Night Passage js-1

by Robert B. Parker

  house,” Portugal said.

  “Where you and Tammy lived?”

  “Yeah, and I had to come in from Springfield to get some stuff I lef there. Probably hoping it would give me an excuse to come back. So I thought I’d stop by, see how the case was coming.”

  “Not much hard evidence,” Jesse said.

  “You got her diary?”

  Jesse was silent for a moment. Then he got up and walked around Portugal and closed the office door.

  When he was back behind his desk again he said, “Di-

  “Yeah. You didn’t mention it when you was in Springfield, but I figure, cops. You know? I’m not badmouthing the police, I’m just figuring you got it and don’t see reason to talk about it with me.”

  “She kept a diary.”

  “Long as I knew her, every night, last thing. Even if had sex, when we was done, she’d write in the freaki:

  “You ever read it?” Jesse said.

  “No. It was one of those leather ones with a lock on She wore the key on a chain around her neck. Little gl key. She had a lotta ambition. I think she thought she col write down everything she did and someday she could, someone to help her and they’d write a book about all 1 exciting adventures.”

  Portugal shook his head and smiled grimly.

  “Like getting knocked up by me.”

  Jesse was quiet.

  “So if you had the diary I figured it might tell you son thing, who she Was seeing, who she went out with [ night.

  Something. She wasn’t somebody to stay home: watch TV.”

  Jesse shook his head slowly.

  “You don’t have {t, do you?”

  Portugal said, slowly prised.

  “No. Did you see the drawer where she kept it?”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s what made me think of it. It wash‘ there. You find the key on her when you… found her Jesse shook his head.

  “You might have missend it.”

  “No.”

  “She always had it on her.”

  “She .was stark naked,” Jesse said as

  gently as he co

  “We’d have seen it.”

  Portugal sat still a minute, looking at nothing.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said after a moment,

  “you’d have seen it. You find her

  clothes?”

  “No.”

  Portugal nodded as if that were meaningful.

  “If you keep a diary for a long time,”

  Jesse said, “you fill up the pages. Did she keep the old ones?”

  “Yeah. I think so. She bought a new one whe we got married and that’s the only one I know. She probably left the other ones home, at her mother’s house, when she got

  “You think her mother took it?”

  Portugal shrugged.

  “She could have. They were in there cleaning out the‘ place. It’s going on the market Monday. I don’t get any.

  They get it all. Her old lady didn’t ex;en want me in there to get my things. She never got over me knocking up her baby girl. But the old man’s not a bad guy. He called me, told me to come get my stuff. The old lady woulda chucked it in the Dumpster.“

  Jesse tapped gently on the desktop with his fingers.

  Finally h said, “I have your phone number. I know anything, I’ll‘ let you know.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Ygu can count on it,” Jesse said.

  “And I’d appreciate it if the diary was something you didn’t talk about with anybody else.”

  “Sure,” Portugal said. “No

  sweat.”

  “Thanks,” Jesse said.

  “I already told my girlfriend how Tammy used to keep a diary,” Portugal said.

  “Well, ask her not to discuss it as well,”

  Jesse said.

  “Well, since her husband don’t know about me,” Portugal said, “I guess she can keep a secret.”

  “You better hope so,” Jesse said.

  And they were both laughing as Portugal left.

  the passenger door and got in beside him.

  “Patrol supervising?” Jesse said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I ride along?” Jesse said.

  “I spend too much time in the office.”

  “Come ahead,” Burke said.

  Burke backed the car out of the parking lot and turned up Main Street. Between them was a shotgun, locked barrel up on the transmission hump.

  “See if there’s any gum wrappers in the barrel,” Burke said. “Peter Perkins had the car before me.”

  Jesse looked into the sho, tgun barrel. He blew some dust out.

  “No gum wrappers,” he said.

  “Boys don’t seem to have the proper

  respect for a weapon,” Burke said, “do

  they?”

  “Never make it in the Corps,” Jesse said.

  “You in the Marines?”

  “Semper Fi,” Jesse said.

  “You?”

  “Navy.”

  “What was your job?”

  Burke smiled.

  “Lot of stuff. I was a lifer.”

  “Twenty years?”

  “Yeah. This is my retirement.”

  Jesse smiled. Burke drove the car up Indian Hill Road.

  The startling leaves had finished turning, Jesse noticed.

  Many of the trees were leafless, or nearly so. And, puzzlingly, some of them still had leaves and the leaves were still green.

  “Ever do any demolition work?” Jesse said.

  Burke’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly as he glanced involuntarily at Jesse and then looked back at the road.

  “Yeah, some.”

  Jesse nodded. At the top of Indian Hill, Burke drove the patrol car slowly into the park. It was during school hours, and it was chilly. There was no one in the park except a white-haired man in a black-and-red wool jacket walking an aging yellow Lab.

  “Funny how quiet a town is during school hours,” Jesse said.

  Burke didn’t say anything.

  “Ever been to Denver?” Jesse said.

  “Denver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why you asking?”

  Jesse smiled at him.

  “Why not?” Jesse said.

  “Jesse, you got something on your mind, I think you just better say it right out.”

  “I am saying it right out,” Jesse said, still smiling. “You ever been to Denver?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jesse’s smile was gone.

  “When’s the last time you were in

  Denver?” Jesse said.

  From Indian Hill, you could see the whole harbor, uneventful in the late fall, and the old town, weathered shingle, red brick, and church steeples beside the dark water. You could see across the harbor to Paradise Neck, the big glass facade of the Yacht Club teetering over the water. And you could see across the Neck, mostly evergreen trees, with white and gray houses among them, and look at the Atlantic Ocean.

  Burke didn’t answer. He turned the car back down the hill toward the center of town.

  “When’s the last time you were in Denver, LouT‘

  Burke shook his head.

  “Drive us back to the station, Lou.”

  Burke was silent. Jesse let the silence stand. There was no reason to let Burke in on what Jesse knew. Jesse had never gotten in trouble saying too little. The patrol car pulled into its slot outside the station.

  “I’m going to ask you to take a leave of absence, Lou.”

  Burke turned toward him and started to speak, and stopped.

  “Leave the handgun and the badge with

  Molly,” Jesse said.

  As they got out of the car Burke turned and looked across the roof at Jesse.

  “You sonova bitch,” he said.

  Burke’s voice was thick, as if forced out through a closing throat. And there was something in Burke’s face that Jesse felt with a force he wasn’t used to. You didn’t work
South Central without seeing hatred. But the passion in Burke’s face was beyond hatred. Jesse felt something like revulsion, as if he’d seen something grotesque for a moment.

  He felt as if he needed to hold steady against it, the way you lean into a strong wind.

  “Gun and badge to Molly, Lou,” Jesse said.

  mother and father lived in a small ugly house that had once been a summer cottage, facing a swampy saltwater estuary which the local kids called the eel pond. The process of converting the cottage to a full-time home had been apparently a slow one. The rear wall of the kitchen above the sink was still unfinished, the area between the studs filled with the silvery foil backing of the fiberglass insulation.

  The kitchen table where Jesse sat was made of metal covered with white enamel. There was a small fold-up leaf at either end. The mug from which Mr. Gennaro was drinking instant coffee was formed in the shape of a gnomish-looking man with a beard, Mrs. Germaro, in a flowered housedress and white sneakers, was at the stove boiling water, in case there was a call for more instant coffee. The sneaker on her right foot had a hole cut to relieve pressure on her small toe. She was a sturdy woman, not fat, but wide in the hips and shoulders. She had white hair which she wore in a tight perm, and rimless glasses.

  “You sure you won’t have

  coffee?” Mrs. Gennaro said.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Jesse

  said.

  Jesse hated instant coffee. Across the table from him, Mr.

  Gennaro put a spoonful of Cremora in his coffee and stirred.

  He was a wiry little man, no taller than his wife.

  He worked sometimes as a fisherman, and sometimes as a landscaper, and in snowstorms be drove a plow for the town.

  “How are you both doing?” Jesse asked.

  Mr. Gennaro shrugged.

  Mrs. Gennaro said, “We get through the

  day.”

  “It’ll get better,” Jesse said.

  “I know it doesn’t feel like that now, but in time, it’ll get better.”

  Neither one said anything. Probably didn’t Want it to get better right now, Jesse thought, probably were so into the grief that it was their life, and without it they wouldn’t have anything at all.

  “I see you have your daughter’s house on the market.”

  Jesse said.

  “Yeah,” Mr:- Gennaro said. “No

  sense paying for an empty house.”

  “You selling it furnished?” Jesse said.

  “No,” Mrs. Gennaro said. “We got

  a man to come in and take everything out. He paid us for the furniture.”

  “That’s good,” Jesse said.

  “It would be painful doing that yourself.”

  Mrs. Gennaro nodded. The steam began to spout from the kettle.

  She turned the heat down beneath it and came to the table.

  “I hope you were able to keep some

  memories,” Jesse said.

  Mr. Gennaro shifted a little in his seat.

  “What do you mean,” Mrs. Gennaro said.

  “You know,” Jesse said,

  “pictures, letters, diaries, stuff like that.”

  They were silent.

  “She keep a diary?” Jesse said.

  Simultaneously, Mr. Gennaro said “Yes” and Mrs. Gennaro said “No.”

  Jesse smiled politely and didn’t say anything. The Gennaros looked at each other. Jesse waited. No one said anything.

  Jesse could hear the hot water in the teakettle stir restlessly on the stove over the low heat.

  “If she kept a diary it might help us find who killed her,” Jesse said.

  The Gennaros looked at each other and hack at Jesse.

  Still they didn’t speak. Jesse knew they were silent because they didn’t know what to say. He needed to get them started.

  “I want to punish the man who killed your daughter.”

  Jesse said.

  Silence. Mr. Gennaro shifted again in his chair. Mrs.

  Gennaro’s face was clenched like a fist.. Her cheeks were red.

  “I know there are diaries,” Jesse said.

  Mrs. Gennaro shook her head.

  ‘“I need to see them.”

  Still she shook her head. Jesse looked at her husband.

  “You want the man that killed your

  daughter?” Jesse said.

  His voice was still quiet, but, the pleasantness was gone.

  “You embarrassed by what’s in

  there?” Jesse said.

  “What would she say? Would she say, ‘Cover up for me and let the man who killed me get away’? Would she say that?”

  “No,” Mr. Gennaro said.

  “Eddie,” Mrs. Oennaro said sharply.

  Gennaro stared at the tabletop, shaking his head slowly.

  “No,” he Said again.

  Then he stood and walked into the next room.

  “Eddie,” Mrs. Gennaro said again, louder, and sharper.

  ‘ Gennaro came back into the kitchen with a cardboard beer case filled with small books covered in red imitation leather, each little book with a brass lock. Gennaro put the diaries on the table in front of Jesse and went back to the other side of the table and sat down.

  “This is them,” he said. He nodded at his wife. “She got the keys.”

  “I won’t give them to you,” Mrs.

  Gennaro said.

  “You don’t have to,

  ma’am,” Jesse said.

  “I raised a decent gift,” Mrs. Gennaro

  said. “She was a decent girl until that Portugal…”

  “She was decent anyway,” Gennaro muttered.

  “I don’t want him prying into those books, Eddie,” Mrs.

  Gennaro said.

  “He’s going to,” Gennaro said

  and kept his eyes on the table.. “I want him to.”

  “Don’t you care what I want?”

  Mrs. Gennaro said.

  “I want the guy caught,” Gennaro said.

  Jesse picked up the beer case with the diaries carefully stacked in it.

  “How you going to open them without the keys?” Mrs.

  Gennaro said.

  “Probably pry them open,” Jesse said,

  “with a screwdriver.”

  Mrs. Gennaro looked at the diaries without speaking for a moment, then she said, “Wait a minute.”

  She left the kitchen. Jesse waited. Gennaro sat silently staring at the kitchen tabletop. After a moment Mrs. Gen-nato returned and gave Jesse a collection of little brass keys tied together with a red ribbon.

  “I want them books back,” she said,

  “with no damage.” get them back to you, ma’am,“ Jesse said.

  Neither of Tammy Portugal’s parents said anything else Jesse carried the diaries fom the house.

  0

  Northshore Shopping genter. ‘I’ne nose of the car pointed north so that the afternoon sun streamed in over I-Iasty’s shoulder and made him a dark silhouette as Burke turned in the seat to look at him.

  “Some/hing will have to be done about

  Stone,” Burke said, squinting, trying to look at Hasty. But the sun was too fierce. Burke gave up and looked away.

  Hasty was silent.

  “I-Ie knows,” Burke said. “He

  knows I was in Denver.

  He knows more than that. Sonora bitch doesn’t say much, but he knows.“

  “Maybe he doesn’t say much because he

  doesn’t know.”

  Hasty said.

  “He knows,” Burke said. “We made

  a bad mistake with him.”

  “Mistakes are part of life,” Hasty said.

  “The important thing is to overcome them.”

  To Burke, Hasty’s voice seemed disembodied, coming as. it did out Of an unseeable place in the hard middle of the sun glare.

  “Well, we better overcome this one pretty quick,” Burke said. “Or he’s going to

  overcome
us.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “We have to kill him.”

  “The death of a second police chief from this town in less than a year?”

  “Better than having him take us all down,”

  Burke said.

  “We can find a way to cover it, an accident or something.”

  “All of us?” Hasty said.

  “Well, you know what I mean, he gets me, sooner or later he’ll get you, and… everybody.”

  “You are required in these circumstances to give only your name, rank, and serial number.”

  “For crissake, Hasty, I’m not a fucking prisoner of war.”

  “Of course you are. If our movement is about anything, it is about war with the forces of international mongrelization.‘’

  “I know,” Burke said. “I

  understand that. But they’re going to arrest me for murder, Hasty.”

  “What they do has no effect on what we know to be true,” Hasty said.

  “Hasty, I can’t afford theory right now.

  My ass is on the stove, you know? We need to get Stone out of the way.”

  In black silhouette Hasty nodded slowly.

  “To save us all,” Hasty said.

  “Absolutely,” Burke said.

  “What have ‘us all’ to do with

  your trip to Denver, Lou?”

  “Christ, Hasty. You sent me.”

  “To do what?”

  “To blow Torn Carson up.”

  “Because?”

  “Because he knew too much and you didn’t trust him to he quiet about it.”

  “Un huh.”

  There was silence in the car. Across the parking lot, people in bright fall clothing surged in and out of the vast mail.

  Shop early for Christmas. Take advantage of pre-holiday saies.

  No payments until January. Many of the people in the late-afternoon surge were teenaged mall rats. For them the mall had replaced playground, Boys Club, street corner, home. The new marketplace.

  “I wouldn’t tell them, of

  course,” Burke said. “But once they start they’re bound to find out.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I mean they investigate.”

  ‘What?“

  “Well, you know, they backtrack my

  story…”

  “And?”

  “And who the hell knows what physicai evidence they have. Who knows what the Wyoming militia might tell them. They.. get somebody in jail they can squeeze them, make a deai, go easy on you if you give us the others, you know… I would never do that, but we don’t really know the Wyoming people.”