Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Eighty-One

The two bruisers walked him up a stairway in the front hall. A room that looked to be a combination den and study was in the back, on the second floor. When Jesse stepped into the room, the bruiser Dennis he recognized from the Capital Grille and from the Scupper patted him down again. Obviously the top bruiser. Jesse wondered if he had better benefits.

“If I wanted to shoot you,” Jesse said, “you’d be shot already.” He grinned. “I know a guy.”

“The Indian,” Roarke said from where he sat on the other side of the room.

“Well, yeah,” Jesse said. “But the man can shoot a long gun like Buffalo Bill.”

Roarke was in a big leather chair that barely contained him. Lemon-colored V-neck sweater, what looked like a polo shirt of the same color underneath. Jeans that Jesse was certain were a lot more expensive than his own. Loafers, no socks. The loafers looked softer than the sweater.

Gangster in repose.

Like he was ready if somebody else burst in the door for a photo shoot.

Dennis stood just inside the door, leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of him. Jesse managed not to look terrified.

There was an antique desk set against the back wall. One chair on each side. Also antique.

“Grab that chair,” Roarke said, nodding at the desk. “Not that you’re going to be here for long. But then neither am I.”

“Running?” Jesse said. “I would. Tony’s got Marin. And Marin told him just who it was who ordered him to burn down some building of Tony’s in Southie and kill one of his guys.” Jesse shook his head. “You bad, bad boy.”

“I’ll be gone in an hour.”

“To a non-extraditable country?” Jesse said.

Jesse sat down so that he and Roarke were facing each other.

“Dennis needs to leave,” Jesse said.

“You don’t tell people what to do in my house.”

“But, see, that’s the thing. I am in your house, Liam. And if you want Dennis to hear what I came here to tell you about your private life, well, that’s your call. Makes no difference to me.”

Now it was a stare-down.

Roarke finally said, “Give us the room, Dennis.”

He likes saying that.

All big guys do.

Before Dennis left Jesse said, “No listening at the door.”

“Fuck off,” Dennis said.

Roarke told Dennis to send men outside to see if Jesse had brought anybody with him.

When it was just the two of them Roarke said, “Now who’s this Tayshawn Leonard?”

He really was a very big man. Somehow bigger in here, in this setting, than he’d seemed the other two times Jesse had been in his presence. The highball glass in his hand looked as small as a shot glass.

“Are we really gonna do this?” Jesse said.

“Do what?”

“Fuck around, Liam,” Jesse said. “I know. Okay? I know. And something you need to know? I don’t give a shit about your sexual preferences. But I know you had a thing going on with Tayshawn, a side deal away from the escort service on the occasion when love wasn’t for sale. What I don’t know is why he had to go away. And go away permanently would be my guess. But that’s just one more thing about which I don’t give a shit.”

Roarke smiled. It reminded Jesse of a large dog baring its teeth.

“You only know what you think you know,” he said. “It’s why I’m frankly not quite sure why you’re here. What gave you the idea that I was going to get scared off by some small-town asshole ex-drunk of a cop?”

He drank whatever it was he was drinking. There was a bottle of Hennessy on a tray next to the desk. That had to be it. Jesse had never been a brandy guy, unless it was all that was handy.

“Because I need you to listen to what I know,” Jesse said, “whether I can prove it or not. And not to make too fine a point of things, but I must scare you, or you wouldn’t have come to Paradise and tried to cut a deal with me.”

“I’m listening. But make it fast. I’ve got a private plane to catch.”

He told Roarke that Marin should have been smart enough to be on the run himself, except he was never very smart. A friend of his had given him up by now for the fire set at Tony’s property. Tony had tracked down Marin at a strip club near Chinatown.

“Marin told Tony about the side game he and Sam Waterfield had going with scam calls of their own, and how you found out about it. Then how Marin went to my friend Charlie Farrell’s house after Charlie convinced him he was some feeble old man so scared of the IRS coming after him that he’d drawn out twenty thousand in cash. When Marin got there Charlie put a gun on him and Marin panicked and killed him. When you found out about all that, Waterfield and his wheelchair went into the ocean.”

“That’s some story. I just don’t happen to know anything about it.”

Jesse ignored him. “What I don’t understand is why Waterfield had to die and Marin got to live.” Jesse shrugged. “At least until tonight.”

“Maybe, since we’re just speaking hypothetically, I needed a fire-starter one last time. For old times’ sake, maybe?”

Roarke crossed his long legs.

“Not that it matters to you, Stone. But I had nothing to do with that old man dying. I never had anything to do with killing a cop in my life.” The bared-teeth smile again. “I mean, maybe until now.”

“But you set it all in motion, you son of a bitch.”

Roarke drank.

“I thought you said you came here to talk about Tayshawn, by the way.”

“That just got me in the door,” Jesse said. “You can never go wrong breaking the ice with sex.”

“Had a feeling this had to be about more than some missing queer.”

Jesse was still hopeful that he could goad Roarke into making a mistake, or an admission, that could actually be used against him. Jesse had palmed the micro-recorder he’d brought when they’d patted him down outside, then again when Dennis went through the drill. Now it was inside his jacket. If Roarke did say something stupid, the recorder would be even better than a Glock.

Roarke hadn’t done it yet. He really hadn’t told Jesse anything Jesse didn’t know when he walked through the door.

“You know what I really think, Roarke?” Jesse said. “I think that wherever you go on the fucking earth, I’m going to find you. I don’t know if the confession I’m going to get out of Marin will be enough to nail your ass, but I’m going to try like hell to make it so. Maybe even after you have run like the dog that you are.”

“And maybe when we’re done here,” Roarke said, “just thinking out loud, my guys could hold you down and pour a bottle of whiskey down your throat and you could have a tragic drunk-driving accident.”

Roarke drank again.

He let the threat linger in the air.

“Where’s Tayshawn?” Jesse said.

Roarke sighed. “Tayshawn got greedy and threatened to tell on us. Then, as far as I know, he chose to go on a long, unplanned vacation.” He paused. “Now are we done here?”

Jesse reached into his jacket, slowly, came out with a copy of Jack Carlisle’s phone records, the one Suit had printed out for him before he’d left Paradise.

“Just one more thing,” Jesse said. “For the life of me, what I can’t understand is why somebody using the More Chocolate Wi-Fi — again, the dumb bastard must have gotten careless — ghosted the phone of Hillary More’s son, and sent a text to another kid named Jack Carlisle, telling Jack to come meet him at the Bluff the night Jack died.”

Before Roarke could respond, they heard voices arguing outside the room, and then the door was opening.

“Boss,” Dennis said, “I didn’t know how to stop him without having to hurt him.”

Kevin More stepped in behind Dennis.

“Dad,” he said, “is it true what Mom said, that you burned down her fucking company?”

He noticed Jesse then.

“Wait,” Kevin More said. “What’s going on here?”

Jesse stared at the kid, processing what he’d just heard.

“Even more than I knew,” he finally said.