Sea Change

“Not a thing.”

“Know anybody named Florence Horvath?”

“Nope.”

“Corliss or Claudia Plum?”

“Nope. Great names, though,” Bob said. “You ever go out with people you’ve questioned, Kelly Cruz?”

“When I can get a babysitter.”

“Kids.”

“Yep.”

“Husband?”

“Nope.”

“That works,” Bob said.

“It does,” Kelly Cruz said, and handed Bob her card.

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38

H ealy took his hat off and put it on the edge of Jesse’s desk.

“I’m on my way home,” he said.

“Way to go,” Jesse said.

“Which means I’m off duty.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse said.

He went to the file cabinet, got a bottle of Bushmill’s Black Label, poured about two inches into a water glass and handed it to Healy.

“You still can’t join me,” Healy said.

“Almost eleven months now,” Jesse said. “Not yet. Maybe never.”

S E A C H A N G E

“Day at a time,” Healy said.

He took a sip, and put his head back, and closed his eyes.

“You don’t have to enjoy it so fucking much,” Jesse said.

“Sorry,” Healy said. “But you remember what the first one was like at the end of the day.”

“I do,” Jesse said. “It’s the fifth or sixth one I have trouble recalling.”

“I’ll try to be unemotional about the next swallow,” Healy said.

“Appreciate it.”

“So,” Healy said. “You asked me to stop by.”

“Remember the floater we had?” Jesse said.

“Horvath,” Healy said. “Been a long time in the water.”

“Well, lemme bring you up to date,” Jesse said.

Healy nodded and sat back with his Irish whiskey and listened.

When Jesse was through, Healy thought about things for a moment. Then he said, “You can get them on statutory rape anytime you want.”

“Yes.”

“But when you do,” Healy said, “they’ll get lawyered to the eyeballs, and you won’t get another word out of them.”

“Correct.”

“And it’s pretty hard to leverage statutory rape into a murder confession.”

“Pretty hard,” Jesse said.

“So right now you’re just stirring the mix.”

Jesse nodded.

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“So what do you want with me?”

“I don’t want to lose them.”

“You afraid they’ll run?”

“They know I’m interested,” Jesse said. “They’ve got money. They leave the jurisdiction, I’m going to have trouble getting them back.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let them know you were interested.”

“Maybe. But I got no other way to go about this than to keep prying and asking and pushing and poking and looking around. And maybe the pressure will make one of them stupid.”

Healy nodded. “They aren’t charged with a crime,” he said. “They can go where they want to.”

“But they could be charged with statutory rape anytime,”

Jesse said.

“So you want me to help you keep track of them and if they try to depart we arrest them and charge them with the rape of a minor child.”

“Yes.”

“And tell them they have the right to an attorney.”

“Better than losing them,” Jesse said. “I don’t have the resources.”

“We can help you at the airport,” Healy said. “And the train stations.”

“And I need some clout with the Coast Guard. They’re stretched a little thin these days.”

“I can probably do something there. If I can’t, I can prob-1 8 2

S E A C H A N G E

ably get you one of ours. What do you want, a patrol boat at the harbor mouth?”

“Plainly marked,” Jesse said.

“Soon?”

“Now,” Jesse said.

Healy sipped some whiskey.

“Soon,” he said.

They sat quietly.

“You got a theory?” Healy said after a time.

“Some kind of sex ring with these two clucks at the center,” Jesse said. “They bring some girls and recruit others, mostly very young. Florence would have been a bring-along.”

“And you figure something grew out of that scene that caused the death of Horvath?”

“Yes.”

“You figure Darnell did it?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s Ralston fit?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. Maybe he’s just a pervert and all we get him on is the stat rape charge.”

“Could have been Ralston,” Healy said.

“Could have. They were tight, we know that. Cruz in Fort Lauderdale found that out. Moorings at the outer ring. Side by side.”

“They were doing the same thing there,” Healy said.

“I’d guess,” Jesse said.

“You got anywhere to go now?”

“Nothing beyond the rape charge. Hell, I don’t even know 1 8 3

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

if that will stick on Ralston. We got Darnell cold with it on tape. But the girl may not be a good witness against Ralston, and we got no tape.”

“Keep pushing,” Healy said. “These aren’t stand-up guys, I’d guess.”

“You’d be right,” Jesse said.

“And they’ve made a lot of messes in various places they’ve been. So one of them will scare and fuck up and you’ll catch him and it’ll either be him or he’ll give you the other one . . .”

“Or one of the messes they left behind will give them up.”

Healy nodded. They were quiet again. It was a late summer day. Still light, but the light slanting now from the west, and a darker tone. Healy sipped his whiskey. It would be nice, Jesse thought, to be able to sit at the edge of evening and sip a whiskey and talk. Maybe someday. Maybe not.

“You’re living with your ex-wife,” Healy said.

“We’re giving it another try.”

“Working?”

“So far,” Jesse said.

“Good,” Healy said, and sipped.

“You’re married,” Jesse said.

“Long time,” Healy said. “Some of it has been some pretty bad thrashing around, but we hung in there and it turned out good.”

Jesse nodded.

“Marriage is hard for cops,” Healy said. “Know a lot of them that can’t do it.”

1 8 4

S E A C H A N G E

“Cop wasn’t the issue, I don’t think,” Jesse said.

“Some of the divorces are a mess. They hate each other, they fight over the kids and the money and anything else they can find.”

“I know marriages like that,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. But some of the breakups are bad. They loved each other, even liked each other, but they couldn’t do it.”

“Hard,” Jesse said.

“Hardest thing in the world, I think. Guys like us,” Healy said, “are not chit-chat guys. Closed in a little, maybe.”

Healy sipped whiskey, and sat a minute as it settled in.

“And the only people we know how to talk with is the women we marry,” he said.

“I know,” Jesse said.

“Then the marriage breaks up, and you need somebody to talk with more than you ever have and she’s the only one you can’t talk with. . . . Makes for a lot of guys alone with a bottle of vodka.”

“That’s why they have shrinks,” Jesse said.

“Lot of cops don’t do shrinks.”

“I do,” Jesse said.

“Which is maybe,” Healy said, “why she’s back in the house.”

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39

J e

“Just like a movie star,” Jesse said.

He sat on the little built-in banquette while Je

“Big production budget,” Je

Je

came out and dried carefully, and began to reapply her own makeup.

“Why not just leave the other makeup on?” Jesse said.

Je