“Jo Jo. He sent the pictures. I told the police.”
“What police?‘”
“Jesse.”
She was still whispering. He was still leaning forward.
His face was bloodless and there was sweat on his upper lip.
“Did ‘he force you?” Hasty said.
“No.”
Her voice was barely audible.:
“Goddamn you,” Hasty said.
“Jo Jo killed that girl, too,” she
whispered. “I told Jesse.”
Her husband didn’t say anything. He leaned farther forward until he was doubled over and clutched at himself and began to moan. Then he stood and walked to the wall and pounded on it with both fists and began to scream. Then stopped pounding and stopped screaming and turned back toward her.
“You… you don’t
know…”
He shook his head. He couldn’t find words. She was still, staring at the hands folded in her lap.
“I’m sick,” she whispered.
“You have to understand, Hasty. I’m sick.”
“Goddamn you,” he said. “Goddamn
you.”
With the back of his hand her husband knocked a floor lamp over and when it was on the floor he kicked it. Then he turned and ran from the room. After a moment she heard the back door open and after another moment she heard the car start. She sat for a long time in the empty house before she got up finally and walked slowly to the kitchen and closed the back door that her husband had left open. Then she sat and rested her arms on the kitchen table and put her head down onto them, and cried.
house, where they had their weekly meetings; all the Horsemen, in fatigues, with weapons, sitting on folding chairs among the children’s bicycles, and the family garden tools.‘
the wh .eelbarrow, power mower, snowblower, the rakes and hoe, 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, Torn Carson, the arms deal, every thing, 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 betny 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.”
