Night passage

“What if I went to the FBI with this?”

“This is what I’m trying to forestall,” Hathaway said. “Other people, people like Jo Jo, would prevail. And your family . . .” Hathaway shrugged and held the shrug for a moment, and sighed as if to himself, before he continued.

“But we both know, Tom, you are not made of that kind of stuff. The better choice for you, and I’m sure you recognize this, is to take our rather generous severance package. We’ve found you a house, and we’ve contributed some cash to help you in relocation costs. The details are in here.”

“What if I promise not to say a word about anything, Hasty. Why can’t I just stay here. You’d have a chief of police that won’t give you any trouble.”

Hathaway shook his head slowly as Carson spoke. He smiled sadly.

“I mean, you know, the next chief,” Carson said, “might be harder to deal with.”

Hathaway continued his sad smile and slow head shake.

“I am trying to help you, Tom,” Hathaway said. “I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”

“I’m no troublemaker,” Carson said. “How can you be sure you won’t just get a troublemaker.”

“We have already chosen your successor,” Hathaway said. “He should be just right.”

He held the envelope out toward Tom Carson and, after a moment of empty hesitation, Carson reached out and took it.

Chapter 3

Jesse drove out Route 10 past Upland, where he picked up Route 15 and followed it north to Barstow, where he went east on Route 40. He didn’t turn on the radio. He liked quiet. He set the cruise control to seventy and kept a hand lightly on the steering wheel and slowly settled into himself and allowed his feelings to seep out of the compacted center of himself. He no longer had a badge. He’d turned it in with his service pistol. There was no wedding ring on his left hand. He smiled without pleasure. Turned that in too. It made him feel sort of scared to be without a badge or a wedding ring. Not quite thirty-five and no official status anymore. With his right hand he fished in the gym bag on the front seat beside him until he found his off-duty gun, a short-barreled Smith & Wesson .38. He arranged it near the top of the bag, where it would be easy to reach, and he let his hand rest on it for a time. It made him feel less insubstantial. He stopped at a truck stop outside of Needles, sat at the counter and had orange juice, ham, eggs, potatoes, wheat toast, and three cups of coffee with cream and sugar. It made him feel good. The place was full of truckers and tourists, and he was alone among them. No one paid any attention to him. They were going where they would and he was on his way east. He went to the men’s room and washed his hands and face. Back in the car, cruise control set, he felt a small freshet of excitement. It was afternoon now, the sun was behind him. Shining on what he had left. The road spooled out ahead of him, straight to the horizon, nearly empty. Freedom, he thought, and smiled again, no badge, no ring, no problem. You look at it the right way and that’s freedom. He nursed the excitement as long as he could, trying to build on it.

He stayed the night in Flagstaff, 250 miles north of where he had been born, and went to the motel bar for supper. He ordered scotch on the rocks and a chicken breast sandwich on a croissant. There were a couple of guys in plaid shirts and those little string ties they wore in places like Arizona, the kind with the silver hasp where a knot should be. Both bartenders were women wearing white shirts and black ties and short red jackets. One was a fat blond woman, the other a more slender dark-haired Hispanic girl who would be fat in five more years. Beyond the bar was a room with tables and a dance floor, and the setup for a disc jockey. No one was in the room yet. An unlit piece of neon script over the disc jockey stand spelled out “Coyote Lounge.” He sipped a little scotch, felt the cold heat spread from his esophagus. A tall well-built man in his thirties came into the bar wearing a big Stetson hat and earphones. He seemed to be bouncing slightly to music that only he heard. He had on a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tight jeans and two-toned lizard-skin cowboy boots. The tiny tape player was tucked into his shirt pocket and the slender cord ran up under his chin. He looked as if he’d just come from a shower and a shave and his cologne came into the bar ahead of him. Clubman, maybe. Jesse watched him. There was nothing particularly interesting about him except that Jesse watched everything. The cowboy ordered a nonalcoholic beer and when it was served he left the glass and picked up the bottle and carried it with him as he walked along the bar looking everything over.

“When’s that dancing start?” he said to one of the bartenders.

He spoke loudly, perhaps because he needed to speak over the music in his ears. He drank his nonalcoholic beer from the bottle, holding it by the neck.

“Nine o’clock,” the Hispanic girl said. She had no accent.

The cowboy looked around the bar at Jesse, at the two guys in plaid shirts drinking beer, at the two bartenders.

“Anybody know a happening place around here?”

One of the beer drinkers shook his head without looking up. Nobody else even acknowledged the question. Everybody knows it, Jesse thought. Maybe it’s how loud he talks. Or how he looks like a model in one of those western-wear catalogs. Or the way he walks around in the little backwater bar, like he was strolling into the Ritz. Whatever it was, everyone knew he was a guy who, encouraged by an answer, would talk to you for much too long. The cowboy nodded to himself, as if his suspicions were confirmed, and walked into the empty dance hall and walked around it, looking at the caricatures of dapper semi-human coyotes hanging on the walls. Then he put his half-finished bottle of nonalcoholic beer on the bar, surveyed the bar again, and walked out.

“Takes all kinds,” the blond bartender said.

A jerk, Jesse thought. A good-looking jerk, but just as lonely and separate as the homely ones. His sandwich came. He ate it because he needed nourishment, and drank two more scotches and paid and went to his room. Nothing was going to happen when they opened up the dance floor that Jesse wanted to watch.

In his room he got the travel bottle of Black Label out of his suitcase and poured some into one of the little sanitary plastic cups he found in the bathroom. The walk down the hall for ice seemed too long so he sipped the scotch warm. He didn’t turn on the television. Instead he stood at the window and looked out at the high pines that rimmed the hill behind the motel. He’d grown up in Tucson when The Brady Bunch was hot, and while it was only four or five hours away, it could have been another planet. Tucson was sunlight and desert and heat, even in January. Up here they had winter. It was 7:45, getting dark. He was still in the same time zone. Je

Chapter 4

Hasty Hathaway had never really worked. His father had made a great deal of money in banking, and while he spent time in his office at the bank he’d inherited, he was mainly busy with being the most prominent citizen in Paradise, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Commander of Freedom’s Horsemen, and president of the Rotary Club. He stood now in his bedroom with the closet door open thinking about which jacket to wear. His wife lay in bed in her nightgown watching him.