Night Passage

Chapter 12

Lou Burke sat with Hasty Hathaway on the bench outside the meeting house on the town common. Hathaway had a bag of popcorn which he was feeding to some pigeons that had gathered.

“You got any pets, Lou?” Hathaway said.

“No.”

“I’d like to have some animals, but Cissy...” He shook head and held out a piece of popcorn on his upturned palm. A pigeon circled it, hesitated, feinted once, then darted in and grabbed the corn. “I guess Ciss just isn’t an animal person.”

“Sure,” Burke said. “They’re not for everybody, I guess.”

“You know Ciss, used to having her house just so. God knows what she’d have been like if we’d had kids.”

“Easy to get set in your ways,” Burke said.

The common was a small green triangle at the intersection of three streets. There was a white eighteenth-century meeting house set on it, where at Christmas, the women’s auxiliary of something or other, Burke had never really known what, sold greens and fruitcake and handmade satin bows.

“So what do you think of Stone?” Hathaway said.

He took a handful of the popcorn and scattered it on the grass in front of the bench.

Burke was silent a moment, watching the pigeons hop and flutter after the popcorn.

“Well,” Burke said finally, “it’s too soon to say, I guess.”

“I realize that, but what’s your impression.”

“He might not be the answer,” Burke said.

“Really?” Hathaway seemed surprised. “Why do you say so?”

“I don’t know exactly, there’s just something... he’s got more iron in him than I was expecting.”

“Lou, he’s a lush,” Hathaway said. “He was fired for drinking on duty. His personnel file said he was unfit for police work.”

“Yeah, I know,” Burke said. “But he doesn’t give me that feeling. He was a homicide cop in L.A., remember.”

“And he was half gassed when we interviewed him in Chicago,” Hathaway said.

Burke shrugged.

“Well, let’s keep our eyes open,” Hathaway said. “What we don’t want is some born-again straight arrow poking his sober nose in where it shouldn’t go.”

Burke nodded.

“I still don’t see why you wouldn’t take the job, Lou.” Hathaway said. “It would have worked out so well.”

“No,” Burke said. “I’m a lot more effective if I’m not in charge. I’m the chief and things go bad, everybody lands on me. I’m just a cop following orders and no one pays me much attention. I know as much as I would being chief, and I’m a lot less visible. I do us more good where I am.”

“Things aren’t going to go bad, Lou.”

“I like to plan for what’s possible, not what’s likely,” Burke said.

“Sure, Lou, I understand, just would have been nice if weʼd been clearer on this before Tom left.”

“He’d have had to leave anyway.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Hathaway said.

The pigeons still fluttered and strutted, their heads bobbing like mechanical contrivances around him, but the popcorn was gone.

“And maybe I’m wrong,” Burke said.

Hathaway nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes,” he said. “I think you probably are. He seems pretty harmless to me.”