They’d come from there. This wasn’t a smart group of people, but nobody was stupid enough to do a drive-by shooting and keep going into a dead end. So they’d linger up around the bend on Paradise Neck until he appeared and took his place, and then they would drive down along the causeway, presumably at a moderate pace, like everyone else on the causeway, and when they got opposite, someone would open up at him, probably from the back window, probably with at least a semiautomatic weapon. One issue, if there was any traffic, would be for him to distinguish which car was carrying the shooter.
Meanwhile, if they could pull this off, Francisco and friends would be coming from the mainland end. They would have scouted the location, and would know that going toward Paradise Neck was a road to nowhere. But they had no reason to worry about escape. They would simply drive out on the causeway from the mainland end, planning to pick up the daughter in the middle, and follow the circular road around the Neck and back.
The crucial moment would come when Francisco saw no daughter, and people shooting at Crow. If they could get the timing to come out right, it might work. But it seemed to Crow that it needed tweaking. It would work better if Francisco could see people shooting at his daughter. But that would be tricky. He knew Stone would never let the kid be used as a decoy. And since a lot of this was about protecting the kid, Stone was probably right. But it wasn’t all about protecting the kid. For Stone there was a case to close, maybe even some justice thing he cared about. For Crow there was the fun of it. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. With real guns and real bullets…Crow’s excellent adventure.
It would go better if there were a decoy. Dressed properly, from a moving car, over a short span, with a kid he hadn’t seen in several years, maybe a stand-in would work with Francisco. He looked slowly along the causeway, first toward the mainland, then toward the Neck. It wasn’t a long causeway. The reaction time would be pretty brief. This could get him killed. Or not. The uncertainty made the game.
Alone on the seawall, with the wind still steady on his back, Crow smiled happily. Hard to be a warrior if death wasn’t one of the options.
64.
In the back of Daisy’s Restaurant, there was a bedroom with a single bed, and a bathroom with a shower.
“I lived here when I first opened the restaurant,” Daisy said. “I was still single.”
“And how is the lovely Mrs. Dyke,” Jesse said.
“She’s great. And she’s starting to sell her paintings.”
“Good for her,” Jesse said.
“Makes her happy,” Daisy said. “Which makes me happy.”
“I got a kid,” Jesse said. “A runaway, fourteen, I think. Mother’s dead. Father’s a gangster. She doesn’t want to live with him. At the moment we’re taking care of her at my place.”
“We?”
“Jenn and me.”
“Congratulations,” Daisy said.
“It’s temporary,” Jesse said. “Molly can’t work twenty-four hours a day, and I can’t keep her there myself.”
“That would be your style,” Daisy said. “Sex with fourteen-year-old girls.”
“They’re so fun to talk with after,” Jesse said. “How about you?”
Daisy grinned. She was a big blonde woman with a round, red face and when she smiled like that it was as if a strong light went on.
“I’m an age-appropriate girl, myself,” she said.
“And the wife?” I said.
“Angela likes me,” Daisy said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “If I can make it work, I’m going to keep her from her father, and I’m looking for someplace to put her.”
“To raise?” Daisy said.
“No, to give her an option.”
“And you think Daisy Dyke is going to play Mother Courage?”
“She can work in the restaurant, sleep in the back. I’ll be responsible for her. Get her registered for school, take her to the doctor, whatever.”
Daisy stared at him.
“She old enough to get a work permit?”
“I think so,” Jesse said.
“Is she a pain?” Daisy said.
“You bet,” Jesse said.
“Might she run off anyway?”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said.
“And you think the town will feel much better about her living with two lesbians than they would about her living with you?”
“I think so,” Jesse said. “More important, though, I think it would be better for her.”
“Because a fourteen-year-old girl living alone with an unrelated man will tie herself into some kind of Oedipal knot?” Daisy said.
“You’re pretty smart for a queer cook,” Jesse said.
“I used to see a shrink,” Daisy said. “When I was trying to figure out if I should be a lesbian.”
“Well, it must have worked,” Jesse said.
“I don’t seem ambivalent about it,” Daisy said, “do I.”
“I don’t know if this will happen,” Jesse said. “It won’t happen until I am sure her father will not present a problem for anybody.”
“This is a just-in-case,” Daisy said.
Jesse nodded.
“You want to discuss it with Angela?”
“No,” Daisy said. “I’ll do it.”
“Like that?”
“I’m not from here, Jesse, and neither are you,” Daisy said. “Neither one of us exactly belongs. And probably neither one of us ever will.”
Jesse shrugged.
“And I didn’t improve my chance for membership by marrying Angela Carlson,” Daisy said. “Of the Paradise Carlsons.”
“I think most people don’t give much of a damn one way or the other,” Jesse said. “Unless they’re running for office and their opponent is winning.”
Now Daisy shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said. “You may recall, I got some nasty feedback when I got married. But you’ve had problems of your own, and you do a tough job well, and ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been a decent and welcoming friend. I love it that you called me a queer cook.”
Jesse grinned.
“Can I take that as a yes?” Jesse said.
“You may,” Daisy said. “And to prove it I’ll give you the secret lesbian sign.”
She put her arms around Jesse and kissed him. Jesse hugged her for a moment and stepped back.
“You know,” he said, “we heteros have a similar sign.”
65.
Crow drove the length of the causeway and clocked the distance, and on the way back stopped to check the water level at low tide. There was a wide strip of sand and rocks on the ocean side, but still no footing on the harbor side. Okay. He’d be leaning on the ocean-side seawall. At the mainland end of the causeway, he pulled into the town parking lot by Paradise Beach and parked and flipped open his cell phone. He punched in a number and waited.
“It’s Crow,” he said when a voice answered. “Got a message for Francisco.”
Crow waited a moment, then spoke again.
“You call him what you want, and I’ll call him what I want. Tell him I got his daughter, and I’ve changed my mind. He can have her if the price is right.”
He listened to the phone again as he watched a young woman take her beach robe off near the edge of the water.
“He knows the cell phone number,” Crow said. “Tell him to give me a ringy-dingy.”
The young woman’s bathing suit was white, and barely sufficient to its task, though it contrasted nicely with her tan skin. She looked to be about twenty-five.
“Sure thing,” Crow said, and closed the phone.
Crow wasn’t choosy about age, though at twenty-five most women didn’t seem very interesting. Older women had more to talk about. But younger women usually had firmer thighs.