High Profile

“So they’ll be inclined not to sit still,” Molly said.

“It’s why I think Lorrie’s involved,” Jesse said. “Lutz is an ex-cop. He should know better.”

“What if he prevails this time,” Molly said. “What if they do sit tight?”

“I know that one or both of them did it,” Jesse said.

“Sooner or later, I’ll prove it.”

Molly looked at Jesse for a long moment, then she reached up and rested her hand briefly on his cheek.

“Yes,” she said. “You will, won’t you.”

2 7 5

62

As Jesse got out of his car in the parking lot, he could see someone sitting in the dark at the foot of his stairs. Jesse took his gun out and held it at his side.

“Stone?” the person said.

“Yes.”

“Lutz,” he said. “I need to talk.”

“Okay.”

They sat in Jesse’s living room with the French doors open to the deck and the night air coming in thick with the smell of the harbor.

“You got a drink?” Lutz said.

H I G H P R O F I L E

“Scotch okay?”

“Sure, some ice.”

Jesse got the whiskey and the ice and a glass and put them on the table.

“One glass?” Lutz said.

“I’ll pass,” Jesse said.

“I heard you were a boozer,” Lutz said.

He put ice in his glass and poured whiskey over it.

“Sometimes I’m not,” Jesse said.

He sat at the bar across from Lutz and put the gun on the bar top. If Lutz noticed, he didn’t care. He looked past Jesse at the big picture behind the bar.

“Ozzie Smith,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded.

“The best,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded again.

“My old man used to say Pee Wee Reese was the best,”

Lutz said.

“Never saw him play.”

Lutz shrugged. Once when Jenn had been staying there, she had put small-wattage bulbs in all the lights. More romantic, she said. Hated bright lights, she said. When she left again, Jesse never changed them. So the room was dim. Only the light over the table where Lutz sat was on. And it wasn’t a bright light.

“Me either,” Lutz said. “I only know what my old man said.”

“He ever see Ozzie?”

2 7 7

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

Lutz shook his head.

“Died too soon,” Lutz said. “You ever play?”

“Yes.”

“Shortstop like Ozzie?”

“Shortstop,” Jesse said. “But not like Ozzie.”

“You any good?”

“I was.”

“Good enough?” Lutz said.

“Got hurt,” Jesse said. “Never got a chance to find out.”

Lutz drank some whiskey.

“Tough,” Lutz said.

Jesse waited. Lutz was quiet. He drank some more whiskey.

“Life’s tough,” Lutz said.

Jesse waited. Lutz poured himself some more whiskey.

“You ever been married?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“But not now,” Lutz said.

“No.”

“She still around someplace?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“Hard to cut it off,” Lutz said.

Jesse nodded.

“You like this job?” Lutz said.

“Yes.”

“I heard you was on the job in L.A. before this.”

“Robbery Homicide,” Jesse said.

“You got fired,” Lutz said.

2 7 8

H I G H P R O F I L E

“Drunk on duty,” Jesse said.

“Wife troubles?”

“Some.”

Lutz drank some whiskey.

“They’ll drive you right into the bottle, you let them,” he said.

Jesse didn’t answer. Lutz didn’t expect him to. It was as if Jesse were barely there.

“So you ended up here,” Lutz said. “And started over.”

Jesse waited. Lutz drank.

“And starting over worked,” Lutz said.

“So far,” Jesse said. “Sort of.”

Lutz shook his head.

“Too late,” he said.

“For you?”

Lutz nodded. He was looking at his glass of whiskey. It looked good to him. He drank some.

“Bad mistake,” he said. “Bringing it here.”

Jesse was very still.

“Figured I had them up here anyway,” Lutz said, “I dump them here, small town, some fucking hillbilly cop would be stepping on his own dick trying to figure out what to do.”

Lutz added some ice to his glass, and some more whiskey.

“Drink enough, it doesn’t do any good anymore,” he said.

“Doesn’t change the way you feel anymore.”

He drank again.

“Helps you talk, though,” he said. “Instead of a hillbilly, I got you.”

2 7 9

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

Jesse nodded.

“You seem to be the kind of cop I thought I was going to be,” Lutz said.

He stopped and studied the surface of his whiskey again, as if there were something to be learned from it. Jesse waited. He was an exterior observer of a private unraveling, and he didn’t want to intrude.

“But then I met her, and then I met Walton Weeks, and then I got really fucking smart. Or she did. He’s the brass ring, she says. He doesn’t want people to know you arrested him for public fucking. Make him hire you. And I say as what? And she says as a bodyguard. He’s a big deal. He needs a bodyguard.”

Lutz stopped talking and drank.

“So I’m his bodyguard,” Lutz said. “And we’re getting along. He’s a pretty good guy, and I’m not demanding too much, and it sort of works, even though it shouldn’t and I’m fucking blackmailing him, you know?”

The air got heavier as it cooled in the darkness and settled. The smell of the ocean thickened.