Night Passage Read online

  East of Albuquerque he was back into sere landscape with high ground lying ominously in the distance, like sleeping beasts at the point where the vast high sky joined the remote landscape. At a rest stop the sign warned of rattlesnakes. He stopped for gas at an Indian reservation in New Mexico. He didn’t know what kinds of Indians they were. Hopi maybe, or Pima. He didn’t know anything about Indians. The gas was cheaper on the reservation and so were cigarettes because neither was subject to federal tax. Signs for miles along the interstate advertised the low price for cigarettes. A couple of Indian men in jeans and white tee shirts and plastic mesh baseball caps were hanging around the self-service pump. 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 an old Indian woman at the register in a red tee shirt that had “Harrah’s” printed across the front in black letters. A cigarette was stuck in the corner of her mouth and she squinted 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 saw the two Indian men looking after him, talking Massachusetts! There was nothing else in the shale and scrub landscape but the station and the two men.... The first time he met Jennifer she had blond hair. He had played basketball for an hour at Sports Club LA, where 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. Showered and dressed, he was drinking coffee at a table for two in the snack bar during a crowded noontime when she asked if she could sit in the empty seat across from him. He 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 point guard at Fairfax High School, the only white point guard in the conference, and he could climb a long rope hand over hand without using 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 cobalt-and-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 what 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 off. “I’ll take you shooting sometime, if you’d like.”

  “Is there a big kick?”

  “No.”

  Jennifer ate some more sandwich and wiped her mouth.

  “If I’d known I was going to eat with someone I wouldn’t 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.”

  “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 here. It’s a modern version of a Greek tragedy called The Parcae. I play Clotho.”

  “Sounds really interesting,” Jesse said. “I’d like to come see it.”

  “I can leave a ticket for you at the box office. All you have 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 lobby.”

  She smiled and stood and disposed of her tray.

  “I you don’t like the play, don’t arrest me,” she said.

  “I’ll like the play, Jesse said.

>   He watched her as she walked away. He knew he’d hate the play, but it was part of what he was willing to pay in order to see that body without the Lycra.... At Santa Rosa he crossed the Pecos. It was a pretty ordinary-looking little river to be so famous. What the hell made it so famous? Was it Judge Roy Bean? The law west of the Pecos? Small things pleased him as he drove. He liked seeing the towns that had once marked Route 66: Gallup, New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, Winona. He liked seeing the occasional wind-driven tumbleweed that rolled across the highway. He liked seeing road signs for Indian reservations and places like Fort Defiance. Past Santa Rosa he pulled off of the Interstate to get gas and a ham-and-cheese sandwich at a gas station/restaurant in the middle of the New Mexico wilderness.

  It was the only building in sight with views in all directions to the empty horizon. He pumped his own gas, and a skinny girl with pale skin and a tooth missing took his money and sold him a sandwich. He sat in the car and ate 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 car 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 no 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 Hollywood 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 apartment 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 backless 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 underpants and dropped them into the clothes hamper in her closet. 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, um, so still, on the outside and then, you know, wow.”

  “You’re pretty exciting,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t like to talk about his emotions.

  “I try to be,” she said.

  They lay quietly on their backs. His arm under her neck. Her head on his right shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t want to make you mad,” Jennifer said.

  “You won’t.”

  They lay quietly for a while longer, then she got up and put 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 as to get fully dressed. He settled for putting his pants on, leaving his gun holstered on top of her dresser. They sat 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 construction for six months, joined the Marines, got out, took the exam for fire 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 you get to help people.”

  “And the awful things?”

  “There’s not as much as you think,” he said.

  “But there is some,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “What about that?”

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  JO JO GENEST FIRST GOT INTO the money business through 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. His 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 wash it, you unnerstand, launder it, so the government can’t find 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 acid to drain from his muscles.

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

  “Like to a numbered Swiss bank account,” Jo Jo said.

  “Sure,” Fusco said, “like that. Anyway wha
t you do is go around with a sack full of cash and buy cashier’s checks or money orders for amounts small enough so they don’t get 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 you?” he said. “Usually it’s the branch of some South American bank in Florida.”

  “So don’t they get reported?”

  “No. It’s not a cash deal. CTRs are required only for cash.”

  “CTR?”

  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 tight 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.”

  “Half a percent,” Fusco said again. “You interested?”

  “Sure,” Jo Jo said.

  Chapter 7

  IN TUCUMCARI JESSE STOPPED at a Holiday Inn just off the interstate on old Route 66. There was a gas station across the street, and a field where horses and one mule grazed and nothing else. He had a club sandwich in the restaurant and got some ice and went to his room where he sat with the door open and sipped scotch and the few people still using the pool in the courtyard. There was a couple with two children using the pool. The were unpleasant—unkind to each other, demanding of their parents. The father looked awkward in his ill-fitting bathing suit, white-bodied, hairy, and soft. The mother was bottom-heavy and knew it, wearing a bathing with a tiny skirt in a useless attempt to conceal her disproportion. Her parents were with them. The grandmother was a thin old woman in matching beige pants and blouse. Her hair was evenly gray and curled tightly to her head. Whenever the mother spoke sharply to one of her children, the grandmother would intervene. The grandfather looked like he might once have done heavy labor. His forearms were still thick and there was a hint of muscle pack in his sloped shoulders. But his stomach was big and his white legs in their pink polyester shorts were blue-veined and rickety-looking. The grandfather had a grim look, as if the family trip had not been his idea. Jesse imagined the man’s dismay at his family. Still it was family, three generations of it. Jesse felt remote as he sat, as if he were viewing himself from far away, a tiny figure, diminished by distance, dwindling as he sat… In the morning he was on the interstate before seven and crossed into the Texas panhandle before eight. There were signs for Big John’s Steak House in Amarillo. A seventy-two-ounce steak. Eat it in an hour and get it free. By ten he was in Amarillo. Big John was not alone. The highway was suddenly beset by motels and fast food, car dealers and steak houses and gas stations. Then he was out of Amarillo and back onto the plains. The Big John’s signs faced the other way now, luring the westbound travelers. On each side of the highway the open range reappeared, dotted occasionally with cattle grazing on the unappetizing brown grass. Once in a while there would be a gate, usually made of iron piping, with a sign indicating a cattle baronage. But he never saw any houses, or any cowboys, mostly just brown grassland beyond the wire fencing that lined the highway, and now and then a water cistern. The grass did not look nourishing. He had the cruise control on seventy, but the distances were so great and the sky so high and the horizon so distant that the car seemed in the ulteriority of his imagination a beetle scuttling without measurable progress beneath a limitless sky across an uncomprehending plain… They’d been married a month when they had dinner at a table in the rear at Spago with Elliott Krueger. He had been across the street from Spago once, at 2:35 in the morning, on the crime-scene team, when a Chicano coke dealer named Street Duck been killed by somebody who shot him five times in the stomach at close range with a nine-millimeter pistol. No had seen the shooting. Elliott was about fifty. His thick black hair was touched with gray, his short careful beard was touched with more. He was medium height, medium build. He didn’t look like he exercised. He had on an unconstructed linen jacket with the sleeves pushed up over his forearms. He wore a Rolex watch. It had been Jesse’s experience that people who really had a lot of money didn’t waste it on Rolex watches. In the bad neighborhoods, on other hand, a Rolex watch on a kid meant he was so tough that no one dared to take it away from him. Elliott a girlfriend with him. Her name was Taffy. She seemed about sixteen, but she might have been twenty. Wearing a flowing dress with a very short ruffled skirt, she sat silently beside Elliott like an obedient spaniel waiting for a command.