Night Passage - Robert B Parker

by Les Weil

  "Mistake," Jo Jo said.

  "No, he has to go. He'll ruin everything if he doesn't."

  "You can't kill the chief of police," Jo Jo said, "and think it'll keep things quiet. You seen that state cop, whatsisname."

  "Healy."

  "Yeah. You think that he's going to kiss it off when the second police chief in less than a year dies in this fucking town?"

  "It's a risk we'll have to take," Hasty said. "We're too close to the arms deal. The arms deal is crucial."

  "What's this 'we' shit, paleface? I'm the guy has to do the clip."

  "We're in this together, Jo Jo."

  Jo Jo looked almost amused.

  "Sure," he said. "Why don't we ace Lou Burke?"

  "Lou?"

  "Yeah. He's the only thing connects you to Tom Carson. Deep-six Burke and the connection's gonzolla."

  "Lou Burke?" Hasty said. "I've known Lou Burke for thirty years."

  "I dump him," Jo Jo said, "hide the body, make it look like he took off after Stone suspended him."

  "Lou's one of us," Hasty said. "He's a Horseman,"

  "And you think they ain't going to find somebody out in the wild west to finger him, say, yeah, he's the guy blew Tom Carson up? And you think when they get that they won't squeeze him, and when they squeeze him you think he won't spill his freaking guts?"

  "Lou wouldn't talk."

  "You think so, huh? I don't know how they do it in freaking Montana. .."

  "Wyoming," Hasty said.

  "Whatever," Jo Jo said. "I don't know if they electrocute you or hang you or do it with an injection or a fucking firing squad, but just say you're Lou Burke and you're sitting in jail and they tell you they are going to hang you or, if you don't like that idea, you can give us something and maybe we won't. You think Lou's gonna say gimme that noose, baby?"

  "Are you afraid to kill Jesse Stone?" Hasty asked.

  "I ain't afraid," Jo Jo said. "And I ain't stupid either. It's a lot smarter to take out Lou Burke than it is to clip Stone."

  "I can't betray the movement."

  "You hit Stone and it'll turn into a bowel movement," Jo Jo said.

  As they talked about the crime Jo Jo's vocabulary became more and more like a movie tough guy. Hasty hated him at that moment, more than he thought was possible. Jo Jo was a sneering, posturing bully. He cared for no cause, no person. No question of honor had ever penetrated that thick Neanderthal skull. He cared only about his muscles and the fear he could instill in people. Except Stone. Stone wasn't afraid of him, and Hasty was pretty sure that Jo Jo was afraid of Stone. What made the hatred worse, though, so that it trembled in his solar plexus, was the fact that Jo Jo was probably right this time.

  "How would you hide the body?" Hasty said.

  "Let me figure that out," Jo Jo said. "What you don't know you can't tell the cops later."

  "You think I'd tell the police anything?"

  Jo Jo looked at him without answering.

  "You don't understand, do you," Hasty said. "You don't understand commitment, or honor, or loyalty. And you certainly do not understand responsibility. You don't even know what these things mean. All you understand is fear."

  Jo Jo snorted.

  "What I understand, Hasty, is you want some guy iced, but you haven't got the balls to do it. We both understand that, don't we."

  Hasty was silent for a time. They reached the Gloucester circle, and went around it, and started back, southbound, on Route 128.

  "All right," Hasty said. "Kill Lou Burke, and hide the body. Make it look like he took off."

  "There's a little matter of price," Jo Jo said.

  "Thirty pieces of silver."

  "What the hell is that?" Jo Jo said. Hasty shook his head.

  "Same as Tammy," Hasty said.

  "No, Lou's a cop, and I got to hide the body. I want double Tammy."

  Hasty felt very tired.

  "Okay," he said. "It's a deal."

  "Up front," Jo Jo said.

  "Of course," Hasty said. "Just do it quickly."

  "What would you do without me, Hasty?" Jo Jo said. The weariness Hasty felt was nearly overwhelming. He had trouble concentrating on the road. He didn't respond to Jo Jo and they drove in silence the rest of the way.

  Chapter 64

  When Jesse answered the phone there was a pause and then he heard Jenn's voice.

  "Jesse?"

  He felt a small tug in the center of himself. He had always felt it when he heard her voice or saw her. Goddamn it.

  "Hello, Jenn."

  "I was in the middle of a swallow," Jenn said, "when you answered. How are you?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Are you having a drink?"

  "Yes."

  "How many?"

  "First one."

  "It's later there, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you really all right, Jesse?"

  "So far."

  "Are you still scared?"

  "Sort of."

  "Say more about that, Jesse. Can you get any help?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, have you caught the one who killed the girl?"

  "I know who he is. I can't prove it yet."

  "Is he what scares you?"

  "No, it's more ... well. The guy I replaced, guy named Carson, got blown up by a bomb out in Wyoming. Wyoming cops have evidence of a militia movement involvement back east. One of my cops, guy that was acting chief before me, that interviewed me for this job, guy named Lou Burke, flew to Denver just before Carson got blown up. Burke was a demolition specialist in the Navy. He's a member of the local militia movement which calls itself Freedom's Horsemen."

  "You think he did it?"

  "I'll bet," Jesse said.

  "Have you arrested him?"

  "Not yet. I suspended him."

  "Why not arrest him, turn it over to the Wyoming police?"

  "I'm not sure they can make the case yet, but even if they can, I want more," Jesse said. "The chief selectman in town, the guy that hired me, is also the commander of Freedom's Horsemen."

  "You think he's involved?"

  "He's a married man. He's having trouble with his wife. And he was having an affair with the girl that was murdered."

  Again there was silence while Jenn drank some wine. Jesse's drink sat untouched on the kitchen counter.

  "But you know who killed her," Jenn said.

  "Yeah, but now, I'm not so sure I know why."

  "You said last time it was about you."

  "Yeah, and maybe it is, but now maybe it was about more than me."

  "So why don't you confront, or arrest, or call in the FBI or whatever."

  "I don't know exactly if any of what I suspect is true. I don't know who I can trust. Maybe I can't trust anybody."

  "Even your own policemen?"

  "Even. I'm alone here, Jenn."

  "I could come."

  Jesse was silent. He felt suddenly overwhelmed by the desire for her to be there.

  "Jenn ... I can't. .."

  "I know, Jesse. I know."

  Jesse was silent, struggling not to fail. "I can't have that, Jenn. At least not yet."

  "I know."

  "I want it more than I can tell you, but I can't let that happen to me again. First I have to do this. Then we can see about us."

  "It's awful to be alone, Jesse."

  "If you can't be alone," Jesse said, "you can't be with someone. I can't have you here because I'm scared. You can't come here because you're scared for me. You understand?"

  "Yes."

  They were quiet. Jesse picked up his drink and took a sip. He had switched his scotch from on-the-rocks to with-soda.

  "You seeing anybody?" Jesse said.

  "No. You?"

  "I'm still dating that woman, but it's not going anywhere."

  "Because you don't trust her?"

  "I guess."

  "Can't have a relationship with someone you don't trust," Jenn said.

  "I know."
<
br />   "It must be very hard, Jesse, to be alone in trouble where there's no one to trust."

  Jesse drank more scotch and soda. "Yes," he said.

  "Stranger in a strange land," she said.

  "I want to get them all," Jesse said slowly. "Everybody. I want the town cleaned up. I want to know when I see somebody that they're not a murderer or an anarchist, or whatever, you know? I want the pleasant little town I thought I was getting when I came here."

  "Maybe that's more than you can have," Jenn said.

  "I want to find out."

  "Get some help, Jesse."

  "I can't," Jesse said. "I need to do this alone."

  "Are you proving something to me, Jesse?"

  "No."

  "To yourself, then."

  "I guess so."

  "I know you, Jesse," Jenn said across the continent, "I know how tough you are. I know how smart you are. If you need to do this, you'll do it. You won't lose this, Jesse."

  "I don't know, Jenn, I mean thank you for what you said, but it's like wrestling with smoke in the dark." They were quiet again at each end of the wire. "You seem a little different, Jenn," Jesse said after a time.

  "You think so?"

  "Yeah. You getting any help?"

  "Yes.' "Shrink?"

  "Yes. "

  "A real one, not some guy does full body rolfing?"

  "No. It's a woman. She might be tougher than you, Jesse."

  "Nobody's that tough," Jesse said and heard her laugh and felt excited as he always had when he made her laugh.

  "Yes," Jenn said, "that's the Jesse I know."

  "It helps to talk with you, Jenn."

  "Good."

  Again they were quiet.

  "I guess I better hang up," Jesse said.

  "Okay," Jenn said. "Be very careful."

  "Yes."

  "I'm here, Jesse."

  "I know. It helps, Jenn."

  They hung up and Jesse stared a long time at his halfempty glass with the excitement pulsating in the pit of his stomach. He stood finally and picked it up and emptied it into the sink. Then he went into the bedroom and opened his bureau drawer and took out a picture of Jenn and set it upright on the top of the bureau.

  Chapter 65

  There were two Paradise cruisers and the fire department rescue van parked in a semicircle on Indian Hill. Lou Burke's car, a six-year-old Buick sedan, was parked, doors open, against the safety barrier at the verge of the rust-colored granite cliffs which dropped two hundred feet straight down to the surf. The car's ignition was on, the gas tank was empty, and the battery was dead. Jesse popped the hood and put his hand on the engine block. It was cold. He walked to the barrier and looked down to where the dark shape tossed and wallowed in surf, caught among the rocks.

  "Do we know if it's Lou?" Jesse said.

  "Not yet," Peter Perkins said. "No way down the cliffs from here. Suitcase is coming around with the police boat and a couple of divers, but it'll take him a while."

  Jesse nodded and walked back to the Buick. On the steering wheel, attached with a piece of gray duct tape, was a typewritten note:

  Jesse,

  I can't stand it any more, suspected of murder, suspended. It's on you, Jesse.

  Lou Burke

  "Bag the note," Jesse said.

  Peter Perkins picked up the note by one corner and put it carefully into a transparent plastic envelope.

  "You think Lou killed himself, Jesse?" Perkins said.

  "Don't know," Jesse said.

  "There's Suitcase," Perkins said.

  The police boat from the town wharf nosed around the ragged jut which marked the end of the harbor, and pushed through the hard morning chop toward the base of the cliff. Jesse could see Suitcase Simpson and two men in wet suits. The light was pale in the early morning and the late-fall sun gave a weak yellow light, and no warmth. The wind off the ocean was strong and cold.

  The boat steered in as close as it could to the surf line below the cliffs, and the two men in wet suits went over and into the black water. It took them almost ten minutes to work their way to the dead man, bumping against the boulders, facedown in the seafoam. One of the divers attached a line, and with the two divers steering the body, Suitcase reeled it in toward the boat. The body bumped against the side of the police boat and flopped inhumanly as Suitcase and the two divers got it in over the gunwales and laid it faceup on board.

  "Is it Lou?" Jesse yelled, but his voice was lost in the wind and surf sound. He could see Simpson looking up at him. Simpson yelled, but Jesse could not hear him. Jesse cupped his hands as if making a megaphone, and Simpson went into the cabin and came out with the bullhorn.

  "I think it's Lou," Simpson yelled, his voice amplified and dehumanized by the bullhorn. "He's been banging around down here for a while and it's hard to tell."

  Jesse nodded and gave Simpson a thumbs-up and the police boat swung in an arc away from the foot of the cliffs, opened the engines, and roared, with the east wind behind it now back around the point toward the town wharf.

  "See what you can do here," Jesse said to Peter Perkins.

  He got into his cruiser, set the blue light flashing, and headed for the town wharf. There was barely anyone on the road at 6:10 in the morning and he had no need of the siren. I really can pick 'em, he thought as he drove through the old town with its narrow streets and narrower sidewalks and narrow old houses built right up against them. Three homicides in a year. Towns like this you're supposed to get about one a career. He thought about Jenn for a moment, and then he was there. He could see the police boat slow now as it passed through the boats winter-moored in the harbor. He got out of the car with the wind pushing at him. Seagulls were roosting on the tops of pilings and along the edge of the big town float. He went into the wharf office and poured himself some coffee and drank it with Cremora and sugar while he waited for Simpson and the body. He still had some left when the boat docked against the float, and he was still sipping it when he stepped over the gunwales of the police boat and squatted on his heels next to the sodden corpse.

  "You're right," Jesse said to Simpson. "It's kind of hard to say who it is. You find any I.D. on him?"

  Simpson looked like he might be a little seasick. "Once we got him in the boat," he said, "I didn't touch him."

  Jesse nodded. He rolled the body over and found the pants pockets and with some trouble got a soaked wallet out. He opened it.

  "It's Lou's wallet," Jesse said.

  "Jesus," Simpson said.

  The two divers and the boat captain looked elaborately elsewhere.

  "Yeah," Jesse said. "We'll get a positive I.D. from the M.E., I guess. But it sure seems to be Lou."

  "Why'd you suspend him, Jesse?"

  "I'll tell you about it later," Jesse said.

  "Did you really suspect him of murder?"

  "Later, Suit."

  "Yeah, sure, Jesse. Lou didn't seem the type, you think?"

  "I don't know if there is a type," Jesse said. "But if there is, no, Lou didn't seem to be it."

  "I guess there's a lot we don't know yet," Simpson said.

  "Yes," Jesse said, "there sure as hell is."

  Chapter 66

  Jo Jo recognized the voice on the phone. It belonged to the pretty young man who worked for Gino Fish.

  "Mr. Fish asked me to tell you that the product you asked for is now available."

  "How do we pick it up?" Jo Jo asked.

  "Go to the information booth at the South Shore Plaza with the correct amount of money, in cash, as specified. Someone will meet you and tell you the rest. You'll be expected at two o'clock today."

  "I gotta talk to my guy," Jo Jo said.

  "You can talk to anyone you want," the pretty boy said. "But you're there at two or the deal is canceled."

  "For crissake," Jo Jo said.

  But the pretty boy had hung up.

  "Faggot bastard," Jo Jo said aloud.

  Then he called Hasty Hathaway and at 12:30 they we
re in Hasty's Mercedes, with a suitcase full of small bills, heading for the South Shore.

  "It's right there where Route Three splits off from the expressway for the Cape," Jo Jo said.

  "Well, how are we to transport the arms?" Hasty said. "Didn't they say anything?"

  "Just what I told you," Jo Jo said.

  They parked near the entrance to Macy's and walked through the mall, it was busy in the early afternoon. The stores were already pushing Christmas. There were Christmas trees and pictures of Santa Claus, and miniature village scenes and railroad trains that circled endlessly through the fake snow. There were Salvation Army troopers with their bells and buckets, and tinsel and shiny ornaments and a lot of people, mostly women, often with small bored children dressed too warmly. Jo Jo and Hasty stopped beside the information booth. Jo Jo was carrying the money in a green sports equipment bag that said Adidas on it in white letters. The women behind the information desk were wearing Santa Claus hats. There was a big clock on the booth. It read ten minutes of two.

  At 2:15 a smallish man in a longshoreman's cap and a Patriots warm-up jacket walked up to Hasty and said, "I'm from Gino."

  "Money's in the bag," Jo Jo said.

  With the bag still on Jo Jo's shoulder, the smallish man zipped it open enough to peer in. He nodded.

  "Okay," he said. "You give me the bag. I give you the keys to the truck and tell you where it's parked."

  "You don't get the dough until we see the product," Jo Jo said.

  "Nope, deal goes down like I said, or it don't go down at all."

  "And maybe I grab your scrawny little fucking neck and squeeze it until you tell me where the truck is," Jo Jo said.

  The smallish man shrugged, and glanced over toward a bookstore fifty yards down the mall. Vinnie Morris was leaning against the wall outside the bookstore with his arms folded across his chest.

  "Maybe not," the smallish man said.

  "You know if you double-cross us," Hasty said, "I can bring an army down on you."

  "Sure," the smallish man said. "You want the deal or not?"

  "Give him the money, Jo Jo."

  Jo Jo shrugged. The sight of Vinnie Morris had taken a lot of the ferocity out of him. He took the bag off his shoulder and handed it to the smallish man. The smallish man handed him a set of two keys on a small orange plastic key tag.

  "It's a Penske rental truck," the smallish man said, "Mass plates 354-6AV. It's parked outside the entrance next to Charlie's Saloon."