'I don't miss.'
They were quiet. Below them, a sloop, heeling sharply in the offshore wind, was moving out of the harbor under sail. They were too far to make out the people onboard.
'So how much did you get?' Faye said.
'Fifteen thousand and change,' Macklin said.
'Should keep us afloat until we clean out Stiles Island.'
'You really think we can?'
'It's perfect,' Macklin said.
'The isolation. The money. The police.'
'Small-town cops?'
'You bet,' Macklin said.
'Biggest robbery they've ever had is probably some kid copping two Snickers bars from a Ma and Pa.'
'I think something happened here last year, while you were in jail.'
'Probably caught a Peeping Tom,' Macklin said.
'No, I don't remember. It was on the news one night.'
'Whatever,' Macklin said and grinned at her again.
'They haven't seen anything like me before.'
Faye smiled back at him.
'Not many people have,' she said.
ELEVEN.
Suitcase Simpson and Anthony De Angelo brought the Hopkins boys and Snapper Jencks in to see Jesse at 9:15 in the morning. None of them seemed scared. They all seemed to enjoy the celebrity of being arrested.
'Nobody was home but the kids,' De Angelo said.
'Either house. I left a note.'
'My father's going to be down here with a lawyer soon as he finds out,' Earl said.
Jesse nodded. Simpson closed the door and leaned against it.
'I don't think you're supposed to arrest a kid without his parInts' permission anyway,' Robbie said.
'You better call my mother It work.'
Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at them with the deadyed cop look he'd polished to a gleaming edge in South Central L.A. He let his eyes move slowly from one to the other, letting his saze rest heavily on each of them. Jencks was the hard case. He met esse's look. The other two didn't. Jesse looked at Earl.
'You want a lawyer?' Jesse said.
'I don't know no lawyer,' Earl said.
'Want me to get you one?'
'I don't want your lawyer,' Earl said.
'You better wait until my aid man gets here.'
'How old are you?' Jesse said.
'Fifteen.'
Jesse looked at Robbie.
'You?' he said.
'Fourteen.'
'You?' he said to Jencks.
'Old enough,' Jencks said.
Jesse nodded. Jencks looked older than the other two. He was t, but he already had the shadow of a beard, and he had muscle definition. Didn't have to be older. Might merely have grown up quicker.
'Here's how it's going to go,' Jesse said.
'You better let me call my mother or father,' Earl said.
Jesse gestured at the phone. Earl stared at it and didn't call. Jesse hadn't thought he would. They weren't scared enough yet, and they didn't want their parents to know they were in trouble. Yet.
'Shut up,' Jesse said.
'We're going to ask you to wait in separate cells while we question you one at a time until one of you tells us that the three of you set the fire on Geary Street. Then we will throw the book at the ones who held out on us and go easy on the one who cooperated.'
'Think you're bad,' Earl said, 'picking on three kids?'
