Night Passage (25 page)

“Because you don’t trust her?”

“I guess.”

“Can’t have a relationship with someone you don’t trust,” Jenn said.

“I know.”

“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 half-empty 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.

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.”

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 were 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.”

Then the smallish man turned and walked away down the mall. Jo Jo and Hasty looked after him for a time and then looked back at Vinnie Morris, but Morris wasn’t anywhere in sight. They turned then and headed back down the mall toward the parking lot outside of Charlie’s. Hasty could feel the excitement in his stomach. Things had gone badly for a while. This was a good thing. They’d be armed properly. They could hold off anyone. State police, ATF, FBI, Marshals, anybody. At 2:35 in the afternoon, the parking lot was full. By 2:45 they hadn’t found the truck. By three o’clock they realized they weren’t going to.

There was no truck.

Jesse stood with Abby Taylor on Indian Hill, looking over the railing down at the rocks where they had found Lou Burke.

“Right here?” Abby said.

“Yes.”

“How could he do it?” Abby said. “I mean, maybe I could put a bullet through my brain, or take too many sleeping pills, or whatever if I were really depressed. But to climb over this fence and jump off the cliff …” She shuddered.

“Maybe he didn’t,” Jesse said.

“Didn’t jump?”

“Maybe.”

Abby stepped back from him and stood with her hands pushed into the pockets of her long blue coat.

“Jesse,” she said and stopped.

He waited.

“Jesse, a lot of people think you’ve gone off the deep end here. You see conspiracy everywhere. Yet you don’t talk to anyone about it. People are wondering about you.”

“And you?” Jesse said.

She took another step away from him. Jesse knew she was unaware of it.

“I don’t know. I mean, we’ve been so intimate, and yet, you don’t trust me. You don’t trust anyone. That’s not healthy, Jesse.”

Jesse leaned his forearms on the railing and looked at the gray water. It was like the last night in L.A., except he wasn’t drunk. L.A. seemed much longer than six months ago.

“I’m not going to explain myself, Abby. I’ve done this kind of work most of my adult life. I’m doing it the best way I know how.”

“A lot of people blame you for Lou’s death.”

“Because I suspended him?”

“Yes. The thinking is that if you had anything on him, arrest him for it, otherwise leave him alone. People in town liked Lou. He grew up here. He’s part of the militia.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“The militia, oh for God’s sake, Jesse. They’re like the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. They march in the Fourth of July parade, for God’s sake. Sure I think they’re silly, and so do you. But they aren’t some criminal enterprise.”

“I hadn’t heard you defend them so strongly,” Jesse said.

He was still staring at the choppy gray water below him. Above them a splatter of herring gulls soared and stooped. The sound of them was as constant as the movement of the sea. Abby seemed cold, she thrust her hands deeper into her pockets, hunched her shoulders so that the high collar of her coat was a little higher.

“Jesse, I live here and I work here. I am with a good law firm, I have a chance to be a partner.”

Jesse nodded silently.

“What are you nodding about?” she said.

“I’m agreeing that it is not going to be good for your career if you stick by me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “You did. You just didn’t use those words.”

It was an overcast day, and raw. There was a spatter of rain with snow mixed. The snow didn’t last on the blacktop of the parking lot, or the rocks. But it had a short life on the grassy parts of Indian Hill, and a small residue had collected around the base of the windshield of Jesse’s car. Abby stood drawn in upon herself. She shook her head slowly.