Death in Paradise

"It's still about Billie Bishop, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a theory?"

Jesse drank a little Coke. It had caffeine in it. It tasted like it should give him a pleasant jolt. There was none.

"Alan Garner is almost certainly recruiting runaway girls to prostitution. He doesn't seem like your standard street pimp. He treats them nice, doesn't come on to them, puts them up in a cheap apartment, and rents them out on a call basis. Maybe to a specialized market."

"Men who like very young girls."

"Yes. Alan works for a mobster named Gino Fish. Gino is an acquaintance of Norman Shaw, the novelist Shaw lives in Paradise."

"Do you think that Garner recruited Billie Bishop?"

"Maybe."

"For this Fish person?"

"Yes."

"Do you think that Gino Fish is supplying adolescent girls to Norman Shaw?" Lilly said.

"I have no idea. I've met Mrs. Shaw and she would certainly be sufficient for me."

"You know that has nothing to do with it," Lilly said.

"I know."

"Do you think he might have sent Billie Bishop to Norman Shaw, which is how she ended up in Paradise?"

"In the lake," Jesse said.

"Yes. Do you think?"

"What I think," Jesse said, "is that I'm not going to jostle any of them, until I've got enough to get them all."

"Do you know who they all are?" Lilly said.

"Not yet."

Chapter Fifty

"I had a thought," Jesse said to Suitcase Simpson.

"Excellent," Simpson said.

"Wise guys don't make sergeant," Jesse said. "What I was thinking was that if Norman Shaw was banging kids like Billie, where would he do it?"

"His house?"

"You think Mrs. Shaw would have a problem with that?"

"Oh, yeah."

"So if he's doing it, it must be someplace else."

"You really think he's involved?"

"No. I really think he isn't," Jesse said. "But I don't know he isn't. I want to know. It's where the chain of co

"Billie Bishop to Alan Garner to Gino Fish to Shaw," Simpson said.

"Sort of."

"Not much of a chain," Simpson said.

"Everybody's a critic," Jesse said. "If you had a teenaged beauty you wanted to score, where would you go?"

"Not my high school," Simpson said.

Jesse smiled.

"I guess I'd take her to a motel," Simpson said.

Jesse nodded. "You want to learn several things," he said. "You want to learn if a guy named Norman Shaw has registered there, in, say, the last six months, whatever they got for records."

"Would he use his real name?" Simpson said.

"Probably not," Jesse said. "So he couldn't use a credit card. Try to find who registered and paid cash."

"Hotels keep records like that?" Simpson said.

"Some do. Some don't," Jesse said. "Sometimes you can be lucky. You'll get a clerk who remembers."

"Shaw's pretty recognizable," Simpson said. "Even if he gave a false name and paid cash."

"So what would you do about that?" Jesse said. "If you were him?"

"Disguise?"

Jesse smiled.

"Ask if they remember a guy with a fake nose and glasses," he said.

"Really?"

"Suit, I'm kidding you. Be easier if he had the girl register."

"And if he was real careful," Simpson said, "he'd have her register at one of those places where you can park right in front of the door and go in your room once you got a key."

"Maybe you should start with that kind of motel, close to Paradise, and then circle out. Get a picture of Shaw. And take one of Billie. Show both of them."

"You're pulling me off shift again?"

"Special assignment," Jesse said.

"Guys are getting kind of a

"Un-huh."

"We don't even know if Shaw's got anything to do with it," Simpson said.

"That's true."

"There's a thousand motels around here."

"Un-huh."

"Jeez, on those TV real-life cop shows they don't do this. They got all kinds of guys with microscopes and computers figuring shit out."

"We're a small department," Jesse said. "We can't afford smart people."

"This could be a total waste of time," Simpson said.

"Ah," Jesse said, "you are begi

Chapter Fifty-one

"You wanted to drink," Dix said.

"Yes."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"Why'd you want to?"

Jesse shrugged. It never occurred to him to ask why he wanted a drink. Wanting a drink was part of existence. It didn't have a why.

"Did you want one at 2:35 that afternoon?"

"I'm not that far gone," Jesse said.

"I'll take that to mean no," Dix said. "So why did you want one at seven o'clock that evening?"

"What difference does it make?" Jesse said.

"None," Dix said, "to me."

They were silent.

"It was, you know, you used to be a drinker," Jesse said. "It was the end of the day and the harbor was quiet, and we were sitting together on the deck, and later we'd have sex. I mean it was all ahead of us."

"The romance of booze," Dix said.

Jesse thought about that. "Miller time," he said.

"Soft light touching on crystal stemware, bright liquid, clean white shirt, shimmering gown, alto sax, here's looking at you, kid."

"You think that makes me drink?"

"No. But it helps make you want to."

"But I didn't give in this time."

"No," Dix said. "You didn't."

"Kind of late," Jesse said.

Dix waited.

"Now I'm saying no," Jesse said. "Now that it's cost me my job and my marriage."

"But you have a new job," Dix said.

"Marriage is gone."

"You think that's your fault?"

"Sure," Jesse said. "She couldn't be expected to stay with a drunk."

"You don't think she should share the blame?"

"Sure," Jesse said. "I know. In every breakup there's fault on both sides, blah, blah."

"But this one was all yours," Dix said.

"Pretty much," Jesse said.

"You don't think the fact that she was sleeping with other men might have contributed?"

Jesse didn't answer.

"Maybe you couldn't be expected to stay with an adulteress."

"What are you saying?"

"If you take the responsibility for it, then it's in your hands."

"If I broke it, maybe I can fix it," Jesse said.

"And if you didn't break it, maybe you can't," Dix said. "And you have to face the scary fact that you can't control how this will work out."

Jesse sat for a long time without speaking.

"So what's this got to do with me not drinking when I wanted to the other night?"

"What we're doing here," Dix said, "is a little like what you did when you were working homicide in L.A. There are incidents, we're not sure of how these incidents co

"Maybe because I don't love Lilly, I can spare some energy to control my drinking, instead of controlling myself when I'm with Je

"Maybe," Dix said.

"And maybe I need to think about not drinking so I can stop being a drunk."

"Instead of?"

"Instead of not drinking so I can be with Je

Dix nodded.

"Sometimes we clear a case," Dix said.