Chief Pruitt was right on time. His Vineland Park PD Suburban pulled up to the hotel entrance at exactly eleven. A few minutes prior to the sheriff’s arrival, Jesse, drinking his third cup of coffee, strolled over to a guy who was clearly one of Kahan’s minions. He stood beside him but didn’t look at him.
“I’ll be with Chief Pruitt all day until the party tonight,” Jesse said, flipping through a stack of Wall Street Journals. “Don’t waste your time on me. Keep eyes on Miss Evans. If you follow me, I’ll know it. And I’ll make an ugly scene. You copy?”
“Copy that,” Kahan’s man said, his voice barely a whisper.
Pruitt was in good spirits. He gave Jesse a firm handshake and a pat on the shoulder. Told him how beautiful he thought Diana was.
“You’re looking a little rough around the edges, there, Jesse,” Pruitt said when he noticed Jesse hadn’t said much. “A few too many?”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Like a flashing neon sign, son.”
Jesse laughed. Pruitt, too.
“It’s not only the scotch,” Jesse said.
“Pressure getting to you?”
Pressure comes in all shapes and sizes, Jesse thought, considering he’d just committed himself to Diana for the rest of his life. But he understood what Pruitt was referring to.
“Not me I’m worried about, Chief Pruitt. It’s everyone else.”
“Call me Jed. And worrying about everyone else, that about describes a chief’s job, doesn’t it?”
Jesse nodded, staring out the window of the big SUV.
“Problem this time is that everyone involved is someone I care about. It’s one thing to worry about your town. You can have some distance from it most of the time, enough to be rational. It’s something else when it’s the people closest to you that you’re worrying over. No distance. Hard to make clear choices.”
“I hear you, Jesse. I surely do.”
That was when Pruitt wisely changed the subject to baseball. That pleased Jesse. He didn’t get to talk much baseball with anyone except Healy, and until Peepers reared his head again, Jesse hadn’t seen much of his old state police friend. And these days, given Healy’s retirement and the health of his wife, baseball took a backseat when they got together. Suit was more of a football fan. The rest of his cops were such dyed-in-the-wool Sox fans that it was impossible to have a baseball discussion that didn’t include the Sox and the hated Yankees. For them, the other twenty-eight teams were inconveniences, games to fill in the spaces between Sox–Yankees games.
Pruitt recalled games Jesse had played in. They discussed the guys Jesse had played with in the minors, the ones who had made it to the show and those who hadn’t. Vic Prado’s name came up, of course.
“So was he really mixed up with the Boston mob like the media reports said?” Pruitt asked.
“Uh-huh, but he paid a big price.”
“Yes, sir, he’ll be spending a lot of time behind bars.”
“That, too, but I meant something else,” Jesse said. “Peepers was the guy who nearly tortured Vic to death. That’s what started this whole mess. Long story.”
“We got a few minutes.”
“Maybe some other time, Jed. Okay?”
“Sure thing.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, the kind that happens between people who are getting along but don’t really know each other. Pruitt broke it up by going back to an earlier part of the conversation.
“I hear your Diana can really handle herself. Ex-FBI, right?”
“Uh-huh. A few weeks ago, she chased a mugger down in Boston. Didn’t hesitate. Saw it happen and was out of the car before I could move.”
“She sounds like a woman full of surprises.”
“You’ve got no idea.”
They didn’t speak much for the rest of the ride, but the awkwardness was gone. Pruitt had a satisfied smile on his face that he kept there right up until the moment he pulled the Suburban into the semicircular front drive of an apartment and hotel complex that smelled of money. But by the time the VPPD chief put the SUV in park, the smile was gone. From his serious expression, one might’ve believed he had never smiled in his life.