Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Fifty-Nine

Jesse and Healy were back at Charlie Farrell’s house the next morning. It had been Healy’s idea. He said he needed to get out of what he called the broom closet at the PPD and move around.

“Maybe breathe real air for a change,” Healy had said.

“It’s not all that bad at your home away from home,” Jesse said.

“Worse,” Healy said. “I’m tired of chasing ghosts around on the Internet.”

“Ghost numbers.”

“Same difference.”

Healy no longer wore a tie, even if he was back to work. But he was still in a blazer, gray pants, black penny loafers. White shirt that matched his hair perfectly. He was still all cop. Wanting to be in motion like the great cop he had been. The way Charlie had been.

“Somehow Charlie figured out where the calls from these shitheels were coming from,” Healy said. “He found out who was doing it, or how, or some goddamn thing. Only thing I can figure. And set up a meeting.”

They were standing in the living room.

“Now we have to do the same,” Jesse said.

He told Healy what he’d heard on Miss Emma’s recording, the sound of a train whistle.

“What’s that got to do with my friend Charlie Farrell?” Healy said.

“He was looking into where the scam calls were coming from, and Miss Emma taped one of them, and there was a train whistle in the background.”

“So what?”

“So I did the math,” Jesse said. “That whistle lines right up with the nine-fifty to Boston. So let me give you a what-if: What if some of those calls are coming from Paradise?”

Healy snorted.

“Or some train out on the Fitchburg line. Or Lowell. Or Newark Freaking New Jersey. Or Mumbai, for all we know. Just because somebody came for Charlie doesn’t automatically mean they came from across the street in your town.”

“But what if it did basically come from across the street?” Jesse said. “What if the whole thing has been local from the start, even though I know calls like that can come from the freaking moon?”

“Would make our lives easier, I gotta admit.”

“Wasn’t it you who told me that if this shit was easy, anybody would do it?”

“I thought you were the one who told me,” Healy said.

He looked around, closed his eyes, took in air, let it out, with great force.

“You feel Charlie here? His spirit or whatever?”

“How can you not?” Jesse said.

“If he’s here, I wish to hell he’d tell us something.”

“Now you’re talking to the ghosts,” Jesse said.

“Let me play along with you for a second,” Healy said. “Say it was the nine-fifty. Say the call did come from Paradise. What do we do now, go door-to-door at every building you think is close enough to the tracks? Every office in town?”

Jesse grinned. “I’m game if you are.”

“If nothing pans out, though,” Healy said, “we’re back to where we started, and trying to track just one of those numbers.”

“To an IP address?” Jesse said.

“My heart just skipped a beat hearing you say that.”

“Being an optimistic bastard keeps me young,” Jesse said.

“You think that might work for me?”

“Too late,” Jesse said.

Their plan was to search the house as if searching it for the first time. When Healy asked him why, Jesse said it was because he knew he’d missed something. Healy asked how he could know that. Jesse said it was because he always missed something.

“But you got no idea what it might be.”

“None.”

“Narrows things down considerably,” Healy said.

He nodded at Jesse.

“You didn’t have to bring me along, you know.”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I did. Makes me feel like I’m working with Charlie.”

It was Healy’s first time in the house since Charlie had died. Jesse knew full well that when Maisie had still been alive, the Healys and Farrells had a regular bridge game. Until the day that he died, Charlie maintained that Healy had finally quit the game because he and the missus never won.

When Jesse mentioned that to Healy now, Healy said, “Prove it.”

He took the downstairs. Jesse went back upstairs. He was back under the sink in Charlie’s bathroom when he heard Healy call up that he’d found something.

“I found this in the side pocket of Charlie’s windbreaker, the one with the logo from Paradise Country Club on the front,” Healy said. “Hanging on a hook in the kitchen.”

You always miss something.

He was holding a phone bill.

“I already checked the last phone bill that Charlie got in the mail,” Jesse said.

“Take a closer look,” Healy said, handing it to Jesse. “It’s not his. It’s Miss Emma’s.”

Then Healy said, “There’s a number circled near the bottom.”

Jesse did take a closer look now.

“Son of a bitch,” he said.

“What?” Healy said.

“I know that number,” Jesse said.