Night Passage js-1
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Molly was on the phone.
“Trash pickup has been delayed a day
because of Labor Day,” she said into the phone.
“No, ma’am. One day
!ater…Wben’s your usual
pickup?…Then it’ll be
Thursday this week… Yes, ma’am.
Glad to.“
She hung up and smiled at Jesse.
“Suitcase due in this morning?”
“He’s on shift,” Molly
said. “Seven to three. Want me to get him in here?”
“When it’s convenient,”
Jesse said. “Nice job on the trash pickup dates.”
“Lotta practice,” Molly said.
“They call after every holiday.‘’
Jesse went back into his office and looked at the list of gun permits some more. He looked at them for a long time with his lips pursed, then he pushed the print button and watched as the sheets came silently from the laser printer.
.He was still watching them when Simpson knocked on his door and came in. He took off his hat and stood in front of Jesse’s desk a little awkwardly. At twenty-two he was still not entirely comfortable being called into the chief’s office. Even if the Chief wasn’t very old himself.
“Hi, boss.”
“Close my door, Suit, and then sit
down.”
Simpson did as he was told. His shoulders looked tight.
“You’re not in
trouble,” Jesse said. “I just need some help and you seemed the right guy to give it.”
Simpson’s shoulders relaxed. He put his hat on the edge of Jesse’s desk and leaned back slightly in his chair.
“Sure, Jesse.”
“You know about the militia
group’in town.”
“Freedom’s Horsemen, sure. Mr.
Hathaway is the commander, I thi.nk. I never figured the name out, though, tell you the truth. There isn’t a one of them can ride a damn horse.”
“And you know most of the people in the group?”
“Oh sure. I lived here all my life, Jesse.
I know about everybody in town.”
“That’s why I figured you were
the right one for this, Suit.”
Jesse reached into the printer catch basket and took out the permit list and handed it to Simpson.
“Go through this list,” Jesse
said. “Check off the names that are also Freedom’s Horsemen.”
“Sure. You want me to do it right
now?”
“Yes, please.”
Simpson took a ballpoint pen from the pocket of his uniform shirt and began to go slowly through the list. Jesse watched quietly. It took Simpson a long time to go through the hundred or so names on the list. When he finished he handed the list over to Jesse and capped his pen and put it carefully back in his shirt pocket. Most of the names were checked.
“I don’t know who a couple of
those people are,” Simpson said. “I put a question mark beside them. And a couple people I’m not sure if..they’re in the Horsemen or not. So I put two question marks next to them.”
Jesse glanced over the list. There were only twelve unmarked names.
“Most of them are Horsemen,” he
said.
“Sure,” Simpson said.
“It’s always the gun guys join a militia.”
Jesse nodded.
“Gun is probably a prerequisite,”
he said. “What I’m wondering is why so few non-Horsemen have permits.”
“Most people are scared of guns.”
Jesse didn’t answer. He stared at the list for a time while Simpson sat and waited.
“How come you want to know this,
Jesse?” Simpson asked finally.
“Just like to keep track, Suit. Militias have sometimes gotten a little hairy.”
“Oh hell, Jesse, you take the Horsemen too serious. I known most of them since I been a little kid. They just like to shoot, hang around with each other. Drink beer after the meetings.
Hell, Lou’s one of the officers, for crissake.”
“You’re probably right, Suit.
What I would like is if you kept it to yourself, though, be kind of embarrassing if Lou . found out, or Mr. Hathaway, that I was checking them out.”
“Oh sure, Jesse, no sweat. I
won’t say a damned word.”
“And the other thing, Suit, if you know anybody that tried to get a gun permit and couldn’t, could you let me know his name.”
“That off the record too, Jesse?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Simpson said and his
round pink face widened as he smiled. “Suitcase Simpson, Undercover.”
of Paradise was left over from the time when every town had a movie theater. There was a balcony. The ceiling was high.
And the screen was big, with maroon drapes gathered at each side of it.
Jesse didn’t like the movie much. But he liked the theater.
And he enjoyed being with Abby.
“What’d you think,” she
said as they walked out onto Washington Street.
“The computer broke, they’d have
had no movie,” Jesse said.
He had the slightly disoriented lightness he always felt coming out of a movie.
“Computer?” Abby said.
“Oh, you mean all the special effects.”
“Un huh.”
“But that’s how film is made
these days. I mean art is partly about making use of the technology available.”
“Art?” Jesse said.
There was a gym on the second floor next to the theater, and coming out the front door of the gym and walking toward them was Jo Jo Genest. He had on a cutoff black tee shirt and gray sweatpants and a black headband. His long hair was wet with sweat. He was wearing the fingerless leather gloves that everyone wore in the movies. His face was dark with an unshaven beard. The tee shirt read, I am an animal. I will eat you, across the front.
“Hey, Chief Stone,” Jo Jo said.
“How you doing?”
Jesse looked at him without speaking.
“How you doing, little lady,” Jo
Jo said.
“Fine,” Abby said.
“Closing in on that cat killer,
chief?.”
Jesse continued to look at him dead-eyed.
“Whatsa matter, you can’t hear
me?” Jo Jo said.
·
Some of the people coming from the movie slowed, looking covertly at the confrontation.
· “You got an alibi for the time
of the cat killing?” Jesse said. He was smiling, playing to the crowd, which was pretending not to notice as it moved around the scene.
“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.‘t 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. I
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 happenin
g, 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.
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 biSck wall. But he didn’t. This was business, and he Was always aware of Vinnie Morals 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.” lie 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 liasty’s disapproval.
But Gino was Gino and he had to meet the client.
liasty 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 liasty uncomfortable, lie 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 x/lU$q¢
‘57 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 sl.owly. 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, bu
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 OF not.”
“Of course I do,” Fish said.
“Let’s talk particulars.”
“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 he
r 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 twehty-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.
bridge, Hasty driving the big Mercedes, Jo $o 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 attentipn to the view.