“Did,” Jesse said.
“Well, it feels like a big-league arm to me,” Suit said.
“That’s because you haven’t played with a big-league arm.”
The ball popped again in Suit’s glove.
“Jesus,” Suit said. “I been playing first base in the softball league every summer since I got out of high school. And nobody throws a ball like you.”
“Muscle memory,” Jesse said.
“You know Harley, played defensive end for BC? He’s twice your size. When he played third for us one year, his throws came across the infield and hit my glove like a boulder. But yours, they like hiss, and plane, like a fucking bullet.”
“If I had to play a hundred-and-sixty-two-game season my arm would fall off,” Jesse said.
“Softball season is, what, thirty, forty games? Even then I have to ice my shoulder every night.”
“Well, all I know,” Suit said, “is the goddamned thing hums coming across the diamond.”
Jesse was throwing easily, and the day was warm. But he could already feel the twinges in his right shoulder. They’d be worse tonight.
“Time,” Jesse said.
They sat in the shade on the running board of one of the town trucks and drank some water.
“How’s Kim,” Jesse said.
“Saw her today,” Suit said. “Molly and I swap off, one of us stops by every day, see how she is. After asshole Chase has gone to work and the kids are in school.”
“And?” Jesse said.
“She’s okay. She says he hasn’t laid a hand on her since you talked to him.” Suit smiled.
“And Spike. Kimmy says he won’t even tell her what Spike said to him.”
“Any swinging?” Jesse said.
“Nope, she says he comes home pretty late from work, and she knows he’s been drinking.
But he doesn’t say anything to her or the kids.”
“She mention their sex life?”
“For crissakes, Jesse,” Suit said.
“She have any plan?”
“Mostly she’s numb. I think her plan is to get through the day, as best she can, you know?”
“I know,” Jesse said.
They threw for another ten minutes and went back into the station house.
In his office Jesse sat at his desk and put a little neat’s-foot oil on his glove. Without getting up he put the glove carefully on top of a file cabinet, then picked up the phone and called Sunny Randall.
“How’s your press contacts?” Jesse said.
“I have some,” Sunny said.
“Do you know that Jay Ingersoll’s wife was the apparent victim of a home invasion, by the Night Hawk?”
“The big-deal lawyer?” Sunny said.
“Yep.”
“The one that was involved in some sort of thing with girls’ underwear?” she said.
“Yep?”
“How come I haven’t heard about it? Were there pictures?”
“Yep.”
“What do you want from my press contacts?” she said.
“Publicity for the event,” Jesse said.
“The home invasion?”
“Yep.”
Sunny was silent for a time.
Then she said, “You hate publicity.”
“I do,” Jesse said. “But not this time.”
“Should they contact you?”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said. “I am eager to tell them everything.”
Again, Sunny was silent for a time.
