“Informally, sure. Besides, Reagan wants to score me.”
“Don’t blame him,” Jesse said.
“Who supervises their
service?”
“The court, in theory. In fact the people they’re assigned to
serve with are supposed to keep track of their hours, and rat them out if they don’t do what they’re supposed to.”
“Which often makes community service a joke,” Jesse
said.
“Often,” Rita said.
“How about they serve their sentence with me?” Jesse
said.
Rita stared at him and began to smile.
“They sweep up,” Jesse said,
“empty trash, run errands, shovel
snow, keep the cruisers clean … like that.”
Rita smiled at him some more.
“And you would, of course, take your supervisory responsibilities seriously,” she said.
“I would bust their chops,” Jesse said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Rita
said.
She put her martini glass down and stood and stepped around the
coffee table and straddled him where he sat on the leather hassock and sat on his lap facing him. The movement lifted her short skirt almost to her waist. She pressed her mouth against his. After a time she leaned back.
“If I could use your shower,” she said,
“I’d fluff up my body a
little.”
“Down the hall on the right, off my
bedroom.”
Jesse’s voice sounded hoarse to him.
“Conveniently located,” Rita said.
She stood, smoothed her short skirt over her thighs, and walked
to the bathroom.
52
It had begun to snow softly when Jesse pulled into the visitor’s
parking space near the Seascape entrance. The same elegant and careful concierge tried not to stare at the rifle he was carrying as she phoned the Lincolns.
“Penthouse floor,” she said.
“I remember,” Jesse said.
Lincoln was waiting for him again, in the small foyer.
“Oh,” he said, “my
gun.”
Jesse handed it to him. Lincoln smiled.
“It’s not linked to any drive-by shootings or anything?” Lincoln
said.
“None that we could discover,” Jesse said.
“And it wasn’t used
to kill the four people in Paradise.”
“Oh good.”
Brianna Lincoln came into the living room.
“Mr. Stone,” she said. “What a
nice surprise.”
“Jesse was just returning our rifle, Brianna.”
