Night Passage js-1

by Robert B. Parker

  One of them eyed the California plates on the car.

  “Where you headed,” he said with that

  indefinable Indian accent.

  “Massachusetts,” Jesse said.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Massachusetts,” one of them said.

  “All the way to Massachusetts?” the other one said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Driving?”

  “All the way,” Jesse said.

  “You got to be shitting me, mister.

  Massachusetts?‘’

  Jesse nodded.

  “Massachusetts,” he said.

  “Jeesus!”

  The pump shut off and Jesse went into the tiny station pay.

  There was some motor oil on a shelf. There was electronic cash register‘ on a tiny counter. There was a old Indian woman at the register in a red tee shirt that

  “Harrah’s” printed across the

  front in black letters. A was stuck in the corner of her mouth and she

  ‘uinted through the smoke as she took Jesse’s money and it up. The rest of the store was filled with stacked of cigarettes.

  “Cigarettes?” she said.

  “Don’t smoke.”

  She shrugged. As Jesse pulled away from the pumps he see the two Indian men looking after him, talking Massachusetts! There was nothing else in the and scrub landscape but the station and the two

  ·.. The first time he met Jennifer she had blond hair. had played basketball for an hour at Sports Club LA, Magic sometimes worked out, against a bunch of college players and one guy who’d spent a couple years as the eleventh man on the Indiana Pacers. Showand dressed, he was drinking coffee at a table for two the snack bar during a crowded noontime when she if she could sit in the empty seat across from him. said she could. It was a big part of why he came to Club LA.

  He didn’t really need to work out much·

  At six feet and 175 it was as if he’d been born in shape and never really had to work at it. He’d been a poin guard at Fairfax High School, the only .white point guard in the conference, and he could climb a long rope hand over hand without usifig his feet. At the Academy he had been the fastest up the rope in his class. Mostly he came to Sports Club LA because he knew there would be many good-looking young women there in excellent physical condition, and he hoped to meet one. He played some handball, some basketball, and drank coffee in the snack bar where, had he wished to, he could have had a blended fruit-and-yogurt frappe or some green vegetable juice.

  Jennifer set her tray down and smiled at him.

  “My name’s Jennifer,” she said.

  “Jesse Stone.”

  “What are you having?” she said.

  Her eyes were blue, the biggest eyes Jesse had ever seen, and the lashes were very long. She was wearing cobaltand-emerald spandex and her fingernails were painted blue.

  “Coffee.”

  “Wow,” Jennifer said. “Here in

  the health food bar?”

  Jesse smiled. Jennifer had some kind of sandwich with guacamole on whole wheat bread. When she took a bite the guacamole oozed out of the edges and dribbled on her chin. She giggled as she put the sandwich down and wiped her chin with a napkin. He liked the way she giggled. He liked the way she seemed unembarrassed by slobbering her sandwich on her chin. He liked the way her green headband held her hair back off her face. He liked the fact that her skin was too dark a tone for her blond hair, and he wondered momentarily wha her real color was.

  “So, you in the business?” Jennifer said.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said.

  “Really?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  “God, you don’t look‘ like

  one.”

  “What do I look like?” Jesse said.

  “Like a producer, maybe, or an agent. You know, slim, good haircut, good casual clothes, the Oakley shades.”

  Jesse smiled some more.

  “You carry a gun?” Jennifer said.

  “Sure.”

  “Really?”

  Jesse opened his coat and turned his body a little so that she could see the nine-millimeter pistol he wore behind his hip.

  “I’ve never even picked up a

  gun,” Jennifer said.

  “That’s good.”

  “I’d love to shoot one. IS it hard to

  shoot one?”

  “No,” Jesse said. The gun nearly always worked. Unless they were sort of late-age hippies and then it turned them I’ll take you shooting sometime, if you’d like.“

  “Is there a big kick?”

  “No.”

  Jennifer ate some more sndwich and wiped her mouth.

  “If I’d known I was going to eat with

  someone I have ordered this sandwich,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “You don’t say much, do you?”

  “No,” Jesse said. “I

  don’t.”

  “Why is that, most guys I know around here talk a mile minute.”

  “That’s one reason,” Jesse said.

  Jennifer laughed.

  “Any other reasons?”

  “I can’t ever remember,” Jesse

  said, “getting in trouble keeping my mouth shut.” i

  “So what kind of cop are you? You a detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “LAPD?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you, ah, stationed? Are cops stationed?”

  “I am a homicide detective. I work out of police headquarters downtown.”

  “Homicide.”

  “Yes.”

  Jennifer was silent for a moment thinking about the gap between the world she lived in and the one he worked in.

  “Is it like, what? Hill Street Blues?” she said.

  “More like Barney Miller,” he said.

  It was his standard answer, but it was no truer than any other, just self-effacing, which was why he used it. Being a homicide cop wasn’t like anything on television, but there wasn’t much point in trying to explain that to someone who could never know.

  “You an actress?” he said.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  It was another thing he always said. He had a good chance to be right in Los Angeles, and even if he were‘ wrong, the girl was flattered.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “And you have a sort of star quality.”

  “Wow, you know the right things to say, don’t YOU.‘’

  “Just telling the truth,” Jesse said.

  “Right now I’m working at the reception desk at CAA.”

  Jennifer said. “But one of the agents has noticed me and says he’s going to get me some auditions during pilot season.”

  “You done any work I might have seen?”

  “Mostly nonspeaking parts, crowd scenes, things like that. I’m in a.play three nights a week just down the street ere. It’s a modem version of a Greek tragedy called The Parcae. I play Clotho.”

  “Sounds really interesting,” Jesse said.

  “I’d like to ‘iCome see it.”

  “I can leave a ticket for you at the box office. All you ave to do is let me know the night.”

  “How about tonight?” Jesse said.

  “Maybe have a bite afterwards?”

  “That would be very nice,” she said.

  “Good,” Jesse said.

  “I’ll meet you afterwards in the !obby.”

  She smiled and stood and disposed of her tray.

  “I you don’t like,the play,

  don’t arrest me,” she said. “I 11 like

  the play, Jesse said.

  ‘:He watched her as she walked away. He knew he’d hate :

  ‘ e play, but it was part of what he was willing to pay in ,der to see that body without the Lycra… At Santa Rosa crossed the Pecos. It was a pretty ordinary-looking little i Var to be so famous. What the hell made it so famous.’? it Judge Roy Bean.‘? The law
west of the Pea:os? Small i-.’ngs pleased him as he drove. He liked seeing the towns lla.-had once marked’Route 66: Gallup, New Mexico, Flag.v‘,f, Arizona, Winona. He liked seeing the occasional nd-driven tumbleweed that rolled across the highway. He ü.i, mt- seeing road signs for Indian reservations and places ’llm Fort Defiance. Past Santa Rosa he pulled off of the Interstate to get gas and a ham-and-cheese sandwich at a ‘ station/restaurant in the middle of the New Mexico wilü$1!ness.

  It was the only building in sight with views in all

  !i?lreCtions to the empty horizon. He pumped his own gas,

  ‘i?d a skinny girl with pale skin and a tooth missing took

  ’i money and sold him a sandwich. He sat in the car and i,the sandwich and drank a Coke and thought about how alone the skinny girl was and wondered about what she did when she wasn’t working the gas station and selling the pre-wrapped sandwiches. Probably went someplace and watched television off a dish. The sense of her aloneness made him feel a little panicky, and he put.the c0r in gear and drove away, finishing his sandwich on the move. As he drove he ran the ball of his thumb over his wedding ring, in a habitual gesture. But of course there was ho wedding ring, only the small pale indentation on his third finger where the ring had been. He glanced at the indentation for a moment and brought his eyes back to the road. The sun was behind him now, the car chasing its own elongated shadow east. He wanted to make Tucumcari by dark…

  The play had been incomprehensible, he remembered. A lot of white makeup and black lipstick and shrieking. He took her up to a place on Cower called Pinot Hollywood that was open late and featured a martini bar. They drank martinis and ate calamari and talked. Or she talked. She chattered easily and without apparent pretense. He listened comfortably, glad not to talk too much, pleased when she asked him a question that he could answer easily, aware that though she talked a lot she was quite adroit at talking about him. After the bar closed he drove her to West Hol lywood where she had an apartment on Cynthia Street above Santa Monica Boulevard. It was 2:30 in the morning and the street was still. At the door she asked if he’d like to come in. He said he would. The apamnent was living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bath. It had been built into one corner of the building so that all the rooms were angular and odd shaped. The living room overlooked the street. The bedroom allowed a glimpse of the pool.

  “Would you like a drink, Jesse?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She was wearing a little black dress with spaghetti straps and bacldess high-heeled shoes. She put her hands on her hips and smiled at him. Maybe a little theatrical, but she was an actress.

  “Let’s have it afterwards,” she

  said.

  Her bedroom was neat. The bed freshly made. She had probably planned, this afternoon, to ask him in. He watched her undress with the same feeling he used to have when, as a small boy, he unwrapped a present. She folded her dress neatly over the back of a chair and lined her shoes Carefully together under it. She squirmed out of her underIc Pmts and dropped them into the clothes hamper in her loset. She wiped her lipstick off carefully and dropped the tissue in the wastebasket.

  They made love on top of the spread, and lay together afterward in the dim bedroom listening to the comforting white noise of the air conditioning.

  “You’re very fierce, Jesse.”

  “I don’t mean to be,” he said.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s exciting in

  fact. But you seem so, urn, o still, on the outside and then, you know, wow.”

  “You’re pretty exciting,” he

  said. He didn’t know what .lse to say. He didn’t like to talk about his emotions.

  “I try to be,” she said. i: They lay

  quietly on their backs. His arm under her neck.

  ? e,r, head on his right shoulder.

  I: ‘I wouldn’t want to make you

  mad,“ Jennifer said.

  You won’t. i They lay quietly for a while longer, then she got up and irt on a longish tee shirt and made them a drink.

  He felt like a fool sitting naked, but he didn’t want to be so formal i to get fully dressed. He settled for putting his pants on, leaving his gun bolstered on top of her dresser. They’t on stools at the tiny counter that separated her kitchen from her living room, and sipped white wine.

  “How’d you get to be a cop,

  Jesse?”

  “I was going to be a baseball player,”

  Jesse said.

  “Shortstop. Dodgers drafted me out of high school, sent me to Pueblo. I was doing okay and then one night a guy took me out on a double play at second base. I landed funny, tore up my shoulder, ended the career.”

  “Oh, how awful,” she said. “Does

  it bother you still?”

  “Not if I don’t have to throw a

  baseball.”

  “Couldn’t you have played where it

  didn’t matter?”

  “No. I hit okay for a shortstop, but I was going to make it on my glove.”

  “Glove?”

  “I was a much better fielder,” Jesse said,

  “than I was a hitter.”

  “And you couldn’t just field?”

  “No.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen,” Jesse said. “I came

  home, worked con-stmction for six months, joined the Marines, got out, took the exam for fir department, police, and DWP. Cops came through first.”

  “Do you miss baseball?”

  “Every day,” Jesse said.

  “Isn’t it kind of depressing being a

  policeman?” she said. “You know, seeing all that awfulness.”

  Again he was aware of how skillfully she turned the conversation to him. He enjoyed her interest, but more than that he admired her skill.

  “I like police work,” he said.

  “You’re with a bunch of guys, but the work is mostly, one on one. Sometimes yott get to help people.”

  “And the awful things?”

  “There’s not as much as you

  think,” he said.

  “But there is some,” she said.

  “That’s just how it is,” Jesse

  said.

  “That’s all?” ‘

  “What else,” Jesse said.

  “Life’s hard sometimes.”

  “So you don’t let it bother you.”

  “I try not to,” Jesse said.

  a guy named Fusco that he met at the gym in Somerville.

  “Guy I know,” Fusco said, “is

  looking to smurf some cash.”

  Jo Jo was sitting spread legged on the floor doing lat pullbacks.

  “Whaddya mean smurf?” he said.

  “You know, go around to banks,” Fusco

  said. “Deposit cash for him so he can wire transfer it later.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why the whole thing,” Jo Jo said.

  His movements as he pulled the cables and raised the weight were smooth and appeared effortless. His muscles moved like huge serpents under his pale skin.

  “Man, where you been,” Fusco said.

  “I been around,” Jo Jo said.

  “Maybe I’m being smart.

  Tell me the deal.“

  Fusco sat on a weight bench with a towel over his thighs.

  ?Ils stomach pushed against his tank top. His thin legs were Very white and hairy in blue sport shorts.

  “Guy I know makes a lotta money in ways that maybe he shouldn’t, you unnerstand. Lotta money. He needs to ,ash it, you unnerstand, launder it, so the government can’t ind it and if they do, they can’t trace it to him.”

  Jo Jo let the cable go slack on the lat pull machine and mopped his face with a hand towel, waiting for the lactic Cid to drain from his muscles.

  “So he needs to get the dough into banks so that he can msfer it around, maybe overseas.”

  “Like to a numbered Swiss bank

  acco
unt,” Jo Jo said.

  “Sure,” Fusco said,

  “like that. Anyway what you do is o around with a sack full of cash and buy cashier’s checks r money orders for mounts small enough so they don’t et reported.”

  “What happens then.”

  “You give them to me.”

  “What do you do with them.”

  “None of your business.”

  “Aw, Fusco, come off it. You know

  I’m all right or you wouldn’t have told me this’much. What happens to the checks and money orders, they get sent to a Swiss bank.”

  Fusco grinned. “You really like them Switzers, don’t tou,” he said. “Usually

  it’s the branch of some South anerican bank in Florida.”

  “So don’t they .get reported?”

  “No. It’s not a cash deal. CTRs are

  required only for e-aSh?,

  Jo Jo had begun a second set, holding his upper body till, isolating’the muscles. His voice showed no sign of train.

  “Cash Transaction Report.”

  “So you change the cash into something else and you don’t have to report it,” Jo Jo said.

  “Bada bing,” Fusco said, shooting at Jo Jo with his forefinger.

  “You want some?”

  “How much?”

  “Half a percent,” Fusco said.

  “Everything you smurf.

  Plus expenses.“

  Jo Jo pulled the bar toward him and moved a huge stack of iron plates up by means of a cable-and-pulley arrangement.

  He held the bar fight against his stomach, then very slowly let it down. Fusco watched him with admiration.

  “You gotta focus on the muscle,” Jo Jo

  said. “You got to be thinking about it when you work it. On this one it’s the lats, nothing else, just think about the lats, Fusco.”