“I won’t,” Jesse said.
“On the other hand,” Rita said, “neither are you.”
19
EVERYONE IN town seemed to be interested in, or amused by, or frightened about, the Peeping Tom at large. They knew about him. They didn’t know his name. But they knew what he did. The Night Hawk was scared . . . and titillated. He didn’t make his usual rounds this Wednesday night. Instead, in civilian dress, he strolled around Paradise, getting a look at the way things were. Shades were down all over town. It made him smile and stirred some sense of power in him. There seemed to be no unusual police activity. No stakeouts, no prowl cars driving slowly through the neighborhoods. The Night Hawk felt faintly disappointed that there was no more police activity. Wasn’t much of a police department, anyway. And it was encouraging that maybe he could still make his rounds. But not the same way. No one would be careless about their shades anymore . . . unless he found an exhibitionist. Wouldn’t that be a chuckle, he thought, for a voyeur and an exhibitionist to find each other. That was pretty unlikely, he knew. And he also knew without quite saying it that it wouldn’t work anyway. He didn’t want to keep seeing them. He just wanted to discover their secret and move on, and discover someone else’s. Maybe he should work another town for a while. Until things relaxed
. . . No. He didn’t want things to relax, and he preferred to discover his secrets in this town.
Where he lived. Where he knew most of the people. He stopped at the main-land end of the causeway to Paradise Neck, and leaned his forearms on the top of the wall, and looked at the ocean. It would be awfully frustrating, night after Wednesday night, to be unsuccessful. He hadn’t even seen a bedroom in the last two weeks. Everywhere the shades were drawn. . . .
There was no wind. The stars were high. The black ocean quietly murmured against the causeway. . . . He stared out to sea. . . . Okay, he thought. A new venue. More risk, yes. But the rewards were greater. He smiled to himself in the darkness. Like the stock market, he thought. Bigger the risk, bigger the reward.
20
SUIT CAME into Jesse’s office carrying a bag of doughnuts.
“Sex in Paradise,” he said. “The saga continues.”
He put the doughnuts down on the edge of Jesse’s desk. Jesse took one out of the bag and had a bite.
“I got an expense account to submit,” Suit said.
“For what?”
“I bought a few beers for Vinnie Basco,” Suit said. “And I took Debbie Basco and Kim Clark for lunch.”
“Give it to Molly,” Jesse said.
Suit nodded and drank some coffee.
“You learn anything?” Jesse said.
“I bought Vinnie a few beers at the Gray Gull. I told him I was curious about the Paradise Free Swingers. You know, not as a police officer, just as a guy used to play ball with him.”
“He buy that?” Jesse said.
“I don’t think so. But his real problem was that he was embarrassed about it. Said it was kind of creepy.”
“Then why does he do it?” Jesse said.
“My question exactly. And my answer to myself was”?Suit grinned?“the little woman.”
Jesse nodded and fished another doughnut out of the paper bag.
“So I say to Vinnie,” Suit went on, “ ‘Your wife likes it?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it turns her on.’
And that’s about all I got out of that. Rest of the time we talked about how if I coulda held my block longer he’d have had more time to run the deep patterns. And I say to him if he were faster I wouldn’ta had to hold my blocks so long. And like that. I always thought Vinnie was an okay guy.”
“You talk with Chase,” Jesse said.
“Chase Clark? Naw, he’s an asshole. Always was. I couldn’t stand him, and he couldn’t stand me.”
“Hard to believe,” Jesse said.
“How I know he’s an asshole,” Suit said.
“So you went for the wives,” Jesse said.
“I did. Kim Clark was ahead of me in high school. I guess I had kind of a crush on her.”
“She show early promise?” Jesse said.
“As a future swinger?” Suit said. “No. But she did get knocked up. It’s why she’s got a thirteen-year-old daughter, and she’s only a few years older than me.”
“So maybe she did,” Jesse said. “How about Debbie?”
Suit grinned.
“She showed a lot of promise,” he said. “With about everybody.”
“You had lunch with them together?”
“Yeah,” Suit said. “They was always buddies, even when Kimmy was into being Catholic.”
“And Debbie wasn’t,” Jesse said.
“Not so it showed. I told them I was investigating another case that had nothing to do with them, but that I needed to learn as much as I could about the swinging lifestyle.”
“And they told you,” Jesse said.
“Maybe more than I wanted to know,” Suit said.
“Cocktails with lunch?” Jesse said.
“Line of duty,” Suit said. “And a couple bottles of wine.”
“Candy is dandy,” Jesse said, “but liquor is quicker.”
“Man,” Suit said. “I never drink in the middle of the day. I barely sipped a little wine, and I had to go home and take a nap.”
“Being a lush is heavy work,” Jesse said. “What’d they tell you.”
“Well, for openers,” Suit said, “they talked about it like it was some kind of high-minded philosophy of life. The swinging lifestyle.”
“Liberated,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, ‘free of prudish’ . . . what did she say? ‘Free of prudish limitations.’ That’s what Debbie told me,” Suit said.
“Only a repressed pervert would disapprove,” Jesse said.
“Debbie says that studies show that swingers have happier relationships and more stable marriages.”
“Because they are open and loving, and there’s no surreptitious nookie going on,” Jesse said.
“Wow,” Suit said. “Surreptitious nookie.”
“I amaze myself, sometimes,” Jesse said. “How’s it work?”
“The swingers club?”
“Yep.”
“Couples only,” Suit said. “No single guys.”
“Leaves us out,” Jesse said.
“Yeah,” Suit said. “Don’t seem fair, does it?”
“How about single women?” Jesse said.
“No rules that I know of about that,” Suit said.
“Sexist bastards,” Jesse said. “So do they meet regularly?”
“They meet once a month at a club member’s home,” Suit said. “And they also have, you know, parties and cookouts and picnics, stuff like that.”
“And this is all about partners having sex with other people’s partners,” Jesse said.
“I guess,” Suit said. “I know that sometimes one partner watches while the other partner does it.”
“I wonder how they decide,” Jesse said.
“Who’s gonna do what with who?” Suit said. “Yeah, I wondered about that.”
“But you didn’t ask,” Jesse said.
“I was getting embarrassed,” Suit said.
“Cops don’t get embarrassed,” Jesse said.
“Never?” Suit said.
Jesse grinned at him.
“Hardly ever,” he said. “Debbie seems to have done most of the talking. What did Kim have to say?”
“Not much. She was kind of agreeing with Debbie, but I don’t know. She didn’t seem to have much to say about it.”
“She’s the one we should talk with,” Jesse said.
“Because she didn’t say much?”
“Be good to know why she didn’t,” Jesse said
21
JESSE SAT at a table in Daisy’s Restaurant and looked at Sunny Randall sitting across from him wearing tight jeans and a white tank top.
“Hard to carry a concealed weapon in that outfit,” Jesse said.
“This outfit is not about concealing,” Sunny said. “Gun’s in my purse.”
Jesse nodded.
“The outfit is doing its job,” Jesse said.
“Of not concealing?”
“Yes.”
“I was hoping you’d notice,” she said.