16.
Mostly Molly ran the front of the police station, but she had persuaded Jesse to allow her, at least once a week, to take a shift on patrol. Jesse had not wanted her shift to be at night. But after Molly explained that he was treating her like a woman, not a cop, and that she was both and should be treated as both, Jesse put her out every couple of weeks, at night, in one of the two patrol cars.
Tonight she was cruising Paradise Neck. She liked the night patrol. Every night would be awful. She’d never see her husband or her kids. But once every couple of weeks it was very soothing. She felt safe enough. Paradise was hardly a war zone. She also had a .40-caliber handgun, Mace, a nightstick, a radio, and the shotgun locked to the dashboard.
She smiled. Armed to the teeth.
She passed a pickup truck parked on Ocean Street. White-collar affectation, she thought. Riding in the soft darkness, she could think about things like white-collar affectation. She could worry about her children. She could ponder what would become of them. She could think about her husband and herself when the kids had grown. She giggled to herself. She could think about Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow. She shook her head. She had never cheated on her husband. Probably never would. If she did, it would probably be with Jesse, and not an Apache gunman. And even if she wanted to cheat with Jesse, she was not sure he’d allow it. He had so many little rules. Which, she said to herself, is one of the reasons you find him attractive in the first place.
As she rounded a curve on Ocean Street she saw dimly a man coming down the front walk of one of the big houses that overlooked the Atlantic on the outer side of the Neck. It was 3:10 in the morning. She slowed when she saw him. He paused in the shadow of a shrub and waited. She drove slowly past. Around the next bend she U-turned and drove back. The man was walking back down Ocean Street toward where she’d seen the pickup truck. He was a big man, and his walk looked familiar. She pulled up beside him and looked. Then she pulled ahead and parked and lowered her window.
“Suitcase Simpson,” she said. “You get right in this cruiser, right now.”
Suitcase said, “Hi, Molly,” and got in beside her.
“That your truck up ahead?” Molly said.
“Yep.”
“Was that Miriam Fiedler’s house you were coming out of when I passed you before and you tried to hide in the bushes?”
“I wasn’t hiding,” Suitcase said.
“You were, too, and it is Miriam Fiedler’s house,” Molly said.
Suitcase shrugged.
“You doing some off-duty security work?” Molly said.
Suitcase looked at her and grinned.
“No,” he said. “I was banging Mrs. Fiedler.”
“Suit,” Molly said, “you dog.”
Suitcase smiled and nodded.
“Where’s Mr. Fiedler?”
“He travels,” Suit said, “a lot.”
“Weren’t you, in your elegant phrase, banging Hasty Hathaway’s wife a few years back?”
“I was,” Suit said.
“And not embarrassed about it,” Molly said.
“She was hot,” Suit said.
“And Mrs. Fiedler?” Molly said. “With the teeth?”
“You’d be surprised,” Suit said.
“You together often?” Molly said.
“Whenever Mister goes traveling.”
“Which is often.”
“Often enough,” Suitcase said.
“You think there’s any conflict of interest here?” Molly said. “We’re sort of opposing her efforts to keep the Latinos out of the Crowne estate.”
“Sleeping with the enemy?” Suit said.
“You might say that,” Molly said.
“We don’t talk about the Crowne estate when we’re together.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Sex stuff,” Suit said.
“Jesus,” Molly said.
She stopped the cruiser beside Suit’s truck.
“You want to hear what she says when we’re in bed together?” Suit said.
“Good God, no,” Molly said. “I’m already horrified.”
“It’ll be our secret, though, right, Moll?” Suit said. “Chief might not like it.”
“He’s nobody to disapprove,” she said. “I’m surrounded by a bunch of billy goats.”
Suit got out of the cruiser. He leaned his head back in through the open door.
“Mum’s the word, Moll?” he said
“Mum,” Molly said.
Suit closed the door and got in his truck.
As she drove away, Molly giggled.
“Miriam Fiedler,” she said aloud. “Oh, my sweet Jesus.”