Jesse said.

Jenn smiled.

“They write it. I read it,” she said and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the lips.

“Where shall we eat?”

“Up to you,” Jesse said.

“I usually have pizza.”

“You know what I’d love?” Jenn said.

“I’d love to have some fried clams at that little restaurant on the harbor in Paradise.”

“The Gray Gull,” Jesse said.

“Yes. Do you mind driving all the way back?”

“No, of course not,” Jesse said.

“Oh good. Let me get my purse and stuff, I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

Like I would, Jesse thought.

He didn’t mind driving forty-five minutes back to Paradise. He would be alone with her. Jenn would sit sideways in the seat next to him, tuck her knees under her, and talk. He had always loved to listen to her talk. She didn’t even need to be talking to him. When they had been married, he used to enjoy listening to her talk on the car phone to her agent, her manager, casting directors, girlfriends, hairdressers.

“It’s not really about telling people the weather,” she said, as they went north through the Callahan Tunnel. The rush hour was over and the traffic was light.

“It’s about marketing the weather person as a way to market the station,” she said.

“Otherwise the anchor could just tell you it was going to rain tomorrow as part of the newscast. But that’s not the point. There’s three of us, for Christ’s sake. Clark does noon and eleven. I do six, and Dinah does weekends. I visit schools and street fairs and do remotes from somebody’s lobby. That’s why I only do six, so they can market me.”

“Long day for Clark?” Jesse said.

Jenn nodded.

“He loves it,” she said.

“Gives him more air time.”

“So why you?”

“I got a better ass than Clark.” 

“I think that’s right,” Jesse said.

“How about Dinah?” 

Jenn shrugged.

“Girls with bad asses don’t get hired.”

Jesse wasn’t looking at her. He was watching the road in front of him.

“But she is the weekend weather girl, isn’t she,” Jenn said. ;

And Jesse knew without looking just the way her eyes gleamed when she said it.

Jesse took a deep breath and let it out audibly.

“How’s Tony Salt,” he said.

“Is it serious?”

“Not yet.”

Jesse felt the thickness in his chest. It began near the solar plexus and reached the lower part of his throat.

“I don’t know, Jesse. I’m just dating. It’s not serious like you and me, if that’s bothering you.”

“Could it get that serious?”

“I don’t know. I can’t promise. I have to be able to see who I want to see, and tonight I want to see you.”

“I haven’t spied on you again.”

“Good.”

Jenn didn’t say anything, though he was aware that she shifted in the seat so she could look at him more directly.

“I’m ashamed of it,” Jesse said.

Jenn nodded.

“Knowledge is power,” she said.

“That’s exactly the phrase my friend used when I told her.”

“Your friend’s had psychotherapy,” Jenn said.

“It’s a shrink thing to say. This the lawyer lady?”

“No. It’s a woman named Marcy Campbell. She sells real estate.”

“You fucking her?”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“Well, hell, Jenn, adults fuck, you know?”

“Yep, I know. You love her?”

“No. I like her. I like her a lot. But I don’t love her or her me.”

Jenn didn’t say anything. Jesse drove a quarter way around Bell Circle and headed north past the dog track.

“You think you’ll stake me out again?” Jenn said.

“No. You have my word.”

“It’s a human thing to do, Jesse.”

“But not a useful thing,” Jesse said.

“No. I have to live my life and see who I wish to see and go where I wish to go and not be trapped in a single commitment.”

“Forever?”

“No, just until I don’t have to.”

“You know when that will be?”

“No. And pushing me on it is counterproductive.”

“I know.”

“I can’t make you promises, Jesse. I can’t give you any guarantees. It scares me even to talk this much about it. But you have to remember that you and I are connected in a way that I’ve never been connected to anyone else.”

“You love me?”

“Yes.”