this,” Jo Jo said. “That Vinnie Morris is a quick sonova bitch.”
“I thought you were a tough guy,”
Hasty said. “Are scred of these peopleT”
“No, but it don’t make no
sense,” Jo Io 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.”
Io Io shook his head.
“I mean it, Io Io. You are in this far too deeply to just walk away.”
Io Io 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
heating,” 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 and you know it. You have great big muscles, and y mean as hell, but you are as yellow as they come. Y have nothing on me that won’t get you in trouble too.”
Jo Jo stared at Hasty with eyes that seemed without i pfis, opaque eyes too small for his crude face. As Ha watched him, between glances at the road, Jo Jo’s cc deepened, and a small muscle twitched in his cheek.
“I oughta just throw you off the fucking rocks,” Jo i said.
“My men would tear you apart if that
happened,” Ha 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 mol back that you allowed us to be cheated out of,” Hasty st At Berkeley Street he turned the car onto Storrow D and they headed back to Paradise in utter silence.
jesse stment.
What struck him most was the anonymity
of’t. 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 magazires. 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 In the ‘front hall closet was an upright vacuum
. Not much of a life, Lou.
Jesse stood in the middle of the living room and listened the silence. He turned slowly. There was nothing he was Nothing he’d overlooked. He wondered if his would look like this to a stranger, empty and and temporary. He was glad Jenn’s picture was on bureau. He looked once more around the small empty 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.
B’i‘i “We got a
typewriter around here anywhere?” Jesse ,!-iI
’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. Torn 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 won
derful 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 wer
e 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.
of the Episcopal chUrch,rectory. It was a big brick bui with a green center entrance door and green shutters. I a bright morning, and the grass of the rectory lawn wa
· with the early morning frost that had melted in the st woman wearing an apron over a flowered dress ansv Jesse’s ring.
She said, “Reverend is expecting you, Chief Store Jesse followed her into the study, where the reverem at his desk.
The room was lined with books, and ther a fire burning in the fireplace. Reverend Cotter was i haired and pink-cbeeked. He was wearing a brown’t jacket over his black minister’s front-and-backwards c He stood and shook lesse’s hand and gestured him chair beside the desk. He waited until the housekeepe left before he spoke.
“Thank you very much for coming so
promptly, 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 parish-loners 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 lrovocative 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 i occurs to you.”
“Of course,” Cotter said.
Jesse put the picture back in the envelope, and slid th in the side pocket of his jacket.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’ll check it for
fingerprints,” Jesse said.‘t’Are you
going to speak to Cissy?“
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“I… I am her
minister,” Cotter said. “If I ca
help…”
“Sure,” Jesse said.
I’ll let you -know if we need you.‘
out at the backyard now fiowerYess, 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 th 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 neighbor’s yard beyond it. She took a deep inhale and the smoke dribble out. Jesse was silent.
“Jo Jo,” she said with
her‘ back still to him. “Jo Jo took that picture.
He has others.”
“Did he coerce you?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“Do you know why he sent the picture to your minis ter?”
Cissy took another big inhale and let the smoke out, still with her back to Jesse. She seemed to he memorizing every detail of the neighbor’s lawn. Jesse was quiet. It was going to come, he knew that. All he needed to do was wait.
“Yes,” Cissy said. “I
know.”
“Can you tell me?” Jesse said.
Cissy took a last drag on her cigarette and dropped it into the sink, turned on the water, flicked the disposal switch, and watched the butt disappear. Then she shut off the disposal, turned off the water, and turned from the sink.
The high color had left her face. Her eyes seemed larger than Jesse remembered.
“I am going to have to tell you things that mortify me,” she said. “I will. But you have to promise not to he judgmental.‘’
“I won’t be judgmental,
Cissy.”
“No, I think you won’t.
It’s why I think I can tell you.”
Jesse nodded gently and waited. Cissy stood at the sink and folded her arms.
“You have to help me, Jesse,”,
she said. “You have to help me say these things.”
Jesse stood and walked over to the sink and put one arm around Cissy’s. shoulders. She stiffened but she didn’t move.
“I was a cop,” Jesse said,
“in the second-largest city in the country. I have heard stuff you can’t even imagine. I
have seen stuff you don’t even know
exists.“
She nodded slowly, her arms still folded, his arm still around her shoulder.
“You’re human, Cissy. Humans do
things that they’re ashamed of. They get in trouble. They need help. I don’t want to get too dramatic here, but that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m
supposed to help you when you get in trouble.”
Cissy nodded again. Then they were both quiet, Cissy hugging herself, Jesse’s arm around her shoulder.
“I have been married to Hasty for
twenty-seven years.”
Cissy said softly. “I don’t know
if I love him, sometimes I don’t even know if I like him, but we’ve been together so long.”
She fumbled another cigarette out of the package and lit it.
&
nbsp; “I think Hasty likes sex. I know I do. But somehow we don’t seem to like it with each other. When we have sex it’s… technically correct, I guess. But it is not much else and we don’t have it very often. I feel very stiff and cold and awkward having sex with Hasty.”
She smoked for a tim, watching the exhaled smoke drift toward the ceiling.
“The longer we have been together, the
odder Hasty has become. He was an important young man from a good family when I first met him. All this business with Freedom’s Horsemen…”
She shook her head.
“It occupies him more and more every year.
I needed sex. And, I guess there is something very wrong with me, some of the kind of sex I needed.”
“No reason, right now, to decide if
there’s something wrong with what you needed,”
Jesse said.
“I know. I tell myself that. I took a
series of lovers.
of them were nice normal men who were happy to nice normal things with me.“
She took in some smoke and blew it out. actually met Jo Jo through Hasty. He came to the one day. He and Hasty talked business in the den I brought them some beer. The way Jo Jo looked at It was like he knew. I could feel his look go right my clothes. Right through everything I pretended
I knew he saw me. And I let him know I
knew.“
She was still standing stiffly,, but he had allowed her head to rest lightly against Jesse’s shoulder.
“He wasn’t the first man, but he
was the worst one.”
Cissy said. “And the worse he was, the
worse I was.”
She stopped talking and seemed to be thinking about her badness.
“The pictures?” Jesse said.
“They were my idea. I… liked
being that way and I liked to see myself that way.”
“There are more pictures?”
“Many.”
?‘And he has them.“
“Yes.”
“Probably been better,” Jesse said,
“if you kept them.”
“Maybe I half wanted him to tell,” she
said.
“Maybe.”
She half turned and dropped her cigarette in the sink and repeated the process of washing it down the disposal. Then she settled back against Jesse’s shoulder.
“So why did he go public now?” Jesse said.
“I think he’s mad at Hasty,” she
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