"For a while," Faye said.

"You hungry?"

"For cris sake Faye," Macklin said.

"One appetite at a time. Let me sort of rest up."

"I've got supper ready whenever you want it."

"You serve a nice hors d'ouevre," Macklin said.

"You get the people you want?"

"Yeah, Crow was the most important one. Now I got JD for wiring, and Fran for explosives, and Freddie Costa for the boat."

"That means a five-way split," Faye said.

"Unless some of them drop out," Macklin said.

Faye met his eyes in the mirrored ceiling.

"You think that could happen?"

Macklin smiled and shrugged at her.

"Could," he said.

Still looking at him in the ceiling, Faye said, "You're a heartless bastard, Jimmy."

"Not all the time," Macklin said and patted her thigh.

"No," Faye said.

"Not all the time."

She put her head against his shoulder, and they were quiet together. Faye knew that it wasn't quite right, what he'd said about "not all the time." He loved her, within his limits, but Jimmy wasn't capable of a lot of feeling. What he could feel most sharply, she knew, was excitement and boredom, and his life was mostly seeking one to avoid the other. It was why jail was so hard on him.

She knew that she didn't know what he did to fight boredom in jail, but she knew Jimmy and what excited him was risk. She knew that the odds were good that he'd risk too much someday. And, she knew that he would be unfaithful. It had nothing in his emotional world to do with loving her or not. It had to do with opportunity and conquest. She hated knowing it, but she was a woman who had learned early in life that things were so whether she wanted them to be so or not. And she knew that she loved him and that he would never leave her, and she would take what there was and make as much of it as she could. Looking up at the two of them lying naked on her bed, Faye thought that probably that was what life was, taking what you could get and making the most of it.

"What's for supper?" Macklin said.

"Pork and pepper stew," Faye said.

"And I made a big pitcher of sangria."

"Faye," Macklin said, "you're the best."

Faye knew he meant it, even if he couldn't say she was the only.

"Yes," Faye said.

"I am."

TWENTY-FOUR.

Jesse's office was crowded. He was there at his desk. And seated to his right was Nick Petrocelli, the new town counsel. In front of them, in a broad semicircle, were the two Hopkins boys, their father, Charles, their mother, Kay, and their lawyer, Brendan Fogarty. Beyond them was Carleton Jencks, Sr." Carleton Jencks, Jr." known as Snapper, and the Jencks lawyer, Abby Taylor. Earl gave Jesse the finger while pretending to scratch his upper lip. He and Robbie both smirked. Snapper was expressionless.

"As you know, Stone," Fogarty said, "and, as I warned you, the District Attorney's Office has decided that your case against these lads is so tainted by the way you treated them that they won't bring it to trial."

Jesse was motionless, his swivel chair tipped back, while he looked at Fogarty the way he had learned to look at gang bangers in South Central. The stone-faced stare that every big city cop masters his first month in a black and white. To his right Petrocelli was equally motionless, looking bored, staring out the side window at the late gathering evening. He was a dark, slim young guy who wore glasses with big, thick black frames. Jesse wasn't sure about him. Petrocelli had graduated from Harvard Law not very long ago and put in time as a prosecutor in Suffolk County, before he joined a big Boston firm as a litigator. He had moved to Paradise after that and become pro bono town counsel when Abby Taylor resigned. But he wasn't thirty yet, Jesse was pretty sure. There was about him a hint of Ivy League condescension, and in the few times Jesse had been with him, he seemed bored in his duties. Fogarty, Jesse noticed, responded to Petrocelli with inadequately concealed amusement. Even Abby, who, except in certain areas that Jesse knew of, was the essence of propriety, seemed heedless of Petrocelli. On the other hand, Jesse thought, the price is right.

"And," Fogarty went on, "it is that same precipitous treatment of these boys that has brought us here tonight. We intend to bring suit, for false arrest and imprisonment."

Jesse turned his stare from Fogarty for a moment and looked at Abby Taylor. She nodded.

"We are part of the suit, Jesse," she said.

Jesse didn't speak. His stare rested heavily once again on Fogarty.

"Do you have anything to say?" Fogarty asked.

Jesse glanced over at Petrocelli.

"Nick?"

"It's America, Jesse, say whatever you want."

Jesse nodded as if that were sage advice. He kept nodding slightly as he looked carefully at each of the people seated in front of him.

"What are you all doing here?" Jesse said.

"I told you," Fogarty began.

Jesse interrupted, "Nobody had to come here for that. You could have sent me a notice in the mail," Jesse said.

"Why are you here?"

"Well," Kay Hopkins said.

"I can tell you why I'm here."

Her husband said, "Kay..."

"Don't you shush me, Charles," Kay bore on.

"I wanted to look right into the eyes of the kind of man who would mistreat two little kids."

"Mistreat?" Jesse said.

"Arrested falsely, imprisoned falsely, frightened to death? What would you call it?"

"You guys frightened?" Jesse said to the Hopkins brothers.

"Oh sure" Earl said.

"We was scared to death, wasn't we, Robbie?"

"Scared to death," Robbie said and giggled slightly.