He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith. He looked at his gun and badge lying on the bar.
He finished his drink and stood and made another one. He walked with his drink into the bedroom and looked at the picture of Jenn on his night table. He gestured at it with his glass.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.
He sat on the bed, looking at her.
It would be nice to have her home. It would be nice to call her and say, Come on home, I’ll look out for you. She enriched a space when she was in it. Her laughter bubbled. Her affec-tion seemed genuine. She was good- looking and funny and she was smart . . . he smiled . . .
though not always. If she was to come and stay with him, they’d have sex. Sex with Jenn was like sex with no one else. He knew, if he looked at it for a while, that it wasn’t so much what she did, it was how he felt.
His glass was empty. Drinks disappeared faster, he noticed, the more of them you drank.
He stood and walked back to the living room and mixed another. He’d been doing pretty good lately. Two drinks before dinner, maybe half a glass of wine with dinner. Tonight, not so good.
He drank.
He looked at the phone.
“You keep on doing the same thing you been doing, and expect the results to be different,”
Jesse said aloud. “You’re maybe a little crazy.”
He looked at his picture of Ozzie Smith and raised his glass toward it.
“Maybe even a little obsessive, Oz. You know?”
He drank, and looked at the phone.
Couple more drinks, maybe less, and there’d be no more pleasure to it. Then it would be something else, something dull and needful.
“But not yet,” he said.
And drank.
And didn’t call.
60
“I HOPE you didn’t mind coming into Boston,” Jay Ingersoll said in a way that let Jesse know that he didn’t really care whether Jesse liked it or not.
“I didn’t mind,” Jesse said.
He sat across from Jay Ingersoll’s big desk on the top floor of Cone, Oakes. Betsy Ingersoll sat to her husband’s left in a comfortable chair facing Jesse. It was a big office, but not or-nate, the most prominent features being the view, which rivaled that from the client conference room three flights down, and a large leather sofa on the inside wall next to the door.
“What can we do for you?” Jay said.
“I have a letter,” Jesse said, “from the Night Hawk that I thought you both should see.”
Jay Ingersoll put out his hand.
Jesse took a photocopy of the original letter from his briefcase and gave it to Ingersoll. He took another copy and started to hand it to Betsy. Ingersoll put up a hand.
“I’ll read it,” he said.
Jesse held on to the copy and waited.
Ingersoll read the letter carefully. His face seemed to harden, but otherwise nothing changed. He looked up at Jesse when he was through reading.
“You find this credible?” he said to Jesse.
“You?” Jesse said.
“What does it say,” Betsy asked.
“It’s about you,” Jay said.
“Then perhaps,” Betsy said, “I ought to see it.”
Jesse handed her a copy.
“Don’t say anything,” Jay said to her.
She read slowly. As she read, her face began to flush. When she finished she stared at the paper for a moment and then looked at Jesse.
“Well, of course he tells you that,” Betsy said. “He’s a perverted criminal. He wouldn’t admit it.”
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said, “don’t talk.”
“I mean, do you think I made it all up, for God’s sake?”
“Betsy,” Ingersoll said sharply.
“Actually, ma’am, I do think you made it all up,” Jesse said.
“Betsy,” Jay Ingersoll said. “He is saying that you filed a false police report. That’s a crime.
