Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

the head. Maybe someday.
    “Gino back there?” he said.
    “Sure.”
    Jo Jo nodded and went past the young man through the open archway into the back room. Gino Fish was sitting at a round antique table, in a high-backed antique chair. He was tall and thin with gray hair. Along the right-hand wall, a little behind Fish, sat Vinnie Morris with his chair tipped back and balanced on its back legs. Vinnie was listening to earphones from a small portable tape player clipped to his belt.
    “How’s it going, Gino,” Jo Jo said.
    “Fine,” Fish said.
    “Vinnie,” Jo Jo said, “how they hanging?”
    Vinnie Morris always made Jo Jo a little uneasy. The uneasiness puzzled Jo Jo. He weighed a hundred pounds more than Vinnie. But there was something about Vinnie’s stillness. And when Vinnie moved he moved with such quickness and economy. And he had heard that Vinnie could shoot better than anyone in Boston. And Vinnie always seemed a little scornful of Jo Jo, which didn’t make any sense because Jo Jo could have broken him in two like a twig, and Vinnie better not try anything with him, or he would.
    There were two big suitcases on the floor next to Vinnie. Fish nodded at them.
    “Two million,” Fish said, “and change.”
    “No sweat, Gino.”
    “I’m sure,” Fish said.
    “Thing is, Gino, I been getting three and a half on it, and I gotta split it with some people. Makes the math a little complicated. I was looking to get four even on this one, if I could.”
    Fish sat silently and looked at Jo Jo, his hands resting on the table, his long fingers interlaced. Fish pursed his lips while he thought about this.
    “We could cut it to two,” Fish said. “That would simplify the math even further.”
    Jo Jo laughed.
    “I know you’re kidding, Gino. But I’m coming cheap at four percent. Not many guys can move two million, three for you bang bang like that, you know?”
    Again Fish was quiet, pursing his lips. This time he was quiet for quite a while. It made Jo Jo nervous. He didn’t like being nervous, and especially didn’t like being made nervous by two guys he could crush like a couple of grapes. They should be nervous of me, he thought.
    “What you say is true, Jo Jo,” Fish said. “Not many men have your contacts in this. But that doesn’t mean no one does. I’ll give you the four, but I don’t want you coming in next week and asking for five.”
    “Hey, Gino, I don’t do business that way. I say four, it’s four and that’s it.”
    “Fine,” Fish said, and nodded at the suitcases.
    Jo Jo went and picked them up. Each of them weighed more than 120 pounds, but if they were too heavy Jo Jo didn’t show it. The trapezius muscles bunched along the top of his shoulders and the triceps defined themselves more deeply along the backs of his arms.
    “I’ll take care of this today, Gino,” he said.
    “I’m sure you will,” Fish said.
    “Take it easy,” Jo Jo said.
    Neither Fish nor Vinnie spoke and Jo Jo left the office and went through the anteroom and out the front door. The good-looking young man came in with the mail and put it on the table in front of Gino.
    “What do you think,” he said. “Cute?”
    Fish glanced up at him and snorted and began to open the mail.
    “What do you think, Vinnie,” the young man said.
    “He’s a jerk,” Vinnie said. “He thinks muscles matter.”
    “Well, maybe they do to me,” the young man said.
    Vinnie shrugged and turned up the volume on his tape player. The young man went back out to the anteroom smiling.
    Outside on Tremont Street, Jo Jo walked a half block back up the street, and, out of sight of Gino’s office, put the bags down on the curb and waited for a cab.

11
     
    Jesse drove into Paradise at ten in the morning with the sun shining straight at him so that he had to put the sun visor down even with sunglasses on. He could smell the Atlantic before he saw it. Before he went to the town hall, he found the beachfront along Atlantic Avenue and parked and got out and walked onto the beach and looked at the eastern ocean. It probably had something to do with closing a circle. What circle it was, Jesse didn’t know. But it did no harm to look at the ocean. He stood for a while, then got back in the car and drove slowly along Atlantic Avenue, following the directions they’d sent him, to the town hall. The east in Jesse’s imagination had always been New England: village greens, and white steeples and weathered shingles and permanence.