Trouble in Paradise

"Pretty soon."

They finished their martinis in silence.

"What are we going to do?" Faye said.

"The same thing mostly," Macklin said, "but I was thinking maybe we could try it in the chair."

Faye giggled again.

"I don't mean that," she said.

"I mean what are we going to do, you know, like with our life?"

"Besides this?"

"Besides this."

Macklin smiled. He sat up higher in the bed and poured another martini for himself and one for Faye.

"Well, tomorrow," Macklin said, "we're going up to Paradise and look at real estate on Stiles Island."

"What's Stiles Island?"

"Island in Paradise Harbor. It's co

"How do you know about this place?"

"Guy I was in jail with, Lester Lang, kept talking about it, called it the mother lode."

"You ever seen it?"

"Nope."

"We going to buy property out there?" Faye said.

"Nope."

"So why we going up there to look at real estate?"

"We're scoping the place."

"For what?"

"For the mother of all stickups," Macklin said.

Faye put her head against his shoulder and laughed.

"I'll drink to that," she said, touching the rim of her glass to the rim of his.

THREE.

Suitcase Simpson came through the open door into Jesse's office without knocking.

He said, "Jesse was that your ex-wife I seen on TV last night?"

"I don't know, Suit," Jesse said.

"What did you see?"

"Cha

"They got a new weather girl, Je

She'd used her married name.

"Weather girl?" Jesse said.

"Yeah, they said she was from Los Angeles and were joking around with her about how it would be pretty different trying to report New England weather."

"And it looked like Je

"Yeah, I only seen her that one time, but you know she's not somebody you forget."

"No," Jesse said, "she's not."

"Was she a weather girl in L.A.?" Simpson said.

"No, she was an actress."

"Well, maybe she's acting like a weather girl."

"Maybe," Jesse said.

"Was she on at six or eleven?"

"I saw her at six," Simpson said.

"I'll take a look tonight," Jesse said.

"I guess she's not going back to L.A.," Simpson said.

"Looks that way for now," Jesse said.

Simpson stood for a moment, as if he wanted to say other things but didn't know how to. Finally he said, "Well, I figured you'd want to know."

"I would, thanks, Suit."

Simpson hesitated another moment and then nodded as if answering yes to a question no one had asked, turned, and went out of the office.

She s using her married name.

Jesse swiveled his chair around and put his feet up on the windowsill and looked out. It has to be Je

"Jesse," she said, "the fire this morning down at Fifty-nine Geary Street? Anthony says it looks like it was set, thinks you should have a look."

Jesse swiveled slowly back around.

"Geary Street," he said.

"They got the fire pretty well knocked down," Molly said.

"But Anthony's there and the fire captain."

Jesse nodded.

"They're waiting on you, Jesse."

Jesse smiled. Molly was like a third-grade teacher.

"On my way," he said.

He didn't use the siren. One of his hard rules for the department was no sirens, no flashing lights, unless it was a time-sensitive , emergency.

That end of Geary Street converged with Preston Road to form | a triangle two blocks from the beach. Fifty-nine Geary was at the I apex of the triangle. It was separated from the next house by a vacant lot. Both Geary and Preston were blocked off when Jesse arrived. Pat Sears was rerouting traffic away from the area. Jesse | stopped beside him.

"You want me to get couple more people down here for traffic?" he said.

Pat blew his whistle and vigorously gestured a Buick station wagon to proceed past Jesse's car.

"You bet," he said to Jesse.

"We need somebody down the other end, and maybe another guy up there." He nodded toward the traffic trying to inch past the fire captain's car that jutted out into LaSalle Street.

"I'll call Molly," Jesse said and drove down to the fire scene.

There were half a dozen fire trucks. Both of the Paradise trucks and four from neighboring departments. Jesse parked among them and got out. Arleigh Baker, the fire captain, was standing on the front lawn. Technically, as director of Public Safety, Jesse was the fire chief too. But since Jesse knew little about fighting fires, and Arleigh knew a lot, Arleigh ran the fire department. He was short and fat and looked slightly Napoleonic in his helmet, boots, and raincoat.

"Looking good, Arleigh," Jesse said.

"I look like a goddamned asshole in this outfit," Arleigh said.

Jesse smiled, and looked at the still smoking remnant of the house. Its superstructure was still standing. There was a hole in the roof, and all the windows were out. Part of the front wall had burned away. Inside was black with ash and crisscrossed with charred timber.

"Suspicious origin?" Jesse said.

"Take a look," Arleigh said and started for the front door.

The fire had been at its most intense in the living room, to the right as Jesse entered the front door. Most of the floor was gone, and part of the back wall had burned through to the kitchen behind it. On the left-hand wall, where the fire hadn't bitten, the word FAGGOTS was spray painted in large black letters.

"Watch your step," Arleigh said.

Jesse was wearing sneakers. The floor was still warm in places and there were pieces of lath lying about bristling with thin shanked nails. Jesse stepped carefully through the debris. In his boots, Arleigh paid it no heed.

Up the stairwell it said FAGGOTS, and in two of the upstairs rooms, where the damage was largely smoke staining, the word was curlicued repetitively on the walls.

"Not an inventive bastard," Jesse said.

"We'll have the state fire marshal in here later on," Arleigh said.

"Give us something more definitive. But it looks to me that the fire started right in the middle of the living room floor. That's unusual, unless somebody just dumped a can of gasoline on the rug and let her rip."

He was red-faced and sweating inside his heavy coat.

"And if it was set, it's logical to assume that the people who wrote FAGGOTS did the setting."

"People? Plural?"

"Yeah," Jesse said.

"At least two people did the graffiti."

"How the hell can you tell?" Arleigh said.

"Work South Central L.A. for a while," Jesse said, "get to see a lot of taggers. You know who lives here?"