Night Passage (26 page)

“This isn’t happening right,” Abby said.

“No,” Jesse said.

“I … have had a very nice time with you, Jesse.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “It’s been nice.”

“People think you should resign.”

Jesse nodded.

“Want a ride back to your office?” Jesse said.

“No,” Abby said. “I’ll walk back. I need the time alone.” She smiled without pleasure. “Clear my head.”

“Sure thing,” Jesse said.

He was still leaning on the rail.

“Jesse,” she said. “Turn around.”

He did. She stepped to him and put her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest.

“I’m sorry, Jesse.”

He patted her gently on the back.

“It’s okay, Abby,” he said.

Then he let her go and she walked away down the hill toward town, the spit of snow glistening momentarily in her hair. Then she was out of sight and he turned back and looked at the gray water and listened to the gray gulls and thought about the other ocean and the night he left it. He smiled after a while.

“Here’s looking at you, Jenn,” he said out loud.

His voice was small and nearly soundless mixed with the wind and the ocean sound and the noise of the gulls.

Hasty didn’t like driving in city traffic. But he had to see Gino Fish, so the big Mercedes was wedged into the northbound commuter traffic on the Southeast Expressway. Hasty was nearly in tears.

“You dumb bastard,” he said to Jo Jo.

“What the hell are you yelling at me for?”

“Because this was your deal. You were the one vouched for Fish.”

“Bullshit,” Jo Jo said. “You come to me, I was trying to do you a favor. Don’t whine to me it didn’t work out.”

“You bastard,” Hasty said.

He turned off at Mass. Avenue and drove past Boston City Hospital. He didn’t like the city, and didn’t spend much time there. It took him two or three false turns to find Tremont Street and another ten minutes to find the block where Gino Fish had his storefront.

“You needa be careful about this,” Jo Jo said. “That Vinnie Morris is a quick sonova bitch.”

“I thought you were a tough guy,” Hasty said. “Are you scared of these people?”

“No, but it don’t make no sense,” Jo Jo said, “go charging fucking in there? Yelling and waving your arms, you know?”

“The goddamned fairy took my money,” Hasty said. “The Horsemen’s money. If I have to I’ll bring the whole militia company in here. And I’m going to tell him that.”

Hasty parked beside a hydrant near the Cyclorama, and got out.

“You going to back me?” he said to Jo Jo.

“I didn’t cut in for that,” Jo Jo said. “I set up the deal. They welshed on it. It’s between you and them.”

“You yellow belly,” Hasty said.

He slammed the door, and turned and went down Tremont Street to the storefront. It was empty. The door was locked. Hasty groaned in anger and disappointment and turned and went back to his car. He got in and started up without a word.

“Nobody there?” Jo Jo said.

Hasty nodded as he yanked the Mercedes out into the traffic and drove out of the South End on Tremont Street.

“I knew there wouldn’t be,” Jo Jo said. “Why I didn’t waste time walking down there.”

“You’re a yellow belly,” Hasty said.

“You want to go one on one with me?” Jo Jo said.

“These are your people, Jo Jo. I want my weapons, or I want my money.”

“You been stiffed, asshole. Don’t you get it? There aren’t any fucking weapons.” Jo Jo said “weapons” in exaggerated scorn. “There never were any weapons. They saw you coming.”

“You brought me to them. You get the money back.”

Jo Jo shook his head.

“I mean it, Jo Jo. You are in this far too deeply to just walk away.”

Jo Jo felt a little tingle of fear race up the backs of his thighs. His glance shifted onto Hasty’s face, and held. He pulled his chin down into his neck almost like a turtle retracting, and his neck thickened.

“I may be in it, Hasty, but I sure as shit ain’t in it alone.”

Hasty didn’t answer right away. He had driven out of the South End and onto Charles Street where it ran between the Common and the Public Garden. The city rose up all around them. A cold rain had begun to spit and Hasty turned the windshield wipers on to low intermittent.

“I do not believe what I am hearing,” Hasty said finally.

He was choosing his words carefully, talking as if to an adolescent, trying to speak with the icy assurance of command.

“We have paid you well for work you were willing to do. Now you speak as if, somehow, that gave you knowledge which you would use against us.”

“Hey, you’re the one talking about getting in deep,” Jo Jo said.

“And you are in deep. There is no information you have which you could use against us that would not also incriminate you.”

“You want people to know about Tammy Portugal? Or how you had me throw Lou Burke off the rocks? You think that might not get you in just a little fucking trouble?”

Hasty shook his head as if saddened. He turned left onto Beacon Street, past the Hampshire House with its line of tourists outside the Cheers bar.

“Jo Jo, you haven’t the intestinal fortitude. You inform on me and you go to the electric chair. It’s as simple as that, and you know it. You have great big muscles, and you are mean as hell, but you are as yellow as they come. You have nothing on me that won’t get you in trouble too.”

Jo Jo stared at Hasty with eyes that seemed without pupils, opaque eyes too small for his crude face. As Hasty watched him, between glances at the road, Jo Jo’s color deepened, and a small muscle twitched in his cheek.

“I oughta just throw you off the fucking rocks,” Jo Jo said.

“My men would tear you apart if that happened,” Hasty said. “Don’t threaten me, Jo Jo. I’m not afraid of you.”

“You think I’m bluffing?”

“I think you better think about how to get the money back that you allowed us to be cheated out of,” Hasty said.

At Berkeley Street he turned the car onto Storrow Drive and they headed back to Paradise in utter silence.

Jesse stood alone in Lou Burke’s small garden apartment. What struck him most was the anonymity of it. No pictures of family. No books. No old baseball gloves with the infield dust ground into the seams. Jesse walked slowly through the three small rooms. No newspapers stacked up. No magazines. A television set with a twenty-six-inch screen glowered at the living/dining area off the kitchenette. A small desk near the entry. Some bills due the end of the month. Two canisters of coffee on the kitchen counter, a Mr. Coffee machine. Some milk and some orange juice in the refrigerator. A couple of pairs of slacks in the closet, a blue suit, a starched fatigue outfit with Freedom’s Horsemen markings. Clean police uniform shirts in the bureau drawer. An alarm clock on the bedside table. No fishing equipment. No hunting gear. No cameras. No binoculars. No rugs on the floor. No curtains on the windows. The shades were all drawn to precisely the middle of the lower window. The bed was tightly made. There was no dust. No plants. No bowling trophies. The floors were polished. In the front hall closet was an upright vacuum cleaner.

Not much of a life, Lou.

Jesse stood in the middle of the living room and listened to the silence. He turned slowly. There was nothing he was forgetting. Nothing he’d overlooked. He wondered if his apartment would look like this to a stranger, empty and lifeless and temporary. He was glad Jenn’s picture was on his bureau. He looked once more around the small empty space. There was nothing more to see. So Jesse went out the front door and locked it behind him.

Back at the station Jesse stopped to talk with Molly.

“We got a typewriter around here anywhere?” Jesse said.

“Nope. Got rid of them five years ago when we got the computers.”

“Don’t have one left over in the cellar or the storage closet in the squad room, or anyplace?”

“No. Tom made a deal with a used-typewriter guy, from Lynn. When we went computer the typewriter guy came in, took all three typewriters. You want me to see if I can get you one?”

Jesse shook his head.

“No, just curious. Lou Burke have any family?”

“None that I know, Jesse. Parents died a while back. Far as I know he never married.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“Not that he ever talked about. Pretty much the department and the town was what he had.”

Jesse didn’t miss the cutting edge in the remark. The department was Lou Burke’s life, and Jesse had taken it from him.

“There was no typewriter in his apartment,” Jesse said.

“I’m sure there wasn’t,” Molly said. “Lou was a wonderful cop but he hated to write anything. I used to do half his reports for him.”

“So where did he type out his suicide note?” Jesse said.

Molly looked up at Jesse and started to speak and stopped and frowned.

“There’s no typewriter at his house,” she said.

“That’s correct,” Jesse said.

“The note wasn’t printed out of a computer.”

“No,” Jesse said.

“Maybe he went to somebody’s house that had a typewriter,” Molly said.

Jesse picked up a pad of blue-lined yellow paper from Molly’s desk. There were fifty pads just like it in the office supply cabinet in the squad room.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to have handwritten the note?” Jesse said.

“That is odd,” Molly said. “Though suicidal people are, you know”—Molly tossed her hands—“crazy.”

Jesse put the notepad back down on Molly’s desk. He didn’t say anything.

“Unless he didn’t write the note,” Molly said. “And whoever did it just assumed that there’d be typewriters in the station. But even if there were, we’d find out pretty quick that they weren’t used for the note.”

“Which means whoever wrote it was stupid,” Jesse said.

“That’s not all it means,” Molly said.

“No,” Jesse said, “it’s not.”

He walked back toward his office. Molly watched him as he went.

“Jesus,” she said softly.

Jesse parked his car in the curving cobblestone driveway of the Episcopal church rectory. It was a big brick building with a green center entrance door and green shutters. It was a bright morning, and the grass of the rectory lawn was wet with the early morning frost that had melted in the sun. A woman wearing an apron over a flowered dress answered Jesse’s ring.

She said, “Reverend is expecting you, Chief Stone.”

Jesse followed her into the study, where the reverend was at his desk. The room was lined with books, and there was a fire burning in the fireplace. Reverend Cotter was gray-haired and pink-cheeked. He was wearing a brown tweed jacket over his black minister’s front-and-backwards collar. He stood and shook Jesse’s hand and gestured him to a chair beside the desk. He waited until the housekeeper had left before he spoke.

“Thank you very much for coming so promptly,” he said.

He had a deep voice, and he was pleased with it.

“Glad to,” Jesse said.

Cotter unlocked the middle drawer of his desk with a small key on his key chain, and tucked the key chain back into his pants pocket. He opened the drawer and took out a five-by-seven manila envelope and placed it on his desk, taking time to center it and to adjust it so that it was neatly square in the middle of his clean desk blotter.

“This is very embarrassing,” he said.

“Whatever it is,” Jesse said, “it won’t be as embarrassing as other stuff I’ve been told.”

Cotter nodded.

“Yes, I’m sure. Indeed I often reassure my own parishioners in the same way when they come for help.”

Jesse nodded and smiled politely. Cotter took in a big breath of air and let it out. Then he handed the envelope to Jesse. It was postmarked the previous day from Paradise. It was addressed to Reverend Cotter, probably with a ballpoint pen, in block printing, no return address. Inside was a Polaroid picture. Jesse took it out, handling it by the edges, and looked at it. It was a picture of Cissy Hathaway, naked and provocative on a bed. There was nothing else in the envelope except a piece of shirt cardboard used to protect the picture. There was nothing in the picture to identify the room.

“Just this?” Jesse said.

“Yes,” Cotter said.

“Any idea why this would be sent to you?”

“No.”

“It came this morning?”

“Yes.”

Jesse sat quietly looking at the picture. He could see no real expression in Cissy’s face, though the harsh light of the Polaroid flashbulb would wash out subtlety.

“Mind if I keep this?” Jesse said.

“Please,” Cotter said. “I certainly don’t want it.”

“Anything else arrives let me know,” Jesse said. “Or if anything occurs to you.”

“Of course,” Cotter said.

Jesse put the picture back in the envelope, and slid the envelope in the side pocket of his jacket.

“What are you going to do?”

“We’ll check it for fingerprints,” Jesse said.

“Are you going to speak to Cissy?”

“Yes,” Jesse said.

“I … I am her minister,” Cotter said. “If I can help …”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “I’ll let you know if we need you.”

Jesse sat with Cissy Hathaway in her kitchen, looking out at the backyard now flowerless, the grass yellow in the weak sunlight. He handed her the Polaroid.

“This came today in the mail addressed to Reverend Cotter,” Jesse said.

Cissy took the picture and stared at it. As she looked at the picture she began to blush. Jesse was still. Cissy kept her eyes fixed on the picture, her face expressionless except for the bright flush that made her look feverish. She didn’t say anything, and Jesse didn’t say anything, and the silence grew stifling the longer it went on.

Finally Jesse said, “As far as I can see, there’s no crime here. You can tell me to buzz off, if you want to. But I thought you should know.”

Cissy put the picture facedown on the kitchen table and stared at the blank back of it. Jesse waited. Cissy got up from the table suddenly and walked to the counter. She got a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and stood with her back to him looking out the window over the sink at her driveway and the neighbor’s yard beyond it. She took a deep inhale and let the smoke dribble out. Jesse was silent.