Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Fifty-Three

Raney yawned. He was tired of Tate making this more complicated than necessary. He put his gun into its holster and walked into the cell.

“Hey,” Tate said.

“Shoot me if you want,” Raney said. “Then you’ve got to carry both bags on your own.”

“I could do it,” Tate said.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a big, strong man,” Raney said, and went over to the duffel bags on the cot.

He grabbed the first bag. It was heavy.

And why not? That was his future in there, Raney thought. That was a whole new world in there.

Suit and Molly pulled up outside Daisy’s at almost the exact same time as Jesse emerged.

They leaped out of their vehicles, but Jesse was already waving them off. “Check on Daisy! I’ve got this!”

He ran off before they could argue.

They didn’t like it, but they did as they were told. They followed orders.

Jesse did not want them following. If anyone was going to run into the night after a killer, it would be him.

If anyone was going to die tonight, it would not be them.

Elliott ran, the folder under one arm, his gun in his other hand.

He went as fast and as far as he could, which wasn’t very fast or very far. His right leg dragged where he’d been stabbed. He couldn’t quite lift it properly, as if she’d cut some vital string inside him.

He couldn’t catch his breath, either. He still ran five miles every day at home, but now he had a hitch in his chest and his vision narrowed to a tunnel.

It took him a second to realize he was losing too much blood. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

He made a blind turn around a building, just trying to get distance between himself and the café and the police station. He wanted to turn on his phone again and call for help, no matter how much it galled him. But he had the file in one hand and his gun in the other, and he didn’t want to let go of either. Elliott needed a safe spot where he could regroup.

He made another blind left turn, thinking this would take him farther away from downtown. Maybe he could boost a car. He still knew how to do that. Well, provided he could find an older model in this town full of Mercedeses and Range Rovers and those electric things that looked like the Batmobile.

Elliott suddenly came to a skidding halt on the wet pavement. He looked up.

The alley ended in a brick wall.

He had nowhere to go.

“Well,” Elliott said out loud. “Shit.”

“Yeah, these alleys can be tricky until you’ve been here awhile,” a voice behind him said.

He knew the voice. Stone.

Son of a bitch. For the first time in his life, he’d been caught.

He turned, very slowly, but didn’t drop the gun.

Stone didn’t shoot him, but he could have. The cop had him lined up with a .38, the barrel aimed center mass.

“How the hell are you alive?” Elliott said, and then answered his own question. “Vest. Damn it.”

“It was still a good shot,” Stone said.

“Thanks,” Elliott said. “Must have hurt like a son of a bitch.”

“It didn’t tickle. That a .357?”

“Yeah.”

“Felt like it. You going to drop it now?”

Elliott considered his options. At this range, there was no way Stone could miss. And unlike the cop, Elliott wasn’t wearing a vest.

He played the only card he had left.

“You could waste your time with me,” he said, “but right now, someone is robbing that two million from your jail. You ready to let all that money go?”

The cop smiled at him like this was funny.

“Yeah,” Stone said. “About that.”

Raney opened the first duffel bag.

“Jesus Christ, what are you doing, just grab it and let’s go,” Tate said.

“Oh, now you’re in a hurry?”

“Quit screwing around!”

Raney ignored him. He wanted to see what a million bucks in cash actually looked like. He pulled back the zipper.

For a moment, his eyes couldn’t quite process what he was seeing.

He wanted to see money. Lots of it. Lots and lots of it. He wanted to see it so badly that for a moment, he could almost turn the yellow-and-white paper into green stacks of cash.

But he couldn’t ignore what was actually there.

There were very thick, bound books of yellow-and-white pages of some kind stuffed into the bag.

He read the covers. “Greater Boston Telephone Directory?” he said, almost to himself.

Holy shit, he knew what these were. He’d seen them as a kid. “Phone books,” he said.

He tore open the other duffel, even though he knew what he’d find. He ripped out several of the heavy, thick stacks of thin pages.

They were both packed with old phone books.

Nothing else.

“I’m fine, damn it, stop poking me,” Daisy said, as Molly examined her cheek. The gash from the man’s gun was wide but not deep. The real problem was the broken cheekbone. That would hurt a lot.

“We’ve got a paramedic team on its way,” Molly said.

“I’m not the one who needs it! Jesse got shot, for chrissakes!” Daisy said.

“He what?” Molly asked.

“Hey, what’s this?” Suit said. He’d found Jesse’s gun on the floor when he turned on the lights, and then he saw something else.

A burner phone, still active.

“Must have belonged to the gunman,” Molly said.

“He was talking to some other guys while he was talking to me,” Daisy added.

Suit held the phone to his ear.

He looked puzzled at first. Then his eyes went wide.

“We’ve got to get to the station. Now.”

“What the hell?” Raney said. Quietly at first. Then louder. Then he was screaming.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d been right all along. The money was only ever bait.

He wasn’t taking it very well.

Tate heard him bellowing and crowded into the cell to see the problem. He looked into the duffel bag. Phone books.

In this moment, for this one second at least, Tate was smarter than Raney. Maybe because he’d worked with Jesse Stone, if only for a short time. But he realized he’d been played — they all had — and he didn’t waste any time getting angry about it.

Instead, he shoved Raney down toward the floor and turned and stepped outside the cell.

Then he slammed the door shut.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Raney screamed at him.

Tate didn’t reply. He turned to leave. He hoped Raney would put up a fight, that he’d try to shoot his way out of the cell. That might give him enough time to get out of Paradise.

“Hey,” the drunk said from the nearby cell.

Tate turned to tell him to shut up.

And saw Gabe Weathers, wrapped in the thrift-store clothing he’d used as a disguise, holding a gun on him.

“Tell me something, Derek: Who’s stupid enough to break into a jail?” Gabe asked and grinned.

That was too much for Tate. He saw nothing but red. He didn’t care that Gabe had the drop on him. He began pulling the trigger of his gun, spraying bullets all over the corridor and the cells.

The older man laughed.

“The money isn’t there?”

“Nope,” Jesse said. “There’s nothing here worth dying for. Come on. Put the gun down. Let’s get out of the rain.”

The man didn’t drop his gun. His pant leg was soaked, and not from the rain. Jesse thought he might fall from blood loss if they stayed out here much longer. He stood a safe distance away, perfect shooting stance, muscles and body locked into place by reflex, sights trained. He had him.

The older man didn’t move. Just breathed, deep and quickly, like a dog panting when it’s scared.

“It’s over. Put the gun down,” Jesse said. “Then step away.”

The man looked up at Jesse and squinted as if seeing him from a great distance.

From a couple of blocks away, there was a faint noise. A sound like firecrackers going off in rapid succession.

The older man looked at Jesse. “Sounds like gunshots. You wanna go see about that?”

“I’m fine here,” Jesse said.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely,” Jesse said, and hoped he wasn’t lying.

Gabe was no idiot. Unlike Jesse, he did not stand around, waiting to be shot. As soon as Tate brought up his gun, Gabe fired and then dived out of the way, ducking into the cell for cover.

Gabe’s bullet went wide of Tate. Tate missed every one of his shots and, surprisingly, managed to avoid getting hit by his own ricochets.

But he made a clear path to the door and ran at it as fast as he could. Tate burst out of the cell area into the station, convinced he was home free.

That’s when Molly clotheslined him with her baton, dropping him flat on his back.

Eyes unfocused, he bent at the waist, struggling to get back up.

Suit leaped onto him and grabbed his right hand with both of his own, squeezing hard enough to crack the ulna in Tate’s forearm.

Tate yowled in pain and dropped his gun.

Suit rolled off him and then flipped him onto his stomach, pulling on one arm to cuff him at the wrists.

Tate threw a wild punch that caught Suit in the side of the head. Suit was stunned, but didn’t let go.

Tate struggled. He thrashed. He flopped on the carpet like a fish on the deck of a boat.

Molly thumped his skull once again with the baton. And then one more time for good measure.

Half conscious, Tate finally stopped struggling.

Working together, Suit and Molly put Tate’s arms behind his back and zip-tied him at both his wrists and his ankles.

“Bastards,” Tate said, the word slurring slightly as it left his mouth. “Knew Jesse was too scared to face me himself.”

Suit laughed. “Jesse is busy with real problems. He only sends us to handle pest control.”

Tate told Suit to do something anatomically impossible.

Molly finished hog-tying Tate’s wrists to his ankles. “Hey, Derek,” she said. “How’s my ass look now?”

Elliott stood there in the alley, tired and numb. The gun in his hand felt unbelievably heavy. All those years, all those guns, they had always felt just like an extension of his arm, a part of his body. Now it felt like a cinder block, dragging him under the water.

Getting old, he thought.

There were sirens in the distance, getting closer. It sounded like a lot of them.

Elliott heard the cop’s voice, didn’t quite catch the words, but he was sure he knew the tune. Put down the weapon. Hands on your head. Come along quietly. Something like that.

Even if he won this little gunfight with the cop — and, honestly, he knew he didn’t have a chance — he’d be surrounded. Stuck in this goddamn town.

Trapped in Paradise.

He wished he had a cigarette. He’d never smoked, but he thought that would be a cool move, lighting a cigarette. Maybe, like Raney, he was a little in love with the idea of the hit man from the movies.

He wondered if Raney would get away. Or if that idiot Tate would get them both killed.

Elliott didn’t regret it. He’d made his choices.

Elliott didn’t regret anything, really.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now.

The cop said something again, but Elliott’s mind was somewhere else. He thought of Kate.

He had multiple IDs on him, but none that went back to her, or to the accounts he’d set up for them. He didn’t have life insurance — he smiled a little, thinking of a Mob that offered health and life and pension — but the mortgage was covered. She had her Social Security checks and enough in the bank.

It wasn’t $2 million, but she’d be fine. And they’d never trace his steps back to her.

But she’d never know what happened to him. She’d stay up nights wondering. He knew how she worried.

She’d call his phone, and then the hotel where he wasn’t, and then, finally, the fake numbers of the companies he’d set up years ago, and find them dead or disconnected.

And she’d be baffled and scared, probably for a long time.

It would hurt her.

“I said put the gun on the ground and step away now. Last chance,” Jesse said.

Jesse didn’t pull the hammer back on his gun or anything like that. Those were moves for people who saw gunfights only on TV. The older man would do what he wanted to do. He knew his options here.

Jesse wanted to shoot the man just for hurting Daisy. But he managed to stow his anger away. When the anger faded, he always remembered he didn’t like killing people.

So he could give the guy a moment to turn this around. To change the story. It was a risk, sure. But Jesse figured it was his life to risk.

“It doesn’t have to end like this,” Jesse said.

Elliott heard that loud and clear. It came through even though everything else sounded muffled by cotton in his ears.

He wondered if this was what having a stroke felt like. Maybe he’d end up in a hospital before prison. Or maybe this was just his time.

God, he hated the idea of being an old man on a cell block. He’d seen those guys, inside and out. Husks of themselves. Scared all the time. Hollow men.

Kate would be fine, he decided.

He lifted his gun. It felt heavier than ever.

“Yeah, it does,” he told the cop.

Even for an old guy, he was pretty fast.

Jesse put three into him from a standing position, but the older man got a shot off anyway.

It went wide of Jesse and shattered the wall near his head. A couple fragments of wood and masonry sliced open his forehead and cheek.

Jesse blinked away blood as he walked over to the body.

He kicked away the gun, but he knew it didn’t matter.

The man was dead.

It was over.