Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

only the tips of her fingers were visible. She had a small gold bead in one nostril.
    She struggled to be as quiet as Jesse, but she couldn’t.
    “You going to run me off the wall or what?” she said.
    “No,” Jesse said.
    “So how come you’re sitting here?”
    “I was thinking what a waste of time this deal is for both of us,” Jesse said.
    “What deal?”
    “You sit on the wall and smoke dope. I chase you off. You come back. I chase you off. You come back. It’s a waste of my time and yours.”
    “I’m not wasting my time,” Michelle said.
    “Really?”
    “Really. It’s a free country. I should be able to do what I want.”
    “And this is what you want?” Jesse said. “Sit on the wall and smoke dope.”
    “You can’t prove I’m smoking dope.”
    “Doesn’t matter.”
    “So why don’t you leave me alone then?”
    “Why don’t you go to school?”
    “School sucks,” Michelle said.
    Jesse grinned.
    “Babe, you got that right,” he said. “You know that Paul Simon song, ‘When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school/It’s a wonder I can think at all’?”
    “Who’s Paul Simon?”
    “A singer. Anyway, yeah, school sucks. It’s one of the great scams in American public life. On the other hand, most people grind through it. How come you don’t?”
    “I don’t have to, I’m seventeen.”
    “True,” Jesse said.
    They were both quiet for a time. Michelle kept looking at Jesse as covertly as she could.
    “My sister says she sees you sometimes down the Gray Gull having drinks,” she said.
    “Un huh.”
    “So how come that’s okay and smoking dope isn’t?”
    “It’s legal and smoking dope is illegal.”
    “So that makes it right?” Michelle said.
    “Nope, just legal and illegal.”
    Michelle opened her mouth and then closed it. She was trying to think. Finally she said, “Well, that sucks.”
    Jesse nodded.
    “Lot of things suck,” he said. “After a while you sort of settle for trying not to suck yourself, I guess.”
    “By pushing kids around?” Michelle said.
    Jesse turned his head slowly and held her gaze for a moment.
    “Am I pushing you around, Michelle?”
    She shrugged and looked absently at the white meeting house across the street.
    “What do you think you’ll be doing in ten years?” Jesse said.
    “Who cares?” Michelle said.
    “Me,” Jesse said. “You ever see any thirty-year-old people sitting on the wall here, smoking dope?”
    Michelle gave a big sigh.
    “Oh please,” she said, drawing out the second word.
    Again Jesse nodded.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I know. Lectures suck too.”
    She almost smiled for a moment, and then looked even more sullen to compensate. The boys by the shopping center had tired of watching them and drifted off. On the front porch of the town library, across the common, a young woman with a small child clinging to her skirt, and another on her hip, was sliding books into the library return slot. Jesse wondered briefly when she got time to read.
    “You think I’m going to end up like her?” Michelle said, nodding at the woman.
    “No,” Jesse said.
    “Well, I’m not,” Michelle said.
    Jesse was quiet.
    “So what about right and wrong?” Michelle said after a time.
    “Right and wrong?”
    “Yeah. You said stuff was just legal or illegal. Well, what about it being right or wrong? Doesn’t that matter?”
    “Well, I’m not in the right or wrong business,” Jesse said. “I’m in the legal and illegal business.”
    “Oh, that’s a cop-out,” she said. “You just don’t want to answer.”
    “No, I don’t mind answering,” Jesse said. “That was part of my answer. There’s something to be said for trying to do what you’re paid to do, well.”
    He was aware that she was suddenly looking at him directly.
    “And sometimes that’s the best you can do. The other thing is that most people don’t have much trouble seeing what’s right or wrong. Doing it is sometimes complicated, but knowing the right thing is usually not so hard.”
    “You think so,” Michelle said in a tone that said she didn’t.
    “Sure. You and I both know, for instance, that sitting on the wall all day smoking grass isn’t the right thing for you to do with your life.”
    “Who the hell are you to say what’s right for me?” Michelle said.
    “The guy you asked,” Jesse said. “And chasing you off the wall is obviously not the right way to help you do the right thing.”
    “So why the hell are you