Louis Francisco got out of his car and walked unarmed to the motionless Amber dummy in the street. He knelt down in the rain and looked at it and turned it over. He looked at it for a while, then he stood and looked over the seawall, and finally turned and looked at Jesse. His face showed nothing.
“I wish to speak with my attorney,” he said without inflection.
Jesse nodded. Everyone was quiet. The only sounds were the movement of the ocean, and the sound of the rain falling, under the low, gray sky.
There is no quiet quite like the one that follows gunfire.
72.
Jesse sat with Healy, late at night, in his office, with a bottle of scotch and some ice.
“Quest was stolen,” Jesse said.
“’Course it was,” Healy said.
“We don’t have much on Francisco,” Jesse said. “He didn’t even have a gun.”
“And he was just innocently riding along when a firefight broke out,” Healy said.
“We got the others for carrying unlicensed firearms, and for firing them. The claim is that they fired in self-defense.”
“And the Horn Street Boys?”
“They got a twenty-six-year-old public defender,” Jesse said. “They’ll be lucky to avoid lethal injection.”
“Jenks tells me there was some sort of dummy involved,” Healy said.
Jesse shrugged.
“And where is this guy Crow?”
Jesse shrugged again.
“Just curious,” Healy said. “But you’re right. It’s probably better if I don’t know too much about what went down over there.”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“What about this guy Romero?” Healy said. “The one that shot Carty?”
“We got him on the unlicensed gun thing,” Jesse said. “But Francisco’s lawyer says he can make a self-defense case on the shooting. And I think he might.”
“Anyone you can turn?”
“I don’t think so. We got the most leverage with Romero,” Jesse said. “But he’s a pro. He’ll take one for the team if he has to.”
Healy nodded.
“Besides,” Jesse said. “I kind of like the way he walked in there and took Esteban out. For all Romero seemed to care, the kid could have been throwing snowballs.”
Healy leaned forward and put some more ice in his glass and poured another inch of scotch for himself.
“I’m sure he’s swell,” Healy said.
Jesse sipped his scotch, and rolled it a little in his mouth before he swallowed.
“He’s not swell,” Jesse said. “But he’s got a lot of guts.”
“How about the kid?” Healy said.
“Amber?”
Healy nodded. Jesse drank another swallow of scotch. The room was half-dark. The only light came from the crookneck lamp on Jesse’s desk.
“Francisco says he’ll leave her be,” Jesse said. “We got enough legal pressure on him up here, so he might mean it…at least for now.”
“She’s moving in with Daisy Dyke?” Healy said.
“Yes. She’ll work there. I’ll supervise her, get her in school, stuff like that.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by to watch you at the first parent-teacher meeting,” Healy said.
Jesse shook his head.
“You’re a cruel man, Healy,” he said.
“Who buys her school clothes?” Healy said. “Pays the doctor’s bills, stuff like that?”
“We have an, ah, financial arrangement with her father,” Jesse said.
“Which is no more kosher than this freaking shoot-out on the causeway,” Healy said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“So I’m better off not knowing about that, too,” Healy said.
“We all are,” Jesse said.
“You think the old man will let her be?”
“I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass about her in any emotional way. I think we got a little legal pressure on him. I think it’ll be in his best interest to give all this a good leaving alone, for the time being.”
“But?”
“But we’ll keep a car around Daisy Dyke’s as much as we can,” Jesse said. “And I’ll take her places she needs to go.”
“Think she’ll stay?” Healy said.
“I don’t know. If she stays, she’s got financial security. If she runs away, she doesn’t. Her mother’s dead. Esteban’s dead. So she hasn’t got any place to run away to, that I know about.”
“Talk to any shrinks about her?” Healy said.
“My own,” Jesse said.
“And what does he say?”
“He’s not optimistic,” Jesse said.
Healy nodded. He drank some scotch and sat back in his chair.
“Gotta try,” he said.
73.
It was the first snow of the winter. The snowfall was deeper inland than it was along the coast, but in Paradise there was enough to make watching it fall worth doing. Jenn stood with Jesse at the French doors. It was late afternoon but not quite yet dark. Over the harbor the snow whirled in the conflicting air currents and disappeared into the asphalt-colored water. Most of the moorings were empty for the winter, but a few fishing boats still stood in the harbor and the snow collected on their decks. The snowfall was thick enough so that Paradise Neck on the other side of the harbor was invisible.
“What’s in the bag?” Jesse said.
“A care package from Daisy, for supper,” Jenn said. “Amber brought it.”
Behind them, disinterested in snowfall on the water, Amber sat sideways in an armchair with her legs dangling over an arm and watched MTV.
“What did you bring?” Jesse said to Amber.
“A bunch of stuff,” Amber said. “I don’t know.”
“Gee,” Jesse said. “That sounds delicious.”
“Whatever,” Amber said.
Jenn went to the bar and made two drinks and brought them back to the window. She handed one to Jesse.
“Oh, God,” Amber said. “You two booze bags at it again?”
“We are,” Jesse said.
Jenn went and sat on the footstool near Amber’s chair.
“How is school, Amber?” Jenn said.
“Sucks,” Amber said. “Don’t you remember school, for crissake? It sucks.”
“Gee,” Jenn said. “I loved school.”
“Sure,” Amber said. “You probably did. You were probably the best-looking girl there, and popular as hell.”
Jenn nodded a small nod.
“Well,” she said. “There was that.”
“You like school, Jesse?” Amber said.
“No,” Jesse said. “To tell you the truth, I thought it sucked, too.”
“See?” Amber said to Jenn.
Jenn nodded.
“You want a Coke?” she said to Amber.
“Yeah, sure, if I can’t have the good stuff,” Amber said.
Jenn got up and got Amber a Coke. Jesse continued to look out at the snow. Jenn came back to stand beside him. Amber refocused on MTV.
“So much for motherly small talk with the kid,” Jenn said.
“Maybe it’s a little soon,” Jesse said, “for motherly.”
“Too soon for me?” Jenn said. “Or too soon for her?”
“You,” Jesse said. “You seem a little…avant-garde…for motherly.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not,” Jenn said.
“It’s an observation,” Jesse said.
“Wouldn’t it be odd,” Jenn said, “if we put this together someday, and we had children.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “That would be odd.”
“But not bad odd,” Jenn said.
“No,” Jesse said. “Not bad odd.”
The early winter night had arrived. The only snow they could see now was that just past the French doors, illuminated by the light from the living room.
“I saw where Miriam Fiedler got divorced,” Jenn said.
“Yep.”
“I thought that was going to be troublesome.”
“Guess it wasn’t,” Jesse said.
Jenn looked at him for a minute.
“You have something to do with that?” she said.