There were two big suitcases on the floor next to Vinnie. Fish nodded at them.

“Two million,” Fish said, “and change.”

“No sweat, Gino.”

“I’m sure,” Fish said.

“Thing is, Gino, I been getting three and a half on it, and I gotta split it with some people. Makes the math a little complicated. I was looking to get four even on this one, if I could.”

Fish sat silently and looked at Jo Jo, his hands resting on the table, his long fingers interlaced. Fish pursed his lips while he thought about this.

“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 player. The young man went back out to the anteroom smiling.

Outside on Tremont Street, Jo Jo walked a half block back up the street, and, out of sight of Gino’s office, put the bags down on the curb and waited for a cab.

Chapter 11

Jesse drove into Paradise at ten in the morning with the sun shining straight 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 arch of old trees. It wasn’t clean and cold, but it was clean and warm and he liked it.

He met the town, or as many members of the town as were interested, including most of the police department, in the auditorium of the brick town hall. The Board of Selectmen sat on stage in folding chairs. Jesse stood, while the chairman of the Board of Selectmen introduced him from a lectern, reading into an insensitive microphone from a sheet of paper with his remarks typed out on it.

“It gives me great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to present Paradise’s new police chief, Jesse Stone.”

The chairman of the board was named Hasty Hathaway. He wore a pink shirt and a plaid bow tie and a seersucker jacket that appeared too small for him. Jesse wore his dark suit with a white banded-collar shirt and no tie. He wore the short .38 in a black holster in back of his right hip. Hathaway handed Jesse the new badge that said “Paradise Police Department” around the outside, and “Chief” across the center.

Jesse slipped it into his shirt pocket.

“As most of you know, Chief Stone comes to us from Los Angeles, California, where he is a ten-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, serving most recently as a homicide detective. He holds numerous departmental citations, and was once featured in Parade magazine’s list of America’s Top Cops. Chief Stone was selected for this post after an exhaustive search from a field which included a number of very viable candidates. I’d like to thank all the members of the search committee who gave unsparingly of their time, and my thanks also to Lou Burke, who served us so well as interim chief. I know he and all the men, and women, of the Paradise Police Department will continue to serve with the devotion to duty that has marked this department since its inception. Chief Stone, would you care to say a few words?”

“I’m glad to be here,” Jesse said into the microphone. “Right now, everyone in the room knows more about the town than I do. I’ll need your help. Thank you.”

He stepped away from the microphone. Hathaway looked as if he were hoping for more. But he rallied.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s give Chief Stone a round of applause.”

Everyone clapped. Jesse went upstairs with Hathaway and the town legal counsel, whose name was Abby Taylor, and signed several papers. While he was signing them he noticed that the town counsel was wearing a nice-looking pale yellow suit, with a short skirt.

Then he went next door to the brick wing where police and fire were housed and sat down in the swivel chair in his new office. Lou Burke came in with a Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter pistol.

“The one Tommy Carson turned in,” Burke said, “when he got fired.”

“Thanks,” Jesse said. “I’ve got my own gun.”

Burke shrugged and put the pistol on the desk.

“Belongs to the department,” he said. “Goes with the job.”

Jesse picked up the gun and put it in the right-hand drawer of the desk.

“Have a seat,” Jesse said. “I might as well start learning.”

Burke sat. He was a compact man with dark skin and an advanced case of male pattern baldness. What hair remained along the sides of his head was black and cut very close.

“Is this a first-name department?” Jesse said.

“Has been.”

“Good. How you feel about them bringing me in from the outside, Lou?”

Burke sat quietly for a moment as if thinking about the question.

“Relieved,” he said finally.

“You didn’t like being chief?”

Burke shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Pay’s not worth the aggravation,” Burke said.

“Tell me about the aggravation,” Jesse said.

“You’re used to a big force,” Burke said. “Big city. Lotta cops, lotta people, you get to keep some distance from the civilians. Here you’re a town employee. Everybody knows everybody. The civilians are in our face twenty-four hours a day. For crissake you have to attend Rotary Club meetings.”

“Rotary Club?”

“Yeah. They didn’t mention that to you? Chief of police here is automatically a member of the Rotary Club, meets every Wednesday at the Paradise Inn.”

“How’s the food?” Jesse asked.

“You like chicken pot pie?”