Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Fifty-Five

When he got home, he knew the first thing he needed to do was get the taste of Crow’s scotch out of his own mouth. Not that he’d taken a sip of Crow’s when he got up to go to the men’s room.

Just because it was the same as if he had.

It was there.

It happened this way sometimes, not that he talked about it with anybody except Dix. Or occasionally at a meeting. When he least expected it. Maybe tonight it was because of the way his senses had heightened, or sharpened, or both, with Roarke sitting that close to him. Threatening him without coming out and issuing the threat, even as he was trying to make a deal to leave Jesse alone as long as Jesse would do the same with him.

In the end Liam Roarke was lying his ass off the same as Jesse had been.

Jesse knew he would go after Roarke again, and again, if necessary. And if he did that, Roarke would come after him. It was Tony Marcus who had once said to Jesse, “I’m no good and can prove it.” Roarke was the same way, maybe on steroids.

But whatever the reason the taste of scotch was in his mouth now, it was there. Right there.

And a familiar thirst along with it, one that never really went away.

He never needed a specific trigger like Roarke. Sometimes it was when he was tired. Or jammed up on a case. Or jammed up on cases, plural, the way he was now, feeling as if he were trapped in a maze, trying to get out so he could find out, once and for all, what had happened to Charlie Farrell and Jack Carlisle.

Whatever the reason, the wolf was back at the door, just like that.

He tried to tell himself when it happened, the way it was happening right now, that he’d just dropped his guard. But Jesse knew that wouldn’t fly, because he never dropped his guard. He never took his sobriety for granted, not one single day as he went one day at a time.

He never forgot that he was a drunk.

Just a dry one at this time, and for a good long time.

Whether he was happy or sad or tired or pissed off or angry about Charlie Farrell or pleased that he’d managed to crack another case, sometimes hanging on to his job like it was a lifeline, he was still a drunk.

There it was.

He knew he could call Dix at any time of the day or night, but he wasn’t going to bother him with this. Nellie was with Molly again tonight. As tough as Nellie Shofner was — and she was tough enough to be a cop — what had happened on the street in front of Jesse’s place the other night had scared her. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before. Now it had rocked her world. The way Molly’s world was rocked when she had been shot last year, for the first time.

It had been Jesse’s suggestion that Nellie stay on with Molly for a few days. To his surprise, she had readily taken Molly up on the offer.

“It’s win-win,” Jesse told Molly. “You can look out for her when Crow isn’t. And she can act as a chaperone now that Crow is back.”

“Jesse?” Molly had said. “You know how much I love you, right?”

“This is going to be bad, it’s always bad after you tell me that.”

“Blow it out your ear,” Molly had said and hung up.

He got up now and walked over to his desk, to the bottom drawer he always kept locked, as if that meant anything, opened the drawer with the key he kept on his chain, and pulled out the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue.