Текст книги "Trouble in Paradise"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

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"Like hell," Faye said.

"Looking is one thing. You're a man, and you can't help it. But you start following up, and I will cut off your balls."

"Faye, would I cheat on you?"

"Like I say, you're a man."

"Cynical," Macklin said.

"Experienced," Faye said.

"Besides, you know what I meant.

What is your plan for doing business on the island?"

"Well I'm going to get a good map," Macklin said.

"And I'm going to start putting together a crew."

"What are we going to do for money in the meantime?"

"I'll get some," Macklin said.

"I hope so. You got people in mind for this crew?"

"Yeah. It's one of the best things about going to jail a few times," Macklin said.

"You get a chance to network."

"You going to hit the bank?"

"Sweet cakes," Macklin said, "I'm going to hit the whole island."

SEVEN.

As he had taken to doing when his day ended at five, Jesse stopped by the bar at the Gray Gull. He would have two drinks, talk with the bartender or a few of the reglulars, and then go home for supper. It iworked better than having a drink at "home. It was sociable, and it was easier to stop after two in public. Being chief of police carried with it certain obligations, and | Jesse was pretty sure that not getting pink in public was one of them.

"Black label and soda, Doc," Jesse said to the bartender. He made a measuring gesture with his hands.

"Tall glass."

The bartender made the drink and set it before Jesse and went down to the service corner of the bar to get a waitress order. He mixed up two pink drinks, one of them up, the other on the rocks, and set them out with the slip tucked between the glasses. Then he came back down the bar to talk with Jesse.

"You been fighting crime all day?" Doc said.

"Serve and protect," Jesse said.

"What are those pink things?"

"Cosmopolitans," Doc said.

"Sort of a summer martini."

"They look tasty," Jesse said.

"They're pretty good," Doc said.

"You want to try one? On me?"

The young waitress came and put the two drinks on a tray and went out onto the deck with them. Jesse noticed that her cutoff jeans were snug. "No thanks, Doc. Scotch is fine."

Jesse nursed his drink. The bar was only half full. It was mid-week, and the after-work crowd hadn't drifted in yet in force. Jesse liked quiet bars. He liked them best in the middle of the afternoon, air-conditioned and nearly empty, where everything was desultory and you could play old Carl Perkins stuff on the juke box and watch people as they came in out of the outside brightness and paused for their eyes to adjust. He liked the lucent way the bottles looked, arranged along the back of a good bar with the mirror reflecting the light from behind them. It was a little too late to be perfect, but it was still a good place to be. For two drinks.

In the bar mirror, he saw Abby Taylor come into the bar with a tall man in a seersucker suit. Jesse smiled. Only here, Jesse thought. Until a year ago, he'd never seen a seersucker suit. They got a table behind him and sat. Abby saw him then and said something to the man and got up and walked over. She was wearing an olive suit with a short skirt.

"Jesse," she said.

"How are you?"

They shook hands, and she put her cheek out. Jesse kissed it lightly.

"Fine," Jesse said.

"You look great."

Behind her Jesse could see the guy in the seersucker suit order drinks from a waitress. He was nearly bald, with what remained of his hair cut short.

"Thanks, you too. How are you and Jenn getting on?"

Jesse shrugged.

"She came back because I was in trouble. Now I'm not in trouble. She hasn't been around much. Suit tells me he saw her doing the weather on Channel Three."

"So you're not together?"

"God no," Jesse said.

"But you're not fully apart," Abby said.

"Are you?"

"I guess not," Jesse said.

"That the new boyfriend?"

"Chip? Maybe. We've been dating for a while."

"Chip?" Jesse said.

"I know, but he's really nice. He knows about us. Want to meet him?"

"No," Jesse said.

The young waitress with the tight cutoffs came out of the kitchen with a basket of clams and walked past them toward the deck. Jesse watched her. Abby smiled.

"Good to see you've not lost all interest," Abby said.

"I don't think that's possible," Jesse said.

"Well..." Abby paused a moment, thinking of what to say.

"I

| hope you and Jenn work it out, whatever way is best for you."

"When we got divorced I thought we had," Jesse said.

"One would have thought that," Abby said and patted his hand | lightly where it rested on the bar.

"Take care of yourself."

"You too," Jesse said.

He watched her as she walked back to sit down with Chip. Chip | looked over at him and nodded in a friendly way. Fuck you, Chip.

"Better hit me again, Doc," Jesse said.

The second drink tasted better than the first. Jesse held it up so that the light shown through it. The ice cubes were crystalline. The IF I drink was golden with scotch and quick with carbonation.

"You know a family in town named Hopkins?"

"Yeah. He's some kind of financial consultant, I think."

"Kids?"

"They got a couple," Doc said.

"Kids are real assholes."

"Lot of that going around," Jesse said.

"Yeah, all fifteen-year-old kids are probably assholes," Doc said.

"But these kids are worse. You know I got a lobster boat."

Jesse nodded.

"I caught them one day stealing lobsters out of my boat while II was in the wharf office for a minute."

"Maybe they were having a clam bake," Jesse said.

"They weren't taking them. They weren't even throwing them back. They were stealing them and throwing them up onto the deck | of some guy's Chris-Craft."

"So the lobsters die and the guy's boat gets messed up and you lose money and all they get out of it is the pleasure of being pricks," Jesse said.

" Jesse, you're wasting your time as a cop. You should be a child psychologist," Doc said.

"I wanted to drown the little fuckers."

"But you didn't."

Doc shrugged. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled above his elbows and his sun-darkened forearms were those of a man who'd done a lot of heavy physical labor in his life.

"They're too old to scare, too young to kick the shit out of. I chased them off, climbed on the Chris-Craft, and got my lobsters back."

"Say anything to the parents?"

"No."

Doc moved down the bar and drew two pints of Harp. He put them on the bar, picked up the tab, rang it up and put it back in front of the drinkers. Then he moved back to Jesse.

"How come you're asking?" he said.

"Just making conversation," Jesse said.

Doc squinted at Jesse and shrugged.

"Yeah, you're a big conversation maker," he said.

"I try," Jesse said.

He got up from the bar and went to a pay phone and called the station.

"Anthony? Jesse. You know those Hopkins kids, torched the house on Geary Street? Well, I want a cruiser to park outside their house for a half hour every shift, starting tonight. No don't say anything, don't do anything. Just park outside the house a half hour every shift. That's right. I want to make them nervous."

EIGHT.

At 2:15 in the afternoon, Macklin was sipping a Kettle One martini with a twist, at a sports bar on Huntington Avenue. He was wearing baggy olive linen slacks with three reverse pleats, a loose-fitting black silk tee shirt, and alligator loafers with no socks. In his wallet he had ten one hundred-dollar bills from Faye's savings account. In his pants pocket, he had a hundred and a twenty left from the liquor store.

There were four people besides Macklin in the room: a man and woman at a table eating buffalo wings, and a white-haired man down the bar, watching the soccer game that was on every big screen television in the room. The bartender was slicing lemons.

"Quiet afternoon," Macklin said.

"Usually is," the bartender said, "this time on a weekday." He was a middle-sized young guy with a thick moustache.

"Soccer don't help," Macklin said.

"Some people like it," the bartender said.

"Can't get into it myself."

"Whaddya like?" Macklin said.

"Football," the bartender said.

"Now you're talking," Macklin said.

"You bet?"

"Sure," the bartender said.

"Last year I was up about a bill and a half."

He finished slicing the lemons and put them in a jar and put the jar in the refrigerator under the counter. Then he came down the bar and nodded at Macklin's glass.

"Buy you one?" he said.

"Be a fool not to say yes," Macklin answered.

The bartender scooped some ice into a shaker. Without measuring, he poured in vodka and a splash of vermouth.

"You must know the game," Macklin said.

"Come out ahead."

The bartender rattled the martini around in the shaker and then poured it through the strainer into a chilled glass.

"I played some in high school," he said.

"And I pay attention."

He ran a twist of lemon around the rim of the glass and then dropped it into the martini.

"Makes the game more interesting," Macklin said, "you got something on it."

"You got that right."

Macklin sipped his second martini.

"Nice job," he said to the I bartender.

The bartender grinned and went down the bar to the white-haired man. Macklin took the hundred from his pocket and put it I on the bar. The bartender poured a double shot of Jack Daniels over some ice and put it on a paper napkin in front of the man.

Then he strolled back up the bar to Macklin. He gave no indication that he saw the hundred.

"I'm from out of town," Macklin said.

"And I'm bored. You know where I could find a card game?"

"Where you from?"

"Dannemora, New York," Macklin said.

"And you want to play poker?"

"Yeah. Good game. Some money changing hands, you know?"

"Sure," the bartender said.

"Lemme make a call."

The bartender went down the bar and punched out a number I on the phone. He talked for a moment and then hung up and walked back down to Macklin.

"You know the Lincolnshire Hotel?"

Macklin shook his head.

"You can walk there. You call Tommy King from the lobby. Tell him Lennie Seltzer sent you. They'll tell you the room number and up you go."

"You Lennie?"

"No, Lennie's the guy I called."

"Excellent," Macklin said.

"How do I get there?"

He finished his second martini while the bartender gave him directions. Then he got up, left the hundred on the bar and headed for the door.

"Wish me luck," he said.

The bartender gave him a thumbs-up, and Macklin went out onto Huntington Avenue and walked to the Copley Place Garage where he had parked his car. He took the thousand dollars from his wallet and crumpled the bills and put them in his right-hand pants pocket. Inside the car, he unlocked the glove compartment and took out his 9-mm pistol. He undid his pants. Instead of shorts, he was wearing an oversized jock with a cup. He shoved the pistol down inside the cup. He took a roll of adhesive tape from the glove compartment, tore off some, and taped the handle of the gun against his belly, well below the navel. Then he got out and tucked in his shirt and buttoned his pants. He locked the car and cut through Copley Place on his way to the hotel. He paused outside a leather goods store and looked at himself reflected in the dark glass of the display window. The gun didn't show, just as it hadn't shown when he rehearsed this morning.

It was a perfect summer day in Boston as Macklin strolled through the Back Bay. He didn't need the directions. He knew where the Lincolnshire was. Inside the ornate lobby, he called Tommy King on an ivory house phone.

"Name's Hoyle," Macklin said.

"Lennie Seltzer sent me."

"Room four-eighteen."

"I'll be up," Macklin said.

The elevator smelled of lilacs. The corridor was done in dark red carpet and ivory woodwork. The numbers on the doors were done in gold. At room 418 Macklin stopped. The emergency exit was two doors beyond-out the door and turn left. He rang the little illuminated bell beside the door. When the door opened, he stepped into a small foyer. Room 418 was in fact a two-bedroom suite.

In the foyer with him was a big man with thick hands.

"Mr. Hoyle?"

"That's me," Macklin said.

"Sorry, sir, but I'll have to pat you down. Just routine."

A short plump man in a white silk shirt was standing behind the big man. He had thin black hair plastered against his balding skull.

"Sergeant Voss is an off-duty police officer," the plump man said.

"Just to make sure everything's on the up and up."

"Excellent," Macklin said.

"Makes me feel safe."

He spread his arms and stood straight while Sergeant Voss ran his hands under each arm, down each side, around Macklin's belt line, and down each leg. Sergeant Voss was assiduous, as Macklin knew he would be, in avoiding Macklin's crotch. When he was through, Sergeant Voss stepped back and nodded at the plump man.

"I'm Tommy King," the plump man said.

"Come on in."

The game was in the living room. Five men at a round table, with a sixth chair waiting for Macklin at the sixth spot. A blond woman with prominent breasts and a short black dress was overseeing the buffet and bar that was set up at the far end of the living room.

"Drink?" King said.

"I'll just take a beer," Macklin said.

"Maybe a shrimp cocktail."

"Fine. Tiffany will get it for you."

Macklin sat down. He took the thousand out of his pants pocket and put it on the table beside him without making much attempt to smooth them out.

"The gentleman with the five-o'clock shadow is Tony, my dealer."

Macklin nodded at him.

"The rest will introduce themselves," King said.

"Bill," the first player said, and they went around the table.

"Chuck."

"Mel."

"John."

"Sully."

Macklin smiled and nodded. Tiffany brought him beer and shrimp cocktail and managed to rub one of her breasts against him as she did so.

"Five-card draw," Tony said.

"Jacks or better. Hundred-dollar minimum."

Macklin nodded and put his hundred in the pot. Tony began to deal. He was thin with dense black hair that waved straight back.

The cards seemed to move about in his thin hands as if they were alive. Macklin got a pair of threes. Chuck opened. Macklin drew three cards. It didn't improve his threes. He dropped out. Chuck won with three queens. Tiffany made sure everyone had what they needed in food and drink. And she made sure that she rubbed her chest against all the players but Tony. Tony neither ate nor drank.

Sergeant Voss leaned on the wall in the foyer. Occasionally Tommy King sat in for Tony. Macklin was a competent card player, but it didn't interest him. Gambling was for losers. There were better ways to get money. And there were better ways to lose it... like women. Macklin played hard enough to make it seem he was trying and kept close track of the amount of money that was moving Iv across the table.

After an hour and a half, Macklin was down $200.

i "Excuse me a minute," he said.

"Damn beer, you don't drink it, : you just rent it."

He stood and walked through a bedroom into the bath and closed the door and locked it. Then he unbuttoned his pants, pulled the tape off the gun butt and took the pistol out of his protector. He put the pistol down on the top of the toilet tank and took the occasion to urinate. Make it authentic. Then he zipped up.

Washed his hands, dried them on a towel, picked up the pistol, cocked it, and went back through the bedroom. He took a pillow |s off the bed and shook the pillowcase loose. Carrying it in his left hand, with the 9-mm in his right, he went into the poker room. The first thing he did as he stepped through the bedroom door was to shoot Sergeant Voss in the middle of the chest. Voss grunted and fell on his left side and twitched a couple of times and was still. It took the starch out of everyone else in the room. Macklin waved the gun gently toward the poker players. Tiffany began to cry softly.

Macklin ignored her.

"Any one of you can be next," Macklin said.

"Unless I get all the money."

Nobody spoke.

"Everybody clasp their hands behind their head."

They did as they were told.

"No problem," Tommy King said.

"You'll get your money."

"This is true," Macklin said.

"Now, one by one, starting with you, Tommy, get up, empty your pockets into the pillowcase. And then lie facedown on the floor," he gestured with the gun barrel, "right there."

They did as they were told. After all the men had done as they were told, Macklin picked up the money on the table and handed it to Tiffany.

"Hold that," he said.

Then he surveyed the room.

"In a minute I'm going to search you, one at a time. If I find you held out on me, I'm going to shoot you in the back of the head."

He paused a moment.

"Anybody got anything to declare?"

Nobody moved. Macklin grinned.

"Okay, I believe you. Come on, Tiffany."

He took hold of her wrist and led her past the dead man in the foyer and out the front door. Turn left. Two doors down. Into the emergency stairwell. Tiffany was still crying. He let go of her.

"I left you behind, they'd have taken the money away from you," he said.

"Now you're on your own."

And he left her clutching the table stakes and sniveling, and he ran down the four flights. At the bottom he took the gun off cock, dropped it in the pillowcase, and went out the emergency door onto the street.

NINE.

"So now you're a weather weenie," Jesse said.

He sat at the counter in Jenn's kitchen in a newly remodeled third-floor condominium on Beacon Street. Jenn had shown him around. From her bedroom window, you could see the Charles River. He had felt uneasy in her bedroom, but he was more comfortable now, sipping a scotch and soda, while Jenn transferred supper from the take-out boxes to the plates.

"Only the guys have to be weenies," Jenn said.

"The weather girls have to look," she stuck out her chest and wiggled her hips, "goooood."

Jesse smiled.

"What about 'having a film career'?"

Jenn shook her head.

"Have to ball too many toads," she said.

"Like Elliot?" Jesse said.

"Yeah, and the worst part is after you ball them, they're still toads."

She had bought chicken salad at the take-out, and cold sesame noodles, and a loaf of sourdough bread. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay and handed it to Jesse.

"Opener's right there beside the wine bucket," she said.

Jesse finished his scotch, opened the wine, and poured two glasses. He handed one to Jenn as she came around the counter to sit beside him. She touched his glass with hers.

"I don't know what to drink to," Jesse said.

"We could drink to each other."

"Okay," Jesse said. They drank.

"So," Jesse said.

"Here we are."

"Yes."

"But I don't quite know where here is."

"Other than three thousand miles from Los Angeles?" She served a spoonful of chicken salad onto his plate.

"It's got grapes in it," Jesse said.

"That makes it chicken salad Veronique."

Jenn served him some sesame noodles and took some for herself. She liked to eat, and she was careful about what she ate. But she put together some very odd combinations, Jesse thought.

Sesame noodles and chicken salad? Veronique? She was sitting beside him eating neatly. She seemed calm. He could smell her perfume, and he could brush her arm if he leaned slightly left. He remembered exactly what she looked like with her clothes off.

He felt as if he might come apart and scatter on her kitchen floor.

He sipped some Chardonnay. He didn't like wine that much. He particularly didn't like Chardonnay. But he knew she always had ordered it when they were married, and this had been the most expensive bottle of Chardonnay in the Cove Liquor Store, which was the nearest liquor store to the police station.

"You doing good with your drinking, Jesse?"

"I'm all right, Jenn. I slip occasionally, but never in public."

"Drinking alone?"

"Yep. But not often."

"I worry about you drinking alone."

"Hell, I've always liked drinking alone, Jenn. I hate being drunk where people can see me."

"I know. You're a very inward person."

Jenn was eating her noodles with chopsticks. He admired how clever she was with the chopsticks. He always used a fork. She ate some noodles, put down the chopsticks, drank some wine.

"Well," she said.

"The question is where are we."

Jesse nodded. He wasn't hungry. He drank some wine.

"I've had quite a lot of therapy since we broke up," she said.

"We didn't break up," Jesse said.

"You left me for Elliot the producer."

Jenn nodded carefully.

"I've had quite a bit of therapy since I took up with Elliot Krueger and you divorced me," she said.

"I'm sorry," Jesse said.

"I guess I'm quibbling over language."

"You're mad," Jenn said.

"And why wouldn't you be?"

"You did what you had to do."

"I guess so," Jenn said.

"But all the therapy I've had hasn't solved my problem."

"Which is?"

"I want to be with you and I don't."

"And what's the shrink say about that?"

"She says I'm ambivalent."

"For this she gets a hundred dollars an hour?"

"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 the 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."