Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

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 this,” Jo Jo said. “That Vinnie Morris is a quick sonova bitch.”
    “I thought you were a tough guy,” Hasty said. “Are you scared of these people?”
    “No, but it don’t make no sense,” Jo Jo said, “go charging fucking in there? Yelling and waving your arms, you know?”
    “The goddamned fairy took my money,” Hasty said. “The Horsemen’s money. If I have to I’ll bring the whole militia company in here. And I’m going to tell him that.”
    Hasty parked beside a hydrant near the Cyclorama, and got out.
    “You going to back me?” he said to Jo Jo.
    “I didn’t cut in for that,” Jo Jo said. “I set up the deal. They welshed on it. It’s between you and them.”
    “You yellow belly,” Hasty said.
    He slammed the door, and turned and went down Tremont Street to the storefront. It was empty. The door was locked. Hasty groaned in anger and disappointment and turned and went back to his car. He got in and started up without a word.
    “Nobody there?” Jo Jo said.
    Hasty nodded as he yanked the Mercedes out into the traffic and drove out of the South End on Tremont Street.
    “I knew there wouldn’t be,” Jo Jo said. “Why I didn’t waste time walking down there.”
    “You’re a yellow belly,” Hasty said.
    “You want to go one on one with me?” Jo Jo said.
    “These are your people, Jo Jo. I want my weapons, or I want my money.”
    “You been stiffed, asshole. Don’t you get it? There aren’t any fucking weapons.” Jo Jo said “weapons” in exaggerated scorn. “There never were any weapons. They saw you coming.”
    “You brought me to them. You get the money back.”
    Jo Jo shook his head.
    “I mean it, Jo Jo. You are in this far too deeply to just walk away.”
    Jo Jo felt a little tingle of fear race up the backs of his thighs. His glance shifted onto Hasty’s face, and held. He pulled his chin down into his neck almost like a turtle retracting, and his neck thickened.
    “I may be in it, Hasty, but I sure as shit ain’t in it alone.”
    Hasty didn’t answer right away. He had driven out of the South End and onto Charles Street where it ran between the Common and the Public Garden. The city rose up all around them. A cold rain had begun to spit and Hasty turned the windshield wipers on to low intermittent.
    “I do not believe what I am hearing,” Hasty said finally.
    He was choosing his words carefully, talking as if to an adolescent, trying to speak with the icy assurance of command.
    “We have paid you well for work you were willing to do. Now you speak as if, somehow, that gave you knowledge which you would use against us.”
    “Hey, you’re the one talking about getting in deep,” Jo Jo said.
    “And you are in deep. There is no information you have which you could use against us that would not also incriminate you.”
    “You want people to know about Tammy Portugal? Or how you had me throw Lou Burke off the rocks? You think that might not get you in just a little fucking trouble?”
    Hasty shook his head as if saddened. He turned left onto Beacon Street, past the Hampshire House with its line of tourists outside the Cheers bar.
    “Jo Jo, you haven’t the intestinal fortitude. You inform on me and you go to the electric chair. It’s as simple as that, and you know it. You have great big muscles, and you are mean as hell, but you are as yellow as they come. You have nothing on me that won’t get you in trouble too.”
    Jo Jo stared at Hasty with eyes that seemed without pupils, opaque eyes too small for his crude face. As Hasty watched him, between glances at the road, Jo Jo’s color deepened, and a small muscle twitched in his cheek.
    “I oughta just throw you off the fucking rocks,” Jo Jo said.
    “My men would tear you apart if that happened,” Hasty said. “Don’t threaten me, Jo Jo. I’m not afraid of you.”
    “You think I’m bluffing?”
    “I think you better think about how to get the money back