Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Seventy-Nine

After his allotted time with Dix, Jesse stopped back at the office long enough for Suit to tell him what he’d learned from Verizon.

Then Jesse told the team he needed to get back to Boston.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“I need to get with Sunny and Spike again,” he said.

“Are you telling me the truth?” she said.

“Might be,” he said.

He wasn’t.

He was back on 93 headed south, when he called Crow.

“Are you still following Hillary?” Jesse said.

“Did you tell me to stay with her?” Crow said.

“Any sign of Roarke?”

“No. Did you think there’d be?”

“No,” Jesse said. “But I had to make sure they weren’t together on this, and she was just handing me a load of happy horseshit.”

Crow had followed Hillary More to New Hampshire, her plant up there.

“She was inside the factory for a while,” Crow said. “There’s a Hampton Inn close by. Looks like she’s spending the night.”

“You mind spending the night, too?”

“They say you get a fresh duvet every day,” Crow said. “Sounds like too good a deal to pass up.”

Then he asked Jesse where he was.

“On my way to Boston,” Jesse said.

“Tell me you’re not going alone to see Roarke?”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

He ended the call. He was crossing over the Charles on the Zakim Bridge when he had another incoming call. He thought at first it might be Crow calling him back.

It wasn’t.

“Turns out our interests coincided more than you thought, homey,” Tony Marcus said. “Guy set my fire turns out to be the guy set yours. And did worse than that.”

“Marin,” Jesse said.

“His own self.”

“Where are you?” Jesse said. “I’m nearly in town. I can come to you.”

“Ain’t gonna be no none of that,” Tony said. “Boy’s mine. But he sure can talk, once you put him with Junior.”

Then Tony Marcus told Jesse what Marin had told him.

“So turns out I do need to settle my grudge with Roarke sooner rather than later,” Tony said.

“Me first,” Jesse said.