Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Eighty-Two

Roarke tried to remain calm. In command. Still the big boss, still in control of the room. But Jesse could see it was a struggle for him now with his son in the scene.

“You know you’re not supposed to interrupt business meetings,” Roarke said.

“I spoke with Mom,” Kevin said. “She told me you’re behind the fire. And that she told Chief Stone the same thing.”

“She’s lying, Kevin,” Roarke said.

Kevin barked out a harsh laugh. “Like she hasn’t been lying to people my whole life about who my father really is?”

In a quiet voice Roarke said, “You have no idea just how much your mother lied to herself about me. And about what.”

He’s got that right.

Jesse wondered when Hillary More knew about Roarke being gay. Or if she knew.

Or cared.

Kevin turned to Jesse now.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Partially.”

“Not another goddamn word!” Roarke shouted at Jesse.

He jerked his head at Dennis and said, “Get this asshole out of my sight. Now.”

“You get the fuck out of here, Dennis,” Kevin said. “Now.”

As if he was the one in charge now.

As if he had the room.

Dennis looked at Roarke, who nodded, almost imperceptibly. Dennis said he’d be on the other side of the door if Roarke needed him.

Roarke was stuck. Jesse knew it. So did he. Dennis wasn’t going to come back in and put a gun on a cop, not in front of Roarke’s son.

Kevin was Roarke’s son.

There was a slight resemblance, but not one Jesse would have ever noticed. The boy was more his mother. Her dark hair. But Roarke’s blue, blue eyes. Tall, almost as tall as his old man.

“Before you walked in,” Jesse said to Kevin, “I had just asked your father if he happened to know why a text message had been sent from your phone to Jack Carlisle the night Jack died. A text sent off the More Chocolate Wi-Fi.”

“Now he’s lying,” Roarke said. “He’s just trying to turn you against me.”

To Roarke, Jesse said, “And why would I be looking to do that, having just now discovered that he’s your son?”

To Kevin he said, “Apparently, kid, everybody lies except your criminal of an old man. Go figure.”

Roarke started to get out of the chair. Stopped himself. Still in a very bad place.

This place.

“Kevin,” he said, “I don’t know anything about Wi-Fi or a text message or any of that.”

“I could tell you what was in the text,” Jesse said. “Whoever was impersonating you told Jack how much he loved him, and that the two of you needed to talk.”

Nobody spoke until Kevin did. Jesse watched him, the kid frowning, as if he were starting to put things together. Or at least trying to.

“I had told Mom about being gay the day before Jack died. I told her about Jack and me. I wasn’t ready to tell you myself, so she said she would. I figured that might soften the blow or whatever.”

Jesse said, “It was his people making scam calls. So they’d been ghosting numbers for months. Easy to ghost yours if he wanted them to — Lord knows they knew how to do it.”

Kevin was staring at his father.

“Did you have one of your men ghost my number?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Roarke said.

“Did you, Dad?”

“No,” Roarke said.

Not looking at him. Staring out the window.

“Did you get Jack to meet you?”

Kevin was shouting now.

And in that moment, Liam Roarke seemed to collapse into himself, as if the fight had gone out of him, at least for now. Jesse thinking: They’re all tough until they’re caught. What Roarke said next came out in a harsh whisper.

“I couldn’t let you be like me,” he said.

“Like you?” Kevin said. “You mean a criminal?”

Roarke shook his head. Still whispering. “I didn’t want you to be gay.”

Kevin opened his mouth and closed it. “You?” he said. “You’re...?”

Roarke nodded. Then nodded at me. “You might as well hear it from me. Stone would have told you, anyway.”

Then Roarke said, “I didn’t want you to end up hating yourself the way I hate myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Kevin was shouting again. “I was happy. I loved Jack. He loved me. What was there to hate about that?”

He was standing over his father then. He was the one who looked like the bigger man, Jesse thought.

“So how did it work, Dad?” he said. “You killed Jack because you couldn’t kill me to keep me from being gay?”

“You need to leave, Kevin,” Roarke said. “I’m done talking about this for now.”

“Got it,” Kevin said. “I’m leaving now, and won’t be back, not ever again, you son of a bitch.”

He turned and walked out of the room and maybe half a minute later the front door slammed.

Just Roarke and Jesse now.

“You got a death wish, Stone?” Roarke said.

“I thought I’d given it up when I gave up drinking,” Jesse said. “Maybe not.”

“Because you act like you have one.”

“Why did that boy have to die?”

“Fuck you.”

Roarke finished his drink, slammed the glass down hard.

Jesse thought: I should have waited to come here with Crow.

Everything had changed when Kevin More came through the door, not in a good way for Jesse. Now Roarke was back to being a gangster, in full. Self-hating or otherwise.

Jesse reviewed his options, limited as they were. He was wondering if he could make a move on Dennis when he came back in here, because that might be his only chance to leave this house alive.

“You’re a fucking dead man now,” Roarke said. “You might not have been before Kevin showed up. But you are now.”

“People know that I came here.”

“Tell them to try and find you in about an hour.”

“If Crow doesn’t hear from me, he’ll come for you.”

“Tell him to try and find me. Him and Marcus both.”

At some point Jesse was going to have to make a move, maybe on Roarke, knowing that there were guns on the other side of the door. He just didn’t know when. Or if the moment had already come and gone when Kevin was still there as distraction.

“Dennis!” Roarke yelled finally.

This time when Dennis came through the door, he had his gun out.

“It’s time for Chief Stone to have that accident we talked about a week ago,” Roarke said. “Take a bottle from the cabinet downstairs. No reason to waste the good stuff on a drunk.”

Dennis motioned for Jesse to walk out ahead of him, and start down the stairs.

Roarke was right behind them.

“You and the boys tie him to a chair in the kitchen,” Roarke said. “I want to watch him start drinking again.”

“You’ll have to kill me first,” said Jesse.

“Have it your way,” Roarke said.

They had just gotten to the foot of the stairs when the front door opened and Kevin More, gun in his own hand, yelled for Jesse to get down and fired his first shot into his father’s chest, and then two more in rapid succession after that, all of the shots sounding like explosions in the small area.

Dennis was raising his own gun, but Jesse wheeled and knocked it out of his hand before punching him in the neck. Then he had Dennis’s gun in his hands as the black suits from outside were coming through the door, Jesse yelling at Kevin to get down now.

The taller black suit got off a shot before Jesse put him down. The second guy put his gun on the ground, and his hands up. Jesse told Kevin to now use his phone to call 911, and then let Jesse do the talking when the cavalry arrived.

Even before Jesse heard the first siren, and had established that Liam Roarke was dead, he wondered whether Kevin had shot Roarke to save Jesse.

Or if he had shot him and kept shooting for Jack Carlisle.