Death in Paradise

"He's a carpenter. Works in the Rucker Boatyard."

"Does she ever do anything but cover the front desk?" Lilly said.

"Sure."

"So she's not just a secretary with a gun?"

"No. She likes the day shift and she likes to be in the station so her kids can reach her if they need to."

"Couldn't they reach their father-at the boatyard?"

"They can."

"Fathers are as responsible for their children as mothers."

"That would be my guess," Jesse said.

She smiled at him.

"You're pretty hard to argue with, aren't you?"

"I think so," Jesse said.

Lilly got up again and walked past Jesse's desk and stared down at the fire trucks parked outside the station.

"I've never had sex in a police station," she said.

Jesse smiled. "Me either."

"Does anyone ever have sex in one of the cells?" Lilly said.

"Not to my knowledge."

"Maybe somebody should," Lilly said.

"I don't think so."

"Would you dare?" Lilly said. Her voice was bubbly with humor and something else.

"No."

"Scaredy-cat?" Lilly said.

"That's me," Jesse said.

"I've always had a fantasy of sex in some public place."

"You have a hidden side," Jesse said.

Lilly turned from the window and looked directly at him. The humor and something else in her voice glistened in her eyes.

"I do," she said.

Jesse didn't say anything.

"Does it bother you?" Lilly said.

"No," Jesse said. "I like it."

"But you wouldn't make love to me in a jail cell?"

"Not one of mine," Jesse said.

Again Lilly looked straight at him. "How about your office?"

"Can't," Jesse said.

The sound was still in her voice and the look was still in her eyes, but there might have been the tinge of a

"Because?"

"Because I don't want to be caught."

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"It would embarrass me, and the department," Jesse said.

"School principals aren't supposed to do that kind of thing either. It would embarrass me, too. But the risk is part of the fun."

"I like you. I like to have sex with you. But this is what I have. I'm divorced from the only woman I seem able to love. I am trying not to drink. I can't play professional baseball like I was supposed to. All I can be is a cop, and this is my last chance at that."

"And you can't jeopardize it."

Jesse smiled. He felt himself relax. She understood.

"No. I can't. Not for fun."

"Will Je

"I don't know. She is so far."

Lilly sighed, and smiled.

"Well," she said. "I guess I'll just hang around and see."

"You can't count on me changing," Jesse said.

"Maybe not. But I can count on you to fuck my brains out, can't I?"

"Absolutely," Jesse said.

Chapter Thirty-two

Jesse had breakfast with Lilly before she went home, and he was late coming to work. It was a deeply still summer morning that you can only get in a small town. Cloudless. Hot. Silent. As if everything was going to live forever.

"Suit's in the squad room," Molly said when Jesse came into the station. "He says to come see him."

Simpson was at one of the computers.

"I got a hit," he said when Jesse came into the room.

"On what?" Jesse said.

"Gino Fish. I got a co

"Which is?"

"This'll knock your socks off," Simpson said.

"Sure," Jesse said.

"Norman Shaw," Simpson said. "How about that?"

"Knocks my socks off," Jesse said. "What's the co

"Article in the Globe five years back," Simpson said. "Shaw was going to write a book about Gino and they were going to make a movie out of it."

"You print it out?"

"Yeah."

Simpson handed Jesse a sheet of paper.

"Anything else?" Jesse said.

"Not that helps us. He did ten years at Walpole for killing a guy with a straight razor."

"Nice," Jesse said.

"Was one of the people they covered when they did that big spotlight thing on organized crime."

"Anything about girls?"

"Says in here he is alleged to be gay."

"I know. Anything about prostitution?"

"Nothing specific. Just says he's the alleged boss of all criminal activity in Downtown and Back Bay."

"Well," Jesse said and gestured with the printout. "I'll take this. You print out the rest and put it on my desk."

"Print out all of it?"

"Yep."

"There's 5,145 entries for Gino Fish."

"Most of them are for fish markets, or tropical fish collectors, or sportsmen or other guys named Fish, or Papa Gino's pizza," Jesse said. "Internet's not too selective."

"Don't I know it," Simpson said.

"So just print out the ones about Gino Fish, and don't duplicate."

"I hate the Internet," Simpson said.

"Information highway," Jesse said.

"Mostly bullshit highway," Simpson said.

"No one ever said crimebusting was pretty," Jesse said.

Chapter Thirty-three

When she opened the front door Joni Shaw said, "Oh, oh, the fuzz."

"May I come in?"

"Are you pla

"No, I just want to talk."

She smiled widely at him and stepped away from the door.

The entry hall of Norman Shaw's big house was twenty feet wide with a curved staircase to the second floor. At the turn a full-length window was full of sunlight. To the right of the front door there was an umbrella stand made from the lower part of an elephant's leg, and a dark wine-colored Persian rug lay across the width of the hall at the foot of the stairs.

"Let's sit in the atrium," Joni Shaw said.

She led Jesse through a room lined with bookshelves and scattered with heavy nineteenth-century furniture, into a glass atrium where the ocean was visible a hundred yards below, tossing spray toward the house as it broke on the rocks. Jesse sat on the end of a green leather chaise.

"Coffee?" Joni Shaw said. "A drink?"

"Coffee would be nice," Jesse said.

"That will make it a social call," Joni Shaw said.

"Sure," Jesse said.

Joni Shaw was dressed in black shorts and a white silk tee shirt that stopped short of her waist so that her stomach showed. An Asian woman brought coffee. Jesse added cream and sugar and drank some.

"Is your husband at home?" Jesse said.

"Oh, damn," she said. "I thought you'd come calling on me."

Jesse smiled and didn't say anything.

" Norman is working," Joni Shaw said. "He works every morning in his study with the door locked."

"Here in the house," Jesse said.

"Yes. But it might as well be on Mars," Joni Shaw said. "He is simply not here when he's working."

"Well, maybe you can help me," Jesse said.

"I hope so," Joni Shaw said.

Jesse noticed that everything she said seemed to imply something more.

"Do you know a man named Gino Fish?"

"The gangster?"

"Un-huh."

"Sure."

"Talk about him a little," Jesse said.

"Why do you ask?"

"His name has come up in a case I'm working on," Jesse said.

"Oh my, are we suspects?"

"No. I'm just looking for help."

Joni Shaw was sitting on the couch across from Jesse, with one leg on the couch so that he could see the inside of her thigh. She sipped her coffee, looking at Jesse over the rim of her cup.

"Aren't we all," she said.

Jesse waited. Joni Shaw let him wait.

"Gino Fish?" Jesse said after he had waited long enough.

"You may remember that about five years ago one of Norman 's books was being made into a movie, here, in Boston."

Jesse nodded as if he remembered. Five years ago he'd been in L.A., on the cops, still with Je