Healy shook his head.
“Nope. I was a pitcher, Phillies organization, pretty good. Then
I went in the Army and came home and got married and had kids
…”
Jesse nodded.
“And it went away,” Healy said.
“You?”
“Shortstop, tore up my shoulder, and that was the end of
that.”
“Were you good?” Healy asked.
“Yes.”
“Too bad,” Healy said. “You play
anywhere now?”
“Paradise twi league,” Jesse said.
“Softball.”
“Better than nothing,” Healy said.
“A lot better,” Jesse said.
19
Jesse sat with Suitcase Simpson in the front seat of Simpson’s
pickup parked up the street from Candace Pennington’s home on Paradise Neck. The weathered shingle house sat up on a rocky promontory on the outer side of the neck overlooking the open ocean.
“She walks from here down to the corner of Ocean Ave. to catch
the school bus,” Jesse said. “Which Molly will be driving.”
“School bus company in on this?” Simpson said.
“No. They think we’re trying to catch a drug
pusher.”
“I used to ride the bus to school,”
Simpson said. “Lot of shit
got smoked on that bus.”
“Focus here, Suit,” Jesse said.
“You’ll follow her when she
walks to the bus stop, and follow the bus to school and watch her until she’s in the building. You go in the building after her and
hang around near where she is, and, at the end of the day, reverse the procedure.”
“What did you tell the school?”
“Same thing, undercover drug
investigation.”
“I played football with Marino’s older brother,” Simpson said.
“Half the school knows me. How undercover can it be.”
“Suit,” Jesse said.
“We’re not really looking for druggies.
It’s
a cover. It’s good if everyone knows you’re a cop, as long as they
don’t know why you’re there.”
“Which is?”
“To protect Candace Pennington, and, maybe, while we’re at it,
get something on the three creeps that raped her.”
“But no one knows that,” Simpson said.
“They threatened her if she told on them,”
Jesse said. “And I
promised her that I’d keep it secret.”
“Do I wear my unie?” Simpson said.
“No, I told the school to pretend you were a new member of the
