“How do we pick it up?” Jo Jo
asked.
“Go to the information booth at the South Shore Plaza with the correct am6unt of money, in cash, as specified.
Someone will meet you and tell you the rest.
You’ll be expected at two o’clock today.“
“I gotta talk to my guy,” Jo Jo
said.
“You can talk to anyone you
want,” the pretty boy said.
“But you’re there at two or the
deal is canceled.”
“For crissake,” Jo Jo said.
But the pretty boy had hng up.
“Faggot bastard,” Jo Jo said
aloud.
Then .he called Hasty Hathaway and at 12:30 they were in Hasty’s Mercedes, with a suitcase full of small bills, heading for the South Shore.
“It’s right there where Route
Three splits off from the expressway for the Cape,” Jo Jo said.
“Well, how are we to transport the
arms?” Hasty said.
“Didn’t they say
anything?”
“Just what I told you,” Jo Jo
said.
They parked near the entrance to Macy’s and walked through the mall, it was busy in the early afternoon. The stores were already pushing Christmas. There were Christmas trees and pictures of Santa Claus, and miniature village scenes and railroad trains that circled endlessly through the fake snow. There were Salvation Army troopers with their bells and buckets, and tinsel and shiny ornaments and a lot of people, mostly women, often with small bored children dressed too warmly. Jo Jo and Hasty stopped beside the information booth. Jo Jo was carrying the money in a green sports equipment bag that said Adidas on it in white letters.
The women behind the information desk were wearing Santa Claus hats. There was a big clock on the booth. It read ten minutes of two.
At 2:15 a, smallish man in a longshoreman’s cap and a Patriots warm-up jacket walked up to Hasty and said,
“I’m from Gino.‘ ’
“Money’s in the bag,”
Jo Jo said.
With the bag still on Jo Jo’s shoulder, the smallish man zipped it open enough to peer in. He nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “You
give me the bag. I give you the keys to the truck and tell you where it’s parked.”
“You don’t get the dough until we
see the product,” Jo Jo said.
“Nope, deal goes down like I said, or it don’t go down at all.”
“And maybe I grab your scrawny little
fucking neck and squeeze it until you tell me where the truck is,” Jo Jo said.
The smallish man shrugged, and glanced over toward a
· bookstore fifty ‘yards down
the mall. Vinnie Morris w: leaning against the wail outside the bookstore with his am folded across his chest.
“Maybe not,” the smailish man
said.
“You know if you double-cross
us,” Hasty said, “I ct bring an army down on you.”
“Sure,” the smallish man said.
