Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

49

Jesse had never seen Bill Marchand look beat-up and disheveled. That was no longer the case. Men like Marchand had an image to maintain and usually went to great lengths to protect it. It wasn’t so much out of vanity or ego, as people often assumed. Defending their images was something Jesse understood about politicos that most people got wrong. The person beneath the image, rotten or pure, beau or bully, was almost beside the point. The electorate voted for the image, not the person behind it. Jesse thanked his lucky stars that his job was by appointment because he didn’t think he could win an election, nor would he ever want to.

Although Marchand had been impatient to get into the room, he seemed to be fumbling for his words. This, too, was a phenomenon Jesse had never before witnessed. Marchand, even when bearing bad news, usually delivered it calmly and without hesitation. Just when Jesse was about to come to the selectman’s rescue, Marchand found his footing and his words.

“Can a friend get a drink around here?”

This is going to be bad, Jesse thought. Maybe worse than he’d anticipated.

Jesse threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Sure, Bill. Let’s go into my office.”

Jesse got a funny feeling in his stomach, a feeling he had had only twice in his life. The first time had been when he was in A ball and got called into his manager’s office after going hitless in three consecutive games. He knew then as he knew now that it was trouble. The other time was when he found out Jenn was cheating on him. Both times it signaled the end of things. One ending was temporary. He earned his starting job back the next week. One ending wasn’t, though it took a decade for him and Jenn to realize it.

It was strange how things worked. Jesse’s job had been threatened before, more than once, and he’d taken it in stride. Jesse always took life in its stride, sometimes with an assist from Johnnie Walker. It was his way. He was tough, a man unto himself. Molly had summed him up best when she compared him to Crow. She said they were both self-contained men, immune from the petty vanities and forces that swayed weaker men. He wasn’t feeling immune presently. Just at the moment he had finally accepted that Paradise would be his life’s work, he was going down.

When they were settled in at his desk, Jesse poured some of the same Irish he had poured for Maxie Connolly only a few days earlier.

“You sure you won’t drink with me?” Marchand asked, his hand a bit unsteady.

“Too early even for me.” Jesse managed a laugh.

“You sure?”

“Bill, say what you’ve got to say. We keep on like this, you’re going to offer me a cigarette, a blindfold, and ask if I have any last words.”

Marchand didn’t guzzle his drink, but he didn’t sip it, either. He stretched his neck. Spoke.

“Jesse, you’ve got a week.”

Although he felt a warm sense of relief, Jesse sat stony-faced. A week could be an eternity or it could be over in the blink of an eye, but at least he still had his job and a chance to do right by the dead girls.

“Did you hear me, Jesse?”

“I’ve got a bad shoulder, not bad ears.”

“The mayor wanted your ass on a silver platter and she wanted it right now. My other colleagues were pretty tepid in their support of you. I bought you a week.”

“A week to solve three homicides, two of which happened twenty-five years ago. Should I find the killers of Judge Crater in my spare time?”

“Jesse, you can be an ungrateful SOB and a hard man to like sometimes.”

“Sorry, Bill. I know that most of the time you are my sole backer in town.”

Marchand grabbed at his chest to feign a heart attack. “I think I need another drink and some CPR. Was that an apology I just heard coming out of your mouth?”

“Giving me a time limit isn’t going to solve these cases for you or for anyone you bring in to sit in this chair.”

“I know that, Jesse. I told them all that. I told them that till I was blue in the face.” Marchand stood, looking worse than he had when Jesse had laid eyes on him earlier. He walked to the office door and turned back to Jesse and in a voice as cool as a crocodile’s said, “You’ve got a week.”