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and they take you seriously.”
    “So you did it for effect.”
    “I wanted to neutralize him. And I wanted to get their attention.”
    “Weren’t you afraid someone would hear the shot?” Faye said.
    “Hotel rooms have pretty good sound insulation,” Macklin said.
    “And most people don’t know what a gun shot sounds like anyway. They’re afraid to call up and make an asshole of themselves, you know?”
    “Why didn’t they call down to the desk the minute you left the room?”
    “And say what-we were having an illegal poker game up here, guarded by a corrupt Boston cop? As soon as I left the room, they were busy getting the hell out of there and covering their tracks.”
    “So they won’t even report it.”
    “Nope. Why I like to knock them over.”
    “Paper says that a policeman was found shot to death in a room,” Faye said.
    “And the room was occupied by someone named Thomas King, who turns out to be a phony.”
    “It didn’t say in the paper.”
    “It will,” Macklin said.
    “The real Thomas King will be a guy from Des Moines, who’s never been to Boston, and somebody lifted his credit card number and used it to make phony plastic.”
    “You take some awful chances, Jimmy.”
    “Not really,” Macklin said.
    “What if the cop had found your gun?”
    “Guy’s patting you down he stays away from your crotch.”
    “But suppose he had found it?”
    “So he takes it,” Macklin said.
    “And they either boot me out or let me play. If they boot me out, I take my thousand and leave. If they let me play, I donate my thousand and leave.”
    “But shooting the cop?”
    “Part of doing business,” Macklin said.
    “Either it bothers you or it doesn’t. If it bothers you, find another line of work.”
    “It doesn’t bother you.”
    “No.”
    “What if you’d missed?”
    Macklin grinned at her.
    “I don’t miss.”
    They were quiet. Below them, a sloop, heeling sharply in the offshore wind, was moving out of the harbor under sail. They were too far to make out the people onboard.
    “So how much did you get?” Faye said.
    “Fifteen thousand and change,” Macklin said.
    “Should keep us afloat until we clean out Stiles Island.”
    “You really think we can?”
    “It’s perfect,” Macklin said.
    “The isolation. The money. The police.”
    “Small-town cops?”
    “You bet,” Macklin said.
    “Biggest robbery they’ve ever had is probably some kid copping two Snickers bars from a Ma and Pa.”
    “I think something happened here last year, while you were in jail.”
    “Probably caught a Peeping Tom,” Macklin said.
    “No, I don’t remember. It was on the news one night.”
    “Whatever,” Macklin said and grinned at her again.
    “They haven’t seen anything like me before.”
    Faye smiled back at him.
    “Not many people have,” she said.

 
     
    ELEVEN
    Suitcase Simpson and Anthony De Angelo brought the Hopkins boys and Snapper Jencks in to see Jesse at 9:15 in the morning. None of them seemed scared. They all seemed to enjoy the celebrity of being arrested.
    “Nobody was home but the kids,” De Angelo said.
    “Either house. I left a note.”
    “My father’s going to be down here with a lawyer soon as he finds out,” Earl said.
    Jesse nodded. Simpson closed the door and leaned against it.
    “I don’t think you’re supposed to arrest a kid without his parents’ permission anyway,” Robbie said.
    “You better call my mother It work.”
    Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at them with the dead-eyed cop look he’d polished to a gleaming edge in South Central L.A. He let his eyes move slowly from one to the other, letting his gaze rest heavily on each of them. Jencks was the hard case. He met Jesse’s look. The other two didn’t. Jesse looked at Earl.
    “You want a lawyer?” Jesse said.
    “I don’t know no lawyer,” Earl said.
    “Want me to get you one?”
    “I don’t want your lawyer,” Earl said.
    “You better wait until my aid man gets