it’s not going anywhere.‘
‘
“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 ‘73 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.”
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.
partment 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 mst-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 sgid.
“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 LouT‘ 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 amplifio and dehumanized by the bullhorn.
“He’s been banginl around down here for a while and it’s hard to tell.”
Jesse nodded and gave Simpson a thumbs-up and’t police boat swung in an arc away from the foot of the cliff opened the engines, and roared, with the east-wind behin it now back around the point toward the town wharf.
“See what you can do here,” Jesse
said to Peter Perkin He got into his cruiser, set the blue light flashing, a headed for the town wharf. There was barely anyone the road at 6:10 in the.morning and he had no need of siren. I really can pick’em, he thought as he drove throul the old town with its narrow streets and narrower sidewall and narrow old houses built fight up against them. Thy homicides in a year. Towns like this you’re supposed get about one a career. He thought about Jenn for a in ment, and then he was there. He could see the police b slow now as it passed through the ‘boats’ winter-moored the harbor. He got out of the car with the wind pushing him. Seagulls were roosting on the tops of pilings and alo the edge of the big town float. He went into the wharf offi and poured himself some coffee and drank it with Crem{ and sugar while he waited for Simpson and the body.
still had some left when the boat docked against the and he was still sipping it when he stepped over the g wales of the police boat and squatted on his heels nex the sodden corpse. -
“You’re fight,” Jesse
said to Simpson. “It’s kind hard to say who it is.
You find any I.D. on him?”
Simpson looked like he might he a little seasick.
“0 we got him in the boat,” he said, “I didn’t touch him.
Jesse nodded. He rolled the body over and found 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.”
· 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 am6unt 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 hng 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 w: leaning against the wail outside the bookstore with his am folded across his chest.
“Maybe not,” the smailish man
said.
“You know if you double-cross
us,” Hasty said, “I ct bring an army down on you.”
“Sure,” the smallish man said.
“You want the deai not?”
“Give him the money, Jo Jo.”
Jo Jo shrugged. The sight of Vinnie Morris had taker lot of the ferocity out of him. He took the bag off his sho der and handed it to the smailish man. The smallish in handed him a set of two keys on a small orange plastic k tag.
“It’s a Penske rental
truck,” the smailish man sa
“Mass plates 354-6AV. It’s parked
outside the entran next to Charlie’s Saioon.”
Then the smallish man turned and waiked away do‘ the mall. Jo Jo and Hasty looked after him for a time then looked back at Vinnie Morris, but Morris wasn’t in where in sight. They. turned then and headed back do the mail toward the parking lot outside of Charlie’s. Ha could feel the excitement in his stomach. Things had g badly for a while. This was a good thing. They’d be am properly. They could hold off anyone. State police, A
FBI, Marshals, anybody. At 2:35 in the afternoon, the pa ing lot was full. By 2:45 they hadn’t found the truck.
three o’clock they realized.they weren’t going to.
There was no truck.
over e ling down at e where ey had found Lou Bue.
“ght heT‘ Abby said.
“Yes.”
“How could he do itT‘ Abby sd.
”I me, may I could put a bullet rough my brn, or e’t my sleeping pills, or whaver if I were ally depressed.
But to climb over is fence d jump off e cliff…“
She shudder.
“May he dn’t,” Jesse
sd.
“Didn’t jump?”
“May.”
Abby stepd back from him and st wi her hds push into e he of her long blue coat.
“Jesse,” she sd d stopd.
He wind.
“Jesse, a lot of ple ink you’ve
gone off e dp end here. You’s conspiracy evewm. Yet you don’t talk to anyone aboutit. 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 wate 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.
“This isn’t happening
right,” Abby said.
“No,” Jesse said.
“I… have had a very nice time
with you, Jesse.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“It’s been nice.”
“People think you should resign.”
Jesse nodded.
“Want a ride back to your
office?” Jesse said.
“No,” Abby said.
“I’ll walk back. I need the time alone.”
She smiled without pleasure. “Clear my head.”
“Sure thing,” Jesse said.
He was still leaning on the rail.
“Jesse,” she said.
“Turn around.”
He did. She stepped to him and put her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest.
“I’m sorry, Jesse.”
He patted her gently on the back.
“It’s okay, Abby,” he
said.
Then he let her go and she walked away down the hill toward town, the spit of snow glistening momentarily i her hair. Then she was out of sight and he turned back an looked at the gray water and listened to the gray gulls an thought about the other ocean and the night he left it. H smiled after a while.
“Here’s looking at you,
Jenn,” he said out loud.
His voice was small and nearly soundless mixed with th wind and the ocean sound and the noise of the gulls.
see tino eisn, so the bg Mercedes was wedged into the northbound commuter traffic on the Southeast Expressway.
Hasty was nearly in tears.
“You dumb bastard,” he said to Jo
Jo.
“What the hell”are you yelling at
me for?“
“Because this was your deal. You were the one vouched for Fish.”
“Bullshit,” Jo Jo said.
“You come to me, I was trying to do you a favor.
Don’t whine to me it didn’t work out.”
“You bastard,” Hasty said.
He turned off at Mass. Avenue and drove past Boston City Hospital. He didn’t like the city, and didn’t spend much time there. It took him two or three false turns to find Tremont Street and another ten minutes to find the block where Gino Fish had his storefront.
“You needa be careful about
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