11.
The east side of Marshport butted up against the west side of Paradise. Marshport was an elderly mill town with no mills. There was an enclave of Ukrainians in the southwest end of town. The rest of the city was mostly Hispanic. There had been a couple of feeble efforts to reinvigorate parts of the city, but the efforts had simply replaced the old slums with newer ones.
Jesse parked in front of a building that used to house a grammar school and now served as office space for the few enterprises in Marshport that needed offices. He had driven his own car. He was not in uniform. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt, with a blue blazer over his gun.
The door to Nina Pinero’s office had OUTREACH stenciled on it in black. Jesse went in. The office was a former classroom, on the second floor, in back, with a view of a playground where a couple of kids shot desultory baskets on a blacktop court at a hoop with a chain net. The playground was littered with bottles and newspapers and fast-food wrappers and scraps of indeterminate stuff.
The blackboard was still there, and the bulletin board, which was covered with memos tacked up with colored map pins. There were a couple of file cabinets against the near wall, and Nina Pinero’s desk looked like a holdover from the classroom days. There were three telephones on it.
“Nina Pinero?” Jesse said.
“I’m Nina,” she said.
There was no one else in the room.
“I’m Jesse Stone,” Jesse said. “I called earlier.”
“Mr. Stone,” Nina said. She nodded at a straight chair next to the desk. “Have a seat.”
Jesse sat.
“Tell me about your plans for the Crowne estate in Paradise,” Jesse said, “if you would.”
“So you can figure out how to prevent us?” Nina Pinero said.
“So we can avoid any incivility,” Jesse said.
“Latinos are uncivilized?” Nina Pinero said.
“I was thinking more about the folks in Paradise,” Jesse said.
She was slim and strong-looking, as if she worked out. Her hair was short and brushed back. She smiled.
“Excuse my defensiveness,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“I understand you are going to bring in a few kids this summer, to get them started.”
She nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “A kind of pilot program.”
“And later add some more kids?”
“When the school year starts and if things have gone well, maybe.”
Jesse nodded.
“Your constituency,” she said, “probably has used the camel’s-nose-in-the-tent phrase by now.”
“They have,” Jesse said.
“And traffic,” Nina Pinero said.
She was dressed in white pants and a black sleeveless top. Her clothes fit her well.
“That, too,” Jesse said.
“You believe them?”
“No. They are fearful that when it’s time to sell their home, the prospective buyers will be discouraged by a school full of Hispanic Americans.”
“They have, I know, already tried the zoning route,” Nina Pinero said.
“Town council tells me there are no zoning limits in Paradise that apply to schools,” Jesse said. “There are regulations about what you can put near a school but none about what you can put a school near.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve done your homework,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“You have legal advice?”
“I’m a lawyer,” she said.
“And yet so young and pretty,” Jesse said.
“My only excuse is that I don’t make any money at it,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“How old are these kids?” Jesse said.
“Four, five, a couple are six.”
“Best and the brightest?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“How do they feel about breaking trail?” he said.
“Scared,” she said.
“But willing?”
“Marshport,” Nina Pinero said, “is not a good place to be a kid. Most of them are scared anyway. This way maybe we can save a few of them.”
“Not all of them?”
“God, no,” Nina Pinero said. “Not even very many of them. But it’s better than saving none.”
“Sort of like being a cop,” Jesse said.
“You do what you can,” she said.
They sat quietly for a moment. The room was not air-conditioned, and the windows were open. Jesse could hear the thump of the basketball on the asphalt court.
“You’re making your initial run Monday?” Jesse said.
“Yes. Do you expect trouble?”
“Probably not. Do you think the kids would mind if I rode the bus with them?”
“You?”
“Me and one of my officers,” Jesse said. “Molly Crane. I’d wear my uniform and polish up my badge.”
“You do think there might be trouble.”
“Not really,” Jesse said. “But there could be a picket or two. I’m thinking about the kids mostly.”
“Reassured by your presence?”
“Yes. And Molly’s.”
“Mostly, they are afraid of policemen,” Nina Pinero said.
“Maybe Molly and I can help them get past that,” Jesse said.
Nina Pinero nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she said. “I can see how you might.”