(5/10) Sea Change (2 page)

“You usually win these, Fran,” Jesse said to the bouncer.

The bouncer shrugged. His right eye was nearly closed.

“Too big for me, Jesse. You guys may have to shoot him.”

“We’ll see,” Jesse said.

Jesse pushed into the crowded bar. There was no noise. A big man was standing on the bar drinking from a bottle of Wild Turkey. The bottle had a pour spout on it and he would hold it away from his open mouth and pour the whiskey in. The bartender, whose name was Judy, had ducked out from behind the bar and was standing near the door. She had blonde hair in a ponytail and wore sneakers, shorts and a tank top.

“You call us?” Jesse said to her.

She nodded.

“He was drunk when he came in,” she said.

Jesse nodded.

“He made some remarks,” Judy said. “I told him I wouldn’t serve him. He made some more remarks, Fran tried to help…” She shrugged.

“You know who that is?” Simpson murmured in Jesse’s ear.

“Carl Radborn,” Jesse said. “All-Pro tackle. Shall we get his autograph?”

“Just letting you know,” Simpson said.

Jesse slid through the quiet crowd with Simpson behind him.

“Hey,” Radborn yelled. “Run for your fucking life, it’s the Paradise cops.”

Radborn was 6'5" and weighed more than 300 pounds. Standing on the bar he seemed too big for the room. Jesse smiled at him.

“Should have brought an elephant gun,” Jesse said.

“Shit,” Radborn said and jumped down off the bar, still holding the whiskey bottle. “You know who I am?”

“I always love that question,” Jesse said. “Yeah, I know who you are. Jonathan Ogden knocked you down and stomped on your face when you played the Ravens last year.”

“Fuck you,” Radborn said.

“Oh,” Jesse said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

A few people snickered.

“I don’t give a fuck. You a cop or what,” Radborn said. “I’ll kick your ass and Fat Boy’s right here and now.”

Simpson reddened.

“A lot of that is muscle,” Jesse said.

“I play football,” Radborn said. “You play football, you’ll go with anybody. You ready to go?”

“Be better if you walked outside with us,” Jesse said.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Jesse said. “Suit, gimme your stick.”

Simpson took the nightstick from the loop on his belt and handed it to Jesse.

“You think that fucking toothpick gonna matter?” Radborn said.

He was six inches taller than Jesse and more than 125 pounds heavier. Jesse took the stick from Simpson and with one motion hit Radborn in the testicles with it. Radborn gasped and doubled over. Jesse stepped around him quickly and hit him behind each knee with the stick. The legs collapsed. Radborn went to his knees. Jesse took a handful of hair and yanked him forward so that he was facedown on the floor. He glanced back at Simpson.

“I played baseball,” Jesse said. “Cuff him, Dan-o.”

Simpson handcuffed Radborn. With help from the bouncer they got Radborn on his feet and stumbled him to the squad car and strapped him in. He’d been drinking all day. It was having its effect. He was half conscious, rocking in the backseat. He was so big that the squad car rocked with him. He bent forward suddenly against the seat belt and vomited. Some of the crowd had followed them outside. They applauded.

The two cops and the bouncer looked in at him for a moment without saying anything.

“Race Week,” the bouncer said.

“And it’s only the first day,” Jesse said.

Simpson got in to drive and Jesse sat up front beside him. They put the front windows down. Jesse looked back through the thick wire screening that separated them from Radborn in the backseat. As he looked, Radford threw up again.

“One of the perks of being chief,” Jesse said, “is you don’t have to clean the patrol car.”

“That be your driver’s job?” Simpson said.

“Yes,” Jesse said. “I believe so.”

2

J
enn sat with Jesse outside, at a table on the deck of the Gray Gull restaurant, where they could look at the harbor.

“Is it always like this during Race Week?” Jenn said.

“Has been since I arrived,” Jesse said.

“Just to watch a bunch of sailboats race?”

“And drink and eat and fornicate,” Jesse said, “and maybe snort a little something, bet some money. Maybe make a deal with somebody important. Big boats start arriving a month before. Lot of people come here for Race Week and never see a race.”

He was drinking iced tea. She had a daiquiri. She was wearing Oakley wraparounds. The veranda looked east at the harbor, and the sun was very low in the west and entirely screened from them by the body of the restaurant. Jenn was a weather girl on a Boston television station and people occasionally recognized her. The glasses didn’t prevent that, and, he thought, that wasn’t why she wore them. She saw him looking at her and put her hand on top of his across the table.

“How we doing?” she said.

“So far, so good,” Jesse said.

The harbor was dense with racing sailboats, and beyond, in the deeper water near the point where the harbor opened onto the limitless ocean, the big yachts lay at anchor.

“Do they race those big ones?” Jenn said.

“Some of them,” Jesse said. “At the end of Race Week some of the yachts race from here to Virginia Beach. I’m told that the racing yachts are different than the yachts you just sail around in, but I’m not a seagoing guy, and I can’t tell you what the difference is.”

The waitress brought lobster salad for each of them and a glass of white wine for Jenn.

“It came in on the news wire that you had to arrest that huge football player yesterday,” Jenn said. “One of the sports guys told me.”

“He was drunk at the Dory,” Jesse said. “Broke the bouncer’s nose.”

“The sports guy said you subdued him with a nightstick.”

“I borrowed Suit’s,” Jesse said.

“I was with, what’s his name, Redford?”

“Radborn,” Jesse said.

“I was with Radborn at a charity thing,” Jenn said. “He’s enormous. Weren’t you intimidated? Even a little?”

“The bigger they are…” Jesse said.

“Oh God,” Jenn said. “Not that.”

Jesse smiled. “How about, ‘it’s not the size of the dog in the fight…’?”

“I’m serious. It interests me. You interest me.”

“If you’ve been a cop,” Jesse said, “especially a big city cop, like I was, after awhile you sort of expect to handle it.”

“But he’s twice your size.”

“It’s not really about the other guy,” Jesse said. “It’s about yourself.”

“So what’s your secret?”

Jesse grinned.

“Usually it’s backup.”

“And this time?”

“Well, Suit was there, but the guy was out of control and the place was crowded…”

“And he gave you attitude,” Jenn said.

“He did. So if you’re going to go, do it quick. You gotta get a guy like Radford right away or you’re going to have to shoot him.”

“What did you do?”

“I hit him in the balls with Suit’s stick.”

“Ouch,” Jenn said. “And that was it?”

“Essentially it was,” Jesse said.

“I was talking to the bartender before you arrived,” Jenn said.

“Doc,” Jesse said.

“Yes, he said you didn’t press charges.”

Jesse drank some iced tea, and grinned at her as he put the glass down.

“This morning when he was sober with a deadly hangover, we gave him the choice: district court or clean the squad car.”

“Clean the squad car?”

“He puked in it.”

“Oh yuck,” Jenn said. “So much for dinner.”

“Don’t kid me, you’re about as queasy as a buzzard.”

“But much cuter,” Jenn said. “Did he do it?”

“He did,” Jesse said. “And we let him walk.”

“With his hangover,” Jenn said.

“Awful one, as far as I could tell.”

“You would know about those,” Jenn said.

“I would.”

They ate their lobster salad for a time. It was mediocre. Jesse always thought the food at the Gray Gull was mediocre, but it was a handy place, and friendly, and had a great view of the harbor on a summer night sitting on the deck. Jesse didn’t care much what he ate anyway.

When they finished supper they walked along the waterfront for a stretch. The street were full of people, many of them drunk, some of them raucous. Jesse seemed not to notice them.

“I brought my stuff,” Jenn said.

“For an overnight?”

“Yes,” Jenn said. “I’m not on air until tomorrow afternoon.”

“You bring it in the house?”

“Yes, I unpacked in the bedroom.”

“That sounds promising,” Jesse said.

“It is promising, but I need to walk off my supper first.”

“You never were a love-on-a-full-stomach girl,” Jesse said.

“I like things just right,” Jenn said.

“Sure,” Jesse said.

Away from the wharf the street life grew sparse. No more bars and restaurants, simply the old houses pressed up against the sidewalks. There were narrow streets, and brick sidewalks, bird’s-eye glass windows, weathered siding, and widow’s walks and weathervanes. It was dark and there weren’t many streetlights. Away from the Race Week crowds, the old town was dim and European. Jenn took Jesse’s hand as they walked.

“This time,” Jenn said, “things might be just right.”

“Maybe,” Jesse said. “If we’re careful.”

The street-side windows were lighted in many of the homes, and people sat, watching television, or reading something, or talking with someone, or drinking alone, behind the drawn curtains only inches away from Jesse and Jenn as they walked.

“How long since you’ve had a drink, Jesse?”

“Ten months and thirteen days,” Jesse said.

“Miss it?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe, in time, you’ll get to where you can have a drink occasionally,” Jenn said. “You know, socially.”

“Maybe,” Jesse said.

“Maybe in awhile you and I can be more than, you know, one day at a time.”

“Maybe,” Jesse said.

In this neighborhood fewer lights were on. The streets seemed darker. Their footsteps were very clear in the silent sea-smelling air.

“You’ve slept with a lot of women, since we got divorced,” Jenn said.

Jesse smiled in the darkness.

“No such thing as too many,” he said.

“There certainly is,” Jenn said, “and you know it.”

“I do know it.”

“There’s been a lot of men,” Jenn said. “For me.”

“Yes.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jesse shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Not until I understand it more.”

Jenn nodded.

“Do you still talk to Dix?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you talk about that?”

“Sometimes,” Jesse said. “The women in my life bother you?”

“Not very much,” Jenn said. “Mostly I don’t think about them.”

In their walk they had made a slow loop along the waterfront, up into the town, and back around down to the waterfront again to Jesse’s condominium. They stopped at Jesse’s front steps.

“Well,” Jenn said. “You are the man in my life now.”

“Yes,” Jesse said.

“You want to neck on the porch for a while?” Jenn said. “Or go right on in and get serious?”

Jesse put his arms around her.

“No hurry,” he said.

“I love that in a man,” Jenn whispered, and put her face up and kissed him.

3

T
he body moved gently, facedown, against the town dock, in the dark faintly oily water, among the broken crab shells, dead fish and fragments of Styrofoam which seemed to survive all adversity. It tossed easily on the small rounded swells of a powerboat wake. The seagulls were interested in the body, and below Jesse could see the shimmer of small fish.

Simpson said, “A woman, I think, wearing a dress.”

“Not proof positive, but we’ll assume,” Jesse said.

They looked at her as she eddied in the seaweed, and the body turned slightly so that the feet swung toward shore.

“Gotta get her out,” Jesse said.

“She been in awhile,” Simpson said. “You can see the bloat from here.”

“Get a tarp,” Jesse said, “and you and Arthur and Peter Perkins get her up on the dock and put the tarp over her. Don’t want the sailors all puking before the race.”

“What about the cops?” Simpson said.

“Try not to,” Jesse said. “Bad for the department image.”

Jesse had seen enough floaters, and he had no need to see another one. Nor smell one. He looked at the small racing boats forming up and heading out to the harbor mouth where they would race off Stiles Island. Out by the end of Stiles Island he could see whitecaps. Be some bumpy races today. Behind him the coroner’s wagon arrived and the ME’s people got out a gurney and wheeled it down the ramp to the dock. One of them, a woman, squatted on her heels over the body and pulled back the canvas. Jesse saw all three of his cops look away. He smiled. The ME woman didn’t seem bothered, holding up the tarp, inspecting the body. When she was through she put the tarp back and jerked her thumb toward the wagon and they got the body on the gurney, and wheeled it up to the truck. A small crowd, mostly teenaged kids, watched the process. Occasionally one of them would giggle nervously.

“Anything interesting,” Jesse said to the woman.

“Need to get her on the table,” she said. “She’s too big a mess to tell much here.”

“ID?” Jesse said.

“Not yet.”

“She in the water long?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Looks like the crabs been at her.”

“Crabs?”

“Un-huh.”

“Means she was on the bottom,” Jesse said.

“Or at the water’s edge.”

Jesse nodded. “Anything else?” he said.

She shook her head.

“We’ll know more after we get her into the shop,” she said.

“Mind if I send my evidence specialist along with you?” Jesse said.

“Hell no,” the woman smiled, “we’ll show him some stuff.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Peter Perkins said.

Simpson watched the van pull away. He was very fair, with a round face and pink cheeks. Now there was no pink.