“Who jumps in his car,” Suit said, “and joins the tail. I like it.”
Jesse nodded.
“Could work,” he said, “if you’re quick.”
“Who’s quicker than me and Moll?” Suit said.
“Could make him move to days,” Jesse said. “And escalate quicker.”
“You got a better idea?” Molly said.
“I don’t have one as good,” Jesse said.
46
STEVE FRIEDMAN called Jesse from the front desk.
“Got a kid here wants to see you,” he said.
“Kid have a name?”
“She won’t tell me,” Steve said.
“Bring her in.”
In a moment Steve appeared in the doorway with Missy Clark.
“I’ll see her alone,” Jesse said.
Steve shrugged and went back to the desk. Missy came in.
“Close the door if you wish,” Jesse said.
She did. Then she came and sat where she’d sat before. Today she was wearing a short denim skirt, a cropped pink tank top, and flip-flops. Her toenails were painted black, and there was a gold ring in her navel.
“Want coffee?” Jesse said.
“Yes, please.”
Jesse poured her some.
“Milk and sugar?” he said.
“Yes, please, two sugars.”
He added the milk and sugar and gave her the cup. She sipped a little.
“Hot,” she said.
“Often is,” Jesse said.
He poured himself some and sat back down behind his desk. She looked at the picture of Jenn for a moment. Then at Jesse.
“My parents are fighting awful,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“You talked to my mom about swinging.”
“I did,” Jesse said.
“Did you tell her about me?”
“No.”
She continued to look at him.
“That’s what they’re fighting about,” Missy said.
Jesse waited.
“Me and Eric can hear them,” Missy said. “He comes in my room sometimes. It scares him. He wets the bed sometimes.”
“Are they fighting about swinging or fighting about her talking to me?” Jesse said.
“She wants to stop. She says that you know, and that scares her. She says if you know, pretty soon everybody will know. He says it’s not illegal and if she’d learn to keep her stupid mouth shut, nobody would know anything. She says she doesn’t like doing it anyway. And he says that if she won’t do it, he’ll find somebody who will.”
Jesse was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Well, doesn’t that suck.”
She had on too much inexpert makeup, which looked especially garish, Jesse thought, on a thirteen-year-old kid. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t quite cry.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Can you talk to either of them?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Everybody’s afraid of my father,” Missy said.
“Your mother, too?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Does he ever hit you?”
“Not very often.”
“Now and then?” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Your mother, too?”
“Yes,” Missy said.
“Well, we got a problem to solve,” Jesse said.
“I didn’t know who else to talk to,” Missy said.
“I’m the right guy,” Jesse said.
“So what are we going to do?”
“First we have to face up to them,” Jesse said.
“Me?”
“You,” Jesse said. “And me. I’ll ask them to come in and when they do, I’ll have to be able to talk about you and your brother.”
“They’ll know I talked to you,” Missy said.
“Very likely,” Jesse said. “I can soften the spin, probably. But they’ll know we’ve talked.”
“No,” Missy said. “You promised.”
“I can’t keep them from being mad,” Jesse said. “But I can pretty well guarantee that no one will harm you.”
“My mom wouldn’t harm me,” she said.
“And I can see to it that your father doesn’t.”
“No,” Missy said. “You can’t. I got no place to go.”
“And how’s it going where you are now?” Jesse said.
“I . . .”
“Nothing’s going to change,” Jesse said, “unless we make it change.”
Missy began to cry. Jesse was quiet until the crying slowed.
“It’s awful,” he said. “I won’t pretend it isn’t. And I won’t pretend it’s easy. But it’s a chance.
Otherwise, it’ll destroy you and your brother. You doing dope yet?”
She shook her head.
“I won’t go ahead without your okay,” Jesse said. “But I think we can fix it.”
“You just want to talk with them?”
“Yes.”
“Do I have to be here?” Missy said.
“No.”
“What if I wanted?”
“Then you’d be welcome,” Jesse said.
“I don’t want to,” Missy said.
“Okay,” Jesse said.
Missy was still sniffling. Jesse handed her a paper towel. She did what she could with it, and got her breathing steadier, and took a deep breath.
“You can go ahead,” she said.
“Be a little while,” Jesse said. “Till I get the ducks in a row.”
“Ducks?” Missy said.
“Just an expression,” Jesse said. “Hang on for a couple more days.”
She nodded. They were quiet. Missy seemed as if she didn’t want to leave.
“I wish you were my father,” she said finally.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “Kinda wish I was, too.”
47
“HE CAME into my house in the early evening,” Betsy Ingersoll said. “I had come home from school. Jay was working late, as he often does, and the man had a gun.”
She sat in front of Jesse’s desk, immaculate in a mauve pantsuit. Her husband sat beside her, immaculate in a gray suit. Molly sat in a chair in the corner nearest to Jesse. Jesse waited.
“He pointed the gun at me. He had on a ski mask, and a hat pulled low, and you can imagine how terrified I was.”
“I can imagine,” Jesse said.
“He came right up to me and put the gun right against my neck”—she pointed at the little hollow at the base of her throat—“right here . . . And he told me to take off my clothes. . . . I thought of Jay, and all the children at school. . . . And I said I wouldn’t, and he hit me across the face with his hand, and told me that if I didn’t he’d kill me.”
Jesse nodded.
“So I did,” Betsy Ingersoll said.
Jesse glanced at Jay Ingersoll. Ingersoll’s face was tight and impassive.
“And, and . . . he touched me.”
“Intimately?” Jesse said.
“Yes. He, ah, fondled me.”
Jesse nodded.
“Then he stopped and backed away and took out a camera and made me stand there while he took my picture.”
She put her face in her hands and her shoulders shook slightly, but she didn’t actually cry.
Then she raised her face.
“Then he tied me up on the couch,” she said. “And he left. When he was gone I was able to wriggle myself loose and call the police.”
“You got dressed first,” Jesse said.
“Yes, of course.”
“And Officer Maguire came,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“Could you recognize anything about this man?”
“Oh, it was the Night Hawk, all right,” she said.
“But you couldn’t recognize him otherwise,” Jesse said.
“She already told you he was masked,” Jay Ingersoll said.
“Of course,” Jesse said. “Could you tell me about the gun, Mrs. Ingersoll?”
“I don’t know anything about guns,” she said.
“Was it sort of blue-black, or was it sort of silver?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know. It happened so quickly. I was terrified. It was just a gun.”
“Of course,” Jesse said.
“I might remark, Stone,” Jay Ingersoll said, “that if you had worked as hard on the Night Hawk business as you did on an innocent mistake my wife may have made while trying to do her job, maybe you’d have this pervert behind bars where he belongs.”
Jesse shrugged.