“Un-huh.”
Shaw grinned suddenly, almost genuinely, at Jesse.
“Sort of a queer Godfather,” he said.
“How do you collaborate?”
“Gino and I get together, couple times a week,” Shaw said.
Despite the fact that he was clearly drunk, Shaw was focused as he talked about his writing, in a way he had not been before that.
“And talk?”
“Yeah. Gino likes to talk about himself.”
Lunch arrived.
“When the book gets written,” Jesse said, “do you share the royalties?”
“Everybody thinks it’s royalties,” Shaw said. “It ain’t. It’s the advance, stupid. You know?”
Jesse ate some clam chowder. Shaw paid no attention to his scrod. His speech had thickened noticeably. He’d been at the bar when Jesse arrived. He’d had three, one of them a double, since Jesse had arrived. The conversation wasn’t going to last too much longer.
“So he gets half the advance?”
“Naw, it’s all mine,” Shaw said. “Gino jus’ wants a book about him. He…”
Shaw stopped talking for a moment and looked at Jesse as if he were having trouble remembering who Jesse was. Then he put his head down and rested it on top of his scrod and went to sleep.
Chapter Forty-one
Suitcase Simpson came into Jesse’s office trying not to look self-important.
“Got the info from the phone company,” he said to Jesse. “That phone number used to belong to a guy named Alan Garner. No longer in service.”
“Got an address?”
“Yeah. In Brighton, but he moved last year.”
“I know where he is,” Jesse said.
Simpson stared at him.
“How you know that?” he said.
“I’m chief of police,” Jesse said.
“Oh,” Simpson said. “Yeah. I forgot. You going to talk with this guy?”
Jesse shook his head.
“We’ll watch him,” Jesse said.
“We?”
“You ever do any surveillance?”
“Jesse. I’m a cop in Paradise, Mass.,” Simpson said. “What the hell am I going to surveil?”
“Go put on some civvies,” Jesse said. “Time you learned.”
Driving into Boston from the north, there was a choice between the tunnel under the harbor and the bridge over the Mystic River. The tunnel was a little shorter, from Paradise, but on the Boston end you came up out of the tunnel into the boiling confusion of the largest urban renewal project in the country. Jesse took the bridge.
As they arched down toward the Charlestown end they could look down at the merge of the river and the gray sprawl of the harbor to their left. Below them was the old Charlestown Navy Yard, now mostly condominiums. Straight ahead the individuated buildings coalesced into skyline.
Tremont Street was so hot that the asphalt was soft. They parked on a hydrant and Simpson got out and bought a cup of coffee and a large Coke at a convenience store while Jesse stayed in the car looking at Development Associates of Boston. When he got in the car, he handed Jesse the Coke.
“My mother always used to tell me to drink hot stuff in hot weather,” Simpson said. “Because being hot inside would make you feel cooler outside.”
Jesse was silent.
“You think that makes any sense?” Simpson said.
“Sure.”
“You think it’s true?”
“No.”
Simpson nodded and settled back with his coffee. Jesse knew he still half believed it. He was only about ten years older than Suitcase, but he felt like his father.
“Who we looking at here?” Simpson said.
