Jesse smiled pleasantly.
'I don't think you won't,' he said.
SIX.
Macklin sat with Faye on the deck outs side the Gray Gull Restaurant overlooking the harbor. They were drinking cosmopolitans. Faye had hers straight up in a big martini glass. Macklin was drinking his on the rocks. The late afternoon sun had gotten low enough behind the buildings to throw elongated shadows of the wharf office and the sail loft out onto the water.
'Faye,' Macklin said, 'you look more like the wife of a WASP millionaire than any of the real ones I've ever known.'
'So maybe that means I don't,' Faye said.
'And exactly how many WASP millionaires' wives have you known?'
'If I knew one, she'd look like you,' Macklin said.
He had loosened his tie and taken off his coat. He sat now with his legs out in front of him, leaning back in his chair. There was a breeze off the water.
'You told that woman we were from Concord,' Faye said.
'Sure,' Macklin said.
'I lived there for a couple years.'
'In Concord?'
Macklin grinned.
'MCI Concord,' he said.
'The prison.'
Faye laughed.
'Jimmy, you're crazy.'
'Can't get too solemn about this shit,' Macklin said.
A waitress went by. Macklin gestured at her for a refill.
'And maybe, whaddya got. Some fried clams? Give us an order of fried clams,' he said.
'But bring the drinks first. Don't wait for the clams.'
'Yes sir.'
Macklin watched her as she walked away. Nice butt. Young.
Probably some college kid working for the summer.
'So what did we learn about Stiles Island today?' Faye said.
'Three quarters of a mile long,' Macklin said, gazing out across the harbor at the near end of it.
'About a quarter of a mile wide.
Fifty estates so far. Room to build another fifty. Cheapest one is eight hundred seventy-five thousand dollars. Adults only. No children. No dogs.'
'Most people can afford eight-hundred-seventy-five-thousand dollar houses are too old to have children anyway,' Faye said.
Macklin nodded.
'Only access is across that bridge,' he said.
'All the power lines under the bridge, all the phone lines, even the water pipes are icorporated into the bridge under structure
The waitress brought them two more cosmopolitans. The pink drinks looked just right, Macklin thought, out here on the deck of |he weathered shingle restaurant with the harbor below them, lack ling liked things to be right.
'There's a branch of Paradise Bank,' he said.
'With safe deposit boxes. There's a private boat club on the harbor end of the sland, only place on the island where you can land a boat. There's health club with a drug store and beauty salon and a restaurant rith a big plate glass picture window looking out on the ocean Aide. And there's a private security patrol, a man on the bridge twenty-four hours, and a two-man cruiser patrolling the island twenty-four hours. Everybody got a radio that connects to the security headquarters in the other side of the real estate office and IP the Paradise Police.'
Faye held her glass with the fingertips of both hands. She was matching him over the rim of it as he talked. When he finished she whistled very softly.
'And I thought all you were doing was watchIng Mrs. Campbell's ass,' she said.
Macklin grinned.
'Attention to detail,' he said.
A gull coasted down, sat on the fence railing about five feet away, and waited. The waitress brought flatware wrapped in napkins, and an order of fried clams in a small paper napkin-lined wicker basket. She put the clams on the table between them and placed two small paper cups of tartar sauce beside the basket.
