Night Passage (15 page)

“Sure do,” Jo Jo said.

“How do you know when the cat was killed?” Jesse said.

“Huh?”

Jo Jo stopped smiling.

“You got an alibi for the time the cat was killed, you must know when the cat was killed. How do you know that?”

“Hey, don’t be an asshole, Stone. I just meant whenever it happened, I didn’t do it, so I’d have an alibi.”

“Turn around,” Jesse said.

His voice was flat.

“What?”

“Turn around. Put your hands flat against the wall.”

“Wait a freaking minute, Stone.”

“You disobeying the lawful order of a policeman?” Jesse said.

He unbuttoned his blazer jacket.

“What are you gonna do? Shoot me?” Jo Jo said.

“Hands on the wall,” Jesse said in the same flat voice.

Abby had taken a couple of steps away from Jesse, moving closer to the passersby who paused and stared, or walked by as if nothing were happening, depending on their temperament.

“Oh for crissake,” Jo Jo said.

He placed his hands flat against the building.

“Step away from the building, leaving your hands in place,” Jesse said. “Spread your legs.”

Jo Jo did as he was told. His face was flushed, and his breath was coming shorter. Jesse tapped his ankles with the edge of one foot, moving Jo Jo’s feet farther apart. Then he patted him down. When he was through, he stepped back away from Jo Jo and stared at him without speaking.

“How long am I supposed to stand here?” Jo Jo said.

“Until I tell you to stop,” Jesse said.

He continued to look silently at Jo Jo for another full minute.

Then he said, “Okay.”

Jo Jo straightened and turned from the wall. He glared at Jesse without speaking. Jesse stared back at him.

Then Jesse spoke very softly. “We both know something, don’t we, pal?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“We both know,” Jesse said again.

“Aw,” Jo Jo said and made a push-away motion with his left hand, and stepped past Jesse and walked down the street away from them, trying to swagger.

Jesse stepped over beside Abby.

“Want to eat at the Rosewood?” Jesse said.

“Jesus Christ,” Abby said.

“I don’t like this,” Hasty said to Jo Jo as they walked along Tremont Street.

“Gino says it’s this way or no way,” Jo Jo said. “He likes to see who he’s doing business with.”

“Why does someone like him care?” Hasty said.

Jo Jo shrugged.

“Gino’s a strange guy,” Jo Jo said.

They went down the stairs to the basement-level entrance and walked into Development Associates of Boston. The pretty young man behind the reception desk looked up at them.

“Well, Tarzan,” he said with his infuriating smile. “And who’s this, Cheetah?”

Jo Jo had a momentary image of himself yanking the little faggot from behind the desk and smashing his head against the white brick wall. But he didn’t. This was business, and he was always aware of Vinnie Morris and his odd unnerving stillness, and how quick everyone said he was when he had reason to be.

“Gino’s expecting us,” Jo Jo said.

“Me check,” the young man said. “You wait.”

He stood and went back through the door behind the desk and into the back room. In a moment he came out and made a sweeping gesture of invitation like a maitre d’ at a pretentious restaurant. Jo Jo could almost feel Hasty’s disapproval. But Gino was Gino and he had to meet the client.

Hasty looked around the inner office. It too was white brick, with a vase full of flowers on the desk. A tall spare man sat behind the desk, and a compact efficient-looking man sat to Gino’s left, tilting his straight chair back against the wall.

“I’m Gino Fish,” the spare man said. “This is my associate Vinnie Morris.”

Morris didn’t make any sign that he even heard Gino. He simply looked at them without expression. Vinnie Morris made Hasty uncomfortable. He made him think of his new police chief, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Something about potential unexpressed, maybe. The motionless implication that there would be more than what you saw, if you pushed beyond the stillness.

“How do you do,” Hasty said.

Why was he so uncomfortable? He was meeting a couple of small-time crooks. He was the president of his own bank. He commanded a force of men that would liquefy these two thugs at his order. If one were to guess from the nance at the reception desk, Fish might even be a homosexual.

“You want some guns,” Fish said.

“As many as you can get, small arms, heavy weapons. I’m sure Jo Jo has spelled all this out for you.”

“Jo Jo couldn’t spell cat,” Fish said, “if you gave him the C and the A. What do you want the weapons for?”

“There’s no need for you to know.”

“I like to know,” Fish said. “You want to do business with me, you do it on my terms. What are you going to do with the weapons?”

“We are a group of free men,” Hasty said. “Patriots.”

Fish smiled.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Hasty said.

He could feel his face getting hot.

“Go on,” Fish said.

“We know that the government is intent on destroying us. We are ready for it. But we need weapons. Not only for the moment but for the long struggle. We need to stockpile so that when they think they’ve confiscated our arms, we can unearth a new supply and rise when they least expect it.”

Fish nodded slowly. He glanced once at Vinnie Morris, and then back at Hasty.

“So, you’re going to bury the guns?” Fish said.

“Yes.”

Fish smiled.

“This got to do with an international Jewish conspiracy?” he said.

“I know you’re mocking, but you’ll see. Jews, Catholics, one-worlders, anybody who wishes us to give up our sovereignty to a foreign power.”

“Like the Pope, or the UN,” Fish said.

“Yes.”

Fish looked again at Vinnie Morris.

“See?” Fish said. “Didn’t I say it would be worth it to have him come in and see us?”

“That’s what you said.”

Jo Jo didn’t like the way this was going. He didn’t have any idea what Hasty was talking about. He never had known why the Horsemen ran around in the woods with guns. This was the first he’d heard about one-worlders, whatever they were. But he knew Gino was having fun with them, and it made him feel sweaty. For his part Hasty wasn’t used to being laughed at. He wasn’t sure how one was supposed to respond to being laughed at.

“Lot of unmarked UN helicopters hovering over, ah, where are you from again?”

“Paradise,” Hasty said.

His face felt somewhat stiff.

“Ah yes,” Fish said. “Paradise.”

“I am doing business with you,” Hasty said. His voice was hoarse and seemed hard to squeeze through his windpipe. “Admittedly. But you are also doing business with me, and goddamn it, if you don’t want the business, just keep it up and I’ll take my money somewhere else, where they don’t have a damned fairy at the reception desk.”

There was silence in the office for a long moment. Vinnie kept his blank stare on Jo Jo. Then Fish smiled slowly.

“He used the F word, Vinnie.”

Vinnie Morris nodded without saying anything. His eyes steady on Jo Jo.

“Spunky devil, isn’t he?” Fish said.

Vinnie shrugged.

“Well,” Hasty said, hoarsely. “You want the business or not.”

“Of course I do,” Fish said. “Let’s talk particulars.”

Suitcase Simpson was blushing.

“Well, did you ever think of doing that?” Cissy Hathaway said.

They were sitting on the king-sized bed in a Holiday Inn in the middle of the afternoon drinking California champagne out of the little plastic glasses.

“Jesus, no,” Simpson said. “Cissy, you got to understand, I haven’t had that much experience, you know? I mean you weren’t my first, but, well, I got a lot to learn.”

“But you have youth,” Cissy said. “And energy.”

She drank champagne and refilled her plastic cup.

“Thank God,” she said, “for energy.”

Simpson blushed again and drank, as much to occupy his hands as any other reason. He didn’t really like champagne. It was sour compared to Pepsi, and sweet compared to beer. He really liked beer better. Hell, he admitted to himself, he really liked Pepsi better. But sitting in a motel with a married woman you were about to screw, didn’t seem the right time for Pepsi. Cissy was wearing a little black dress with thin straps over the shoulders and very high heels. She had gotten to the hotel first and he knew she had changed into these clothes. He could see the brown dress she’d worn hanging in the closet. The mirror in the bathroom was still misted so he knew she’d showered, which meant that she had put on the makeup just before he arrived. She’d brought the champagne too, and he knew she was paying for the room. He felt a little funny about not paying. But he didn’t have all that much money, and she had tons. I guess my contribution is the energy, he thought.

“You love your husband?” he said.

Cissy widened her eyes slightly.

“Do I love Hasty?” she said.

“I mean you sneak off with me every week. Maybe other people.”

Cissy narrowed her eyes and smiled to suggest that maybe he was right.

“But you don’t want a divorce or anything, right?”

“Divorce? No, I don’t want to divorce Hasty. We have been together for twenty-seven years. He is worth a lot of money. We have a nice home. He is not demanding of my time, and we are comfortable with each other.”

“So how come you cheat on him?” Simpson said.

He wished he hadn’t said “cheat” as soon as it came out. But Cissy didn’t seem to mind.

“Hasty is not passionate,” she said. “I am.”

“That’s for sure,” Simpson said.

Cissy smiled and looked at him sideways like Lauren Bacall.

“This week,” she said, “I think we should experiment with positions.”

He thought they’d already been doing that, but he didn’t say so.

“Sure,” he said.

They went north from Boston, over the Mystic River bridge, Hasty driving the big Mercedes, Jo Jo looming beside him. It was a high bridge and at the peak of its arch you could look east down the long harbor where the city seemed to rise directly from the water, or west, up the river where the vast Boston Edison plant sent white vapor into the bright blue air. Neither Hasty nor Jo Jo paid any attention to the view.

Jo Jo was worried about the way the meeting had gone with Gino. He was bothered by the crack about how he couldn’t spell cat. It had been a mistake for Hasty to call the receptionist a fairy. He probably was. Gino was probably scoring him. But it wasn’t smart to talk like that to a guy like Gino. He didn’t like the way Vinnie Morris always watched him. He never looked at anyone else. Hasty had no idea what these people were like. If Gino simply nodded his head, Vinnie would have shot both of them dead. They always said with Vinnie at least it was quick. No lingering. No pain. One right between the eyes and sayonara. Hasty didn’t get that. Gino had laughed at them both. Jo Jo knew that he had. But Hasty seemed to think he was some kind of stand-up guy because he got to have war games behind the high school every week or so. He wouldn’t be so fucking stand-up if Vinnie put one right between Hasty’s eyes. Jo Jo didn’t know what Gino would do, but he wasn’t going to let that fairy remark go. Jo Jo was willing to bet the ranchos grande on that. He hunched the muscles in his back, felt them swell and press against the fabric of his shirt. He often did that when he was scared. Made him feel impregnable. As if the wall of muscle he’d created could keep him safe.

Hasty felt good about the way he’d stood up to Gino Fish. You have to be firm. And he was pretty sure they knew that he was firm. He wasn’t just some suburban banker in over his head. He commanded armed men. Once they realized who they were dealing with, Fish had been as nice as pie. Good meeting, Hasty thought. The arms deal seemed firm and Freedom’s Horsemen could at last be fully combat-ready. He couldn’t stave off what was to come, perhaps, but, properly armed, he and his men could keep their little piece of America safe and free. They went over the crest of the bridge, where the toll booths had been before it was toll-free northbound, and sloped down toward Chelsea. Hasty needed to clear Tammy Portugal from the agenda. He could not have his life’s work contaminated by a mercenary woman, just as his life’s work was to reach fulfillment. He was a little worried about the new chief. Jesse didn’t seem to be what he was supposed to be when Hasty hired him. He seemed to have his drinking under control. He seemed to be a lot tougher and maybe a lot smarter than they had thought he would be when he had sat in the hotel room in Chicago smelling of booze, trying not to slur his speech. But that wasn’t clear yet, and aside from manhandling Jo Jo, which Hasty had actually rather enjoyed, Stone hadn’t gotten in the way, and maybe would not. If he did he could be dealt with. If one were steadfast, one could deal with what came along. It was the girl that needed tending. He knew it was as much his fault as hers, his own weakness, to throw himself into the arms of this cheap tramp, like he had. But he was a man, and a man needed things. Cissy seemed unable to give him those things. He didn’t know why, and after a while had stopped thinking about it. Women were women. So he’d made a mistake, but he could rectify it.

He glanced over at Jo Jo sitting vastly in the passenger side of the big Mercedes. Someday, perhaps, when he was no longer of use, he might be rectified as well. But not yet. For all his loutish stupidity he was handy.

They reached the flat where the roadway curved through Chelsea before it split off to go north along Route 1 or east along the Revere Beach Parkway.

“Jo Jo,” Hasty said. “I need you to fix something for me.”

Michelle Merchant was smoking dope with some friends on the low stone wall of the historic burial ground opposite the town common. They liked to sit there and freak out the adults. The adults retaliated through the selectmen who posted “No Loitering” signs and insisted that the Paradise police enforce them. Michelle was seventeen. She had dropped out of school after tenth grade and spent as much time as possible on the cemetery wall.