Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Eighty-Three

Two weeks later.

Nellie Shofner had made headlines just about everywhere, and put herself on the national map, with her story headlined “To a Gay Athlete Dying Young.”

She had written the piece with the permission of Jack’s mother, and also with permission from Kevin More. It turned out he’d had a copy of Jack’s one-act play all along, which he’d written on a computer at the Paradise High library. He’d shown it to Kevin the day before he died, because he said it was finally ready to be seen.

Nellie didn’t use all of the play. But she used a lot of it, primarily the speeches from the main character.

“The world is going to care about my story,” the main character, called Ben, says at one point. “I just hope it cares for the right reasons.”

From the responses Jesse had seen, that they’d all seen, the world had embraced the story of Jack Carlisle, who’d finally come out.

Kevin More hadn’t been charged in the shooting death of Liam Roarke. Jesse had told Lieutenant Frank Belson, the first cop to the house on Monument Square — Jesse imagined it being a race once they found out who the victim was — that the kid was actually a hero for saving a policeman’s life.

His.

When Belson had arrived, Jesse was the only witness still on the scene, Roarke’s men having run like the dogs they were, same as their boss had been about to do.

“Kid put four in him,” Belson said, chewing on an unlit cigar. “He must have really wanted to save you.”

“He’s a kid, Frank,” Jesse said. “He’d never shot anybody before. He clearly panicked. Probably couldn’t even tell you right now how many times he fired.”

“Unless it was an execution,” Belson said.

“Of his dad?”

“Well,” Belson said, “maybe this dad.”

Jesse was sitting across from Kevin More at the Gull, having just finished lunch. He told Jesse his mom, last he heard, was somewhere in Southern California, sorting out the shuttering of the company and the payouts remotely.

“She told me she wanted to move near Stanford so she could be close to you,” Jesse said.

“She lied,” he said. “She does that.”

“Noticed.”

Jesse had spent a lot of lunch telling Kevin what Dix had told him, and how being a self-loathing gay man had made a violent man even more violent, especially someone as obsessed with power and appearances as Liam Roarke was. A few days after Monument Square a badly beaten and horribly bloated body, Tayshawn Leonard’s, had been found floating in the water near Castle Rock, in Marblehead.

One more body in the water because of Liam Roarke.

“There was no way the guy was going to kill his own kid,” Jesse told Kevin, repeating what Dix had said to him. “He wasn’t going to kill himself. But somehow in that moment, without knowing what went on that night, the object of his anger, and his self-loathing, became his son’s lover.

“We’ll never know whether he went there to kill Jack or tell him to stay away from you,” Jesse said. “But something must have snapped.”

“I’m just relieved Jack didn’t kill himself because of us,” Kevin said.

“From my reading of that play,” Jesse said, “he sounded like somebody who couldn’t wait to get on with his life. Openly.”

After a pause, Jesse said, “Molly wanted me to ask you if you had any idea who that Pepsquad1234 was on social media.”

“It was Scott Ford,” Kevin said. He grinned. “I think Scott may have had more feelings for Jack than he did for Ainsley, if you want to know the truth.”

“I’ll take any I can get.”

“Why did Matt Loes beat him up?” Jesse said. “Scott, I mean.”

“Because Scott wanted to tell,” Kevin said. “He said Jack had nothing to be ashamed of and so we shouldn’t be ashamed of him even though he was gone. Pretty much what he told Jack before their fight. They were both drunk. Matt was drunker. And bigger.”

Kevin had told Jesse he wasn’t sticking around for graduation, the school would mail him his diploma. He was on his way this afternoon to another of his father’s houses, one that really was a safe house, on Martha’s Vineyard. He said he was going to stay there awhile, probably look for a summer job coaching tennis.

When they were outside the Gull, Kevin said, “Thank you for everything.”

“Not sure what I did, other than be too goddamn slow on the uptake, all over town.”

Kevin smiled. “But in the end you didn’t just find out about my truth, and Jack’s. You pretty much found everybody else’s, too.”

“How old were you when you found out who your father was?”

“It was only a few years ago.”

“And you were able to have a relationship with him after that?”

“I knew he existed in a violent world.” He exhaled loudly, shook his head. “But he was my dad. I never got to know the man who I thought was my dad. For better or worse, I thought I’d gotten a second chance.”

“And he was good to you.”

“And to mom. Until he wasn’t, with either one of us.”

They walked down Main Street, past where More Chocolate used to be, the cleanup of the remains almost complete.

“What do you think happened to Steve Marin?” Kevin More asked.

“Another gangster, this one named Tony Marcus, happened,” Jesse said.

“You think Marin is still alive somewhere?”

“Not so anybody would notice,” Jesse said. “Tony settles grudges. And sometimes not just his own.”

“You okay with that?”

“Charlie Farrell might not have been okay with it,” Jesse said. “But he was a better man than I am.”