Robert B. Parker's Fool's Paradise (A Jesse Stone Novel) by Mike Lupica

Author:Mike Lupica [Lupica, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-08T05:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Three

While Molly and Sunny were with Joe Marino, Jesse was at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord, seated across from Hasty Hathaway in the middle of the afternoon.

Hasty: former top guy on the Board of Selectmen in Paradise. Head of the Rotary Club. A pillar of the community who was also a tinhorn general in a cockeyed militia group called Freedom’s Horsemen. Currently serving twenty-five-to-life for the first murders Jesse had investigated in Paradise, before charging the guy who had hired him. He had been in the courtroom the day Hasty was convicted.

His first parole hearing had been the one at which Jesse testified. Hasty had been denied. Now here they were. Jesse had been surprised at the hearing that the geek he remembered seemed to be in much better shape on the inside than he ever had been on the outside. The warden had told him that Hasty ran his prison block the way Jesse had read that Bernie Madoff used to run his in North Carolina. Like he was still chairman of a board.

Jesse had told the guard he could uncuff him, that he’d never felt threatened by Mr. Hathaway when he could see him, but the guard said rules were rules, and he’d be right outside.

When the guard had shut the door Hathaway said, “The stones on you, coming to see me.” He smiled. “See what I did there? Stones?”

“Still a silver-tongued devil,” Jesse said.

“You must want something,” Hathaway said.

“You’ve got nothing I want, Hasty,” Jesse said. “But I would like you to answer a couple questions for me.”

“So you do want something,” Hathaway said. “I get a lot of that here. It’s more like Paradise than you’d think. Very transactional. Just with a better class of people.”

“Hope you’re not trading sexual favors for more phone time,” Jesse said.

“Fuck you, Stone.”

“Silver-tongued devil.”

“So what do you want?”

“You trying to have me killed again?” Jesse said. “At first you don’t succeed?”

“Been there. Done that. Didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped.” He swiveled his head around, as if taking in their surroundings.

“Thought you might have worked up a brand-new grudge because of the parole hearing,” Jesse said. “Almost like I put you away all over again.”

Hasty started to lift his hands, realized they were cuffed, put them back on the table.

“You know, I was thinking that day that you were the two biggest mistakes I ever made,” Hathaway said. “The first was hiring a drunk like you. The second was that I didn’t have you killed when I did have the chance.”

“Have to say getting me was a lot easier for you than getting rid of me.”

Hathaway shook his head. “Who knew I was hiring the last fucking boy scout? At least when you’d crawl out of the bottle and do your job.”

He smiled again. “Heard you got sober. That true?”

“Where’d you hear?”

“I hear a lot of things. You’d be surprised.”

“Hear that somebody tried to shoot me?”

“Heard they missed,” Hathaway said. “Good help’s hard to find these days. Even with the Horsemen.

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