Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

someone like him care?” Hasty said.
    Jo Jo shrugged.
    “Gino’s a strange guy,” Jo Jo said.
    They went down the stairs to the basement-level entrance and walked into Development Associates of Boston. The pretty young man behind the reception desk looked up at them.
    “Well, Tarzan,” he said with his infuriating smile. “And who’s this, Cheetah?”
    Jo Jo had a momentary image of himself yanking the little faggot from behind the desk and smashing his head against the white brick wall. But he didn’t. This was business, and he was always aware of Vinnie Morris and his odd unnerving stillness, and how quick everyone said he was when he had reason to be.
    “Gino’s expecting us,” Jo Jo said.
    “Me check,” the young man said. “You wait.”
    He stood and went back through the door behind the desk and into the back room. In a moment he came out and made a sweeping gesture of invitation like a maitre d’ at a pretentious restaurant. Jo Jo could almost feel Hasty’s disapproval. But Gino was Gino and he had to meet the client.
    Hasty looked around the inner office. It too was white brick, with a vase full of flowers on the desk. A tall spare man sat behind the desk, and a compact efficient-looking man sat to Gino’s left, tilting his straight chair back against the wall.
    “I’m Gino Fish,” the spare man said. “This is my associate Vinnie Morris.”
    Morris didn’t make any sign that he even heard Gino. He simply looked at them without expression. Vinnie Morris made Hasty uncomfortable. He made him think of his new police chief, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Something about potential unexpressed, maybe. The motionless implication that there would be more than what you saw, if you pushed beyond the stillness.
    “How do you do,” Hasty said.
    Why was he so uncomfortable? He was meeting a couple of small-time crooks. He was the president of his own bank. He commanded a force of men that would liquefy these two thugs at his order. If one were to guess from the nance at the reception desk, Fish might even be a homosexual.
    “You want some guns,” Fish said.
    “As many as you can get, small arms, heavy weapons. I’m sure Jo Jo has spelled all this out for you.”
    “Jo Jo couldn’t spell cat,” Fish said, “if you gave him the C and the A. What do you want the weapons for?”
    “There’s no need for you to know.”
    “I like to know,” Fish said. “You want to do business with me, you do it on my terms. What are you going to do with the weapons?”
    “We are a group of free men,” Hasty said. “Patriots.”
    Fish smiled.
    “I don’t expect you to understand,” Hasty said.
    He could feel his face getting hot.
    “Go on,” Fish said.
    “We know that the government is intent on destroying us. We are ready for it. But we need weapons. Not only for the moment but for the long struggle. We need to stockpile so that when they think they’ve confiscated our arms, we can unearth a new supply and rise when they least expect it.”
    Fish nodded slowly. He glanced once at Vinnie Morris, and then back at Hasty.
    “So, you’re going to bury the guns?” Fish said.
    “Yes.”
    Fish smiled.
    “This got to do with an international Jewish conspiracy?” he said.
    “I know you’re mocking, but you’ll see. Jews, Catholics, one-worlders, anybody who wishes us to give up our sovereignty to a foreign power.”
    “Like the Pope, or the UN,” Fish said.
    “Yes.”
    Fish looked again at Vinnie Morris.
    “See?” Fish said. “Didn’t I say it would be worth it to have him come in and see us?”
    “That’s what you said.”
    Jo Jo didn’t like the way this was going. He didn’t have any idea what Hasty was talking about. He never had known why the Horsemen ran around in the woods with guns. This was the first he’d heard about one-worlders, whatever they were. But he knew Gino was having fun with them, and it made him feel sweaty. For his part Hasty wasn’t used to being laughed at. He wasn’t sure how one was supposed to respond to being laughed at.
    “Lot of unmarked UN helicopters hovering over, ah, where are you from again?”
    “Paradise,” Hasty said.
    His face felt somewhat stiff.
    “Ah yes,” Fish said. “Paradise.”
    “I am doing business with you,” Hasty said. His voice was hoarse and seemed hard to squeeze through his windpipe. “Admittedly. But you are also doing business with me, and goddamn it, if you don’t want the business, just keep it up and I’ll