Free Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel) by Robert B. Parker Page A

as they looked at the menus.
    “A lobster roll?”
    “Yes. Is it a kind of sushi or what?”
    Abby smiled.
    “God, you California kids,” she said. “A lobster roll is lobster salad in a hot dog roll.”
    “Oh,” Jesse said. “Actually I wasn’t a California kid. Didn’t move there until I was fifteen.”
    “Where’d you grow up before then?”
    “Around Tucson. My father was with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.”
    “Ah,” Abby said. “Second generation.”
    “Un huh.”
    “Why’d you move?”
    “My father was working paid detail with a film crew in Tucson, and he got friendly with one of the stars and took a job as the star’s driver, personal assistant, bodyguard, whatever. So we moved.”
    “So do you know a lot of famous movie people?”
    “Nope, my father lasted about a month and got fired and took a job at Hughes.”
    “Oh my,” Abby said. “Who was the star?”
    Jesse shook his head.
    “Why not?” Abby said.
    “Old news,” Jesse said.
    “Well, aren’t you private,” Abby said. “Your folks still alive?”
    “No.”
    “Brothers? Sisters?”
    “Brother.”
    “Where is he?”
    “I don’t know. He and my father didn’t get along. He took off.”
    “And you don’t know where he went?”
    “No.”
    She drank the rest of her martini. The waitress stopped by at once. The profit here was on drinks. Abby nodded yes, she’d have another one, and she noticed that Jesse had another beer.
    “I wouldn’t have figured you for a beer drinker,” Abby said.
    “I’m not. I’m a scotch on the rocks drinker, but I didn’t want to get drunk on our first date.”
    “Do you get drunk?”
    “I have some trouble stopping when I start,” Jesse said.
    “You’re open about it,” Abby said.
    Jesse shrugged.
    “I have trouble too,” she said.
    “Stopping?”
    “Un huh. My father was a boozer.” She smiled. “Drank only beer.”
    “In my house it was my mother.”
    “What did she drink?”
    “Port,” Jesse said.
    Abby wrinkled her nose.
    “Ugh,” she said.
    The waitress came back and took food orders. It was a noisy crowd out on the deck. Young men and women, many of them from the same condo complex where Jesse was renting, single, well employed, affluent, stylish, and loud. They were drinking things like Long Island iced teas and tequila sunrises. As Abby looked across the table at him, Jesse seemed to her a figure of stillness in the midst of turbulence, as if he were the only boat with an anchor. He sat perfectly still, his hands resting on the tabletop. When he moved it was for a reason, to pour beer, to drink beer, to pick up the menu. He wasted no energy. It was hard to imagine him drunk and out of control. It was hard to imagine him kicking Jo Jo Genest in the balls, too. Though her official position required her to disapprove, she was glad he had. No one deserved a kick in the balls more than Jo Jo Genest, she thought. Her martini was gone. She could handle one more, all right. She loved the feeling of integration and certainty the drinks gave her. He would be an interesting guy to have sex with. See how contained and steady he was then.
    “I’m going to go ahead and order another martini,” she said to Jesse. “If you want to order a scotch, go ahead. Our cards are on the table, I’m willing to risk it, if you are.”
    Jesse smiled and ordered a Black Label on the rocks.
    “You have any children, Jesse?”
    “No. You?”
    “No, we tried and couldn’t seem to. I guess I’m barren.”
    “Or he is,” Jesse said.
    The drinks came. Jesse was barely able to stifle a sigh as he took some of his scotch in and felt the ease begin to seep through him. Abby smiled at him over the rim of her martini.
    “Good times,” she said and held the glass out. He clinked it with his. Each of them drank again.
    “Can a man be barren?” Abby said.
    “You mean is it a word you can use about men?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know,” Jesse said. “But if the two of you