Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

the rakes and hoes, the shovel, and the long-handled three-toothed cultivator, and coiled hoses hanging on the wall. That had been easy, there was a system in place to assemble the Horsemen. Now it was all on him. He stood in a near trance at the side of the room waiting for the men to settle. Now everything was in what he would say. He felt simultaneously frenetic and still. He remembered a phrase he read once in college—furious immobility. That’s what he felt like. Furious immobility. Every moment since Cissy told him had been frenzied. If Jesse knew that Jo Jo killed Tammy Portugal, then soon he would know why, and once Jo Jo began to talk—and Hasty had no doubt that under pressure, Jo Jo would talk—he would tell everything. Tammy, Lou Burke, Tom Carson, the arms deal, everything, and all that Hasty had built for, all the plans, the mobilization, the slow expansion, all that Hasty was, the Horsemen, the bank, the prominent man in town. He didn’t know how Jo Jo had gotten those pictures, but he knew why he had gone public with them. He should never have fought with him about the aborted weapons deal. He should not have blamed him. The blame goes to the commander. It had been a moment of weakness and frustration and it had betrayed him as such moments always would betray a man who had the burden of command. Later he could learn from that mistake. Now he must silence it. Stone knew. He didn’t know how much, but Stone knew something about Lou Burke when he suspended him. He knew something about Jo Jo. Stone was another mistake. Hasty had wanted a pliable drunk. He had been deceived. That mistake had to be silenced too. Once he would simply have used Jo Jo. But now he could not. Now he had only one instrument, the Horsemen. However he was to save the situation, the Horsemen were what he had available. He had not told them yet of the aborted arms deal. If he could pull this off, the arms deal would fade. They wouldn’t need the arms. Perhaps he could control the town without them. Enough good men, banded in the right cause … The room was quiet. Hasty walked out in front of the men. His insides felt jagged and unstable. My God, he thought, I hope I don’t foul myself. He tried to tighten his stomach. He took in a deep breath through his nose so as not to let it show and tried to focus on what he wanted.
    “Men,” he said, and paused, and cleared his throat. “Men, we have been preparing—I think it is fair to say, that many of us have been preparing all our lives—for the moment that has come.”
    He could hear the nervous vibrato in his voice. Was he to fail himself in the moment of crisis? Command, he said to himself. Command.
    “You all know Jo Jo. He has his ways, but he has been one of us. Now they have him in jail on a manufactured charge and they will force him to incriminate us. He may resist them, but no one can resist long. They use science to pervert us. Injections, hypnosis, sleep deprivation. It will not be long before Jesse Stone knows our every plan.”
    They were listening. His voice was stabilized, though his insides were still turbulent.
    “I know that many of us have come to like Jesse Stone, but that is part of his way. He is, at the very bottom line, a stooge for the state police.”
    From the inside pocket of his field jacket, he took a Polaroid picture of Cissy and held it up.
    “He has even circulated this disgusting piece of trash. I don’t know if any of you have received one; it is an obviously doctored picture purporting to be my wife. A man capable of that kind of deceit is capable of anything.”
    Several of the men leaned forward trying to make out the picture. Hasty paused, letting his eyes rove slowly over the room, meeting the look of as many of the men as he could. He let the pause build. After a long moment he put the picture back in his jacket pocket. His insides were settling. He was heartened by his rhetoric. He had felt the satisfaction of revenge as he had held up his wife’s naked picture in front of the men. Bitch. He felt powerful. His voice was strong.
    “He has to be stopped,” Hasty said softly.
    Hasty paused again, looking slowly around the room. Some of the men were nodding their heads.
    “We will implement our plan to take the town hall,” Hasty said. “We will take Jo Jo out of there … and we will eliminate Jesse Stone.”
    “You mean kill him?” one of the men said from the back.
    “In a war of liberation,” Hasty said, “we do