Night Passage

Chapter 58

Lou Burke was getting into his car when Jesse opened the passenger door and got in beside him.

“Patrol supervising?” Jesse said.

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I ride along?” Jesse said. “I spend too much time in the office.”

“Come ahead,” Burke said.

Burke backed the car out of the parking lot and turned up Main Street. Between them was a shotgun, locked barrel up on the transmission hump.

“See if there’s any gum wrappers in the barrel,” Burke said. “Peter Perkins had the car before me.”

Jesse looked into the shotgun barrel. He blew some dust out.

“No gum wrappers,” he said.

“Boys don’t seem to have the proper respect for a weapon,” Burke said, “do they?”

“Never make it in the Corps,” Jesse said.

“You in the Marines?”

“Semper Fi,” Jesse said. “You?”

“Navy.”

“What was your job?”

Burke smiled.

“Lot of stuff. I was a lifer.”

“Twenty years?”

“Yeah. This is my retirement.”

Jesse smiled. Burke drove the car up Indian Hill Road. The startling leaves had finished turning, Jesse noticed. Many of the trees were leafless, or nearly so. And, puzzlingly, some of them still had leaves and the leaves were still green.

“Ever do any demolition work?” Jesse said.

Burke’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly as he glanced involuntarily at Jesse and then looked back at the road.

“Yeah, some.”

Jesse nodded. At the top of Indian Hill, Burke drove the patrol car slowly into the park. It was during school hours, and it was chilly. There was no one in the park except a white-haired man in a black-and-red wool jacket walking an aging yellow Lab.

“Funny how quiet a town is during school hours,” Jesse said.

Burke didn’t say anything.

“Ever been to Denver?” Jesse said.

“Denver?”

“Yeah.”

“Why you asking?”

Jesse smiled at him.

“Why not?” Jesse said.

“Jesse, you got something on your mind, I think you just better say it right out.”

“I am saying it right out,” Jesse said, still smiling. “You ever been to Denver?”

“Yeah.”

Jesse’s smile was gone.

“When’s the last time you were in Denver?” Jesse said.

From Indian Hill, you could see the whole harbor, uneventful in the late fall, and the old town, weathered shingle, red brick, and church steeples beside the dark water. You could see across the harbor to Paradise Neck, the big glass facade of the Yacht Club teetering over the water. And you could see across the Neck, mostly evergreen trees, with white and gray houses among them, and look at the Atlantic Ocean.

Burke didn’t answer. He turned the car back down the hill toward the center of town.

“When’s the last time you were in Denver, Lou?”

Burke shook his head.

“Drive us back to the station, Lou.”

Burke was silent. Jesse let the silence stand. There was no reason to let Burke in on what Jesse knew. Jesse had never gotten in trouble saying too little. The patrol car pulled into its slot outside the station.

“I’m going to ask you to take a leave of absence, Lou.”

Burke turned toward him and started to speak, and stopped.

“Leave the handgun and the badge with Molly,” Jesse said.

As they got out of the car Burke turned and looked across the roof at Jesse.

“You sonova bitch,” he said.

Burke’s voice was thick, as if forced out through a closing throat. And there was something in Burke’s face that Jesse felt with a force he wasn’t used to. You didn’t work South Central without seeing hatred. But the passion in Burke’s face was beyond hatred. Jesse felt something like revulsion, as if he’d seen something grotesque for a moment. He felt as if he needed to hold steady against it, the way you lean into a strong wind.

“Gun and badge to Molly, Lou,” Jesse said.