Night Passage (12 page)

“He rarely sees me undressed,” she said.

“Well, ain’t that a trip,” Jo Jo said. “Everybody else in town sees you that way.”

“Must you?” Cissy said.

“Well,” Jo Jo said with a wide grin, “maybe not everybody, but I’ll bet I ain’t the only one, am I right?”

Cissy shook her head without answering.

“Well, I’m not,” Jo Jo said. “One guy once a week ain’t enough for you. Maybe you do different things. Maybe Thursday’s your night for rough trade. But I’m not the only guy.”

A flush smudged along Cissy’s cheekbones. She took her small straw purse from the top of the dresser, put her lipstick in it, closed it carefully, and then, without looking again at Jo Jo, went out of the bedroom. Jo Jo made no move to go with her.

Jo Jo said, “Good night, slut,” but she was probably too far down the stairs to hear him.

He closed the door, and began to strip the bed. He put the sheets and pillowcases in the old-fashioned wicker laundry hamper in the bathroom, and remade the bed with clean sheets. When he was done he went into the bathroom and took a long shower. After he got out and toweled dry, looking at his muscles in the mirror, he rubbed a little Neosporin ointment into the scratches on his hand.

Lou Burke always looked as if he were ready for inspection. His uniform was tailored and pressed. There were military creases in his shirt. His badge shined. His shoes were spit-shined. His pistol belt and holster gleamed with polish. What little hair he had left was always freshly cut. He was carefully clean-shaven, and he smelled faintly of cologne.

“So tell me about this militia group you belong to,” Jesse said.

Burke shrugged. Carefully, Jesse thought.

“Freedom’s Horsemen?” Burke said.

Jesse nodded.

“Just a bunch of guys, like to shoot, like to stay ready,” Burke said.

“Ready for what?”

“For whatever comes. You know, like the Constitution says, a well-regulated militia.”

Jesse nodded.

“Everybody got paper for the guns?”

“Sure,” Burke said. “Mostly F.I.D.’s. Guys with handguns got carry permits.”

“And discharging a firearm within town limits?”

Burke smiled.

“No problem. Selectmen made that legal, four, five years ago, look it up, as long as it is not done in a way to endanger life or property,” Burke said. “Besides, even if it were illegal, you going to arrest half the town government, including the head selectman?”

“Not me,” Jesse said. “Any automatic weapons?”

“Nope. These guys wouldn’t know where to get one. Hunting rifles mostly, some shotguns, couple old M1’s, couple of M1 carbines that fire semi only.”

“Hasty the commander?”

“Yeah. He’s real serious about it.”

“Any talk of, you know, white supremacy, Jewish conspiracy, that kind of stuff?”

“Hell no, Jesse. We’re a self-defense force that enjoys getting together one day a week and doing some maneuvers. You know I wouldn’t be a part of anything that wasn’t straight.”

“Any blacks in the self-defense force?”

“No, but hell, there’s no blacks in town, are there?”

“Good point,” Jesse said.

“Probably why a lot of people move here, get away from what’s going on in Boston.”

“What’s going on in Boston?”

“Aw, come on, Jesse. You worked in L.A. You know you get a bunch of blacks you get crime and drugs and guns and the neighborhood goes to shit. It’s not prejudiced to say that. It’s just reality.”

“Who finances the Horsemen?”

“What’s to finance? The guys buy their own uniforms, supply their own weapons and ammo. We have a couple parties a year. I think Hasty pays for them.”

Jesse nodded slowly. He tapped the fingers of his left hand softly on the desktop, and pursed his lips in a facial gesture that Burke had seen before. It meant Jesse was thinking. Burke felt a bit uncomfortable.

“You got a problem with any of this, Jesse?”

Jesse continued to purse his lips and drum gently on the desk. Then he stopped, and grinned at Burke.

“No. Hell no, Lou. I got no problem with any of it.”

Burke did not feel entirely reassured. Sonova bitch doesn’t miss much, Burke thought.

The apartment was very still when Jesse got home. The small sounds of a functioning building only underscored the silence. Jesse walked to the sliders that opened onto the little deck, and looked out at the harbor. There was still enough light to see all the way across to the Neck. A single lobster boat came in toward the town dock, otherwise the boats that bobbed on the calm surface of the harbor were moored and empty. Jesse liked the silence. It was comforting. He stood for a while looking at the quiescent harbor and let the silence sink in. Then he went to the kitchen and got the bottle of Black Label from the cabinet and poured some over ice. He let it sit for a moment while he hung his coat on the back of a chair. Then he picked up the glass and walked into the living room and looked out the window and took his first drink. First one at the end of a day was always a home run. He sat down on one of the armchairs that had come with the apartment, and put his feet up on the coffee table. He sipped again. The silence made him feel strong. And the whiskey made him feel strong. He tried to simply feel the strength and let his mind go, let it be part of the silence and the whiskey and not think about Jenn. He felt strong about Jenn. Right here at least. Right now. The prospect of life without her seemed for the moment filled with possibility. He drank again and got up and added some ice and poured some more scotch. He took the drink back to the window and looked out again. He could think about who killed Captain Cat, but he tried not to. He pushed the thoughts over to the periphery of his mind, let them drift there with thoughts about Freedom’s Horsemen. They would work on their own if he didn’t force them into the center of his consciousness and hold them too tightly. He swallowed some whiskey. The evening had come down upon the harbor. The Neck was no longer visible. Only the lights from some of the houses shone across the dark water. The lobster boat was docked now, nearly motionless against the dock in the bright mercury lamps of the town landing. Abby made things easier. He drank more whiskey. He liked her. But he knew better than to go from one monogamy to another. Abby would be the first of many. He liked the idea. He drank to it. His glass was empty. He got up and got more ice, holding the glass under the ice dispenser in the refrigerator door. He poured scotch over the ice. He looked at the bottle. There was an encouraging amount still left in the bottle. Happiness is a jug that’s still three-quarters full. It was exciting to go out with a woman and be talking pleasantly and maybe having lunch and knowing that in a few hours, or maybe next week, after another date, you’d see her with her clothes off. It was nice. He remembered the frantic scuffle of his adolescent dates. As an adult there was a calmness and friendliness to it all. Adults made love. How soon depended on circumstance. But all concerned knew it would happen and it took all the desperation out of the procedure. Jesse hated desperation. Life, if he could make all the rules, would proceed in a stately manner. Dating as an adult was sort of stately. Stately. He liked the sound of it.

“Stately,” he said.

His voice seemed loud and not his in the thick silence of the almost empty apartment. He took his drink to the kitchen and made himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich and ate standing at the counter, sipping his whiskey between bites. When he was done he made a fresh drink and walked back to the living room and sat back down. He tried to count how many he’d had.

“More than two,” he said.

Again his voice was loud and alien. Stillness was the norm here. He tipped his head back against the chair. Stately, he thought. I like things to be stately.

He fell asleep and woke up in the hard darkness of late night, feeling thick and stupid. He went to bed and didn’t sleep well and got up at daylight with a hangover.

It was the first week after Labor Day and it still felt like summer except that the kids were back to school. Jesse was glad he wasn’t a kid as he walked past Paradise Junior High School on his way to Carole Genest’s house. Every once in a while one or two leaves on an otherwise green tree would show yellow as he walked along Main Street. There were adults, mostly female, moving about in front of the shopping center, and there was a back-to-business quality that seemed to settle in on a town once school was in session. Jesse had hated school, always. It had something to do with hating to be told what to do, he supposed. On the other hand he’d liked playing baseball and being in the Marines and being a cop in L.A., all of which entailed being told what to do. Maybe he didn’t like being told what to do indoors. Or maybe he didn’t like being instructed. But he didn’t mind being coached … He couldn’t figure it out, but it was not a problem he needed to solve, so he put it aside. The big oak tree that loomed over Carole Genest’s driveway was entirely green. Jesse paused under it and looked at the bright lawn that rolled down to Main Street from the big white house. Ten rooms maybe, and a big yard in the middle of town.

Only the youngest Genest kid was home when Carole let Jesse in. He was in the den with some coloring books and some crayons and some little wooden figures scattered about, watching a home shopping show as if it were a performance of
King Lear
.

“Want some coffee?” Carole said.

“Sure.”

Jesse followed her through the long formal dining room into the big kitchen, paneled in pine, with shiny copper pots hanging from a rack over the stove. The big window at the back of the room looked out at more land behind the house, planted with flowering shrubs and shielded by white pine trees.

“Nice property,” Jesse said. “How much land you got?”

“Three-quarters of an acre,” Carole said. She put coffee into the gold filter basket of a bright blue coffeemaker and added water and turned it on, and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Jesse. She was a pretty woman, with an empty face and wide eyes which always looked a little startled.

“Been here long?”

“Ten years,” she said.

The kid came from the den carrying a ratty-looking stuffed animal by the ear. It was too dilapidated for Jesse to tell what it had been. The child laid the upper half of himself over his mother’s lap and, holding the stuffed animal tightly, started to suck his thumb. Carole patted his head absently.

“You get it as part of the divorce?”

“Yes. And he’s supposed to pay me alimony every month but he doesn’t.”

“Must be tough to keep the payments up,” Jesse said.

“I got to pay taxes quarterly, but at least there’s no mortgage.”

“No mortgage?”

“No. Jo Jo bought it for cash, when we got married.”

“Cash? Really? When was that.”

“Nineteen eighty-six,” she said. “House cost a hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars. Probably worth five now.”

“I should think so,” Jesse said. “Where’d Jo Jo get the cash?”

Carole shook her head. The coffeemaker had stopped gurgling. She raised the kid from her lap and got up and poured them coffee.

“You take anything?” she said.

“Cream and sugar, please. Two sugars.”

“Skim milk okay?”

“Sure.”

She put the coffee down on the table and sat back down. The kid plopped back in her lap and sucked his thumb some more.

“What did you ask me?” Carole said.

“Where Jo Jo got the cash. Hundred and fifty-five thousand is a lot of money. It was even more in 1986.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Jesse nodded.

“Jo Jo come around since he and I had that talk?” Jesse said.

“No.”

“How are the kids doing?”

Carole shrugged.

“You talk to a shrink at all?”

“How’m I supposed to afford a shrink?” Carole said. “My HMO pays a hundred bucks for counseling. You know how far that goes?”

Jesse nodded.

“How are you getting by, financially?”

Again Carole shrugged. It was a particular kind of shrug. Jesse had seen it often. It was not a gesture of surrender or even of defeat, those were long past. It was a gesture of numbness. It meant no hope.

“You got any family?”

“My mother’s dead,” Carole said. “My father’s in Florida with my stepmother. My father sends me some money.”

“If Jo Jo’s not paying what he’s supposed to you can take him to court.”

“Sure, and pay a lawyer, and have the judge tell Jo Jo to pay and have him not pay, and maybe come around later and beat the shit out of me?”

“I don’t think he’ll do that again,” Jesse said.

“Maybe not if you’re around, he hasn’t bothered me since that time. But how long you going to stay around here?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said.

“How come he’s scared of you anyway?” Carole said. “I mean, look at him. Look at you. How come he doesn’t get you for slapping him around?”

Jesse looked at the little boy, sucking his thumb on his mother’s lap. How much of all this did he hear? Probably all of it. How much did he understand? Probably too much of it. What could Jesse do about that?

“Well,” Jesse said. “I’m a cop, which carries a little weight, and I carry a gun, which may have a lot of weight.”

“Jo Jo’s got a gun. He used to have two or three around here.”

Jesse nodded.

“So what is it,” Carole said.

Jesse looked at the boy again. Nothing to do about that.

“Jo Jo’s a fake,” Jesse said. “Alone at night, when he can’t sleep, sometimes, for a minute he knows it. And he knows that I know it too.”

“A fake?”

“Sure. He’s strong, and he’s cruel. And that’s a dangerous combination. But he isn’t really tough.”

“And you are?”

Jesse smiled at her.

“Yes, ma’am. I am.”

The boy straightened and whispered in his mother’s ear.

“Okay,” Carole said. “I’ll take you.”

She stood.

“Excuse us a minute,” she said to Jesse and went out of the kitchen with her son.

For a drunk, Jesse thought as he sat in the quiet kitchen, I’m pretty tough for a boozer.

The television blatted in the family room. The kitchen faucet had a slow drip. He wondered if it needed a washer or if she just hadn’t shut it off tightly. Jenn had rarely shut the faucet off tightly. He always had to firm it up when he had walked through the kitchen. She never closed the cabinet doors all the way either. When she had stopped coming home everything had been much more buttoned up.