Night Passage Read Free Page A

landscape but the station and the two men…. The first time he met Jennifer she had blond hair. He had played basketball for an hour at Sports Club LA, where Magic sometimes worked out, against a bunch of former college players and one guy who’d spent a couple of years as the eleventh man on the Indiana Pacers. Showered and dressed, he was drinking coffee at a table for two in the snack bar during a crowded noontime when she asked if she could sit in the empty seat across from him. He said she could. It was a big part of why he came to Sports Club LA. He didn’t really need to work out much. At six feet and 175 it was as if he’d been born in shape and never really had to work at it. He’d been a point guard at Fairfax High School, the only white point guard in the conference, and he could climb a long rope hand over hand without using his feet. At the Academy he had been the fastest up the rope in his class. Mostly he came to Sports Club LA because he knew there would be many good-looking young women there in excellent physical condition, and he hoped to meet one. He played some handball, some basketball, and drank coffee in the snack bar where, had he wished to, he could have had a blended fruit-and-yogurt frappe or some green vegetable juice. Jennifer set her tray down and smiled at him.
    “My name’s Jennifer,” she said.
    “Jesse Stone.”
    “What are you having?” she said.
    Her eyes were blue, the biggest eyes Jesse had ever seen, and the lashes were very long. She was wearing cobalt-and-emerald spandex and her fingernails were painted blue.
    “Coffee.”
    “Wow,” Jennifer said. “Here in the health food bar?”
    Jesse smiled. Jennifer had some kind of sandwich with guacamole on whole wheat bread. When she took a bite the guacamole oozed out of the edges and dribbled on her chin. She giggled as she put the sandwich down and wiped her chin with a napkin. He liked the way she giggled. He liked the way she seemed unembarrassed by slobbering her sandwich on her chin. He liked the way her green headband held her hair back off her face. He liked the fact that her skin was too dark a tone for her blond hair, and he wondered momentarily what her real color was.
    “So, you in the business?” Jennifer said.
    “I’m a police officer,” he said.
    “Really?”
    “Yes.”
    “God, you don’t look like one.”
    “What do I look like?” Jesse said.
    “Like a producer, maybe, or an agent. You know, slim, good haircut, good casual clothes, the Oakley shades.”
    Jesse smiled some more.
    “You carry a gun?” Jennifer said.
    “Sure.”
    “Really?”
    Jesse opened his coat and turned his body a little so that she could see the nine-millimeter pistol he wore behind his right hip.
    “I’ve never even picked up a gun,” Jennifer said.
    “That’s good.”
    “I’d love to shoot one. Is it hard to shoot one?”
    “No,” Jesse said. The gun nearly always worked. Unless they were sort of late-age hippies and then it turned them off. “I’ll take you shooting sometime, if you’d like.”
    “Is there a big kick?”
    “No.”
    Jennifer ate some more sandwich and wiped her mouth.
    “If I’d known I was going to eat with someone I wouldn’t have ordered this sandwich,” she said.
    Jesse nodded.
    “You don’t say much, do you?”
    “No,” Jesse said. “I don’t.”
    “Why is that, most guys I know around here talk a mile a minute.”
    “That’s one reason,” Jesse said.
    Jennifer laughed.
    “Any other reasons?”
    “I can’t ever remember,” Jesse said, “getting in trouble by keeping my mouth shut.”
    “So what kind of cop are you? You a detective?”
    “Yes.”
    “LAPD?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where are you, ah, stationed? Are cops stationed?”
    “I am a homicide detective. I work out of police headquarters downtown.”
    “Homicide.”
    “Yes.”
    Jennifer was silent for a moment thinking about the gap between the world she lived in and the one he worked in.
    “Is it like, what? Hill