Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Seventy-Six

They talked for another hour.

“I think I might have always known about Kevin,” she said. “But as trite as this sounds, he was a young man and I was his mom, and there were places I just chose not to go. And probably should have.”

“He had girlfriends?”

“Some,” Hillary said. “Never serious. Never for long. I asked him once why he couldn’t get a girl like Ainsley, the way Jack had. And he gave me one of those withering looks you get from your children and said, ‘Mom, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And then I just left it alone, though it turned out I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“And left him alone,” Jesse said.

She looked down at her hands and then back up at Jesse.

“Maybe I didn’t want to know what I didn’t want to know.”

“And you never suspected that he and Jack were more than just good friends?”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t,” she said. “I’m not absolving myself. I’m not avoiding the fact that I should have been more present as a mom, more focused on my son than on being a titan of industry. But no. Or yes. I thought they were just friends.”

Jesse watched her and listened and wondered if she was trying to fool him. Or herself. Or might even be telling the truth.

“Please leave this alone, and leave Kevin alone now,” she said. “This is his business going forward, not yours and not even mine. And you can only hurt him if you don’t leave him alone.”

“If we’ve reached the point where you think you’re another person who can come into this office and tell me how to do my job,” he said, “then you can go now.”

When she was gone, he called Crow and told him to meet him at Daisy’s. Crow told him he was already there.

He was at a window table by the time Jesse arrived and hadn’t waited to order. He had a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, well-done bacon next to it, English muffin, another plate for the pancakes.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said when he slid into the booth across from him. “I didn’t know you were about to go to the chair.”

“Daisy calls this particular combination her Triple Bypass Special.”

“Only a triple?”

“I could order you the same, you want.”

Daisy appeared then with a mug of coffee for Jesse. Her hair today was violet. She wore a T-shirt with the flag of Ukraine on the front.

“I won’t have what he’s having,” Jesse said.

“Pussy,” she said, and walked away, as if Jesse’d insulted her.

Jesse told Crow about his conversation with Hillary More, everything she’d told him about Roarke, including how they’d gotten together in the first place.

“So she says she didn’t know what was going on upstairs until she did,” Crow said.

“Her story and she’s sticking to it.”

“You believe her?”

“Some of what she told me, not all.”

“People telling their version of the truth, and trying to get by with it.” Crow broke off a piece of bacon and ate it. “You probably never run into anything like that, your line of work.”

Daisy came back. “Last chance to order breakfast.”

Jesse grinned. “Stop badgering me.”

“No.”

“No more name-calling,” Jesse said.

She grinned now, before walking away. “Why can’t you be a real man like me?”

Jesse reached over and grabbed some of Crow’s bacon.

“She makes it sound as if Roarke is about to disappear,” he said.

Crow said, “By the way, and even though you might not want to hear this? It’s not as if Roarke ordered a hit on Charlie.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Jesse said. “They were his people. If it happened the way we both think it did, it’s on him.”

“The old man must have turned himself into a target without knowing it.”

Jesse said, “His gun was on the floor. Whoever came to his house that night, I swear Charlie thought he still had the chops to arrest him.”

Crow pushed away his plate.

“You have to know you can’t prove much of this, as sure as you are,” he said. “Maybe not any of it. And just because Hillary says Roarke had the fire set doesn’t mean you can prove that, either.”

“Stop sugarcoating it.”

“Just keeping it real.”

“I went past what’s left of More Chocolate on my way over here,” Jesse said. “Fishman and Morello told me they hadn’t found any sign of accelerants. They were able to go inside now, without worrying about the ceiling falling on them, because it already collapsed.”

“But they think it’s arson?”

“They do.”

They sat in silence, both looking out the window. Finally Crow said, “You’re going after Roarke.”

“You know I am.”

“Even though you took an oath to uphold the law, and even tried to uphold it with me occasionally, I gotta ask you something.”

Jesse was reading Crow’s mind. It was happening more frequently.

“I am going to do whatever it takes to nail that son of a bitch,” he said to Crow.

“I could just kill him, you want.”

“Maybe short of that.”

“Felt like I had to make the offer.”

“I can’t let him just walk away, go somewhere where even the Feds can’t find him.”

“I could find him.” Crow shrugged. “Apache deal.”

“I got the sense from Hillary More that I don’t have a lot of time to roll this up.”

“We need to burn down his house.” Crow shrugged again. “Figuratively speaking.”

“I’ve got to make something happen.”

“We need to make something happen.”

“Have it your way,” Jesse said.

He told Crow then what he wanted him to do. Crow agreed, and said he would call him later. Jesse told him that he was going home for a couple hours, he needed to be alone and think. He’d thought about calling Dix. He knew Dix would make time for him even if he didn’t have it. Jesse was well aware he often did some of his best thinking in that room with Dix, occasionally when he least expected it.

He wasn’t going to let Roarke get away.

Vanish the way Whitey Bulger did.

The chocolate company had been a front. What had it been for Tony Soprano, somebody he’d actually watched back in the day? A pork store? Molly told him one time that in one of her favorite shows, Better Call Saul, the front was a nail spa.

Roarke was hiding behind More Chocolate. Hiding the phone scam and maybe turning the profits from it into crypto before the Feds squeezed him there. Hiding behind his old girlfriend.

And I can’t tag him with any of it.

Jesse sat at his kitchen table and made one of his world-class lists, page after page on his yellow legal pad, establishing a timeline of what he knew and what he didn’t.

And getting nowhere fast.

He was about to go back to the office when the call came in on his cell.

He was surprised to see her name on his screen.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” he said.

“I may have something that can help you,” she said. “Are you free right this minute?”

“Now I am,” he said to Sunny Randall.