Stranger in Paradise

“Bring her,” Jesse said. “Handcuff her if you have to. Arthur, you man the desk. If there’s an emergency, and I mean a real one, not somebody’s cat is missing, you cover it and Suit will take the desk. Otherwise, Suit, you and Molly are in a cell with Amber. Vests and shotguns.”

Suit nodded. Jesse looked around the squad room.

“She’ll want to know why,” Molly said.

“Don’t tell her,” Jesse said. “Peter, you’re on the Neck. Buddy, you’re at the construction detour. Murph, you’re on the backhoe. Eddie, you’re in a car on the Neck with John. Peter will join you when the balloon goes up. Steve and Bobby, you’re in a car at the other end. Buddy and Murph will join you. There will be some Staties in unmarked cars in the parking lot at the beach. Commander is a corporal named Jenks. They’ll pitch in…at my request…if they’re needed.”

“And you’re in the van,” Paul Murphy said.

Jesse nodded.

“At the construction site,” he said. “I’ll be in radio contact with everybody, including Crow. When it goes down, you wait for me, and when I say so, we come in from both ends and arrest everybody in sight.”

“And do what with them?” Peter Perkins said. “We don’t have a paddy wagon, and even if we did, we probably don’t have enough cell space.”

“Healy promised me a State Police wagon, and we can use the Salem City jail.”

“Crow?” Suit said.

“Except Crow,” Jesse said.

“I still don’t get what’s in this for Crow,” Peter Perkins said.

“Nobody does,” Jesse said. “He seems to think it’s fun.”

“Hell,” Peter Perkins said. “I’m not sure what we’re getting out of this.”

“We might close a couple of cases, and give Amber Francisco a life,” Jesse said.

“Sounds like protect and serve to me,” Suit said.

“Me, too,” Jesse said.

“On the other hand,” Suit said, “how you gonna explain the million bucks to the IRS?”

“That’s why they make accountants, Suit,” Jesse said.

“Oh,” Suit said. “I knew there was a reason.”

“Screw the IRS,” Steve Friedman said. “How you gonna explain it to Healy?”

“First,” Jesse said, “let’s see if it works.”

“You’re gonna have to explain this to a lot of people whether it works or not,” Peter Perkins said. “We’re all just obeying orders. But you’re in charge.”

“Glad you noticed,” Jesse said.

“Healy ain’t gonna like it,” Perkins said.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky,” Jesse said. “Maybe somebody will shoot me.”

70.

It was 6:15 in the morning, still raining as it had yesterday. Not a downpour but steady. Drinking coffee, Crow was putting on a Kevlar vest in a van at the construction site at the start of the causeway. Peter Perkins had slipped the radio into his hip pocket and was running the microphone and earpiece wires. When that was done, Crow strapped on two .40-caliber semiautomatic handguns below the vest, and slipped into a hooded sweatshirt. The microphone was clipped inside the neck, and the hood concealed the earphone.

Paul Murphy came into the van wearing work clothes. He poured some coffee for himself.

“There’s a crack in the seawall,” he said, “on the ocean side. I put a tenpenny nail in there and hung the dummy on it, just below the top of the wall.”

Crow nodded, and drank some coffee.

“The timing is everything here,” Jesse said. “You can’t have Amber up there with you too soon, or Esteban may not shoot. On the other hand, she’s got to be up there in time for the old man to see her getting shot at.”

Crow nodded. He was impassive as he always seemed, but Jesse thought there was a ripple of electricity beneath the surface.

“Esteban’s got to pass this site to get out on the Neck. When he does we’ll know it.”

“State cops?” Crow said.

“Sitting tight in the parking lot of the post office,” Jesse said. “’Bout four blocks that way.”

“People at the other end?”

“Yep.”

Crow nodded, flexing his hands a little.

“You nervous?” Jesse said.

Crow shook his head.

“I like to go over it,” Crow said. “Like foreplay, you know?”

“I’ve always thought about foreplay differently,” Jesse said.

Crow shrugged.

“Romero will be with Francisco,” Crow said. “He’s the stud. If somebody needs to get shot down, shoot him first.”

“You know him?”

Crow shrugged.

“We move in the same circles,” he said. “Rest of them will just be routine gunnies.”

The back door of the van was open. Crow looked out at the rain.

“Guess it doesn’t make so much difference where the sun’s coming from,” he said.

“Rain’ll take care of that,” Jesse said.

Crow nodded. He took a deep breath of the wet, salt-tinged air.

“Rain’s good,” he said. “Rain, early morning, hot coffee, and a firefight coming.”

He grinned and nodded his head.

“Only thing missing is sex,” he said.

“We pull this off,” Jesse said, “you get to keep the dummy.”

71.

At seven minutes past ten a new Nissan Quest picked its way through the narrowed construction lane.

In the van, Crow said, “That’s Esteban driving.”

“Let the van through,” Jesse said on the radio. And Buddy Hall waved it on. It drove on across the causeway and disappeared around the bend.

“Peter,” Jesse said into the radio, “a maroon Nissan Quest.”