“How come you want to know this,
Jesse?” Simpson asked finally.
“Just like to keep track, Suit. Militias have sometimes gotten a little hairy.”
“Oh hell, Jesse, you take the Horsemen too serious. I known most of them since I been a little kid. They just like to shoot, hang around with each other. Drink beer after the meetings.
Hell, Lou’s one of the officers, for crissake.”
“You’re probably right, Suit.
What I would like is if you kept it to yourself, though, be kind of embarrassing if Lou . found out, or Mr. Hathaway, that I was checking them out.”
“Oh sure, Jesse, no sweat. I
won’t say a damned word.”
“And the other thing, Suit, if you know anybody that tried to get a gun permit and couldn’t, could you let me know his name.”
“That off the record too, Jesse?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Simpson said and his
round pink face widened as he smiled. “Suitcase Simpson, Undercover.”
of Paradise was left over from the time when every town had a movie theater. There was a balcony. The ceiling was high.
And the screen was big, with maroon drapes gathered at each side of it.
Jesse didn’t like the movie much. But he liked the theater.
And he enjoyed being with Abby.
“What’d you think,” she
said as they walked out onto Washington Street.
“The computer broke, they’d have
had no movie,” Jesse said.
He had the slightly disoriented lightness he always felt coming out of a movie.
“Computer?” Abby said.
“Oh, you mean all the special effects.”
“Un huh.”
“But that’s how film is made
these days. I mean art is partly about making use of the technology available.”
“Art?” Jesse said.
There was a gym on the second floor next to the theater, and coming out the front door of the gym and walking toward them was Jo Jo Genest. He had on a cutoff black tee shirt and gray sweatpants and a black headband. His long hair was wet with sweat. He was wearing the fingerless leather gloves that everyone wore in the movies. His face was dark with an unshaven beard. The tee shirt read, I am an animal. I will eat you, across the front.
“Hey, Chief Stone,” Jo Jo said.
“How you doing?”
Jesse looked at him without speaking.
“How you doing, little lady,” Jo
Jo said.
“Fine,” Abby said.
“Closing in on that cat killer,
chief?.”
Jesse continued to look at him dead-eyed.
“Whatsa matter, you can’t hear
me?” Jo Jo said.
·
Some of the people coming from the movie slowed, looking covertly at the confrontation.
· “You got an alibi for the time
of the cat killing?” Jesse said. He was smiling, playing to the crowd, which was pretending not to notice as it moved around the scene.
“Sure do,” Jo Jo said.
“How do you know when ‘the cat
