Текст книги "Sea Change"

Автор книги: Robert B. Parker

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

“Sometimes with others?”

“Sure.”

“One at a time?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Not always,” she said.

“Other men involved?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are we talking about gang bangs here, Mandy?”

“Sometimes.”

“Willing?”

“Willing? Oh, sure, willing. Of course, it’s all in fun. Somebody doesn’t groove on that. Fine. Don’t party. You know?”

“What about the nude pictures.”

1 5 4

S E A C H A N G E

“Oh those,” Mandy laughed and stubbed her cigarette out in the remains of her napoleon. “Tommy got it all rigged on his boat, cameras in the bedrooms, all hooked to a VCR.”

“Do the participants know they’re being taped?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy shrugged.

“I know,” she said, “because he showed me some pictures of me.”

“You didn’t mind?”

“Hell, no, fun stuff. I thought it was cool.”

“How’d you meet Mr. Ralston?” Kelly Cruz said.

“Around. I like yachts and men who own them,” Mandy said. “You hang around the right marinas and you get to see a lot of both.”

“And the other women?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy laughed.

“I’m not there,” she said, “because I’m interested in the other women.”

“Any names?”

“No. I don’t know any of them. There’s some babe named Brittany, and somebody named Janine, but I don’t know any last names.”

“Men?”

“Harry,” Mandy said with a big smile, “and Mike and a guy named Ace.”

“No last names,” Kelly Cruz said.

“We’re real informal on the yacht,” Mandy said.

“You know what Mr. Ralston does with all his videotapes?”

1 5 5

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“He looks at them, I guess, in his spare time.”

Kelly Cruz nodded.

“Do you know where he is now?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy tipped her glass so that the small chunks of ice in the bottom slid into her mouth. She crunched them thoughtfully, and shook her head.

“He’s up north near Boston someplace,” she said after she swallowed. “There’s some big race thing going on.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy shrugged and shook her head.

“Do you know anyone named Florence Horvath?” Kelly Cruz said.

“There was a Florence, hung with Tommy for a while.”

“Know anything about her?”

“She was old for Tommy.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Know where she is now?” Kelly Cruz said.

“No.”

“Know any other friends of hers?”

“No.”

“Do you know Corliss and Claudia Plum?”

“Twins?” Mandy said.

“Yes.”

“Corliss and Claudia, yeah. They been on the boat with Tommy, pretty sure. I mean how many twins you meet, let alone named Claudia and Corliss. Yikes.”

“They party with Tommy too?”

1 5 6

S E A C H A N G E

“Absolutely. College cuties, you know.”

Kelly Cruz took out the three head shots Jesse had sent.

“Know any of these?” she said to Mandy.

Mandy studied the pictures.

“I mighta seen them around the marina, hard to say. Pic -

tures aren’t really great, you know?”

“I know,” Kelly Cruz said.

Mandy looked some more.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “Everybody hangs around the marina looks the same, tan, blond. Boys, girls, doesn’t matter.

Hard to remember.”

Kelly Cruz nodded and took the pictures back. She took a card out of her purse and handed it to Mandy.

“Anything occurs to you, call me.”

“Sure,” Mandy said and tucked the card into her bra.

“Tommy give you money?” Kelly Cruz said.

“He helps out, bless his horny little heart.”

“So what are you doing now,” Kelly Cruz said, “while Tommy’s away?”

Mandy paused to light a new cigarette.

“I have other friends,” she said.

1 5 7

33

I been working my little butt off for you down here,” Kelly Cruz said on the phone.

“Glad to know it’s little,” Jesse said.

“Perky, too,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Even better,” Jesse said. “What do you know.”

“I talked to the vic’s parents,” Kelly Cruz said. “The old man is off in happy land someplace. Booze, denial, Alzheimer’s, I don’t know. But as far as he knows, everything is dandy and let’s have a cocktail.”

“How about the mother?”

“She knows. And she doesn’t know what to do with it, and so she pretends she doesn’t know, and let’s have a cocktail.”

S E A C H A N G E

“She know the twins aren’t in school?”

“Yes,” Kelly Cruz said. “I feel kind of bad for her.”

“She know anything else?”

“She knows that Florence was pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“Son of a gun!” Jesse said.

“And the twins,” Kelly Cruz said, “Corliss and Claudia, were also pals with Thomas Ralston.”

“You got that from the mother too?”

“No. I did some follow-up,” Kelly Cruz said. “I’m trying to make sergeant.”

“Follow-up and a perky little butt,” Jesse said. “You’re a lock.”

“Yeah. Ralston led a pretty lively sex life. You want to hear?”

“I do,” Jesse said.

Kelly Cruz told him everything she’d learned. Jesse listened silently. When she was through he told her what he knew about Harrison Darnell.

“And Darnell’s parked right beside Ralston?” Kelly Cruz said.

“In the same harbor,” Jesse said. “And, I don’t think they call it parked. I think it’s anchored, or moored, maybe.”

“I’ll make a note,” Kelly Cruz said. “So they both knew Florence Horvath. They both have the same, ah, atypical sexual interests. And they were both . . . anchored . . . in Paradise Harbor when Florence washed ashore.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “Does that seem significant to you?”

“I might check it out, I was you,” Kelly Cruz said.

1 5 9

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Thanks,” Jesse said.

“You’re welcome, but there’s one other thing, maybe,”

Kelly Cruz said. “One of the people I talked with down here, a girl, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, mentioned that Florence Horvath seemed a little old for Thomas Ralston.”

“She was thirty-four,” Jesse said.

“No accounting for taste,” Kelly Cruz said. “Maybe he passed her on to Darnell.”

“Darnell seems somewhat able to tolerate age diversity,”

Jesse said.

“I’ll keep snooping around when I’m not busy with my real job,” Kelly Cruz said.

When she hung up Jesse sat silently, looking at nothing.

The scientists had established that all the tapes were recent.

He wondered who the redhead was. He hadn’t seen her on Darnell’s yacht. There were several he hadn’t seen. He had to talk with Katie DeWolfe. And her mother. He couldn’t let it slide. She was fifteen. Her mother had to know, too. Molly hadn’t mentioned a father. Sometimes he thought the fathers were harder. Maybe just because I’m male. He’d have Molly sit in. She knew the mother. When he sat at his desk, Jesse was more comfortable when he took the gun off his hip and laid it on the desktop. He looked at it now, lying there. Be simpler if they would let him just shoot people who deserved it. Who would decide? I would. What if you’re wrong? Ah, there’s the rub.

He stood and went out to the desk.

“Can you arrange for Katie DeWolfe and her parents to come see me?” he said.

1 6 0

S E A C H A N G E

“Father’s not around,” Molly said. “They’re divorced.”

Jesse nodded.

“I should be the one,” Molly said. “I know Katie, and I know her mother.”

Jesse nodded again.

“You’re going to ask me to sit in, too,” Molly said.

“Aren’t you.”

Jesse continued to nod. Molly stared past him for a moment. Then she breathed in audibly.

“Any special time?” she said.

“Soon as they can,” Jesse said. “But, you know, try to ac-commodate to them. I’ll be available.”

Molly continued to stare at nothing. Jesse could hear her breathing.

“I wish you could do it,” Molly said.

“I can. But I thought it might be more comfortable for them if you did.”

“It will be,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded.

“This is not going to be fun,” Molly said.

“I never promised you fun.”

1 6 1

34

K atie DeWolfe was scared. Her small face was pinched with it. She walked stiffly and swallowed frequently. Her mother had the

same look. They looked alike. They were both slender, and blond, and had about them a look of furtive sexuality. Jesse could never quite pin down what the look was. But he always knew it when he saw it, and in those instances when he’d had occasion to test it, he had always been right.

Molly brought them both in, introduced everyone, got the DeWolfes seated, facing the desk, and sat herself in a straight chair crowded in to Jesse’s left.

“Do you know what this is about, Katie?” Jesse said.

S E A C H A N G E

Katie shook her head.

“You’re sure?” Jesse said.

“I got no idea,” Katie said.

Jesse nodded and took a breath.

“Okay,” he said. “There’s no easy way to say it. I have a videotape of you having sex with a man named Harrison Darnell.”

“You’re lying,” Katie said. “It’s not me.”

“No, honey,” Jesse said. “It’s you.”

Mrs. DeWolfe said in a strangled voice, “Katie?”

“No way,” Katie said.

“I can play the tape,” Jesse said.

“It’s not me.”

Jesse nodded. He picked up the remote from his desk and aimed it and clicked and the tape began to roll with a closeup of Katie’s face, looking straight up at the camera over a man’s shoulder. Katie dropped her head and closed her eyes. Her mother stared at the tape. The camera pulled back to show the two of them naked and copulating.

“Stop it,” Mrs. DeWolfe said. “For Christ’s sake, stop it.”

Jesse clicked the tape off.

“She’s fifteen,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.

“I know,” Jesse said.

Mrs. DeWolfe looked at Molly.

“Molly, for crissake,” she said, “what am I supposed to do?”

“If Katie cooperates,” Molly said, “we can probably work something out?”

“Cooperates?” Katie said. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

1 6 3

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“No,” Jesse said. “But he did.”

“I’m not ratting Harrison out,” she said. “No way. No way.”

Mrs. DeWolfe said, “Katie, my God.”

“Oh, like you’re so lily pure. You been oinkin’ a different guy every week since Daddy left.”

“Katie, that’s not true. And if it were, it doesn’t mean you should. I’m a grown woman, for God’s sake.”

“So am I,” Katie said.

She stuck her chest out, so that her small breasts pushed against her cotton tank top.

“You seen the movies.”

Her mother slapped her across the face. Katie slapped back at her and her mother gripped her wrists and they grap-pled there, still seated. Jesse put his head back against the back of his swivel chair and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Molly,” he said.

But Molly was already up and separating the two women.

Jesse opened his eyes.

“Who’s on the desk?” he said.

“Arthur,” Molly said.

Jesse picked up the phone and called the desk.

“Arthur,” he said. “Step into my office for a moment.”

He hung up and the door opened and Arthur Angstrom stood there.

“Take Mrs. DeWolfe out to the front,” Jesse said. “Get her seated and be sure she stays there until I holler.”

“Okay, Jesse.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. DeWolfe said.

1 6 4

S E A C H A N G E

“You are, ma’am,” Jesse said. “Easy? Or hard?”

She lingered for a minute but Jesse could tell her heart wasn’t in it and she stood.

“I’ll be right outside,” she said to her daughter.

Arthur took her arm and they went out. Molly closed the office door. Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at Katie. She looked back at him, trying for defiance.

“So?” she said.

Jesse smiled.

“So,” he said.

“Like you never had sex?”

“I’m proud to say I did have sex, and hope to again,” Jesse said.

“So, you think I’m too young?”

“Probably,” Jesse said.

“You never had sex when you was my age?”

“No,” Jesse grinned again. “But it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

“Everybody my age has had sex,” she said.

“Probably not all of them with a stranger forty years older, in front of a video camera,” Jesse said.

“Turn you on?” she said.

She looked at him with her eyes wide open. Jesse looked back. Big, blue, innocent and stupid, he thought.

“You were maybe the twenty-fifth person I looked at,”

Jesse said. “I was a long way past turning on.”

“So, you gonna arrest me, or what?”

“I don’t quite know what to do with you, Katie. Let’s try talking about things, just sort of pleasantly. I won’t be a 1 6 5

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

tough guy, and you won’t be a sexpot, and we’ll see where the conversation takes us.”

She frowned, trying to puzzle out what he had said.

“You married?”

“Divorced,” Jesse said.

“Got a girlfriend?”

Jesse smiled. “Actually, I’m living with my ex-wife,” he said.

“That’s weird.”

Jesse continued to smile.

“Yes,” he said. “It certainly is.”

“If you’re divorced, how come you live together.”

“It has to do with love,” Jesse said.

“You love her?”

“I think we love each other,” Jesse said.

“So how come you got divorced?”

“Long answer,” Jesse said. “The short version is, we had problems we couldn’t solve.”

“And now you can?”

“Maybe.”

“You gonna get married again?”

“I don’t know.”

“They got divorced five years ago,” Katie said.

“Your parents,” Jesse said.

“Yes,” Katie said. “I don’t care.”

Jesse nodded.

“And I don’t want you giving me a lot of crap about broken homes and that shit,” Katie said.

1 6 6

S E A C H A N G E

“Okay,” Jesse said.

“I always been kind of wild,” she said.

“Must worry the hell out of your mother,” Jesse said.

“She’s scared out of her gourd I’ll get pregnant, like she did.”

“Which was why she married your father?”

“Yeah, and had me.”

“Your father worry about you?” Jesse said.

“He’s in Louisville, Kentucky,” she said.

“So you don’t see him so often.”

“For sure,” she made it one word. “He got married again.

Got a kid.”

“And,” Jesse said, “I gather your mother dates.”

“She’s boy crazy,” Katie said. “Like me.”

“Or occasionally,” Jesse said, “man crazy.”

“You mean Harrison? Yeah. I really showed him something. He said he couldn’t believe how great I was. He’s got this huge yacht and tons of money. My mother’s probably jealous. She’s always pigging these losers.”

“So how’d you meet Harrison?” Jesse said.

“Actually I met Tommy first and he introduced me to Harrison.”

“Tommy?” Jesse said.

“Tommy Ralston. He’s got a yacht, too. The Sea Cloud. ”

“How’d you meet Tommy?” Jesse said.

“Cathleen Holton,” Katie said. “Cathleen brought a bunch of us out to Tommy’s boat. She said it was a chance to meet some really cool guys.”

“She have a boat?” Jesse said.

1 6 7

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Naw, Tommy sent a launch for us.”

“How many were you?”

“Excuse me?”

“How many of you went out.”

“Me,” she said. “And Cathleen, Beth, Nancy and Brittany, five all together.”

“All around your age?”

“I’m the youngest,” she said. “I always hang around with older kids.”

Jesse nodded.

“Tell me about what happened on the boat.”

“It was wild,” Katie said. “There were four guys and a couple of older women. We had drinks, and we smoked some weed, and the guys said it was like an initiation. We all had to have sex with all the guys.”

“Everybody cool with that?” Jesse said.

“Everybody but Nancy. She started to cry and said she didn’t feel good and wanted to go home.”

“And did she?”

“They said they’d have somebody take her home in the launch, but she had to do a striptease first.”

“She mind?”

“She didn’t want to, but they said she had to if she wanted to go home . . . so she did. It was pretty pathetic.”

“And then she went home?”

“Yeah, one of the sailors took her in the launch.”

“And the rest of you partied.”

“Yes.”

1 6 8

S E A C H A N G E

“And the older women?”

“First they watched, then they joined in.”

“Hell of a good time,” Jesse said.

“Sure, and then Tommy said I was so good that he wanted me to meet his dear friend, and said could I come back tomorrow, and I said sure, and so the next day the launch took me to Harrison’s boat. Just me.”

Jesse was silent. Katie looked at him oddly, like she wanted something. Jesus Christ, she wants approval. He took a breath.

“Most people,” he said, “are probably doing mostly what they need to do. And maybe you need to do this. But it’s not a good way for you to live.”

“Why not,” she said.

“Again,” Jesse said, “long answer. Short version is you don’t become more important because a lot of people are willing to fuck you.”

“I’m not trying to be important,” she said. “I’m just having some fun.”

“I need the names of the other girls,” Jesse said.

“Are you going to tell them I told?”

Jesse looked at Molly, who had said not a word during the entire conversation. She shrugged and shook her head.

“To tell you the truth, Katie,” Jesse said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’ll start by taking names.”

1 6 9

35

J enn always brushed her teeth before bed.

Jesse lay in bed on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, watching her

through the open door of the bathroom. She was wearing one of his shirts, just the way she used to, and when she bent over to rinse her mouth, her butt showed. Jenn turned off the bathroom light and got into bed beside Jesse.

“Were you leering at me?” Jenn said.

“I was admiring your butt,” Jesse said.

“It is cute, isn’t it.”

“So you don’t mind admiring,” Jesse said.

S E A C H A N G E

“Admiring is good; leering is good.”

“I was admiring,” Jesse said.

Jenn tuned her head and kissed him lightly.

“Tell me about your day,” she said.

He knew she was mocking their domesticity.

“Any day that ends up with us in bed,” Jesse said, “is a good day.”

“Oh,” she said, “you charming devil.”

“I would like to get through with this floater case,” Jesse said. “It’s turned into a goddamned cesspool.”

“The one where you were watching the dirty movies?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s gotten worse.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“I do,” Jesse said. “It’s one of the things I really missed when you were gone.”

“Talking to me?”

“I could always talk to you,” Jesse said.

“So talk,” Jenn said.

They had left the balcony doors open, and they could hear the sound of the harbor as Jesse talked, lying on his back in the nearly dark room, looking up the blank, uninteresting ceiling. Jenn turned on her side toward him as she listened.

Through the open French doors, they could hear a boat mo-tor. Softer, more persistent, so familiar in its endless rhythm as to be nearly soundless was the movement of the waves against the causeway at the south end of the harbor. Jenn 1 7 1

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

already knew some of the story, about the videotapes from Darnell. He told her the rest. He told her what Kelly Cruz had learned. He told her about Katie DeWolfe.

“So the bastards recruit?” Jenn said when he was finished.

“And apparently swap.”

“Tapes, too,” Jenn said, “wouldn’t you guess?”

“They probably leer at them,” Jesse said.

“Almost certainly,” Jenn said. “And, my God, what about the women on board? You know the older women? What are they?”

“Put the young ones at ease. Maybe. On the other hand, Katie says, they ‘jump right in.’”

“Jesus,” Jenn said. “You can get them both, can’t you? For statutory rape?”

“I can always do that,” Jesse said. “I want them for murder.”

“Both of them?”

“Whoever killed her,” Jesse said. “And whoever helped.

And whoever knew.”

“What if neither of them did it?” Jenn said.

“One of them did it. Maybe both.”

“You’re so sure?”

“I’m so sure.”

She continued to lie on her side, looking at him. He continued to look at the ceiling.

“If I was looking at your butt and just thinking it was a good-looking butt?” Jesse said after a while.

“That would be admiring,” Jenn said.

1 7 2

S E A C H A N G E

“And if I also imagined holding on to your butt while we were making wild and exotic love?”

“That would be leering.”

“And is one better than the other?” Jesse said.

“Jesse, this sex case is making you crazy,” Jenn said.

“You think?”

Jenn took in a deep breath.

“I am your main fucking squeeze,” she said. “You are supposed to admire me and leer at me and feel desire and act on it.”

“Act on it?”

“Yeah, act. That too much for you, Hamlet?”

Jesse grinned at her.

“Then out swords,” he said, “and to work withal.”

“That’s not Hamlet,” Jenn said.

“Jose Ferrer said it in some movie I saw.”

“That was Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“Close enough,” Jesse said, and pressed his mouth on hers.

1 7 3

36

T hanks for coming in, Mr. Ralston,” Jesse said.

Thomas Ralston’s head was shaved. He

had a deep tan. He was a little taller than Jesse. Six feet, maybe. And he was the kind of fat guy who pretends that it’s brawn. His white shirt had epaulets. It was unbuttoned halfway down his fat tan chest. He had on tan linen slacks and brown leather sandals. A gold cross on a thick chain nes-tled among the gray chest hairs. He kept his wraparound sunglasses on indoors.

“What’s this all about, Chief?” he said.

“Just routine,” Jesse said. “We’re looking into a homicide.

Woman from Fort Lauderdale named Florence Horvath.”

S E A C H A N G E

“Never heard of her,” Ralston said.

“Well, that answers one question,” Jesse said. “We think she may have come off one of the yachts here for Race Week.”

Ralston shrugged.

“So, you being registered in Fort Lauderdale and all.”

“Sure,” Ralston said. “Perfectly understandable. Why do you think she fell off a yacht.”

“I didn’t say she fell,” Jesse said.

“Whatever. You got any evidence?”

Jesse took out his head shots from the Horvath video.

“Know any of these three people?” Jesse said.

Ralston studied the pictures for a time, then shook his head and handed them back.

“Don’t know any of them,” he said.

Ralston took a leather cigar case out of his shirt pocket.

“Care for a cigar, Chief?” Ralston said. “The real thing. I’d deny it in court, of course. But genuine Cuban.”

“No thank you,” Jesse said.

Ralston shrugged and began to take out a cigar.

“There’s a town ordinance against smoking on town property,” Jesse said.

Ralston paused and shook his head and then put the cigar back in the case and the case back in his pocket.

“Amazing,” he said.

“Know anyone named Katie DeWolfe?” Jessie said.

Jesse could almost hear something click shut inside Ralston. He seemed to think about the name for a moment.

Then he shook his head.

1 7 5

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“No,” he said. “I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Know Harrison Darnell?”

“Darnell?” Ralston said. “Yeah. Sure. I know him a little.

Not well. Just casual, you know? Yachting isn’t that big a world. He’s on the Lady Jane, I believe.”

“Also out of Fort Lauderdale,” Jesse said.

“Oh, sure, that’s right. Of course. That’s why you’re asking. The Fort Lauderdale connection.”

“You think he might know Florence Horvath?” Jesse said.

“I just have no way to know, Chief . . . ?” Ralston looked at the nameplate on Jesse’s desk. “Jesse Stone, is it?”

Jesse nodded.

“I don’t know who Harrison Darnell knows or what he does.”

“What might he do?” Jesse said.

“I just told you I don’t know,” Ralston said. “I’m trying to be cooperative, Chief, but you seem hostile.”

Jesse nodded.

“Know anyone named Cathleen Holton?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“How about Corliss or Claudia Plum?”

“No. Who the hell are these people?”

“Mandy Morello?” Jesse said.

“No, for crissake, Chief. What’s going on here? You think I did something?”

“No,” Jesse said. “Just running through the list.”

“Well, no offense, but I’m getting tired of it. Can I leave?”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “Thanks for coming in.”

1 7 6

37

K elly Cruz was in the manager’s office at the marina near the Boat Club. The manager was appropriately windblown and sun-

tanned, wearing a marina staff polo shirt and khaki shorts.

There was, Kelly Cruz noticed, a cute tattoo on his left calf.

Kelly Cruz liked tattoos in discreet moderation.

“Wow,” the manager said. “You’re pretty good-looking, for a cop.”

“I’m pretty good-looking for a person,” Kelly Cruz said.

“My name’s Kelly Cruz.”

“Bob,” the manager said.

“Do you have assigned mooring here, Bob?”

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Sure,” the manager said. “Otherwise it’d be a free-for-all when they came in.”

“So you got a record of the mooring locations,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Course.”

The manager had thick black hair, cut short. His forearms and hands looked strong. He was wearing a nice aftershave.

“May I see them?”

“You bet,” the manager said. “Come around, we got it all on computer.”

Kelly Cruz stood beside him while he punched up the listings.

“Lookin’ for anybody special?” he said.

“Thomas Ralston.”

The manager scrolled down.

“Here we go, he owns Sea Cloud. Number 10A.”

“How about Harrison Darnell?”

The manager scrolled again.

“He should be 8A or 12A. I remember . . . yeah, 12A . . .

I remember they made a point of insisting on side-by-side moorings.”

“They registered together?”

“We don’t call it registered, Kelly. But yeah. They came in a year, year and a half ago, said they wanted to be far out, and they had to be side by side.”

“Do you know either of these gentlemen, Bob?”

“Nope. Just saw them when they contracted the moorings.”

“Do you know why they wanted to be side by side?”

1 7 8

S E A C H A N G E

“Nope.”

“A guess?”

“Party together, I suppose. Two boats are better than one?”

“Two of most things are better than one,” Kelly Cruz said.

“Absolutely, Detective Kelly Cruz.”

“Kelly’s my first name.”

Bob grinned at her.

“I figured you weren’t Irish,” he said.

She smiled.

“You know anything interesting about either of these guys?” she said.

“Not a thing.”

“Know anybody named Florence Horvath?”

“Nope.”

“Corliss or Claudia Plum?”

“Nope. Great names, though,” Bob said. “You ever go out with people you’ve questioned, Kelly Cruz?”

“When I can get a babysitter.”

“Kids.”

“Yep.”

“Husband?”

“Nope.”

“That works,” Bob said.

“It does,” Kelly Cruz said, and handed Bob her card.

1 7 9

38

H ealy took his hat off and put it on the edge of Jesse’s desk.

“I’m on my way home,” he said.

“Way to go,” Jesse said.

“Which means I’m off duty.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse said.

He went to the file cabinet, got a bottle of Bushmill’s Black Label, poured about two inches into a water glass and handed it to Healy.

“You still can’t join me,” Healy said.

“Almost eleven months now,” Jesse said. “Not yet. Maybe never.”

S E A C H A N G E

“Day at a time,” Healy said.

He took a sip, and put his head back, and closed his eyes.

“You don’t have to enjoy it so fucking much,” Jesse said.

“Sorry,” Healy said. “But you remember what the first one was like at the end of the day.”

“I do,” Jesse said. “It’s the fifth or sixth one I have trouble recalling.”

“I’ll try to be unemotional about the next swallow,” Healy said.

“Appreciate it.”

“So,” Healy said. “You asked me to stop by.”

“Remember the floater we had?” Jesse said.

“Horvath,” Healy said. “Been a long time in the water.”

“Well, lemme bring you up to date,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded and sat back with his Irish whiskey and listened.

When Jesse was through, Healy thought about things for a moment. Then he said, “You can get them on statutory rape anytime you want.”

“Yes.”

“But when you do,” Healy said, “they’ll get lawyered to the eyeballs, and you won’t get another word out of them.”

“Correct.”

“And it’s pretty hard to leverage statutory rape into a murder confession.”

“Pretty hard,” Jesse said.

“So right now you’re just stirring the mix.”

Jesse nodded.

1 8 1

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“So what do you want with me?”

“I don’t want to lose them.”

“You afraid they’ll run?”

“They know I’m interested,” Jesse said. “They’ve got money. They leave the jurisdiction, I’m going to have trouble getting them back.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let them know you were interested.”

“Maybe. But I got no other way to go about this than to keep prying and asking and pushing and poking and looking around. And maybe the pressure will make one of them stupid.”

Healy nodded. “They aren’t charged with a crime,” he said. “They can go where they want to.”

“But they could be charged with statutory rape anytime,”

Jesse said.

“So you want me to help you keep track of them and if they try to depart we arrest them and charge them with the rape of a minor child.”

“Yes.”

“And tell them they have the right to an attorney.”

“Better than losing them,” Jesse said. “I don’t have the resources.”

“We can help you at the airport,” Healy said. “And the train stations.”

“And I need some clout with the Coast Guard. They’re stretched a little thin these days.”

“I can probably do something there. If I can’t, I can prob-1 8 2

S E A C H A N G E

ably get you one of ours. What do you want, a patrol boat at the harbor mouth?”

“Plainly marked,” Jesse said.

“Soon?”

“Now,” Jesse said.

Healy sipped some whiskey.

“Soon,” he said.

They sat quietly.

“You got a theory?” Healy said after a time.

“Some kind of sex ring with these two clucks at the center,” Jesse said. “They bring some girls and recruit others, mostly very young. Florence would have been a bring-along.”

“And you figure something grew out of that scene that caused the death of Horvath?”

“Yes.”

“You figure Darnell did it?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s Ralston fit?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. Maybe he’s just a pervert and all we get him on is the stat rape charge.”

“Could have been Ralston,” Healy said.

“Could have. They were tight, we know that. Cruz in Fort Lauderdale found that out. Moorings at the outer ring. Side by side.”

“They were doing the same thing there,” Healy said.

“I’d guess,” Jesse said.

“You got anywhere to go now?”

“Nothing beyond the rape charge. Hell, I don’t even know 1 8 3

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

if that will stick on Ralston. We got Darnell cold with it on tape. But the girl may not be a good witness against Ralston, and we got no tape.”

“Keep pushing,” Healy said. “These aren’t stand-up guys, I’d guess.”

“You’d be right,” Jesse said.

“And they’ve made a lot of messes in various places they’ve been. So one of them will scare and fuck up and you’ll catch him and it’ll either be him or he’ll give you the other one . . .”

“Or one of the messes they left behind will give them up.”

Healy nodded. They were quiet again. It was a late summer day. Still light, but the light slanting now from the west, and a darker tone. Healy sipped his whiskey. It would be nice, Jesse thought, to be able to sit at the edge of evening and sip a whiskey and talk. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

“You’re living with your ex-wife,” Healy said.

“We’re giving it another try.”

“Working?”

“So far,” Jesse said.

“Good,” Healy said, and sipped.

“You’re married,” Jesse said.

“Long time,” Healy said. “Some of it has been some pretty bad thrashing around, but we hung in there and it turned out good.”

Jesse nodded.

“Marriage is hard for cops,” Healy said. “Know a lot of them that can’t do it.”

1 8 4

S E A C H A N G E

“Cop wasn’t the issue, I don’t think,” Jesse said.

“Some of the divorces are a mess. They hate each other, they fight over the kids and the money and anything else they can find.”

“I know marriages like that,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. But some of the breakups are bad. They loved each other, even liked each other, but they couldn’t do it.”