We Mos ways made Jo Jo a lie uney. e puzzl Jo Jo. He weigh a hununds Vinnie. But e wsomeng aut Vinnie’s d when Vinnie moved he mov with such d onomy. d he had hed at Vinnie sht Rer thyone in Boston. d Vine smed a liRle scSI of Jo Jo, wch dn’t me senause Jo Jo could have broken him in two like ig, d Vinnie Rer not ng wi him, or he ere were two big suitca on e flr next to Vine. nded em.
“TWo llion,” Fish sd, ?‘d
chge.“
“No sweaL Gino.”
“I’m se,” Fish sd.
“ng is, Gino, I n geng ee d a lf on it, I go‘ split it with some ople. Mes e ma a complicate. I was lg to get fo even on if I could.” sat silemly and lked at Jo Jo, his hds sfing e table,’s long finge interlaced. Fish pud his lips he ought about is.
48
“We could cut it to two,” Fish said.
“That would simplify the math even further.”
Jo Jo laughed.
“I know you’re kidding, Gino. But
I’m coming cheap at four percent. Not many guys can move two million, three for you bang bang like that, you know?”
Again Fish was quiet, pursing his lips. This time he was quiet for quite a while. It made Jo Jo nervous. He didn’t like being nervous, and especially didn’t like being made nervous by two guys he could crush like a couple of grapes.
They should be nervous of me, he thought.
“What you say is true, Jo Jo,” Fish said.
“Not many men have your contacts in this. But that doesn’t mean no one does. I’ll give you the four, but I don’t want you coming in next week and asking for five.”
“Hey, Gino, I don’t do business that way.
I say four, it’s four and that’s it.”
“Fine,” Fish said, and nodded at the
suitcases.
Jo Jo went and picked them up. Each of them weighed more than 120 pounds, .but if they were too heavy Jo Jo didn’t show it.
The trapezius muscles bunched along the top of his shoulders and the triceps defined themselves more deeply along the backs of his arms.
“I’ll take care of this today,
Gino,” he said.
“I’m sure you will,” Fish said.
“Take it easy,” Jo Jo said.
Neither Fish nor Vinnie spoke and Jo Jo left the office and went through the anteroom and out the front door. The good-looking young man came in with the mail and put it on the table in front of Gino.
“What. do you think,” he said.
“Cute?”
Fish glanced up at him and snorted and began to open the mail.
“What do you think, Vinnie,” the young man said.
“He’s a jerk,” Vinnie said.
“He thinks muscles matter.”
“Well, maybe they do to me,” the young man said.
Vinnie shrugged and turned up the volume on his tape The young man went back out to the anteroom smil- Outside on Tremont Street, Jo Jo walked a half block up the street, and, out of sight of Gino’s office, put bags down on the curb and waited for a cab.
CM ?r II the sun shining stxaight at him so that he had to put the sun visor down even with sunglasses on. He could smell the Atlantic before he saw it. Before he went to the town hall, he found the beachfront along Atlantic Avenue and parked and got out and walked onto the beach and looked at the eastern ocean. It probably had something to do with closing a circle. What circle it was, Jesse didn’t know. But it did no harm to look at the ocean. He stood for a while, then got back in the car and drove slowly along Atlantic Avenue, following the directions they’d sent him, to the town hall.
The east in Jesse’s imagination had always been New England: village greens, and white steeples and weathered shingles and permanence. He had always liked to imagine it in winter when the clear virtuous cold was antipodal to the hot desperation of Los Angeles. It wasn’t winter when he arrived. It was late June and .the narrow streets were dappled by the sunlight shining through the.
full-foliaged of old trees. It wasn’t clean and cold, but it was clean warm and he liked it.
He met the town, or as many members of the town as interested, including most of the police department, in auditorium of the brick town hall. The Board of Sesat on stage in folding chairs. Jesse stood, while chairman of the
