Trouble in Paradise js-2 Read online

  "Two hundred. And she's worth it. She helped me see that I really feel both ways at the same time, that it's really quite human to feel conflicting things."

  "So what do you do about it?"

  "I don't know yet. But I know I want to stay near you. You were too far away before."

  "And what do we do with your ambivalence? You fuck me on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Elliot Tuesdays and Thursdays?"

  "It's not about fucking, Jesse."

  "The hell it isn't."

  "Well. It's not only about fucking."

  Jesse took in some air. He finished his wine. Better not have any more.

  "Okay," he said, "it's not only about fucking. It's about you don't want me and you don't want to lose me. What the Christ am I supposed to do with that?"

  "Talk."

  "That's what I'm doing."

  "No," Jenn said.

  "Mostly you're yelling."

  Jesse got off the stool and walked into Jenn's frilly living room id looked down at Beacon Street.

  "Goddamn, this is hard," he said.

  She stood in the doorway behind him.

  "It's awful, isn't it?" she Isaid.

  "Yes."

  "Dr. St. Claire says the bond between us is quite impressive."

  Jesse nodded, staring down at the cars outbound toward Kenmore Square.

  "I think we need to try," Jenn said.

  "Try what?" Jesse said.

  "Jesse," Jenn said.

  "We're divorced. We're single. We can act like [any other single people. We could date."

  "Date who?"

  "Anybody we wanted," Jenn said.

  "Including each other. Like | we'd just met."

  "And?" Jesse said.

  "And see what happens."

  "Sex?" Jesse said.

  Jenn shrugged.

  "Let's see what happens."

  "Not tonight," Jesse said.

  "No," Jenn said.

  Jesse turned from the window and looked at Jenn and smiled.

  "You are a piece of work, Jenn," he said.

  "You want to give it a try?"

  "Sure," Jesse said.

  "Want to take me to dinner next Wednesday night?"

  Yes.

  They stood on opposite sides of the living room for a time and looked silently at each other. Then Jenn walked across and put her arms around Jesse and rested her head against his chest.

  With her voice somewhat muffled, she said, "A day at a time, huh?"

  "Sure," Jesse said.

  TEN.

  "And you just walked out and shot the cop without a word" Faye said.

  They were sitting in the Mercedes parked on Indian Hill, looking at Stiles Island where it jutted into the harbor.

  "He was the dangerous one. Knock him over and they take you seriously."

  "So you did it for effect."

  "I wanted to neutralize him. And I wanted to get their attention."

  "Weren't you afraid someone would hear the shot?" Faye said.

  "Hotel rooms have pretty good sound insulation," Macklin said.

  "And most people don't know what a gun shot sounds like anyway. They're afraid to call up and make an asshole of themselves, you know?"

  "Why didn't they call down to the desk the minute you left the room?"

  "And say what-we were having an illegal poker game up here, guarded by a corrupt Boston cop? As soon as I left the room, they were busy getting the hell out of there and covering their tracks."

  "So they won't even report it."

  "Nope. Why I like to knock them over."

  "Paper says that a policeman was found shot to death in a room," Faye said.

  "And the room was occupied by someone named Thomas King, who turns out to be a phony."

  "It didn't say in the paper."

  "It will," Macklin said.

  "The real Thomas King will be a guy from Des Moines, who's never been to Boston, and somebody lifted his credit card number and used it to make phony plastic."

  "You take some awful chances, Jimmy."

  "Not really," Macklin said.

  "What if the cop had found your gun?"

  "Guy's patting you down he stays away from your crotch."

  "But suppose he had found it?"

  "So he takes it," Macklin said.

  "And they either boot me out or let me play. If they boot me out, I take my thousand and leave. If they let me play, I donate my thousand and leave."

  "But shooting the cop?"

  "Part of doing business," Macklin said.

  "Either it bothers you or it doesn't. If it bothers you, find another line of work."

  "It doesn't bother you."

  "No."

  "What if you'd missed?"

  Macklin grinned at her.

  "I don't miss."

  They were quiet. Below them, a sloop, heeling sharply in the offshore wind, was moving out of the harbor under sail. They were too far to make out the people onboard.

  "So how much did you get?" Faye said.

  "Fifteen thousand and change," Macklin said.

  "Should keep us afloat until we clean out Stiles Island."

  "You really think we can?"

  "It's perfect," Macklin said.

  "The isolation. The money. The police."

  "Small-town cops?"

  "You bet," Macklin said.

  "Biggest robbery they've ever had is probably some kid copping two Snickers bars from a Ma and Pa."

  "I think something happened here last year, while you were in jail."

  "Probably caught a Peeping Tom," Macklin said.

  "No, I don't remember. It was on the news one night."

  "Whatever," Macklin said and grinned at her again.

  "They haven't seen anything like me before."

  Faye smiled back at him.

  "Not many people have," she said.

  ELEVEN.

  Suitcase Simpson and Anthony De Angelo brought the Hopkins boys and Snapper Jencks in to see Jesse at 9:15 in the morning. None of them seemed scared. They all seemed to enjoy the celebrity of being arrested.

  "Nobody was home but the kids," De Angelo said.

  "Either house. I left a note."

  "My father's going to be down here with a lawyer soon as he finds out," Earl said.

  Jesse nodded. Simpson closed the door and leaned against it.

  "I don't think you're supposed to arrest a kid without his parInts' permission anyway," Robbie said.

  "You better call my mother It work."

  Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at them with the deadyed cop look he'd polished to a gleaming edge in South Central L.A. He let his eyes move slowly from one to the other, letting his saze rest heavily on each of them. Jencks was the hard case. He met esse's look. The other two didn't. Jesse looked at Earl.

  "You want a lawyer?" Jesse said.

  "I don't know no lawyer," Earl said.

  "Want me to get you one?"

  "I don't want your lawyer," Earl said.

  "You better wait until my aid man gets here."

  "How old are you?" Jesse said.

  "Fifteen."

  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 t, 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 th
e 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?" lesse said to Simpson.

  "Three of the toughest kids in Paradise," Simpson said.

  "How you think they'll do at Lancaster?" Jesse said.

  Simpson and De Angelo 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 De Angelo 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 butto
n 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.

  TWELVE.

  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 shortsleeved 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 cris sake

  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."